Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcot the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Duglats.
Speaker 1: You sound very measured this morning. Julie. Well, I'm trying
Speaker 1: out the smoothing it so it's a better whispering. And
Speaker 1: I'm very interested in exploring the oral landscape. And Robert
Speaker 1: that I mentioned to you that I'm also interested in
Speaker 1: caring for your hair. Oh yes, yes, I do enjoy
Speaker 1: a good haircut. Really I don't. I thought so. And
Speaker 1: so what I'm going to do is I'm going to
Speaker 1: brush your hair first, and I just want you to
Speaker 1: close your eyes and enjoy the strokes of the brush
Speaker 1: through your hair. Okay, it doesn't feel good. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is getting so creepy. Hey guys, it's us and we're
Speaker 1: exploring something called a s m R. Yeah. And in
Speaker 1: a way, this is an episode appears nicely with our
Speaker 1: our tripophobia episode because in both cases we have something
Speaker 1: that is kind of not really emerging from the Internet age,
Speaker 1: but it's the Internet has allowed individuals who have a
Speaker 1: certain reaction to a certain type of stimuli to allow
Speaker 1: them to come together and start talking about and say, Hey,
Speaker 1: what's what's going on here? Why does why does this
Speaker 1: make me feel this way? Uh? And why doesn't everyone
Speaker 1: else around me seem to be affected in the same way.
Speaker 1: With triple phobia, it was about looking at clusters of
Speaker 1: holes and feeling the sense of repulsion. But with a SMR,
Speaker 1: which we're talking about today, it's about something far more pleasant,
Speaker 1: far more mellow, but but equally perplexing. Yeah. It's called
Speaker 1: autonomous sensory meridian response. And we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about what triggers it, but essentially what it is
Speaker 1: is a pleasurable tingling that begins in the head and
Speaker 1: scalp and then it shimmies down the spine and and
Speaker 1: it reportedly relaxes the entire body when the person is
Speaker 1: exposed to certain auditory cues. Yeah, in some cases, particularly
Speaker 1: in headlines written by by male editors, I think you'll
Speaker 1: see it compared to an orgasm, like it's an orgasm
Speaker 1: in the brain, it's a brain gasm or whatever. But
Speaker 1: I mean generally the descriptions you you hear, uh, it
Speaker 1: is more of a mellow, comforting, relaxing sensation and less
Speaker 1: um you know, psychedelic sexual mind explosion. Yeah, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people will step in and say, hey, this
Speaker 1: really is not a sexual thing. This is just this
Speaker 1: um more than anything, this pleasurable, relaxing sense that you
Speaker 1: get when you hear these triggers. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention that most of these things, these cues are provided
Speaker 1: by videos made by what are called a s m
Speaker 1: AREST on YouTube, and it has a very intimate air
Speaker 1: to them. And we'll talk more about that. And so
Speaker 1: far a s m R isn't a medically or scientifically
Speaker 1: recognized term, though studies are now beginning to be conducted,
Speaker 1: and there's a ton of anecdotal information out there and
Speaker 1: explanations abound. Yeah, it's entirely possible that by the time
Speaker 1: you get around to listen to this episode, maybe one
Speaker 1: of these studies will actually publish. Um. Well, we know
Speaker 1: from from researching it that there's a guy at Dartmouth
Speaker 1: College Bryson Launched, who did an f m R I
Speaker 1: study on a SMR, which is one of the types
Speaker 1: of studies that everyone's been clamoring for. Let's get one
Speaker 1: of these brains inside the tube and actually see what's
Speaker 1: going on in there. Um. But as of right now,
Speaker 1: we don't have this kind of research to turn to. Alright,
Speaker 1: So before we start explaining this really in earnest, let's
Speaker 1: look at some of the terms, because I think these
Speaker 1: terms will kind of tell you to what degree people
Speaker 1: are really bound up in a s m R. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even a s m R. Even autonomous sensory meridian response.
Speaker 1: This is this is not a set in stone a
Speaker 1: bit of terminology. This itself emerges from individuals on the
Speaker 1: Internet coming together and talking about it. You'll see it
Speaker 1: at times. It's been referred to as attention induced euphoria.
Speaker 1: You've seen it. We've seen it called attention induced head
Speaker 1: orgasm uh or, as referred to by Andrew mcmurris on
Speaker 1: his blog that he started back in two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: the unnamed feeling. Uh let's you give you an idea,
Speaker 1: because at the at the time there was everyone's still
Speaker 1: coming together and saying what is it? What what should
Speaker 1: we call it? And uh So around two thousand and eleven,
Speaker 1: you see autonomous sensory meridian response really coming to the
Speaker 1: forefront as the as the main term and pretty much
Speaker 1: cemented in place by Yeah. In fact, if you look
Speaker 1: at the Google history on this. You'll see in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven it starts to make a bit of a
Speaker 1: footprint UM, but two two fourteen it rockets as search term,
Speaker 1: which I think gives you an idea of the kind
Speaker 1: of UM following or the kind of communities that are
Speaker 1: gathering around this. I guess you could say phenomenon. You know,
Speaker 1: what's weird is UM. And I'll get into this more
Speaker 1: as as we as we discussed that my wife has
Speaker 1: a SMR and I've known her since the first Saw
Speaker 1: movie came out, whatever year that was, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I I love that you are always like and
Speaker 1: we got together when Saw came out. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: what brought us together. Yeah, well anyway for a number
Speaker 1: of years. But we've known each other for about ten years,
Speaker 1: and so a s MR was not the predominant term
Speaker 1: until very recently. But I can't, for the life of
Speaker 1: me remember what she called it, or that even had
Speaker 1: a name, uh, you know, back when I first met her.
Speaker 1: And so what is her trigger? Her trigger is definitely, uh,
Speaker 1: the sound of a pencil on paper, but more specifically,
Speaker 1: it's uh, she she's she's sitting in a room with
Speaker 1: someone who is drawing her with with soul and paper,
Speaker 1: and she's so she's hearing the sound of it. She's
Speaker 1: in the it's it's the you know, it's the sensation
Speaker 1: of being drawn. I guess the attention, the intimacy of
Speaker 1: that with the sounds, the soft sounds of the of
Speaker 1: the drawing and you guys listening out there. I think
Speaker 1: about that example in a moment because we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: more about triggers, but that really hits on a lot
Speaker 1: of the different factors that make this pleasurable for people. Um.
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention that a couple other terms really
Speaker 1: helped to frame this, or something called ascension when an
Speaker 1: experience or levels up, and usually that means that the
Speaker 1: control of a s MR has improved or that experiences
Speaker 1: are much more intense. Again, these are people who are
Speaker 1: seeking this out and really concentrating, even meditating on some
Speaker 1: of these triggers. Now there's asthma or as marian person
Speaker 1: who experiences I'm married you are married to That explains
Speaker 1: a lot. Yep. And of course you already mentioned it brandgasm,
Speaker 1: which is that colloquial term for SMR. So triggers. Yes,
Speaker 1: let's get to this. I was whispering at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this, and I was taking the pages and making
Speaker 1: this kind of noise um. And these are both big triggers.
Speaker 1: But probably whispering is the I would say, like the
Speaker 1: headliner of all the triggers. Yes, indeed, a whispering voice
Speaker 1: and oftentimes, like the subject matter is not necessarily important.
Speaker 1: But in many cases the the the voice will be
Speaker 1: providing instruction of some kind or taking the listener on
Speaker 1: sort of an imaginative journey, kind of a storyteller. You're
Speaker 1: walking through the park, you're passing a dog, next sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, it's really interesting, and I think about
Speaker 1: it as levels and whispering is sort of like the
Speaker 1: base doc to a s m R. And Bob Ross
Speaker 1: think about him. He's a perfect example of someone and
Speaker 1: someone who's quite fetishized, I would say, although some might
Speaker 1: take issue with that terminology of fetishizing, but people seek
Speaker 1: him out in order to you have a a s
Speaker 1: MR experience. But now think about and I should I
Speaker 1: should jump in if you're not familiar with who that is.
Speaker 1: He's the PBS joy painting guy who talks about painting
Speaker 1: pretty little trees and happy trees, little trees. That was it,
Speaker 1: and so he was that he's perfect because soft suiting voice.
Speaker 1: I'll be at a male voice and some people take
Speaker 1: a shoe and say that a female voice is preferable.
Speaker 1: But but he's also instructing me you, and he's taking
Speaker 1: you on a journey. Yes, it was very meditative in
Speaker 1: nature if you think about it that way. Now, imagine
Speaker 1: if someone had long nails and they would tap them
Speaker 1: on a hard service or um lovingly scraped them against
Speaker 1: plastic or something like that. There's the crinkling of a
Speaker 1: bag of chips um again, the shuffling of pages turning
Speaker 1: in a book. And then the personal care aspect, the
Speaker 1: role playing aspect that you already sort of called out here,
Speaker 1: and that's when someone looks at the camera you're watching
Speaker 1: this video and they're looking at you the you are
Speaker 1: and role playing with you some sort of self care
Speaker 1: or some sort of uh nurturing thing that they're doing.
Speaker 1: You could be pretending like you're at a spot, or
Speaker 1: it could be an exam. And these I think are
Speaker 1: amazing because it's sort of like the motherload of a
Speaker 1: s MR. These these exam videos, especially the cranial exams,
Speaker 1: because the cranial exam. I think it's like a real thing, right,
Speaker 1: We're sensory cues would be introduced to you because you're there,
Speaker 1: a doctor would be looking for neurological damage. But in
Speaker 1: these role playing videos, they're just pretending like they're at
Speaker 1: the doctor and they have different things, like they have
Speaker 1: a feather that they're stroking the camera with and saying
Speaker 1: do you feel this on your cheek? And that is
Speaker 1: the motherload because it has the whispering, it has the crinkling,
Speaker 1: it has the pen going up and down, the clicking
Speaker 1: of the pen, the keyboard, um, all those different things,
Speaker 1: and it has the nurturing aspect to it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: interesting to to to look around at some of the
Speaker 1: videos out there because there's been a kind of an
Speaker 1: evolution um of the art form. Because some of the
Speaker 1: earlier stuff is just yeah, let's just watch some Bob
Speaker 1: Ross or here someone's gonna talk to me, or someone's
Speaker 1: gonna provide a fake haircut, fake ear exam kind of
Speaker 1: situation in video form. But as the as the the
Speaker 1: art form evolves, it's all about layering things and providing
Speaker 1: multiple triggers because not everybody is going to be affected
Speaker 1: by these same triggers, the person who who prefers the
Speaker 1: whispering is not gonna go for the tapping or the scratching. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, my wife, for instance, the the the the
Speaker 1: sound of just a soothing voice does not affect her
Speaker 1: in that way. Um, but it's it's it's just that
Speaker 1: that drawing on the paper or someone someone sketching her
Speaker 1: and uh. And I do want to point out that
Speaker 1: when I ask her about it, I said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: what exactly do you feel when this happens? And she said,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a tingling in my scalp uh, a
Speaker 1: strong sense of relaction, and a strong but a short
Speaker 1: lived feeling of just being really stoned. Um. Because I
Speaker 1: asked her it was like a mild high, and she's,
Speaker 1: I know, it's really intense high. It just doesn't last
Speaker 1: very long, just falls off. Yeah. And I think that's
Speaker 1: an important distinction to make, because I think all of
Speaker 1: us can probably list off a bunch of different sounds
Speaker 1: that are pleasurable too, you know, like I love paper
Speaker 1: being kind of sorted around, but I don't get tingles,
Speaker 1: and I don't have a sort of flash stone stoner response. Yeah. Likewise,
Speaker 1: I mean I love I love a good white noise,
Speaker 1: brown noise machine. I love ambient even some drone music,
Speaker 1: you know, but but it doesn't have that kind of
Speaker 1: effect on me. I mean we we both have listened
Speaker 1: to the Headspace app, for instance, and hearing the soothing
Speaker 1: voice of Andy pooticomb on that you know, very soothing voice,
Speaker 1: and very can help get you in a meditative state.
Speaker 1: But I don't feel high while it's taking place. No,
Speaker 1: actually think that would be distracting because Headspace is actually
Speaker 1: a meditation app, so it would be kind of wonderful,
Speaker 1: but perhaps distracting to the point of you're trying to
Speaker 1: calm your brain down, uh not elicit um some sort
Speaker 1: of overreaction. You need an alternate Headspace app where there's
Speaker 1: just a drill sergeant. I guess, yeah, you you definitely
Speaker 1: have to do that. Although Andy does have a really
Speaker 1: nice whispery voice, you know, another voice that came to mind,
Speaker 1: and again this is a from a non Asmirian, but
Speaker 1: Timothy Leary, I feel I feel like his voice is
Speaker 1: always I've always found that super soothing, and I did
Speaker 1: looks like there's some a SMR stuff that does utilize
Speaker 1: some of his spoken word album work in the sixties.
Speaker 1: And I want to mention too that it's not just whispering.
Speaker 1: A lot of these artists are. They're using space. We
Speaker 1: talked about this in music, like if you use space
Speaker 1: in unexpected ways, that your brain pays even more attention.
Speaker 1: And so you like the ambient sounds of a room
Speaker 1: or no, I mean like I'm thinking about Dr Dmitri,
Speaker 1: who does one of them? Can you describe? Um? I
Speaker 1: will try to be doctor Dmitri? Now what is your name?
Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, he's not talking in the
Speaker 1: sort of the pattern that we're used to write. And
Speaker 1: so I think that is a part of it is
Speaker 1: because and we've talked about this before, it's like it's
Speaker 1: not like music, but there are some similarities in which
Speaker 1: if your brain is grappling with those unpredicted spaces, and
Speaker 1: those spaces resolve themselves like in a certain note, right,
Speaker 1: um that you you get relief from that, or you
Speaker 1: get a sort of pleasure from that. And now a
Speaker 1: lot of as Marian's will say, this is not like
Speaker 1: the musical chills, yes, that they make generally make a
Speaker 1: strong point of that being significantly different. That is known
Speaker 1: as fregen is it French reim the spine tiggling sensation
Speaker 1: of listening to music that you know a lot a
Speaker 1: lot more people can can relate to. But in Asmara
Speaker 1: will be quick to tell you no, that is separate.
Speaker 1: That is not my thing. That may be your thing,
Speaker 1: but that's not my thing. Yeah, And if you want
Speaker 1: to know more about that, check out our episode on
Speaker 1: does music hijack that brings? So we get a little
Speaker 1: bit deeper into that. Now within as Marian community, there
Speaker 1: are two types of as Marian's as reported by the community,
Speaker 1: that's type A and type B. Type A is through
Speaker 1: just sort of meditation or thinking about the thing, right,
Speaker 1: So if you hear the auditory queue, that may just
Speaker 1: be enough to trigger that sort of sensation, but type
Speaker 1: bees need to actually experience the trigger. So for instance,
Speaker 1: getting a haircut, that's why I was pretending to cut
Speaker 1: your hair earlier, which was again super creepy um or
Speaker 1: any sort of exam or close personal attention. So it's
Speaker 1: the difference again between imagining the haircut and happy the haircut.
Speaker 1: If you're type A, you don't. All you have to
Speaker 1: do is think about the trigger. The type you need
Speaker 1: to trigger. Yeah. One of our producers, Paul, was telling
Speaker 1: me that his trigger is when he is on an
Speaker 1: airplane and they begin to describe all the safety precautions
Speaker 1: that passengers must take in the oxygen coming down and
Speaker 1: the exits and all of this, And he said, it's
Speaker 1: not just the voice, but it's the actual, like taking
Speaker 1: care to tell you how to protect yourself. It's a
Speaker 1: kind of nurturing quality. We see that nurturing theme and
Speaker 1: a lot of these it's like sometimes it's just merely instructional,
Speaker 1: which can be a form of nurturing. Other times it's
Speaker 1: actual physical care, a doctor and patient relationship, or a
Speaker 1: parent and child relationship. I'm gonna groom your hair. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna look after your your hygiene, your well being. And
Speaker 1: that is a good point for us to actually take
Speaker 1: a break, because when we get back, we're gonna delve
Speaker 1: a little bit more into the A s MR artists,
Speaker 1: but also the reasons the possible explanations for white people
Speaker 1: experience this. Alright, we're back. We're still discussing autonomous sensory
Speaker 1: meridian response or a s MR. The the domain of
Speaker 1: the asmirians. I feel like they should it sounds like
Speaker 1: they should have their own planet. They should. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's probably a indistinguishable from our own. It's the thing
Speaker 1: because I was looking around at some of the videos. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a reddit for as Mirian's where people
Speaker 1: are just throwing up, you know, various videos and they
Speaker 1: range from the like highly produced professional a s MR
Speaker 1: video realm to stuff. Literally there's a video where someone
Speaker 1: just has an audio and video recording of chefs at
Speaker 1: five Guys Fries preparing to make French fries. So they
Speaker 1: just send a little bit of ambient clanging and echo
Speaker 1: and the opening of the potato bag and that that clip.
Speaker 1: I looked at, the clip had the like ten thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred views. Well, okay, all right, so let me
Speaker 1: tell you that Maria, who is known as Gentle Whispering
Speaker 1: if you want to look at her on her YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: she has something like forty plus million views of her videos.
Speaker 1: Now granted she's up in the hundreds in her videos,
Speaker 1: but still some of them will fetch up to eight
Speaker 1: hundred thousand to a million views. I think there was
Speaker 1: one that was two million views. And she is she's
Speaker 1: really sort of the czar of a s MR and
Speaker 1: she's a Russian woman who moved to the US in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, and she had a lot of
Speaker 1: she says, a lot of depression, a lot of anxiety,
Speaker 1: and she began to actually seek out videos, not realizing
Speaker 1: that the whispering stuff was actually helping her anxiety. And
Speaker 1: she found herself doing it more and more and more.
Speaker 1: And I believe in two thousand and nine she started
Speaker 1: doing this in earnest making her own videos. Um. So
Speaker 1: obviously people like her who have a genuine interest in
Speaker 1: the a s MR community, or even not a genuine interest,
Speaker 1: can make a small income doing this. Yeah, and not
Speaker 1: to at least put back into your your product and
Speaker 1: uh and pump out more videos. Um. It's it's interesting
Speaker 1: too that she's she's Russian and has a Russian accent,
Speaker 1: because I saw that mentioned a lot in them shows.
Speaker 1: We're looking at that. Uh, you know, everyone has their
Speaker 1: their different taste as far as a SMR material, but
Speaker 1: a lot of people do prefer an accent of some kind.
Speaker 1: And it kind of goes back to what you were
Speaker 1: saying earlier about Uh, you know, a different mode of speech,
Speaker 1: being less predictable. Reminds me of of of Bella Leegostia's Dracula.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons Dracula resonated so much with Bella's
Speaker 1: performance because bell didn't speak English at the time, so
Speaker 1: he was he was saying these words but not actually
Speaker 1: speaking them, so his his mode of his delivery was
Speaker 1: what it was a little unpredictable and a little little haunting,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because that the unpredictability factor I think
Speaker 1: is present. And whispering anyway, I mean, the best way
Speaker 1: to get my kids attention is to actually whisper to
Speaker 1: her because it's unusual, right, and you're like, you have
Speaker 1: to lean in and really pay attention. So you have
Speaker 1: that going for you, and then you have those spaces
Speaker 1: in the actual speech pattern making it a little bit
Speaker 1: even more skewed, right. And in addition to this, a
Speaker 1: lot of a s MR artists like Maria use three
Speaker 1: D or binural microphones, which create a stereo recording that
Speaker 1: makes the listener feel like they're in the same room
Speaker 1: as the speaker. Oh yeah, a lot of people uh
Speaker 1: in the SR community. So you do have to have
Speaker 1: the headphones. You need that that surround feeling you're just
Speaker 1: not going to get from your laptop. Speaker. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is from the Atlantic article how to have a Brain orgasm.
Speaker 1: There it is again. Uh. Maria is interviewed and she says,
Speaker 1: of the experience, I definitely think it has something to
Speaker 1: do with proximity. When you watch a SMR videos, you're
Speaker 1: completely vulnerable the viewer is. It's all most uncomfortable for
Speaker 1: you to be that close to another person. But if
Speaker 1: you feel how much they care about you at that moment,
Speaker 1: it just puts you in that shape of euphor you
Speaker 1: So imagine you've got your headphones on and you have
Speaker 1: the three D microphones making it feel that much more intimate. Huh.
Speaker 1: You know. I I also did a quick chip check
Speaker 1: and there are videos of individuals who are pretending to
Speaker 1: draw you with a pencil. Ah. So your wife would
Speaker 1: be like, Hey, that's the incisers with the sound and
Speaker 1: there's the kind of attention, right, and that's sort of like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I care for you, I care for you, I care
Speaker 1: for you enough to set here and draw you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you have pointed out before why mostly women. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a lingering question about this, isn't it again?
Speaker 1: We're still waiting on studies, so we don't have anything
Speaker 1: really hardcore, but but as best as we can tell,
Speaker 1: if it comes down to that nurturing energy. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I had mentioned Dr dmitriv but he is uh, he's
Speaker 1: in a nominally among all the A S MR artists,
Speaker 1: And yeah, there's that that sort of nurturing role playing
Speaker 1: going on, And it would make sense that this kind
Speaker 1: of stereotype would play down the lines of gender. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I almost felt weird saying it because it sounds
Speaker 1: a little sexist for me to say, Oh, well, you know,
Speaker 1: nurturing energy. Of course females are into it. But you know,
Speaker 1: I mean if that's the predominant stereotype, then I mean
Speaker 1: we see that carried out through all types of media,
Speaker 1: So it would makes sense that this is something that
Speaker 1: is acceptable. Now. I was fine with Dr Dmitriev, but
Speaker 1: my husband was like, oh, that was totally creeping me out.
Speaker 1: What did your husband think about Bob Ross? Uh? You know,
Speaker 1: we didn't talk about Bob Ross, but I'm yeah, who
Speaker 1: doesn't like Bob Ross? Some artists don't like Bob. I
Speaker 1: have a friend who's an artist and she hates him. Well,
Speaker 1: is that because the content of his work? I think so?
Speaker 1: I think she's just kind of like blah. I think also,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe it's because her mom was an art teacher
Speaker 1: or something. I'm not sure that she does not like
Speaker 1: the happy little trees. Yeah, she wants dangerous trees. She's
Speaker 1: a weird dug that one. But but yeah, for the
Speaker 1: most part of most people would like Bob Ross. What
Speaker 1: can you be offended by? Indeed, uh real, real quick,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the nurturing power of it. And I
Speaker 1: do want to mention as well that my wife said
Speaker 1: that when she was a little girl, Um, she and
Speaker 1: a friend would take turns combing each other's hair and
Speaker 1: she would also experience a SMR in those situations. Huh.
Speaker 1: So I mean she's kind of a type and type
Speaker 1: bee or maybe actually she would probably would be a
Speaker 1: type be just I think surely experiential. Yeah, I think so,
Speaker 1: because especially since as far as I know, the videos
Speaker 1: don't even work that well that well on her, Like,
Speaker 1: it has really got to be someone in the room
Speaker 1: drawing her. Yeah, And then I did it once and
Speaker 1: I think it kind of worked for but then she
Speaker 1: saw that my drawing was stupid because I can only
Speaker 1: draw the monsters. She's like a stick figure. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just not good at drawing actual things,
Speaker 1: all right, So what I wonder is, does she maybe
Speaker 1: have any other synesthesia, you know, because that is something
Speaker 1: that has come up before that possibly a s MR
Speaker 1: is a subcategory of this phenomenon where a person experiences
Speaker 1: one sense or you could say a cognitive pathway which
Speaker 1: results in the experience of another one. So for instance,
Speaker 1: you might see the letter B as red or hear
Speaker 1: a word that makes you taste a certain flavor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as far as I know, she does not experienced this,
Speaker 1: but indeed you do see this possible connection between synesthesia
Speaker 1: come up a lot, especially among Asmirians trying to make
Speaker 1: sense of their I don't want to say condition, but
Speaker 1: there response response, Yeah, the response. And indeed synesthesia is
Speaker 1: a is a great place to turn to because at
Speaker 1: least with synesthesia we have actual science behind it. Because
Speaker 1: some of the other explanations floating around out there among
Speaker 1: the Asmrians dip a little, perhaps a little bit too
Speaker 1: much into the pseudoscience realm or into the just the
Speaker 1: spiritual realm. And I'm you know, I'm not saying don't
Speaker 1: turn to those things to explain something for your own
Speaker 1: personal worldview. But if you're looking for a scientific explanation,
Speaker 1: then you know, the third eye, uh and the peneal
Speaker 1: gland might not be a strong answer the normal you know,
Speaker 1: certain theories about it being the next stage and the
Speaker 1: evolution of consciousness, um, synaesthesia is a little more set
Speaker 1: in stone. Yeah, you came across the same stuff that
Speaker 1: I did, where I was like, yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you could say that this is uh an increased
Speaker 1: level of awareness. Um. Are you meditating on something? Are
Speaker 1: you engaging with it? Yes? Um, just as you might
Speaker 1: during about of synaesthesia. So yeah, we need some rigorous
Speaker 1: studies here. We need a boatload of them because all
Speaker 1: we can do is sort of kind of scratch at
Speaker 1: these possibilities. And another possibility, which is going to be
Speaker 1: really obvious by now, is the early mother child bonds.
Speaker 1: That could be this sort of re enactment of that, right,
Speaker 1: And this seems like a pretty strong theory just you know,
Speaker 1: again just from especially from the outside looking in at
Speaker 1: something that does not have a lot of rudreus um
Speaker 1: uh study behind it. But but it does seem to
Speaker 1: line up fairly well with that and it's something we
Speaker 1: can all really I mean we all there are things
Speaker 1: in are in all of our lives that we can
Speaker 1: point to and say, you know, there's there's something about
Speaker 1: this is tied up in the nurturing energy of my childhood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and especially if you look at the A. S. M
Speaker 1: Are artist as occupying the mother role in in the
Speaker 1: viewer as the child role and um. Mark O'Connell, writing
Speaker 1: for Slate Magazine in the article The Soft Bulletins, says,
Speaker 1: there's something about the typical s MR video that seems
Speaker 1: to address itself to a desire to regain some prelapsarian
Speaker 1: state of mother child unity. And that is that that
Speaker 1: mother child state in which you're being cared for to
Speaker 1: um a pretty huge degree. Right. Your hair is being brushed,
Speaker 1: your teeth are being brushed, you're being washed. Um, there's
Speaker 1: something that's just very comforting about that. Yeah, despite how
Speaker 1: much a two year old fights against every one of
Speaker 1: those things. Sometimes I'm trying to brush your teeth. You're
Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna look back on this and feel this
Speaker 1: weird sense of nostalgia and comfort in the fact, well,
Speaker 1: you just open your mouth long enough for me to
Speaker 1: get in there. You know, I'm going to share this
Speaker 1: and you guys judge as much as you want, oh care.
Speaker 1: But recently I went to Ju, which is a Korean spot,
Speaker 1: and they offer a full body scrub. And so the
Speaker 1: setup is this, You're in the female locker room and um,
Speaker 1: you're naked. And you should describe the female locker room
Speaker 1: because when when someone says, you know you're getting some
Speaker 1: sort of a bobby body rubber massage, some people may
Speaker 1: think of gentle candles, soothing music. No, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is just like it's kind of a a locker room
Speaker 1: that's had a lot of money put into it. So
Speaker 1: you have marble floor, so it's kind of like a spa,
Speaker 1: but it's also like a locker room and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of there's a huge Korean community and Russian community
Speaker 1: and people who just don't care about being naked among
Speaker 1: one another within the same gender. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: really comforting. I love going there as well because you
Speaker 1: just go in body types of all all kinds, all sizes.
Speaker 1: You just feel good. Oh yeah, I mean that's the
Speaker 1: whole other lesson and um in body image. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting to me about this is that you go for
Speaker 1: the body scrub, there're a bunch of massage tables. There
Speaker 1: are older women in their sixties and seventies who work
Speaker 1: there in in their lace underwear because you know, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna if that's your uniform, you want it to
Speaker 1: be nice right on them inside. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: like a diaper speed o thing. That's different. Um, But anyway,
Speaker 1: it's basically like a grandmother scrubbing you down, that's my point.
Speaker 1: And it's so it's such a nice experience because no
Speaker 1: one is going to scrubby down like that except for
Speaker 1: like your mother when you were a child. But here
Speaker 1: is this grandmother type really getting your ears clean like
Speaker 1: head to toe. It's a little thought. Yeah. Now another
Speaker 1: possible explanation here is that it's all a matter of suggestibility, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you mentioned fear poles, right, this idea that if
Speaker 1: you have to prophobia it maybe because it actually came
Speaker 1: into your awareness, right and you assumed it for yourself.
Speaker 1: This sort of internet awareness and support that has sprung
Speaker 1: up around this idea of fear of poles. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's kind of like joining a community, right, Who doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be a part of community that has its
Speaker 1: You know that not everyone can be a part of
Speaker 1: this group. We have our own terminology. We may even
Speaker 1: call ourselves something like as Marian's. I mean it sounds
Speaker 1: nice and everyone can released relate to. Well, I like
Speaker 1: white noise machines. Maybe I have this And if you
Speaker 1: think about it and maybe you want it long enough,
Speaker 1: then if you can, you can convince yourself that you
Speaker 1: have it. Yeah, and so it's the question becomes are
Speaker 1: people being primed for this and that in fact don't
Speaker 1: normally have this response, but now that they're aware of it,
Speaker 1: will they then become primed to experience it for themselves.
Speaker 1: I feel like I would be more inclined to buy
Speaker 1: into that of my wife didn't have it, you know.
Speaker 1: And I'm and I'm not just being like, you know,
Speaker 1: I support my wife in her craziness, no matter what
Speaker 1: I'm saying that. You know, it's like it seems too
Speaker 1: real on her part, and she's and she's been talking
Speaker 1: about it for years before it was blowing up in
Speaker 1: the internet. Yeah, to your point. There's an article by
Speaker 1: Harry Cheetle writing for Vice magazine, and he says that
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and a Yahoo group called the
Speaker 1: Society of Sensationalists, I think you might have mentioned that
Speaker 1: already formed with a somewhat vague manifesto quote. All we
Speaker 1: have right now are questions, and we need answers. We
Speaker 1: need help, not in the sense that we want to
Speaker 1: solve or cure this sensation, but rather instead to learn
Speaker 1: what causes this. And so that's I think to your point.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like people are experiencing this and the
Speaker 1: reporting on it, and maybe some people would pick up
Speaker 1: from that and feel primed and then have that sensation
Speaker 1: to Yeah, I imagine it's a mix, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're probably you have people who actually experienced this, and
Speaker 1: you probably have some outliers and people who think, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I have it or I just really want to
Speaker 1: have it, and they're playing into the suggestion. But but
Speaker 1: we won't know, and we won't know if it's just
Speaker 1: always existed and just hasn't been named, or if the
Speaker 1: Internet birthed it into being. And that reminds me. I
Speaker 1: was looking around at the the a s mr Reddit
Speaker 1: and I saw people talking about why about how they've
Speaker 1: developed the ability to do something like they're they're transitioning
Speaker 1: perhaps from type B to type A. So that makes
Speaker 1: me wonder, like is that how much is suggestion playing
Speaker 1: into that? And if it's possible to go from type
Speaker 1: B to type A, then is it possible to go
Speaker 1: from type nothing of type or is it that in
Speaker 1: engaging in all these videos or these experiences, are you
Speaker 1: ramping up the reward pathways in your brain and therefore
Speaker 1: it makes it a lot easier to seek out, not
Speaker 1: just seek out, but to experience that. And that was
Speaker 1: a question that Stephen Novella, a neurologist at Yale University
Speaker 1: School of Medicine, put out there because he tried to say, hey,
Speaker 1: let's try to figure this out. Is this actually real?
Speaker 1: And of course this can't be answered, um, but he
Speaker 1: did say that he's inclined to believe that it is. Quote,
Speaker 1: it's similar to migraine headaches. We know they exist as
Speaker 1: a syndrome primarily because many different people report the same
Speaker 1: constellation of symptoms in natural history, including hallucinations. We've ended
Speaker 1: that a bit with our Lepricron episode if you're interested
Speaker 1: in checking that out. Yeah, so he's thinking a s MR. Hey,
Speaker 1: it could be a small seizure or it could just
Speaker 1: be activating the pleasure centers of the brain. And again,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's too far of a stretch to
Speaker 1: think that might be happening, just because we've talked about
Speaker 1: pro pre receptive drift before, this idea that it's really
Speaker 1: easy to sort of gain your brain to reconsider the
Speaker 1: boundaries of your body. And there are plenty of studies
Speaker 1: to support that, um, and there's mere neurons and then
Speaker 1: of course suggestibility, and who doesn't need a little nurturing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean again, as a non as marian, I I
Speaker 1: love like musical tracks and incorporate soothing spoken word into them.
Speaker 1: Uh the books, for instance, they have an album that
Speaker 1: that uses a lot of that, and it's they're using
Speaker 1: like some new ag self help samples in the background.
Speaker 1: And there's one track on that album that is listening
Speaker 1: to over and over again in large part because it's
Speaker 1: just such a nice, soothing, uplifting voice. And they're you're
Speaker 1: talking about like they even use uh, you know that
Speaker 1: that false bit of science about you are only using
Speaker 1: tempers in your brain. So it's like I'm not even
Speaker 1: buying into the message at all, but just I appreciate
Speaker 1: that somebody is telling me these nice things all set
Speaker 1: to some really interesting music. You know, That's funny because
Speaker 1: we've talked about this before in the context of some
Speaker 1: electronic music having the criticism Levey Data that it was
Speaker 1: infantilizing and that you know, we were returning more to
Speaker 1: like this womb state and trying to recreate that oral
Speaker 1: state of a heartbeat or you know, the sound of
Speaker 1: liquid rushing past us. Yeah, why not, there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with that. Yeah, yeah, returned to the womb if you
Speaker 1: can go for it. Oh, while I'm at it, since
Speaker 1: we're drifting off topic and here at the end of
Speaker 1: the podcast, I do want to mention as well that
Speaker 1: I recently ran across an artist who all all he
Speaker 1: does is create ambient tracks based on the the ambient
Speaker 1: sound from spaceships in various science fiction properties and also
Speaker 1: some other places, but mostly it's starships. So it's like
Speaker 1: the Enterprise, it's the Nostromo from Alien and it's really
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. So you can find a link to that
Speaker 1: particular blog post on the landing page for this episode.
Speaker 1: I have to say that it's a fine line for
Speaker 1: me those sort of ambient sounds, like sometimes it can
Speaker 1: be a bit too um, sort of removed from the
Speaker 1: human experience, where it feels like existential angst, and then
Speaker 1: sometimes it's a little bit more intimate and it feels
Speaker 1: more womb like. But well, I kind of like sometimes
Speaker 1: existential angst is nice in a track. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a lot of electronic music, all of
Speaker 1: music in general. It's not necessarily about it's not about
Speaker 1: feeling comforting. It's about maybe maybe connecting with with something
Speaker 1: alien and something weird and isolating. You know what that
Speaker 1: is going to be money year's resolution for this year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. Okay, Yeah, you've inspired me. Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: Well I hope that doesn't end in disaster me too.
Speaker 1: So there you have it. A m R in a
Speaker 1: nutshell Again. We're still waiting for some of these studies
Speaker 1: to come out and get a little more information about
Speaker 1: what's going on, and as soon as that happens, hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll revisit this topic. In the time being, be sure
Speaker 1: to check out stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That is our mother ship. That is where you will
Speaker 1: find all the blog post, all the videos, all the
Speaker 1: podcast episodes way back to the area at the beginning
Speaker 1: and uh and the landing pages for those podcasts will
Speaker 1: include you know, art and some some links to related
Speaker 1: materials and some outside materials as well. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check that and if you have some thoughts that you
Speaker 1: would like for eyeballs too lovingly caress, you can send
Speaker 1: those thoughts to us at blew the Mind how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com