March 11, 2025 • 53 mins
For thousands of years, people have been convinced that the weather and the position of the moon can wreak profound havoc on human behavior. This belief continues in the modern day, with numerous law enforcement officers, medical professionals and more swearing people act strangely during the full moon. Additionally, science shows certain environmental factors, such as an extended lack of sunlight, can spark measurable changes in mood. So what's the truth here? Can the weather really make people go crazy? Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they dive into the fact, fiction, and alleged ancient meteorological conspiracies in tonight's Classic Episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist. We don't know where this classic episode
finds you in this wide world of hours, but chances
are you probably clocked the weather unless you are in
a biosphere situation like poly shore.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
At the very biodome. Biodome, bio biosphere. It's a domosphere.
They're very similar. I guess a dome dome is half
a sphere.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
It's half a sphere.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's a HEMI in beer feed Well, speaking of weather
and being locked into situations, it's also a good kind
of basic way of getting to know somebody in an elevator.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yes, yes, about the weather. Back in the day, talking
about the weather used to be idiom in English for
having boring small talk. However, as we know, the weather
has become increasingly I was gonna say, Shyamalan s y
you know a lot of plot twists. It was talking
with our guest producer Matt the Madman Still a little
(01:00):
while back, Boom about how difficult is one of us
double birds when you said that, yeah, classic classic, Still
we were talking about how difficult, and you and I
were talking about this too, how difficult it has been
on the road for me, especially to dress and prepare
appropriately for wildly different weather.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
That's right. You are on your third leg of a
month long journey, only the second for me. But I
was really grateful we came from New York.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Set.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Hey, I'm sorry. I got to do the Matt Berry thing.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I like this false words, absolutely true. Which it's very, very,
very cold, as it is in our home city of Atlanta, Georgia,
so we had to pack for super cold weather. It
was actually snowing the last day we were in Brooklyn,
and then we got here to Doha, Qatar, where it's
very hot. But then last night we went out and
it was so freaking windy. We were very grateful that
(01:52):
we had some of those holdover cozy duds leftover from
our time in New York.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Oh, and Matt, Matt, I hope it's okay that I
say this. Matt was freezing as we were waiting at
the taxi stead and I think both and our pal
Jonathan Strickland tried to give Matt our coats, and Matt,
if you recall you said, no, this pain will teach me.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yes, I did this to myself, and I deserve this,
and it's not nobody deserves that.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
And I wondered whether the weather was making Matt crazy.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
That's pretty good, Ben, that's pretty good. You know, we
have things like seasonal depressive disorder, the SADS. Right, there
are parts of the world where it stays dark all
the time during certain times of the year, or some
places year round, and it can cause people to get
this condition where they have this depression that's literally brought
(02:48):
on by the weather, and oftentimes they have to employ
the use of kind of artificial lights, this kind of
technology that will create a light that is meant to
mimic sunlight so that they don't get mega bummed out.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
And then there's the long standing belief throughout various cultures,
throughout various eras of history that the cycle of the
moon and the stars may affect not just someone's personality
at birth, but their behavior. You know, we've all heard
I don't know how common this is, perhaps in other
parts of the world, but in the United States, we've
(03:23):
all heard anecdotes about the full moon driving people crazy,
about hospitals becoming inundated with folks who just went full
werewolf without the hair.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
That's right, of course, the idea of a werewolf's transformation,
of course, being brought on or triggered by a full moon.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
It's something. Yeah, howling at.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
The moon tends to be a stand in expression for
kind of losing it a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
And so back in twenty nineteen with our brother Matt Frederick,
we asked, can the weather really make you crazy?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
It's a good question. Why don't we roll the tape?
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Ben?
Speaker 1 (04:02):
What do you say?
Speaker 4 (04:03):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies? History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
They call me Ben. We are joined, as always with
our super producer Paul Mission control decond. Most importantly, you
are You are here, and that makes this stuff. They
don't want you to know. How you feeling today, Matt, I'm.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Feeling feeling well. It's finally colder here, so much colder
than it has been that I get to wear my
you know, my black leather gloves and my big black
jacket in my black hat when I'm driving, and I
feel like some kind of anti super serial killer hero.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Side know. Paul Michigan control deck and just chimed in
with serial Killer. I don't know if I made it
on the mic.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
No, I don't think it did. But that's why it
was a super serial Killer hero.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah. Driving with your balaclava on.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Right, Yeah, it just feels good.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah. I believe this is one of the states where
it is technically illegal to operate a motor vehicle wearing
a mask.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Have you heard about that?
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Probably, but they haven't caught me yet.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Yeah. I don't see how that would apply to things
that require helmets, like motorcycles and so on. Anyhow, Yeah,
I also felt the strange switch. Suddenly we woke up
and it was fall, you know, or maybe we skipped
fall and it's just winter now.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Yeah, it's getting pretty close.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
And you know, like many people dealing with the rapidly
changing climate, we are just covering a paradigm shift in conversation.
Remember those old halcyon days where it was considered boring
or small talk to talk about the weather when we
were growing up. That's something old people and boring people did.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Yeah, but I think maybe we're just a little older
and more.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Boring that that is a valid that's a valid assertion.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
It's happening more frequently in my life at least.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Or I would say, I would say a valid proposition,
because I would I would argue that now that the
weather is becoming so unpredictable and wildcard esque, we all
tend to talk about the weather more because we have
to check in, because no one knows what's going to happen.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
You know, now a valid concern it is?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
It is it used to. We're no longer shooting the breeze.
We're we're ensuring people's safety and livelihood. You don't know.
If you ask somebody what the weather, what the weather's
like in their part of town, they might say, well,
the tornado has gained sentience, which we were not expecting.
But scientists say that's because we didn't recycle or something
like that. You sure, I'm not exaggerating a bit, But
(07:03):
today's episode is in a way about the weather. It
is in a way about the environment, because whether you
live in the frozen wilds of the Arctic North, or
the sweltering climes of the Tropic or the you know,
objectively perfect environment of Hawaii, you've doubtlessly had one of
those weird conversations about weather with outsiders. You know, yes,
(07:25):
says somebody in the upper reaches of Scandinavia. Sometimes the
sun sets at four pm here. Other times it's dark
for you know, weeks on end, or the sun just
doesn't leave at all. It's normal for us. And while
weather across the planet can vary to a wide degree,
it is pretty impressive that our species, most of whom
(07:47):
were largely identical to one another in terms of physiological requirements.
It's impressive that we can all exist for long periods
of time in these very different conditions. You know, I
think and.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Our cultures have kind of been tailored in a lot
of ways to these different weather patterns and the climates
in which we've you know, existed. Yeah, religions are born
a lot of times early on at least out of
these patterns.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Good call, right. Yeah, we're tool makers, we're arrogant, we
are explainers, and we are woefully satisfied with our own explanations.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, but we're also feelers because we've got a lot
of chemicals that float around in us that cause us
to feel ways, or at least they affect the way
we feel about things sometimes.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Right, And I was thinking about this too with the
old Robert Frost poem Tree at my Window. You remember that,
I do, so there's this line tree at my Window
is obviously it's about this tree that Robert Frost is
really digging at the time, or to be fair, the
speaker of the poem, if not, you know, maybe he's
faking it. Maybe he didn't have a tree.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
It could be a character.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, maybe it's like a metaphor for nuclear war is
something who knows, right, Well, there's this thought in the
last two lines where he talks about the tree experiencing
outer weather and himself again the speaker of the poem
being concerned with their own inner weather. And today's episode
is about that. I love that you set up the
(09:21):
idea of all these neurochemicals and reactions just bouncing willy
nilly and unseen in every person's brain box. Because today's
episode does not center around climate change, it's about a
more primal question people have been asking for the very
least centuries. That is, how does the outer weather the
environment affect our own inner psychological weather. Can something in
(09:45):
the air, some lack of sunlight or some overabundance of
moonlight really make us for lack of a better phrase,
hesitate to say it, but go crazy.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Yes, let's say act abnormally to ourselves, at least to
ourselves in the ways we've come to see ourselves.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Here are the facts.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
There is a common wisdom that floats around the internet,
has been around for a long time that whether in
some ways can affect people's moods, how they feel, whether
or not they're excited to wake up in the morning,
or you know, if they're feeling a little sad now
and then. And there is this idea it is. It
(10:32):
has a name that is kind of delightful, but at
the same time it's just delightful to speak of. It's
called SAD Seasonal effective disorder SAD. Yes, And we'll talk
about that a little bit later on.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yeah, we're just planning the seed for sad. We're planning
the sad seed.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
It will be fruitful later on. Now, there's an unrelated
idea that my wife and I have talked about a
lot of times because of her involvement with children in
a school environment, of whether or not the moon can
actually affect us as well, the amount of light that's
(11:12):
being reflected upon us by the moon. Really, that's what
they're talking about where the moon is and how much
light is being reflected. Can this make us feel different
than stable? Perhaps?
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, yeah, This is an ancient idea and it goes
in a couple of different directions. The ancient idea is
the concept that the moon maybe not so much the
light sometimes light. Sometimes it's just the idea that a
more visible moon means a moon is physically closer. This
(11:43):
dates back all the way to philosophers like Aristotle and
the often hilariously incorrect historian Plenty the Elder. From the
Roman historian, they thought that the brain was the moistest
organ in the body, and that they're for like the oceans,
it was the most susceptible to the insidious influences of
(12:06):
the moon because of the way the moon can affect
the tides and the oceans. And this went through this
idea which Gaina's ancient has gone through many different iterations
and names. Sometimes it was called the lunar lunacy effect
or the Transylvania effect, and the belief, you know, survived
(12:28):
the fall of the Roman Empire, survived the fall of
the ancient Greeks in the Middle Ages, when people when
it was just commonly accepted that some people turn into wolves,
you know, some people are in league with infernal powers
and they turn into wolves. And that's just how the
cookie crumbles, right They they of course thought that the
moon had these unholy influences, even on people who say
(12:55):
their prayers at night, you know, and the whole wolf
Spain reference.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
The full moon is a weird thing.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
It's a weird thing.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Back in the nineteenth century, there is even this thing
that you could argue in court, that you could argue
that somebody was not guilty by reason of the full moon.
Let's say, if you're a defense lawyer and you're representing somebody,
and they would make their claim that this quote unquote
lunatic client was you know, not accountable for whatever he
(13:25):
or she did because the full moon was there. And
we all know how the full moon affects us, especially
when we're turning into wolves and such. Just kidding. This
is now the nineteenth century, so we've moved beyond werewolves,
not fully, but we moved a bit beyond werewolves.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Eighteen hundreds Eastern Europe people believe people were still certain,
you know, and in less you know, in less densely
populated areas in the world, today, belief in physical shape shifters.
It's still around, you know, it's not as popular.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Yeah, well, I mean, and there's well, there's a lot
to be said there on the full moon. There's there's
a ton of things here about how the full moon
can possibly affect us.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
So that's that's the interesting part, right where wolves a
side ancient romacide. The belief in this relationship between the
moon waxing and people acting unstable persist in the modern day.
You'll see the lunar cycle blamed for everything from spikes
and suicide attempts and psychiatric hospital emissions, to emergency room
(14:35):
calls and reports, to traffic accidents, to dog bites and
more and more and more and again.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Just hanging it back to my wife and just for
a second, she believes this is kind of her theory
or her hypothesis, is that the amount of light of
shining down on a darkened earth at any given time
can affect sleep patterns, the way a a child or
an adult falls asleep, how long it takes to fall asleep,
(15:03):
how well they're able to sleep, just because of an
increased amount of light within a room, unless there are
blackout curtains or something like that she thinks that can
have an effect on the next day.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Essentially, I see, Yeah, it's a disturbance in circadian rhythm,
right that. I mean, that's a good argument. I would
want to hear the opinion too, of how that if
light is if light is the cause there ultimately of
some sort of disturbance in otherwise normal behavior. Is it
(15:37):
dependent on the type of light? Is that what creates
the disturbance? Because now we live in a place where many, many,
many people have artificial lights, whether they're even just computer
screens to television screens on while they sleep. So are
you know, as a disturbed circadian rhythm the new normal?
I could definitely see it being a really solid proposition
(15:59):
in the days before for electricity, you know, I like,
maybe maybe the disturbance has changed over time because of
the rise of electric lights.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
So yeah, I would just say from you know, not
to get into an argument about this, but within at
my home, the moon's light comes into our windows at
my house to such a significant effect that it looks
like we've got lights on outside when there's a full
moon compared to when there's even a half moon or
(16:28):
you know, lesser.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Do you feel that's pushing closer to like anthropy.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Or not sure, but I but it certainly does affect
my ability to get to sleep and just personally. And
I just wonder how much of an effect that would
be outside of computer screens, outside of you know, artificial light.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
And yeah, that's that's again, that's one of my big questions.
There would be the type of light you know what
I mean? Is uv thing? Is it something in the
LED displays? People are still debating about this, and there's
an interesting scientific quibble here. Psychiatrists across the planet and
certainly throughout the West, including people like Miami psychiatrists Arnold Lieber,
(17:10):
have argued have argued less about light and more about water,
the idea that, just like Aristotle and Plenty said, the
full moon has an effect on behavior because the human
body is almost eighty percent water. So again, maybe the
moon is disrupting something about the way water functions in
(17:35):
our nervous systems. Specifically, other people, not just psychiatrists, tend
to agree, and large groups of people tend to agree
that the moon does something wonky to human beings or
is This survey a few years back that said around
forty five percent of college students believe, yes, the moon
can affect human behavior in increasing their likelihood of doing
(17:57):
something unusual for them. The thing is all case by
case unusual for them. For someone, unusual might be staying
up till three am and eating a pint of ice cream.
For other people, unusual, maybe you know, robbing toys r US.
I'm trying to think of things that aren't around so
we don't get any angry letters.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
That's a good choice of toys r us or radio
shack somewhere there we go be a Blockbuster and kept
its stores unlocked.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
A media play, there are still seers in Alaska. Isn't
that weird there? You? So this this is interesting because
this isn't just cherry picking one survey. Other surveys seem
to indicate that mental health professionals might be more likely
than the average person to believe in this relationship, and
(18:48):
sectors of law enforcement. They should not surprise anybody, whether
you yourself are an l e O or whether you
have one in your friend group of your family. A
lot of members of law enforcement share this belief. As
a matter of Back in the nineteen seventies, the International
Association of the Chiefs of Police put their money where
their mouth is. They commissioned a study to discover whether
(19:09):
there was in a scientific basis to the belief that
the full moon makes people Let's not say crazy, let's
say weird.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
What do we know what they found?
Speaker 1 (19:21):
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's
where it gets crazy. Oddly enough, multiple studies, not all
the studies, but the majority of studies conducted in this
field or toward this question, have found no discernible scientific
(19:44):
evidence that the full moon has any sort of physiological
effect on the human mind. So we can bust the
water myth first. Before we get to that, Please note
everyone the way we phrase that finding that the full
moon does not have any sort of physiological effect on
(20:06):
the human mind that is different from a psychological effect. Right,
So there's a dilemma there. But we're pretty sure as
a species that if the moon has some sort of
some sort of deletorious effect on human beings, it is
not due to the water content of our bodies.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Let's go to the Scientific American with some quotes that
list the problems with this whole water gravity theory. Is
the moon actually changing the water inside of us? It
says quote First, the gravitational effects of the Moon are
far too minuscule to generate any meaningful effects on brain activity,
let alone behavior. As the late astronomer George Abell of
(20:48):
the University of California, Los Angeles noted, a mosquito sitting
on your arm exerts a more powerful gravitational effect on
us than the moon does. Now, that's intense. This is
me being outside of the quote. That's an intense fact.
If it is indeed a fact, and it was said
by a former astronomer, so we must believe it. Let's
continue on. Yet, to the best of our knowledge, there
(21:12):
have been no reports of a mosquito lunacy effect. So
there's a little biting remark there. Let's go on. Second,
the Moon's gravitational force affects only open bodies of water,
such as oceans and lakes, but not contained sources of
water such as the human brain. Aha.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Pretty rock solid, it really is.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
It is contained within our skulls.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
This last one's the most interesting, yes. Quote.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Third, the gravitational effect of the moon is just as
potent during new moons, when the moon is visible to us,
as it is during full moons. So aha, the light
of the moon is a more likely candidate for affecting us.
I'm just kidding, but it is sure.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
I mean, well, let's find out going back to water.
What this means is that the perception that we have,
while it does hold its own internal logic, you know,
there's some analog there. The moon affects water in certain
ways or in certain you know, situations, then why not
(22:19):
the human brain. What's so special about the water and
the human body? Nothing except temporarily its location. This means
that if we want to dive into the belief there's
some sort of causal relationship between the moon and specifically crime, right,
if we want to look at law enforcement data, then
we will need to reject the water myth or the
(22:42):
water part of the moon myth, and we'll need to regard,
at least to some degree, the huge amount of anecdotal
evidence from police officers across the planet because a lot
of these folks wholeheartedly believe in this, but maybe not
the way you think, because often, you know, people who
work in law enforcement are trained to apply critical thinking,
(23:03):
so they will, hopefully they're paying attention and training be
some of the more skeptical members of society at large
So let's consider the work of a guy named David Hunter.
David Hunter was a retired deputy from Knox County, Tennessee.
In his book The Moon Is Always Full, he collected
(23:24):
multiple stories of police officers relaying strange events let's call
them lunar war stories, things that happened while they were
on duty during the full moon. However, a Hunter does
not believe that there is a physiological mechanism at play here. Instead,
he believes it is squarely something in the sphere of
(23:45):
the psychological. He says that the moon crime relationship, or
perception thereof, is a matter of self fulfilling prophecies. And
he notes he says, hey, you know, most cops, they
are adrenaline junkies. If nothing happens on a graveyard shift,
they get disappointed. So the full moon gives a cop
a reason to investigate things he might usually ignore.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Ah, so just the fact that it is a full moon.
The police officer thinking to him or herself, Oh, it's
a full moon. I gotta check this out.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Right right right, I've seen the movies, I've seen the tropes,
or you know, it's it's similar to I guess bader
Minehoff to where you know, you hear turn the beat
around once and then or you think of the song
and then you feel like you've heard it three times
in the past forty eight hours. But have you or
were you just noticing more?
Speaker 3 (24:38):
You know? Are you using turn the beat around as
like a verb like I did a thing I turned
the beat around.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I mean the song, Okay, but yeah, you turn the
beat around if you'd like.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
You know, But but you know, this doesn't take into
account like I'm just imagining. I'm not poopooing hunter writing here.
I'm just saying there's a difference between investigating, like having
something to investigate, and choosing to investigate something. And so
(25:13):
I guess what I'm trying to say is a police
officer generally is going to respond to calls that come through,
especially a you know, uniform police officer that's in a
patrol vehicle or is on patrol. They will get called
to a thing to investigate something, or they will observe
something and investigate it. Right, those are generally the two
(25:35):
ways in which a report is going to get generated
for you know, something that the police officer did that evening.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
I see where you're going.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
I don't know how them choosing to or not to
investigate something would differ with the.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Moon, because that would also happen. What I think you're
raising is a fascinating point because in the order of operations, right,
the chain of events, their decision to whether or not
to investigate something aka do their job, occurs after something
has already happened. Right, So they are reacting to an event.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Hopefully rather than just going out there.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
And I guess I better start something, right I doubt that.
I doubt that, but I see what you're saying. It's
very important because then that means that their decision has
very little to do with whether or not there is
a higher a higher number of incidents during the evening
of a full.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Moon, right, Yeah, one would have to come before the other.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Okay, and interesting too because I know I feel like
you're a big proponent of the light argument. Well what
about when a full moon is out during the day?
Oh yeah, and it's observable, Oh man, crazy pandemonium.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Kids everywhere are like the moon.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Yeah, I think. I don't know if anybody else remembers this,
but I remember very clearly the first time I saw
the moon during the day, and I thought the jig
was up. I thought it was the end, you know
what I mean. I was like, well, the quality is
going to fall off a little bit at the end,
so we got a good run.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Well, it is a weird that is a weird thing.
I wonder how universal the concept is. I think there's
a sense growing up that the sun is out or
the moon is out. Oh yeah, right, yeah, and the
moon is out at night and the sun is out
at day, and you cannot have both because how could
it be night and day. That's not a thing, that's
(27:36):
not possible. But then you, you know, begin to realize
that the sun and moon, like all things, are a
sliding scale or a spectrum of almost all things. It's
this weird it's this weird function of reality night and
day or just part of the same wheel man.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Yeah, that's true. So let's let's go back, because we
do have to point out, in all fairness to the
retired deputy Hunter that he is, by his own admission,
not a scientist. He is collecting this in a way
that's very similar to the way someone would collect folklore,
(28:16):
you know what I mean. So let's go to members
of academia, members of the Ivory Tower, the capital a academy. Finally, Finally,
University California, Irvine criminology professor Kris Kubrian calls this perception
amongst el eos a kind of confirmation bias, adding that
(28:37):
the officers are looking for evidence that confirms their pre
existing belief. Pre existing is a phrase I inserted into
that quotation. So let me not mislead you, fellow listeners.
This is something personally, and it's just one person's opinion
that I could get behind because we know that happens.
(28:59):
We know this happens often to everyone. We we build
coincidences or we curate coincidence in a way that most
aids and a bets our own narrative. So you could
go through a troublesome traffic light fifty times, right, and
(29:21):
maybe it's always green, right except for the twelve times
that you happen to catch it when it's red light,
and then by time eleven you're like, this light sucks.
This happens all the time. How much of my life
have I spent here waiting at this pos traffic light?
And then you know the way other people work. If
you say that, especially if you complain about traffic, other
(29:43):
people are not gonna go What is wrong with you?
That light is awesome. I looked at my stats for
that light, and buddy, I am green sixty five percent
of the time. No, they're gonna go. Yeah, man, traffic
lights blow. I don't know what it is. It's like
they should just paint them red because the color never changes.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
There are very few of us, but there are a
few of us who would take the side of the
traffic light just by default because somebody's complaining.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I I I don't want
to get too far into this, but I've been involved
in some of the traffic light conversations. Do you know
how easy those systems are to hack? Yeah? It is frightening, dude,
It is frightening. How uh how little effort it would
(30:27):
take to totally collapse some traffic systems in cities here
in the US. We're supposed to be a developed country.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Well, in Atlanta, it takes about three broken lights to
just screw up the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
I know. Yeah, we all call it a day at
that point. That's why. Yeah, it's it's pretty it's pretty rough,
especially especially the neighborhood we work in. It's funny. I'm
doing a I'm doing an episode later this week spoiler
alert for our show car Stuff, which has hit.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
The road again.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
And one of the one of the things we're gonna
look at is the cost of traffic. Like, traffic is expensive.
I had no idea. Forget millions, forget billions. It costs
like trillions of dollars a year. Yeah, but dude's strategic traffic.
If you've got a business that's on like a major road, Yeah,
traffic is the stuff, man, I was thinking of that. Okay,
(31:19):
this is a terrible idea. I want to preface this. Okay,
this is a terrible idea. No one do it. It's
not cool. Okay, but it would work. Oh god, I
added that at the end. So, we have a lot
of traffic jams. Right in other cities, you'll see people
who wait at traffic jams to sell things, right, yes,
So what if we had our worst traffic jams here
(31:42):
in Atlanta tend to be on interstates. What if we
had some kind of like side scooter type things that
could go out when traffic is stopped, when it's gridlocked
and sell snacks, sell beverages, non alcoholic sell you know,
do dads flowers toys. It's like a rolling convenience store
(32:06):
on the highways, on the highway, on the shoulder of
the highway and places where again like four thirty to
seven thirty, it's the only time they're open. Yeah, because
that's the only time traffic is slow enough for these
people not to get killed. Yeah, now here are the
three reasons is a horrible idea. One, I would want
to operate it as a nonprofit and give the money
(32:29):
to disadvantage people, which is never gonna fly with Atlanta's government. Two,
we're talking about sending people out in traffic. Even if
the speed is zero that could very quickly become sixty
and then we're just like one scrape up away from
the whole thing collapsing.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Yeah, but I bet you could charge a premium on this.
This is my solution, right, because people are stuck in traffic.
They can't escape on some exit because they know if
they go escape on the exit to hit up whatever
fast food joint or let's say a racetrack or QT
(33:08):
or insert your gas station seven to eleven here, they
know it's just gonna take even longer to get back
on the highway. They won't be able to get where
they're going. But if somebody, let's say, was on the
side of the road and they could make it to you,
if they could get to your car door your window,
roll it down and that's all you gotta do. Roll
down your window and swipe your card and you can
(33:30):
have let's just say, some something as simple as some
chips and an ice cold beverage. They will pay you
like movie theater prices, for sure. And if they're paying
movie theater prices, not only can you pay for your
staff and they'll have a pretty nice wage. You'll be
able to donate a good chunk of that the way
you wanted to donate it.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Again, the city governor will never let it happen. But
I like what you're saying because then also think about this, well,
the last prop the last problem. Of course, I think
I have a solution too. But the last problem is
one of the biggest ones, which is it would further
ruin cripple traffic to have everybody trying to get to
(34:12):
the shoulder at a stopping point. You know, of course
there it's a very self centered species, so there will
be a lot of people in the middle who are like, hey,
forget you, buddy, bring that RBS to me. I got
things to do. Uh, it's true, But here's the solution
instead of people, When we just send drones out.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
That was good. That was literally the thing.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, drones you just need reliably for them to operate
at peak efficiency, you'd need a sun roof though, so
it's already kind of for the elite.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
I mean it would be anyway if you're gonna pay
movie theater prices for anything.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Right, I guess there aren't a lot of people who
are just scraping by so they could save up for
their drone.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Chilupas drone chilupas man.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
You know what, I apologize for derailing us here. Let
us know what you think of this idea. Met You're kind,
you're you're kind of turning me back into a proponent
of it.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
You know, I would, I'd get in in this venture.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Cool. I think I agree with you. Also, if we
partner up with a fast food franchise, since we're already
ruining the world with drones, then we could we could
get them to sink some of the overhead costs for us.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
You know, there's this fast food chain that makes chicken sandwiches,
not the one you're thinking about. It's that one from Louisiana.
If you had them with their chicken sandwiches. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Food for thought, literally food for thought. Let's let's go
back to Sorry, I got us to traffic for folklore
the moon, But let's go back to the Academy capital A.
There's another professor who attributes this perception, this causual perception
between the moon and extraordinary behavior to folklore rather than
(36:10):
to science. Professor Elizabeth Loftis says she will not outright
condone a correlation between the moon and craziness, but she
does concede that quote. Maybe mentally ill people get weirded
out by the full moon and behave in strange ways.
(36:31):
If this is the case, then what we might be
perceiving as a weird effect of moonlight or gravity or
water what have you, may in fact just be a
collection of isolated incidents wherein people who were already unwell
were somehow triggered by a specific environmental event. And in
these cases, maybe it just happened to be the moon.
(36:52):
Maybe we're not paying enough attention to other things like
an eclipse, people go nuts steering and a clip you know,
for one reason or another. Back to what you said
about religions. Some religions are founded on being able to
predict an eclipse and then go absolutely ham when one happens.
They are wonderful, they are, they are, you know, if
(37:14):
you can get a spot where you get totality. Ah,
but the moon is the moon alone, is not the
weather nor the environment entire So we mentioned sad earlier,
but what exactly is it? How does it work? We'll
tell you after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
And we are back. So let's get sad everybody. Sorry,
oh sorry, So let's let's discuss seasonal effective disorder. It's
it's more rare than probably the media would want you
to believe or has made us believe, but it is
indeed very much a real thing. And let's just talk
(38:02):
about what it means. Seasonality or this disorder is reported
by approximately ten to twenty percent of people with depression.
So that's somebody who already is feeling depression or having
depression and they are either saying this is a part
of it or the entirety of their depression. The changes
in season. Then fifteen to twenty two percent of those
(38:24):
with bipolar disorder also, you know, report that seasonality or
seasonal effective disorder is also affecting them.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Right right, Like, I know what my my variation may
be in mood and emotion values peaks and valleys exactly,
and even correcting for that, I notice some enormous valleys.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
And there are some fascinating real reasons behind some of
this stuff. That Again, as we're talking a little bit
more about the chemical in our bodies and how those
change this stuff, it goes deeper and it speaks to
our connection, humanity's connection to the sun.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Oh sure, Yeah. According to the Mayo Clinic, SAD or
seasonal effective disorder, it's a type of depression that's related
to changes in the seasons. It begins and ends around
the same couple of times every year. And if you're
like most people with this condition, your symptoms start in autumn.
They begin in the fall, they continue into the winter months.
(39:32):
You are lethargic, your energy is sapped, you feel moody.
Less often, we have seen cases of people reporting SAD
in the other direction in the spring or early summer.
The signs and symptoms are going to be very familiar
for anyone who has had these wintry blues before. You
(39:55):
will feel depressed most of the day, almost every day.
The stuff that you enjoyed, video games, volleyball, cyber bullying, Twitter,
people or whatever, you don't enjoy it anymore. You have
low energy. But even though you feel tired all the time,
you cannot sleep. You also don't enjoy a lot of
the food you used to like.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
A lot of people report that they feel agitated when
they're experiencing this, or sluggish, having a difficult time concentrating,
like let's say, if you're at school or at work,
just can't really wrap your mind around one thing. Feeling hopeless,
sometimes feeling guilty or worthless. Again, these are a lot
(40:41):
of these symptoms of just overall depression, too, having frequent
thoughts of death or suicide.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
And there's some science to this. As you would as
you had said, Matt, we know that when your body,
as long as you qualify as a human being, when
your body is exposed to less sunlight, it produces more melatonin.
Melatonin is the hormone that makes you sleepy. It's pretty
popular in the West as a sleep eit nowadays. Then
there's also a pretty solid idea called the phase shift hypothesis.
(41:13):
The phase shift hypothesis proposes what we had just talked
about earlier in the beginning of the show, and it
says that shortened days cause the timing of our circadian
rhythms to fall out of sync with the actual time
of day because there's this delay in the release of melatonin.
And just as your body, your flesh bag, begins craving
(41:35):
these mid day naps, your brain begins producing lower levels
of serotonin.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Oh, the good one.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah, the tickle, that's what I call it. Yeah, your
brain stops making the tickle that is with a capital T.
So your mood, your appetite, your sleep, your sexual desire,
none of them scratch the itch anymore. You don't get
the tickle. What's the point of living if you don't
have the you know, if you don't enjoy the way
stuff taste, if you're not excited about doing something, you're
(42:03):
just sort of getting a participation grade.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Yeah, the tickle of it's of the highest import and
that stinks to have it deadened, a little bit nullified
in a way. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
And how like, for instance, I'm a I'm a person
who goes through i mean dark times pretty regularly. No, yeah, right,
so me too. Yeah, I think that's one of the
reasons we get along for well. But but we did.
We did find the science here, and then we not
(42:37):
only found the science, we found beyond the microcosmic neurochemical
mechanisms of every individual brain. We found that societies wherein
people regularly experience this deprivation of light to an extreme degree,
the societies have banded together and created group solutions or
(43:01):
attempts at group solutions for sunlight deprivation. That's why a
lot of people living in the Arctic Circle, a lot
of people living in against Scandinavian countries that have the
infrastructure to support community solutions like this, they've done some
groundbreaking work with light therapy and we found some pretty
(43:25):
cool examples of this too.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
Oh yeah. There's an Atlantic article called will Norway Ever
Beat the Winter Blues that you shared Ben and in
here it talks about a southern town in Norway called
Rijukun or rjuka n And it's kind of in a
bit of a valley between two large mountains, and during
(43:47):
certain times of the seasons there the sun basically hits
the peaks of the mountains are high up on the mountains,
but doesn't actually ever get down into the valley, so
it doesn't actually ever touch the town for long periods
of time. And they figured out a way to get
these large, i think seventeen meter wide mirrors that reflect
(44:11):
the sunlight from the higher peaks of that mountain down
into the town square. And it's a fascinating idea. It's
genius and very simple in a way, but just the
concept of bringing a little bit of light into the
town square so that people during midday, like I think
(44:31):
it was noon to two or something like that, people
can go out and experience sunlight in a time when
they haven't felt it on their skin in days, if
not weeks. And another thing interesting that's happening in that
town in the surrounding areas as well. There's a company
called brain Lit. It's a Swedish company, and what they
(44:52):
do is they outfit a whole building, sometimes a classroom,
sometimes a home with smart lighting that mimics day and
night cycles essentially. So the idea here is to get
a human being circadian rhythms back on track just by
having their eyes experience the light and the feeling on
(45:12):
their skin, all those things have it occur indoors rather
than outside being affected by the sun.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
And then again we return to the nature of the light. Right,
it's a specific type of light, correct.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Yeah, it's HCl and led the two solutions they have
and they call it biocentric lighting. It's really interesting stuff
if you want to learn more. We are not promoting
this company or this brand, but it's called brain lit
b R A I N L I T dot S
E slash e N. That's where we were looking about
looking at.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
It, and we know that the research in this field
is continuing. Light at least affects us more than we
might like to believe. This is not hey, I'm going
on record, man, you know I respect you. This is
not me agreeing with the light hypothesis re luncy. This
is not okay. This is not me agreeing with that
(46:08):
because I just I couldn't find any science to bear
it out. But that doesn't mean it's not true. It
just means maybe the science hasn't caught up with the
human belief yet.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
I told you, just my belief. I don't got no science.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
But it might be out there and it's worth searching
for in some people with bipolar disorder. We also know
that spring and summer can bring on symptoms of mania
or a less intense form of mania hypomania, and fall
in winter can be a time of deep depression. Here's
another here's the ultimate answer. Though not just counting lights,
which is only one part of our environment. Let's think
(46:42):
of the weather all the other things. The weather is wind,
barometric pressure, ymidity, things like that.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Pressure is a big one.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
Pressure is a huge one. And it turns out that
everyday weather can change your mood. If you are already unhappy,
if you're already having a bad time, don't worry. Weather
can make it worse. If you're in a good mood,
you are more you are less susceptible to changes in
(47:11):
environment or changes in weather affecting you environ mental state.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
I'll go with this. I've got stuff to add. I'll
bring it back later.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Let's go through this, Okay, So first things first. Two
thousand and eight study associated with the APA American Psychological Association,
published in the journal Emotion, indicates the weather can indeed
mess with you if you're already feeling down in the dumps, morose, sad, etc.
Researchers evaluated the personalities and moods of more than twelve
(47:41):
hundred adults through these daily questionnaires, so they're self reporting, right,
a little sticky. But these these questionnaires were cross referenced
with the local weather during the day when they answered
these questions, and they found that relate like climate factors
like temperature, sunlight, wind, precipitation, and so on, had no
impact whatsoever on positive mood. But the temperature, wind, and
(48:06):
sunlight did have a measurable effect on negative mood. And
when we say negative, we're using it in a colloquial way,
not the scientific way. Negative and science means absence of
here it means bad. So yeah, right, So increased temperatures
had a positive effect on bad moods, while increased wind
(48:28):
and decreased sunlight had a worsening effect on a bad mood.
Although these effects did vary from one individual to another
in terms of the degree of change, like how extremely
or profoundly they were affected, it did bear out across
again more than a thousand people, that there was some
sort of correlation. And additionally, this is just the lead
(48:52):
we're going to drop, we're not going to follow up. Additionally,
there are a surprising number of studies into the core
between high temperatures and crime and from what we can tell,
it is real when the heat spikes, more crimes occur.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
Hot time somewhere in the city. My friend, back of
your neck, right, but no, but it's true. And from
what I was reading just this morning, you know, the
science isn't necessarily in on that, but it does make
sense on a very base level. If it is warm
outside and it is warm inside, a lot of people
(49:31):
will probably be going outside. There will be more people
on the street, There'll be more people, you know, mulling around.
There will be more people with bikes, more people making
a trip with their briefcases or whatever they're carrying with
them that may have something in there.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
Perhaps more opportunity for crime.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
More opportunity like more victims, like potential victims in an area,
and also more people who are not hold up in
their house because it's cold and rainy. Who would be
the potential mugger or burglar or whatever. It does feel
like there's a real correlation there, Like if you just
(50:14):
imagine yourself if it's cold and rainy, making the decision
to go out and do something nefarious, versus if it's
hot and you've got nothing else to do and very dry.
I don't know it, feel it feels, it feels real.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
So there we have it. Though we know that the
weather is not conspiring against us, because the weather itself,
as far as we know, is not sentient, right, And
if we go down that route, we end up at
the guy a hypothesis, which is a fascinating thought experiment.
It's super organisms at all. While there is no currently
(50:54):
while there's no scientific proof that a full moon affects
the human brain and the way that folklore tells us
to does, the strength of confirmation bias and self fulfilling
prophecy might render that exact same science moot, because some
people may be having stability issues during the full moon
just because they believe that's what happens. We all grow
(51:14):
up in a world where full moons are portrayed as
harbingers of doom or eeriness in works of fiction right
dating back centuries, so of course we believe it. We've
been brought up to believe that some medical law enforcement
professionals may be suffering from their own illusory pattern recognition.
But it also seems like they are a little bit
(51:36):
more likely than the average Jane or Joe whatever to
believe in this correlation because they feel they've personally experienced it.
And while the moon may not affect your mind, the
sun most certainly does in ways that you might not even.
Speaker 3 (51:52):
Notice, as can barometric pressure bring in about some pain.
It affects my dog. If my dog feels barometric pet
pressure changing, especially if it's lessening, she gets all freaked
out because she knows the storm's coming. It's crazy. Yeah,
and it's in. It's like half an hour to twenty
minutes before a storm starts. It's weird.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
It's right let us know what you think.
Speaker 3 (52:22):
You can reach.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
You to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Facebook x and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy
Stuff Show.
Speaker 3 (52:30):
If you want to call us dial one eight three
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If you got more to say than can fit in
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Speaker 1 (52:48):
We are the entities the read every single piece of
correspondence we receive, be aware yet not afraid. Sometimes the
void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (53:17):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow conspiracy realist. We don't know where this classic episode
finds you in this wide world of hours, but chances
are you probably clocked the weather unless you are in
a biosphere situation like poly shore.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
At the very biodome. Biodome, bio biosphere. It's a domosphere.
They're very similar. I guess a dome dome is half
a sphere.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
It's half a sphere.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's a HEMI in beer feed Well, speaking of weather
and being locked into situations, it's also a good kind
of basic way of getting to know somebody in an elevator.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yes, yes, about the weather. Back in the day, talking
about the weather used to be idiom in English for
having boring small talk. However, as we know, the weather
has become increasingly I was gonna say, Shyamalan s y
you know a lot of plot twists. It was talking
with our guest producer Matt the Madman Still a little
(01:00):
while back, Boom about how difficult is one of us
double birds when you said that, yeah, classic classic, Still
we were talking about how difficult, and you and I
were talking about this too, how difficult it has been
on the road for me, especially to dress and prepare
appropriately for wildly different weather.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
That's right. You are on your third leg of a
month long journey, only the second for me. But I
was really grateful we came from New York.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Set.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Hey, I'm sorry. I got to do the Matt Berry thing.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I like this false words, absolutely true. Which it's very, very,
very cold, as it is in our home city of Atlanta, Georgia,
so we had to pack for super cold weather. It
was actually snowing the last day we were in Brooklyn,
and then we got here to Doha, Qatar, where it's
very hot. But then last night we went out and
it was so freaking windy. We were very grateful that
(01:52):
we had some of those holdover cozy duds leftover from
our time in New York.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Oh, and Matt, Matt, I hope it's okay that I
say this. Matt was freezing as we were waiting at
the taxi stead and I think both and our pal
Jonathan Strickland tried to give Matt our coats, and Matt,
if you recall you said, no, this pain will teach me.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yes, I did this to myself, and I deserve this,
and it's not nobody deserves that.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
And I wondered whether the weather was making Matt crazy.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
That's pretty good, Ben, that's pretty good. You know, we
have things like seasonal depressive disorder, the SADS. Right, there
are parts of the world where it stays dark all
the time during certain times of the year, or some
places year round, and it can cause people to get
this condition where they have this depression that's literally brought
(02:48):
on by the weather, and oftentimes they have to employ
the use of kind of artificial lights, this kind of
technology that will create a light that is meant to
mimic sunlight so that they don't get mega bummed out.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
And then there's the long standing belief throughout various cultures,
throughout various eras of history that the cycle of the
moon and the stars may affect not just someone's personality
at birth, but their behavior. You know, we've all heard
I don't know how common this is, perhaps in other
parts of the world, but in the United States, we've
(03:23):
all heard anecdotes about the full moon driving people crazy,
about hospitals becoming inundated with folks who just went full
werewolf without the hair.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
That's right, of course, the idea of a werewolf's transformation,
of course, being brought on or triggered by a full moon.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
It's something. Yeah, howling at.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
The moon tends to be a stand in expression for
kind of losing it a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
And so back in twenty nineteen with our brother Matt Frederick,
we asked, can the weather really make you crazy?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
It's a good question. Why don't we roll the tape?
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Ben?
Speaker 1 (04:02):
What do you say?
Speaker 4 (04:03):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies? History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
They call me Ben. We are joined, as always with
our super producer Paul Mission control decond. Most importantly, you
are You are here, and that makes this stuff. They
don't want you to know. How you feeling today, Matt, I'm.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Feeling feeling well. It's finally colder here, so much colder
than it has been that I get to wear my
you know, my black leather gloves and my big black
jacket in my black hat when I'm driving, and I
feel like some kind of anti super serial killer hero.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Side know. Paul Michigan control deck and just chimed in
with serial Killer. I don't know if I made it
on the mic.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
No, I don't think it did. But that's why it
was a super serial Killer hero.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah. Driving with your balaclava on.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Right, Yeah, it just feels good.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah. I believe this is one of the states where
it is technically illegal to operate a motor vehicle wearing
a mask.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Have you heard about that?
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Probably, but they haven't caught me yet.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Yeah. I don't see how that would apply to things
that require helmets, like motorcycles and so on. Anyhow, Yeah,
I also felt the strange switch. Suddenly we woke up
and it was fall, you know, or maybe we skipped
fall and it's just winter now.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Yeah, it's getting pretty close.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
And you know, like many people dealing with the rapidly
changing climate, we are just covering a paradigm shift in conversation.
Remember those old halcyon days where it was considered boring
or small talk to talk about the weather when we
were growing up. That's something old people and boring people did.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Yeah, but I think maybe we're just a little older
and more.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Boring that that is a valid that's a valid assertion.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
It's happening more frequently in my life at least.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Or I would say, I would say a valid proposition,
because I would I would argue that now that the
weather is becoming so unpredictable and wildcard esque, we all
tend to talk about the weather more because we have
to check in, because no one knows what's going to happen.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
You know, now a valid concern it is?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
It is it used to. We're no longer shooting the breeze.
We're we're ensuring people's safety and livelihood. You don't know.
If you ask somebody what the weather, what the weather's
like in their part of town, they might say, well,
the tornado has gained sentience, which we were not expecting.
But scientists say that's because we didn't recycle or something
like that. You sure, I'm not exaggerating a bit, But
(07:03):
today's episode is in a way about the weather. It
is in a way about the environment, because whether you
live in the frozen wilds of the Arctic North, or
the sweltering climes of the Tropic or the you know,
objectively perfect environment of Hawaii, you've doubtlessly had one of
those weird conversations about weather with outsiders. You know, yes,
(07:25):
says somebody in the upper reaches of Scandinavia. Sometimes the
sun sets at four pm here. Other times it's dark
for you know, weeks on end, or the sun just
doesn't leave at all. It's normal for us. And while
weather across the planet can vary to a wide degree,
it is pretty impressive that our species, most of whom
(07:47):
were largely identical to one another in terms of physiological requirements.
It's impressive that we can all exist for long periods
of time in these very different conditions. You know, I
think and.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Our cultures have kind of been tailored in a lot
of ways to these different weather patterns and the climates
in which we've you know, existed. Yeah, religions are born
a lot of times early on at least out of
these patterns.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Good call, right. Yeah, we're tool makers, we're arrogant, we
are explainers, and we are woefully satisfied with our own explanations.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, but we're also feelers because we've got a lot
of chemicals that float around in us that cause us
to feel ways, or at least they affect the way
we feel about things sometimes.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Right, And I was thinking about this too with the
old Robert Frost poem Tree at my Window. You remember that,
I do, so there's this line tree at my Window
is obviously it's about this tree that Robert Frost is
really digging at the time, or to be fair, the
speaker of the poem, if not, you know, maybe he's
faking it. Maybe he didn't have a tree.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
It could be a character.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, maybe it's like a metaphor for nuclear war is
something who knows, right, Well, there's this thought in the
last two lines where he talks about the tree experiencing
outer weather and himself again the speaker of the poem
being concerned with their own inner weather. And today's episode
is about that. I love that you set up the
(09:21):
idea of all these neurochemicals and reactions just bouncing willy
nilly and unseen in every person's brain box. Because today's
episode does not center around climate change, it's about a
more primal question people have been asking for the very
least centuries. That is, how does the outer weather the
environment affect our own inner psychological weather. Can something in
(09:45):
the air, some lack of sunlight or some overabundance of
moonlight really make us for lack of a better phrase,
hesitate to say it, but go crazy.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Yes, let's say act abnormally to ourselves, at least to
ourselves in the ways we've come to see ourselves.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Here are the facts.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
There is a common wisdom that floats around the internet,
has been around for a long time that whether in
some ways can affect people's moods, how they feel, whether
or not they're excited to wake up in the morning,
or you know, if they're feeling a little sad now
and then. And there is this idea it is. It
(10:32):
has a name that is kind of delightful, but at
the same time it's just delightful to speak of. It's
called SAD Seasonal effective disorder SAD. Yes, And we'll talk
about that a little bit later on.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yeah, we're just planning the seed for sad. We're planning
the sad seed.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
It will be fruitful later on. Now, there's an unrelated
idea that my wife and I have talked about a
lot of times because of her involvement with children in
a school environment, of whether or not the moon can
actually affect us as well, the amount of light that's
(11:12):
being reflected upon us by the moon. Really, that's what
they're talking about where the moon is and how much
light is being reflected. Can this make us feel different
than stable? Perhaps?
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, yeah, This is an ancient idea and it goes
in a couple of different directions. The ancient idea is
the concept that the moon maybe not so much the
light sometimes light. Sometimes it's just the idea that a
more visible moon means a moon is physically closer. This
(11:43):
dates back all the way to philosophers like Aristotle and
the often hilariously incorrect historian Plenty the Elder. From the
Roman historian, they thought that the brain was the moistest
organ in the body, and that they're for like the oceans,
it was the most susceptible to the insidious influences of
(12:06):
the moon because of the way the moon can affect
the tides and the oceans. And this went through this
idea which Gaina's ancient has gone through many different iterations
and names. Sometimes it was called the lunar lunacy effect
or the Transylvania effect, and the belief, you know, survived
(12:28):
the fall of the Roman Empire, survived the fall of
the ancient Greeks in the Middle Ages, when people when
it was just commonly accepted that some people turn into wolves,
you know, some people are in league with infernal powers
and they turn into wolves. And that's just how the
cookie crumbles, right They they of course thought that the
moon had these unholy influences, even on people who say
(12:55):
their prayers at night, you know, and the whole wolf
Spain reference.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
The full moon is a weird thing.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
It's a weird thing.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Back in the nineteenth century, there is even this thing
that you could argue in court, that you could argue
that somebody was not guilty by reason of the full moon.
Let's say, if you're a defense lawyer and you're representing somebody,
and they would make their claim that this quote unquote
lunatic client was you know, not accountable for whatever he
(13:25):
or she did because the full moon was there. And
we all know how the full moon affects us, especially
when we're turning into wolves and such. Just kidding. This
is now the nineteenth century, so we've moved beyond werewolves,
not fully, but we moved a bit beyond werewolves.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Eighteen hundreds Eastern Europe people believe people were still certain,
you know, and in less you know, in less densely
populated areas in the world, today, belief in physical shape shifters.
It's still around, you know, it's not as popular.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Yeah, well, I mean, and there's well, there's a lot
to be said there on the full moon. There's there's
a ton of things here about how the full moon
can possibly affect us.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
So that's that's the interesting part, right where wolves a
side ancient romacide. The belief in this relationship between the
moon waxing and people acting unstable persist in the modern day.
You'll see the lunar cycle blamed for everything from spikes
and suicide attempts and psychiatric hospital emissions, to emergency room
(14:35):
calls and reports, to traffic accidents, to dog bites and
more and more and more and again.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Just hanging it back to my wife and just for
a second, she believes this is kind of her theory
or her hypothesis, is that the amount of light of
shining down on a darkened earth at any given time
can affect sleep patterns, the way a a child or
an adult falls asleep, how long it takes to fall asleep,
(15:03):
how well they're able to sleep, just because of an
increased amount of light within a room, unless there are
blackout curtains or something like that she thinks that can
have an effect on the next day.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Essentially, I see, Yeah, it's a disturbance in circadian rhythm,
right that. I mean, that's a good argument. I would
want to hear the opinion too, of how that if
light is if light is the cause there ultimately of
some sort of disturbance in otherwise normal behavior. Is it
(15:37):
dependent on the type of light? Is that what creates
the disturbance? Because now we live in a place where many, many,
many people have artificial lights, whether they're even just computer
screens to television screens on while they sleep. So are
you know, as a disturbed circadian rhythm the new normal?
I could definitely see it being a really solid proposition
(15:59):
in the days before for electricity, you know, I like,
maybe maybe the disturbance has changed over time because of
the rise of electric lights.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
So yeah, I would just say from you know, not
to get into an argument about this, but within at
my home, the moon's light comes into our windows at
my house to such a significant effect that it looks
like we've got lights on outside when there's a full
moon compared to when there's even a half moon or
(16:28):
you know, lesser.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Do you feel that's pushing closer to like anthropy.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Or not sure, but I but it certainly does affect
my ability to get to sleep and just personally. And
I just wonder how much of an effect that would
be outside of computer screens, outside of you know, artificial light.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
And yeah, that's that's again, that's one of my big questions.
There would be the type of light you know what
I mean? Is uv thing? Is it something in the
LED displays? People are still debating about this, and there's
an interesting scientific quibble here. Psychiatrists across the planet and
certainly throughout the West, including people like Miami psychiatrists Arnold Lieber,
(17:10):
have argued have argued less about light and more about water,
the idea that, just like Aristotle and Plenty said, the
full moon has an effect on behavior because the human
body is almost eighty percent water. So again, maybe the
moon is disrupting something about the way water functions in
(17:35):
our nervous systems. Specifically, other people, not just psychiatrists, tend
to agree, and large groups of people tend to agree
that the moon does something wonky to human beings or
is This survey a few years back that said around
forty five percent of college students believe, yes, the moon
can affect human behavior in increasing their likelihood of doing
(17:57):
something unusual for them. The thing is all case by
case unusual for them. For someone, unusual might be staying
up till three am and eating a pint of ice cream.
For other people, unusual, maybe you know, robbing toys r US.
I'm trying to think of things that aren't around so
we don't get any angry letters.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
That's a good choice of toys r us or radio
shack somewhere there we go be a Blockbuster and kept
its stores unlocked.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
A media play, there are still seers in Alaska. Isn't
that weird there? You? So this this is interesting because
this isn't just cherry picking one survey. Other surveys seem
to indicate that mental health professionals might be more likely
than the average person to believe in this relationship, and
(18:48):
sectors of law enforcement. They should not surprise anybody, whether
you yourself are an l e O or whether you
have one in your friend group of your family. A
lot of members of law enforcement share this belief. As
a matter of Back in the nineteen seventies, the International
Association of the Chiefs of Police put their money where
their mouth is. They commissioned a study to discover whether
(19:09):
there was in a scientific basis to the belief that
the full moon makes people Let's not say crazy, let's
say weird.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
What do we know what they found?
Speaker 1 (19:21):
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's
where it gets crazy. Oddly enough, multiple studies, not all
the studies, but the majority of studies conducted in this
field or toward this question, have found no discernible scientific
(19:44):
evidence that the full moon has any sort of physiological
effect on the human mind. So we can bust the
water myth first. Before we get to that, Please note
everyone the way we phrase that finding that the full
moon does not have any sort of physiological effect on
(20:06):
the human mind that is different from a psychological effect. Right,
So there's a dilemma there. But we're pretty sure as
a species that if the moon has some sort of
some sort of deletorious effect on human beings, it is
not due to the water content of our bodies.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Let's go to the Scientific American with some quotes that
list the problems with this whole water gravity theory. Is
the moon actually changing the water inside of us? It
says quote First, the gravitational effects of the Moon are
far too minuscule to generate any meaningful effects on brain activity,
let alone behavior. As the late astronomer George Abell of
(20:48):
the University of California, Los Angeles noted, a mosquito sitting
on your arm exerts a more powerful gravitational effect on
us than the moon does. Now, that's intense. This is
me being outside of the quote. That's an intense fact.
If it is indeed a fact, and it was said
by a former astronomer, so we must believe it. Let's
continue on. Yet, to the best of our knowledge, there
(21:12):
have been no reports of a mosquito lunacy effect. So
there's a little biting remark there. Let's go on. Second,
the Moon's gravitational force affects only open bodies of water,
such as oceans and lakes, but not contained sources of
water such as the human brain. Aha.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Pretty rock solid, it really is.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
It is contained within our skulls.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
This last one's the most interesting, yes. Quote.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Third, the gravitational effect of the moon is just as
potent during new moons, when the moon is visible to us,
as it is during full moons. So aha, the light
of the moon is a more likely candidate for affecting us.
I'm just kidding, but it is sure.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
I mean, well, let's find out going back to water.
What this means is that the perception that we have,
while it does hold its own internal logic, you know,
there's some analog there. The moon affects water in certain
ways or in certain you know, situations, then why not
(22:19):
the human brain. What's so special about the water and
the human body? Nothing except temporarily its location. This means
that if we want to dive into the belief there's
some sort of causal relationship between the moon and specifically crime, right,
if we want to look at law enforcement data, then
we will need to reject the water myth or the
(22:42):
water part of the moon myth, and we'll need to regard,
at least to some degree, the huge amount of anecdotal
evidence from police officers across the planet because a lot
of these folks wholeheartedly believe in this, but maybe not
the way you think, because often, you know, people who
work in law enforcement are trained to apply critical thinking,
(23:03):
so they will, hopefully they're paying attention and training be
some of the more skeptical members of society at large
So let's consider the work of a guy named David Hunter.
David Hunter was a retired deputy from Knox County, Tennessee.
In his book The Moon Is Always Full, he collected
(23:24):
multiple stories of police officers relaying strange events let's call
them lunar war stories, things that happened while they were
on duty during the full moon. However, a Hunter does
not believe that there is a physiological mechanism at play here. Instead,
he believes it is squarely something in the sphere of
(23:45):
the psychological. He says that the moon crime relationship, or
perception thereof, is a matter of self fulfilling prophecies. And
he notes he says, hey, you know, most cops, they
are adrenaline junkies. If nothing happens on a graveyard shift,
they get disappointed. So the full moon gives a cop
a reason to investigate things he might usually ignore.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Ah, so just the fact that it is a full moon.
The police officer thinking to him or herself, Oh, it's
a full moon. I gotta check this out.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Right right right, I've seen the movies, I've seen the tropes,
or you know, it's it's similar to I guess bader
Minehoff to where you know, you hear turn the beat
around once and then or you think of the song
and then you feel like you've heard it three times
in the past forty eight hours. But have you or
were you just noticing more?
Speaker 3 (24:38):
You know? Are you using turn the beat around as
like a verb like I did a thing I turned
the beat around.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I mean the song, Okay, but yeah, you turn the
beat around if you'd like.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
You know, But but you know, this doesn't take into
account like I'm just imagining. I'm not poopooing hunter writing here.
I'm just saying there's a difference between investigating, like having
something to investigate, and choosing to investigate something. And so
(25:13):
I guess what I'm trying to say is a police
officer generally is going to respond to calls that come through,
especially a you know, uniform police officer that's in a
patrol vehicle or is on patrol. They will get called
to a thing to investigate something, or they will observe
something and investigate it. Right, those are generally the two
(25:35):
ways in which a report is going to get generated
for you know, something that the police officer did that evening.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
I see where you're going.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
I don't know how them choosing to or not to
investigate something would differ with the.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Moon, because that would also happen. What I think you're
raising is a fascinating point because in the order of operations, right,
the chain of events, their decision to whether or not
to investigate something aka do their job, occurs after something
has already happened. Right, So they are reacting to an event.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Hopefully rather than just going out there.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
And I guess I better start something, right I doubt that.
I doubt that, but I see what you're saying. It's
very important because then that means that their decision has
very little to do with whether or not there is
a higher a higher number of incidents during the evening
of a full.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Moon, right, Yeah, one would have to come before the other.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Okay, and interesting too because I know I feel like
you're a big proponent of the light argument. Well what
about when a full moon is out during the day?
Oh yeah, and it's observable, Oh man, crazy pandemonium.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Kids everywhere are like the moon.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Yeah, I think. I don't know if anybody else remembers this,
but I remember very clearly the first time I saw
the moon during the day, and I thought the jig
was up. I thought it was the end, you know
what I mean. I was like, well, the quality is
going to fall off a little bit at the end,
so we got a good run.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Well, it is a weird that is a weird thing.
I wonder how universal the concept is. I think there's
a sense growing up that the sun is out or
the moon is out. Oh yeah, right, yeah, and the
moon is out at night and the sun is out
at day, and you cannot have both because how could
it be night and day. That's not a thing, that's
(27:36):
not possible. But then you, you know, begin to realize
that the sun and moon, like all things, are a
sliding scale or a spectrum of almost all things. It's
this weird it's this weird function of reality night and
day or just part of the same wheel man.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Yeah, that's true. So let's let's go back, because we
do have to point out, in all fairness to the
retired deputy Hunter that he is, by his own admission,
not a scientist. He is collecting this in a way
that's very similar to the way someone would collect folklore,
(28:16):
you know what I mean. So let's go to members
of academia, members of the Ivory Tower, the capital a academy. Finally, Finally,
University California, Irvine criminology professor Kris Kubrian calls this perception
amongst el eos a kind of confirmation bias, adding that
(28:37):
the officers are looking for evidence that confirms their pre
existing belief. Pre existing is a phrase I inserted into
that quotation. So let me not mislead you, fellow listeners.
This is something personally, and it's just one person's opinion
that I could get behind because we know that happens.
(28:59):
We know this happens often to everyone. We we build
coincidences or we curate coincidence in a way that most
aids and a bets our own narrative. So you could
go through a troublesome traffic light fifty times, right, and
(29:21):
maybe it's always green, right except for the twelve times
that you happen to catch it when it's red light,
and then by time eleven you're like, this light sucks.
This happens all the time. How much of my life
have I spent here waiting at this pos traffic light?
And then you know the way other people work. If
you say that, especially if you complain about traffic, other
(29:43):
people are not gonna go What is wrong with you?
That light is awesome. I looked at my stats for
that light, and buddy, I am green sixty five percent
of the time. No, they're gonna go. Yeah, man, traffic
lights blow. I don't know what it is. It's like
they should just paint them red because the color never changes.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
There are very few of us, but there are a
few of us who would take the side of the
traffic light just by default because somebody's complaining.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I I I don't want
to get too far into this, but I've been involved
in some of the traffic light conversations. Do you know
how easy those systems are to hack? Yeah? It is frightening, dude,
It is frightening. How uh how little effort it would
(30:27):
take to totally collapse some traffic systems in cities here
in the US. We're supposed to be a developed country.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Well, in Atlanta, it takes about three broken lights to
just screw up the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
I know. Yeah, we all call it a day at
that point. That's why. Yeah, it's it's pretty it's pretty rough,
especially especially the neighborhood we work in. It's funny. I'm
doing a I'm doing an episode later this week spoiler
alert for our show car Stuff, which has hit.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
The road again.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
And one of the one of the things we're gonna
look at is the cost of traffic. Like, traffic is expensive.
I had no idea. Forget millions, forget billions. It costs
like trillions of dollars a year. Yeah, but dude's strategic traffic.
If you've got a business that's on like a major road, Yeah,
traffic is the stuff, man, I was thinking of that. Okay,
(31:19):
this is a terrible idea. I want to preface this. Okay,
this is a terrible idea. No one do it. It's
not cool. Okay, but it would work. Oh god, I
added that at the end. So, we have a lot
of traffic jams. Right in other cities, you'll see people
who wait at traffic jams to sell things, right, yes,
So what if we had our worst traffic jams here
(31:42):
in Atlanta tend to be on interstates. What if we
had some kind of like side scooter type things that
could go out when traffic is stopped, when it's gridlocked
and sell snacks, sell beverages, non alcoholic sell you know,
do dads flowers toys. It's like a rolling convenience store
(32:06):
on the highways, on the highway, on the shoulder of
the highway and places where again like four thirty to
seven thirty, it's the only time they're open. Yeah, because
that's the only time traffic is slow enough for these
people not to get killed. Yeah, now here are the
three reasons is a horrible idea. One, I would want
to operate it as a nonprofit and give the money
(32:29):
to disadvantage people, which is never gonna fly with Atlanta's government. Two,
we're talking about sending people out in traffic. Even if
the speed is zero that could very quickly become sixty
and then we're just like one scrape up away from
the whole thing collapsing.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Yeah, but I bet you could charge a premium on this.
This is my solution, right, because people are stuck in traffic.
They can't escape on some exit because they know if
they go escape on the exit to hit up whatever
fast food joint or let's say a racetrack or QT
(33:08):
or insert your gas station seven to eleven here, they
know it's just gonna take even longer to get back
on the highway. They won't be able to get where
they're going. But if somebody, let's say, was on the
side of the road and they could make it to you,
if they could get to your car door your window,
roll it down and that's all you gotta do. Roll
down your window and swipe your card and you can
(33:30):
have let's just say, some something as simple as some
chips and an ice cold beverage. They will pay you
like movie theater prices, for sure. And if they're paying
movie theater prices, not only can you pay for your
staff and they'll have a pretty nice wage. You'll be
able to donate a good chunk of that the way
you wanted to donate it.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Again, the city governor will never let it happen. But
I like what you're saying because then also think about this, well,
the last prop the last problem. Of course, I think
I have a solution too. But the last problem is
one of the biggest ones, which is it would further
ruin cripple traffic to have everybody trying to get to
(34:12):
the shoulder at a stopping point. You know, of course
there it's a very self centered species, so there will
be a lot of people in the middle who are like, hey,
forget you, buddy, bring that RBS to me. I got
things to do. Uh, it's true, But here's the solution
instead of people, When we just send drones out.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
That was good. That was literally the thing.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, drones you just need reliably for them to operate
at peak efficiency, you'd need a sun roof though, so
it's already kind of for the elite.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
I mean it would be anyway if you're gonna pay
movie theater prices for anything.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Right, I guess there aren't a lot of people who
are just scraping by so they could save up for
their drone.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Chilupas drone chilupas man.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
You know what, I apologize for derailing us here. Let
us know what you think of this idea. Met You're kind,
you're you're kind of turning me back into a proponent
of it.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
You know, I would, I'd get in in this venture.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Cool. I think I agree with you. Also, if we
partner up with a fast food franchise, since we're already
ruining the world with drones, then we could we could
get them to sink some of the overhead costs for us.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
You know, there's this fast food chain that makes chicken sandwiches,
not the one you're thinking about. It's that one from Louisiana.
If you had them with their chicken sandwiches. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Food for thought, literally food for thought. Let's let's go
back to Sorry, I got us to traffic for folklore
the moon, But let's go back to the Academy capital A.
There's another professor who attributes this perception, this causual perception
between the moon and extraordinary behavior to folklore rather than
(36:10):
to science. Professor Elizabeth Loftis says she will not outright
condone a correlation between the moon and craziness, but she
does concede that quote. Maybe mentally ill people get weirded
out by the full moon and behave in strange ways.
(36:31):
If this is the case, then what we might be
perceiving as a weird effect of moonlight or gravity or
water what have you, may in fact just be a
collection of isolated incidents wherein people who were already unwell
were somehow triggered by a specific environmental event. And in
these cases, maybe it just happened to be the moon.
(36:52):
Maybe we're not paying enough attention to other things like
an eclipse, people go nuts steering and a clip you know,
for one reason or another. Back to what you said
about religions. Some religions are founded on being able to
predict an eclipse and then go absolutely ham when one happens.
They are wonderful, they are, they are, you know, if
(37:14):
you can get a spot where you get totality. Ah,
but the moon is the moon alone, is not the
weather nor the environment entire So we mentioned sad earlier,
but what exactly is it? How does it work? We'll
tell you after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
And we are back. So let's get sad everybody. Sorry,
oh sorry, So let's let's discuss seasonal effective disorder. It's
it's more rare than probably the media would want you
to believe or has made us believe, but it is
indeed very much a real thing. And let's just talk
(38:02):
about what it means. Seasonality or this disorder is reported
by approximately ten to twenty percent of people with depression.
So that's somebody who already is feeling depression or having
depression and they are either saying this is a part
of it or the entirety of their depression. The changes
in season. Then fifteen to twenty two percent of those
(38:24):
with bipolar disorder also, you know, report that seasonality or
seasonal effective disorder is also affecting them.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Right right, Like, I know what my my variation may
be in mood and emotion values peaks and valleys exactly,
and even correcting for that, I notice some enormous valleys.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
And there are some fascinating real reasons behind some of
this stuff. That Again, as we're talking a little bit
more about the chemical in our bodies and how those
change this stuff, it goes deeper and it speaks to
our connection, humanity's connection to the sun.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Oh sure, Yeah. According to the Mayo Clinic, SAD or
seasonal effective disorder, it's a type of depression that's related
to changes in the seasons. It begins and ends around
the same couple of times every year. And if you're
like most people with this condition, your symptoms start in autumn.
They begin in the fall, they continue into the winter months.
(39:32):
You are lethargic, your energy is sapped, you feel moody.
Less often, we have seen cases of people reporting SAD
in the other direction in the spring or early summer.
The signs and symptoms are going to be very familiar
for anyone who has had these wintry blues before. You
(39:55):
will feel depressed most of the day, almost every day.
The stuff that you enjoyed, video games, volleyball, cyber bullying, Twitter,
people or whatever, you don't enjoy it anymore. You have
low energy. But even though you feel tired all the time,
you cannot sleep. You also don't enjoy a lot of
the food you used to like.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
A lot of people report that they feel agitated when
they're experiencing this, or sluggish, having a difficult time concentrating,
like let's say, if you're at school or at work,
just can't really wrap your mind around one thing. Feeling hopeless,
sometimes feeling guilty or worthless. Again, these are a lot
(40:41):
of these symptoms of just overall depression, too, having frequent
thoughts of death or suicide.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
And there's some science to this. As you would as
you had said, Matt, we know that when your body,
as long as you qualify as a human being, when
your body is exposed to less sunlight, it produces more melatonin.
Melatonin is the hormone that makes you sleepy. It's pretty
popular in the West as a sleep eit nowadays. Then
there's also a pretty solid idea called the phase shift hypothesis.
(41:13):
The phase shift hypothesis proposes what we had just talked
about earlier in the beginning of the show, and it
says that shortened days cause the timing of our circadian
rhythms to fall out of sync with the actual time
of day because there's this delay in the release of melatonin.
And just as your body, your flesh bag, begins craving
(41:35):
these mid day naps, your brain begins producing lower levels
of serotonin.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Oh, the good one.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah, the tickle, that's what I call it. Yeah, your
brain stops making the tickle that is with a capital T.
So your mood, your appetite, your sleep, your sexual desire,
none of them scratch the itch anymore. You don't get
the tickle. What's the point of living if you don't
have the you know, if you don't enjoy the way
stuff taste, if you're not excited about doing something, you're
(42:03):
just sort of getting a participation grade.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Yeah, the tickle of it's of the highest import and
that stinks to have it deadened, a little bit nullified
in a way. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
And how like, for instance, I'm a I'm a person
who goes through i mean dark times pretty regularly. No, yeah, right,
so me too. Yeah, I think that's one of the
reasons we get along for well. But but we did.
We did find the science here, and then we not
(42:37):
only found the science, we found beyond the microcosmic neurochemical
mechanisms of every individual brain. We found that societies wherein
people regularly experience this deprivation of light to an extreme degree,
the societies have banded together and created group solutions or
(43:01):
attempts at group solutions for sunlight deprivation. That's why a
lot of people living in the Arctic Circle, a lot
of people living in against Scandinavian countries that have the
infrastructure to support community solutions like this, they've done some
groundbreaking work with light therapy and we found some pretty
(43:25):
cool examples of this too.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
Oh yeah. There's an Atlantic article called will Norway Ever
Beat the Winter Blues that you shared Ben and in
here it talks about a southern town in Norway called
Rijukun or rjuka n And it's kind of in a
bit of a valley between two large mountains, and during
(43:47):
certain times of the seasons there the sun basically hits
the peaks of the mountains are high up on the mountains,
but doesn't actually ever get down into the valley, so
it doesn't actually ever touch the town for long periods
of time. And they figured out a way to get
these large, i think seventeen meter wide mirrors that reflect
(44:11):
the sunlight from the higher peaks of that mountain down
into the town square. And it's a fascinating idea. It's
genius and very simple in a way, but just the
concept of bringing a little bit of light into the
town square so that people during midday, like I think
(44:31):
it was noon to two or something like that, people
can go out and experience sunlight in a time when
they haven't felt it on their skin in days, if
not weeks. And another thing interesting that's happening in that
town in the surrounding areas as well. There's a company
called brain Lit. It's a Swedish company, and what they
(44:52):
do is they outfit a whole building, sometimes a classroom,
sometimes a home with smart lighting that mimics day and
night cycles essentially. So the idea here is to get
a human being circadian rhythms back on track just by
having their eyes experience the light and the feeling on
(45:12):
their skin, all those things have it occur indoors rather
than outside being affected by the sun.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
And then again we return to the nature of the light. Right,
it's a specific type of light, correct.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Yeah, it's HCl and led the two solutions they have
and they call it biocentric lighting. It's really interesting stuff
if you want to learn more. We are not promoting
this company or this brand, but it's called brain lit
b R A I N L I T dot S
E slash e N. That's where we were looking about
looking at.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
It, and we know that the research in this field
is continuing. Light at least affects us more than we
might like to believe. This is not hey, I'm going
on record, man, you know I respect you. This is
not me agreeing with the light hypothesis re luncy. This
is not okay. This is not me agreeing with that
(46:08):
because I just I couldn't find any science to bear
it out. But that doesn't mean it's not true. It
just means maybe the science hasn't caught up with the
human belief yet.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
I told you, just my belief. I don't got no science.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
But it might be out there and it's worth searching
for in some people with bipolar disorder. We also know
that spring and summer can bring on symptoms of mania
or a less intense form of mania hypomania, and fall
in winter can be a time of deep depression. Here's
another here's the ultimate answer. Though not just counting lights,
which is only one part of our environment. Let's think
(46:42):
of the weather all the other things. The weather is wind,
barometric pressure, ymidity, things like that.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Pressure is a big one.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
Pressure is a huge one. And it turns out that
everyday weather can change your mood. If you are already unhappy,
if you're already having a bad time, don't worry. Weather
can make it worse. If you're in a good mood,
you are more you are less susceptible to changes in
(47:11):
environment or changes in weather affecting you environ mental state.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
I'll go with this. I've got stuff to add. I'll
bring it back later.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Let's go through this, Okay, So first things first. Two
thousand and eight study associated with the APA American Psychological Association,
published in the journal Emotion, indicates the weather can indeed
mess with you if you're already feeling down in the dumps, morose, sad, etc.
Researchers evaluated the personalities and moods of more than twelve
(47:41):
hundred adults through these daily questionnaires, so they're self reporting, right,
a little sticky. But these these questionnaires were cross referenced
with the local weather during the day when they answered
these questions, and they found that relate like climate factors
like temperature, sunlight, wind, precipitation, and so on, had no
impact whatsoever on positive mood. But the temperature, wind, and
(48:06):
sunlight did have a measurable effect on negative mood. And
when we say negative, we're using it in a colloquial way,
not the scientific way. Negative and science means absence of
here it means bad. So yeah, right, So increased temperatures
had a positive effect on bad moods, while increased wind
(48:28):
and decreased sunlight had a worsening effect on a bad mood.
Although these effects did vary from one individual to another
in terms of the degree of change, like how extremely
or profoundly they were affected, it did bear out across
again more than a thousand people, that there was some
sort of correlation. And additionally, this is just the lead
(48:52):
we're going to drop, we're not going to follow up. Additionally,
there are a surprising number of studies into the core
between high temperatures and crime and from what we can tell,
it is real when the heat spikes, more crimes occur.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
Hot time somewhere in the city. My friend, back of
your neck, right, but no, but it's true. And from
what I was reading just this morning, you know, the
science isn't necessarily in on that, but it does make
sense on a very base level. If it is warm
outside and it is warm inside, a lot of people
(49:31):
will probably be going outside. There will be more people
on the street, There'll be more people, you know, mulling around.
There will be more people with bikes, more people making
a trip with their briefcases or whatever they're carrying with
them that may have something in there.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
Perhaps more opportunity for crime.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
More opportunity like more victims, like potential victims in an area,
and also more people who are not hold up in
their house because it's cold and rainy. Who would be
the potential mugger or burglar or whatever. It does feel
like there's a real correlation there, Like if you just
(50:14):
imagine yourself if it's cold and rainy, making the decision
to go out and do something nefarious, versus if it's
hot and you've got nothing else to do and very dry.
I don't know it, feel it feels, it feels real.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
So there we have it. Though we know that the
weather is not conspiring against us, because the weather itself,
as far as we know, is not sentient, right, And
if we go down that route, we end up at
the guy a hypothesis, which is a fascinating thought experiment.
It's super organisms at all. While there is no currently
(50:54):
while there's no scientific proof that a full moon affects
the human brain and the way that folklore tells us
to does, the strength of confirmation bias and self fulfilling
prophecy might render that exact same science moot, because some
people may be having stability issues during the full moon
just because they believe that's what happens. We all grow
(51:14):
up in a world where full moons are portrayed as
harbingers of doom or eeriness in works of fiction right
dating back centuries, so of course we believe it. We've
been brought up to believe that some medical law enforcement
professionals may be suffering from their own illusory pattern recognition.
But it also seems like they are a little bit
(51:36):
more likely than the average Jane or Joe whatever to
believe in this correlation because they feel they've personally experienced it.
And while the moon may not affect your mind, the
sun most certainly does in ways that you might not even.
Speaker 3 (51:52):
Notice, as can barometric pressure bring in about some pain.
It affects my dog. If my dog feels barometric pet
pressure changing, especially if it's lessening, she gets all freaked
out because she knows the storm's coming. It's crazy. Yeah,
and it's in. It's like half an hour to twenty
minutes before a storm starts. It's weird.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
It's right let us know what you think.
Speaker 3 (52:22):
You can reach.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
You to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Facebook x and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy
Stuff Show.
Speaker 3 (52:30):
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If you got more to say than can fit in
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Speaker 1 (52:48):
We are the entities the read every single piece of
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void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (53:17):
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Noel Brown
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