October 18, 2011 • 28 mins
Why do kids chat with invisible friends? Those creepy encounters are just part of how the human brain works. Even the average adult brain engages in something very similar. Join Robert and Julie as they enter the world of imaginary friendship.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Myname is Robert Lamb, and I'm really This is yet
another Halloween themed episode. They can also be enjoyed throughout
the year. The theme is is not Halloween specific, but
it goes very appears nicely with Halloween, like a nice,
(00:26):
very subtle, right subtle tones of Halloween nests. And in fact,
we were wearing, yet again some Halloween costumes while we
record this way. What are you wearing? Well, I am,
of course my favorite movie monster. I am Gamera. As
you noticed from the the large plastic turtle shell on
my back, the cool little uh tusks that I've painted
on in my face and uh and the tail. You
(00:47):
can't see the tail, but I also have a large
turtle tail. Well, yeah, it's I did see it out
in the other room. And I've lined the floor with
tiny Japanese buildings which I'm stepping on even now. The
elaborate to I can't believe you extended it all the
way to the break room. I know there's a lot
of work I've been I've been at work for forty
eight hours doing this. Oh yeah, yes, I am dressed
(01:11):
as a as my imaginary friend, my creepy imaginary friend,
very timely. Yeah yeah, so um so I'm a little
girl with like a nineteen fifties dress and a huge
giant bow and giant saucer eyes and thanks, yeah, it was,
it was. It was an extra step I thought to
dilate your eyes that intensely. Yeah, I mean, just kindle hours.
(01:32):
It's gonna last, but it's fine. I mean, just thank
you for helping me through the hallway. That yeah, yeah,
and I'm good luck reading those notes. But but yeah,
the creepy childhood imaginary friend. This does pop up in
horror movies, of course, because it's one of those things
where as adults, we'll see a child talking to something
that isn't there and referring to it by name, and
it can be a little like, what's kind of creature
(01:54):
is this that lives in this house and talks to
things that don't exist? And we've seen it taken to
extremes in such horror movies as The Exorcist, where the
little girl, of course, has this imaginary friend called Bazoozoo
and she makes this a little statue of it and
it looks exactly like this ancient demon statue from the
Middle East that we've seen the opening scenes. This demon
(02:16):
is making dogs fight or something. That's what that is.
My daughter just fashioned one of those out of Plato
the other day. Yeah, well that's cool, that's what means.
I mean, it's you know, it's it's still she made
it for you. You should still put it on the fridge.
She didn't say she made it for me, and she
lit all these tiny torches around it. Okay, um, But yeah,
that's why it's creepy, right, because because you observe this
(02:37):
in a kid and you think who are you talking to?
Or initially it's creepy until you get introduced to the
imaginary friend and you understand that it's part and parcel
of their imagination. Well like share your your child's example. Oh,
she has to Lily and Fifi. Okay, my kids two
and a half. So you know if she's uh, she's
not doing a lot with them. I mean she's cooking
(02:58):
with them. She made egg plant parmers one with them.
The other day. She made what she called the castle
home for them out of blocks. But yeah, I hear
her talking to them and the first time I did
hear her talking to lately, I kind of stopped that
I was doing and said, what who are you talking to?
Because you know, it kind of raises the hackles a
little bit, like, well, yeah, I don't remember. Do you
(03:20):
remember ever having an imaginary friend or hearing about yourself
having one? Uh no, No, But there's some research I
came upon that we can talk about later that that
struck a chord with me. Yeah. I don't think I
ever ever had one. No one ever told me that
I spoke of one. And uh, my wife doesn't remember
having one either, but she there was a time when
(03:40):
her family may or may not have lived in a
haunted house, and she definitely came to her grandma and said,
there's a man in the bathtub, And there was no
man in the bathtub, So there's a creepy bald guy
in the in the bathtub. Yeah. So I mean, I'm
thinking that's a weird imaginary friend. Well I'm not saying
it was an imaginary friend, but as well discuss the
imaginary friends tims from just this sort of imaginative, magical
(04:02):
thinking in general, And I could see where it could
also on occasion produce ghosts. So, yeah, just to throw
some quick stats out of the idea of ghosts. Yeah, uh,
just to throw some quick stats out there, sixty of
children up to the age of seven have had an
imaginary friend at least one time or another. Only in
firstborn children are most likely to have imaginary playmates. And
(04:23):
I found this really telling. Uh, girls are more likely
to have invisible friends, while boys are more likely to
transform themselves. So like where the girl might imagine that
they have a friend who is having the tea party
with them, Um, the boy would just imagine that he
is a ninja and uh, you know, follow out a
slide or something, you know, that kind of thing. And
I was I definitely looking back, I can I remember
(04:45):
probably to an inappropriate age, and I still have this
very rich I guess I still have an inappropriately rich
fantasy life in my head. But but I remember, you know,
getting caught up in these fictions that I would create
in my mind, and and at times I would like
pretend I was a spy or or like I remember
walking around, uh this might have been like sixth grade
(05:05):
and just sort of pass the time. I was pretending
that I was like a covert agent on a like
a cobra spaceship or something. Well, yeah, you know it's
funny to uh my brother and I. I don't know
that we would say this animal called Crango, which was
a stuffed girl that we had, was an imaginary friend.
But we made up so many stories about him. And
we still laugh to this day because, Uh, one of
(05:28):
the places we used to go with Crango was to
Marijuana Island. Whoa okay, babysitter check. Uh. It was just
so funny now because we look back and they were like,
we had no idea what Marijuana Island was, but I
know we came up with all these elaborate stories about this.
So anyway, yes, imaginative to play is really important. And
(05:50):
there's an article in the Wall Street Journal called the
Power of Magical Thinking, and uh, there's a quip from it.
I love it says, whenever you think about the Civil War,
or the Roman Empire, or possibly God, you're using your imagination.
Says Paul Harris, a development psychologist and professor at Harvard
Graduate School of Education who studies imagination. The imagination is
absolutely vital for contemplating reality, not just those things we
(06:13):
take to be near fantasy. So we know that there's
evidence that imagination and role playing is really key in
helping kids to develop perspective, which we've talked about in
terms of the theory of mind. Yeah, yeah, I love
that point about about reading about the past, because because ultimately,
if you're reading about if you're reading The Lord of
(06:34):
the Rings, or if you're reading, uh, you know, some like,
you know, tightly researched historical book, not not even a fiction,
but just a straight up this is what we think
life was like in ancient Rome or something, you're still
having to use like the same faculties to transport yourself
there and imagine the sense data around you of this
either fanciful or historically accurate setting. And of course you
(06:59):
can also fact in the whole point that we can
never be completely accurate with our historical representations, especially you know,
the farther we go back in time, right, right, So
we always think that we're grounded in reality or some
sort of realism, when in fact we are having to
engage that part of our brain quite a bit to
really inhabit a different perspective or a different time period,
as you were talking about. And again this is going
(07:20):
back to theory of mind, which we talked about before.
We're when we recorded Don't Eat the Panda about the
reason why we we sometimes have our hard time, uh,
squaring the fact that we eat an animal um with
the fact that we can't help but inhabit the perspective
of an animal, just because we're hardwired to survive like this.
(07:41):
So you've got to try to anticipate with the next
move will be whether or not you're seeking, you know,
your next dinner, or you're trying to make some sort
of strategic play on the court. Yeah, we have this
ability as humans to take what we know about ourselves
and use it to understand and predict the behavior of others.
And uh, it gives us a, like you said, a
(08:01):
basic evolutionary advantage. But then there's a certain amount of
bleed over into these other areas of our thought life,
like like imaginary friends, like imagined realities that aren't real,
I mean, just as being you know, we've we've just
discussed multiple times. We're part of a world of fixed
and movable objects, of symbols, of social organizations. We have
(08:23):
to navigate this world, and part of part of that
is being able to predict what other people are gonna
do theory of mind what other settings will be like.
For instance, anytime you go to say a doctor's office,
say you're going to a new doctor's office, you have
a basic idea in mind what that experience is going
to be like based on previous experiences, so you you
(08:45):
have a fictional version of that place before you actually
reached that point. Any of this have have probably spoken
on the phone with somebody that we know in a
setting that we don't know. Uh say, like if you
have a spouse or friend or family member that is
staying in a hotel room out of town and you're
talking to him on the phone, you end up picturing
where they are in your mind. I mean, you may
(09:07):
not even be putting a lot of thought into it.
You may not be building this false room piece by piece,
but your imagination is kicking in to predict what that
space is like. I was thinking about it even in
a more dramatic context, and I was thinking about the
third man syndrome, which we talked about in our Toppelganger podcast.
And that's when all of a sudden, a third you know,
(09:28):
it's let's say it's you and me and we're sitting
here and something life threatening happens to us, and all
of a sudden, I imagine a third man or a
third woman with us, possibly helping us through whatever this
life threatening situation is. And this has been documented, right,
and we've seen this um with mountain climbers who were
stranded No eleven UM survive the account where there was
(09:49):
like this other guy in the stairwell with them, like
helping them escape, and it later, you know, it turns
out there was no such man. No, but he felt
like that person was so real and that person actually
helped him to get out of the building and instructed him.
And I was just thinking, like, this is a great
example of how your imagination kicks in to really help
you not just predict the future, but to even deal
(10:09):
with the present. Yeah, our imagination far from being just
this curious little trinket we we haul out to pass
the time and make the world a little more fun.
I mean, it's an important, an essential part of our
mental faculties and allows us to navigate this world around us,
which is why it's so important that kids engage in
this right as you As you said, kids actually do this.
(10:31):
And it's funny because before a really a landmark study
on this was done um and This was a study
that was done by Marjorie Taylor. She's a psychology professor
at the University of Oregon and the author of a
book called Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them.
Before she did the study, which was a study that
then had a ten year follow up on it, people
(10:53):
thought or psychologists thought that maybe one and three kids
were engaging in this, but again, we know that a
lot of kids are doing this. Um and fantasy play
is really correlated with other positive attributes in preschool children.
For example, kids who have imaginary friends are more creative,
they have a greater social understanding, and they're better at
assuming the perspective of others. As we talked about, Yeah,
(11:14):
they're the theories that say that really imaginative children and
ones that have imaginary friends. It's it's showing that the
theory of mind is actually kicking in a little early
because this is not something that the child is born knowing.
That's one of the reasons like small children are also
kind of like aliens because it takes them a lot
to develop that point where they can they can put
themselves in another person's shoes if they were taking that
(11:35):
replicant test in Blade Runner, they would fail it and
Harrison Ford would arrest them. Uh, it's true. And actually
I was just thinking about this is a marker of genius. Um,
the fact that a child can do this early right,
this imagine play and not just have imagine friends, but
create imaginative worlds. So it's definitely something that parents should
(11:57):
be happy about when they see their kids engaging in this.
But I found it really fascinating that Taylor found these, uh,
that that imaginative friends could very you know, wildly across
the board, right, Like, it's more than just little girls
and another little girl plays with or a little boy
that convinces one another little boy that he needs to
do something bad. Right, it continue. They could have one
(12:18):
imaginative friend, they could have fifteen amagement to friends. Um.
And here are some examples. One one girl had an
invisible nine year old squirrel. And then there was a
little boy who had skateboard guy. Um and this was
an invisible eleven year old who lived in his pocket
and popped up at boring moments to do tricks on
(12:39):
his skateboard. And then um again, one of my favorites.
All this is kind of horrible elephant, a seven inch
high packaderm that wore a tank top and shorts and
sometimes was mean. But I thought that was fascinating just
because I've heard about this before. I've heard about imaginary
friends that were jerks, and psychologists say that they that
(12:59):
some times kids have jerk and mentionary friends just because
they're working out that again, assuming perspective and role playing
and becoming a little bit more sophisticated in how to
navigate the social world unfolding before them. Yeah, this is
where we get to. They have the idea of like
the kid who has the imaginary friend that either that
either tells him to knock over a vase or actually
(13:21):
did knock over the vase and is getting blamed for it. Yeah,
and this is this is another funding that Taylor found
that kids as old as twelve years old had imaginary playmates,
and she cited a German researcher who thinks that teen
diarists uh diarists keeping a diary experienced a similar phenomenon
when they addressed their musings to a specific person and
(13:43):
you know, dear diary um, and that this person takes
on the guys of a friend and this is where
I found some similarities in my own life when I
was that age, because I felt like I had a
a the same kind of relationship with my diary or
something that someone was there listening. Is it possible that
your diary was a hor crux? Now? Okay, I checked
it out. Okay, I'm just making sure. Uh, and no,
(14:06):
there's there's absolutely no possibility that my diary would be one.
Taylor interviewed about fifty adult novelists, okay and including Mry
writers Sue Grafton, to see if the same kind of
relationship existed between them and their characters, and nearly all
reported that at some point their characters seemed to come
to life and outside of their control. Yeah, which brought
(14:26):
Taylor to, you know, to this point of, well, maybe
an imaginary friend doesn't necessarily go away as you age.
Maybe it morphs into something else to find fascinating. Well, excellent.
Let's take a quick break, and when we come back,
we'll get into this. This podcast is brought to you
by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel.
(14:49):
At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation.
Join us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers
to life's questions. Right, and we're back before we get
into the idea of adult imaginary friends, um, which is
really fascinating. There's also this idea that the young children
(15:10):
when they engage with imaginary friends, they're using something that
is essentially a socialization simulator. It's like a Star Trek holiday,
except they're running through simulations of what it's like to
interact with other people. Yeah, it's a safe place to
work that up. Again, that's why they might have an
imaginary friend who's not so nice, right, because then once
(15:33):
they kind of go through the role playing of that,
then they can, you know, in theory, be able to
better handle kids that might be jerks to them. Yeah,
I mean it makes sense of like a kid encounters
in a a role jerk at at preschool, that they might
have a simulated jerk to work out exactly how these
scenarios would go. You know, it blows my mind, but
it does make make perfect sense. I can see how
that would be the case. Well, you know, we've talked
(15:55):
about how nuanced human beings are, even sometimes we don't
feel like it right given the day, but how complex
we are and how complex our emotions are, and how
we have those micro expressions in which an emotion can
pass over our face and under like eighteenth of a
second or something. And in order to be able to
get that, to be able to to look at another
(16:16):
human being and detect that micro expression really takes a
lot of practice, right, And it all starts with these
very basic things, like, you know, how do I deal
with negotiating this social circumstance, you know, give me back
my banana or my stuff toy or whatever whatever it is.
So adult imaginary friends. Yeah, okay, well not with me currently? Yeah,
(16:44):
she because this week she's a she is not she's
she took a little break. She's not actually allowed in
the podcast booth. But um, there's some interesting information coming
out on this. So consider this. The average American watches
more than four and a half hours of TV a day. Okay, now,
considering this other fact, According to researcher John Kapiocho at
the University of Chicago, of all people are unhappy because
(17:07):
of social isolation at any given moment. Right, all right,
So there's this idea that para social relationships are emerging
in that that adults are in particular, are creating these
relationships with characters on TV, and these are basically one
sided pseudo relationships. Yeah. In a two thousand nine article
(17:28):
published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers tested
the social seriousy hypothesis and the findings suggested that people
spontaneously seek out social surrogates when real interactions are unavailable,
which would make sense right to an extreme. It's like
the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks in the volleyball all right, right, Wilson, Yeah, right, right,
(17:50):
take what you can get at the time, and you've
got your imagination and you have this person in front
of you that looks like they could be your friend, right,
was the show friends that you brought up the other
day or people felt such an affinity with them, yeah,
Or in my case, I remember being in college. There
was a point in college when I didn't really have
that many acquaintances or were friends. I had a few,
(18:13):
but there was a lot of alone time, and I
remember having this affinity for news radio and and and
and it would it really kind of felt like those
characters were my friends. And looking back, and it was
kind of weird and a little creepy. But that's so
when you hear MPR, Now do you hear like there's
certain voices that you feel like, Yeah, in a sense,
(18:35):
I feel like that's one of the values of radio
and podcasts because the individuals that you listen to are
kind of like they're right there with you. They're in
your head with you. They're almost there's as close as
your breath. When you're listening to say Irach Glass or
or maybe you're listening to us, there's a brickishing around
in your head right now. Yeah, you get this affinity
for for the voice. You feel like they're that you're
(18:56):
You're kind of paled on some sort of unreal level.
You're like, how God, if Julie brings up one more
example of excrement and I have to listen to her
obsession with it, I'm just gonna die. So you start
to feel like, oh, yes, like I start to know
these people on some level, right, And to go back
to the whole social simulation things, it also helps pattern
the way that you behave in social situation. She sort
of observe how this network of characters are behaving, and
(19:18):
you you pattern your expectations and your behavior based on them.
I mean, it makes perfect sense. Well. In this study
that the Journal talked about, the participants were asked to
write about TV shows after being asked a series of
questions non TV related questions about their relationships, and they
found that participants who were called a fight with a
close person in their lives wrote for significantly longer about
(19:41):
their favorite TV show than a non favorite TV show.
They also found that these participants suffered less of a
self esteem blow, negative moods, and feelings of rejection than
their non TV watching counterparts, which I thought was pretty fascinating.
So they're able to deflect some of these uh feelings
of loss that sometimes come up in relationships that we
(20:04):
have to negotiate every day by basically taking the energy
and putting it into these TV characters. And to come
back to what you mentioned earlier about the authors to
like the idea that a fictional character becomes alive and
becomes its own thing, um like the fictional character they're writing.
I've always found that really fascinating, both in the way
authors describe it and then also in my own experiences,
like if I'm writing about like a fictional character, and
(20:26):
it's kind of like surfing anybody's ever, who's ever surfed,
there's like this magic moment, like you're swimming as hard
as you can on the surfboard, and then there's this
magic moment where the wave catches the board and it's
propelled by its own energy. And that's the way it
feels when you're writing a character. And then there's a
point where the character becomes real enough to where on
a certain level, on a varying level, you don't know
(20:48):
what that character is going to do on the page well,
and you're you're preoccupied with that character right whether or
not you're writing it or you're watching it on TV,
because you're really you're immersing yourself and the experience. And
that's when you know, Hey, that's when you know you've
got a good story going, right um, Or you've written
a good storyline and someone is investing time in thinking
about the psyche of another person who is fictional, right
(21:10):
We I talked about this, um and then I was
looking up some recipes on a certain website from the
chef and she had a slew of recipes that were
dedicated to the show True Blood, and she was saying, Oh,
I think silky what the sandwich? And so on and
so forth, and I remember thinking, oh God, really, But
then I thought, oh, well I have I have certainly
dedicated enough mental time to that show as well and
(21:33):
considered the characters. Um just you know, I might be
doing laundry or even doing work, and on the sudden
character will pop up in my brain and I think
that is fascinating that I am giving mental time to
this construct. Well, I have to say, I've never actually
thought about what kind of sandwich I would cook for
I would make for Silkie, or what kind of what
kind of sandwich you might make for me? But you
(21:54):
should think about that. Now I'll have to think about that.
I'll have to I'll have to have to ponder that. So,
but what have it is when your favorite TV show
goes away? Well, yeah, I have friends who were like
mad and to Saved by the Bell. And on one level,
I'm just kind of kind of let roll my eyes
at it, you know, but because it's an awful American
TV show. It is. But but then I have to
remind myself, all right, this is something that they probably
(22:15):
they're nostalgic for. It was a part of their growing up,
and you can easily imagine, say, you know, you're an
elementary school, or you're or you're in junior high and
there's a show that, for the most part shows you
successful social teenagers interacting with one another and doing so
in the correct way. And and so you can't help
(22:35):
but participate in that is a is a kind of
social uh simulation. You probably are bonding with them, and
it sort of taking them on a surrogate friends. So
even though the show has been off the air forever,
you I can see where you could you could still
put that show in and still get a sense of
that belonging with them. You know, No, I get it.
It's just Saved by the Bell I have a real
(22:55):
problem with that screech character. Yeah, yeah, there there are
some deff issues to take take with that character. But
hearing you said that, and having had a roommate who
was completely m entranced by Saved by the Bell, I
I think you got something there. Well. I don't think
there are any There are no TV shows that I
go back and watch over and over again, but there
are certain there are certain books that I reread like
(23:18):
every year, where the like the characters do feel very
ethnic to me and I and they're like old friends.
I mean the books are kind of like old friends too.
I imagine that's that's the way it is, if you're
I mean, I don't really watch I don't watch news
radio anymore. I think I tried once and I just
couldn't get over I can't watch anything with a laugh
track anymore. But but there was but I but I
wanted to I remember wanting to reconnect with these characters. Well,
(23:41):
this is interesting. This is according to Jonathan Cohen. He's
a researcher and psychologist who authored a study that examined
the responses of television viewers the potential loss of their
favorite television characters. Viewers anticipated experiencing the same negative reactions
to pair social breakups as they experience when they're real
social really ships dissolve. So I mean, just because these
(24:04):
people don't exist doesn't necessarily mean that you can't feel
the same thing for them once they go away. Right, Yeah,
Well it's true. I mean, it's I have two thoughts
on this. First of all, there's a major American HBO
crime drama that was probably the best television show we've had,
which one Well, okay, it's the Wire. But there's a
(24:26):
character that goes away at some point. And I remember
when that character went away, I was like, how can
we go on? How can we go on with this show?
And how can I go on without this character? In
my life? You my friend had an adult imaginary friend. Yeah, yeah,
he was pretty cool. But but then the show got
even more awesome without this character, So I need. I know,
(24:48):
it brings up all sorts of questions because, um, you know,
obviously we're conducting our relationships more and more online via
social media, and uh so you sort of wonder if
if this is just part and parcel of our modern age, right, yeah,
like if you're interacting on the message board, sure, I
(25:09):
know message boards normally, you know you'll have a situations
where you have threads where people will share pictures of
themselves or depending on the community, people may often share
pictures of themselves, uh in varying stages of undress, who knows,
and weird costumes, it varies. The internet is a big tenant,
but I think a lot of cases you were also
imagining what these people look like. You don't really have
(25:30):
a firm idea of what they look like. And it's
also that case with with with the radio and podcast personalities.
I know, we've had, we've had pinched people mentioned that
we don't look like we should look right based on
what they think, which I totally get because anytime that
you've read a book and it's been made into a movie,
haven't you said, that's not what I thought that person
looked right? And I find that I am that way
(25:51):
with certain radio personalities, even if I know what they
look like, um or or audiobook personalities. Take that David
saderis I know what David Sdaris looks like. I've I've
seen him live. I I if I stopped to think
about it, I can picture him. But when I hear
him speak and read his own work, I picture David
Hyde Pierce. And that's the only thing that's a really
(26:12):
good fit. Yeah, it is a good fit. It's good casting.
But I know better, I know what he looks like.
There is actual, real David Sedaris. Yeah, because it does
not need to play him. But but see that reason
the question what is an authentic experience and what is inauthentic?
When we know we're hardwired to seek out connections with
one another, but we're also compelled to create our own
(26:36):
reality to engage our imagination. Right, Yeah, alright, so imaginary friends.
I'm gonna ask my imaginary friend to hand me some
listener mail. Thank you, now I will I just have
the one to read. But it's a really cool one listener.
Robert McLaren writes in and I'm using his last name
because it was cool because he listened to our episode
(26:58):
about the cube Earth. What would it? What would cuber
or a cube planet be like? And he was like, hey,
I did a Google in the search. All the images
were kind of crappy, you know, because there are it
is like a for the original blog post that does
this stem from? I had to find like a very
basic here is a here is a globe and now
it is a cube kind of image. It looks like
(27:18):
it was made in photoshop. And so Robert here, Robert
McClaren is a really talented artist, and so he's like,
I can be better than that. I Am going to
make an artistic representation of what a cube planet would
look like. And he's sent in this amazing photo. So um,
I mean he actually traveled into space and photograph. Now
he created this awesome work of art showing like the
(27:41):
exactly how we were describing it, the way the atmosphere
is still a spherical that how the end the edges
of the cubes are like mountains poking above the atmosphere
and it's just really awesome. So, uh do check that out.
It should be on the house stuff Works blogs and
we'll also have the reference on the Facebook. It's a
really elegant representation and I want it on a T shirt. Yeah,
so thank you Robert for that, and uh yeah yeah,
(28:01):
look him up. Robert mclareny has a website and everything
that's mc l a r e n. So if you
have stuff you want to share with us, um, be
it really cool art that you've made, or just some
really cool thoughts that you've funk, then you may find
us on Facebook and Twitter. We are blow the Mind
on both of those and we would also love to
hear about your own experiences with imaginary friends. Have you
(28:25):
had them? How many? What were they like? Were they
were they tiny pack of germs being mean to you?
I hope not, um, But anyway, you can always drop
us a line at Blow the Mind at how Stuff
works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work
(28:46):
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow,
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Myname is Robert Lamb, and I'm really This is yet
another Halloween themed episode. They can also be enjoyed throughout
the year. The theme is is not Halloween specific, but
it goes very appears nicely with Halloween, like a nice,
(00:26):
very subtle, right subtle tones of Halloween nests. And in fact,
we were wearing, yet again some Halloween costumes while we
record this way. What are you wearing? Well, I am,
of course my favorite movie monster. I am Gamera. As
you noticed from the the large plastic turtle shell on
my back, the cool little uh tusks that I've painted
on in my face and uh and the tail. You
(00:47):
can't see the tail, but I also have a large
turtle tail. Well, yeah, it's I did see it out
in the other room. And I've lined the floor with
tiny Japanese buildings which I'm stepping on even now. The
elaborate to I can't believe you extended it all the
way to the break room. I know there's a lot
of work I've been I've been at work for forty
eight hours doing this. Oh yeah, yes, I am dressed
(01:11):
as a as my imaginary friend, my creepy imaginary friend,
very timely. Yeah yeah, so um so I'm a little
girl with like a nineteen fifties dress and a huge
giant bow and giant saucer eyes and thanks, yeah, it was,
it was. It was an extra step I thought to
dilate your eyes that intensely. Yeah, I mean, just kindle hours.
(01:32):
It's gonna last, but it's fine. I mean, just thank
you for helping me through the hallway. That yeah, yeah,
and I'm good luck reading those notes. But but yeah,
the creepy childhood imaginary friend. This does pop up in
horror movies, of course, because it's one of those things
where as adults, we'll see a child talking to something
that isn't there and referring to it by name, and
it can be a little like, what's kind of creature
(01:54):
is this that lives in this house and talks to
things that don't exist? And we've seen it taken to
extremes in such horror movies as The Exorcist, where the
little girl, of course, has this imaginary friend called Bazoozoo
and she makes this a little statue of it and
it looks exactly like this ancient demon statue from the
Middle East that we've seen the opening scenes. This demon
(02:16):
is making dogs fight or something. That's what that is.
My daughter just fashioned one of those out of Plato
the other day. Yeah, well that's cool, that's what means.
I mean, it's you know, it's it's still she made
it for you. You should still put it on the fridge.
She didn't say she made it for me, and she
lit all these tiny torches around it. Okay, um, But yeah,
that's why it's creepy, right, because because you observe this
(02:37):
in a kid and you think who are you talking to?
Or initially it's creepy until you get introduced to the
imaginary friend and you understand that it's part and parcel
of their imagination. Well like share your your child's example. Oh,
she has to Lily and Fifi. Okay, my kids two
and a half. So you know if she's uh, she's
not doing a lot with them. I mean she's cooking
(02:58):
with them. She made egg plant parmers one with them.
The other day. She made what she called the castle
home for them out of blocks. But yeah, I hear
her talking to them and the first time I did
hear her talking to lately, I kind of stopped that
I was doing and said, what who are you talking to?
Because you know, it kind of raises the hackles a
little bit, like, well, yeah, I don't remember. Do you
(03:20):
remember ever having an imaginary friend or hearing about yourself
having one? Uh no, No, But there's some research I
came upon that we can talk about later that that
struck a chord with me. Yeah. I don't think I
ever ever had one. No one ever told me that
I spoke of one. And uh, my wife doesn't remember
having one either, but she there was a time when
(03:40):
her family may or may not have lived in a
haunted house, and she definitely came to her grandma and said,
there's a man in the bathtub, And there was no
man in the bathtub, So there's a creepy bald guy
in the in the bathtub. Yeah. So I mean, I'm
thinking that's a weird imaginary friend. Well I'm not saying
it was an imaginary friend, but as well discuss the
imaginary friends tims from just this sort of imaginative, magical
(04:02):
thinking in general, And I could see where it could
also on occasion produce ghosts. So, yeah, just to throw
some quick stats out of the idea of ghosts. Yeah, uh,
just to throw some quick stats out there, sixty of
children up to the age of seven have had an
imaginary friend at least one time or another. Only in
firstborn children are most likely to have imaginary playmates. And
(04:23):
I found this really telling. Uh, girls are more likely
to have invisible friends, while boys are more likely to
transform themselves. So like where the girl might imagine that
they have a friend who is having the tea party
with them, Um, the boy would just imagine that he
is a ninja and uh, you know, follow out a
slide or something, you know, that kind of thing. And
I was I definitely looking back, I can I remember
(04:45):
probably to an inappropriate age, and I still have this
very rich I guess I still have an inappropriately rich
fantasy life in my head. But but I remember, you know,
getting caught up in these fictions that I would create
in my mind, and and at times I would like
pretend I was a spy or or like I remember
walking around, uh this might have been like sixth grade
(05:05):
and just sort of pass the time. I was pretending
that I was like a covert agent on a like
a cobra spaceship or something. Well, yeah, you know it's
funny to uh my brother and I. I don't know
that we would say this animal called Crango, which was
a stuffed girl that we had, was an imaginary friend.
But we made up so many stories about him. And
we still laugh to this day because, Uh, one of
(05:28):
the places we used to go with Crango was to
Marijuana Island. Whoa okay, babysitter check. Uh. It was just
so funny now because we look back and they were like,
we had no idea what Marijuana Island was, but I
know we came up with all these elaborate stories about this.
So anyway, yes, imaginative to play is really important. And
(05:50):
there's an article in the Wall Street Journal called the
Power of Magical Thinking, and uh, there's a quip from it.
I love it says, whenever you think about the Civil War,
or the Roman Empire, or possibly God, you're using your imagination.
Says Paul Harris, a development psychologist and professor at Harvard
Graduate School of Education who studies imagination. The imagination is
absolutely vital for contemplating reality, not just those things we
(06:13):
take to be near fantasy. So we know that there's
evidence that imagination and role playing is really key in
helping kids to develop perspective, which we've talked about in
terms of the theory of mind. Yeah, yeah, I love
that point about about reading about the past, because because ultimately,
if you're reading about if you're reading The Lord of
(06:34):
the Rings, or if you're reading, uh, you know, some like,
you know, tightly researched historical book, not not even a fiction,
but just a straight up this is what we think
life was like in ancient Rome or something, you're still
having to use like the same faculties to transport yourself
there and imagine the sense data around you of this
either fanciful or historically accurate setting. And of course you
(06:59):
can also fact in the whole point that we can
never be completely accurate with our historical representations, especially you know,
the farther we go back in time, right, right, So
we always think that we're grounded in reality or some
sort of realism, when in fact we are having to
engage that part of our brain quite a bit to
really inhabit a different perspective or a different time period,
as you were talking about. And again this is going
(07:20):
back to theory of mind, which we talked about before.
We're when we recorded Don't Eat the Panda about the
reason why we we sometimes have our hard time, uh,
squaring the fact that we eat an animal um with
the fact that we can't help but inhabit the perspective
of an animal, just because we're hardwired to survive like this.
(07:41):
So you've got to try to anticipate with the next
move will be whether or not you're seeking, you know,
your next dinner, or you're trying to make some sort
of strategic play on the court. Yeah, we have this
ability as humans to take what we know about ourselves
and use it to understand and predict the behavior of others.
And uh, it gives us a, like you said, a
(08:01):
basic evolutionary advantage. But then there's a certain amount of
bleed over into these other areas of our thought life,
like like imaginary friends, like imagined realities that aren't real,
I mean, just as being you know, we've we've just
discussed multiple times. We're part of a world of fixed
and movable objects, of symbols, of social organizations. We have
(08:23):
to navigate this world, and part of part of that
is being able to predict what other people are gonna
do theory of mind what other settings will be like.
For instance, anytime you go to say a doctor's office,
say you're going to a new doctor's office, you have
a basic idea in mind what that experience is going
to be like based on previous experiences, so you you
(08:45):
have a fictional version of that place before you actually
reached that point. Any of this have have probably spoken
on the phone with somebody that we know in a
setting that we don't know. Uh say, like if you
have a spouse or friend or family member that is
staying in a hotel room out of town and you're
talking to him on the phone, you end up picturing
where they are in your mind. I mean, you may
(09:07):
not even be putting a lot of thought into it.
You may not be building this false room piece by piece,
but your imagination is kicking in to predict what that
space is like. I was thinking about it even in
a more dramatic context, and I was thinking about the
third man syndrome, which we talked about in our Toppelganger podcast.
And that's when all of a sudden, a third you know,
(09:28):
it's let's say it's you and me and we're sitting
here and something life threatening happens to us, and all
of a sudden, I imagine a third man or a
third woman with us, possibly helping us through whatever this
life threatening situation is. And this has been documented, right,
and we've seen this um with mountain climbers who were
stranded No eleven UM survive the account where there was
(09:49):
like this other guy in the stairwell with them, like
helping them escape, and it later, you know, it turns
out there was no such man. No, but he felt
like that person was so real and that person actually
helped him to get out of the building and instructed him.
And I was just thinking, like, this is a great
example of how your imagination kicks in to really help
you not just predict the future, but to even deal
(10:09):
with the present. Yeah, our imagination far from being just
this curious little trinket we we haul out to pass
the time and make the world a little more fun.
I mean, it's an important, an essential part of our
mental faculties and allows us to navigate this world around us,
which is why it's so important that kids engage in
this right as you As you said, kids actually do this.
(10:31):
And it's funny because before a really a landmark study
on this was done um and This was a study
that was done by Marjorie Taylor. She's a psychology professor
at the University of Oregon and the author of a
book called Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them.
Before she did the study, which was a study that
then had a ten year follow up on it, people
(10:53):
thought or psychologists thought that maybe one and three kids
were engaging in this, but again, we know that a
lot of kids are doing this. Um and fantasy play
is really correlated with other positive attributes in preschool children.
For example, kids who have imaginary friends are more creative,
they have a greater social understanding, and they're better at
assuming the perspective of others. As we talked about, Yeah,
(11:14):
they're the theories that say that really imaginative children and
ones that have imaginary friends. It's it's showing that the
theory of mind is actually kicking in a little early
because this is not something that the child is born knowing.
That's one of the reasons like small children are also
kind of like aliens because it takes them a lot
to develop that point where they can they can put
themselves in another person's shoes if they were taking that
(11:35):
replicant test in Blade Runner, they would fail it and
Harrison Ford would arrest them. Uh, it's true. And actually
I was just thinking about this is a marker of genius. Um,
the fact that a child can do this early right,
this imagine play and not just have imagine friends, but
create imaginative worlds. So it's definitely something that parents should
(11:57):
be happy about when they see their kids engaging in this.
But I found it really fascinating that Taylor found these, uh,
that that imaginative friends could very you know, wildly across
the board, right, Like, it's more than just little girls
and another little girl plays with or a little boy
that convinces one another little boy that he needs to
do something bad. Right, it continue. They could have one
(12:18):
imaginative friend, they could have fifteen amagement to friends. Um.
And here are some examples. One one girl had an
invisible nine year old squirrel. And then there was a
little boy who had skateboard guy. Um and this was
an invisible eleven year old who lived in his pocket
and popped up at boring moments to do tricks on
(12:39):
his skateboard. And then um again, one of my favorites.
All this is kind of horrible elephant, a seven inch
high packaderm that wore a tank top and shorts and
sometimes was mean. But I thought that was fascinating just
because I've heard about this before. I've heard about imaginary
friends that were jerks, and psychologists say that they that
(12:59):
some times kids have jerk and mentionary friends just because
they're working out that again, assuming perspective and role playing
and becoming a little bit more sophisticated in how to
navigate the social world unfolding before them. Yeah, this is
where we get to. They have the idea of like
the kid who has the imaginary friend that either that
either tells him to knock over a vase or actually
(13:21):
did knock over the vase and is getting blamed for it. Yeah,
and this is this is another funding that Taylor found
that kids as old as twelve years old had imaginary playmates,
and she cited a German researcher who thinks that teen
diarists uh diarists keeping a diary experienced a similar phenomenon
when they addressed their musings to a specific person and
(13:43):
you know, dear diary um, and that this person takes
on the guys of a friend and this is where
I found some similarities in my own life when I
was that age, because I felt like I had a
a the same kind of relationship with my diary or
something that someone was there listening. Is it possible that
your diary was a hor crux? Now? Okay, I checked
it out. Okay, I'm just making sure. Uh, and no,
(14:06):
there's there's absolutely no possibility that my diary would be one.
Taylor interviewed about fifty adult novelists, okay and including Mry
writers Sue Grafton, to see if the same kind of
relationship existed between them and their characters, and nearly all
reported that at some point their characters seemed to come
to life and outside of their control. Yeah, which brought
(14:26):
Taylor to, you know, to this point of, well, maybe
an imaginary friend doesn't necessarily go away as you age.
Maybe it morphs into something else to find fascinating. Well, excellent.
Let's take a quick break, and when we come back,
we'll get into this. This podcast is brought to you
by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel.
(14:49):
At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation.
Join us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers
to life's questions. Right, and we're back before we get
into the idea of adult imaginary friends, um, which is
really fascinating. There's also this idea that the young children
(15:10):
when they engage with imaginary friends, they're using something that
is essentially a socialization simulator. It's like a Star Trek holiday,
except they're running through simulations of what it's like to
interact with other people. Yeah, it's a safe place to
work that up. Again, that's why they might have an
imaginary friend who's not so nice, right, because then once
(15:33):
they kind of go through the role playing of that,
then they can, you know, in theory, be able to
better handle kids that might be jerks to them. Yeah,
I mean it makes sense of like a kid encounters
in a a role jerk at at preschool, that they might
have a simulated jerk to work out exactly how these
scenarios would go. You know, it blows my mind, but
it does make make perfect sense. I can see how
that would be the case. Well, you know, we've talked
(15:55):
about how nuanced human beings are, even sometimes we don't
feel like it right given the day, but how complex
we are and how complex our emotions are, and how
we have those micro expressions in which an emotion can
pass over our face and under like eighteenth of a
second or something. And in order to be able to
get that, to be able to to look at another
(16:16):
human being and detect that micro expression really takes a
lot of practice, right, And it all starts with these
very basic things, like, you know, how do I deal
with negotiating this social circumstance, you know, give me back
my banana or my stuff toy or whatever whatever it is.
So adult imaginary friends. Yeah, okay, well not with me currently? Yeah,
(16:44):
she because this week she's a she is not she's
she took a little break. She's not actually allowed in
the podcast booth. But um, there's some interesting information coming
out on this. So consider this. The average American watches
more than four and a half hours of TV a day. Okay, now,
considering this other fact, According to researcher John Kapiocho at
the University of Chicago, of all people are unhappy because
(17:07):
of social isolation at any given moment. Right, all right,
So there's this idea that para social relationships are emerging
in that that adults are in particular, are creating these
relationships with characters on TV, and these are basically one
sided pseudo relationships. Yeah. In a two thousand nine article
(17:28):
published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers tested
the social seriousy hypothesis and the findings suggested that people
spontaneously seek out social surrogates when real interactions are unavailable,
which would make sense right to an extreme. It's like
the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks in the volleyball all right, right, Wilson, Yeah, right, right,
(17:50):
take what you can get at the time, and you've
got your imagination and you have this person in front
of you that looks like they could be your friend, right,
was the show friends that you brought up the other
day or people felt such an affinity with them, yeah,
Or in my case, I remember being in college. There
was a point in college when I didn't really have
that many acquaintances or were friends. I had a few,
(18:13):
but there was a lot of alone time, and I
remember having this affinity for news radio and and and
and it would it really kind of felt like those
characters were my friends. And looking back, and it was
kind of weird and a little creepy. But that's so
when you hear MPR, Now do you hear like there's
certain voices that you feel like, Yeah, in a sense,
(18:35):
I feel like that's one of the values of radio
and podcasts because the individuals that you listen to are
kind of like they're right there with you. They're in
your head with you. They're almost there's as close as
your breath. When you're listening to say Irach Glass or
or maybe you're listening to us, there's a brickishing around
in your head right now. Yeah, you get this affinity
for for the voice. You feel like they're that you're
(18:56):
You're kind of paled on some sort of unreal level.
You're like, how God, if Julie brings up one more
example of excrement and I have to listen to her
obsession with it, I'm just gonna die. So you start
to feel like, oh, yes, like I start to know
these people on some level, right, And to go back
to the whole social simulation things, it also helps pattern
the way that you behave in social situation. She sort
of observe how this network of characters are behaving, and
(19:18):
you you pattern your expectations and your behavior based on them.
I mean, it makes perfect sense. Well. In this study
that the Journal talked about, the participants were asked to
write about TV shows after being asked a series of
questions non TV related questions about their relationships, and they
found that participants who were called a fight with a
close person in their lives wrote for significantly longer about
(19:41):
their favorite TV show than a non favorite TV show.
They also found that these participants suffered less of a
self esteem blow, negative moods, and feelings of rejection than
their non TV watching counterparts, which I thought was pretty fascinating.
So they're able to deflect some of these uh feelings
of loss that sometimes come up in relationships that we
(20:04):
have to negotiate every day by basically taking the energy
and putting it into these TV characters. And to come
back to what you mentioned earlier about the authors to
like the idea that a fictional character becomes alive and
becomes its own thing, um like the fictional character they're writing.
I've always found that really fascinating, both in the way
authors describe it and then also in my own experiences,
like if I'm writing about like a fictional character, and
(20:26):
it's kind of like surfing anybody's ever, who's ever surfed,
there's like this magic moment, like you're swimming as hard
as you can on the surfboard, and then there's this
magic moment where the wave catches the board and it's
propelled by its own energy. And that's the way it
feels when you're writing a character. And then there's a
point where the character becomes real enough to where on
a certain level, on a varying level, you don't know
(20:48):
what that character is going to do on the page well,
and you're you're preoccupied with that character right whether or
not you're writing it or you're watching it on TV,
because you're really you're immersing yourself and the experience. And
that's when you know, Hey, that's when you know you've
got a good story going, right um, Or you've written
a good storyline and someone is investing time in thinking
about the psyche of another person who is fictional, right
(21:10):
We I talked about this, um and then I was
looking up some recipes on a certain website from the
chef and she had a slew of recipes that were
dedicated to the show True Blood, and she was saying, Oh,
I think silky what the sandwich? And so on and
so forth, and I remember thinking, oh God, really, But
then I thought, oh, well I have I have certainly
dedicated enough mental time to that show as well and
(21:33):
considered the characters. Um just you know, I might be
doing laundry or even doing work, and on the sudden
character will pop up in my brain and I think
that is fascinating that I am giving mental time to
this construct. Well, I have to say, I've never actually
thought about what kind of sandwich I would cook for
I would make for Silkie, or what kind of what
kind of sandwich you might make for me? But you
(21:54):
should think about that. Now I'll have to think about that.
I'll have to I'll have to have to ponder that. So,
but what have it is when your favorite TV show
goes away? Well, yeah, I have friends who were like
mad and to Saved by the Bell. And on one level,
I'm just kind of kind of let roll my eyes
at it, you know, but because it's an awful American
TV show. It is. But but then I have to
remind myself, all right, this is something that they probably
(22:15):
they're nostalgic for. It was a part of their growing up,
and you can easily imagine, say, you know, you're an
elementary school, or you're or you're in junior high and
there's a show that, for the most part shows you
successful social teenagers interacting with one another and doing so
in the correct way. And and so you can't help
(22:35):
but participate in that is a is a kind of
social uh simulation. You probably are bonding with them, and
it sort of taking them on a surrogate friends. So
even though the show has been off the air forever,
you I can see where you could you could still
put that show in and still get a sense of
that belonging with them. You know, No, I get it.
It's just Saved by the Bell I have a real
(22:55):
problem with that screech character. Yeah, yeah, there there are
some deff issues to take take with that character. But
hearing you said that, and having had a roommate who
was completely m entranced by Saved by the Bell, I
I think you got something there. Well. I don't think
there are any There are no TV shows that I
go back and watch over and over again, but there
are certain there are certain books that I reread like
(23:18):
every year, where the like the characters do feel very
ethnic to me and I and they're like old friends.
I mean the books are kind of like old friends too.
I imagine that's that's the way it is, if you're
I mean, I don't really watch I don't watch news
radio anymore. I think I tried once and I just
couldn't get over I can't watch anything with a laugh
track anymore. But but there was but I but I
wanted to I remember wanting to reconnect with these characters. Well,
(23:41):
this is interesting. This is according to Jonathan Cohen. He's
a researcher and psychologist who authored a study that examined
the responses of television viewers the potential loss of their
favorite television characters. Viewers anticipated experiencing the same negative reactions
to pair social breakups as they experience when they're real
social really ships dissolve. So I mean, just because these
(24:04):
people don't exist doesn't necessarily mean that you can't feel
the same thing for them once they go away. Right, Yeah,
Well it's true. I mean, it's I have two thoughts
on this. First of all, there's a major American HBO
crime drama that was probably the best television show we've had,
which one Well, okay, it's the Wire. But there's a
(24:26):
character that goes away at some point. And I remember
when that character went away, I was like, how can
we go on? How can we go on with this show?
And how can I go on without this character? In
my life? You my friend had an adult imaginary friend. Yeah, yeah,
he was pretty cool. But but then the show got
even more awesome without this character, So I need. I know,
(24:48):
it brings up all sorts of questions because, um, you know,
obviously we're conducting our relationships more and more online via
social media, and uh so you sort of wonder if
if this is just part and parcel of our modern age, right, yeah,
like if you're interacting on the message board, sure, I
(25:09):
know message boards normally, you know you'll have a situations
where you have threads where people will share pictures of
themselves or depending on the community, people may often share
pictures of themselves, uh in varying stages of undress, who knows,
and weird costumes, it varies. The internet is a big tenant,
but I think a lot of cases you were also
imagining what these people look like. You don't really have
(25:30):
a firm idea of what they look like. And it's
also that case with with with the radio and podcast personalities.
I know, we've had, we've had pinched people mentioned that
we don't look like we should look right based on
what they think, which I totally get because anytime that
you've read a book and it's been made into a movie,
haven't you said, that's not what I thought that person
looked right? And I find that I am that way
(25:51):
with certain radio personalities, even if I know what they
look like, um or or audiobook personalities. Take that David
saderis I know what David Sdaris looks like. I've I've
seen him live. I I if I stopped to think
about it, I can picture him. But when I hear
him speak and read his own work, I picture David
Hyde Pierce. And that's the only thing that's a really
(26:12):
good fit. Yeah, it is a good fit. It's good casting.
But I know better, I know what he looks like.
There is actual, real David Sedaris. Yeah, because it does
not need to play him. But but see that reason
the question what is an authentic experience and what is inauthentic?
When we know we're hardwired to seek out connections with
one another, but we're also compelled to create our own
(26:36):
reality to engage our imagination. Right, Yeah, alright, so imaginary friends.
I'm gonna ask my imaginary friend to hand me some
listener mail. Thank you, now I will I just have
the one to read. But it's a really cool one listener.
Robert McLaren writes in and I'm using his last name
because it was cool because he listened to our episode
(26:58):
about the cube Earth. What would it? What would cuber
or a cube planet be like? And he was like, hey,
I did a Google in the search. All the images
were kind of crappy, you know, because there are it
is like a for the original blog post that does
this stem from? I had to find like a very
basic here is a here is a globe and now
it is a cube kind of image. It looks like
(27:18):
it was made in photoshop. And so Robert here, Robert
McClaren is a really talented artist, and so he's like,
I can be better than that. I Am going to
make an artistic representation of what a cube planet would
look like. And he's sent in this amazing photo. So um,
I mean he actually traveled into space and photograph. Now
he created this awesome work of art showing like the
(27:41):
exactly how we were describing it, the way the atmosphere
is still a spherical that how the end the edges
of the cubes are like mountains poking above the atmosphere
and it's just really awesome. So, uh do check that out.
It should be on the house stuff Works blogs and
we'll also have the reference on the Facebook. It's a
really elegant representation and I want it on a T shirt. Yeah,
so thank you Robert for that, and uh yeah yeah,
(28:01):
look him up. Robert mclareny has a website and everything
that's mc l a r e n. So if you
have stuff you want to share with us, um, be
it really cool art that you've made, or just some
really cool thoughts that you've funk, then you may find
us on Facebook and Twitter. We are blow the Mind
on both of those and we would also love to
hear about your own experiences with imaginary friends. Have you
(28:25):
had them? How many? What were they like? Were they
were they tiny pack of germs being mean to you?
I hope not, um, But anyway, you can always drop
us a line at Blow the Mind at how Stuff
works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work
(28:46):
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow,
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Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
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