May 25, 2023 • 47 mins
Why is a fountain in an urban environment so inviting and, at least to some extent, so calming? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss human fountain culture and the seeming benefits of urban blue space.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe mcformick.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
So the title for this episode comes from a poem
by English poet Elizabeth Jennings With nineteen twenty six through
two thousand and one. This poem contains the lines observe
it there the fountain too fast for shadows, too wild
for the lights which illuminate it, to hold even a
moment an ounce of water back. The poem in full
(00:42):
details how we might observe a fountain in an urban
center and makes a comparison to more ancient traditions. Joe,
were you familiar with this poem or this poet prior
to this episode? She was a new one for me.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I'm not sure the name is familiar, but I need
to look up more of her stuff to to see
if there's anything I recognize well.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
This poem fountain, Like I say, it also connects back
to some of these more ancient traditions that are reflected
in our tradition of spending times with fountains and other
water features. Just to read another bit from it, quote
see in that stress, an image of utter calm, a stillness.
There it is how we must have felt once at
(01:24):
the edge of some perpetual stream, fearful of touching, bringing
no thirst at all, panicked by no perception of ourselves,
but drawing the water down to the deepest wonder well.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
That phrasing gives a much profounder spin to the kind
of awe that I recall feeling when looking at fountains
as a child. Particularly, what I remember is a fountain
in the mall in my hometown when I was a
kid that had a kind of kind of a tile
mosaic bottom that was always covered in pennies. I guess
(01:56):
the idea is that people would throw pennies into the
fountain and make a wish. At least that's what I
was always told you did, and I really liked to
do this, and I think firmly believed in the magic
of the wish granting powers of the fountain.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I didn't even think about fountains and water features and malls,
but oh man, shopping malls had some great ones as
far as I remember, and of course smaller at the time,
so they seemed more gigantic, you know, some sort of
a fountain there in the atrium of the mall beautiful
to behold.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I do remember thinking when I saw all of the
pennies on the bottom, I also thought, at some point
they must clean all those up, because it's not like
overflowing with pennies. They've got to go in and get them.
And then my thought as a child was who gets
to keep all that money? That's so much money when
you collect all of them, you know, that's got to
(02:51):
be tens of dollars.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I mean, this is why that one scene in the
Goonies I think was so impactful, the extrap elation of
our dreams of harvesting the coins of a fountain.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
You know, Oh, is that is that in the Goonies.
I don't remember that they had the same thought I did.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Well, no, they in the Goonies, if memory serves, It's
been a long time since I've seen it. There's that
there's like these caverns beneath the wishing well, and that's
where all the coins are, and one of the kids
goes to steal a bunch of them, and they're like, no, no,
those are peaceful people's wishes. You're not supposed to take them.
And the children, you know, abstain and ultimately they have
pirate gold on the radar.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
So well, I didn't make the connection. I did believe
in the wish granting powers, and I did greedily lust
after all of the penny money, but I didn't think
that would be stealing people's wishes. It's already granted right
once the pennies there, Now it's just free money.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah. I don't know how that it depends on superstitious Sure,
I guess how it works, but at any rate, I yeah,
I always am curious to see if a fountain has coins,
And even though I don't nowadays, I'm not thinking about
harvesting them. I'm still just one of the things I
kind of like checking off the mental checklist when I
check out a fountain. Are there coins in it? What's
the filtration system look like? You know, where's the water
(04:07):
coming out of? Like, if there's a fountain somewhere, I
need to get closer to it so I can take
it all in. Beyond that, I don't think i'd ever
really thought about, you know, any universal truths about the
calming nature of fountains. I've always just kind of in
the back of my mind thought well, they're nice. Sometimes
they have interesting statues incorporated into their design, and they
(04:28):
can be cooling on a hot day, that sort of thing,
And they're often like at the center of everything, you know.
I think of like the fountain in Washington Square, you know,
I think about the indeed, the fountains in the atrium
at a mall, at a shopping mall, which was like
a center of community in some respects.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Well, and yet another way that the fountain was sacred
to my child's brain. But taking some of the profound
varnish off of it, I do associate the idea of
a fountain with the smell of the mall food court,
you know. It's that's where the saborrow mingles with the
with the Kariaki place.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, the ma All food court of our childhoods. This
is a place where you also had freedom, like suddenly
you could often often the case, you could choose what
you were going to eat, and it made you feel powerful.
But coming back to water features and fountains specifically, of course,
we have to think larger than that. We have to
think too about just like running water, bodies of water
(05:28):
in general, and you know, personally, and I think this
applies somewhat universally. I've always found waters to be calming
to be around. They're often great places to do some
thinking or to do less thinking in a good way,
you know, to sort of unshackle from your normal thought process.
And I think I've mentioned before on the show that
(05:50):
there's a very useful stress reduction exercise that makes use
of this connection. It's called leaves on a stream. It's
a cognitive diffusion technique that allows you to distance yourself
from the thoughts that you're having. So the way it goes,
and you can look this up online. There are plenty
of online resources that that spell it out in more detail.
(06:10):
But you imagine yourself seated beside a running stream. You
imagine taking a given thought, essentially taking it out of yourself,
placing it upon a floating leaf, and allowing the stream
to carry that leaf and the thought away from you.
And you know, everyone's mileage may vary, but I find
it very constructive. But I was thinking about it again here,
(06:31):
thinking about fountains, thinking about natural bodies of water, and
they're they're they're calming powers.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
It does seem like an especially nice image for concretizing
your your emotions and your thoughts because it's it's passive,
like the the water does the carrying away for you,
so it doesn't even involve you having to imagine like
forcing or shoving the idea away. It is just carried
away by nature.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah. Yeah, Now we've talked a bit on the show
previously about the history and importance of public water works.
We're not going to reachret all of that here, but
I wanted to at least touch on some of it
in this case via a twenty fifteen article titled Short
Global History of Fountains by Juty at All, published in
the journal Water. That's pointed out that the word fountain
(07:18):
stems from the Latin fawnds, which can refer to both
artificial and natural water features, not like the fawns on
happy Days, but fis I've also read that the source
is fontana, which informs the medieval fount or source, and
so fountain becomes a symbol of a providing source as well.
(07:41):
Like this idea of a fountain as being this thing
from which something else beneficial arises becomes pretty crucial to
a lot of a lot of our language. Now, the
construction of fountains properly dates back to ancient times, and
the authors of this paper point out that regional water
available played a role in what form fountains took and
(08:03):
how they were fed. For instance, they mentioned that for
the ancient Egyptians bringing water out for the people or
for personal use, it was a matter of pulling water
from the Mighty Nile. Meanwhile, the Minoans and the Greeks
brought water down from the mountains via aqueducts. So this is,
you know, something to keep in mind. There's the sort
(08:24):
of especially when you go back into the origins of fountains,
there are a lot more practical purposes in mind for
having that water there, And then how do you get
the water there? You're not just piping it in from
the local modern water system, you know, there are other
means that have to be in place. One of the
primary purposes for ancient fountains was of course to bring
(08:46):
water to the people for drinking, as well as for
other uses such as bathing. We've talked about that on
the show before. Another big one that I hadn't thought
as much about, and I guess part of this is
because we haven't we've touched on Firefight, but we haven't
done a lot on firefighting, but this was another reason
to have a source of water available in a center
(09:07):
of the population.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
I think we actually did a pretty extensive look at
firefighting in our Invention episode on the fire extinguisher.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah, and we got into like fire extinguisher grenades and
so forth. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
But going into ancient history, how the fire fighting in
ancient Rome and how it had a very different character
because if I remember correctly, the early version in maybe
like the first century BCE or so, there was like
a rich guy who instituted fire brigades who would come
to your house if it was on fire, not to
like as a public service, put it out for you,
(09:43):
but to say, hey, I will buy your house for
the following price, take it or leave it. And if
you know, if you agreed to let this guy buy
your house, then his dudes would put out the fire.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah. I think there's a scene in one of Stevens
Sailor's Gordian Honest books that take place in ancient Rome
where this exact situation takes place with like the building
burning down and here's the sky shows up and he's like, well,
you know, it looks like your property is really plummeting
in value. Now would be a great time to sell
(10:17):
to me, as opposed to five minutes from now.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Wicked in an especially hilarious way. But of course, you know,
later on the idea of firefighting as a public service
that benefits everyone does develop, And yeah, of course there
are a lot of different ways to fight fires, and
not all of them involve water. Of course, some involve
like you know, pulling down structures to create barriers to
fire spreading and things like that. But yeah, water of
(10:40):
course is quite often one of the most important tools
in fighting fires.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Now. One of the things about bringing water into a city,
one of the problems here are potential potential problems, is well,
you can have to deal with drainage, removal, fouled water,
and various public health challenges that can emerge from public
water works, and that can get into things like you know,
I have to worry about water borne ill illnesses, potentially mosquitoes,
(11:09):
things of that nature. So systems to bring water into
a city these were extremely important for human civilizations, and
we see them in all the major civilizations of the
ancient world as well as the various ancient civilizations of
the New World. The earliest carved water basin apparently dates
back to three thousand BC in the Mesopotamian site of Tello,
(11:32):
and a stone fountain figure in another Mesopotamian site, Mari
dates back to two thousand BCE. This would basically be
in line with the common fountain trope that we've seen
again and again of a goddess holding a base of
some sort that releases piped in water, just sort of
(11:53):
an irresistible image. And I guess part of this comes
down to, like what a fountain does that like recasts
the idea of water being gifted to people.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
As if from a morton.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Joe, Yeah, yeah. The Romans were, of course masters of hydraulics,
which they adopted from the Etruscan civilization, and the Roman
tradition greatly influenced the medieval fountain tradition to follow. Now,
one thing in this paper that I thought was really interesting.
They point out that in China, wells and streams were
along the primary source of water, so wells tend to
(12:27):
play the role we see public fountains play in other
parts of the world. In some of these Mesopotamian accounts,
these public wells were crucial as well to city planning.
These would be the things that you plan the structure
of the city around. They also note that quote spring
and structures have also assumed characteristics of fountains in China,
(12:51):
so what we might think of as proper fountains were
also introduced and built in urban and palace settings later
over the course of centuries. But sometimes you might have
something just constructed at a where a spring emerges or
where a spring has come to, and this will sort
of take on the building and appearance of a western fountain.
(13:13):
Now The authors even include discussion of modern and industrial
age water kiosks in the paper, which serve the purpose
of distributing clean water to the people, though without most
of the more aesthetically pleasing aspects that you associate with
a public fountain. Nowadays, you can look up images of
(13:34):
various water kiosks that I believe they're especially common in
subs of how in Africa a place where people can
go and get water, and it often takes on a
more I guess, sort of commercial appearance. I mean it
looks like a little shop in many cases. Sometimes they
even you see something that looks more like a vending machine.
(13:55):
And you can also make comparisons like water kiosk and
say public ice dispensary, you know those you see these especially,
we see these a lot in the United States. I know,
when you go into rural areas and there's like the
standalone machine that you can pull up to, you pay
the machine and you get some ice. You know you
are buying water. I'llbeit in a frozen form from that
(14:19):
machine right now. That Beings said, I guess water kiosks
could still be considered like a social center, a place
where people were going for water. And while most of
the examples I was looking at seem largely transactional and functional,
I suppose it doesn't have to be the case.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Though.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
When I looked around for like more pleasing designs and
water kiosks, the only thing that was coming up for
me were various design competitions that were more situated in
say London, and were essentially coming up with water fountain
designs that you know, looked crazy things that weren't necessarily
I think, actually brought to life in urban settings. But
(14:59):
I don't know, maybe the there have been efforts to
sort of evolve water kiosk sites throughout the rest of
the world as well. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Well, this idea sort of highlights the two different faces
of the civic water dispensing area. So you can have
on one hand, something that is functional that is there.
It's a place for people to get water that they
need for you know, everything in life basically that you
need in order to drink, to cook, to clean and
so forth. And then the other idea is water based
(15:31):
infrastructure that is there to be enjoyed, maybe the same
way that a park would be there to be enjoyed.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I think in the popular imagination, something that brings all
these together is, of course the chocolate factory of Willy Wonka,
where we see the chocolate mixed by waterfall. It is
a pleasing water fall to behold. You're you're not supposed
to swim in it, of course, but still, you know,
some uses of the chocolate are available via fun and
(16:00):
then of course we do have chocolate chocolate fountains at
events and all. So it is weird how we get
into this use of fountains, both in the imagination and
in reality, for liquids that are not drinking water.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Why do the culinary fountains always go in the sweet direction?
I want to see more savory ones, you know. So
it's the nacho cheese fountain, the gravy fountain. I don't
know what, maybe cheese fondue fountain. I guess that's pretty
similar to nacho cheese.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Well that that surely exists, right, some sort.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Of a cheese fountain, I suppose, I would guess.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Anyway, coming back to this Water Journal paper, the authors
here they stress that fountains also often stood as symbols
of power and wealth. Somebody builds them, someone provides them
for the people. But there's still this calming element to
the urban fountain, offering sites and sounds conducive to relaxation
that are frequently cited in histories and literature. As many
(16:53):
of the practical reasons for public fountains declined in modern times,
the esthetic elements remained in playing the soothing sites and
sounds of the running water. Another interesting point this is
something I read in Fountains as Reservoirs of myth and
memory from Myths on the Map the Storied Landscapes of
Ancient Greece from twenty seventeen by Betsy A. Robinson, or
(17:17):
this section about fountains is by Robinson, and in this
they point out that public fountains, specifically those in Greek traditions,
were also a means of quote, connecting past and present
and establishing authority by the manipulation of architectural form and
the selective retelling of stories. So I found that fascinating
(17:40):
to think about and be reminded of, because the public
fountain here is both a means of bringing water to
the people, but also conceptualizing the deliverer of that water
by means of myth and legends reflected in the carvings,
the statues and so forth then make up a given fountain.
For instance, who is the goddess that is pouring forth
(18:02):
the water, and what is that goddess's relationship to the
to the people in power at the moment, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yes, flowing water almost kind of naturally tells a story,
or it easily can be narrativized in some way by
you know, filling in the infrastructure around it with images
and representations.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, can you imagine if our primary sources of water
today are faucets, what if by law they were required
to resemble entities or beings or specific people in power
as they're bringing forth your prescious drinking or dishwashing water.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Yes, the faucet is like your local water commissioner's face
and the water is coming out of their mouth or
something like vomiting the water to you.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yeah. Away. The main idea we're exploring this episode, though,
is the idea that there is something soothing, calming, and
mentally restoring about public fountains, something that may, you know,
subjectively seem to be the case with many of us,
(19:11):
but you know, is there something more objective there as well.
There's actually been a fair amount of certainly recent scholarship
on the topic that we're going to touch on in
this We're going to get into this idea of blue spaces.
So in the world of urban and land use planning,
there's green space obviously, you know, we think of gardens, trees,
(19:35):
whole parks, et cetera. And then there's a subset of
green space known as blue space. And the blue of
course refers to water, you know, as water is often
blue on the map, if not in actual visual appearance,
and it entails all manner of naturally occurring and artificial
water features, including fountains. Now, once again it's important to
stress that proximity to natural and or artificial Blue Spaces
(19:57):
has always come with certain additional risks and potential danger.
We talked about those already, but there's also this compelling
idea that blue spaces are an overall mental and or
physical health benefit to those with access to the feature.
And on one hand, this basic idea would seem to
line up with the late EO. Wilson's biophilia hypothesis, something
(20:20):
we've talked about on the show before.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Yeah, this is kind of interesting. So we've done multiple
episodes exploring and critiquing the biophilia hypothesis at length in
the past, so we're not going to go into great
depth on that again here, but briefly, in Wilson's words,
this would have been what he believed was quote the
innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes. So
(20:44):
the argument goes that there is something in our brains
that calls us to be fascinated by and attracted to
other forms of life beyond just the obvious and direct
benefits to our survival that we would get from them.
So it's obvious why you would be attracted to, say
an animal or a plant that you might eat for food,
but that our fascination by and attraction to life forms
(21:07):
goes way beyond this, goes to you things that you
can't eat, things that you can't necessarily get any tangible,
quantifiable benefit from. We still these other life forms, We
still want to see and touch and spend time around them,
and when they're not present in our lives, we feel
a kind of we feel that loss as a kind
(21:29):
of malaise or unhappiness. And so a funny thing here
about water is that, of course, moving water is very
often associated with the suite of esthetic and environmental preferences
suggested by the biophilia hypothesis. Yet of course water is
itself not alive. It, like rocks and air, is part
(21:49):
of the inorganic environment. And yet of course the presence
of water is greatly associated with the presence of life. Basically,
all life on Earth needs water to survive. And it's
not an accident that when you know, you're walking through
the desert and you come to an oasis, it is
suddenly surrounded by forms of life that were not found
in the surrounding landscape.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yeah yeah, And you know, you can make the argument that,
you know, we're hardwired to appreciate something like a nice
flowing stream as opposed to another body of water. How
would how would Donald Pleasance put it?
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Joe, Oh, the spirit of dark and lonely waters.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, yeah, the dark and lonely water.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
That's it, ready to trap the unwary, the show off
the fool.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
In this, we're of course referring to something we discussed
in an older Halloween episode what Jenny Green teeth, But
it was what a British public service advertisement or video
message warning you against stagnant ponds and the danger to
young children posed.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
There right, warning children not to play in the in
the pools of black liquid that gather in abandoned buildings.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Yeah, it's yeah. Thinking about biophilia hypothesis in light of
all this is interesting. And I was looking around in
the book that Wilson co wrote on it, and at
one point mentioned he mentions that while uphill or spraying
aspects of artificial fountains rarely occur in nature, He points out,
(23:19):
you know, obviously the geysers.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
But.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Still even if a fountain is pumping water straight up
in the air, you know, it's still something we connect with,
even if this is not the normal way that water
behaves in just the average environment. He writes, quote, yet
the motion of water in fountains seems to have the
same hypnotic attraction as water flowing downhill in a waterfall.
(23:43):
He also writes that it would be interesting to see
a study of people observing quote, quiet and repetitive motions
of predators, sharks in an aquarium, circling birds of prey,
or other stalking movements of wolves, or large feeling which
combine Heraclitian movement with potential danger. Now, just to note there,
(24:06):
Heracliteanism is a philosophy concerning everything except the logos remaining
in flux, with the four elements eternally cycling into each
other and so forth. There's a lot to it, but
the philosopher of its namesake Heraclitis circle of five hundred BCE.
His ideas can be basically condensed down to the idea
(24:26):
that everything flows, that everything is becoming but never being,
and that does feel like it lines up with a
lot of the essence of moving water observations and the
various metaphors we form about it. But at any rate, yeah,
I like how this flows into the idea of the
attractive nature of streams and fountains. But coming back to
(24:47):
what Wilson ponders here and I looked up. I looked
it up. I wasn't able to find any studies that
actually took the challenge here, but I was wondering, Okay,
aquariums are especially relaxing, I find, or at least the
parts that involve fish and water. Sometimes the you know,
the crowds can be a bit much, but in terms
(25:09):
of like steering in through the aquarium glass at an
aquarium enclosure can be very relaxing. Sometimes there are sharks there.
Our local aquarium has sharks, and I was trying to
I was looking back on my experiences of viewing those sharks,
and I'm like, is this relaxing? And I'm not entirely sure.
I mean obviously for me anyway. I mean, if I'm
(25:30):
looking at a shark in a shark tank, I know
that I'm not in danger. It's not gonna you know,
pop out of the glass at me. I'm distant from it.
On the other hand, observing large predators and zoo environments
sometimes can feel a little uncanny in my experience, you know,
like if the lion's looking right at you, that sort
of thing, or you know, another large predator is eyeing
(25:52):
your toddler, your infant, like that that gets a little
that starts, you know, turning on some some lights that
are kind of buried in your psyche. But in terms
of the sharks and the aquarium, I'm not sure. I
asked my wife about this and she was like, like, no, no,
it's it's absolutely relaxing. There's nothing, there's nothing stressful about
(26:15):
observing these predators. For her, I don't know if you
have any thoughts in this show.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Well, I feel like I may have missed something. Here
was Wilson suggesting that the predators would be relaxing. I
interpreted that him to mean that the idea of a
slowly circling predator with Heraclidean movement would be like an
arresting image.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Well, I think what I took to be the idea
is like which energy is going to win out? Like
the movement is relaxing, but it's a predator engaging in
the movement. In these we see traditional movements have said
predators like what is going to be the end result?
Speaker 3 (26:52):
I see, yeah, okay, Well, I'm not sure what I
would say about sharks in particular. I mean, I certainly
find aquariums incredibly relaxing. But like you also, that is,
they're strongly counteracted by the presence of loud crowds around them.
But like a viewing an aquarium in a quiet space
is I think one of the most relaxing things I
(27:13):
can imagine. I'm not sure, Yeah, I'm not sure that
a shark being in there would really change anything about
it seeing a shark swimming around, I mean, assuming I'm
not in the water.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, or in the captivity of a bond villain that
sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Right, Yeah, I think that's probably still just as relaxing
as any other side of an aquarium.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
All right, Well, we've drifted off course a little bit.
Let's get back to just the basic idea that spending
time near a body of water would have some sort
of beneficial effect on you.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Right, So, at this point there have been a lot
of different studies investigating the impact of green and blue
spaces on human well being, and specifically, the question with
blue spaces would be does living near or spending time
I'm near a body of water improve your mental and
physical health, and if so, how does it create those improvements?
(28:07):
And fortunately, just a couple of years ago, there was
a meta analysis that rounded up all of the existing
research and synthesized what we know so far with a
special focus on the mechanism of action the question of
how blue space works on us. The paper is called
Mechanisms of Impact of Blue Spaces on Human Health, a
systematic literature review and meta analysis by Mikhail Georgiu at
(28:32):
All published in the journal the International Journal of Environmental
Research and Public Health in twenty twenty one, and this
study begins with a general survey of the research on
the health effects of exposure to natural environments. The authors
note that most of the research in this area has
actually been focused on something slightly different, on green spaces
(28:53):
rather than blue spaces, and this is also something we've
looked at in multiple episodes in the past. But short summary,
there is pretty strong evidence that living near or spending
time in areas where surfaces are covered in plant life
basically where you'd be exposed to grass, trees, vegetation of
(29:13):
various sorts, is correlated with a wide range of benefits
in all kinds of domains and everything from markers of
physical health, cardiovascular health, and so forth, to mental and
emotional well being, lower rates of anxiety, and things like
that and even like greater cognitive performance in school children. So,
in short, I think we can say with pretty high
(29:35):
confidence that it is good for you to spend time
in a park or a forest compared to spending the
same amount of time in a landscape fully paved with
metal and concrete and plastic. Something about living near and
spending time in those kinds of environments has a wide
range of benefits for your body and mind. Now, the
(29:55):
authors of this study note that a lot of the research,
unfortunately does not disentangle the variables of exposure to blue spaces,
meaning bodies of water, including lakes, rivers, coastlines, canals, and
in some cases even smaller features like fountains and things,
from exposure to green spaces. Sometimes the presence of water
(30:16):
is treated as part of the definition of green spaces,
sometimes not. So that's unfortunate, and it would be good
to separate these variables out to see if they have
effects independent of one another, And fortunately some studies have
done that. They've separated them out and looked at blue
spaces independently. Now, the first half of the question, do
(30:37):
blue spaces have positive effects on our well being? The
answer seems to be a pretty firm Yes, the author's right.
Recent epidemiological studies have shown that blue spaces have a
positive effect on public health, including the reduction of mortality
rate with the greatest rate of decline seen in areas
closest to blue space, better physical health, and better minntal health,
(31:00):
and their copious citations and support of these general statements.
So this brings us to the main question explored here,
which is why why is exposure to water or living
near water good for you? Why would it be good
for say, lowering your mortality or giving you better physical
health or mental health. And the authors of the study
(31:23):
explore four main hypothetical mechanisms, all of which are on
their own known to have significant positive effects on mortality,
physical health, and mental health. And these mechanisms are social interaction,
physical activity, environmental factors, and restoration. So physical activity, this
(31:43):
is pretty straightforward. Maybe blue spaces encourage people to get
more exercise. Getting more exercise is strongly correlated with decreased
mortality and improvements in mental and physical health. And maybe
something about living near water or having water in your
geographical area makes you more likely to exercise.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Okay, that seems to track.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Yeah, second mechanism. Maybe it's social interaction. Maybe blue spaces
encourage people to spend more time interacting with others rather
than alone, which again has well known, well established benefits.
Third thing is environmental factors. This refers to the effects
of bodies of water on other local environmental variables that
(32:26):
have their own effects on human well being. The author's
right quote blue spaces may contribute to a healthier environment
and reduce air pollution, heat island effect, risk of flooding, etc.
And then fourth restoration, Exposure to blue spaces might improve restoration,
which they define by saying that they use the definition
(32:47):
from another paper, So I had to look up what
that paper was to get the definition, and basically it
seems to be quote recovery from depleted attentional capacity or stress.
This is also something we've blowed on the show before,
but basically the question here would be weather. Exposure to
water sources helps people relax and recharge, to recover from
(33:09):
depleted attention spans from having you know, people spend a
lot of their attentional energy on certain types of tasks,
or not even tasks, maybe even just you know, like
scrolling their phones or something all day. This creates a
lot of stress. And then there are other types of
experiences people can have that tend to restore depleted attentional
resources and relax you and sort of remove those biomarkers
(33:33):
of stress that people would notice, like you know, elevated
levels of cortisol and blood or in the saliva.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Interesting. So yeah, it's kind of a satisfying exercise to
take these different factors and apply them to different sort
of activities and environments. Like, for instance, you think of,
say a fishing pond. A number of these you can
easily check off. I don't know, physical activity. I guess
you could have a discussion there regarding phishing, and I
guess it depends on how you're going about fishing. And
(34:00):
then likewise, if you apply it to say a fountain
in the middle of a public square, that sort of thing,
some of these more easily or checked off the list here.
But even like physical activity, I mean you think of
environments that have a fountain. I mean, I don't know
about the rest of you. I think of like children
playing inside fountain, whether they're supposed to do or not.
(34:22):
I think of people doing things around the fountain. So
even if you're not say attempting to swim laps in
the fountain or do boating in the fountain. There still
may be physical action that is encouraged around.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
It, right, So we'll get to in a second what
the evidence for these factors or not is. But yeah,
you can't always know exactly how it works, but you
can imagine tons of possibilities like maybe having a canal
or a river or something nearby just makes people want
to get out and go on a walk more often
that it could be. Yeah, But finally I wanted to
(34:55):
finish up my note about what the mechanism with restoration
would be if blue spaces do encourage restoration that leads
to the better effects on mental and physical health, because
the authors say, quote stress, anxiety, depressed mood, and psychological
well being have been linked with the risk of cardiovascular
diseases and mental health issues, so that link is also
(35:16):
firmly established. So the authors did their review and analyzed
all the studies that had any results illuminating these possible
mechanisms whether they hold true or not, and there were
fifty studies total. In their review, they said twenty seven.
Ultimately they concluded had data relevant to the meta analysis
on this question, and what they found was quote three
(35:38):
of the four hypothesized pathways physical activity, restoration, and environmental
factors are supported by empirical evidence, while findings on social
interaction are inconclusive. Now, as for physical activity, they say,
people's physical activity seem to increase with both their proximity
two blue space and and with the total amount of
(36:01):
blue space in their geographical area where they lived. So
it seems that both of these factors are correlated with
people getting more exercise. It seems people get out and
get more physical activity if there is water somewhere in
their neighborhood, and also more if their home is physically
closer to water. So this seems like a pretty strong
(36:22):
candidate explanation. Second one is restoration. They found that blue
space was correlated with increased restoration the author's rite. Intriguingly,
the increase of amount of blue space within a geographical
area was found to be the highest among all mediating
pathways and exposures. This evidence, therefore suggests that developing more
(36:43):
blue spaces within neighborhoods could primarily benefit the restorative character
of an area. So having some kind of blue space
in your general geographic area definitely that helps with alleviating stress. However,
the interesting and kind of prizing thing to me was
that they did not find evidence that your individual proximity
(37:04):
to blue space had an effect on restoration. And they write, quote,
while urbanicity is found to increase mental disorders through stress,
we propose that creating more blue spaces and promoting contact
with them can be used to reverse this effect and
ameliorate urban living. So it looks like another fairly strong
candidate to me here, Having more water and waterways in
(37:28):
the general area where you live seems to have a
relaxation and restoration effect on people, counteracting stress and thus
achieving improvements in health. Of course, again, chronic stress is
bad for you. Now, the other two mechanisms were more
complicated or a different story. As for environmental factors, they say,
there is evidence for a couple of things, but it's
(37:50):
kind of complicated. So the authors did find some evidence
that blue spaces correlate with lowering heat stress and with
improving air quality, but they said that the evidence base
for those was kind of small and messy, and other
environmental factors they looked at, such as effects on noise
pollution and biodiversity, there was not enough evidence to reach
(38:11):
a conclusion. And then they also say when it comes
to environmental factors, there are some that could be operating
in the opposite direction. As you mentioned earlier, there could
be some negative environmental effects of having water nearby, such
as say being a vector for infectious disease or something
like that. So this one seems to be sort of
(38:32):
a question mark. The evidence for the effects that are
there is kind of weak, and effects appear to be
going in both directions. And then finally, for social interaction,
they said that the evidence again is kind of weak.
Previous findings were mixed, but the meta analysis did not
find a significant effect of blue spaces on social interaction.
(38:52):
But it does look like the evidence for two of
the four categories is pretty strong. Having more blue space
in the neighborhood and living closer to blue space appears
to increase people's amount of physical exercise, which has strong
benefits for health, and living in an area with more
blue space in the general geographical region has restorative effects.
(39:13):
It helps people relax and recharge to counteract the stress
of life. Now, I do want to mention that this
study was focused on blue spaces in general, and the
majority of effects documented. From what I could tell, we're
probably coming more from larger natural and artificial waterways like
lakes and rivers and canals and so forth. So I
(39:33):
don't know how much you could map the total effects
of blue space onto specific things like smaller water features
installations like fountains and so forth.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Right, So don't take this podcast episode or or these
various studies here is just like clear evidence that it's
time to install that water feature in your yard, because
it might not have ultimately have that big a difference,
but who knows. Maybe it'll be delightful, maybe it will
be calming. Maybe all you need is that the sound
of trickling water.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
But a lot of the more specific and detailed oriented
questions out of the way, it does seem just generally
true that, yes, green space is good for mental and
physical health, and blue space also seems to be pretty
good for mental and physical health.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Absolutely. Now. I was looking at a study out of
twenty twenty two titled a population based Retrospective Study on
the Modifying effect of Urban Blue Space on the impact
(40:39):
of Socioeconomic Deprivation on Mental Health two thousand and nine
through twenty eighteen by Giorgio at all published in scientific reports.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
I think this is the same first author as the
meta analysis I just looked at.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
So this particular study quote aim to investigate whether living
near blue space lounge of two udinally modifies the effect
of socioeconomic deprivation on mental health the author's right quote. Hence,
we study longitudinally the impact of a large scale regeneration
of the Glasgow branch of the Fourth and Clyde Canal,
(41:15):
an urban blue space, on mental health, using routinely collected
clinical data. Now I had to look up some images
of what this area looked like. I included one here
for you, Joe. It looks nice. You basically have a
canal space with a lot of vegetation grown up on
one side of it, you know, and then I mean
a little bit on the surface of the water. You
(41:36):
have all it looks like a walking and or bicycle path,
and then some more green space and some walls and
some trees and whatnot. And it looks pleasant, looks like
a place if you lived in this area you might
go to for a bike ride or a walk, et cetera.
So a number of factors went into this localized study,
including distance one resides from the blue space, psychotropic medication prescriptions,
(42:01):
socioeconomic deprivation in the area, comorbidities, and demographics. So what
do they determined in this analysis? Will they identified a
protective modifying effect of living near the blue spaces in
relation to the impact of socioeconomic deprivation and mental health disorders.
(42:21):
So the idea here is that the blue space doesn't
completely cancel out all of the negative effects on mental health,
but it provides what they describe as a quote unquote
protective moat mm, which is also clever because you know
it's a water feature. But they also write that their
findings suggests that increased exposure to blue spaces rolled out
(42:43):
in urban spaces could reduce medication intake and reduce mental
health inequalities in urban areas.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Yeah, I think it's important to note that while like
the positive effects of things like blue spaces does appear
to be pretty good, also the effects are fairly modest,
so they're not going to be like a fix all
for all of everyone's problems. But they seem to be
part of a suite of solutions to generally make life
and make urban environments more friendly and those kind of things.
(43:16):
While no one of them is going to be life changing.
Probably they can add up.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Yeah, yeah, they can all add up to an increase
in quality of life, staving off some of these additional
mental and health issues. So something that should certainly should
be factored into urban planning, to urban restoration projects and
so forth. And you know, just on an individual level,
(43:43):
you can feel a little better about taking time out
of your day to be near water, be it in
the form of you know, some sort of an artificial pond, fountain,
et cetera, or local bodies of water and so forth.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
You know, there's something I wonder about that I haven't
seen this sighted in any papers looking at or anything.
This is just kind of an amusing but I wonder
if there is some psychological benefit or quality of life
benefit to just having something near you that is an
excuse for you to go do something you don't have
(44:17):
to do, you know, And it can be anything. It
can be a you could be a park, or could
be a pathway near your house, or something just an
excuse to like an excuse to go do something that
is not work and is not like a screen. Does
that make.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Sense, Yeah, And that you know ultimately occupies your mind
in a way that that may force out other thoughts
and other preoccupations. You know that that taps into, you know,
our basic primal wiring to see what's going on over
there by the water. Are there ducks? What are the
ducks doing? Are they are they mining their own business?
(44:56):
Or are they looking at me suspiciously? Are there in
the fountain? Et cetera. And again, if you're on the
fence about building that coy pond, you know, don't don't
build it just because you listen to this episode. But
also maybe don't not build it.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
We're not saying it's going to be a cure all,
but also, hey, you know, water's nice. Why not go
for it?
Speaker 2 (45:14):
It might be nice.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
Now, the one thing I would hesitate on is throwing
pennies in the pond with the fish.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Oh absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
I don't know that that's a bad idea, but I
have a hunch.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Oh, I mean, based on all the signs I see
places I go, they say don't throw the coins in
because they're not good for the fish or the turtles
or what have you. So unless it is a designated
wishing fountain, don't cast your wishes because it's you know,
it's not gonna work. All right, we're gonna ahead and
close this episode out, but we'd love to hear from
everyone out there. What are your thoughts on green spaces
(45:48):
and blue spaces? On naturally occurring bodies of water and fountains?
Do you have a favorite that you have observed or
hang out around frequently us, No, we'd love to hear
from you. Also, thanks to my wife who suggested this episode.
We were kind of casting around and I would I said, hey,
what would you like to hear an episode about? And
(46:08):
she said, oh, I've heard some about some studies regarding
blue spaces, and so we looked into it, and here
we are. If you would like to catch up on
past episodes of the show, where you can find them
in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We
have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have episodes
of Listener Mail on Monday's, short form Artifact or Monster
(46:31):
Fact episodes on Wednesdays. On Fridays, we set aside most
serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Weird House Cinema. And in terms of that fire Extinguisher
episode of Invention that we mentioned offhand, I cannot remember
if we have republished that one in the Stuff to
Blow Your Mind podcast feed. I assume that we have,
but there is also a separate abandoned podcast feed for Invention,
(46:55):
which is a show we did for a period based
on inventions, so you can also find it there.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Wish huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you're listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe mcformick.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
So the title for this episode comes from a poem
by English poet Elizabeth Jennings With nineteen twenty six through
two thousand and one. This poem contains the lines observe
it there the fountain too fast for shadows, too wild
for the lights which illuminate it, to hold even a
moment an ounce of water back. The poem in full
(00:42):
details how we might observe a fountain in an urban
center and makes a comparison to more ancient traditions. Joe,
were you familiar with this poem or this poet prior
to this episode? She was a new one for me.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I'm not sure the name is familiar, but I need
to look up more of her stuff to to see
if there's anything I recognize well.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
This poem fountain, Like I say, it also connects back
to some of these more ancient traditions that are reflected
in our tradition of spending times with fountains and other
water features. Just to read another bit from it, quote
see in that stress, an image of utter calm, a stillness.
There it is how we must have felt once at
(01:24):
the edge of some perpetual stream, fearful of touching, bringing
no thirst at all, panicked by no perception of ourselves,
but drawing the water down to the deepest wonder well.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
That phrasing gives a much profounder spin to the kind
of awe that I recall feeling when looking at fountains
as a child. Particularly, what I remember is a fountain
in the mall in my hometown when I was a
kid that had a kind of kind of a tile
mosaic bottom that was always covered in pennies. I guess
(01:56):
the idea is that people would throw pennies into the
fountain and make a wish. At least that's what I
was always told you did, and I really liked to
do this, and I think firmly believed in the magic
of the wish granting powers of the fountain.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I didn't even think about fountains and water features and malls,
but oh man, shopping malls had some great ones as
far as I remember, and of course smaller at the time,
so they seemed more gigantic, you know, some sort of
a fountain there in the atrium of the mall beautiful
to behold.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I do remember thinking when I saw all of the
pennies on the bottom, I also thought, at some point
they must clean all those up, because it's not like
overflowing with pennies. They've got to go in and get them.
And then my thought as a child was who gets
to keep all that money? That's so much money when
you collect all of them, you know, that's got to
(02:51):
be tens of dollars.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I mean, this is why that one scene in the
Goonies I think was so impactful, the extrap elation of
our dreams of harvesting the coins of a fountain.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
You know, Oh, is that is that in the Goonies.
I don't remember that they had the same thought I did.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Well, no, they in the Goonies, if memory serves, It's
been a long time since I've seen it. There's that
there's like these caverns beneath the wishing well, and that's
where all the coins are, and one of the kids
goes to steal a bunch of them, and they're like, no, no,
those are peaceful people's wishes. You're not supposed to take them.
And the children, you know, abstain and ultimately they have
pirate gold on the radar.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
So well, I didn't make the connection. I did believe
in the wish granting powers, and I did greedily lust
after all of the penny money, but I didn't think
that would be stealing people's wishes. It's already granted right
once the pennies there, Now it's just free money.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah. I don't know how that it depends on superstitious Sure,
I guess how it works, but at any rate, I yeah,
I always am curious to see if a fountain has coins,
And even though I don't nowadays, I'm not thinking about
harvesting them. I'm still just one of the things I
kind of like checking off the mental checklist when I
check out a fountain. Are there coins in it? What's
the filtration system look like? You know, where's the water
(04:07):
coming out of? Like, if there's a fountain somewhere, I
need to get closer to it so I can take
it all in. Beyond that, I don't think i'd ever
really thought about, you know, any universal truths about the
calming nature of fountains. I've always just kind of in
the back of my mind thought well, they're nice. Sometimes
they have interesting statues incorporated into their design, and they
(04:28):
can be cooling on a hot day, that sort of thing,
And they're often like at the center of everything, you know.
I think of like the fountain in Washington Square, you know,
I think about the indeed, the fountains in the atrium
at a mall, at a shopping mall, which was like
a center of community in some respects.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Well, and yet another way that the fountain was sacred
to my child's brain. But taking some of the profound
varnish off of it, I do associate the idea of
a fountain with the smell of the mall food court,
you know. It's that's where the saborrow mingles with the
with the Kariaki place.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, the ma All food court of our childhoods. This
is a place where you also had freedom, like suddenly
you could often often the case, you could choose what
you were going to eat, and it made you feel powerful.
But coming back to water features and fountains specifically, of course,
we have to think larger than that. We have to
think too about just like running water, bodies of water
(05:28):
in general, and you know, personally, and I think this
applies somewhat universally. I've always found waters to be calming
to be around. They're often great places to do some
thinking or to do less thinking in a good way,
you know, to sort of unshackle from your normal thought process.
And I think I've mentioned before on the show that
(05:50):
there's a very useful stress reduction exercise that makes use
of this connection. It's called leaves on a stream. It's
a cognitive diffusion technique that allows you to distance yourself
from the thoughts that you're having. So the way it goes,
and you can look this up online. There are plenty
of online resources that that spell it out in more detail.
(06:10):
But you imagine yourself seated beside a running stream. You
imagine taking a given thought, essentially taking it out of yourself,
placing it upon a floating leaf, and allowing the stream
to carry that leaf and the thought away from you.
And you know, everyone's mileage may vary, but I find
it very constructive. But I was thinking about it again here,
(06:31):
thinking about fountains, thinking about natural bodies of water, and
they're they're they're calming powers.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
It does seem like an especially nice image for concretizing
your your emotions and your thoughts because it's it's passive,
like the the water does the carrying away for you,
so it doesn't even involve you having to imagine like
forcing or shoving the idea away. It is just carried
away by nature.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah. Yeah, Now we've talked a bit on the show
previously about the history and importance of public water works.
We're not going to reachret all of that here, but
I wanted to at least touch on some of it
in this case via a twenty fifteen article titled Short
Global History of Fountains by Juty at All, published in
the journal Water. That's pointed out that the word fountain
(07:18):
stems from the Latin fawnds, which can refer to both
artificial and natural water features, not like the fawns on
happy Days, but fis I've also read that the source
is fontana, which informs the medieval fount or source, and
so fountain becomes a symbol of a providing source as well.
(07:41):
Like this idea of a fountain as being this thing
from which something else beneficial arises becomes pretty crucial to
a lot of a lot of our language. Now, the
construction of fountains properly dates back to ancient times, and
the authors of this paper point out that regional water
available played a role in what form fountains took and
(08:03):
how they were fed. For instance, they mentioned that for
the ancient Egyptians bringing water out for the people or
for personal use, it was a matter of pulling water
from the Mighty Nile. Meanwhile, the Minoans and the Greeks
brought water down from the mountains via aqueducts. So this is,
you know, something to keep in mind. There's the sort
(08:24):
of especially when you go back into the origins of fountains,
there are a lot more practical purposes in mind for
having that water there, And then how do you get
the water there? You're not just piping it in from
the local modern water system, you know, there are other
means that have to be in place. One of the
primary purposes for ancient fountains was of course to bring
(08:46):
water to the people for drinking, as well as for
other uses such as bathing. We've talked about that on
the show before. Another big one that I hadn't thought
as much about, and I guess part of this is
because we haven't we've touched on Firefight, but we haven't
done a lot on firefighting, but this was another reason
to have a source of water available in a center
(09:07):
of the population.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
I think we actually did a pretty extensive look at
firefighting in our Invention episode on the fire extinguisher.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah, and we got into like fire extinguisher grenades and
so forth. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
But going into ancient history, how the fire fighting in
ancient Rome and how it had a very different character
because if I remember correctly, the early version in maybe
like the first century BCE or so, there was like
a rich guy who instituted fire brigades who would come
to your house if it was on fire, not to
like as a public service, put it out for you,
(09:43):
but to say, hey, I will buy your house for
the following price, take it or leave it. And if
you know, if you agreed to let this guy buy
your house, then his dudes would put out the fire.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah. I think there's a scene in one of Stevens
Sailor's Gordian Honest books that take place in ancient Rome
where this exact situation takes place with like the building
burning down and here's the sky shows up and he's like, well,
you know, it looks like your property is really plummeting
in value. Now would be a great time to sell
(10:17):
to me, as opposed to five minutes from now.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Wicked in an especially hilarious way. But of course, you know,
later on the idea of firefighting as a public service
that benefits everyone does develop, And yeah, of course there
are a lot of different ways to fight fires, and
not all of them involve water. Of course, some involve
like you know, pulling down structures to create barriers to
fire spreading and things like that. But yeah, water of
(10:40):
course is quite often one of the most important tools
in fighting fires.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Now. One of the things about bringing water into a city,
one of the problems here are potential potential problems, is well,
you can have to deal with drainage, removal, fouled water,
and various public health challenges that can emerge from public
water works, and that can get into things like you know,
I have to worry about water borne ill illnesses, potentially mosquitoes,
(11:09):
things of that nature. So systems to bring water into
a city these were extremely important for human civilizations, and
we see them in all the major civilizations of the
ancient world as well as the various ancient civilizations of
the New World. The earliest carved water basin apparently dates
back to three thousand BC in the Mesopotamian site of Tello,
(11:32):
and a stone fountain figure in another Mesopotamian site, Mari
dates back to two thousand BCE. This would basically be
in line with the common fountain trope that we've seen
again and again of a goddess holding a base of
some sort that releases piped in water, just sort of
(11:53):
an irresistible image. And I guess part of this comes
down to, like what a fountain does that like recasts
the idea of water being gifted to people.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
As if from a morton.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Joe, Yeah, yeah. The Romans were, of course masters of hydraulics,
which they adopted from the Etruscan civilization, and the Roman
tradition greatly influenced the medieval fountain tradition to follow. Now,
one thing in this paper that I thought was really interesting.
They point out that in China, wells and streams were
along the primary source of water, so wells tend to
(12:27):
play the role we see public fountains play in other
parts of the world. In some of these Mesopotamian accounts,
these public wells were crucial as well to city planning.
These would be the things that you plan the structure
of the city around. They also note that quote spring
and structures have also assumed characteristics of fountains in China,
(12:51):
so what we might think of as proper fountains were
also introduced and built in urban and palace settings later
over the course of centuries. But sometimes you might have
something just constructed at a where a spring emerges or
where a spring has come to, and this will sort
of take on the building and appearance of a western fountain.
(13:13):
Now The authors even include discussion of modern and industrial
age water kiosks in the paper, which serve the purpose
of distributing clean water to the people, though without most
of the more aesthetically pleasing aspects that you associate with
a public fountain. Nowadays, you can look up images of
(13:34):
various water kiosks that I believe they're especially common in
subs of how in Africa a place where people can
go and get water, and it often takes on a
more I guess, sort of commercial appearance. I mean it
looks like a little shop in many cases. Sometimes they
even you see something that looks more like a vending machine.
(13:55):
And you can also make comparisons like water kiosk and
say public ice dispensary, you know those you see these especially,
we see these a lot in the United States. I know,
when you go into rural areas and there's like the
standalone machine that you can pull up to, you pay
the machine and you get some ice. You know you
are buying water. I'llbeit in a frozen form from that
(14:19):
machine right now. That Beings said, I guess water kiosks
could still be considered like a social center, a place
where people were going for water. And while most of
the examples I was looking at seem largely transactional and functional,
I suppose it doesn't have to be the case.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Though.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
When I looked around for like more pleasing designs and
water kiosks, the only thing that was coming up for
me were various design competitions that were more situated in
say London, and were essentially coming up with water fountain
designs that you know, looked crazy things that weren't necessarily
I think, actually brought to life in urban settings. But
(14:59):
I don't know, maybe the there have been efforts to
sort of evolve water kiosk sites throughout the rest of
the world as well. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Well, this idea sort of highlights the two different faces
of the civic water dispensing area. So you can have
on one hand, something that is functional that is there.
It's a place for people to get water that they
need for you know, everything in life basically that you
need in order to drink, to cook, to clean and
so forth. And then the other idea is water based
(15:31):
infrastructure that is there to be enjoyed, maybe the same
way that a park would be there to be enjoyed.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I think in the popular imagination, something that brings all
these together is, of course the chocolate factory of Willy Wonka,
where we see the chocolate mixed by waterfall. It is
a pleasing water fall to behold. You're you're not supposed
to swim in it, of course, but still, you know,
some uses of the chocolate are available via fun and
(16:00):
then of course we do have chocolate chocolate fountains at
events and all. So it is weird how we get
into this use of fountains, both in the imagination and
in reality, for liquids that are not drinking water.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Why do the culinary fountains always go in the sweet direction?
I want to see more savory ones, you know. So
it's the nacho cheese fountain, the gravy fountain. I don't
know what, maybe cheese fondue fountain. I guess that's pretty
similar to nacho cheese.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Well that that surely exists, right, some sort.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Of a cheese fountain, I suppose, I would guess.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Anyway, coming back to this Water Journal paper, the authors
here they stress that fountains also often stood as symbols
of power and wealth. Somebody builds them, someone provides them
for the people. But there's still this calming element to
the urban fountain, offering sites and sounds conducive to relaxation
that are frequently cited in histories and literature. As many
(16:53):
of the practical reasons for public fountains declined in modern times,
the esthetic elements remained in playing the soothing sites and
sounds of the running water. Another interesting point this is
something I read in Fountains as Reservoirs of myth and
memory from Myths on the Map the Storied Landscapes of
Ancient Greece from twenty seventeen by Betsy A. Robinson, or
(17:17):
this section about fountains is by Robinson, and in this
they point out that public fountains, specifically those in Greek traditions,
were also a means of quote, connecting past and present
and establishing authority by the manipulation of architectural form and
the selective retelling of stories. So I found that fascinating
(17:40):
to think about and be reminded of, because the public
fountain here is both a means of bringing water to
the people, but also conceptualizing the deliverer of that water
by means of myth and legends reflected in the carvings,
the statues and so forth then make up a given fountain.
For instance, who is the goddess that is pouring forth
(18:02):
the water, and what is that goddess's relationship to the
to the people in power at the moment, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yes, flowing water almost kind of naturally tells a story,
or it easily can be narrativized in some way by
you know, filling in the infrastructure around it with images
and representations.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, can you imagine if our primary sources of water
today are faucets, what if by law they were required
to resemble entities or beings or specific people in power
as they're bringing forth your prescious drinking or dishwashing water.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Yes, the faucet is like your local water commissioner's face
and the water is coming out of their mouth or
something like vomiting the water to you.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yeah. Away. The main idea we're exploring this episode, though,
is the idea that there is something soothing, calming, and
mentally restoring about public fountains, something that may, you know,
subjectively seem to be the case with many of us,
(19:11):
but you know, is there something more objective there as well.
There's actually been a fair amount of certainly recent scholarship
on the topic that we're going to touch on in
this We're going to get into this idea of blue spaces.
So in the world of urban and land use planning,
there's green space obviously, you know, we think of gardens, trees,
(19:35):
whole parks, et cetera. And then there's a subset of
green space known as blue space. And the blue of
course refers to water, you know, as water is often
blue on the map, if not in actual visual appearance,
and it entails all manner of naturally occurring and artificial
water features, including fountains. Now, once again it's important to
stress that proximity to natural and or artificial Blue Spaces
(19:57):
has always come with certain additional risks and potential danger.
We talked about those already, but there's also this compelling
idea that blue spaces are an overall mental and or
physical health benefit to those with access to the feature.
And on one hand, this basic idea would seem to
line up with the late EO. Wilson's biophilia hypothesis, something
(20:20):
we've talked about on the show before.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Yeah, this is kind of interesting. So we've done multiple
episodes exploring and critiquing the biophilia hypothesis at length in
the past, so we're not going to go into great
depth on that again here, but briefly, in Wilson's words,
this would have been what he believed was quote the
innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes. So
(20:44):
the argument goes that there is something in our brains
that calls us to be fascinated by and attracted to
other forms of life beyond just the obvious and direct
benefits to our survival that we would get from them.
So it's obvious why you would be attracted to, say
an animal or a plant that you might eat for food,
but that our fascination by and attraction to life forms
(21:07):
goes way beyond this, goes to you things that you
can't eat, things that you can't necessarily get any tangible,
quantifiable benefit from. We still these other life forms, We
still want to see and touch and spend time around them,
and when they're not present in our lives, we feel
a kind of we feel that loss as a kind
(21:29):
of malaise or unhappiness. And so a funny thing here
about water is that, of course, moving water is very
often associated with the suite of esthetic and environmental preferences
suggested by the biophilia hypothesis. Yet of course water is
itself not alive. It, like rocks and air, is part
(21:49):
of the inorganic environment. And yet of course the presence
of water is greatly associated with the presence of life. Basically,
all life on Earth needs water to survive. And it's
not an accident that when you know, you're walking through
the desert and you come to an oasis, it is
suddenly surrounded by forms of life that were not found
in the surrounding landscape.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yeah yeah, And you know, you can make the argument that,
you know, we're hardwired to appreciate something like a nice
flowing stream as opposed to another body of water. How
would how would Donald Pleasance put it?
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Joe, Oh, the spirit of dark and lonely waters.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, yeah, the dark and lonely water.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
That's it, ready to trap the unwary, the show off
the fool.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
In this, we're of course referring to something we discussed
in an older Halloween episode what Jenny Green teeth, But
it was what a British public service advertisement or video
message warning you against stagnant ponds and the danger to
young children posed.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
There right, warning children not to play in the in
the pools of black liquid that gather in abandoned buildings.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Yeah, it's yeah. Thinking about biophilia hypothesis in light of
all this is interesting. And I was looking around in
the book that Wilson co wrote on it, and at
one point mentioned he mentions that while uphill or spraying
aspects of artificial fountains rarely occur in nature, He points out,
(23:19):
you know, obviously the geysers.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
But.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Still even if a fountain is pumping water straight up
in the air, you know, it's still something we connect with,
even if this is not the normal way that water
behaves in just the average environment. He writes, quote, yet
the motion of water in fountains seems to have the
same hypnotic attraction as water flowing downhill in a waterfall.
(23:43):
He also writes that it would be interesting to see
a study of people observing quote, quiet and repetitive motions
of predators, sharks in an aquarium, circling birds of prey,
or other stalking movements of wolves, or large feeling which
combine Heraclitian movement with potential danger. Now, just to note there,
(24:06):
Heracliteanism is a philosophy concerning everything except the logos remaining
in flux, with the four elements eternally cycling into each
other and so forth. There's a lot to it, but
the philosopher of its namesake Heraclitis circle of five hundred BCE.
His ideas can be basically condensed down to the idea
(24:26):
that everything flows, that everything is becoming but never being,
and that does feel like it lines up with a
lot of the essence of moving water observations and the
various metaphors we form about it. But at any rate, yeah,
I like how this flows into the idea of the
attractive nature of streams and fountains. But coming back to
(24:47):
what Wilson ponders here and I looked up. I looked
it up. I wasn't able to find any studies that
actually took the challenge here, but I was wondering, Okay,
aquariums are especially relaxing, I find, or at least the
parts that involve fish and water. Sometimes the you know,
the crowds can be a bit much, but in terms
(25:09):
of like steering in through the aquarium glass at an
aquarium enclosure can be very relaxing. Sometimes there are sharks there.
Our local aquarium has sharks, and I was trying to
I was looking back on my experiences of viewing those sharks,
and I'm like, is this relaxing? And I'm not entirely sure.
I mean obviously for me anyway. I mean, if I'm
(25:30):
looking at a shark in a shark tank, I know
that I'm not in danger. It's not gonna you know,
pop out of the glass at me. I'm distant from it.
On the other hand, observing large predators and zoo environments
sometimes can feel a little uncanny in my experience, you know,
like if the lion's looking right at you, that sort
of thing, or you know, another large predator is eyeing
(25:52):
your toddler, your infant, like that that gets a little
that starts, you know, turning on some some lights that
are kind of buried in your psyche. But in terms
of the sharks and the aquarium, I'm not sure. I
asked my wife about this and she was like, like, no, no,
it's it's absolutely relaxing. There's nothing, there's nothing stressful about
(26:15):
observing these predators. For her, I don't know if you
have any thoughts in this show.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Well, I feel like I may have missed something. Here
was Wilson suggesting that the predators would be relaxing. I
interpreted that him to mean that the idea of a
slowly circling predator with Heraclidean movement would be like an
arresting image.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Well, I think what I took to be the idea
is like which energy is going to win out? Like
the movement is relaxing, but it's a predator engaging in
the movement. In these we see traditional movements have said
predators like what is going to be the end result?
Speaker 3 (26:52):
I see, yeah, okay, Well, I'm not sure what I
would say about sharks in particular. I mean, I certainly
find aquariums incredibly relaxing. But like you also, that is,
they're strongly counteracted by the presence of loud crowds around them.
But like a viewing an aquarium in a quiet space
is I think one of the most relaxing things I
(27:13):
can imagine. I'm not sure, Yeah, I'm not sure that
a shark being in there would really change anything about
it seeing a shark swimming around, I mean, assuming I'm
not in the water.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, or in the captivity of a bond villain that
sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Right, Yeah, I think that's probably still just as relaxing
as any other side of an aquarium.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
All right, Well, we've drifted off course a little bit.
Let's get back to just the basic idea that spending
time near a body of water would have some sort
of beneficial effect on you.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Right, So, at this point there have been a lot
of different studies investigating the impact of green and blue
spaces on human well being, and specifically, the question with
blue spaces would be does living near or spending time
I'm near a body of water improve your mental and
physical health, and if so, how does it create those improvements?
(28:07):
And fortunately, just a couple of years ago, there was
a meta analysis that rounded up all of the existing
research and synthesized what we know so far with a
special focus on the mechanism of action the question of
how blue space works on us. The paper is called
Mechanisms of Impact of Blue Spaces on Human Health, a
systematic literature review and meta analysis by Mikhail Georgiu at
(28:32):
All published in the journal the International Journal of Environmental
Research and Public Health in twenty twenty one, and this
study begins with a general survey of the research on
the health effects of exposure to natural environments. The authors
note that most of the research in this area has
actually been focused on something slightly different, on green spaces
(28:53):
rather than blue spaces, and this is also something we've
looked at in multiple episodes in the past. But short summary,
there is pretty strong evidence that living near or spending
time in areas where surfaces are covered in plant life
basically where you'd be exposed to grass, trees, vegetation of
(29:13):
various sorts, is correlated with a wide range of benefits
in all kinds of domains and everything from markers of
physical health, cardiovascular health, and so forth, to mental and
emotional well being, lower rates of anxiety, and things like
that and even like greater cognitive performance in school children. So,
in short, I think we can say with pretty high
(29:35):
confidence that it is good for you to spend time
in a park or a forest compared to spending the
same amount of time in a landscape fully paved with
metal and concrete and plastic. Something about living near and
spending time in those kinds of environments has a wide
range of benefits for your body and mind. Now, the
(29:55):
authors of this study note that a lot of the research,
unfortunately does not disentangle the variables of exposure to blue spaces,
meaning bodies of water, including lakes, rivers, coastlines, canals, and
in some cases even smaller features like fountains and things,
from exposure to green spaces. Sometimes the presence of water
(30:16):
is treated as part of the definition of green spaces,
sometimes not. So that's unfortunate, and it would be good
to separate these variables out to see if they have
effects independent of one another, And fortunately some studies have
done that. They've separated them out and looked at blue
spaces independently. Now, the first half of the question, do
(30:37):
blue spaces have positive effects on our well being? The
answer seems to be a pretty firm Yes, the author's right.
Recent epidemiological studies have shown that blue spaces have a
positive effect on public health, including the reduction of mortality
rate with the greatest rate of decline seen in areas
closest to blue space, better physical health, and better minntal health,
(31:00):
and their copious citations and support of these general statements.
So this brings us to the main question explored here,
which is why why is exposure to water or living
near water good for you? Why would it be good
for say, lowering your mortality or giving you better physical
health or mental health. And the authors of the study
(31:23):
explore four main hypothetical mechanisms, all of which are on
their own known to have significant positive effects on mortality,
physical health, and mental health. And these mechanisms are social interaction,
physical activity, environmental factors, and restoration. So physical activity, this
(31:43):
is pretty straightforward. Maybe blue spaces encourage people to get
more exercise. Getting more exercise is strongly correlated with decreased
mortality and improvements in mental and physical health. And maybe
something about living near water or having water in your
geographical area makes you more likely to exercise.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Okay, that seems to track.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Yeah, second mechanism. Maybe it's social interaction. Maybe blue spaces
encourage people to spend more time interacting with others rather
than alone, which again has well known, well established benefits.
Third thing is environmental factors. This refers to the effects
of bodies of water on other local environmental variables that
(32:26):
have their own effects on human well being. The author's
right quote blue spaces may contribute to a healthier environment
and reduce air pollution, heat island effect, risk of flooding, etc.
And then fourth restoration, Exposure to blue spaces might improve restoration,
which they define by saying that they use the definition
(32:47):
from another paper, So I had to look up what
that paper was to get the definition, and basically it
seems to be quote recovery from depleted attentional capacity or stress.
This is also something we've blowed on the show before,
but basically the question here would be weather. Exposure to
water sources helps people relax and recharge, to recover from
(33:09):
depleted attention spans from having you know, people spend a
lot of their attentional energy on certain types of tasks,
or not even tasks, maybe even just you know, like
scrolling their phones or something all day. This creates a
lot of stress. And then there are other types of
experiences people can have that tend to restore depleted attentional
resources and relax you and sort of remove those biomarkers
(33:33):
of stress that people would notice, like you know, elevated
levels of cortisol and blood or in the saliva.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Interesting. So yeah, it's kind of a satisfying exercise to
take these different factors and apply them to different sort
of activities and environments. Like, for instance, you think of,
say a fishing pond. A number of these you can
easily check off. I don't know, physical activity. I guess
you could have a discussion there regarding phishing, and I
guess it depends on how you're going about fishing. And
(34:00):
then likewise, if you apply it to say a fountain
in the middle of a public square, that sort of thing,
some of these more easily or checked off the list here.
But even like physical activity, I mean you think of
environments that have a fountain. I mean, I don't know
about the rest of you. I think of like children
playing inside fountain, whether they're supposed to do or not.
(34:22):
I think of people doing things around the fountain. So
even if you're not say attempting to swim laps in
the fountain or do boating in the fountain. There still
may be physical action that is encouraged around.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
It, right, So we'll get to in a second what
the evidence for these factors or not is. But yeah,
you can't always know exactly how it works, but you
can imagine tons of possibilities like maybe having a canal
or a river or something nearby just makes people want
to get out and go on a walk more often
that it could be. Yeah, But finally I wanted to
(34:55):
finish up my note about what the mechanism with restoration
would be if blue spaces do encourage restoration that leads
to the better effects on mental and physical health, because
the authors say, quote stress, anxiety, depressed mood, and psychological
well being have been linked with the risk of cardiovascular
diseases and mental health issues, so that link is also
(35:16):
firmly established. So the authors did their review and analyzed
all the studies that had any results illuminating these possible
mechanisms whether they hold true or not, and there were
fifty studies total. In their review, they said twenty seven.
Ultimately they concluded had data relevant to the meta analysis
on this question, and what they found was quote three
(35:38):
of the four hypothesized pathways physical activity, restoration, and environmental
factors are supported by empirical evidence, while findings on social
interaction are inconclusive. Now, as for physical activity, they say,
people's physical activity seem to increase with both their proximity
two blue space and and with the total amount of
(36:01):
blue space in their geographical area where they lived. So
it seems that both of these factors are correlated with
people getting more exercise. It seems people get out and
get more physical activity if there is water somewhere in
their neighborhood, and also more if their home is physically
closer to water. So this seems like a pretty strong
(36:22):
candidate explanation. Second one is restoration. They found that blue
space was correlated with increased restoration the author's rite. Intriguingly,
the increase of amount of blue space within a geographical
area was found to be the highest among all mediating
pathways and exposures. This evidence, therefore suggests that developing more
(36:43):
blue spaces within neighborhoods could primarily benefit the restorative character
of an area. So having some kind of blue space
in your general geographic area definitely that helps with alleviating stress. However,
the interesting and kind of prizing thing to me was
that they did not find evidence that your individual proximity
(37:04):
to blue space had an effect on restoration. And they write, quote,
while urbanicity is found to increase mental disorders through stress,
we propose that creating more blue spaces and promoting contact
with them can be used to reverse this effect and
ameliorate urban living. So it looks like another fairly strong
candidate to me here, Having more water and waterways in
(37:28):
the general area where you live seems to have a
relaxation and restoration effect on people, counteracting stress and thus
achieving improvements in health. Of course, again, chronic stress is
bad for you. Now, the other two mechanisms were more
complicated or a different story. As for environmental factors, they say,
there is evidence for a couple of things, but it's
(37:50):
kind of complicated. So the authors did find some evidence
that blue spaces correlate with lowering heat stress and with
improving air quality, but they said that the evidence base
for those was kind of small and messy, and other
environmental factors they looked at, such as effects on noise
pollution and biodiversity, there was not enough evidence to reach
(38:11):
a conclusion. And then they also say when it comes
to environmental factors, there are some that could be operating
in the opposite direction. As you mentioned earlier, there could
be some negative environmental effects of having water nearby, such
as say being a vector for infectious disease or something
like that. So this one seems to be sort of
(38:32):
a question mark. The evidence for the effects that are
there is kind of weak, and effects appear to be
going in both directions. And then finally, for social interaction,
they said that the evidence again is kind of weak.
Previous findings were mixed, but the meta analysis did not
find a significant effect of blue spaces on social interaction.
(38:52):
But it does look like the evidence for two of
the four categories is pretty strong. Having more blue space
in the neighborhood and living closer to blue space appears
to increase people's amount of physical exercise, which has strong
benefits for health, and living in an area with more
blue space in the general geographical region has restorative effects.
(39:13):
It helps people relax and recharge to counteract the stress
of life. Now, I do want to mention that this
study was focused on blue spaces in general, and the
majority of effects documented. From what I could tell, we're
probably coming more from larger natural and artificial waterways like
lakes and rivers and canals and so forth. So I
(39:33):
don't know how much you could map the total effects
of blue space onto specific things like smaller water features
installations like fountains and so forth.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Right, So don't take this podcast episode or or these
various studies here is just like clear evidence that it's
time to install that water feature in your yard, because
it might not have ultimately have that big a difference,
but who knows. Maybe it'll be delightful, maybe it will
be calming. Maybe all you need is that the sound
of trickling water.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
But a lot of the more specific and detailed oriented
questions out of the way, it does seem just generally
true that, yes, green space is good for mental and
physical health, and blue space also seems to be pretty
good for mental and physical health.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Absolutely. Now. I was looking at a study out of
twenty twenty two titled a population based Retrospective Study on
the Modifying effect of Urban Blue Space on the impact
(40:39):
of Socioeconomic Deprivation on Mental Health two thousand and nine
through twenty eighteen by Giorgio at all published in scientific reports.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
I think this is the same first author as the
meta analysis I just looked at.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
So this particular study quote aim to investigate whether living
near blue space lounge of two udinally modifies the effect
of socioeconomic deprivation on mental health the author's right quote. Hence,
we study longitudinally the impact of a large scale regeneration
of the Glasgow branch of the Fourth and Clyde Canal,
(41:15):
an urban blue space, on mental health, using routinely collected
clinical data. Now I had to look up some images
of what this area looked like. I included one here
for you, Joe. It looks nice. You basically have a
canal space with a lot of vegetation grown up on
one side of it, you know, and then I mean
a little bit on the surface of the water. You
(41:36):
have all it looks like a walking and or bicycle path,
and then some more green space and some walls and
some trees and whatnot. And it looks pleasant, looks like
a place if you lived in this area you might
go to for a bike ride or a walk, et cetera.
So a number of factors went into this localized study,
including distance one resides from the blue space, psychotropic medication prescriptions,
(42:01):
socioeconomic deprivation in the area, comorbidities, and demographics. So what
do they determined in this analysis? Will they identified a
protective modifying effect of living near the blue spaces in
relation to the impact of socioeconomic deprivation and mental health disorders.
(42:21):
So the idea here is that the blue space doesn't
completely cancel out all of the negative effects on mental health,
but it provides what they describe as a quote unquote
protective moat mm, which is also clever because you know
it's a water feature. But they also write that their
findings suggests that increased exposure to blue spaces rolled out
(42:43):
in urban spaces could reduce medication intake and reduce mental
health inequalities in urban areas.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Yeah, I think it's important to note that while like
the positive effects of things like blue spaces does appear
to be pretty good, also the effects are fairly modest,
so they're not going to be like a fix all
for all of everyone's problems. But they seem to be
part of a suite of solutions to generally make life
and make urban environments more friendly and those kind of things.
(43:16):
While no one of them is going to be life changing.
Probably they can add up.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Yeah, yeah, they can all add up to an increase
in quality of life, staving off some of these additional
mental and health issues. So something that should certainly should
be factored into urban planning, to urban restoration projects and
so forth. And you know, just on an individual level,
(43:43):
you can feel a little better about taking time out
of your day to be near water, be it in
the form of you know, some sort of an artificial pond, fountain,
et cetera, or local bodies of water and so forth.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
You know, there's something I wonder about that I haven't
seen this sighted in any papers looking at or anything.
This is just kind of an amusing but I wonder
if there is some psychological benefit or quality of life
benefit to just having something near you that is an
excuse for you to go do something you don't have
(44:17):
to do, you know, And it can be anything. It
can be a you could be a park, or could
be a pathway near your house, or something just an
excuse to like an excuse to go do something that
is not work and is not like a screen. Does
that make.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Sense, Yeah, And that you know ultimately occupies your mind
in a way that that may force out other thoughts
and other preoccupations. You know that that taps into, you know,
our basic primal wiring to see what's going on over
there by the water. Are there ducks? What are the
ducks doing? Are they are they mining their own business?
(44:56):
Or are they looking at me suspiciously? Are there in
the fountain? Et cetera. And again, if you're on the
fence about building that coy pond, you know, don't don't
build it just because you listen to this episode. But
also maybe don't not build it.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
We're not saying it's going to be a cure all,
but also, hey, you know, water's nice. Why not go
for it?
Speaker 2 (45:14):
It might be nice.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
Now, the one thing I would hesitate on is throwing
pennies in the pond with the fish.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Oh absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
I don't know that that's a bad idea, but I
have a hunch.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Oh, I mean, based on all the signs I see
places I go, they say don't throw the coins in
because they're not good for the fish or the turtles
or what have you. So unless it is a designated
wishing fountain, don't cast your wishes because it's you know,
it's not gonna work. All right, we're gonna ahead and
close this episode out, but we'd love to hear from
everyone out there. What are your thoughts on green spaces
(45:48):
and blue spaces? On naturally occurring bodies of water and fountains?
Do you have a favorite that you have observed or
hang out around frequently us, No, we'd love to hear
from you. Also, thanks to my wife who suggested this episode.
We were kind of casting around and I would I said, hey,
what would you like to hear an episode about? And
(46:08):
she said, oh, I've heard some about some studies regarding
blue spaces, and so we looked into it, and here
we are. If you would like to catch up on
past episodes of the show, where you can find them
in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We
have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have episodes
of Listener Mail on Monday's, short form Artifact or Monster
(46:31):
Fact episodes on Wednesdays. On Fridays, we set aside most
serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Weird House Cinema. And in terms of that fire Extinguisher
episode of Invention that we mentioned offhand, I cannot remember
if we have republished that one in the Stuff to
Blow Your Mind podcast feed. I assume that we have,
but there is also a separate abandoned podcast feed for Invention,
(46:55):
which is a show we did for a period based
on inventions, so you can also find it there.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Wish huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you're listen to your favorite shows.
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Joe McCormick
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