Speaker 1: Welcome to sbot to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey,
Speaker 1: it's our yearly Ignobles episode. That's right, This is a
Speaker 1: tradition for us. These awards go out generally what mid
Speaker 1: to late September. We always come back and hit them
Speaker 1: in early November, after we're done with all of our
Speaker 1: Halloween content. And it's just, you know, a great way
Speaker 1: to dive back in to, uh, to serious scientific study.
Speaker 1: And I'm not joking because granted, these are awards that
Speaker 1: that's that celebrate and highlight studies that may seem a
Speaker 1: bit absurd and a bit a bit comical, but generally speaking,
Speaker 1: we're dealing with with with with actual research that doesn't
Speaker 1: at least in some way expand our scientific knowledge of
Speaker 1: the world. Right, even if it's funny, you can usually
Speaker 1: learn something interesting from it, right. So the basics on
Speaker 1: the Igno Belt obviously it's a play on the Nobel Prize. Uh.
Speaker 1: These have been awarded each year since nineteen by the
Speaker 1: Annimals of Improbable Research, which is a publication that uh,
Speaker 1: you know, prides itself on seeking out the absurd and
Speaker 1: the humorous and the whimsical within the realms of legitimate
Speaker 1: scientific research. The purpose of the award, according to the
Speaker 1: editors UH is to quote to honor achievements that first
Speaker 1: make people laugh and then make them think. Furthermore, they
Speaker 1: stressed that the ten prizes aren't necessarily meant to pass
Speaker 1: judgment on the winners. Instead, the official website emphasizes that
Speaker 1: the prizes quote celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and
Speaker 1: spur people's interests in science, medicine, and technology. And the
Speaker 1: key individual in all this is editor Mark Abrams, who
Speaker 1: again has been heading this up since now. In some
Speaker 1: previous years we've covered all of the prizes awarded. We're
Speaker 1: not going to be doing that this year. We just
Speaker 1: wanted to pick out a selection and focus on a
Speaker 1: few of them that seemed fun or interesting for one
Speaker 1: episode this year. We might come back with multiple parts
Speaker 1: in future years, but this year we're just sticking with
Speaker 1: the one right and if you want the full list
Speaker 1: of winners then you should go to www dot Improbable
Speaker 1: dot com. Now, this year's ceremonies happened entirely online on Thursday,
Speaker 1: septe um and uh yeah, let's let's dive right in.
Speaker 1: Let's see what which one are we going to discuss first?
Speaker 1: What we've We've got to start with a knife made
Speaker 1: of feces, because that seems like the perfect metaphor for
Speaker 1: the year is just being menaced with a blade of
Speaker 1: of excrement, blade of excrement, it shall be. This was
Speaker 1: the Materials Science Prize and it does concern a frozen
Speaker 1: feces knife. Um. Now to to put this in the
Speaker 1: correct um, you know, frame of reverence, so to really
Speaker 1: prepare you for what we're specifically talking about here, I'm
Speaker 1: going to read a segment here from Shadows in the
Speaker 1: Sun Travels to Landscapes of Spirit and Desire. Uh is
Speaker 1: a book came out by Wade Davis, a Canadian US
Speaker 1: Colombian cultural anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author and photographer. Quote. There is
Speaker 1: a well known account of an old Inuit man who
Speaker 1: refused to move into a settlement over the objections of
Speaker 1: his family. He made plans to stay on the ice.
Speaker 1: To stop him, they took away all his tools, so
Speaker 1: in the midst of a winter gale, he stepped out
Speaker 1: of their iglue defecated and honed the feces into a
Speaker 1: frozen blade, which he sharpened with a spray of saliva.
Speaker 1: With the knife, he killed a dog using its ribbed
Speaker 1: cage as a sled, and it's high to harness another dog.
Speaker 1: He disappeared into the darkness. WHOA, Now that's that's that's
Speaker 1: a pretty awesome little tail there. That's beyond Rambo levels
Speaker 1: of of improvised tools. I mean, that's that's good stuff,
Speaker 1: beyond the Giver, beyond Rambo. Yeah, so this is this
Speaker 1: is the account or one of two accounts that the
Speaker 1: study we're gonna get to is going to deal with.
Speaker 1: I do think that I thought I would point out
Speaker 1: though for long time listeners of the show, you might
Speaker 1: recognize the name Wade Davis. Davis has written no numerous
Speaker 1: books over the years, but he was perhaps most famously
Speaker 1: the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow um, which,
Speaker 1: as we discussed on the show before, put forward the
Speaker 1: hypothesis that tetrato toxin is linked to the zombie legend
Speaker 1: and Haiti hypo and a hypothesis that proved somewhat controversial. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a nonfiction book, but it served as the
Speaker 1: inspiration for the West Craven film, which was just an
Speaker 1: infamously troubled production filmed on location in Haiti, starring Bill Pullman,
Speaker 1: uh Paul Winfield and I can't remember if there was
Speaker 1: anybody else really have note in that. But um Shadows
Speaker 1: of the Sun, on the other hand, collects various essays
Speaker 1: by Davis concerning various parts of the world, including the
Speaker 1: innuits of the Arctic Circle. But let's get back to
Speaker 1: this poop blade, so material sciences aside. We'll get into
Speaker 1: the material sciences here. This seems like a perfectly great
Speaker 1: legend of a man so rugged and committed to life
Speaker 1: on the ice that robbed of his tools, he will
Speaker 1: forge a blade from his own excrement and use it
Speaker 1: to cut a sled and harness from one dog, and
Speaker 1: then lash that sled to another dog and then just
Speaker 1: escape into the wilds. Right. It's sort of the ultimate
Speaker 1: story of of self reliance and resourcefulness. But it does
Speaker 1: raise the question is this possible? Could you actually do
Speaker 1: this right? Because what works in legend doesn't necessarily work
Speaker 1: in the real world. But that's where this study enters
Speaker 1: the picture to shed light on the legend and see
Speaker 1: if it melts or see if it holds its form um.
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to read the entire title of
Speaker 1: the paper just yet because it gives away the answer.
Speaker 1: But essentially this was looking to it was. It had
Speaker 1: to do with experimental replicate replication of a knife made
Speaker 1: from frozen human feces, and it was by Aaron at All,
Speaker 1: published in the Journal of Archaeological Science in October of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. Uh. That is meeting I Aaron, Associate Professor
Speaker 1: of Anthropology and Director of Archaeology at Kent State University. UH.
Speaker 1: He's the key investigator in this. He's also the one
Speaker 1: who's poop they will use. Now, this is interesting because
Speaker 1: it ties into some stuff we've talked about on the
Speaker 1: show recently. For example, in the Pike Create episode PI
Speaker 1: Crete is. If you didn't check that one out yet,
Speaker 1: that was a lot of fun. But it's a story
Speaker 1: about an attempt during World War Two to manufacture a
Speaker 1: sort of floating armored aircraft carrier out of what would
Speaker 1: have been a mixture of wood, pulp and ice. And
Speaker 1: it kind of gets you considering the different possibilities of
Speaker 1: what kinds of tools and even structures or vehicles you
Speaker 1: can make out of various types of frozen material, because
Speaker 1: the material properties of water with saturated wood pulp in
Speaker 1: it are are very different when frozen than just plain water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and really that the work we did researching PI
Speaker 1: cret I mean it makes you think, well, maybe this
Speaker 1: could work, right, because what is fecal matter, But you know,
Speaker 1: it has water and it obviously, but it also has
Speaker 1: these these different depending on the diet. Yeah, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be some other stuff in there that could potentially add
Speaker 1: to the structure and keep it from shattering. H um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's one of these things that sounds potentially plausible.
Speaker 1: And and again that's where the experiment comes into play.
Speaker 1: I mean it does make you wonder what should you
Speaker 1: eat if you want your fecal matter to be the
Speaker 1: most knife ready. Yeah. Of course. It's also we mentioned
Speaker 1: I think Mortal Kombat Sub Zero, the the character the
Speaker 1: warrior in the video games and the movies that that
Speaker 1: the in addition to freezing people solid and shattering them,
Speaker 1: also crafts magical weapons out of out of magical ice.
Speaker 1: Uh So really this is this is essentially fodder for
Speaker 1: a new Mortal Kombat character, like the poopier version of
Speaker 1: sub zero. Okay, I gotta know the answer, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's work our way up to the answers. So, as
Speaker 1: the author's point out, Davis's account in the book was
Speaker 1: attributed to one Olayuk nar Quitarvek, who who said this
Speaker 1: about his own grandfather in the nineteen fifties. Um, I
Speaker 1: mean the grandfather would have lived in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: That's the idea here now. Davis himself admitted that he
Speaker 1: initially took the story as a humorous one and admits
Speaker 1: that it might well be more legend than reality. But
Speaker 1: it was subsequently repeated in various texts and uh and David.
Speaker 1: But Davis did say that, well, okay, there is an
Speaker 1: account we can look to that could potentially back this up.
Speaker 1: And it's an account by Danish explorer Peter Frutchen, who
Speaker 1: lived eighteen eighty six through nineteen fifty seven, and uh
Speaker 1: Fruction claimed to have used a similar tactic. His account
Speaker 1: was that he dug a pit to sleep in this
Speaker 1: is in the Arctic, and awoke to find himself snowed in. So,
Speaker 1: remembering seeing frozen dog extreument that looked pretty solid, he
Speaker 1: he got an idea. He decided to defecate in one hand,
Speaker 1: shape it into a chisel and then wait for the
Speaker 1: fecal matter to freeze hard enough then to use that
Speaker 1: chisel to dig his way out. I don't I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but for some reason, my my skeptical
Speaker 1: antennae or sort of perking up that something about this
Speaker 1: story seems wrong, I too, am doubtful. I was doubtful
Speaker 1: as well. So basically this is where the this is
Speaker 1: where the experiment comes in. Because again, just because you
Speaker 1: have these two cases, one is is more presented as
Speaker 1: a legend and one also might be an exaggerated or
Speaker 1: simply made up account. Uh, there's just no way of knowing.
Speaker 1: It's not like in either case someone kept the poop
Speaker 1: dagger and it was you know, presented, So that means
Speaker 1: you've got to make your own poop a dagger. And
Speaker 1: that's exactly what they did in this um uh, this
Speaker 1: kid State University study. So first of all, I just
Speaker 1: want to want to just let everybody know, no dogs
Speaker 1: are cut up in this experiment. They use pig hide
Speaker 1: muscles and tendons to stand in for dog fl but
Speaker 1: the poop, well that's a little too essential to the experiment.
Speaker 1: They had to use actual human fecal matter, but they
Speaker 1: also needed to make sure it was fecal matter in
Speaker 1: keeping with the diet of an Inuit living on the
Speaker 1: ice in the nineteen fifties. Oh okay, So what would
Speaker 1: this diet most likely consist of. Well, this is what
Speaker 1: they say in the study quote, in order to procure
Speaker 1: the necessary raw materials for knife production, one of us,
Speaker 1: and then they include the in parenthesise m I E
Speaker 1: for meat and I Aaron the again the Associate professor
Speaker 1: of Anthropology and director of Archaeology, I can't state, went
Speaker 1: on a diet with high protein and fatty acids, which
Speaker 1: is consistent with an Arctic diet for eight days. The
Speaker 1: Innuit do not only eat meat from maritime and terrestrial animals,
Speaker 1: and there were three instances during the eight day diet
Speaker 1: that M I E ate fruit, vegetables, or carbohydrates. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is a diet that is not exclusively meat based,
Speaker 1: but is largely meat based, right, Yeah, more and more
Speaker 1: beat based than and um than Aaron would usually UM
Speaker 1: engage with. So on the fourth day he begins the
Speaker 1: collection process and this continues for five days. The fecal
Speaker 1: samples were formed into knives via ceramic molds, but they
Speaker 1: were also molded by hand into quote hand shaped knives,
Speaker 1: and all of these were stored in a freezer, hopefully
Speaker 1: clearly marked who molded them by hand. I don't know
Speaker 1: that the study was specific on that matter. I I'm
Speaker 1: a I'm assuming that it's m I. E. Him self
Speaker 1: that is doing most of the molding and the handling
Speaker 1: of his own poop blades. Um maybe this is unreasonable
Speaker 1: taboo enforcement. It seems like weird to make somebody else
Speaker 1: handle your frozen feces. Yeah, yeah, I would agree, But
Speaker 1: I don't know in the name of science, you know,
Speaker 1: with with you know, appropriate scientific restraints in place, you know,
Speaker 1: it might be okay. So when it came time to
Speaker 1: put the knives to the test, they were taken out
Speaker 1: of the freezer, they were sharpened once more, and then
Speaker 1: they were turned to even older temperatures via dry ice
Speaker 1: to ready them for the task. And and part of
Speaker 1: this is really as um as the investigators went onto
Speaker 1: to state like this was trying to create the best
Speaker 1: possible conditions for this uh test to potentially work, Like
Speaker 1: really to give just make sure everything was just as
Speaker 1: frozen as possible. Um and uh. And so that they decided.
Speaker 1: Then they put them to the test. They started with
Speaker 1: the toughest challenge, however, and that's the hide, because they figured, well,
Speaker 1: if the knives failed to cut through the hide, you
Speaker 1: can basically go ahead and call it a day because
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. They can cut through fat, etcetera. Here's
Speaker 1: what happened. Both varieties of fecal blade. That means, the
Speaker 1: ones that were just put in the mold, the ones
Speaker 1: that were formed by hand. Both of them failed to
Speaker 1: cut the hide. Oh, your knife sucks. Now, I know
Speaker 1: what you're thinking. Maybe they got the poop consistency wrong. Well,
Speaker 1: they thought of that they had forged a blade from
Speaker 1: Western diet poop, but that failed as well. They also
Speaker 1: went ahead and tried the blades out on a layer
Speaker 1: of fat underneath the hide, and quote, only the shallowest
Speaker 1: of slices could be produced and the knife edge still
Speaker 1: quickly melted and deteriorated. Yeah. I would imagine that this
Speaker 1: would be a problem that uh, that it just melts
Speaker 1: too fast to be effective at cutting. I mean, I
Speaker 1: bet you probably could get a somewhat sharp edge on it,
Speaker 1: but how would you hold the edge for very long,
Speaker 1: because as soon as you start sewing into something, it's
Speaker 1: probably just gonna get heated up by friction and then
Speaker 1: melt away and be blunt. Yeah, because I mean, because
Speaker 1: that's that's the one of the keys here is that
Speaker 1: the legend is not a story of someone who stabbed
Speaker 1: somebody in the eye with an icicle, you know. It's
Speaker 1: the story of someone who butchers a dog and processes
Speaker 1: its body to make raw materials. Now, the researcher stress
Speaker 1: that by depending again on very cold materials instead of
Speaker 1: fresh kills, uh, they gave the experiment the best chance
Speaker 1: of success, but the blades still failed to match up
Speaker 1: to the legend. Now that, they also drive home that
Speaker 1: perhaps additional test with additional fecal matter samples would be
Speaker 1: ideal if anyone else wants to continue this this great work.
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't know, like what would be
Speaker 1: the additional um, you know, dietary um uh formula for
Speaker 1: fecal matter that would make a better poop knife. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, honestly, now that I'm thinking about it,
Speaker 1: I don't even know if like you could make a
Speaker 1: very good knife out of pike crete, right, because a
Speaker 1: knife depends so much on having a very sharp blade
Speaker 1: to work very effectively. And while pike crete is really
Speaker 1: good at preventing cracks from propagating across the length of it,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty good at melting more slowly than regular ice,
Speaker 1: I still think the sharp edge of a pike crete
Speaker 1: knife would probably melt pretty quickly, too quickly to be useful.
Speaker 1: So it seems like you'd be better off if you
Speaker 1: made a pike create or a frozen poop warhammer, right right, yeah, okay, Um. Now,
Speaker 1: the in addition to you know, contemplations of regarding different diets, uh,
Speaker 1: they also contemplate, you know, the idea that, okay, you
Speaker 1: have this saliva aspect of the original legend, right, that
Speaker 1: he sprays saliva onto the poop knife and then forges it.
Speaker 1: But they're doubtful that that would really make a difference either.
Speaker 1: They point to the work of McCall and Telton from
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, who looked into the idea of whether
Speaker 1: humans and cold regions used flaked and chipped ice for
Speaker 1: butchery tools, and they too found that melting occurred with
Speaker 1: these when these objects came into contact with warm bodies,
Speaker 1: and that they also melted during use. So um, you
Speaker 1: know again you're coming down to I think in a
Speaker 1: case where if you're talking about creating something out of
Speaker 1: out of ice or frozen poop and you're attempting to
Speaker 1: use it as a butchery tool, um, you're just asking
Speaker 1: too much of the material For frozen material. The effectiveness
Speaker 1: of a knife blade depends on it being very thin. Basically,
Speaker 1: the extent to which it's effective is based on its thinness,
Speaker 1: and being thin would make any frozen material likely to
Speaker 1: melt because you know, it's harder to maintain the cold temperatures.
Speaker 1: It's just gonna acquire heat from the environment from friction
Speaker 1: too fast. Now you might ask yourself, okay, but seriously,
Speaker 1: why was this necessary research? I think they have a
Speaker 1: nice uh summary of this in the paper itself. I
Speaker 1: just want to read this quote. Societal narratives and policies
Speaker 1: are often constructed from anthropological and scientific claims. While the
Speaker 1: narrative that indigenous and prehistoric people are technologically resourceful and
Speaker 1: innovative is widely supported, these narratives suffer when an untested
Speaker 1: claim is used to support it. If one untested claim
Speaker 1: is used to support a stance, even if that stance
Speaker 1: is otherwise supported, ethical, or just, then there is no
Speaker 1: logical reason why a second untested claim cannot be invoked.
Speaker 1: The use of untested claims then becomes the norm and
Speaker 1: can be used to support stances that are beneficial to
Speaker 1: society as well as those that are harmful. Anthropologists must
Speaker 1: actively seek out unsupported claims, assumptions, rumors, and urban legends,
Speaker 1: and by testing them, ensure any narratives that follow are
Speaker 1: as sturdy as possible. Right, So, there are enough true
Speaker 1: stories about resourcefulness and ingenuity among the Inuit people's that
Speaker 1: you don't need like physically impossible stories gunking up the works, right,
Speaker 1: And by investigating a story like this, you can you
Speaker 1: can make that that decision. Okay, looks like we file
Speaker 1: this more under legend and mythology as opposed to a
Speaker 1: true tale of survival. Right, So that's the poop knife.
Speaker 1: I thought that one was really entertaining, and again it
Speaker 1: does feel kind of fitting for but also it's just
Speaker 1: a really cool story. Uh. And and I do encourage
Speaker 1: anyone out there who has a dungeon master or or
Speaker 1: a Dungeons and Dragons player keep this story in mind.
Speaker 1: I think this one will prove useful, especially if you're
Speaker 1: adventuring and somewhere like ice wind Dale or something. Um
Speaker 1: you know, usually try and use the poop knife. Maybe
Speaker 1: your dungeon master has heard this episode or has read
Speaker 1: this study follows the Ignoble Prizes, and they'll shoot you down.
Speaker 1: But you know, dungeons and dragons is a legendary environment,
Speaker 1: so maybe you'll get away with it. You have acquired
Speaker 1: the blade of Latrinius. Alright, on that note, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but when we come back, we'll
Speaker 1: discuss another selection from the Ignoble Prizes. Thank alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: What have you got for us, Joe? Okay, it's time
Speaker 1: to talk about professional entomologists who are afraid of spiders.
Speaker 1: So this winning article, this was from the Entomology Prize.
Speaker 1: It's by Richard S. Vetter, called arachnophobic entomologists when two
Speaker 1: more legs makes a Big difference, published an American Entomologist
Speaker 1: in Now. The author of the study, Richard Vetter, is
Speaker 1: now retired, but during his career he was an entomology
Speaker 1: research associate at UC Riverside and a quick look around
Speaker 1: the internet at photos of this guy and interviews with
Speaker 1: him suggests that he has some kind of arachnophiliac. He
Speaker 1: clearly loves spider as I found a picture of him
Speaker 1: with a spider crawling on his eye and he's got
Speaker 1: this big smile on his face. I generally thought this
Speaker 1: was a picture of Dennis Hopper when I first saw it.
Speaker 1: I thought it's like a younger Dennis Hopper. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: a warrior poet in the classic sense. So this paper
Speaker 1: is about arachnophobia, the fear, sometimes irrational fear of spiders,
Speaker 1: which is very common phobia. And I've read a couple
Speaker 1: of articles featuring interviews with the vetter and he sort
Speaker 1: of tells some personal stories that got him thinking about
Speaker 1: the subject of arachnophobia among entomologists. So a few of
Speaker 1: these stories. For one thing, he tells a story of
Speaker 1: one time sitting down at a lunch table with colleagues
Speaker 1: and producing a brown recluse spider that was sealed in
Speaker 1: a plastic bag, and he says one of his colleagues,
Speaker 1: an aquatic entomologist, absolutely quote vaporized, just gone from the
Speaker 1: room all the way down the hall in five seconds.
Speaker 1: And then he says another time he was with an
Speaker 1: entomologist colleague, and he opened the lid on a specimen
Speaker 1: jar that had a black widow in it, and he
Speaker 1: said that this guy in the room literally jumped backwards quote,
Speaker 1: like the spider was going to decapitate him. Now, this
Speaker 1: is kind of surprising to me because you would sort
Speaker 1: of expect that entomologists would be pretty much immune to
Speaker 1: irrational spider fear. Uh. Now, quick note on the terminology.
Speaker 1: Entomologists are a specialized branch of zoologists. They study insects.
Speaker 1: The researchers who specialize in arachnids like spider's ticks and
Speaker 1: mites are called arachnologists. But I think there's clearly some crossover,
Speaker 1: Like it looks like Vetter was technically an entomologist by
Speaker 1: title at his institution, but his passion seemed to be
Speaker 1: with spiders. And uh, I think you just kind of
Speaker 1: assumed that attitudes about insects and attitudes about spiders, since
Speaker 1: they're both small arthropods, would be pretty correlated, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I have two minds on this because,
Speaker 1: on one hand, yeah, it just seems like if you're
Speaker 1: cool with devoting your life to to one variety of
Speaker 1: creepy crawley. Then you're good with all creepy crawleys. But
Speaker 1: then I think to my on my own self, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, you know, I'll get down and look
Speaker 1: at something like, you know, a centipede or even a spider,
Speaker 1: but I'm a little wigged out by something like a
Speaker 1: palmetta bug or a roach, you know. So, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is interesting. There's somebody who I think is the inverted
Speaker 1: version of you in this study. Oh really yeah, so
Speaker 1: we'll get to that in just a minute. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I can think of at least a couple of reasons,
Speaker 1: at least for me, why why I wouldn't really expect
Speaker 1: entomologists who have powerful, irrational fears of spiders. One is
Speaker 1: self selection in the profession, right, Like, how many people
Speaker 1: with an existing overwhelming fear of tiny arthropods would go
Speaker 1: into a research field where you handle tiny arthropods all
Speaker 1: the time. And then the other thing I would just
Speaker 1: think of would be conditioning. Even if you start off
Speaker 1: kind of afraid of spiders, wouldn't constantly working with insects
Speaker 1: and various types of small arthur pods just sort of
Speaker 1: blunt that fear over time. Yeah, it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to imagine like a Dickensian tale where uh this, uh this,
Speaker 1: this kid enters entomology, but he's just following in the
Speaker 1: in his father's footsteps. It's just the family business of
Speaker 1: studying insects, right in a weird way. That almost does
Speaker 1: seem like a Dickensian kind of comic character, like entomologists
Speaker 1: who's terrified of of insects or something. But anyway, there
Speaker 1: is a different Spiders are not exactly insects, So uh so,
Speaker 1: let's let's pursue this a little farther. So Vetter, based
Speaker 1: on these anecdotes from his colleagues, he decided to conduct
Speaker 1: a survey that was open to professional entomologists, and he
Speaker 1: solicited responses from self declared a rack no adverse researchers
Speaker 1: from the readership of the journal American Entomologists. So it's
Speaker 1: very worth noting that this is not like a huge
Speaker 1: random sample of the field. This is self selected. This
Speaker 1: is a self selected sample of researchers who were like, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, I raised my hand, I'm afraid of spiders.
Speaker 1: So important to keep that in mind. This is not
Speaker 1: going to be like indicative of the field as a whole,
Speaker 1: but at least, it's showing you what some people in
Speaker 1: the field are thinking. And this survey included a standardized
Speaker 1: psychology test known as the Fear of Spider's Questionnaire or
Speaker 1: f s Q, as well as qualitative reports where people
Speaker 1: could explain their experiences in plain language, and the top
Speaker 1: line result of the survey was like, Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: some professional entomologists who are terrified of spiders. Uh So, first,
Speaker 1: I just want to talk about a few general findings
Speaker 1: from the existing literature on irachnophobia, and this is something
Speaker 1: that Vetter summarizes later in his paper. So one of
Speaker 1: the things is that arachnophobia, usually in in the general public,
Speaker 1: starts in childhood, though it's at sometimes different stages depending
Speaker 1: on who you ask. If you ask parents about their children,
Speaker 1: it seems to start in girls at an average age
Speaker 1: of four point seven. And this research was specifically in girls.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it would be different or the
Speaker 1: same with boys, but if but however, if so, parents
Speaker 1: say it starts at four point seven. If you ask
Speaker 1: adult women about their own arachnophobia when that started, they
Speaker 1: tend to give an average age of nine point four years,
Speaker 1: but with a pretty big margin of error. So if
Speaker 1: those numbers are at least somewhat accurate, that's kind of
Speaker 1: interesting because it might mean that people display fear of
Speaker 1: spiders that like can be observed by others, that parents
Speaker 1: can observe before they themselves recall being aware of the phobia.
Speaker 1: Though qualitatively, many arachnophobes cannot recall an age when their
Speaker 1: fear began. A lot of them just say I've always
Speaker 1: been afraid of spiders as long as I can remember.
Speaker 1: You know, there wasn't an inciting incident, though for a
Speaker 1: few For a few cases in this survey, there was
Speaker 1: a reported conditioning of end. On average, women are more
Speaker 1: likely than men to report aracnophobia, and the intensity of
Speaker 1: arachnophobia tends to be higher in younger people than in
Speaker 1: older people. I thought that was kind of interesting. Spider
Speaker 1: fear is higher in people whose parents also had spider fear,
Speaker 1: and it's especially correlated between mothers and daughters. And many
Speaker 1: arachnophobes rate high on measures of disgust sensitivity, which is
Speaker 1: an interesting psychometric category. It's basically like how easily you
Speaker 1: get grossed out by various kinds of things, and that
Speaker 1: that trait is seems to be interestingly correlated to all
Speaker 1: kinds of other stuff, you know, even like political psychology
Speaker 1: and stuff. Now, there's a lot of interesting speculation as
Speaker 1: to why spiders trigger fear reactions and so many people,
Speaker 1: when in reality spiders don't usually represent much of a
Speaker 1: threat to survival. There are relatively minor threat as far
Speaker 1: as animals in the environment go. UM. We've talked about
Speaker 1: some of these speculations about causes for acnophobia before UM.
Speaker 1: But interestingly, some research has tried to understand not just
Speaker 1: a ragnophobia itself, but which particular features of spiders trigger
Speaker 1: it the most, because they're different spiders with different characteristics
Speaker 1: physical and behavioral, So like what kinds of spiders are
Speaker 1: the worst and which features of spiders bother people the most. Uh,
Speaker 1: And studies have found that the things people really don't
Speaker 1: like about spiders when they don't like them is unpredictability,
Speaker 1: So there's this perceived lack of control over spiders. H.
Speaker 1: People really don't like the fast, jerky movements and their
Speaker 1: ability to suddenly appear in places where they weren't seen before. UH.
Speaker 1: There was one entomologist actually in this study that Vetter did,
Speaker 1: who said that they would rather quote scoop up a
Speaker 1: handful of maggots with an ungloved hand than get close
Speaker 1: enough to a spider to kill it. And now you
Speaker 1: might wonder why they're, Well, they give a rationale. Actually,
Speaker 1: this respondent said, maggots don't sneak up on you and
Speaker 1: jump in your hair. Now, I would say probably spiders
Speaker 1: don't usually do that either. But I guess the thing
Speaker 1: that causes the fear here is that they, at least
Speaker 1: in theory, could Yeah. I mean, you're you're generally going
Speaker 1: to encounter maggots in in exactly one type of place.
Speaker 1: Um where Yeah, if you're more you're more likely to
Speaker 1: encounter spiders at various parts points in your house. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're more likely to be on the move. Maggots,
Speaker 1: they're not going to be on the move, that's right.
Speaker 1: And and the last things about spiders that people disliked
Speaker 1: the most were physical features, including the number of legs.
Speaker 1: For some reason, people don't like the number of legs.
Speaker 1: They don't like they don't like hair nous, and they
Speaker 1: don't like having fangs or being able to bite. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then furthermore, Robbi just included for you to look
Speaker 1: at here a chart of within Vetters survey. He charted
Speaker 1: respondents scores of likability for a variety of different animals.
Speaker 1: It looks like just a few dozen random animals, including
Speaker 1: like butterfly, horse, snake, mouse, earwig, mosquito, spider, and you
Speaker 1: can you can really see that the worst thing, even
Speaker 1: worse than a spider, and I think I would agree,
Speaker 1: is a tick. Oh yeah, I were very much on
Speaker 1: the same page there as far as ticks go. Um,
Speaker 1: far worse than a spider. Uh, Like the tick is
Speaker 1: actively seeking you out, trying to to attach to your body,
Speaker 1: drink your blood, and potentially share some pathogens with you
Speaker 1: at the same time. Um, you know, moments like the
Speaker 1: mosquito that that ranks beneath the spider. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: an interesting chart to look at because you think see
Speaker 1: things in there that I, you know, certainly would expect
Speaker 1: to see, like the cockroach for example, Um, the slug.
Speaker 1: I guess you know. I I've made my piece with slugs,
Speaker 1: but I used to find them more repellent. Um. But
Speaker 1: then eels, like people really grossed out by eels. I
Speaker 1: guess they're kind of weird looking. Well, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a small survey of people who self selected as
Speaker 1: saying they were afraid of spiders or disliked spiders. So
Speaker 1: why is the squirrel so high on the list? Like,
Speaker 1: the squirrel is rated um worse than a bear, worse
Speaker 1: than a or let's say, or is that worse than
Speaker 1: a um, worse worse than an earthworm? I mean, more
Speaker 1: disliked than a bear. But once you get into all
Speaker 1: of the like mammals down here, except for the rat,
Speaker 1: they're all on the positive side of the scale. So
Speaker 1: like the halfway point of the scale, the only things
Speaker 1: that on average were hated more than half were maggots, scorpions, rats, mosquitoes, spiders,
Speaker 1: and ticks. But one thing you all say about hating
Speaker 1: ticks is that I think that's an important case where
Speaker 1: like your gut level discussed also lines up with your
Speaker 1: rational knowledge, because I bet a lot of these entomologists
Speaker 1: hate spiders, but they know it wrong to hate spiders.
Speaker 1: They're like, you know, I can't argue with my gut feelings,
Speaker 1: but I just know that I shouldn't hate spiders. They're
Speaker 1: not actually bad with ticks. I mean, the heart in
Speaker 1: the head are in the same place, right, There are
Speaker 1: just a lot of legitimate, um scientifically proven reasons to
Speaker 1: to not be crazy about ticks. But anyway, so to
Speaker 1: get into the results of vetter study, how do these
Speaker 1: self reported araq no adverse entomologists UH differ from the
Speaker 1: general public in terms of spider fear? Well, actually, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of similarities. So he found that for
Speaker 1: the general public and for these arachno adverse entomologists, the
Speaker 1: arachnophobia begins in childhood, generally before respondents have even considered
Speaker 1: entomology as a career path, So these people are not
Speaker 1: like acquiring spider fear in adulthood. UH. Vetter says that
Speaker 1: the fear of spider's questionnaire scores between the genders were
Speaker 1: not statistically significantly different. UH didn't seem to be a
Speaker 1: major gender difference among the entomologists. Araq noo adverse entomologists
Speaker 1: seem to dislike spiders for most of the same reasons
Speaker 1: as general arachnophobes do. That don't like the hair, nous,
Speaker 1: the fangs, the number of legs still on the number
Speaker 1: of legs eight is bad, unpredictability, and fast sudden movements,
Speaker 1: but also interestingly better believed that there is a lower
Speaker 1: prevalence of disgust reactions to spiders among entomologists. Uh, the
Speaker 1: entomologists who don't like spiders are afraid, but they're not
Speaker 1: as gross stout as the general public. And then to
Speaker 1: read a couple of his final observations quote. One difference
Speaker 1: from general arachnophobes that may have been present but not
Speaker 1: specifically documented in the classic literature is that several entomologists
Speaker 1: mentioned being tormented by family members who capitalized on the
Speaker 1: respondents fear of spiders. That's that's not nice. Don't don't
Speaker 1: torment your family members with spiders. Um. Another is uh quote.
Speaker 1: Another difference is that arachnophobes in the general public assign
Speaker 1: thropomorphic cognitive behaviors to spiders, such as vengefulness or purposeful surveillance,
Speaker 1: Whereas the general impression I received from the iraqno adverse
Speaker 1: entomologists was that they realized their fears or dislikes were paradoxical,
Speaker 1: even though they could not explain the reasoning behind them.
Speaker 1: And this gets this gets to the you know, the
Speaker 1: the non rational aspect of phobia. I imagine here, you
Speaker 1: know that the idea that it's on one hand, you
Speaker 1: can you can rationally discuss why you shouldn't feel this
Speaker 1: way and yet still have these feelings. Yeah, totally. And
Speaker 1: now there was one last thing that I noticed, or
Speaker 1: I at least thought was interesting. Vetter did not draw
Speaker 1: attention to this himself, but it stuck out to me.
Speaker 1: Some of these iraq noo adverse entomologists seemed to display
Speaker 1: what I would guess is an unusually high level of
Speaker 1: affinity for certain insects. For example, one reported having owned
Speaker 1: a Madagascar hissing cockroach as a pet when they were
Speaker 1: a child, which is probably not normal for many kids,
Speaker 1: but you can kind of see how a kid who
Speaker 1: has a cockroach as a pet might want to grow
Speaker 1: up to become an entomologist. And other ones rated animals
Speaker 1: like cockroaches and maggots among their most liked animals in
Speaker 1: that big list of animals we were just talking about, uh,
Speaker 1: And in the averages from all the respondents, the top
Speaker 1: three most liked animals of the entire list, even out
Speaker 1: performing dogs, horses, porpoises, and other commonly charismatic animals. Uh.
Speaker 1: The top three were all insects, butterflies, dragonflies, and ladybugs.
Speaker 1: The entomologists in this survey hated spiders but love those
Speaker 1: three insects. So could it be that some of these
Speaker 1: entomologists are also influenced to dislike or be afraid of
Speaker 1: spiders because they're so fond of the spider's prey animals.
Speaker 1: I wonder that is interesting, um, because when you watch
Speaker 1: a spider do its thing that is, how do you
Speaker 1: emotionally respond to that? Because I think I may have
Speaker 1: showed this something the show already, But a few weeks back,
Speaker 1: maybe like a month back, Uh, there was this enormous
Speaker 1: spider web on my front porch and I was enjoying
Speaker 1: watching and watching the spider set up shop there and
Speaker 1: repair it. And then I happened to go out there
Speaker 1: and find some manner of a little stink bug on
Speaker 1: the pillar right next to the to the web, and
Speaker 1: so on a on a whim, I flicked it into
Speaker 1: the web, and then instantly the vibration strength of the web,
Speaker 1: the spider rushed out and immediately wrapped up the struggling
Speaker 1: bug inside the you know, the binds of the of
Speaker 1: the spider web. It was fabulous to watch, uh, And
Speaker 1: and that was my emotional reaction to it. It was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this this was great. I got to sort of engineer
Speaker 1: this situation that may well have occurred anyway, and get
Speaker 1: to watch this in real time. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: other people have a different emotional response to seeing something
Speaker 1: like that. You end up empathizing and humanizing the victim
Speaker 1: of the spider, right, and you think, oh, what a
Speaker 1: horrible thing happen, What a horrible experience to have to
Speaker 1: go through. Yes, totally, so, I have no proof of
Speaker 1: that of a correlation there, but I do wonder about that.
Speaker 1: I feel like that could possibly be playing some role.
Speaker 1: Um we end up siding with the prey animals as
Speaker 1: opposed to the the predators, because that's the other way
Speaker 1: I always think about spiders in my home, or even
Speaker 1: like a centipede in the home. I think, good, you're
Speaker 1: doing the lord's work, sir or madam, keep at it.
Speaker 1: Probably the spider, right, yeah, yeah, But anyway, so Vetter
Speaker 1: concludes by saying, despite the assumption that entomologists would extend
Speaker 1: warm feelings towards spiders because of their habituation to arthropods
Speaker 1: in general, arachnophobia does occur in some members of our profession.
Speaker 1: For these people, two more legs makes a big difference.
Speaker 1: Why is it the number of legs. That's the thing
Speaker 1: that people consistently call out as disliking about spiders, like
Speaker 1: too many legs, but they like a ladybug has only
Speaker 1: got two less. You know, I was thinking about this
Speaker 1: this This may have no connection, but um, we're putting
Speaker 1: together some notes for an upcoming edition of our our
Speaker 1: Friday night show Weird House Cinema, where we talk about
Speaker 1: weird films, and I started thinking about a genre of
Speaker 1: film subgenre uh that entails crawling disembodied hands and how
Speaker 1: spiderlike they are. Uh. And I but I began to wonder,
Speaker 1: like which, like, which is the predominant fear or maybe
Speaker 1: it's more on an individual level. Is it that the
Speaker 1: disembodied hand is like a spider or is it that
Speaker 1: the spider is in some way kind of like a
Speaker 1: human hand, you know, something, the way that it's often
Speaker 1: bunched together, you know, in a way that you you
Speaker 1: you typically won't see with with insect legs. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: well you see you see spiders kind of working things
Speaker 1: with their legs in a way that you don't usually
Speaker 1: see insects doing. I mean, I guess sometimes you kind
Speaker 1: of do. But I feel like insects are more likely
Speaker 1: to manipulate things with their pincers. You can really see
Speaker 1: a spider using the tips of its legs like fingers
Speaker 1: to like roll something up. Yeah, creepy. Yeah, alright, live,
Speaker 1: Why don't we take another break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll discuss another award winner. Thank thank alright, we're back, Robert.
Speaker 1: I gotta admit this next study. I wonder if they
Speaker 1: are drawing a spurious correlation. Yeah, I I had a
Speaker 1: hard time with this one, but it was their psychology prize. Uh,
Speaker 1: so we're we're gonna discuss it. It is eyebrows Q
Speaker 1: Grandiose Narcissism by Miranda Gia Coleman and Nicholas o' rule,
Speaker 1: published in the Journal of Personality back in May. All right,
Speaker 1: let's hear it. So the basic idea is this, Okay,
Speaker 1: narcissists can be charming, but narcissists are often, uh you know,
Speaker 1: in many cases, horrible people best avoided. As such, it
Speaker 1: pays to be able to identify them. Pastas have linked
Speaker 1: viewing a person's personal appearance as a means of determining
Speaker 1: narcissistic qualities, and this study look to isolate the exact
Speaker 1: facial features, and eyebrows became the focal point in this
Speaker 1: particular study. It's interesting. I mean, obviously people do. You
Speaker 1: could say fairly or unfairly, but I mean certainly, at
Speaker 1: least most of the time unfairly judge other people's character
Speaker 1: by the way they look. I wouldn't have expected eyebrows
Speaker 1: to be the most salient thing here. Yeah, I I
Speaker 1: didn't either. I mean they make they make an interesting case. Uh.
Speaker 1: Here's the basic summary. In study one, we explored the
Speaker 1: faces features using a variety of manipulations, ultimately finding that
Speaker 1: accurate judgments of grandiose narcissism particularly depend on a person's eyebrows,
Speaker 1: and studies to A through to C, we identified eyebrow
Speaker 1: distinctiveness thickness density as the primary characteristic supporting these judgments. Finally,
Speaker 1: we confirmed the eyebrows importance and Studies three A and
Speaker 1: three B by measuring how much perceptions of narcissism changed
Speaker 1: when swapping narcissists and non narcissist eyebrows between faces. So,
Speaker 1: at least, according to their conclusion, eyebrows are not just
Speaker 1: something that people use to conclude that someone else is narcissistic,
Speaker 1: but to some extent are accurate identifiers. Yeah, which again
Speaker 1: I I just found I've read this, and I was thinking,
Speaker 1: could this, Could this possibly be right? Because when I
Speaker 1: think of big bushy eyebrows, I think of uh natural,
Speaker 1: big bushy eyebrows. I think of say, actor Peter Gallagher
Speaker 1: for some reason, like he instantly comes to mind as
Speaker 1: having like big, full, beautiful eyebrows. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, I don't know enough about Peter
Speaker 1: Gallagher to really chutch him one way or the other.
Speaker 1: But I don't think narcissist. I don't look at him
Speaker 1: and think, oh, there's a narcissist right there. I was
Speaker 1: trying to think, what do I know him from? He
Speaker 1: was in that spy movie with Bill Murray, and then
Speaker 1: he's been in an like a million TV shows, always
Speaker 1: in Mr Deed's Great Great film? Is that an eight movie? No? Okay,
Speaker 1: what am I anything? You've done some checks? We should
Speaker 1: keep all this. He tends to not play narcissists like
Speaker 1: you would think if if his eyebrows were we're we're
Speaker 1: we're queuing us into narcissism, And he was legitimately narcissist
Speaker 1: narcissist himself like he would play a lot of narcissists
Speaker 1: on the screen. I know what I realized. I know
Speaker 1: him from American Beauty, in which I think he does
Speaker 1: play a narcissist. But also I think that movie is narcissistic. Okay.
Speaker 1: Um Now, now, speaking of of movies, the other thing
Speaker 1: I think of when I think of big bushy eyebrows
Speaker 1: are the extreme eyebrows that the Mintats boast in David
Speaker 1: Lynch's Dune. Um. Now, I don't tend to think of
Speaker 1: of the Mintats is especially narcissistic, but I guess it
Speaker 1: doesn't really make any sense because those are like clearly
Speaker 1: just added to the character to give the some sort
Speaker 1: of distinctive visual flair for the viewer. Surely through Fear
Speaker 1: how what has has appropriately gone through ego death in
Speaker 1: order to become the human computer who's playing through Fear
Speaker 1: how Loud and the new one. It's Stephen McKinley Henderson. Um.
Speaker 1: He was most recently, I believe in that that Hulu
Speaker 1: series Deaths. He's he's really good. I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: checking out his performance. Oh I know him. Oh he's great. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a wonderful actor. I was trying to remember what
Speaker 1: I recently saw him, and I think he has a
Speaker 1: small part in Ladybird. Ah. Yeah, well, I don't know
Speaker 1: if he's gonna I don't think he's gonna have giant
Speaker 1: eyebrows in the now delayed film adaptation of Dune. But
Speaker 1: the thing is, now that it's delayed a year, they've
Speaker 1: got time to go in and digitally add crazy eyebrows
Speaker 1: to all the mentats. Anyway, back back to the study here,
Speaker 1: So they use neutral expression portraits of thirty nine students
Speaker 1: at the University of Toronto. Twenty six female is, thirteen males,
Speaker 1: thirty two white, seven non white, average age twenty one,
Speaker 1: and the thirty nine subjects took a standardized narcissistic personality test.
Speaker 1: Then twenty eight virtual volunteers looked at the portraits and
Speaker 1: rated in them on a scale from one not narcissistic
Speaker 1: at all to eight extremely narcissistic. They also flip the
Speaker 1: images upside down, as this has been shown to allow
Speaker 1: humans to better focus on particular features of the face
Speaker 1: rather than the face as a whole, and the eyebrows,
Speaker 1: according to the study, were always the giveaway. Distinct eyebrows
Speaker 1: were more likely to accurately identified narcissists. The inversion of
Speaker 1: the head thing is making me think of one of
Speaker 1: the most hilarious effects we've ever talked about on the show,
Speaker 1: which is the Margaret Thatcher effect, where when you flip
Speaker 1: a head upside down, you can invert the eyes and
Speaker 1: the mouth so that like they are actually opposite of
Speaker 1: the orientation of the head. But people don't notice it
Speaker 1: when they're looking at the head upside down. You should
Speaker 1: look this up if you've never seen it before. It's
Speaker 1: really funny now, i'd actually the main purpose of eyebrows
Speaker 1: is to keep sweat, water debris out of your eye sockets. Um.
Speaker 1: But of course the human faces also, as we've discussed
Speaker 1: many times, a communications array, so we we can't dismiss
Speaker 1: the communicative qualities here. It may play into dog eyebrows,
Speaker 1: even as a two thousand nineteen University of Portsmouth study
Speaker 1: found that human preferences for expressive brows may have influenced
Speaker 1: selection in domestic dog breeds. Does your dog have have
Speaker 1: nice eyebrows? He has the most heavenly eyebrows. They're very
Speaker 1: bushy and they are very expressive. See there you go.
Speaker 1: Also has pointed out in a two thousand eighteen University
Speaker 1: of York study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, highly
Speaker 1: mobile eyebrows in humans can be used to express a
Speaker 1: wide array of emotions that may have been key to
Speaker 1: human survival. Uh, they might even be key to our
Speaker 1: ability to empathize and identify with the emotions of others. So,
Speaker 1: you know, think about like all the things you can
Speaker 1: say just with your eyebrows. It's all the even subtle
Speaker 1: um communicative cues you can pick up on with eyebrows.
Speaker 1: Sure so, fair enough. We we can imagine how more
Speaker 1: distinctive eyebrows might accentuate these communications. But how would that
Speaker 1: be linked to a personality disorder? You know again, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's the fact that they're distinctive thickness and density um.
Speaker 1: In another experiment, they also gave narcissistic individuals new eyebrows,
Speaker 1: this was the eyebrow swap thing, and tested them out
Speaker 1: on people, and they found that they did rate them
Speaker 1: as less narcissistic, and putting more distinctive eyebrows and less
Speaker 1: narcissistic people produced the opposite effect. So it'll leads to
Speaker 1: the big question, do narcissists have particular morphological characteristics. I
Speaker 1: guess this is the part I'd be more skeptical about
Speaker 1: than the idea that people think they can identify narcissists
Speaker 1: through certain facial characteristics. I'd be more surprised if it
Speaker 1: were true that they could, that they actually accurately were
Speaker 1: finding correlations there with facial characteristics. I guess it's not impossible,
Speaker 1: but I feel like I need to see really good
Speaker 1: evidence of that. Yeah, I mean, I guess. Another thing
Speaker 1: to keep in mind is like this is a study
Speaker 1: that was asking people about narcissism in images of people,
Speaker 1: like is this a narcissist? That a narcissist? And I
Speaker 1: feel like, for the most part, this is one of
Speaker 1: just many questions we may ask about people that we encounter.
Speaker 1: You know, Uh, it's probably not your primary question regarding
Speaker 1: an individual like narcissist or not a narcissist. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know that. Maybe that's just me, um, because
Speaker 1: ultimately it comes down to them to like how would
Speaker 1: this work? What would be the tie? You know, obviously
Speaker 1: there's there's not like this, like the personality disorder would
Speaker 1: make your eyebrows grow more bushy, right, um, And it
Speaker 1: would have to be something more in terms of like
Speaker 1: it it changed. It affects the way that you interact
Speaker 1: with the world, and that and the way that you're received,
Speaker 1: and that ends up nurturing a sense of narcissism. I
Speaker 1: don't know, possibly, I mean you could say that from
Speaker 1: like a developmental personality where I mean, I guess you could,
Speaker 1: though again, this is one of those things that seems
Speaker 1: very difficult to believe. I guess you could try to
Speaker 1: say that there's some correlated like genetic component that's like
Speaker 1: deeper back that happens to have both random effects like
Speaker 1: happens to give you more distinctive eyebrows and also happens
Speaker 1: to make you more narcissistic. But again, uh, it seems
Speaker 1: kind of hard to believe that. Yeah, I mean, they
Speaker 1: bring up the idea of messing with your eyebrows, grooming
Speaker 1: your eyebrows, and how you know, you know, they basically
Speaker 1: they said quote though narcissism did not significantly relate to
Speaker 1: eyebrow grooming. Here, grooming mediated how grandiosity related to perceived
Speaker 1: narcissism when controlling distinctiveness and femininity, and previous research found
Speaker 1: that eyebrow plucking relates to women's narcissism, But I don't
Speaker 1: know that doesn't really um, you know, provide a firm
Speaker 1: answer for me, like what what we're seeing when we
Speaker 1: see eyebrows that are somehow queuing us into narcissism? Like
Speaker 1: I feel like I can. I can look at a
Speaker 1: photograph of someone who I either know or believe to
Speaker 1: how of narcissistic qualities, and I can often lean into
Speaker 1: this interpretation. I can say, well, I guess those eyebrows
Speaker 1: are pretty wild and thick, you know, Or well, those
Speaker 1: eyebrows are really well maintained. You know that. I guess
Speaker 1: there are there are things I can I can then
Speaker 1: pinpoint if I'm prompted, But I I just I don't.
Speaker 1: I just have a hard time with this one. I
Speaker 1: have to admit I have. I have a hard time
Speaker 1: seeing the eyebrows as a window into the narcissistic soul. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess it's one of those things where it just
Speaker 1: it just seems kind of like surface level implausible to me.
Speaker 1: But I guess I don't know. It's one of those
Speaker 1: word if if I saw more evidence than I guess,
Speaker 1: I'd have to accept it. But yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: do have to, you know, give credit to the whole
Speaker 1: argument of the eyebrows being key to the way we
Speaker 1: communicate with people, you know, like like in ways that
Speaker 1: we often don't think about. Uh, you know, unless you're
Speaker 1: just really obsessed with eyebrows. Like you know, we are
Speaker 1: moving our eyebrows around a lot. They are, they are
Speaker 1: doing a lot to communicate how we feel about ourselves
Speaker 1: and about other people to the world. So I mean,
Speaker 1: on another hand, why not the eyebrow? Sure, we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from from listeners on this one. What's your
Speaker 1: relationship with eyebrows? Do you see eyebrows as a as
Speaker 1: a as a clue to someone's narcissistic qualities? Um, we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. Are you a grandiose narcissist?
Speaker 1: Do you have really distinctive eyebrows? Yeah, let us know,
Speaker 1: measure them all right? Shall we move on to the
Speaker 1: final prize that we're going to discuss on this episode. Sure,
Speaker 1: this one will be pretty quick, but I thought this
Speaker 1: was kind of fun. So you remember earlier this year
Speaker 1: when we were talking about snake pits, and in that
Speaker 1: episode I discussed research on the vocalizations of snakes like
Speaker 1: king cobras, how they're known, in fact, not just to hiss,
Speaker 1: but to actually growl. Yes, And one of the tests
Speaker 1: conducted in that study about King Cobra's and related snakes
Speaker 1: growling actually involved getting a snake to inhale helium and
Speaker 1: talk like Donald Duck. And I thought that was a
Speaker 1: pretty great experiment, but it uns out this is a
Speaker 1: broader genre of scientific weirdness, as proven by this year's
Speaker 1: Ignoble winner in acoustics. So this prize went to Stephen A.
Speaker 1: Rebber Takeshi Nishimura, Judith Yanish, Mark Robertson, and W two
Speaker 1: comes to Fitch And the study was called a Chinese
Speaker 1: Alligator in helios Format Frequencies and a Crocodilian and the
Speaker 1: Journal of Experimental Biology in uh so they the authors
Speaker 1: here start by saying that crocodilians are among the most
Speaker 1: vocal non avian reptiles. Not a lot of reptiles really
Speaker 1: make you know, voice sounds, but crocodiles do. Crocodilians do.
Speaker 1: Both males and females tend to produce sounds called bellows,
Speaker 1: so they'll they'll kind of and this happens all year,
Speaker 1: but especially during mating season. And the question is what
Speaker 1: purpose do these bellows serve. Scientists aren't exactly sure, but
Speaker 1: they think they might be auditory ad atisements of body size. So,
Speaker 1: if you're a crocodilian trying to make you want to
Speaker 1: be large, the author's right quote, relative sized differences strongly
Speaker 1: affect courtship and territorial behavior in crocodilians. Now, in mammals
Speaker 1: and birds, it has been documented that vocalizations are sometimes
Speaker 1: an honest signal, and that's a term in biology, and
Speaker 1: honest signal of body size, meaning an advertisement that is
Speaker 1: basically true. It's hard to fake because body size is
Speaker 1: related to what kinds of frequencies you can make when
Speaker 1: you issue a vocalization, specifically with reference to what are
Speaker 1: known as formant frequencies or vocal tract resonances. And these
Speaker 1: are like sort of peak frequencies that you hit, say,
Speaker 1: when you're making certain kinds of vowel like sounds. Now,
Speaker 1: where does this study fit into everything I've just said? Well,
Speaker 1: the authors here say that format frequencies have never been
Speaker 1: documented before in a reptile, in a non avian reptile,
Speaker 1: and they say quote, formants do not seem to play
Speaker 1: a role in the vocalizations of frogs and toads. Technically
Speaker 1: they're called a neurons, but that means frogs and toads.
Speaker 1: They write quote. We tested performance in crocodilian vocalizations by
Speaker 1: using playbacks to induce a female Chinese alligator or alligator
Speaker 1: sinensis to bellow in an air tight chamber. During vocalizations,
Speaker 1: the animal inhaled either normal air or a helium oxygen
Speaker 1: mixture known as helios, in which the velocity of sound
Speaker 1: is increased. Although helios allows normal respiration, it alters the
Speaker 1: formant distribution of the sound spectrum. An acoustic analysis of
Speaker 1: the calls showed that the source signal components remained constant
Speaker 1: under both conditions, but an upward shift of high energy
Speaker 1: frequency bands was observed in helios. We conclude that these
Speaker 1: frequency bands represent formants. So, according to their theory radical framework,
Speaker 1: they think this is a good sign that actually what
Speaker 1: crocodiles are doing, what crocodilians are doing with these bellowing
Speaker 1: sounds is actually advertising body size via these format frequencies
Speaker 1: in their vocalizations. And uh oh, and also because they
Speaker 1: say okay, so we've observed these format frequencies playing a
Speaker 1: role in like mating calls in birds and if it's
Speaker 1: correct that they're doing a similar thing in crocodilians. And
Speaker 1: because birds and crocodilians share a common ancestor with all dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: they say quote a better understanding of their vocal production
Speaker 1: systems may also provide insight into the communication of extinct arcosaurians.
Speaker 1: So it's actually a really interesting study. I guess if
Speaker 1: you ask the question why is it funny, I guess
Speaker 1: it's the helium giving healing crocodile. Also, I found it
Speaker 1: in the study there was a pretty funny illustration of
Speaker 1: the experimental setup that showed the croc goodisles in the
Speaker 1: sealed chambers either breathing air or breathing the oxygen helium mixture.
Speaker 1: It is. It is kind of a humorous illustration. I
Speaker 1: don't know why, but it's it's like a nice illustration
Speaker 1: it has. It's very colorful. The crocodile looks looks realistic.
Speaker 1: It's not a cartoon crocodile. But I don't know, it
Speaker 1: does look a little awkward in there. It just makes
Speaker 1: me wonder how many different studies have made other animals
Speaker 1: in hale helium to see what their voices sound like,
Speaker 1: so we got snakes and we got crocodiles. Now, where
Speaker 1: where else has this happened? We're not crocodile? Sorry, this
Speaker 1: was an alligator, I guess, say, a crocodilian. Sorry, if
Speaker 1: I've been loose with that terminology. Well maybe, well we'll
Speaker 1: have to come back and do an episode on Helium
Speaker 1: and discuss it. Okay, I'll meet you there all right. Well,
Speaker 1: like I said, we're not going to cover all the
Speaker 1: Ignoble Prize winners for We're just covering these four. If
Speaker 1: you want to check out the full list of winners again,
Speaker 1: go to Improbable dot com and you get to check
Speaker 1: out the list and see links to the studies. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's always worth a read, just to see what
Speaker 1: they're they're highlighting from, you know, from from recent or
Speaker 1: not so recent scientific studies. Yeah, give him a look there.
Speaker 1: There was another one that definitely raised my eyebrow this year,
Speaker 1: and it was about it was about looking into economic
Speaker 1: data via mouth to mouth kissing. Oh okay, yeah, that
Speaker 1: one looked good. There's also one about hitting man. Did
Speaker 1: you see that one? Yes? Yeah, it wasn't really contact.
Speaker 1: It was just like a news It was a funny
Speaker 1: news report. Basically, it was a story from China where
Speaker 1: someone had taken out a murder contract that was just
Speaker 1: repeatedly subcontracted down to like five or six layers of
Speaker 1: of different people who were hired for successively smaller sums,
Speaker 1: and then the murder was never done. Yeah, it's it
Speaker 1: sounds like it would make a great Coen Brothers film,
Speaker 1: you know, like each one gets cold feet and they're
Speaker 1: like okay, yeah, yeah, until like basically they're just being
Speaker 1: offered so little money it just doesn't get done. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, you know where to find us.
Speaker 1: You can find us wherever you get your podcasts and
Speaker 1: wherever that happens to be. We just asked that you rate,
Speaker 1: review and subscribe. You can always go to stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com and that will take you
Speaker 1: right to our I heart listing. Uh. And you also
Speaker 1: see a button there somewhere on the page for store.
Speaker 1: If you click on that, you go to our t
Speaker 1: shirt store. You can buy a T shirt or a
Speaker 1: sticker or a bag with our logo on it or
Speaker 1: some manner of monster. Uh. Pretty fun little place. We
Speaker 1: hopefully you're gonna get some new designs in there soon.
Speaker 1: Let's see what else. So yeah, our former co host
Speaker 1: Christian has a Kickstarter going right now for Corridor magazine
Speaker 1: issue number one. It's gonna be a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: of cool, weird art, short fiction, UH, comics, essays, uh
Speaker 1: all together. If you're if you want to follow back
Speaker 1: a cool project, just go to Kickstarter and look up Corridor.
Speaker 1: You're in there, aren't you. Yeah. I've got a little
Speaker 1: story like a sci fi store with sharks in it,
Speaker 1: I said, I think listeners will enjoy, so yeah, and
Speaker 1: but then also just a whole host of other richly
Speaker 1: talented people. And it's from the images I've seen, it's
Speaker 1: just gonna be gorgeous cover to cover. So that that
Speaker 1: kickstarters ending soon. So if you want to be a
Speaker 1: part of it, go look it up now. Definitely big
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind Pod cover Stuff to Blow Your Mind it's
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for My
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. Proper time the
Speaker 1: town to b