March 5, 2019 • 46 mins
ASMR is soothing to some, maddening to others. Learn all about these whisper tones in today's episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there
eating god knows what for lunch. And this is stuff
you should know, the Jerry's Lunch edition about SMR. And
(00:23):
that's the addition that everyone loves the best. Yes, you're
doing so good, Chuck. I'm sure zero people had an
a s m R experience just now. Well, let's I mean,
I need to know. Do you know do you get
the tingles? No? Not either. I don't even think I
(00:44):
could put myself in that position where I'd be like, like, stop,
stop touching the camera that's supposed to be my face.
Not comfortable. I watched a bunch of these just to see.
You know, you have to dive in head first and
really get a sense. And uh, I had a hard time.
I'm sitting there for too long. Even I might have
the opposite effect. Yes, there's a very good question that
(01:08):
I wrote at the end. Why not be freaked out
by this? Why do the exact opposite and enter a euphoric,
meditative state. It's a very bizarre, really interesting thing, and
not bizarre in any kind of weird like, look at
these weirdos, I want to poke them in the in
the net kind of thing. It's more like it's a genuinely,
(01:29):
legitimately bizarre and if we can figure it out, it'll
unlock a whole other corridor to the brain that we
didn't really know existed. Yeah, so in true stuff, you
should know fashion A lot of you have no idea
what we're talking about. UM A s MR stands for autonomous,
is how you say it. I went with autonomous autonomous
(01:51):
I think so, I think you're probably right, autonomous sensory
meridian response, which sounds very clinical. Yeah, and we'll we'll
we'll get to that. But I think everyone needs to
know what it is, uh, and what it is is
uh generally a video that you will watch online, although
(02:13):
it's really just sounds, but the way they present themselves
these days or audio clips and video clips, it's and
it's not just sounds, it's it's also closeness is a
big part of it too. Uh. Okay, but it's it's
a sound. It's a response to sounds that some people
get and some people don't. UM A tingling sensation in
(02:35):
the head moves down the neck. Uh. Some people call
it like a tickle. Some people call it like a
head orgasm or brain orgasm, a tickle in your skull. Yeah,
So then that is triggered by hearing certain sounds like
whispering voices or seeing repetitive motions is another one too. Yeah,
(02:56):
but I think I get For my research, I found
that it was mostly sound and that the visual component
is just by virtue of the fact that a lot
of these are on YouTube. Is that So I got
that from that too. But I also saw that in
one of these UM surveys that said that slow movements
UM accounted for triggering for of the participants. So yeah, men,
(03:18):
seems significant, But I get what you're saying, Like it
does seem like the sounds are far and away, like
the crux of the whole thing. Yeah, and they're all
different kinds of sounds. Like the best way to really
it's hard to describe, is to really just go listen
to one real quick. UM. It always includes whispering, and
I think that's my biggest turn off. A lot of
the other sounds are fine and pleasing to me, they
(03:41):
don't give me the tingle, But they're relaxing, but I
don't like someone whispering in my ear. I don't like that.
I've determined that that is basically what you're going to
get with a SMR videos is somebody whispering in what
seems like your ear. Yeah, I have personal triggers for
that from my childhood. I think pleasant ones no unpleasant,
(04:03):
which is why i'd have an aversion to it now.
So I might be an parents. No, I don't want
to talk about it, but it's uh, it's it's I
think I might be an l lier. I don't know.
I definitely don't get the tinkles. I don't get the
tinkles either, And it's not I don't want to say
like it's a ingreat. Well, it's not a huge aversion
to it, but I'm not like, I don't like it.
(04:26):
I'm not big into it. How about that when I
was watching and that lady was whispering too much, I
literally had to rip the earbuds out of my ears.
Oh wow, that's a real aversion. But some of the sounds,
like the tinking of a glass or that's another one.
Stuff like that was okay. It's specifically the whispering that
doesn't jibe with my ears, understood, So if you're if
(04:46):
you're still kind of sitting there going huh. Put another way,
some sounds and possibly some sites actually trigger a really
unusual sensation in people where they feel like it's one.
One woman described it um kind of like sparkles or
fireworks going off in your head on your scalp. The
(05:06):
strongest one, and this is really really significant to the
strongest version of an a SMR experience will leave you
feeling exhausted and pleasantly tired, satisfied, she said, like you're
just like you just had some sort of climax of sorts, right,
But we want to point out and we'll get into
(05:28):
it more later. This is not for the vast majority
of people who experience this. This is not um sexual
in any way. It's sensual, but it's not sexual. It's
something entirely different. And it's also not what's called freezon,
which is getting the chills when you hear like an
amazing piece of music or something really incredible has happened art, right,
(05:52):
that'll give you the chill bumps. So it's not that,
and it's not sexual. It's its own thing that we're
just now starting to realize is its own thing. Yeah,
and it's pretty new as far as people talking about
it and trying to define it. Um. Obviously, if this
is a a real thing, that it has been around
(06:13):
forever most likely, but no one ever knew. You know,
maybe someone in the seventeenth century was like whenever they
got whispered to, they got a head tingle. And maybe
back then their response might have been to turn around
and like bludgeon somebody with a you know, if it
was you, if you have a hug them, thank you
(06:33):
for that. Back then they may not have wanted to relax,
like this is making me feel relaxed. I must kill
you know, stay on the edge like al Pacino and heat. Sure.
Why um, but that that that grouping of words is
very recent. A woman named Jennifer Allen Um. She she
coined the term. She is the person that made up
(06:55):
those words. After Yeah, after about a decade of looking
for other people who experienced a s m R what
would come to be called a s m R. UM,
I guess we're not for the internet. People would still
be walking around either assuming that everybody experiences this and
not talking about it, or thinking that they were the
(07:16):
only one and not talking about it, And were it
not for Jennifer Allen, it might have we still might
not be talking about it. But she sought out some
other people who are experiencing this because she recognized it
as a usual and she found a thread on a
forum called Steady Health and there are people talking about
She said, hey, let's move this to Facebook. That's what
(07:36):
people do these days because that's a non judgmental place
where everybody can get along. So let's just create a
Facebook page. So she did in two and she I
think that year the next year came up with this
term autonomous sensory meridian response. Totally made up, completely made up,
but every scientific term is made up at one point
(07:57):
by somebody, normally by scientists. She is a cybersecurity expert, Yeah,
which is fine. Like, like she did it to um
to basically give it credence enough so that people could
start talking about it without without it being like just
some weird, fringy things. She's trying to start a legitimate conversation,
so it worked like a charm. It's a good name.
(08:18):
I mean that's what scientists call it now, all right,
it's good enough. Yeah, Like she definitely secured her place
in history is the the person who coined the term
autonomous sensory meridium response. So, uh, all right, I guess
let's talk about it. It's it's a very personal experience
for people. Um, No one, no two people will experience
(08:41):
the same feeling or from the same triggers. I love
this one guy, Um from the BBC. They were talking
about how like, why is it? Why are we hearing
about this now? And you're exactly right, it's because of
the Internet. Even a very small um percentage of the
population that experience something like this collected on a Facebook
(09:03):
site or on YouTube seems all of a sudden, like
a lot of folks, And it is a lot of folks, yeah,
but not compared to the population at large, right, So
proportionately speaking, this seems to be it seems to be
just a very small proportion of of people in general
who experienced a s MR. Like I don't you experienced
anti a s MR. Apparently, Jerry, you Jerry a SMR. No,
(09:27):
she did the head cut off thing too. But there
are people, I guarantee there are people out there listening
right now who are like, oh, I've heard of this,
but I've never tried it, who will go try it
and find out that they actually do experience as mr
and will probably email us and be like, thank you
so much for introducing me to that. Jerry's reaction, though,
does it seem more like, Uh, don't bother me with
(09:50):
this right now, unless like, no, I have tried it
and not experienced it. Yes, it was a please just
keep podcasting guys. It was I meaning God knows what
sign continue. Um. So the uh, the writer of this article,
um got it a little bit wrong here, uh, And
(10:10):
that they said it's not something that just randomly randomly
happens in your daily life. These sounds that is not
true at all. They absolutely happen in everyday life. And
that's how people know that. They get this response. And
then the A S. M Artists, the people on YouTube
that actually perform, is that what you would say? They
(10:33):
they replicate these sounds that you do here in everyday
life that give you these triggers. So you don't have
to go to the barber and get a scalp massage
every day. You can just go on to YouTube and
get the same effect. Yeah, like you may have just
you may be in your break room and you hear
someone tapping on a glass bottle, and all of a sudden,
you're sculpted. Tingles goes down your neck, into your shoulders,
(10:56):
down your spine, and you are met with a feeling
of euphoric meditation in relief. And then everyone in the
break room is like, geez, Gary, where did you go? Uh?
And then Gary can go home and just watch videos
of Zoe Kravitz doing it in the Super Bowl commercial.
So let's let's take a break and then we'll come
(11:18):
back and talk about YouTube and how it's completely opened
up the a s m R community. Okay, let's do
it alright, Chuck um. So, like we said, without the Internet,
(11:52):
we might not have a name for this, we might
not be talking about it right now, and definitely well
we wouldn't even have a podcast, so sure that's true.
We'd be out on the street court and being like
here read this, um. The Without YouTube though, a SMR
would would not be anywhere like where it is right now,
because it allows anybody to to make an a s
(12:14):
m R video, And honestly, anybody with a decent type
mix and a mind to do it can make a
SMR videos and they have I saw somewhere that there's
something like seventeen million a s MR videos on YouTube
right now. Yeah, but I mean I would disagree though,
you you there is some skill involved, right, Like if
I went to go make one, it would be terrible
(12:36):
and not elicit any tingles. I didn't mean to diminish
the skill involved. I meant to say, like, because YouTube
democratizing uh entry to like performances to people you've never
even met, that's that's opened the door for a s MR.
Anyone with a skill for doing so can yeah, or
a desire to. Yeah, yeah, but it does take skill,
(12:56):
I think. So. Yeah, you can't just be like you
can't just shout all of a sudden or like lunge
of people at the camera. What are you wearing? You're
like no, like maybe like sharpening a knife on a
stone while you're staring into the camera. That probably not help. No,
that's a different YouTube channel, right it is, But I'll
bet it's out there, um, and there is. It's not
(13:17):
just YouTube obviously. If you go to any of the audio, um,
they're probably a SMR podcasts. I'm sure there's a ton
of them. But SoundCloud in all these other places to
aggregate sound files. There are tens of thousands of them, yes,
and um, they are extraordinarily varied and what what they are,
(13:37):
what you're going to see, what you're going to hear.
I saw one that was pretty great. It was a
woman eating taco bell. No talking, just strictly eating taco bell.
But it was cute, like she comes along and she's
like and like makes this face like oh, a table
full of taco bell and just starts proceeding to like
unwrap it and eat it. And then the real kid
(14:00):
girl And this is what made a s MRI as heck.
Um there the her throat was miked, so not only
did you hear the crunch of the taco, you heard
the chewing like there was a mic in her mouth,
and then you heard the gulping from the swallow every bite.
That's a weird a SMR video though usually they're not
like that. This was a s m R because that's
(14:22):
a I mean, there's another what's the disorder, not disorder,
but what's the condition people? Yeah, like that's a nightmare
off a mesa phoniac. Yeah, this is straight for them
because usually it's some sort of a soothing sound, not
the gullet washing down cheap beef. But no, I've seen
(14:43):
rainforest fed bee. Um. I've seen other ones where it's
like it was a girl drinking like from a half
gallon bottle of water with a law of mike up
against her throat and it was just gold. Gold Like
that is a thing on a s MAR. No, But
on YouTube, does that mean like would the real a
(15:05):
s MR, Like I guess you could call them experts,
would they say, yeah, that's a s MR. Or would
they say, no, that's someone that just threw that tag
up there that has nothing to do with a you know,
I think what they would say is from what we
understand about a s MR. Now who knows that is
probably something that could trigger an a s m R
(15:26):
experience and somebody ergo, it's a s m R. It's
that wide and varied, which we'll get to an explanation
for that at the big reveal. Okay, but if you
go on to YouTube, there's a bunch of um different
variety to it. There's also some through lines that you're
going to see or here in just about any a
s MR video though, Yeah, whispers like we've talked about
(15:49):
uh binaural recording, which is that's the one part of
it I do like I enjoy binaural recordings and being
able to hear, you know, And they always recommend head
phones better, the best headphones you can afford. Yeah, but
to hear, uh, I mean that's why I love the
Beatles so much. Like to hear sound going from left
to right is pleasing to me. Hearing a good slide
(16:11):
whistle go all the way through your skull, fingers, tapping
crisp sounds, that's a big one. Yeah, like scissors. Yeah,
there's a lot of barbershop stuff. This one lady I
watched was doing this uh thing right and she would
do it in the left and then the right, and
I just wanted to throw my computer out the window. Yeah,
(16:33):
because it's another thing too, Like very frequently it's just
a person, typically a woman, also typically wearing like a
low cut shirt. Yeah. We'll get into that too, okay. Um,
and the and the mics, and they're not trying to
hide that. She like she's playing with the mic, like
maybe like tapping it or doing what you were just
(16:55):
doing into it, or rubbing it or something like that,
creating sounds or talk king into it. Soothing, whispering words
of affirmation, calming words. That part makes a little more
sense to me. Um. But the point is is that
it's binural binural recording, so it's like three D stereo,
(17:15):
so it sounds like you're right there, like it's being
spoken right into your ear. And they'll some very frequently
be a mike for each ear and she will go
or he There are some guy A S m R
channels go from mike to mike and ear to ear.
So it's pretty interesting to watch because it's like you
you get to see how the sausage is made, you know,
(17:39):
which is unusual. You'd think it would just be just podcasting,
like but I think from from what I understand, that's
part of it. Seeing like the fingers like move like that, um,
like just kind of tapping in a certain way as
kind of meditative and relaxing. Well, the like I mentioned before,
the brake Zoe Kravitz, Um, it was very big deal
(18:00):
with super Bowl commercial, put it on the map more
than ever before because all of a sudden, you know, uh,
I don't know however, many hundred or million people watch
the super Bowl, but a lot of people that have
no idea what this is. We're exposed to it for
the first time with Zoe Kravitz on a at a
desk on a mountaintop, tapping on a beer bottle and
(18:21):
pouring a beer and speaking into the left and right mix.
And I think the reaction by a lot of folks
that know what the deal is is like, oh interesting.
They put a SMR on the Super Bowl or the
Big Game, and then people were like, what in the
heck is that girl doing? I wonder if anyone was
well assume, so there were probably a lot of dudes
(18:45):
and their recliners that were liking, I don't know what's happening.
It's kind of like finding out you get seesuars by
watching that one episode of Pokemon, right, you know, it's
good time to realize that there's a couple other um
things you'll find too. It's apecially like um role playing.
You'll see role playing a lot in these videos. Yeah. Well,
(19:05):
the one lady I saw look like she was sort
of performing as a nurse might m hm, So I
don't know if that counts as role playing. Was that
um Maria from gent Whisper Gentle Whispering. Maybe they kind
of all ran together for me. So she is the
like the the most popular a s MR artist or
(19:29):
a SM artist around. I think she has like one,
like one point six million subscribers. And she does a
lot of role playing where she will pretend and it's
not just her, there's others that do this too. But
rather than just sitting there messing with a mic or something,
she's got like a whole little set where it looks
like you are getting an eye exam in an optometrists office,
(19:53):
and but the optometrist is whispering to you the whole time,
and it's telling you how great you're doing at this
I X and you're doing so good it's so strange
to me. Let's see how these fit. And here's another
thing about role playing too, is it's meant to be
p o V. So the camera is your eyes. So
the the A s M artist will be messing like
(20:15):
around the camera, like putting the glasses like they're they're
putting them on you. So they're whispering and they're touching
you lightly, and they're they're speaking words of like encouragement
and affirmation to you. And this supposedly is like the
big one. This is the ones that like that that
make it feel like it's fireworks and make people feel
(20:36):
like satisfied afterwards, like from this, what wave of you four?
Your wash over them? See I see that and listen
to it, and I think I'm running out of that
Optometros office as fast as my little legs can care.
But that's that's the hilarious thing. Like if you step
back and imagine, like an actual real world experience like
(20:56):
this should be like is there something wrong with you?
It's like why are you whispering? Dude? But that's yeah.
But apparently if you experience a SMR, that would be
your dream, like, oh my god, a real and tell
me how good these glasses look on me? Well, they're
just kind of messing with my side burns a little bit.
Oh so interesting, It is very interesting. It is all
(21:17):
generally intended to relax someone, uh and introduce what's known
as a state of flow, which is you know you've
heard about artists and musicians and created Yeah, sure, athletes
getting in that state of flow. It's almost like, uh,
it's really just lebron kind of kind of like a
runner's high maybe where uh or if you're creative, things
(21:40):
are just you've opened yourself up and you're channeling creative
energy to cross hatchings is coming right out of your pencil.
That's just and I'm not making fun of that. I've
I've gotten into states of flow for surely. Gosh, it'd
be so neat to be able to just trigger that
or bring it on likely without thinking. Well, I think
that's why a lot of artists like they try to
(22:01):
get that through drugs and alcohol. Yeah, but that's a
that's a blind alley friend. Yeah, it is so um,
I get you through for a little while, but it's
dead in street and really it's not gonna it's not
gonna bring on the flow. It's gonna it's gonna mislead
you because you'll think you're in the zone, playing amazingly,
and all anybody's here is like, and you're not supposed
(22:24):
to be playing like that, So stay off the drugs.
I guess we should talk a little bit more about
the you know, when you said they might be wearing
low cut shirts and the whole sex thing, Well, a
lot of people see that then see the whispering and
the touching, and they're like, oh, well this is porn
of some sort obviously. Yeah, Like it's I've I watched
(22:44):
a few of the videos, and again, it's not like
like anyone, like you said, anyone can put something up there.
So I'm sure there are some a s M artists
that maybe to get more views, might try and be
more sexually tantalizing. But like there are all kinds of
videos out there and all kinds of people watching them.
Some people may not feel anything sexual at all, and
(23:06):
it's only central most people. Most people. Some people may
masturbate to an a s M R video. Apparently five
percent of them do. Uh well, I guess so. But
for the vast majority of them, the vast majority of
people who experience a s M are they say, no,
it's not for sex, it's this has nothing to do
(23:27):
with sex. It's something totally different, and um, it's just
not sexual. So it's intimate, there's no getting around that. Yeah,
And then it's a huge part of the whole experience
is that it's super intimate, and that maybe what triggers
the whole thing, is that that a threshold of of
intimacy is met and then crossed and then there goes
(23:50):
your fireworks in your skull. Right, Um, I wonder how
this fix a relationship though, Like, I don't know if
someone came home and their husband had a an on
owing everyday thing with this woman on YouTube where she
was stroking the camera lens and whispering in his ear,
I don't know. I could see people. I could see
someone turning to their their spouse or loved one and
(24:12):
be like, Hey, that's not too cool. Yeah, you want
someone to whisper, and you're I'll do it. I'm supposed
to do the whispering or maybe I mean, I could
see it causing problems. I would guess they would have
this follow along the same lines of like whatever problems
pornography would cause, you know, I mean maybe even not
because it is intimate. I could see somebody being like,
(24:32):
I'm okay with the porn, but not the p O
V intimacy of the A S M R. I don't
know what kind of things that would. I could see
it causing problems here there. I mean, I didn't even
see that raised in any article I read. I was
just kinda curious he just raised it. Yeah, But for
the most part, I guess what we're trying to say
is if you're an outsider looking in and you think
this is just porn or some sort of weird sexual
(24:54):
fetish thing. That's not the case for almost all people
who are watching these videos. It's not what it is. Yeah,
those of the same people who think, like, you know,
every massage is that kind of massage, Like, well, no massage,
just to relax your body, to heal your body. I think.
Also one of the reasons why there is great misunderstanding
is because of the use of terms like brain orgasm
(25:16):
or some people call it whisper porn, and so people
are just kind of they're kind of misunderstanding the lingo
a little bit. That doesn't automatically mean sex. It's internet lingo.
Well yeah, and they're all kinds of either articles or
YouTube collections where it's like top five hottest a s
m R chicks, right, That certainly doesn't help their case. Also,
the other thing is a lot of comments will be like, oh, yeah,
(25:39):
it's YouTube super yeah exactly, but um, it's it's possible
and even likely that these aren't actually people experiencing a
s MR. They're just going through YouTube looking for videos
of women with low cut shirts looking into the camera. Yeah,
and its YouTube, and they objectify women in every way
possible because you can post a video of a a
(26:00):
talented um young woman playing the violin and half the
comments will be about her appearance. YouTube does have a
reputation for that, and rightly earned. Should we take another break?
Let's take another break? Man? All right, Chuck? So we
(26:36):
talk about science. Yeah, let's do a little science talk.
There's not much on it. No, the first actual peer
reviewed study of a s MR UM. It was published
as recently as two thousand fifteen from Swansea University or Swansea?
Do you know how to say that? I don't know.
I've always said Swansea, but I just realized I could
(26:56):
be wrong. So let's say that I believe if it's
in the UK. UM, So let's just say Dorchestershire. UM.
They did a puero. Well, a couple of researchers brought
in Davis did a survey of a s MR experiencers,
experiencers and UM just tried to at least do the
(27:17):
most basic foundational groundwork of describing whether UM. And they
did a pretty good job too. You see, this referenced
a lot, not a lot of criticisms of it, but
they found I think like a few hundred. I can't
find the number right now, but they there it was
a decent population size of people who experience a SMR,
(27:39):
and they said, well, why do you do this? Like,
what do you get out of this? Is I probably
the question they asked first, and then problem, what triggers this? Right?
And um, they found that ninety eight percent of people
who watch a s MR videos seek out these experiences
on YouTube do it for relaxation. Almost everybody, Yeah, which
(28:01):
says a lot because again, when you think of this,
um from an outsider's view, you're like, oh, it's arousing,
it's it's titillating. It puts you on edge, like you
know when you hear a music crescendo or something like that.
Apparently it doesn't do that. It gives you tingles. But
it also is meditative and relaxing, which is I've never
experienced anything like that, you know what I mean. So
(28:23):
it's really its own thing. So it's very relaxing. Afterwards,
during massage, do you relax. I don't get massages at all.
I'm too high strung for that. Okay, I don't get
them much at all either. Uh, And I find that
I can I can generally kind of go there and
just like super relax but there's always a bit of
shame and embarrassment for me, which is just dumb. Yeah,
(28:46):
you know, yeah, there's no hold over stuff from my
churchy upbringing, you know. But you can't even go there.
I don't even open that door, like sir of the
the have a wire cable running down your spine is
pretty much I can't seem to to tweak it. Yeah,
but what was the point of the question. Well, I
(29:08):
was just kind of curious because hearing how you were
about feel about a SMR, I was like, just wondering
if you have trouble with any kind of relaxing experience.
I have trouble with all of the relaxing experiences. Okay, yeah,
all right, um, yeah, I'm a little high strung. You know. Well, no,
I know that, I was just I just wanted me
to admit it on Mike. No. I wondered if there
(29:29):
was anything if you were like, yeah, but I do
like a good foot massage. Those are nice, like teet Okay,
there you go, I am. I am for those, but
every once in a while you'll get one in that
like it's the real deal where they dig in to
the arch of your foot. And their thumb basically goes
up to your knee. It was like it hurts, and
(29:50):
it's like a suffering kind of hurt, like like your
fingernail being bent back, like bad hurt. And so I
haven't been back since. Okay, So yeah, no, I don't relax,
I guess, is what I'm trying to say. They're they're
kind of jeremy really, So no, what about just floating
in a pool. Have you ever been in a relaxation tank? No,
(30:10):
that I was wondering that. I've done that a couple
of times. Really neat because it's dark and it's private.
There was one experience, I guess I've done it twice.
Both times you just completely lose track of time to
do this. It's really neat, chuck um. And the first
time I got I lost sensation in my body down
(30:33):
to my central nervous system. So in the water, all
I could feel floating was my brain, my spinal cord,
and some of the major peripheral nerves coming off of
my spinal cord. That was all of my body that
I could feel at that point. Everything else that just
melted into the water and into the darkness because it
is the darkness is complete. There's no light, not even
(30:55):
a chance for light to come in. It just doesn't
exist there. Um, and the ownes are just you're just
in your own world. It's amazing. Yeah see there. Yeah,
all right, I guess I need to get one of
those that buy one just take out a helock and
uh and throw down some money. How much are those?
Do you know? Probably I was thinking over ten million
(31:20):
dollars it might as well be. Uh. So let's get
back to the study that's alongside track, So ninety percent
for relaxation to help them sleep, seventy to deal with stress.
So you see a through line here. Um. And then
they looked at the most common triggers analysis of responses
found four prominent categories experience, each one by over fifty.
(31:46):
So whispering at personal attention at sixty nine. That's a
big deal, it seems like. And what we'll get to
that in a second, because there are a lot of
people that think that has a lot to do with this,
Those people that may not get the kind of intimacy
and attention they neat like there's a separate track of people. Yeah, uh,
what else crisp sounds? Have you ever had a coffee
(32:06):
crisp candy bar. Mm I don't think so. Man good. Yeah,
they have them in Canada. I think you can get
them at like a like a world market. Get one.
I'm gonna get you one. You're gonna love it. Like
coffee stuff, You're gonna love it. And then slow movements,
so that would be a visual queue like folding towels,
(32:27):
repetitive stuff. That's so funny to me. Yeah, I like
repetitive things because I love those. Uh. I've talked a
lot about the like how it's made shows and shows
like the repetitive industrial processes. I think that's like a
SMR show. All right, maybe, but I don't get the tingle.
It just relaxes me, right, and some people do. There's
a lot of people who report feeling relaxed from a
(32:48):
SMR videos, even though they don't have the full experience
where they get like the brain orgasm or anything like that.
But it's still is potentially relaxing. And part of it
is because they're designed to be relaxing. The whispering, the
gentle movements, the like, like all of that stuff. It's
it's designed to relax you. Yeah. I found another study
(33:10):
from the University of Sheffield that, um, that's a Worcester. Yeah.
They they got people that were verified a s MR
experiencers and then people that were not. Um, they did
a bunch of studies, mainly about their heart rate, and
they found that people who did experience a SMR UM
(33:30):
they did have a reduced heartbeat by about three point
two beats per minute. But then they said it was
no more than other stress reduction techniques like mindfulness or music.
I could see that, yeah, yeah, I mean they're still
getting the experience of being relaxed out of it, Yeah,
without listening to my music or being mindful or anything
(33:51):
like that. Right, so great, but it still doesn't explain
the brain orgasm, right, which, if that's not cool to
call it that anymore, I apologize everybody. Um. They some
people might have thought early on that it might be
uh co morbid, I guess with synesthesia, which we've talked about,
(34:11):
but then they found that that's probably not the case.
Well I saw that. They think it's because people who
in this in these surveys um don't report synesthesia anywhere
beyond the normal amount that you'd expect to find in
a population that saw But they think it's it's still
possible it's a different type of synesthesia rather than the
(34:32):
kind where you taste colors or here numbers. They think
this is sound emotion synesthesia, possibly so a sound makes
you feel an emotion. In this case, it's still a
little weak. One guy named um Uh, he's a neurologist
at Yale, Stephen Novella. Back in two thousand and twelve,
he suggested that maybe it was little seizures or not
(34:55):
little Caesar's which by the way, they're pretzel crust pieces.
Back every buddy, um or it's just quote just a
way of activating the pleasure response. Seems to be more
than that. And also the fact that it only works
with some people also makes the whole thing pretty remarkable too. So,
of course, because this is clearly happening in the brain,
(35:15):
they stuck people in the wonder machine, pressed start and
look to see what happened. Yeah, and this one was
interesting because one of the big fine things you know,
you're starting off with a new sort of scientific study
when you're big first finding from an fMRI machine is well,
um people can experience it while in this machine, right, Like,
(35:39):
it's not so distracting this machine isn't so distracting that
they that messes up their experience entirely. Well, what's funny,
that's the second one. The first study they didn't even try.
They're like, well, you can experience as m R. Let's
just have a look at your brain without even yeah,
because they're like, this will be too distracting. So that
second study was kind of in a way there. That's
the level that they're at now is there, Like just
(36:02):
here's this finding, Like you can find almost literally anything
new and it's a contribution to the field. At this point,
the science on it is so incomplete now. Yeah. The
other finding they found was that the brain regions similar
to those you know, we talked about what is it
freesng Yeah, is it French? I don't know. It doesn't
(36:24):
look French. It looks made up French. I know. I
wanted to say Frisian. I'm a dummy. No, I did too,
and I but I went, I did, I went an
extra mile, pressed the little microphone speaker thing on and
it went frees on. So the brain regions similar to
those activated during freesan, we're also activated with a SMR,
(36:45):
but a SMR triggered activity in the prefrontal cortex that
during freesan is suppressed. I didn't see that was suppressed
in frees on. Really yeah, so is this bogus? I
think the prefrontal cortex thing being suppressed as boga. But
they're not the same thing. I think that was the
point of that study is they're like, this isn't the
same thing. It's similar, but it's not the same thing.
(37:08):
And the freeson um explanation I saw. We know a
lot more about frees on because we've known about it longer,
but it's activates a bunch of different parts of your
reward pathways that are involved in like assessing the rewards
and stuff like that, and releasing dopamine right um. It
also like activates the electoral conductivity and your skin, which
(37:31):
accounts for the chills. But the explanation for frees on
that I saw is that your brains pattern recognition is interrupted,
like it's predicting what's coming next, and then all of
a sudden, the music crescendos or it changes tempo, or
some big emotion happens and your brain wasn't expecting it.
(37:52):
So opposite of SMR almost pretty much. And then the
other part of it is that you are empathetically connecting
with the musician or the filmmaker whoever, who encapsulated the
emotion that you're interacting with through the movie or the
music or whatever. Yeah, this seems really different because this
seems to be almost unemotional in a lot of ways
(38:14):
and super repetitive, not like there is no criscindo. I
think the whole point is that sort of low droney
repetitive thing, right, Like like with freees On, It's like, um,
it's like Jennifer Gray running up and being picked up
by Patrick Swayzy in that part in in Dirty Dancing,
That's yeah, whereas a s MR is just being knocked
(38:38):
over with a feather. I think that's the difference. One
of the a s M artists was her name was
Heather Feather. Oh that's a great name. Yeah, I don't
think it's her given name. That would be a good
maybe maybe so she was born to do it, Maybe
her parents couldn't have cared less how she was going
to turn out. So the final thing they did find
out from the F M R I studio that was
(38:58):
pretty interesting. I don't want to make it seem like
I was making fun of it, but they did find
a strong connection there uh from the study similar brain
regions being activated as during close personal bonding experiences with
mammalian grooming behavior. This to me is the explanation. Yeah,
it all goes back to that childhood Uh, soothing like
(39:22):
soothing the baby. Right. That's that seems to be the
explanation for it. That people are um have figured out
a way to mimic affiliative behaviors that we are innately
wired to respond to. And that and some people it
can be triggered just by video and sound. Yeah, I mean, uh,
(39:43):
we have played brown noise in my daughter's room since
she was born. And they say that because you know,
noises like that make them feel like they're in the
womb still and it can be comforting and relaxing. And
we've always done it. We use the sound machine in
our room. It's usually waves or brown noise like one
of those two things like a nice creek every now
(40:04):
and then or rainstorm like three. But they're these are
called affiliative behaviors. Uh, and that is very important when
an infancy and young adulthood or any point. Well, yeah,
but help that helps you form those bonds which obviously
when your baby are going to be happening all over
(40:25):
the place. Yeah, so they think that that somehow these videos,
through the the calmness, the whispering nous, but also the
intimacy of it and the the appearance that you're being
touched lightly and you're being kind of cooed at and
um um in affirmative words and encouragement and all that stuff,
(40:45):
that it's triggering that reaction right in the brain. And
that is what a SMR is. That it's a it's
an extreme reaction to a mimicked affiliative behavior. Yeah, and
I when I read that, it's sort of clicked. And
then I wanted to see more studies on like um
(41:07):
different from a more very types of people that are
like categorized, Like I would like to see people take
these tests that we're not nurtured as children maybe and
maybe that means they would have a really strong response
to a SMR or maybe not at all. Right, that's
the thing. It's like, so why why just a segment
of the population does this work in? Right, that's a
(41:31):
big arrow pointing at We need further research here, Like
it does exist, We've established that, but why wouldn't it
exist for everybody, and then why does it exist in
the people who it does exist in? And then also
why are some people just completely turned off by it
to the point where like you just want to pull
your earbuds out, you know, and maybe also pull off
(41:51):
your ears for good measure. And then why some people
might be thinking why even put a lot of work
into studying this, It's because it could be like a
good therapy for some people, could be therapy for anxiety, PTSD,
anxiety depression. Well that's the thing. A lot of people
self report overcoming insomnia, chronic pain, depression, anxiety. Like you said,
(42:15):
like it literally alters their mood, not like oh that
was kind of neat, Like oh, I don't feel anywhere
nearest depressed any longer, or I'm not anxious anymore. And
so say what you will about it. If it's doing
that for even one person, to keep it up, you know,
But if it's doing that for a whole segment of people,
well that's great. I mean, well let's figure that out
(42:37):
and then we can figure out a way to hijack
it and use it to treat other people. Yeah, I
think part of my aversion too, besides the whispering. Was
I felt kind of silly sitting in the office. Well, yeah,
hearing this, Yeah, I think you're supposed to It's supposed
to be more private than that, probably, so maybe I'll
give it a shot later in the in a dark room. Yeah. Uh.
(42:58):
If you want to know more about SMR friends, go
out on the internet right in a s MR to
the search bar of your favorite search engine, and it
will introduce you to a brand new world. And since
I said that it's time for this your mail all right,
I'm gonna call this uh Tahoe Tessei. Oh yeah, hey, guys,
I was listening to Lockness Monster episode and was reminded
(43:21):
a lot of Lake Tahoe. I thought you'd be interested
in some of the similarities. I grew up in the
Carson Valley area in Nevada, right next to Tahoe. Tahoe
actually has its own legend, Tahoe Tessy. Really original, guys.
There used to be a museum but at close now
and TESTI isn't much more than a silly little local legend. Surprise, surprise,
(43:42):
it brought in thirteen dollars and touristing come last year.
I think that lake itself is more interesting, though, Chuck
shuttered at the thought of a nine foot deep lake.
The deepest parts of Tahoe, though, are over sixteen hundred
feet deep. I've heard about this crazy. I can't wait
to fill in the blanks that this guy leaves. The
lake in the Sierra Nevada sits at twenty five feet
(44:05):
in elevation, while the elevation of my hometown is. That
means that the lake has spots that are a hundred
ft deeper than the valley next to it. Thanks for
all you guys, do I've seen you the past three
years in a row in Seattle. I always have a
great time. Yeah that is from Evan Hughes. Thanks Evan
for making that trip, my friend. Yeah, we'll see you
(44:26):
next year. We love going to Seattle every January. There.
Keep it up right. So if this is the same
lake that I'm thinking of, and I believe it is,
it is also very very cold, so if you die
in this lake, it can preserve you for a long time.
That's so much so that they found a diver who
had been missing for twelve years who drowned in that lake.
(44:48):
Twelve years later, they were still able to give him
an autopsy and determine his cause of death because the
lake had preserved him that much. And there's or said,
there's like old gangsters from the thirties who are still
like whearing their clothes and like cement shoes at the
Balm Lake. Railroad workers from China who had died in
the lake are still preserved in there. This is the
(45:09):
local legend. But that divers documented they definitely were able
to give him an autopsy after twelve years underwater. That's
how cold and oxygen oxygen um depleted. It is because
of the debts, they said, it turns out he drowned, right, Yeah,
that's it. Awesome Taho. We should do a show and
like Tahoe, let's do it at Lake Tahoe. Okay, in
(45:33):
Lake Tahoe. I don't know. I thought about doing random
shows at like weird places. Okay, that'd be fun. Thanks
a lot, Evan. If you want to get in touch
with us, please to go onto the internet and search
stuff you should Know dot com. Check out our social
links and uh. You can also send us an email
to stuff podcast how stuff works dot com. For more
(45:57):
on this and thousands of other topics at how stuff
works dot com. MHM
Welcome to Stuff you should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there
eating god knows what for lunch. And this is stuff
you should know, the Jerry's Lunch edition about SMR. And
(00:23):
that's the addition that everyone loves the best. Yes, you're
doing so good, Chuck. I'm sure zero people had an
a s m R experience just now. Well, let's I mean,
I need to know. Do you know do you get
the tingles? No? Not either. I don't even think I
(00:44):
could put myself in that position where I'd be like, like, stop,
stop touching the camera that's supposed to be my face.
Not comfortable. I watched a bunch of these just to see.
You know, you have to dive in head first and
really get a sense. And uh, I had a hard time.
I'm sitting there for too long. Even I might have
the opposite effect. Yes, there's a very good question that
(01:08):
I wrote at the end. Why not be freaked out
by this? Why do the exact opposite and enter a euphoric,
meditative state. It's a very bizarre, really interesting thing, and
not bizarre in any kind of weird like, look at
these weirdos, I want to poke them in the in
the net kind of thing. It's more like it's a genuinely,
(01:29):
legitimately bizarre and if we can figure it out, it'll
unlock a whole other corridor to the brain that we
didn't really know existed. Yeah, so in true stuff, you
should know fashion A lot of you have no idea
what we're talking about. UM A s MR stands for autonomous,
is how you say it. I went with autonomous autonomous
(01:51):
I think so, I think you're probably right, autonomous sensory
meridian response, which sounds very clinical. Yeah, and we'll we'll
we'll get to that. But I think everyone needs to
know what it is, uh, and what it is is
uh generally a video that you will watch online, although
(02:13):
it's really just sounds, but the way they present themselves
these days or audio clips and video clips, it's and
it's not just sounds, it's it's also closeness is a
big part of it too. Uh. Okay, but it's it's
a sound. It's a response to sounds that some people
get and some people don't. UM A tingling sensation in
(02:35):
the head moves down the neck. Uh. Some people call
it like a tickle. Some people call it like a
head orgasm or brain orgasm, a tickle in your skull. Yeah,
So then that is triggered by hearing certain sounds like
whispering voices or seeing repetitive motions is another one too. Yeah,
(02:56):
but I think I get For my research, I found
that it was mostly sound and that the visual component
is just by virtue of the fact that a lot
of these are on YouTube. Is that So I got
that from that too. But I also saw that in
one of these UM surveys that said that slow movements
UM accounted for triggering for of the participants. So yeah, men,
(03:18):
seems significant, But I get what you're saying, Like it
does seem like the sounds are far and away, like
the crux of the whole thing. Yeah, and they're all
different kinds of sounds. Like the best way to really
it's hard to describe, is to really just go listen
to one real quick. UM. It always includes whispering, and
I think that's my biggest turn off. A lot of
the other sounds are fine and pleasing to me, they
(03:41):
don't give me the tingle, But they're relaxing, but I
don't like someone whispering in my ear. I don't like that.
I've determined that that is basically what you're going to
get with a SMR videos is somebody whispering in what
seems like your ear. Yeah, I have personal triggers for
that from my childhood. I think pleasant ones no unpleasant,
(04:03):
which is why i'd have an aversion to it now.
So I might be an parents. No, I don't want
to talk about it, but it's uh, it's it's I
think I might be an l lier. I don't know.
I definitely don't get the tinkles. I don't get the
tinkles either, And it's not I don't want to say
like it's a ingreat. Well, it's not a huge aversion
to it, but I'm not like, I don't like it.
(04:26):
I'm not big into it. How about that when I
was watching and that lady was whispering too much, I
literally had to rip the earbuds out of my ears.
Oh wow, that's a real aversion. But some of the sounds,
like the tinking of a glass or that's another one.
Stuff like that was okay. It's specifically the whispering that
doesn't jibe with my ears, understood, So if you're if
(04:46):
you're still kind of sitting there going huh. Put another way,
some sounds and possibly some sites actually trigger a really
unusual sensation in people where they feel like it's one.
One woman described it um kind of like sparkles or
fireworks going off in your head on your scalp. The
(05:06):
strongest one, and this is really really significant to the
strongest version of an a SMR experience will leave you
feeling exhausted and pleasantly tired, satisfied, she said, like you're
just like you just had some sort of climax of sorts, right,
But we want to point out and we'll get into
(05:28):
it more later. This is not for the vast majority
of people who experience this. This is not um sexual
in any way. It's sensual, but it's not sexual. It's
something entirely different. And it's also not what's called freezon,
which is getting the chills when you hear like an
amazing piece of music or something really incredible has happened art, right,
(05:52):
that'll give you the chill bumps. So it's not that,
and it's not sexual. It's its own thing that we're
just now starting to realize is its own thing. Yeah,
and it's pretty new as far as people talking about
it and trying to define it. Um. Obviously, if this
is a a real thing, that it has been around
(06:13):
forever most likely, but no one ever knew. You know,
maybe someone in the seventeenth century was like whenever they
got whispered to, they got a head tingle. And maybe
back then their response might have been to turn around
and like bludgeon somebody with a you know, if it
was you, if you have a hug them, thank you
(06:33):
for that. Back then they may not have wanted to relax,
like this is making me feel relaxed. I must kill
you know, stay on the edge like al Pacino and heat. Sure.
Why um, but that that that grouping of words is
very recent. A woman named Jennifer Allen Um. She she
coined the term. She is the person that made up
(06:55):
those words. After Yeah, after about a decade of looking
for other people who experienced a s m R what
would come to be called a s m R. UM,
I guess we're not for the internet. People would still
be walking around either assuming that everybody experiences this and
not talking about it, or thinking that they were the
(07:16):
only one and not talking about it, And were it
not for Jennifer Allen, it might have we still might
not be talking about it. But she sought out some
other people who are experiencing this because she recognized it
as a usual and she found a thread on a
forum called Steady Health and there are people talking about
She said, hey, let's move this to Facebook. That's what
(07:36):
people do these days because that's a non judgmental place
where everybody can get along. So let's just create a
Facebook page. So she did in two and she I
think that year the next year came up with this
term autonomous sensory meridian response. Totally made up, completely made up,
but every scientific term is made up at one point
(07:57):
by somebody, normally by scientists. She is a cybersecurity expert, Yeah,
which is fine. Like, like she did it to um
to basically give it credence enough so that people could
start talking about it without without it being like just
some weird, fringy things. She's trying to start a legitimate conversation,
so it worked like a charm. It's a good name.
(08:18):
I mean that's what scientists call it now, all right,
it's good enough. Yeah, Like she definitely secured her place
in history is the the person who coined the term
autonomous sensory meridium response. So, uh, all right, I guess
let's talk about it. It's it's a very personal experience
for people. Um, No one, no two people will experience
(08:41):
the same feeling or from the same triggers. I love
this one guy, Um from the BBC. They were talking
about how like, why is it? Why are we hearing
about this now? And you're exactly right, it's because of
the Internet. Even a very small um percentage of the
population that experience something like this collected on a Facebook
(09:03):
site or on YouTube seems all of a sudden, like
a lot of folks, And it is a lot of folks, yeah,
but not compared to the population at large, right, So
proportionately speaking, this seems to be it seems to be
just a very small proportion of of people in general
who experienced a s MR. Like I don't you experienced
anti a s MR. Apparently, Jerry, you Jerry a SMR. No,
(09:27):
she did the head cut off thing too. But there
are people, I guarantee there are people out there listening
right now who are like, oh, I've heard of this,
but I've never tried it, who will go try it
and find out that they actually do experience as mr
and will probably email us and be like, thank you
so much for introducing me to that. Jerry's reaction, though,
does it seem more like, Uh, don't bother me with
(09:50):
this right now, unless like, no, I have tried it
and not experienced it. Yes, it was a please just
keep podcasting guys. It was I meaning God knows what
sign continue. Um. So the uh, the writer of this article,
um got it a little bit wrong here, uh, And
(10:10):
that they said it's not something that just randomly randomly
happens in your daily life. These sounds that is not
true at all. They absolutely happen in everyday life. And
that's how people know that. They get this response. And
then the A S. M Artists, the people on YouTube
that actually perform, is that what you would say? They
(10:33):
they replicate these sounds that you do here in everyday
life that give you these triggers. So you don't have
to go to the barber and get a scalp massage
every day. You can just go on to YouTube and
get the same effect. Yeah, like you may have just
you may be in your break room and you hear
someone tapping on a glass bottle, and all of a sudden,
you're sculpted. Tingles goes down your neck, into your shoulders,
(10:56):
down your spine, and you are met with a feeling
of euphoric meditation in relief. And then everyone in the
break room is like, geez, Gary, where did you go? Uh?
And then Gary can go home and just watch videos
of Zoe Kravitz doing it in the Super Bowl commercial.
So let's let's take a break and then we'll come
(11:18):
back and talk about YouTube and how it's completely opened
up the a s m R community. Okay, let's do
it alright, Chuck um. So, like we said, without the Internet,
(11:52):
we might not have a name for this, we might
not be talking about it right now, and definitely well
we wouldn't even have a podcast, so sure that's true.
We'd be out on the street court and being like
here read this, um. The Without YouTube though, a SMR
would would not be anywhere like where it is right now,
because it allows anybody to to make an a s
(12:14):
m R video, And honestly, anybody with a decent type
mix and a mind to do it can make a
SMR videos and they have I saw somewhere that there's
something like seventeen million a s MR videos on YouTube
right now. Yeah, but I mean I would disagree though,
you you there is some skill involved, right, Like if
I went to go make one, it would be terrible
(12:36):
and not elicit any tingles. I didn't mean to diminish
the skill involved. I meant to say, like, because YouTube
democratizing uh entry to like performances to people you've never
even met, that's that's opened the door for a s MR.
Anyone with a skill for doing so can yeah, or
a desire to. Yeah, yeah, but it does take skill,
(12:56):
I think. So. Yeah, you can't just be like you
can't just shout all of a sudden or like lunge
of people at the camera. What are you wearing? You're
like no, like maybe like sharpening a knife on a
stone while you're staring into the camera. That probably not help. No,
that's a different YouTube channel, right it is, But I'll
bet it's out there, um, and there is. It's not
(13:17):
just YouTube obviously. If you go to any of the audio, um,
they're probably a SMR podcasts. I'm sure there's a ton
of them. But SoundCloud in all these other places to
aggregate sound files. There are tens of thousands of them, yes,
and um, they are extraordinarily varied and what what they are,
(13:37):
what you're going to see, what you're going to hear.
I saw one that was pretty great. It was a
woman eating taco bell. No talking, just strictly eating taco bell.
But it was cute, like she comes along and she's
like and like makes this face like oh, a table
full of taco bell and just starts proceeding to like
unwrap it and eat it. And then the real kid
(14:00):
girl And this is what made a s MRI as heck.
Um there the her throat was miked, so not only
did you hear the crunch of the taco, you heard
the chewing like there was a mic in her mouth,
and then you heard the gulping from the swallow every bite.
That's a weird a SMR video though usually they're not
like that. This was a s m R because that's
(14:22):
a I mean, there's another what's the disorder, not disorder,
but what's the condition people? Yeah, like that's a nightmare
off a mesa phoniac. Yeah, this is straight for them
because usually it's some sort of a soothing sound, not
the gullet washing down cheap beef. But no, I've seen
(14:43):
rainforest fed bee. Um. I've seen other ones where it's
like it was a girl drinking like from a half
gallon bottle of water with a law of mike up
against her throat and it was just gold. Gold Like
that is a thing on a s MAR. No, But
on YouTube, does that mean like would the real a
(15:05):
s MR, Like I guess you could call them experts,
would they say, yeah, that's a s MR. Or would
they say, no, that's someone that just threw that tag
up there that has nothing to do with a you know,
I think what they would say is from what we
understand about a s MR. Now who knows that is
probably something that could trigger an a s m R
(15:26):
experience and somebody ergo, it's a s m R. It's
that wide and varied, which we'll get to an explanation
for that at the big reveal. Okay, but if you
go on to YouTube, there's a bunch of um different
variety to it. There's also some through lines that you're
going to see or here in just about any a
s MR video though, Yeah, whispers like we've talked about
(15:49):
uh binaural recording, which is that's the one part of
it I do like I enjoy binaural recordings and being
able to hear, you know, And they always recommend head
phones better, the best headphones you can afford. Yeah, but
to hear, uh, I mean that's why I love the
Beatles so much. Like to hear sound going from left
to right is pleasing to me. Hearing a good slide
(16:11):
whistle go all the way through your skull, fingers, tapping
crisp sounds, that's a big one. Yeah, like scissors. Yeah,
there's a lot of barbershop stuff. This one lady I
watched was doing this uh thing right and she would
do it in the left and then the right, and
I just wanted to throw my computer out the window. Yeah,
(16:33):
because it's another thing too, Like very frequently it's just
a person, typically a woman, also typically wearing like a
low cut shirt. Yeah. We'll get into that too, okay. Um,
and the and the mics, and they're not trying to
hide that. She like she's playing with the mic, like
maybe like tapping it or doing what you were just
(16:55):
doing into it, or rubbing it or something like that,
creating sounds or talk king into it. Soothing, whispering words
of affirmation, calming words. That part makes a little more
sense to me. Um. But the point is is that
it's binural binural recording, so it's like three D stereo,
(17:15):
so it sounds like you're right there, like it's being
spoken right into your ear. And they'll some very frequently
be a mike for each ear and she will go
or he There are some guy A S m R
channels go from mike to mike and ear to ear.
So it's pretty interesting to watch because it's like you
you get to see how the sausage is made, you know,
(17:39):
which is unusual. You'd think it would just be just podcasting,
like but I think from from what I understand, that's
part of it. Seeing like the fingers like move like that, um,
like just kind of tapping in a certain way as
kind of meditative and relaxing. Well, the like I mentioned before,
the brake Zoe Kravitz, Um, it was very big deal
(18:00):
with super Bowl commercial, put it on the map more
than ever before because all of a sudden, you know, uh,
I don't know however, many hundred or million people watch
the super Bowl, but a lot of people that have
no idea what this is. We're exposed to it for
the first time with Zoe Kravitz on a at a
desk on a mountaintop, tapping on a beer bottle and
(18:21):
pouring a beer and speaking into the left and right mix.
And I think the reaction by a lot of folks
that know what the deal is is like, oh interesting.
They put a SMR on the Super Bowl or the
Big Game, and then people were like, what in the
heck is that girl doing? I wonder if anyone was
well assume, so there were probably a lot of dudes
(18:45):
and their recliners that were liking, I don't know what's happening.
It's kind of like finding out you get seesuars by
watching that one episode of Pokemon, right, you know, it's
good time to realize that there's a couple other um
things you'll find too. It's apecially like um role playing.
You'll see role playing a lot in these videos. Yeah. Well,
(19:05):
the one lady I saw look like she was sort
of performing as a nurse might m hm, So I
don't know if that counts as role playing. Was that
um Maria from gent Whisper Gentle Whispering. Maybe they kind
of all ran together for me. So she is the
like the the most popular a s MR artist or
(19:29):
a SM artist around. I think she has like one,
like one point six million subscribers. And she does a
lot of role playing where she will pretend and it's
not just her, there's others that do this too. But
rather than just sitting there messing with a mic or something,
she's got like a whole little set where it looks
like you are getting an eye exam in an optometrists office,
(19:53):
and but the optometrist is whispering to you the whole time,
and it's telling you how great you're doing at this
I X and you're doing so good it's so strange
to me. Let's see how these fit. And here's another
thing about role playing too, is it's meant to be
p o V. So the camera is your eyes. So
the the A s M artist will be messing like
(20:15):
around the camera, like putting the glasses like they're they're
putting them on you. So they're whispering and they're touching
you lightly, and they're they're speaking words of like encouragement
and affirmation to you. And this supposedly is like the
big one. This is the ones that like that that
make it feel like it's fireworks and make people feel
(20:36):
like satisfied afterwards, like from this, what wave of you four?
Your wash over them? See I see that and listen
to it, and I think I'm running out of that
Optometros office as fast as my little legs can care.
But that's that's the hilarious thing. Like if you step
back and imagine, like an actual real world experience like
(20:56):
this should be like is there something wrong with you?
It's like why are you whispering? Dude? But that's yeah.
But apparently if you experience a SMR, that would be
your dream, like, oh my god, a real and tell
me how good these glasses look on me? Well, they're
just kind of messing with my side burns a little bit.
Oh so interesting, It is very interesting. It is all
(21:17):
generally intended to relax someone, uh and introduce what's known
as a state of flow, which is you know you've
heard about artists and musicians and created Yeah, sure, athletes
getting in that state of flow. It's almost like, uh,
it's really just lebron kind of kind of like a
runner's high maybe where uh or if you're creative, things
(21:40):
are just you've opened yourself up and you're channeling creative
energy to cross hatchings is coming right out of your pencil.
That's just and I'm not making fun of that. I've
I've gotten into states of flow for surely. Gosh, it'd
be so neat to be able to just trigger that
or bring it on likely without thinking. Well, I think
that's why a lot of artists like they try to
(22:01):
get that through drugs and alcohol. Yeah, but that's a
that's a blind alley friend. Yeah, it is so um,
I get you through for a little while, but it's
dead in street and really it's not gonna it's not
gonna bring on the flow. It's gonna it's gonna mislead
you because you'll think you're in the zone, playing amazingly,
and all anybody's here is like, and you're not supposed
(22:24):
to be playing like that, So stay off the drugs.
I guess we should talk a little bit more about
the you know, when you said they might be wearing
low cut shirts and the whole sex thing, Well, a
lot of people see that then see the whispering and
the touching, and they're like, oh, well this is porn
of some sort obviously. Yeah, Like it's I've I watched
(22:44):
a few of the videos, and again, it's not like
like anyone, like you said, anyone can put something up there.
So I'm sure there are some a s M artists
that maybe to get more views, might try and be
more sexually tantalizing. But like there are all kinds of
videos out there and all kinds of people watching them.
Some people may not feel anything sexual at all, and
(23:06):
it's only central most people. Most people. Some people may
masturbate to an a s M R video. Apparently five
percent of them do. Uh well, I guess so. But
for the vast majority of them, the vast majority of
people who experience a s M are they say, no,
it's not for sex, it's this has nothing to do
(23:27):
with sex. It's something totally different, and um, it's just
not sexual. So it's intimate, there's no getting around that. Yeah,
And then it's a huge part of the whole experience
is that it's super intimate, and that maybe what triggers
the whole thing, is that that a threshold of of
intimacy is met and then crossed and then there goes
(23:50):
your fireworks in your skull. Right, Um, I wonder how
this fix a relationship though, Like, I don't know if
someone came home and their husband had a an on
owing everyday thing with this woman on YouTube where she
was stroking the camera lens and whispering in his ear,
I don't know. I could see people. I could see
someone turning to their their spouse or loved one and
(24:12):
be like, Hey, that's not too cool. Yeah, you want
someone to whisper, and you're I'll do it. I'm supposed
to do the whispering or maybe I mean, I could
see it causing problems. I would guess they would have
this follow along the same lines of like whatever problems
pornography would cause, you know, I mean maybe even not
because it is intimate. I could see somebody being like,
(24:32):
I'm okay with the porn, but not the p O
V intimacy of the A S M R. I don't
know what kind of things that would. I could see
it causing problems here there. I mean, I didn't even
see that raised in any article I read. I was
just kinda curious he just raised it. Yeah, But for
the most part, I guess what we're trying to say
is if you're an outsider looking in and you think
this is just porn or some sort of weird sexual
(24:54):
fetish thing. That's not the case for almost all people
who are watching these videos. It's not what it is. Yeah,
those of the same people who think, like, you know,
every massage is that kind of massage, Like, well, no massage,
just to relax your body, to heal your body. I think.
Also one of the reasons why there is great misunderstanding
is because of the use of terms like brain orgasm
(25:16):
or some people call it whisper porn, and so people
are just kind of they're kind of misunderstanding the lingo
a little bit. That doesn't automatically mean sex. It's internet lingo.
Well yeah, and they're all kinds of either articles or
YouTube collections where it's like top five hottest a s
m R chicks, right, That certainly doesn't help their case. Also,
the other thing is a lot of comments will be like, oh, yeah,
(25:39):
it's YouTube super yeah exactly, but um, it's it's possible
and even likely that these aren't actually people experiencing a
s MR. They're just going through YouTube looking for videos
of women with low cut shirts looking into the camera. Yeah,
and its YouTube, and they objectify women in every way
possible because you can post a video of a a
(26:00):
talented um young woman playing the violin and half the
comments will be about her appearance. YouTube does have a
reputation for that, and rightly earned. Should we take another break?
Let's take another break? Man? All right, Chuck? So we
(26:36):
talk about science. Yeah, let's do a little science talk.
There's not much on it. No, the first actual peer
reviewed study of a s MR UM. It was published
as recently as two thousand fifteen from Swansea University or Swansea?
Do you know how to say that? I don't know.
I've always said Swansea, but I just realized I could
(26:56):
be wrong. So let's say that I believe if it's
in the UK. UM, So let's just say Dorchestershire. UM.
They did a puero. Well, a couple of researchers brought
in Davis did a survey of a s MR experiencers,
experiencers and UM just tried to at least do the
(27:17):
most basic foundational groundwork of describing whether UM. And they
did a pretty good job too. You see, this referenced
a lot, not a lot of criticisms of it, but
they found I think like a few hundred. I can't
find the number right now, but they there it was
a decent population size of people who experience a SMR,
(27:39):
and they said, well, why do you do this? Like,
what do you get out of this? Is I probably
the question they asked first, and then problem, what triggers this? Right?
And um, they found that ninety eight percent of people
who watch a s MR videos seek out these experiences
on YouTube do it for relaxation. Almost everybody, Yeah, which
(28:01):
says a lot because again, when you think of this,
um from an outsider's view, you're like, oh, it's arousing,
it's it's titillating. It puts you on edge, like you
know when you hear a music crescendo or something like that.
Apparently it doesn't do that. It gives you tingles. But
it also is meditative and relaxing, which is I've never
experienced anything like that, you know what I mean. So
(28:23):
it's really its own thing. So it's very relaxing. Afterwards,
during massage, do you relax. I don't get massages at all.
I'm too high strung for that. Okay, I don't get
them much at all either. Uh, And I find that
I can I can generally kind of go there and
just like super relax but there's always a bit of
shame and embarrassment for me, which is just dumb. Yeah,
(28:46):
you know, yeah, there's no hold over stuff from my
churchy upbringing, you know. But you can't even go there.
I don't even open that door, like sir of the
the have a wire cable running down your spine is
pretty much I can't seem to to tweak it. Yeah,
but what was the point of the question. Well, I
(29:08):
was just kind of curious because hearing how you were
about feel about a SMR, I was like, just wondering
if you have trouble with any kind of relaxing experience.
I have trouble with all of the relaxing experiences. Okay, yeah,
all right, um, yeah, I'm a little high strung. You know. Well, no,
I know that, I was just I just wanted me
to admit it on Mike. No. I wondered if there
(29:29):
was anything if you were like, yeah, but I do
like a good foot massage. Those are nice, like teet Okay,
there you go, I am. I am for those, but
every once in a while you'll get one in that
like it's the real deal where they dig in to
the arch of your foot. And their thumb basically goes
up to your knee. It was like it hurts, and
(29:50):
it's like a suffering kind of hurt, like like your
fingernail being bent back, like bad hurt. And so I
haven't been back since. Okay, So yeah, no, I don't relax,
I guess, is what I'm trying to say. They're they're
kind of jeremy really, So no, what about just floating
in a pool. Have you ever been in a relaxation tank? No,
(30:10):
that I was wondering that. I've done that a couple
of times. Really neat because it's dark and it's private.
There was one experience, I guess I've done it twice.
Both times you just completely lose track of time to
do this. It's really neat, chuck um. And the first
time I got I lost sensation in my body down
(30:33):
to my central nervous system. So in the water, all
I could feel floating was my brain, my spinal cord,
and some of the major peripheral nerves coming off of
my spinal cord. That was all of my body that
I could feel at that point. Everything else that just
melted into the water and into the darkness because it
is the darkness is complete. There's no light, not even
(30:55):
a chance for light to come in. It just doesn't
exist there. Um, and the ownes are just you're just
in your own world. It's amazing. Yeah see there. Yeah,
all right, I guess I need to get one of
those that buy one just take out a helock and
uh and throw down some money. How much are those?
Do you know? Probably I was thinking over ten million
(31:20):
dollars it might as well be. Uh. So let's get
back to the study that's alongside track, So ninety percent
for relaxation to help them sleep, seventy to deal with stress.
So you see a through line here. Um. And then
they looked at the most common triggers analysis of responses
found four prominent categories experience, each one by over fifty.
(31:46):
So whispering at personal attention at sixty nine. That's a
big deal, it seems like. And what we'll get to
that in a second, because there are a lot of
people that think that has a lot to do with this,
Those people that may not get the kind of intimacy
and attention they neat like there's a separate track of people. Yeah, uh,
what else crisp sounds? Have you ever had a coffee
(32:06):
crisp candy bar. Mm I don't think so. Man good. Yeah,
they have them in Canada. I think you can get
them at like a like a world market. Get one.
I'm gonna get you one. You're gonna love it. Like
coffee stuff, You're gonna love it. And then slow movements,
so that would be a visual queue like folding towels,
(32:27):
repetitive stuff. That's so funny to me. Yeah, I like
repetitive things because I love those. Uh. I've talked a
lot about the like how it's made shows and shows
like the repetitive industrial processes. I think that's like a
SMR show. All right, maybe, but I don't get the tingle.
It just relaxes me, right, and some people do. There's
a lot of people who report feeling relaxed from a
(32:48):
SMR videos, even though they don't have the full experience
where they get like the brain orgasm or anything like that.
But it's still is potentially relaxing. And part of it
is because they're designed to be relaxing. The whispering, the
gentle movements, the like, like all of that stuff. It's
it's designed to relax you. Yeah. I found another study
(33:10):
from the University of Sheffield that, um, that's a Worcester. Yeah.
They they got people that were verified a s MR
experiencers and then people that were not. Um, they did
a bunch of studies, mainly about their heart rate, and
they found that people who did experience a SMR UM
(33:30):
they did have a reduced heartbeat by about three point
two beats per minute. But then they said it was
no more than other stress reduction techniques like mindfulness or music.
I could see that, yeah, yeah, I mean they're still
getting the experience of being relaxed out of it, Yeah,
without listening to my music or being mindful or anything
(33:51):
like that. Right, so great, but it still doesn't explain
the brain orgasm, right, which, if that's not cool to
call it that anymore, I apologize everybody. Um. They some
people might have thought early on that it might be
uh co morbid, I guess with synesthesia, which we've talked about,
(34:11):
but then they found that that's probably not the case.
Well I saw that. They think it's because people who
in this in these surveys um don't report synesthesia anywhere
beyond the normal amount that you'd expect to find in
a population that saw But they think it's it's still
possible it's a different type of synesthesia rather than the
(34:32):
kind where you taste colors or here numbers. They think
this is sound emotion synesthesia, possibly so a sound makes
you feel an emotion. In this case, it's still a
little weak. One guy named um Uh, he's a neurologist
at Yale, Stephen Novella. Back in two thousand and twelve,
he suggested that maybe it was little seizures or not
(34:55):
little Caesar's which by the way, they're pretzel crust pieces.
Back every buddy, um or it's just quote just a
way of activating the pleasure response. Seems to be more
than that. And also the fact that it only works
with some people also makes the whole thing pretty remarkable too. So,
of course, because this is clearly happening in the brain,
(35:15):
they stuck people in the wonder machine, pressed start and
look to see what happened. Yeah, and this one was
interesting because one of the big fine things you know,
you're starting off with a new sort of scientific study
when you're big first finding from an fMRI machine is well,
um people can experience it while in this machine, right, Like,
(35:39):
it's not so distracting this machine isn't so distracting that
they that messes up their experience entirely. Well, what's funny,
that's the second one. The first study they didn't even try.
They're like, well, you can experience as m R. Let's
just have a look at your brain without even yeah,
because they're like, this will be too distracting. So that
second study was kind of in a way there. That's
the level that they're at now is there, Like just
(36:02):
here's this finding, Like you can find almost literally anything
new and it's a contribution to the field. At this point,
the science on it is so incomplete now. Yeah. The
other finding they found was that the brain regions similar
to those you know, we talked about what is it
freesng Yeah, is it French? I don't know. It doesn't
(36:24):
look French. It looks made up French. I know. I
wanted to say Frisian. I'm a dummy. No, I did too,
and I but I went, I did, I went an
extra mile, pressed the little microphone speaker thing on and
it went frees on. So the brain regions similar to
those activated during freesan, we're also activated with a SMR,
(36:45):
but a SMR triggered activity in the prefrontal cortex that
during freesan is suppressed. I didn't see that was suppressed
in frees on. Really yeah, so is this bogus? I
think the prefrontal cortex thing being suppressed as boga. But
they're not the same thing. I think that was the
point of that study is they're like, this isn't the
same thing. It's similar, but it's not the same thing.
(37:08):
And the freeson um explanation I saw. We know a
lot more about frees on because we've known about it longer,
but it's activates a bunch of different parts of your
reward pathways that are involved in like assessing the rewards
and stuff like that, and releasing dopamine right um. It
also like activates the electoral conductivity and your skin, which
(37:31):
accounts for the chills. But the explanation for frees on
that I saw is that your brains pattern recognition is interrupted,
like it's predicting what's coming next, and then all of
a sudden, the music crescendos or it changes tempo, or
some big emotion happens and your brain wasn't expecting it.
(37:52):
So opposite of SMR almost pretty much. And then the
other part of it is that you are empathetically connecting
with the musician or the filmmaker whoever, who encapsulated the
emotion that you're interacting with through the movie or the
music or whatever. Yeah, this seems really different because this
seems to be almost unemotional in a lot of ways
(38:14):
and super repetitive, not like there is no criscindo. I
think the whole point is that sort of low droney
repetitive thing, right, Like like with freees On, It's like, um,
it's like Jennifer Gray running up and being picked up
by Patrick Swayzy in that part in in Dirty Dancing,
That's yeah, whereas a s MR is just being knocked
(38:38):
over with a feather. I think that's the difference. One
of the a s M artists was her name was
Heather Feather. Oh that's a great name. Yeah, I don't
think it's her given name. That would be a good
maybe maybe so she was born to do it, Maybe
her parents couldn't have cared less how she was going
to turn out. So the final thing they did find
out from the F M R I studio that was
(38:58):
pretty interesting. I don't want to make it seem like
I was making fun of it, but they did find
a strong connection there uh from the study similar brain
regions being activated as during close personal bonding experiences with
mammalian grooming behavior. This to me is the explanation. Yeah,
it all goes back to that childhood Uh, soothing like
(39:22):
soothing the baby. Right. That's that seems to be the
explanation for it. That people are um have figured out
a way to mimic affiliative behaviors that we are innately
wired to respond to. And that and some people it
can be triggered just by video and sound. Yeah, I mean, uh,
(39:43):
we have played brown noise in my daughter's room since
she was born. And they say that because you know,
noises like that make them feel like they're in the
womb still and it can be comforting and relaxing. And
we've always done it. We use the sound machine in
our room. It's usually waves or brown noise like one
of those two things like a nice creek every now
(40:04):
and then or rainstorm like three. But they're these are
called affiliative behaviors. Uh, and that is very important when
an infancy and young adulthood or any point. Well, yeah,
but help that helps you form those bonds which obviously
when your baby are going to be happening all over
(40:25):
the place. Yeah, so they think that that somehow these videos,
through the the calmness, the whispering nous, but also the
intimacy of it and the the appearance that you're being
touched lightly and you're being kind of cooed at and
um um in affirmative words and encouragement and all that stuff,
(40:45):
that it's triggering that reaction right in the brain. And
that is what a SMR is. That it's a it's
an extreme reaction to a mimicked affiliative behavior. Yeah, and
I when I read that, it's sort of clicked. And
then I wanted to see more studies on like um
(41:07):
different from a more very types of people that are
like categorized, Like I would like to see people take
these tests that we're not nurtured as children maybe and
maybe that means they would have a really strong response
to a SMR or maybe not at all. Right, that's
the thing. It's like, so why why just a segment
of the population does this work in? Right, that's a
(41:31):
big arrow pointing at We need further research here, Like
it does exist, We've established that, but why wouldn't it
exist for everybody, and then why does it exist in
the people who it does exist in? And then also
why are some people just completely turned off by it
to the point where like you just want to pull
your earbuds out, you know, and maybe also pull off
(41:51):
your ears for good measure. And then why some people
might be thinking why even put a lot of work
into studying this, It's because it could be like a
good therapy for some people, could be therapy for anxiety, PTSD,
anxiety depression. Well that's the thing. A lot of people
self report overcoming insomnia, chronic pain, depression, anxiety. Like you said,
(42:15):
like it literally alters their mood, not like oh that
was kind of neat, Like oh, I don't feel anywhere
nearest depressed any longer, or I'm not anxious anymore. And
so say what you will about it. If it's doing
that for even one person, to keep it up, you know,
But if it's doing that for a whole segment of people,
well that's great. I mean, well let's figure that out
(42:37):
and then we can figure out a way to hijack
it and use it to treat other people. Yeah, I
think part of my aversion too, besides the whispering. Was
I felt kind of silly sitting in the office. Well, yeah,
hearing this, Yeah, I think you're supposed to It's supposed
to be more private than that, probably, so maybe I'll
give it a shot later in the in a dark room. Yeah. Uh.
(42:58):
If you want to know more about SMR friends, go
out on the internet right in a s MR to
the search bar of your favorite search engine, and it
will introduce you to a brand new world. And since
I said that it's time for this your mail all right,
I'm gonna call this uh Tahoe Tessei. Oh yeah, hey, guys,
I was listening to Lockness Monster episode and was reminded
(43:21):
a lot of Lake Tahoe. I thought you'd be interested
in some of the similarities. I grew up in the
Carson Valley area in Nevada, right next to Tahoe. Tahoe
actually has its own legend, Tahoe Tessy. Really original, guys.
There used to be a museum but at close now
and TESTI isn't much more than a silly little local legend. Surprise, surprise,
(43:42):
it brought in thirteen dollars and touristing come last year.
I think that lake itself is more interesting, though, Chuck
shuttered at the thought of a nine foot deep lake.
The deepest parts of Tahoe, though, are over sixteen hundred
feet deep. I've heard about this crazy. I can't wait
to fill in the blanks that this guy leaves. The
lake in the Sierra Nevada sits at twenty five feet
(44:05):
in elevation, while the elevation of my hometown is. That
means that the lake has spots that are a hundred
ft deeper than the valley next to it. Thanks for
all you guys, do I've seen you the past three
years in a row in Seattle. I always have a
great time. Yeah that is from Evan Hughes. Thanks Evan
for making that trip, my friend. Yeah, we'll see you
(44:26):
next year. We love going to Seattle every January. There.
Keep it up right. So if this is the same
lake that I'm thinking of, and I believe it is,
it is also very very cold, so if you die
in this lake, it can preserve you for a long time.
That's so much so that they found a diver who
had been missing for twelve years who drowned in that lake.
(44:48):
Twelve years later, they were still able to give him
an autopsy and determine his cause of death because the
lake had preserved him that much. And there's or said,
there's like old gangsters from the thirties who are still
like whearing their clothes and like cement shoes at the
Balm Lake. Railroad workers from China who had died in
the lake are still preserved in there. This is the
(45:09):
local legend. But that divers documented they definitely were able
to give him an autopsy after twelve years underwater. That's
how cold and oxygen oxygen um depleted. It is because
of the debts, they said, it turns out he drowned, right, Yeah,
that's it. Awesome Taho. We should do a show and
like Tahoe, let's do it at Lake Tahoe. Okay, in
(45:33):
Lake Tahoe. I don't know. I thought about doing random
shows at like weird places. Okay, that'd be fun. Thanks
a lot, Evan. If you want to get in touch
with us, please to go onto the internet and search
stuff you should Know dot com. Check out our social
links and uh. You can also send us an email
to stuff podcast how stuff works dot com. For more
(45:57):
on this and thousands of other topics at how stuff
works dot com. MHM
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