June 9, 2026 • 48 mins
They say that smiling requires fewer muscles than frowning, so why not smile? That doesn’t seem to be true, or at least unproven, and there is lots more about smiling that will keep you glued to your earbuds in this fun episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck
Jersey too. This is stuff you should know. What in
the world is that I'm smiling from a year grinning
and when I grin, my teeth come together look a
bear trap.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Well, if you're smiling, I bet it's because we are
headed out to see everybody hm on a five nights
adults only rare voyage with Virgin Voyages. This is October
second through seventh, from New York City to Bermuda. We
will be doing our live show and we will be
joined by our colleagues and our old pals. Stuff they
(00:51):
don't want you to know and stuff Mom never told you.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
That's right. So we are going to be there from
October second to seventh. I'm going to be on that
boat to Bermuda from New York and back. And you
can get more information where Chuck.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
At Virgin Voyages dot com slash stuff. Come on hang
out with us on a boat.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Very nice. Yeah, I think we should specify you shouldn't
expect to be able to get runner with us because
you know we're happily married.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yeah, that's right, And what happens at sea doesn't just
stay at sea. That travels back home and you get divorced.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
That's right. Yeah, and you have to go to the
doctor sometimes too.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yeah, you don't want that.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
So we're talking today about smiling. I think it's appropriate
that I said I'm happily married because you me actually
requested this so long ago that when I went to
her last week and was like, do you remember what
prompted you to request smiling a long time ago? And
she's like, I don't remember requesting smiling. So yeah, it'll
forever be a mystery. But I'm glad that we're doing
(01:56):
this one because we've done like all sorts of other
stuff laughing discuss the scream forgiveness, Like there's just this
whole like aspect of human personality. Sweet that is just
kind of slowly assembling into one great person, you know.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
And we did an episode in the early days, I
think when we were but three years old, we were
podcast toddlers, Yeah, on whether or not smiling makes you happy.
So we're gonna recover a bit of that toward the end.
Little but we should probably start out by letting everyone
know that you use muscles when you smile.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
It is all muscle movement.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
And if you want to compare a smile to like
other dumb, boring muscles, the reason you can smile and
make like weird kind of faces just because you have
a lot of fast twitch myosin fibers in your face. Yeah,
and that's why you can. Like, that's why you can't
make a face with your bicep.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I kind of can. It looks like a messed up face,
but it's still somebody. It would be like, I see
the face in there. It looks a little like mister Bill.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Now you can make a kick drum beat when you
flex those babies.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
That's with my other one, So like I make mister
Bill's mouth open and close to the kick drum beat
from my other bicep.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
But how do we compare to our primate friends?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Oh? Well, actually, it turns out, Chuck, I thought this
was quite interesting that our primates are actually our primate
friends are actually more expressive facially because they don't speak.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
That's right, that's.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
The idea behind the whole thing. We do know that
primates typically are more expressive through their faces than humans are,
and that the idea behind it, or the explanation for
it is that humans require more slow twitch muscles, the
bigger muscles to talk, to move our faces in our
mouths to talk, which primates don't have to do. So
(03:52):
we essentially, basically our fast twitch muscles evolved into more
slow twitch muscles. But we're still pretty expressive. So don't
be too sad.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
If you've ever you know, heard people say it takes
more muscles to frown than it does to smile, first
of all, lightly slap that person in the face with
a feather. Next, move along and say, you know what,
prove it because I looked and I couldn't. You know,
first of all, it's a very nuanced thing, like there
are a lot of different smiles and a lot of
(04:25):
different frowns. Yeah, that's a big point, and each of
those different ones, like you know, takes different muscles to
make those. So for someone just to sort of flatly say,
you know, it takes twenty two muscles to smile and
a hundred to frown, right, that's I can't couldn't find
anything that could verify that is true. Or like I
(04:47):
guess the message that they're sending is don't use your muscles.
It's better to not use your muscles.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Right, Why bother just smile? Yeah, it's funny. I looked
all over too, and all I could find were dentists' websites,
which were pretty pretty competent about that as.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Right back, Well, four out of five work.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
But you said that your you're that was great? Uh?
You said that your your smiles all include muscles, and
not just yours, chuck, but all people's. That's right, and
it includes a very particular muscle, I think one on
each side, the zygomaticus major. These actually pull your your
(05:26):
the sides of your mouth up. So I guess the
joker when his face was slashed, it somehow made his
zygomatic kiss major constantly contracted.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I just want to say, I'm not sure what's wrong
with me right now. I realize that I'm stammering and
having a lot of trouble. Hopefully my brain will reset
while you're talking next.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Now I have but noticing that I think you're doing great.
So there are actual people who and boy, they've done
a lot of research on smiling and stuff. As we go,
like you'll probably be at how much time and money
people have put into this kind of thing. But they
have done research and actually sort of like coded the
face and the system of muscles, so they know like
(06:13):
what each group does, the facial action coding system what
it's called the facts, just the facts.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I'm going with faces.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah, they couldn't come up with a knee.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
I think it's implied.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Okay, I'm gonna go with just the faces then.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
So they, like I said, they made various codes for
these muscle movements and assign like names to them. And
they know that all smiles involve action unit twelve, which
is both of those zygomaticus major muscles contracting, and you
know you said, they raise them up or they also
raise them out because you'll see, when you smile your smile,
your mouth gets wider as well.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And the whole world smiles with you.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
But if you're really happy and you're not, and we'll
talk about the different kinds of smiles, like including fake smiles,
but if you're really genuinely happy with something and smiling
from joy or you know, being alive, that means your
eyes are involved, and that is action unit six.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yes, so a couple of things here. Action unit twelve
I think is the pinnacle of band names that we've
ever covered.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
It's pretty darn good.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Not only is a great name if you dig into
what it means, you're talking about smiling. It's the name
for smiling, so that's pretty awesome, but it also has
a built in abbreviation that's great too, AU twelve, maybe
even AU one two.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Oh yeah, so you've got on a logo or whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
I really genuinely think that is the best band name
we've ever stumbled upon.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
So did that just unseed Frozen Poop Knife?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
I think so they could go on tour together? But
does that mean we retire this bit I don't know
chuck as possible.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Well, well, here's the deal, I think if we if
we don't retire it, we will just have to mention
almost every time from now unlike but it's no AU twelve.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Okay, okay, but yes, all apologies to Frozen Poop Knife.
We will will never forget you and we'll bring you
up still.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, they just kicked over their kick drum.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
So the no, that was my bicep. So if you
take Action Unit twelve and Action Unit six together, that's
what's known as the Duchen Smile and We definitely talked
about Gillom Duschen in our Can Smiling Make You Happy? Episode?
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Right, Yeah, And in fact I think we called them
Dushane because the the translator spelled it whacky. How oh,
I mean different things kine k A I n E,
Shane s h A n E. That's two different names. Yeah,
it's you know, go aa translator, I guess.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, but we're gonna go with g Duschen this time,
who was a French neurologist. He also was dabbling with
electricity and photography. I saw that he basically existed at
this neat crossroad of three emergent sciences that were coming
out at the same time. This guy put them all
the use and he stimulated people's facial muscles with electricity.
(09:23):
There's an extensive set of photographs of him doing this
to this poor guy. And this guy's making all these
weird facial expressions and Dushen is coating all of them.
But it's kind of hysterical to think that, like, this
guy's not purposely making these He's being zapped with electricity
and that's what's making them because the correct muscle combination
(09:47):
is being zapped. Right then by Duschen.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeah, that's pretty funny stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
So he claimed, and this was sort of a and
I think people thought this was true for a while.
Was you know this notion that you can you can
tell a fake smile by the eyes, and that's sort
of the dead giveaway. And he may have not reinforced it,
but he may have sort of planted that seed when
he said that the orbicularis oculi, which is action unit
(10:13):
six that we talked about the eyes that would only
contract due to the sweet emotions of the soul, which
is a very nice thing to say, but it turns
out that's probably not true.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
No people can, including Tyra Banks, can make yourself or
make themselves up'm sorry, smile with their eyes. But there
does seem to be some disagreement on whether that can
fully be ever fully be reproduced voluntarily. And I like
to think that it can't be that there's still some
(10:45):
smile out there that's so genuine that it can't voluntarily
be reproduced fully.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah, I think what the deal is is there are
some people who are probably so good at the fake
smile that you just don't realize it.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, be aware of those people.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Of those things can be true I think what you
said is definitely true.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Thanks. Man. I want to say one other thing about
AU six Action Unit six. If you go and look
at the faces, coatings or facts, it's just like strips
of like the mouth or the eyes or something like that.
And for Action Unit six, it is a strip of
my eyes. It is very clearly somebody took my photo
(11:27):
and just cut out the eyes. Wow, and it's just
showing that it looks exactly like my eyes. Dude, you
should go look.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Send me a screenshot. I'm not going to look it up.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Okay, I will eventually see.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
That's the agreement we came to.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Okay, I think that's fair enough.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Two guys who do research for a living. You can't
make the other one look anything up.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
No, we just send screenshot.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
So if we're talking about evolution, like, it's a pretty
human thing to just you know, be alive in the
world and smile because you're feeling good and having a
good day. If you look at something in the like
a somebody from the primate kingdom and you see that
teeth like you, man, I've seen those chimpanzees beare those
(12:09):
teeth and everyone's like, oh, they're so happy and that's
actually not what they're trying to say to you, And
it doesn't mean they're trying to kill you right then either.
But it's a sign of submission, apparently.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
I always I didn't. Never took it as they always
look stressed out to me, like when I see a
chimpanzee bear their teeth like that.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, I've seen them. It depends on I think it
depends on the rest of the face, because I can
bring to mind images of chimps doing that. The one
I bring to mind more is Clyde from every which
Way but Loose doing that orangutang.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Man, he definitely did that, and he didn't seem stressed out,
but they definitely played it like he was laughing or
something like that, and he surely wasn't.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
One of the things about that, though Chuck is smiling
through submission, that is that still survived into humans for sure.
Like that is something that we do not just to
say like you're an alpha, I'm a beta, but also
to say like, hey, I just want to get along,
no stress over here, yeah, yeah, or you know, to
(13:15):
to basically not be tense or if an awkward pause
comes both people might kind of smile or something like that.
All of that is essentially the same thing as a
chimp smiling to signal submission.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
There was a paper in nineteen seventy nine, a pretty
classic smiling paper where these psychologists Robert Crouton, Robert Johnston,
they were notating how people reacted when they went bowling
together and found they were more likely to smile when
just like hanging out and talking than after getting a strike, which,
like that totally tracks because like when you get a strike, you're.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Supposed to be that cool, like you meant to do that.
You're not supposed to turn around and go right.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
For sure. I read a little more about that study.
One participant, Hayesus, never smiled and another participant, inn Amish
man named Ishmael smiled almost constantly.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Well, I think we might want to talk about a
little bit, and I know we've covered this before, was
baby smiling, because it's about one of the cutest darned
things in the world is when you see a little
baby smile at you. That does happen very early. Very
newborn infants can smile, but those are sort of just
random smiles like they may have farted or something and
(14:28):
are smiling because it's funny. They'll learn that a little
bit later, and not because they lit it on fire.
They'll learn that probably in their tween years.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
That's dangerous, is it?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Really?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I've always heard why not? You never let a part
I have, but I escaped by the skin of my teeth.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
It's usually just sort of a random occurrence when a
very newborn baby smiles about four to six weeks. They
start smiling when they wake up and they see you
or hear you, as we'll see, but it's still sort
of indiscriminate. It seems like the social smiling that starts
at about six to twelve weeks when they're like, hey,
I see mom or dad or whoever I like to
(15:10):
see or I hear their voice, and that makes me
happy exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
But apparently they're also master manipulators, because they've been found
to time their smiles to maximize smiling from their caretaker,
so like they'll give you a smile so that you'll
smile at them for thirty seconds, and they'll flash you
another one, and there you go, you're smiling again. They
learn to do that like really early.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Yeah, I wonder if twins are ever like, hey, watch this.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Kind of I'm sure did you see that link I
sent you to this about the study of baby smiling
in you to row. Yeah, if you want your paper
to make the national news, just make it on baby smiles.
But this paper from twenty twenty two in the Journal
of Psychological Science. They gave pregnant women carrot pills or
(16:00):
kale pills, and when the women ate carrot pills, the
babies smiled like fifteen twenty minutes later as it was
digested and reached them. When they ate kale, the baby's grimaced.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
I wonder what they did when they gave them the
Reese's peanut butter cup.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
They just started doing three sixties.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Yeah, they started break dancing.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
But one other thing about the study, Chuck that one
of the co authors was named Jacqueline Blissett.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Uh, that's funny.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
I mean it's true though, I think it's great.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
No, I know, but it's still funny, right, Okay.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Well, yeah, I wonder though if they're her parents were like,
we love Charlie's Angels that much.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I don't get the Charlie's Angels ref.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Oh, Jacqueline Bassett was the she was the best Charlie's
Angel if you ask me one of the original three.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
She wasn't in Charlie's Angels.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Jacqueline Bassett.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I don't know who you're thinking of, buddy.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
All right now, we do need to look something up.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
You go ahead, Okay, I'll go ahead, all right. So
I mentioned hearing and planning a little seed there that
a little infant maybe hearing something could make them smile.
And they know this stuff because you know, they've done
studies on whether smiles are innate or imitative. And so
if you're going to do a study like this, you
(17:20):
might want to study babies who are congenually blind. And
they have found that it really doesn't make a difference.
Blind infants start to smile in response to that voice,
just like cited babies too. And they did another study
of congenitally blind athletes at the Paralympic Games, and this
one had was from twenty three different cultures, because, as
(17:41):
we'll see, different cultures like smiles might mean different things
and had the same They had the same spontaneous expressions
as sided counterparts, sort of across the board.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yeah, which is pretty awesome. They also found that the
children who were studied. I don't remember what study this
was in, but basically they observed children who were given
reasons to basically mask disappointment with a smile. And apparently,
and this is for real, like play schoolers or nursery schoolers.
(18:15):
They had them make lists of toys they wanted, and
then they gave them a toy that they hadn't asked for,
and the kid would mask their disappointment with a little smile.
And they found that sighted and non cited kids basically
made the same facial expressions in that situation too.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, amazing. Did you look up Charlie's Angels?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah? I did. I was hoping you.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Would forget Jacqueline Smith.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Oh yeah, you got Jacqueline right.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Well, we might just take out the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
All you never know, all right, Uh, well, I guess
we'll see.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
We'll let the listener decide.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
I don't know if that's possible.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Well, not decide, but decide how they feel about it.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Okay, but they won't know about it if we took
it out.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Well, but they wouldn't even hear what I just said
then either.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
No, we should leave this part in and really confuse everybody.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Oh man, I brought up cultural differences. Jacqueline Smith is
eighty years old.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Oh wow, how's she doing?
Speaker 3 (19:15):
She's doing great. Hey, listen, I'm not one to comment
on people's appearance, because I know that's untoward. Sure, but
Jacqueline Smith does not look like any other eighty year
old that I've ever seen.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
She is the best angel? You agree, right?
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Yeah? She was my favorite. I think, good actor. I
think I had a pretty big crush on her.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Sure, I mean, for sure, I think everybody had a
crush on all of the Charlie's Angels to some extent.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Yeah, but I'm with you. I think Jacqueline Smith was
definitely the top angel.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah. She was great in The Deep too.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Oh yeah, that was a good movie.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I was trying to make a joke. I thought that
was Jacqueline Bessett, who's in the Deep?
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Oh wait, she was in the Deep?
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah, oh boy, we're going to take that part out too.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Oh Oka, Jerry's gonna have fun with this one. Excuse me, Like,
I'm gonna pass this one on to Ben.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
I got stuff going on.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Can't you hear people being like, get back to smiling?
Speaker 3 (20:10):
I know, all right, back to smiling. I mentioned different cultures,
because you know, there's the idea of like what if
I'm in a different culture and I like smile at
someone and that actually means like I hate what you
just fed me or something like that. So they've done
a lot of studying over the years. There's in the sixties,
it was a psychologist named Paul Ekman who did experiments
where they just showed images of faces to different cultures
(20:33):
and then like had them pick from a list on
what emotion that was. And he was like, all right,
here's what I came up with. There are six universal
facial expressions. Only six anger, disgust, enjoyment, fear, sadness, and surprise.
Later he said contempt. All right, there is a seventh.
We'll add contempt. But a lot of people have picked
(20:54):
that apart because he it was multiple choice, and they're like,
it's probably a better study, and people have done it
since if you just show them pictures and have them
like write down what that is and not to pick
from your list.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Right, And he also was over their shoulder pointing to
the correct answer whenever.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
They would exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
But that's not to say that he was wrong. It
does turn out that subsequent research and a lot of
it has essentially found that, Yeah, there's pretty much universal
agreement on what facial expressions mean. There's a lot of disagreement,
but for the most part, you're going to find the
vast majority look at someone smiling and associate that with happiness.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Yeah, I think there's some nuance in there, depending on
where you are. Interestingly, they did find that people smile
more in countries that have a lot of immigration as
a whole, Countries that are like the United States, that
are formed from people from all over the world.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Melting pot, yeah, like.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Brazil is another one, And some researchers have put out
and make sense to me that, like, Yeah, when you
have a bunch of people living in a melting pot,
people generally want to get along, so they're probably using
a smile more than you might in a country where
like most people are from there.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Yeah, it's like a nonverbal way of saying like, hey friendly,
I'm friendly too. Great.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, it totally makes sense. I think.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Also this one, I was unsure about countries with low
population densities. They have more room to smile, I don't know,
or they just have fewer other people to deal with.
Those are my two interpretations.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah, I agree, But like you said.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
There are some nuance to the whole thing. In East Asia,
specifically in Japan and China, they basically emphasize the eyes
like that's where the smile lay in action unit six
me essentially, and they don't even apparently use the curved
(22:55):
line for a smile on their emoticons. It's just the
eyes as triangles, basically simulating action unit six.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, that's kind of fun. Another thing that smiling conveys,
or at least I don't know if it conveys it,
but people take it this way is they find people
not only happier but more competent and attractive generally when
they're smiling.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Sure, give me a smile, baby.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah exactly. Oh no, no, don't say that.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
In twenty fifteen, there was a study that showed photographs
of people with different expressions to forty four different cultures
around the world, and they found that like in China
and Germany and Egypt, they associated a smile with intelligence,
but in Japan, France, and Iran, I guess I'm on
that sort of a sound they thought it meant or
(23:42):
at the least they correlated it with lower intelligence.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Like they think you look dippy if you have a
big smile in those countries.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I guess it depends on the person in the smile, sure,
Like kletis the slack jawed yokels big toothy smile, Like
I could see that.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Yeah, what's interesting too, is there's different different countries or
cultures have agreed at different periods of time too, as
we'll see.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Should we take a break.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Let's take a break, because I think that was one
of the best cliffhangers we've ever come up with.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
For sure, we'll be right back, so Chuck.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
We're onto the history part. Shout out to Colin Jones,
who wrote a really good article on aon. He was
the author of the book Smile Revolution Colon in eighteenth
century Paris. I've never seen a colon be more useless
than the one Colin Jones put into his book title.
But regardless, this Aon article was super helpful.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Yeah, I mean, are you talking about, like portrait painting.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
The whole darn thing, buddy, Like, basically the progress of smile,
the smile being acceptable in Western culture. It traces a
pretty long heritage and it's had its ups and downs essentially.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah, Like, I definitely I mean, it makes sense, but
I never knew that like portraits being so serious, like
painted portraits, was because it's you can't make a realistic
looking smile, because smiling again is something ideally that's happening spontaneously,
and you can't hold that while you're sitting for a portrait.
(25:41):
So that's the reason why all those portraits for so many,
you know, hundreds and thousands of years, we're just more
serious looking.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, because you can just be like, hurry up, I
know it's no good. Yeah, that is pretty interesting too.
I guess we talked about something like that and the
orthodonics episode because I think also there was just like
you just didn't show your teeth, like that was just etiquette.
There was a manual for boys, an etiquette manual that
(26:11):
said that decorum forbids you to allow your teeth to
be uncovered, since nature gave us lips to conceal them.
And I saw also that there was this general idea
that if you were going to laugh, okay, we'd rather
you don't, but if you're going to laugh silently and
laugh with your mouth closed. And there's a painting from
sixteen twenty four by Franz Hall's called the laughing Cavalier
(26:35):
that if you want to see what that looks like,
it's that, and it looks like essentially a smug half
smile that's apparently laughing in the seventeenth century.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Yeah, I mean, if you look at old yearbooks, you know,
people didn't start smiling till later. You know, teeth were
fairly janky for a while. And it's theorized that it's
just a holdover from the portrait painting days, right where
if you sat for a portrait, and then later in
photography it's just a more formal sort of thing. It's
(27:04):
not a candid and so you don't just sit there
and flash a big smile. But people started doing that eventually,
I did.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Who helped us with this one, Livia did.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Yeah, Libya saw some research that said that early photography too,
like long exposures, people couldn't hold a smile, But I
kind of called bunk on that.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
I've seen that online.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
But by the eighteen fifties and sixties, it was only
a few seconds of exposure, like the cameras were good
enough for that. So I think it had more to
do with the holdover. It just wasn't something that people did,
like smiling like a dope, and a painting or a
picture was just untoward.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Yeah, like you said, smiling like a dope. Basically, in Europe,
for hundreds and hundreds of years, smiles were associated with
you being immature, you being drunk, you being insane, and
like that's just that was a way you depicted people,
was showing them smiling and like a painting, and the
viewer would know what you were showing was maybe like
(28:01):
a patient in an asylum or somebody who was meant
to be drunk or something like that. That was the
only way you would show it. And in the United States,
at least, it wasn't until the nineteen thirties when people
started actually smiling for photographs, and it really took off
after that because of advertising ads for cameras that basically said, hey,
(28:22):
you should smile with a picture. What's your problem? Just
go ahead and smile. Don't you know it takes more
muscles to frown than to smile.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Yeah, yeah, they're like, buy the new codec so you
can capture your dower grandmother and all her majesty exactly.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
But there was that. Did you mention the yearbook study?
Speaker 3 (28:42):
No, not a study just that in yearbooks, like it
took a while for that to catch on.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Right, Yeah, some study basically tracked it, and then I guess,
like I said, by the thirties it really started to
take off. And then by the fifties. This is anecdotal,
but just from watching Happy Days, yearbook photos essentially became
big goof grints because just imagine like Ralph mauf or
POTSI having like a solemn look in their yearbook photo.
You can't do it.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah, I mean, I don't have a ton of pictures
of my parents growing up, but I think I do
have like the college portraits of their yearbooks, and they're
both smiling ish and those.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Yeah, there's I have one picture of my parents, I think,
right before I was born, and they're smiling, and he's
like a portrait they're smiling at each other. My dad looks, goofy.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Should we talk about types of smiles?
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Boy?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
You really had me on on an edge there. So Ekman,
the guy the you know psychologists that I was talking
about the study a lot about smiles. He talked about
identifying a real, genuine enjoyment smile because of the eyes,
those dushen markers and that's what we kind of said
early on, is that a lot of research is found
(30:01):
that like the real genuine smiles is in the eyes,
but you can still fake.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
That, right, But he said that in a real smile,
like this is why I'm like, I'm holding out hope
that there is a smile that cannot be voluntarily replicated.
Ekman said, in a true Duchen smile, the eye cover
fold between your eyebrow and the eyelid or the top
of your eyelid that actually goes downward a little bit
(30:29):
and then the ends of your eyebrows dip down with
it a little bit. You can't do that on your own.
You can't do that. Like I'm having to pull my
face right now to make myself do that.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
And so next time you're on a blind date, if
you're trying to figure out if they are truly truly
enjoying and smiling, just stare as hard as you can
at the eye cover fold and see what it reveals.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Bring a caliper with you so you can take accurate
measurements of the width of the eye cover ful.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
That's right, full of categorized smiles over the years, because
they you know, Some are just for joy, but a
lot of smiles have purposes, like you were talking about earlier,
like hey, it's cool here, like we just want to
get out alive.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
There is the reward smile, which is very I engaged
and offers the feedback to your conversation partner of like
like hey, I'm liking what you're laying down here.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, hey my eyes are up here.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
There's affiliate of smiles that show friendliness. These are the
ones you'll flash a stranger at the grocery store, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, like if you're from the second sneak.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Up behind you and club you with a giant bottle
of wine.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
There's dominant smiles too, which man essentially like the lip
will be lifted a little bit. Usually it's asymmetrical. I
think it's one of those ones where like you just
know if you've been smiled at with the dominant smile,
because you just have a bad taste in your mouth
all of a sudden.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Eckmun identified eighteen smiles. We're I'm gonna go through all those,
but I think we should talk about did you want
to No, I think we should talk about a couple
of them. One of my favorites is the miserable smile.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Yea.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
It is usually asymmetrical and layered on layered on top,
and it usually follows a negative expression, so it's trying
to convey like you're not trying to hide that you're
unhappy and you're just accepting what's happening. So I would
act that out as the smile, like, well, I guess
this is happening now.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yes, I would chalk the current reigning champ of the
Miserable smile. As far as Hollywood goes up to the actor.
I don't know her name, but she was in I
Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore. She was
the star of that. She played Leonardo DiCaprio's wife, and
don't look up. She's good at that. Okay, have you
(32:56):
not seen I Don't Feel at Home in this World Anymore? Know?
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Was that a movie or a TV show?
Speaker 2 (33:02):
It was a movie. It was an indie movie. Toby Maguire, Frodo,
I'm sorry, Frodo.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
He was in it with her, Olga would Oh, you're
Melanie Lensky.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
She's the best.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Okay, yes her, Thank you for coming up with that
that movie is definitely worth seeing. It's a great indie movie.
It's good.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Oh, I'll check that out. I love both of them,
especially like her. She's wonderful. She's married to Jason Ritter.
No way, yeah, great, one of the great couples.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Okay, good, I.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Mean Hollywood couples. You know, they're usually phonies. They seem
pretty real.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Yeah, because there I always have that miserable smile.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
That's right. What other smiles, Josh, what's your favorite?
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Oh, miserable smiles My favorite too.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
The embarrassment smile I think is kind of funny. Oh, yeah,
because it's just so involuntary. Yeah, like if you imagine
somebody actually doing this, it's hard to do, and it
kind of makes you appreciate what actors do, like just
how hard it is to be a good actor, because
you might be called upon to do an embarrassment smile
where you're embarrassed and you smile. It's kind of usually
(34:07):
like just barely tilted up, your lips are pressed together,
and you're looking downward, maybe even to the side a
little bit, and it's just so quick and just so
you just can't stop yourself. You just do an embarrassment smile,
and everybody's like, oh, it's okay, except for that one
guy who's got the dominant smile because you just showed
that you're embarrassed. Yeah, and now he knows that you're
(34:29):
a mark.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Yeah, that's how those embarrassment smile.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
All right, Well, you know what, let's take a break
and I'm going to cover my favorite, last favorite smile
right after this. I know our timing is just all
wonky on this and this because we're having fun, so
we'll be right back with my favorite smile. All right, everybody,
(35:10):
I'm just gonna call this the William H. Macy in
his office in Fargo smile when Fran McDermott meets him
for the first time. It's that smile. It's the coordination smile,
and a coordination smile indicates cooperation and acknowledgment. Slightly asymmetrical
and it's sort of slight. But Bill Macy in that
(35:33):
scene with the yeah, we'll just we'll do.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
A lot count.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
We'll just shoot those numbers right on over to you.
So like he's coordinating, he's showing cooperation, but it's still
kind of phony.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Oh, it's sort of a business smile.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Almost he's great at that though too. Yeah, and it
also has like I'm just so pathetic, like don't you
can't even question me, like like just overlook me?
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Kind of Yeah, do you know that movie is ninety
minutes long?
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Man, we need to get back to that. Anything two
hours are over means that the producers did not ring
the director in. No.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
I agree movies are too bloated now. And if anyone
ever makes it, like if a director would to make
an argument that we really need that, I would just
say Fargo and walk out of the room.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yeah, and that's that's all you need to say. Yeah,
I've been watching some nineties and eighties movies and they're
definitely like ninety minutes. It's all it takes. That's all
it should take. I saw fifty two pickup recently.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Oh who was.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
That Roy Scheider and Ann Martinetz.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
That's right, that's right, good movie.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
It was all right.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
I love Roy Schiter.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
It was much more hardcore than it makes you think
it's going to be in the first like fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
Because you thought it was about cards and just like
throwing them on playing that game.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Right, just an hour and a half of that, Uh, huh,
I've got one more smile, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
All right, let's hear it.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
The uncanny smile.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Oh okay, so you're talking about they made a whole
movie franchise around that.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah, smile right, that's exactly what I'm talking about. It
was also the Ghost Family and Insidious the first one. Yeah,
they all had that uncanny smile. Jack Nicholson might have
been the progenitor of the whole thing. In the Shining
when he's got that smile where he's like, look here,
he's looking like over, he's looking at his chins down,
(37:18):
but his eyes are up and he's got that crazy
smile on his face.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah, it's very unsettling.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
It is. That's the uncanny smile, and it will haunt
your dreams.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Okay. I didn't know if you had any science behind it.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
I looked and I couldn't find anything. The most I
could find was that it was contextually wrong, right, and
that it kind of set our brains on edge from that,
and then also if you really now that you kind
of know about the facial coding system, if you look
at it, the AU six is definitely not an effect
because the eyes are usually staring while there's this shage
(37:53):
grin and that is not a normal combination.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
Yeah. I mean, I think what's important there doesn't need
to be science as long as everyone agrees that it's
scary for movies.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah, what else, buddy, Oh, I think we've reached the
best part.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Does smiling make us happy?
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (38:11):
So you know, like I said, we did a full
episode on this, but that's that was three years in
and I don't think we were very good at that point.
So hopefully this will be better. I was approved by.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
This episode today. Right, This was a throwback, wasn't it. Yeah,
we should have gone for the second ad break right
before we went to a listener mail. Yeah. So the
idea that smiling makes us feel happier apparently traces itself
back to Darwin. Yeah, and Darwin was big into smiling.
(38:42):
He saw facial expressions in general as a evidence of
vestigial behavior that we had from like our primate ancestors. Right, Yeah,
And there there have been tons of studies to find
out if that's true, and they've come back with like
mixed results. Some of them are like meaned of maybe,
but others are like nah, I don't know about that.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Yeah, it's a tough thing to test, because what they
do is like they have different methodologies. One of the
early ones, I think was from nineteen eighty eight, and
they said, you know, they put a pin in your
mouth like sideways, which will you know, make sort of
a fake assimilation of a smile.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
I guess, well, that's if you have the pen sticking
out of your mouth straight between your teeth.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
No, really, no, no, no, I thought it was. I
thought they would put it sideways so it would make
your lips out. You're saying, they just hold it in
your teeth like a cigarette.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Yes, in the middle of your mouth. That'll make you smile.
And then if you put it like in between, like sideways,
that makes you frown. Huh not anybody you got a penhandy, Well.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
I'll do it and I'll text it to you. No, now,
I'll make your.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Research it you send me a screen shot.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Well, either way, if you hold that pin between their teeth,
they will then ask you questions like you like are
you happy? Are you not happy? Stuff like that, and
like look at this thing, does this make you happy?
Speaker 1 (40:07):
And I guess that's.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Supposed to indicate that, like if your mouth is forced
into a smile, that you'll be happier. That just it
didn't make sense to me.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, that's that's the study. That's what they study is
just like if you can if the facial feedback that
you're getting showing that you're smiling, that it can happen
in the reverse rather than smiling because you're happy, If
you make yourself smile, can that make you happy? Right?
And that one, that first nineteen eighty eight study. To
keep people from knowing that they were being tested about smiling,
(40:39):
they taught they told them that they were they were
testing out new methods to help disabled people, right, who
didn't who didn't have arms, So they were trying to
figure out ways to help them write so that people.
That's what they thought they were doing. And then they said, here,
check out this cartoon. Is this funny or not? And
I guess all of the cartoons were ziggy, so every
(41:00):
one thought they were funny, but the people who were
making the smiles thought they were funnier than everybody.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Wow, all right, that got way more interesting once I
knew how they lied.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yeah, they definitely lied for sure. Never trust a researcher.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
This one from twenty twenty four carries a little more
weight for me, because it's not just sticking a pin
in someone's mouth. A psychologist named Sebastian Korb of the
University of Essexon did a thing where he ran a
little electric current into those fast twitched muscles which forced
like a smile to happen for just like a half
a second, and then they assessed whether a like a
(41:38):
digital image of a face looked happy. So apparently when
they had douce those tiny little smiles, people were more
likely to identify a neutral face as happy.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Yeah. And the big failing of all of these studies
is that they go social psychology at the end, like
are you happy? Do you feel happy? Is this comic funny?
Is this neutral face happy? And it just becomes so
subjective and self reporting that it's the jury's still out.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
I think, yeah, there is my comedian?
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Am I making you laugh?
Speaker 2 (42:09):
What? Am I a clown? Do? I amuse you?
Speaker 1 (42:12):
I just watched that again the other night.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
What is that? Good Fellas?
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (42:17):
I mean it's still great. You know it's not great?
Is the aviator? Because I mentioned that in the Howard
Hughes episode. I just watched the Howard Hughes in Vegas bit.
But I had recently seen the Scorsese documentary series and
I was like, you know, I should watch all of
the Aviator.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
It's not one of his best.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
No, I know. It didn't get a lot of praise. Yeah,
it was two and a half hours long, too, wasn't it?
Speaker 3 (42:39):
It was pretty long. It was not ninety minutes.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
I'll tell you.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
There is one more intervention about smiling make you happy.
It's from Dialectical Behavior Therapy DBT okay, and it employs
the half smile, and it essentially tells you to make
a little smile so that you know you're smiling, but
that you look like crazy to other people. Right, So
other people can't really tell. They might see that you
(43:05):
might look slightly different and maybe a little more approachable
than you normally would with a BRF. But it has
been shown again anecdotally that it actually does increase your
your sense of positivity. I know that sounds hippy dippy,
but I believe it actually works.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
What's BRF.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Be resting face?
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Oh? Okay, I always heard I've never heard it in
that order.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Uh, what do you hear?
Speaker 1 (43:32):
It is?
Speaker 3 (43:33):
RBF?
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Man? I am off today we're going to edit that
part out too.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
I think you're doing great. This is a capital episode.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Let's see. Oh there's one other thing too. One more
stuf's here and again. Social psychologists take it with a
grain of salt, but they found that service employees who
have to engage in surface acting, meaning like part of
your job is smiling and seeming happy whether you are
or not, tend to be heavier drinkers than people outside
(44:03):
of the service industry. That's sad, it is, and that
explains why hotel reception people are constantly blotto. If you've
ever noticed, when you check in, they are wasted to
a person. That's why, because they're forced to smile.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
That's right, makes sense. You got anything else, man, I
got nothing else.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
This was great, new and improved smiling happiness episode.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
It was new.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Okay. I guess that means it's time for listener mate.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Might as well finish this one with a correction, you know.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Yeah, I think we should. Hey guys from twenty eleven, first.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Time corrector here.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
No.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
I wanted to say we love the immense amount of
work you put into educating so many people and so
many topics for so long. My partner and I are
so excited to see your live show in Ottawa, Ontario. Yeah,
capital of the Great White and North. And yeah, it's
probably a good time to mention we're going to six
different places in Canada in June and July and we're
super excited. We're trying to move some more tickets in
(45:06):
a couple of these, specifically Montreal. So if you're in
and around Montreal, I mean, this is it, this is
your shot.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
We'd love to see you there.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Yeah, yeah, all right, So quick email guys about the
a minor historical mix up in the Hindenburg disaster episode.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Josh.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
One of you stated, thank you check that the US
ace Eddie Rickenbacker took out German ace the Red Baron,
Manfred von Richtofen.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
But that's not the case. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
The Red Baron was killed on April twenty first, nineteen eighteen,
over the Soalmme. He was loaded the ground chasing an
inexperienced Canadian pilot, Lieutenant Wilfrid May. Canadian Royal Air Force
pilot Captain Arthur Roy Brown drove steeply to defend May
and fired at the Baron's Spoker triplane. While Brown was
officially credited with the kill. Modern ballistics, medical exams and
(45:57):
historians favor the theory that the fatal bullet came from
Australian ground troops who saw them coming. Specifically, it's widely
believed to have been fired by Sergeant Cedric Popkin or
gunners Robert Buey and William Snowy Evans, as Rick Doopin
flew dangerously low over Allied lines. As for Eddie Rickenbacker,
(46:18):
he didn't even see active aerial combat until April nineteen eighteen,
the very month the Red Baron died.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
So, I mean, I'm not a crackpot, right, Like that's
what we've been taught all these years that Eddie Rickenbacker
took out the Red Baron.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Right, I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
This isn't like a Jacqueline Bessett Jacqueline Smith type thing.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
I have no idea because I don't I'm not steeped
in that kind of stuff. Like if you say red Baron,
I think of Snoopy.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
I do too, But I'm saying like, I've never done
any World War One flying ace research. This was literally
taught to me in school as far as I can recall.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
Well, hey, I believe that I'm just saying, I just
don't recall.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
Well, that's funny, so I wonder who really, who really
did it? Because Australia's got their people, Canada's got their people.
We have our people. Who knows.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
Yeah, my money's on Snowy Evans.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Okay, I think that's great. I'll put my money on
Snowy too. Sorry, Rick and Bucker.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Yeah, and that's anonymous.
Speaker 3 (47:17):
By the way, that was a guy and his partner
who were big history buffs.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
I'm not sure why it was anonymous. There's nothing.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
I guess they just don't what their name said. So
that's I guess we'll see the anonymous people in Ottawa.
They'll be out there with sacks over their heads.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Yeah for sure, Thank you Anonymous. Yeah that wasn't so controversial,
but well, okay, we'll definitely always respect your privacy. We'll
respect your privacy too. If you write to us and
you're like, do not read my name, we will never
do that.
Speaker 3 (47:45):
You know what I bet it is is they don't
want to be outed as going to that show because
they told their friends, so they don't really like that
wanted to go with them that they weren't going.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Oh ouch, I'll bet you're right. Yeah, Or some friend
asked them to move or drive them to the airport
and they're like, we're going to out of town.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Yeah, we're having a painting party.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Let's see. Well, I guess that's it. And if you oh,
like I was saying, if you want to be like anonymous,
and even if you want to remain anonymous, send us
an email. Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck
Jersey too. This is stuff you should know. What in
the world is that I'm smiling from a year grinning
and when I grin, my teeth come together look a
bear trap.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Well, if you're smiling, I bet it's because we are
headed out to see everybody hm on a five nights
adults only rare voyage with Virgin Voyages. This is October
second through seventh, from New York City to Bermuda. We
will be doing our live show and we will be
joined by our colleagues and our old pals. Stuff they
(00:51):
don't want you to know and stuff Mom never told you.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
That's right. So we are going to be there from
October second to seventh. I'm going to be on that
boat to Bermuda from New York and back. And you
can get more information where Chuck.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
At Virgin Voyages dot com slash stuff. Come on hang
out with us on a boat.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Very nice. Yeah, I think we should specify you shouldn't
expect to be able to get runner with us because
you know we're happily married.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yeah, that's right, And what happens at sea doesn't just
stay at sea. That travels back home and you get divorced.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
That's right. Yeah, and you have to go to the
doctor sometimes too.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yeah, you don't want that.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
So we're talking today about smiling. I think it's appropriate
that I said I'm happily married because you me actually
requested this so long ago that when I went to
her last week and was like, do you remember what
prompted you to request smiling a long time ago? And
she's like, I don't remember requesting smiling. So yeah, it'll
forever be a mystery. But I'm glad that we're doing
(01:56):
this one because we've done like all sorts of other
stuff laughing discuss the scream forgiveness, Like there's just this
whole like aspect of human personality. Sweet that is just
kind of slowly assembling into one great person, you know.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
And we did an episode in the early days, I
think when we were but three years old, we were
podcast toddlers, Yeah, on whether or not smiling makes you happy.
So we're gonna recover a bit of that toward the end.
Little but we should probably start out by letting everyone
know that you use muscles when you smile.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
It is all muscle movement.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
And if you want to compare a smile to like
other dumb, boring muscles, the reason you can smile and
make like weird kind of faces just because you have
a lot of fast twitch myosin fibers in your face. Yeah,
and that's why you can. Like, that's why you can't
make a face with your bicep.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I kind of can. It looks like a messed up face,
but it's still somebody. It would be like, I see
the face in there. It looks a little like mister Bill.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Now you can make a kick drum beat when you
flex those babies.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
That's with my other one, So like I make mister
Bill's mouth open and close to the kick drum beat
from my other bicep.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
But how do we compare to our primate friends?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Oh? Well, actually, it turns out, Chuck, I thought this
was quite interesting that our primates are actually our primate
friends are actually more expressive facially because they don't speak.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
That's right, that's.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
The idea behind the whole thing. We do know that
primates typically are more expressive through their faces than humans are,
and that the idea behind it, or the explanation for
it is that humans require more slow twitch muscles, the
bigger muscles to talk, to move our faces in our
mouths to talk, which primates don't have to do. So
(03:52):
we essentially, basically our fast twitch muscles evolved into more
slow twitch muscles. But we're still pretty expressive. So don't
be too sad.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
If you've ever you know, heard people say it takes
more muscles to frown than it does to smile, first
of all, lightly slap that person in the face with
a feather. Next, move along and say, you know what,
prove it because I looked and I couldn't. You know,
first of all, it's a very nuanced thing, like there
are a lot of different smiles and a lot of
(04:25):
different frowns. Yeah, that's a big point, and each of
those different ones, like you know, takes different muscles to
make those. So for someone just to sort of flatly say,
you know, it takes twenty two muscles to smile and
a hundred to frown, right, that's I can't couldn't find
anything that could verify that is true. Or like I
(04:47):
guess the message that they're sending is don't use your muscles.
It's better to not use your muscles.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Right, Why bother just smile? Yeah, it's funny. I looked
all over too, and all I could find were dentists' websites,
which were pretty pretty competent about that as.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Right back, Well, four out of five work.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
But you said that your you're that was great? Uh?
You said that your your smiles all include muscles, and
not just yours, chuck, but all people's. That's right, and
it includes a very particular muscle, I think one on
each side, the zygomaticus major. These actually pull your your
(05:26):
the sides of your mouth up. So I guess the
joker when his face was slashed, it somehow made his
zygomatic kiss major constantly contracted.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I just want to say, I'm not sure what's wrong
with me right now. I realize that I'm stammering and
having a lot of trouble. Hopefully my brain will reset
while you're talking next.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Now I have but noticing that I think you're doing great.
So there are actual people who and boy, they've done
a lot of research on smiling and stuff. As we go,
like you'll probably be at how much time and money
people have put into this kind of thing. But they
have done research and actually sort of like coded the
face and the system of muscles, so they know like
(06:13):
what each group does, the facial action coding system what
it's called the facts, just the facts.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I'm going with faces.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah, they couldn't come up with a knee.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
I think it's implied.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Okay, I'm gonna go with just the faces then.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
So they, like I said, they made various codes for
these muscle movements and assign like names to them. And
they know that all smiles involve action unit twelve, which
is both of those zygomaticus major muscles contracting, and you
know you said, they raise them up or they also
raise them out because you'll see, when you smile your smile,
your mouth gets wider as well.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And the whole world smiles with you.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
But if you're really happy and you're not, and we'll
talk about the different kinds of smiles, like including fake smiles,
but if you're really genuinely happy with something and smiling
from joy or you know, being alive, that means your
eyes are involved, and that is action unit six.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yes, so a couple of things here. Action unit twelve
I think is the pinnacle of band names that we've
ever covered.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
It's pretty darn good.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Not only is a great name if you dig into
what it means, you're talking about smiling. It's the name
for smiling, so that's pretty awesome, but it also has
a built in abbreviation that's great too, AU twelve, maybe
even AU one two.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Oh yeah, so you've got on a logo or whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
I really genuinely think that is the best band name
we've ever stumbled upon.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
So did that just unseed Frozen Poop Knife?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
I think so they could go on tour together? But
does that mean we retire this bit I don't know
chuck as possible.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Well, well, here's the deal, I think if we if
we don't retire it, we will just have to mention
almost every time from now unlike but it's no AU twelve.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Okay, okay, but yes, all apologies to Frozen Poop Knife.
We will will never forget you and we'll bring you
up still.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, they just kicked over their kick drum.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
So the no, that was my bicep. So if you
take Action Unit twelve and Action Unit six together, that's
what's known as the Duchen Smile and We definitely talked
about Gillom Duschen in our Can Smiling Make You Happy? Episode?
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Right, Yeah, And in fact I think we called them
Dushane because the the translator spelled it whacky. How oh,
I mean different things kine k A I n E,
Shane s h A n E. That's two different names. Yeah,
it's you know, go aa translator, I guess.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, but we're gonna go with g Duschen this time,
who was a French neurologist. He also was dabbling with
electricity and photography. I saw that he basically existed at
this neat crossroad of three emergent sciences that were coming
out at the same time. This guy put them all
the use and he stimulated people's facial muscles with electricity.
(09:23):
There's an extensive set of photographs of him doing this
to this poor guy. And this guy's making all these
weird facial expressions and Dushen is coating all of them.
But it's kind of hysterical to think that, like, this
guy's not purposely making these He's being zapped with electricity
and that's what's making them because the correct muscle combination
(09:47):
is being zapped. Right then by Duschen.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeah, that's pretty funny stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
So he claimed, and this was sort of a and
I think people thought this was true for a while.
Was you know this notion that you can you can
tell a fake smile by the eyes, and that's sort
of the dead giveaway. And he may have not reinforced it,
but he may have sort of planted that seed when
he said that the orbicularis oculi, which is action unit
(10:13):
six that we talked about the eyes that would only
contract due to the sweet emotions of the soul, which
is a very nice thing to say, but it turns
out that's probably not true.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
No people can, including Tyra Banks, can make yourself or
make themselves up'm sorry, smile with their eyes. But there
does seem to be some disagreement on whether that can
fully be ever fully be reproduced voluntarily. And I like
to think that it can't be that there's still some
(10:45):
smile out there that's so genuine that it can't voluntarily
be reproduced fully.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah, I think what the deal is is there are
some people who are probably so good at the fake
smile that you just don't realize it.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, be aware of those people.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Of those things can be true I think what you
said is definitely true.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Thanks. Man. I want to say one other thing about
AU six Action Unit six. If you go and look
at the faces, coatings or facts, it's just like strips
of like the mouth or the eyes or something like that.
And for Action Unit six, it is a strip of
my eyes. It is very clearly somebody took my photo
(11:27):
and just cut out the eyes. Wow, and it's just
showing that it looks exactly like my eyes. Dude, you
should go look.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Send me a screenshot. I'm not going to look it up.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Okay, I will eventually see.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
That's the agreement we came to.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Okay, I think that's fair enough.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Two guys who do research for a living. You can't
make the other one look anything up.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
No, we just send screenshot.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
So if we're talking about evolution, like, it's a pretty
human thing to just you know, be alive in the
world and smile because you're feeling good and having a
good day. If you look at something in the like
a somebody from the primate kingdom and you see that
teeth like you, man, I've seen those chimpanzees beare those
(12:09):
teeth and everyone's like, oh, they're so happy and that's
actually not what they're trying to say to you, And
it doesn't mean they're trying to kill you right then either.
But it's a sign of submission, apparently.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
I always I didn't. Never took it as they always
look stressed out to me, like when I see a
chimpanzee bear their teeth like that.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, I've seen them. It depends on I think it
depends on the rest of the face, because I can
bring to mind images of chimps doing that. The one
I bring to mind more is Clyde from every which
Way but Loose doing that orangutang.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Man, he definitely did that, and he didn't seem stressed out,
but they definitely played it like he was laughing or
something like that, and he surely wasn't.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
One of the things about that, though Chuck is smiling
through submission, that is that still survived into humans for sure.
Like that is something that we do not just to
say like you're an alpha, I'm a beta, but also
to say like, hey, I just want to get along,
no stress over here, yeah, yeah, or you know, to
(13:15):
to basically not be tense or if an awkward pause
comes both people might kind of smile or something like that.
All of that is essentially the same thing as a
chimp smiling to signal submission.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
There was a paper in nineteen seventy nine, a pretty
classic smiling paper where these psychologists Robert Crouton, Robert Johnston,
they were notating how people reacted when they went bowling
together and found they were more likely to smile when
just like hanging out and talking than after getting a strike, which,
like that totally tracks because like when you get a strike, you're.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Supposed to be that cool, like you meant to do that.
You're not supposed to turn around and go right.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
For sure. I read a little more about that study.
One participant, Hayesus, never smiled and another participant, inn Amish
man named Ishmael smiled almost constantly.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Well, I think we might want to talk about a
little bit, and I know we've covered this before, was
baby smiling, because it's about one of the cutest darned
things in the world is when you see a little
baby smile at you. That does happen very early. Very
newborn infants can smile, but those are sort of just
random smiles like they may have farted or something and
(14:28):
are smiling because it's funny. They'll learn that a little
bit later, and not because they lit it on fire.
They'll learn that probably in their tween years.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
That's dangerous, is it?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Really?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I've always heard why not? You never let a part
I have, but I escaped by the skin of my teeth.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
It's usually just sort of a random occurrence when a
very newborn baby smiles about four to six weeks. They
start smiling when they wake up and they see you
or hear you, as we'll see, but it's still sort
of indiscriminate. It seems like the social smiling that starts
at about six to twelve weeks when they're like, hey,
I see mom or dad or whoever I like to
(15:10):
see or I hear their voice, and that makes me
happy exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
But apparently they're also master manipulators, because they've been found
to time their smiles to maximize smiling from their caretaker,
so like they'll give you a smile so that you'll
smile at them for thirty seconds, and they'll flash you
another one, and there you go, you're smiling again. They
learn to do that like really early.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Yeah, I wonder if twins are ever like, hey, watch this.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Kind of I'm sure did you see that link I
sent you to this about the study of baby smiling
in you to row. Yeah, if you want your paper
to make the national news, just make it on baby smiles.
But this paper from twenty twenty two in the Journal
of Psychological Science. They gave pregnant women carrot pills or
(16:00):
kale pills, and when the women ate carrot pills, the
babies smiled like fifteen twenty minutes later as it was
digested and reached them. When they ate kale, the baby's grimaced.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
I wonder what they did when they gave them the
Reese's peanut butter cup.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
They just started doing three sixties.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Yeah, they started break dancing.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
But one other thing about the study, Chuck that one
of the co authors was named Jacqueline Blissett.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Uh, that's funny.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
I mean it's true though, I think it's great.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
No, I know, but it's still funny, right, Okay.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Well, yeah, I wonder though if they're her parents were like,
we love Charlie's Angels that much.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I don't get the Charlie's Angels ref.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Oh, Jacqueline Bassett was the she was the best Charlie's
Angel if you ask me one of the original three.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
She wasn't in Charlie's Angels.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Jacqueline Bassett.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I don't know who you're thinking of, buddy.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
All right now, we do need to look something up.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
You go ahead, Okay, I'll go ahead, all right. So
I mentioned hearing and planning a little seed there that
a little infant maybe hearing something could make them smile.
And they know this stuff because you know, they've done
studies on whether smiles are innate or imitative. And so
if you're going to do a study like this, you
(17:20):
might want to study babies who are congenually blind. And
they have found that it really doesn't make a difference.
Blind infants start to smile in response to that voice,
just like cited babies too. And they did another study
of congenitally blind athletes at the Paralympic Games, and this
one had was from twenty three different cultures, because, as
(17:41):
we'll see, different cultures like smiles might mean different things
and had the same They had the same spontaneous expressions
as sided counterparts, sort of across the board.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yeah, which is pretty awesome. They also found that the
children who were studied. I don't remember what study this
was in, but basically they observed children who were given
reasons to basically mask disappointment with a smile. And apparently,
and this is for real, like play schoolers or nursery schoolers.
(18:15):
They had them make lists of toys they wanted, and
then they gave them a toy that they hadn't asked for,
and the kid would mask their disappointment with a little smile.
And they found that sighted and non cited kids basically
made the same facial expressions in that situation too.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, amazing. Did you look up Charlie's Angels?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah? I did. I was hoping you.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Would forget Jacqueline Smith.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Oh yeah, you got Jacqueline right.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Well, we might just take out the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
All you never know, all right, Uh, well, I guess
we'll see.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
We'll let the listener decide.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
I don't know if that's possible.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Well, not decide, but decide how they feel about it.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Okay, but they won't know about it if we took
it out.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Well, but they wouldn't even hear what I just said
then either.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
No, we should leave this part in and really confuse everybody.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Oh man, I brought up cultural differences. Jacqueline Smith is
eighty years old.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Oh wow, how's she doing?
Speaker 3 (19:15):
She's doing great. Hey, listen, I'm not one to comment
on people's appearance, because I know that's untoward. Sure, but
Jacqueline Smith does not look like any other eighty year
old that I've ever seen.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
She is the best angel? You agree, right?
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Yeah? She was my favorite. I think, good actor. I
think I had a pretty big crush on her.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Sure, I mean, for sure, I think everybody had a
crush on all of the Charlie's Angels to some extent.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Yeah, but I'm with you. I think Jacqueline Smith was
definitely the top angel.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah. She was great in The Deep too.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Oh yeah, that was a good movie.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I was trying to make a joke. I thought that
was Jacqueline Bessett, who's in the Deep?
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Oh wait, she was in the Deep?
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah, oh boy, we're going to take that part out too.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Oh Oka, Jerry's gonna have fun with this one. Excuse me, Like,
I'm gonna pass this one on to Ben.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
I got stuff going on.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Can't you hear people being like, get back to smiling?
Speaker 3 (20:10):
I know, all right, back to smiling. I mentioned different cultures,
because you know, there's the idea of like what if
I'm in a different culture and I like smile at
someone and that actually means like I hate what you
just fed me or something like that. So they've done
a lot of studying over the years. There's in the sixties,
it was a psychologist named Paul Ekman who did experiments
where they just showed images of faces to different cultures
(20:33):
and then like had them pick from a list on
what emotion that was. And he was like, all right,
here's what I came up with. There are six universal
facial expressions. Only six anger, disgust, enjoyment, fear, sadness, and surprise.
Later he said contempt. All right, there is a seventh.
We'll add contempt. But a lot of people have picked
(20:54):
that apart because he it was multiple choice, and they're like,
it's probably a better study, and people have done it
since if you just show them pictures and have them
like write down what that is and not to pick
from your list.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Right, And he also was over their shoulder pointing to
the correct answer whenever.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
They would exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
But that's not to say that he was wrong. It
does turn out that subsequent research and a lot of
it has essentially found that, Yeah, there's pretty much universal
agreement on what facial expressions mean. There's a lot of disagreement,
but for the most part, you're going to find the
vast majority look at someone smiling and associate that with happiness.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Yeah, I think there's some nuance in there, depending on
where you are. Interestingly, they did find that people smile
more in countries that have a lot of immigration as
a whole, Countries that are like the United States, that
are formed from people from all over the world.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Melting pot, yeah, like.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Brazil is another one, And some researchers have put out
and make sense to me that, like, Yeah, when you
have a bunch of people living in a melting pot,
people generally want to get along, so they're probably using
a smile more than you might in a country where
like most people are from there.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Yeah, it's like a nonverbal way of saying like, hey friendly,
I'm friendly too. Great.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, it totally makes sense. I think.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Also this one, I was unsure about countries with low
population densities. They have more room to smile, I don't know,
or they just have fewer other people to deal with.
Those are my two interpretations.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah, I agree, But like you said.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
There are some nuance to the whole thing. In East Asia,
specifically in Japan and China, they basically emphasize the eyes
like that's where the smile lay in action unit six
me essentially, and they don't even apparently use the curved
(22:55):
line for a smile on their emoticons. It's just the
eyes as triangles, basically simulating action unit six.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, that's kind of fun. Another thing that smiling conveys,
or at least I don't know if it conveys it,
but people take it this way is they find people
not only happier but more competent and attractive generally when
they're smiling.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Sure, give me a smile, baby.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah exactly. Oh no, no, don't say that.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
In twenty fifteen, there was a study that showed photographs
of people with different expressions to forty four different cultures
around the world, and they found that like in China
and Germany and Egypt, they associated a smile with intelligence,
but in Japan, France, and Iran, I guess I'm on
that sort of a sound they thought it meant or
(23:42):
at the least they correlated it with lower intelligence.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Like they think you look dippy if you have a
big smile in those countries.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I guess it depends on the person in the smile, sure,
Like kletis the slack jawed yokels big toothy smile, Like
I could see that.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Yeah, what's interesting too, is there's different different countries or
cultures have agreed at different periods of time too, as
we'll see.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Should we take a break.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Let's take a break, because I think that was one
of the best cliffhangers we've ever come up with.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
For sure, we'll be right back, so Chuck.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
We're onto the history part. Shout out to Colin Jones,
who wrote a really good article on aon. He was
the author of the book Smile Revolution Colon in eighteenth
century Paris. I've never seen a colon be more useless
than the one Colin Jones put into his book title.
But regardless, this Aon article was super helpful.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Yeah, I mean, are you talking about, like portrait painting.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
The whole darn thing, buddy, Like, basically the progress of smile,
the smile being acceptable in Western culture. It traces a
pretty long heritage and it's had its ups and downs essentially.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah, Like, I definitely I mean, it makes sense, but
I never knew that like portraits being so serious, like
painted portraits, was because it's you can't make a realistic
looking smile, because smiling again is something ideally that's happening spontaneously,
and you can't hold that while you're sitting for a portrait.
(25:41):
So that's the reason why all those portraits for so many,
you know, hundreds and thousands of years, we're just more
serious looking.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, because you can just be like, hurry up, I
know it's no good. Yeah, that is pretty interesting too.
I guess we talked about something like that and the
orthodonics episode because I think also there was just like
you just didn't show your teeth, like that was just etiquette.
There was a manual for boys, an etiquette manual that
(26:11):
said that decorum forbids you to allow your teeth to
be uncovered, since nature gave us lips to conceal them.
And I saw also that there was this general idea
that if you were going to laugh, okay, we'd rather
you don't, but if you're going to laugh silently and
laugh with your mouth closed. And there's a painting from
sixteen twenty four by Franz Hall's called the laughing Cavalier
(26:35):
that if you want to see what that looks like,
it's that, and it looks like essentially a smug half
smile that's apparently laughing in the seventeenth century.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Yeah, I mean, if you look at old yearbooks, you know,
people didn't start smiling till later. You know, teeth were
fairly janky for a while. And it's theorized that it's
just a holdover from the portrait painting days, right where
if you sat for a portrait, and then later in
photography it's just a more formal sort of thing. It's
(27:04):
not a candid and so you don't just sit there
and flash a big smile. But people started doing that eventually,
I did.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Who helped us with this one, Livia did.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Yeah, Libya saw some research that said that early photography too,
like long exposures, people couldn't hold a smile, But I
kind of called bunk on that.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
I've seen that online.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
But by the eighteen fifties and sixties, it was only
a few seconds of exposure, like the cameras were good
enough for that. So I think it had more to
do with the holdover. It just wasn't something that people did,
like smiling like a dope, and a painting or a
picture was just untoward.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Yeah, like you said, smiling like a dope. Basically, in Europe,
for hundreds and hundreds of years, smiles were associated with
you being immature, you being drunk, you being insane, and
like that's just that was a way you depicted people,
was showing them smiling and like a painting, and the
viewer would know what you were showing was maybe like
(28:01):
a patient in an asylum or somebody who was meant
to be drunk or something like that. That was the
only way you would show it. And in the United States,
at least, it wasn't until the nineteen thirties when people
started actually smiling for photographs, and it really took off
after that because of advertising ads for cameras that basically said, hey,
(28:22):
you should smile with a picture. What's your problem? Just
go ahead and smile. Don't you know it takes more
muscles to frown than to smile.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Yeah, yeah, they're like, buy the new codec so you
can capture your dower grandmother and all her majesty exactly.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
But there was that. Did you mention the yearbook study?
Speaker 3 (28:42):
No, not a study just that in yearbooks, like it
took a while for that to catch on.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Right, Yeah, some study basically tracked it, and then I guess,
like I said, by the thirties it really started to
take off. And then by the fifties. This is anecdotal,
but just from watching Happy Days, yearbook photos essentially became
big goof grints because just imagine like Ralph mauf or
POTSI having like a solemn look in their yearbook photo.
You can't do it.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah, I mean, I don't have a ton of pictures
of my parents growing up, but I think I do
have like the college portraits of their yearbooks, and they're
both smiling ish and those.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Yeah, there's I have one picture of my parents, I think,
right before I was born, and they're smiling, and he's
like a portrait they're smiling at each other. My dad looks, goofy.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Should we talk about types of smiles?
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Boy?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
You really had me on on an edge there. So Ekman,
the guy the you know psychologists that I was talking
about the study a lot about smiles. He talked about
identifying a real, genuine enjoyment smile because of the eyes,
those dushen markers and that's what we kind of said
early on, is that a lot of research is found
(30:01):
that like the real genuine smiles is in the eyes,
but you can still fake.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
That, right, But he said that in a real smile,
like this is why I'm like, I'm holding out hope
that there is a smile that cannot be voluntarily replicated.
Ekman said, in a true Duchen smile, the eye cover
fold between your eyebrow and the eyelid or the top
of your eyelid that actually goes downward a little bit
(30:29):
and then the ends of your eyebrows dip down with
it a little bit. You can't do that on your own.
You can't do that. Like I'm having to pull my
face right now to make myself do that.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
And so next time you're on a blind date, if
you're trying to figure out if they are truly truly
enjoying and smiling, just stare as hard as you can
at the eye cover fold and see what it reveals.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Bring a caliper with you so you can take accurate
measurements of the width of the eye cover ful.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
That's right, full of categorized smiles over the years, because
they you know, Some are just for joy, but a
lot of smiles have purposes, like you were talking about earlier,
like hey, it's cool here, like we just want to
get out alive.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
There is the reward smile, which is very I engaged
and offers the feedback to your conversation partner of like
like hey, I'm liking what you're laying down here.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, hey my eyes are up here.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
There's affiliate of smiles that show friendliness. These are the
ones you'll flash a stranger at the grocery store, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, like if you're from the second sneak.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Up behind you and club you with a giant bottle
of wine.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
There's dominant smiles too, which man essentially like the lip
will be lifted a little bit. Usually it's asymmetrical. I
think it's one of those ones where like you just
know if you've been smiled at with the dominant smile,
because you just have a bad taste in your mouth
all of a sudden.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Eckmun identified eighteen smiles. We're I'm gonna go through all those,
but I think we should talk about did you want
to No, I think we should talk about a couple
of them. One of my favorites is the miserable smile.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Yea.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
It is usually asymmetrical and layered on layered on top,
and it usually follows a negative expression, so it's trying
to convey like you're not trying to hide that you're
unhappy and you're just accepting what's happening. So I would
act that out as the smile, like, well, I guess
this is happening now.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yes, I would chalk the current reigning champ of the
Miserable smile. As far as Hollywood goes up to the actor.
I don't know her name, but she was in I
Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore. She was
the star of that. She played Leonardo DiCaprio's wife, and
don't look up. She's good at that. Okay, have you
(32:56):
not seen I Don't Feel at Home in this World Anymore? Know?
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Was that a movie or a TV show?
Speaker 2 (33:02):
It was a movie. It was an indie movie. Toby Maguire, Frodo,
I'm sorry, Frodo.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
He was in it with her, Olga would Oh, you're
Melanie Lensky.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
She's the best.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Okay, yes her, Thank you for coming up with that
that movie is definitely worth seeing. It's a great indie movie.
It's good.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Oh, I'll check that out. I love both of them,
especially like her. She's wonderful. She's married to Jason Ritter.
No way, yeah, great, one of the great couples.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Okay, good, I.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Mean Hollywood couples. You know, they're usually phonies. They seem
pretty real.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Yeah, because there I always have that miserable smile.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
That's right. What other smiles, Josh, what's your favorite?
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Oh, miserable smiles My favorite too.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
The embarrassment smile I think is kind of funny. Oh, yeah,
because it's just so involuntary. Yeah, like if you imagine
somebody actually doing this, it's hard to do, and it
kind of makes you appreciate what actors do, like just
how hard it is to be a good actor, because
you might be called upon to do an embarrassment smile
where you're embarrassed and you smile. It's kind of usually
(34:07):
like just barely tilted up, your lips are pressed together,
and you're looking downward, maybe even to the side a
little bit, and it's just so quick and just so
you just can't stop yourself. You just do an embarrassment smile,
and everybody's like, oh, it's okay, except for that one
guy who's got the dominant smile because you just showed
that you're embarrassed. Yeah, and now he knows that you're
(34:29):
a mark.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Yeah, that's how those embarrassment smile.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
All right, Well, you know what, let's take a break
and I'm going to cover my favorite, last favorite smile
right after this. I know our timing is just all
wonky on this and this because we're having fun, so
we'll be right back with my favorite smile. All right, everybody,
(35:10):
I'm just gonna call this the William H. Macy in
his office in Fargo smile when Fran McDermott meets him
for the first time. It's that smile. It's the coordination smile,
and a coordination smile indicates cooperation and acknowledgment. Slightly asymmetrical
and it's sort of slight. But Bill Macy in that
(35:33):
scene with the yeah, we'll just we'll do.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
A lot count.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
We'll just shoot those numbers right on over to you.
So like he's coordinating, he's showing cooperation, but it's still
kind of phony.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Oh, it's sort of a business smile.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Almost he's great at that though too. Yeah, and it
also has like I'm just so pathetic, like don't you
can't even question me, like like just overlook me?
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Kind of Yeah, do you know that movie is ninety
minutes long?
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Man, we need to get back to that. Anything two
hours are over means that the producers did not ring
the director in. No.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
I agree movies are too bloated now. And if anyone
ever makes it, like if a director would to make
an argument that we really need that, I would just
say Fargo and walk out of the room.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yeah, and that's that's all you need to say. Yeah,
I've been watching some nineties and eighties movies and they're
definitely like ninety minutes. It's all it takes. That's all
it should take. I saw fifty two pickup recently.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Oh who was.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
That Roy Scheider and Ann Martinetz.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
That's right, that's right, good movie.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
It was all right.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
I love Roy Schiter.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
It was much more hardcore than it makes you think
it's going to be in the first like fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
Because you thought it was about cards and just like
throwing them on playing that game.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Right, just an hour and a half of that, Uh, huh,
I've got one more smile, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
All right, let's hear it.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
The uncanny smile.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Oh okay, so you're talking about they made a whole
movie franchise around that.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah, smile right, that's exactly what I'm talking about. It
was also the Ghost Family and Insidious the first one. Yeah,
they all had that uncanny smile. Jack Nicholson might have
been the progenitor of the whole thing. In the Shining
when he's got that smile where he's like, look here,
he's looking like over, he's looking at his chins down,
(37:18):
but his eyes are up and he's got that crazy
smile on his face.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah, it's very unsettling.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
It is. That's the uncanny smile, and it will haunt
your dreams.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Okay. I didn't know if you had any science behind it.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
I looked and I couldn't find anything. The most I
could find was that it was contextually wrong, right, and
that it kind of set our brains on edge from that,
and then also if you really now that you kind
of know about the facial coding system, if you look
at it, the AU six is definitely not an effect
because the eyes are usually staring while there's this shage
(37:53):
grin and that is not a normal combination.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
Yeah. I mean, I think what's important there doesn't need
to be science as long as everyone agrees that it's
scary for movies.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah, what else, buddy, Oh, I think we've reached the
best part.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Does smiling make us happy?
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (38:11):
So you know, like I said, we did a full
episode on this, but that's that was three years in
and I don't think we were very good at that point.
So hopefully this will be better. I was approved by.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
This episode today. Right, This was a throwback, wasn't it. Yeah,
we should have gone for the second ad break right
before we went to a listener mail. Yeah. So the
idea that smiling makes us feel happier apparently traces itself
back to Darwin. Yeah, and Darwin was big into smiling.
(38:42):
He saw facial expressions in general as a evidence of
vestigial behavior that we had from like our primate ancestors. Right, Yeah,
And there there have been tons of studies to find
out if that's true, and they've come back with like
mixed results. Some of them are like meaned of maybe,
but others are like nah, I don't know about that.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Yeah, it's a tough thing to test, because what they
do is like they have different methodologies. One of the
early ones, I think was from nineteen eighty eight, and
they said, you know, they put a pin in your
mouth like sideways, which will you know, make sort of
a fake assimilation of a smile.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
I guess, well, that's if you have the pen sticking
out of your mouth straight between your teeth.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
No, really, no, no, no, I thought it was. I
thought they would put it sideways so it would make
your lips out. You're saying, they just hold it in
your teeth like a cigarette.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Yes, in the middle of your mouth. That'll make you smile.
And then if you put it like in between, like sideways,
that makes you frown. Huh not anybody you got a penhandy, Well.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
I'll do it and I'll text it to you. No, now,
I'll make your.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Research it you send me a screen shot.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Well, either way, if you hold that pin between their teeth,
they will then ask you questions like you like are
you happy? Are you not happy? Stuff like that, and
like look at this thing, does this make you happy?
Speaker 1 (40:07):
And I guess that's.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Supposed to indicate that, like if your mouth is forced
into a smile, that you'll be happier. That just it
didn't make sense to me.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, that's that's the study. That's what they study is
just like if you can if the facial feedback that
you're getting showing that you're smiling, that it can happen
in the reverse rather than smiling because you're happy, If
you make yourself smile, can that make you happy? Right?
And that one, that first nineteen eighty eight study. To
keep people from knowing that they were being tested about smiling,
(40:39):
they taught they told them that they were they were
testing out new methods to help disabled people, right, who
didn't who didn't have arms, So they were trying to
figure out ways to help them write so that people.
That's what they thought they were doing. And then they said, here,
check out this cartoon. Is this funny or not? And
I guess all of the cartoons were ziggy, so every
(41:00):
one thought they were funny, but the people who were
making the smiles thought they were funnier than everybody.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Wow, all right, that got way more interesting once I
knew how they lied.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yeah, they definitely lied for sure. Never trust a researcher.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
This one from twenty twenty four carries a little more
weight for me, because it's not just sticking a pin
in someone's mouth. A psychologist named Sebastian Korb of the
University of Essexon did a thing where he ran a
little electric current into those fast twitched muscles which forced
like a smile to happen for just like a half
a second, and then they assessed whether a like a
(41:38):
digital image of a face looked happy. So apparently when
they had douce those tiny little smiles, people were more
likely to identify a neutral face as happy.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Yeah. And the big failing of all of these studies
is that they go social psychology at the end, like
are you happy? Do you feel happy? Is this comic funny?
Is this neutral face happy? And it just becomes so
subjective and self reporting that it's the jury's still out.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
I think, yeah, there is my comedian?
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Am I making you laugh?
Speaker 2 (42:09):
What? Am I a clown? Do? I amuse you?
Speaker 1 (42:12):
I just watched that again the other night.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
What is that? Good Fellas?
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (42:17):
I mean it's still great. You know it's not great?
Is the aviator? Because I mentioned that in the Howard
Hughes episode. I just watched the Howard Hughes in Vegas bit.
But I had recently seen the Scorsese documentary series and
I was like, you know, I should watch all of
the Aviator.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
It's not one of his best.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
No, I know. It didn't get a lot of praise. Yeah,
it was two and a half hours long, too, wasn't it?
Speaker 3 (42:39):
It was pretty long. It was not ninety minutes.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
I'll tell you.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
There is one more intervention about smiling make you happy.
It's from Dialectical Behavior Therapy DBT okay, and it employs
the half smile, and it essentially tells you to make
a little smile so that you know you're smiling, but
that you look like crazy to other people. Right, So
other people can't really tell. They might see that you
(43:05):
might look slightly different and maybe a little more approachable
than you normally would with a BRF. But it has
been shown again anecdotally that it actually does increase your
your sense of positivity. I know that sounds hippy dippy,
but I believe it actually works.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
What's BRF.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Be resting face?
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Oh? Okay, I always heard I've never heard it in
that order.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Uh, what do you hear?
Speaker 1 (43:32):
It is?
Speaker 3 (43:33):
RBF?
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Man? I am off today we're going to edit that
part out too.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
I think you're doing great. This is a capital episode.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Let's see. Oh there's one other thing too. One more
stuf's here and again. Social psychologists take it with a
grain of salt, but they found that service employees who
have to engage in surface acting, meaning like part of
your job is smiling and seeming happy whether you are
or not, tend to be heavier drinkers than people outside
(44:03):
of the service industry. That's sad, it is, and that
explains why hotel reception people are constantly blotto. If you've
ever noticed, when you check in, they are wasted to
a person. That's why, because they're forced to smile.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
That's right, makes sense. You got anything else, man, I
got nothing else.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
This was great, new and improved smiling happiness episode.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
It was new.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Okay. I guess that means it's time for listener mate.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Might as well finish this one with a correction, you know.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Yeah, I think we should. Hey guys from twenty eleven, first.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Time corrector here.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
No.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
I wanted to say we love the immense amount of
work you put into educating so many people and so
many topics for so long. My partner and I are
so excited to see your live show in Ottawa, Ontario. Yeah,
capital of the Great White and North. And yeah, it's
probably a good time to mention we're going to six
different places in Canada in June and July and we're
super excited. We're trying to move some more tickets in
(45:06):
a couple of these, specifically Montreal. So if you're in
and around Montreal, I mean, this is it, this is
your shot.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
We'd love to see you there.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Yeah, yeah, all right, So quick email guys about the
a minor historical mix up in the Hindenburg disaster episode.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Josh.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
One of you stated, thank you check that the US
ace Eddie Rickenbacker took out German ace the Red Baron,
Manfred von Richtofen.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
But that's not the case. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
The Red Baron was killed on April twenty first, nineteen eighteen,
over the Soalmme. He was loaded the ground chasing an
inexperienced Canadian pilot, Lieutenant Wilfrid May. Canadian Royal Air Force
pilot Captain Arthur Roy Brown drove steeply to defend May
and fired at the Baron's Spoker triplane. While Brown was
officially credited with the kill. Modern ballistics, medical exams and
(45:57):
historians favor the theory that the fatal bullet came from
Australian ground troops who saw them coming. Specifically, it's widely
believed to have been fired by Sergeant Cedric Popkin or
gunners Robert Buey and William Snowy Evans, as Rick Doopin
flew dangerously low over Allied lines. As for Eddie Rickenbacker,
(46:18):
he didn't even see active aerial combat until April nineteen eighteen,
the very month the Red Baron died.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
So, I mean, I'm not a crackpot, right, Like that's
what we've been taught all these years that Eddie Rickenbacker
took out the Red Baron.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Right, I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
This isn't like a Jacqueline Bessett Jacqueline Smith type thing.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
I have no idea because I don't I'm not steeped
in that kind of stuff. Like if you say red Baron,
I think of Snoopy.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
I do too, But I'm saying like, I've never done
any World War One flying ace research. This was literally
taught to me in school as far as I can recall.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
Well, hey, I believe that I'm just saying, I just
don't recall.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
Well, that's funny, so I wonder who really, who really
did it? Because Australia's got their people, Canada's got their people.
We have our people. Who knows.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
Yeah, my money's on Snowy Evans.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Okay, I think that's great. I'll put my money on
Snowy too. Sorry, Rick and Bucker.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Yeah, and that's anonymous.
Speaker 3 (47:17):
By the way, that was a guy and his partner
who were big history buffs.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
I'm not sure why it was anonymous. There's nothing.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
I guess they just don't what their name said. So
that's I guess we'll see the anonymous people in Ottawa.
They'll be out there with sacks over their heads.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Yeah for sure, Thank you Anonymous. Yeah that wasn't so controversial,
but well, okay, we'll definitely always respect your privacy. We'll
respect your privacy too. If you write to us and
you're like, do not read my name, we will never
do that.
Speaker 3 (47:45):
You know what I bet it is is they don't
want to be outed as going to that show because
they told their friends, so they don't really like that
wanted to go with them that they weren't going.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Oh ouch, I'll bet you're right. Yeah, Or some friend
asked them to move or drive them to the airport
and they're like, we're going to out of town.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Yeah, we're having a painting party.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Let's see. Well, I guess that's it. And if you oh,
like I was saying, if you want to be like anonymous,
and even if you want to remain anonymous, send us
an email. Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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