December 4, 2019 • 52 mins
For thousands of years, people have been convinced that the weather and the position of the moon can wreak profound havoc on human behavior. This belief continues in the modern day, with numerous law enforcement officers, medical professionals and more swearing people act strangely during the full moon. Additionally, science shows certain environmental factors, such as an extended lack of sunlight, can spark measurable changes in mood. So what's the truth here? Can the weather really make people go crazy?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, Welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt. They call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Paul Mission Control deck, and most importantly, you are you.
You are here and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. How you feeling today, Matt, I'm
feeling feeling well. It's finally colder here, so much colder
(00:47):
than it has been that I get to wear my
you know, my black leather gloves, in my big black jacket,
in my black hat when I'm driving, and I feel
like some kind of anti super serial killer hero. Uh
side know, Paul michigantrol dec and just chimed in with
(01:08):
serial killer. I don't know if that made it on
the mike. No, I don't think it did, but that's
why it was a super serial killer hero. Yeah. Driving
with your balaklava on h Yeah, it just feels good. Yeah.
I believe this is one of the states where it
is technically illegal to operate a motor vehicle wearing a mask.
(01:29):
Yeah have you heard about that? Probably, but they haven't
caught me yet. Yeah. I don't see how that would
apply to things that require helmets like motorcycles and so on. Anyhow, Yeah,
I also felt the strange switch. Suddenly we woke up
and it was fall, you know, or maybe we skipped
fall and it's just winter now. Yeah, it's getting pretty close.
And you know, like many people dealing with the rapidly
(01:54):
changing climate, we are discovering a paradigm shift in conversation.
Remember those old house yon days where it was considered
boring or small talk to talk about the weather. We
were growing up. That's something old people and boring people did. Yeah,
but I think maybe we're just a little older and
more boring that that is a valid that's a valid assertion.
(02:16):
It's happening more frequently in my life at least, or
I would say, I would say valid proposition because I
would I would argue that now the weather is becoming
so unpredictable and wild card esque, we all tend to
talk about the weather more because we have to check in,
because no one knows what's going to happen, you know,
(02:36):
is it is it used to. We're no longer shooting
the breeze. We're we're ensuring people's safety and livelihood. You
don't know, if you ask somebody what the weather, what
the weather is like in their part of town, they
might say, well, the tornado has gained sentience, which we
were not expecting. But scientists say that's because we didn't
recycle or something like that. Sure, I'm I'm not exaggerating
(02:58):
a bit, but today's episode is in a way about
the weather. It is in a way about the environment,
because whether you live in the frozen wilds of the
Arctic North or the sweltering climes of the Tropic or
the you know, objectively perfect environment of Hawaii, you've doubtlessly
had one of those weird conversations about whether with outsiders.
(03:21):
You know, yes, says somebody in the upper reaches of Scandinavia.
Sometimes the sun sets at four pm here. Other times
it's dark for you know, weeks on end, or the
sun just doesn't leave at all. It's it's normal for us.
And while weather across the planet can vary to a
wide degree, it is a pretty impressive that our species,
(03:42):
um most of whom were largely identical to one another
in terms of physiological requirements. It's impressive that we can
all exist for long periods of time and these very
different conditions you know, you know, in our cultures have
of kind of been tailored in a lot of ways
(04:03):
to these different weather patterns and the climates in which
we've you know, existed. Yeah, religions are born a lot
of times early on at least out of these patterns.
Good call. Right, Yeah, we're toolmakers, were arrogant, we are explainers,
and we are woefully satisfied with our own explanations. Yeah,
(04:25):
but we're also feelers because we've got a lot of
chemicals that float around in us that cause us to
feel ways, or at least they affect the way we
feel about things sometimes. Right, And I was thinking about
this too with the old Robert Frost poem Tree at
my window. You remember that, So there's this line tree
(04:46):
in my window is obviously it's about this tree that
Robert Frost is really digging at the time, or to
be fair, the speaker of the poem if not, you know,
maybe he's faking it. Maybe he didn't have a tree.
It could be a character. Yeah, maybe it's like a
metaphor for nuke. The war is something who knows, right, Well,
there's this, there's this thought in the last two lines
where he talks about the tree experiencing outer weather and
(05:09):
himself or again the speaker of the poem being concerned
with their own inner weather. And today's episode is about that.
I love that you set up uh, the the idea
of all these neurochemicals and reactions just bouncing willy nilly
and unseen in every person's brain box. Because today's episode
does not center around climate change, it's about a more
(05:30):
primal question people have been asking for the very least centuries.
That is, how does the outer weather, the environment affect
our own inner psychological weather. Can something in the air,
some lack of sunlight, or some overabundance of moonlight really
make us, for lack of a better phrase, hesitate to
(05:51):
say it, but go crazy. Yes, let's say, act abnormally
through ourselves, at least to ourselves, um in the ways
we've we've come to see ourselves. Here are the facts.
There is a common wisdom that floats around the internet,
(06:12):
has been around for a long time that whether in
some ways can affect people's moods, how they feel whether
or not they're excited to wake up in the morning,
or you know, if they're feeling a little sad now
and then. And there is this idea of it is
it has a name that is kind of delightful, but
at the same time, it's just delightful to speak of.
(06:35):
It's called SAD Seasonal effective disorder SAD. Yes, And we'll
talk about that a little bit later on. Yeah, we're
just planning the seed for sad. We're here. It will
it will be fruitful later on. Now. Um, there's an
unrelated idea that my wife and I have talked about
a lot of times because of her involvement with children,
(06:59):
um in in a school environment, of whether or not
the moon can actually affect us as well to the
amount of light that's being reflected upon us by the moon. Really,
that's what they're talking about, where the moon is and
how much light is being reflected. Can this make us
feel different? Yeah, stable perhaps? Yeah. Yeah. This is an
(07:20):
ancient idea, and it goes in a couple of different directions.
The ancient idea is um the concept that the moon
maybe not so much the light sometimes light Sometimes it's
just the idea that a more visible moon means a
moon is physically closer. Uh. This this dates back all
the way to philosophers like Aristotle and the often hilariously
(07:45):
incorrect historian Pliny the Elder. From the Roman historian, they
thought that the brain was the moistest oregon in the body,
and that therefore, like the oceans, it was the most
susceptible to the insidious influences of the moon because of
the way the moon can affect the tides and the oceans.
(08:08):
And this went through this idea, which again as ancient,
has gone through many different iterations and names. Sometimes it
was called the lunar lunacy effect or the Transylvania effect,
and it's the belief, you know, survived the fall of
the Roman Empire and survived the fall of the ancient
(08:28):
Greeks in the Middle Ages when people when when it
was just commonly accepted that some people turn into wolves,
you know, some people are in league with infernal powers
and they turn into wolves, and that's just how the
cookie crumbles, right, Uh. They they of course thought that
the moon had these unholy influences even on um people
(08:51):
who say their prayers at night, you know, and the
the wolfs bane reference. Yeah, the full moon is a
weird thing. It's a weird thing. Back in the nineteenth century,
there is even this thing that you could argue in
court that, uh, you could argue that somebody was not
guilty by reason of the full moon. Let's say, if
(09:11):
you're a defense lawyer and you're representing somebody, and they
would make their their claim that this quote unquote lunatic
client was you know, not accountable for whatever he or
she did because the full moon was there. And we
all know how the full moon affects us, especially when
we're turning into wolves and such. Just kidding. This is
(09:32):
now the nineteenth century, So we've moved beyond werewolves, not
not fully, but we moved a bit beyond werewolves eight
hundreds Eastern Europe, people people were still certain, you know,
and and in in less uh you know, in less
densely populated areas in the world today, belief in physical
(09:53):
shape shifters. It's it's still around, you know, it's not
as popular. Yeah, well, I mean, and there's there's lot
too to be said there on the full moon. There's
there's a ton of things here about how the full
moon can possibly affect us. So That's that's the interesting part,
right where wolves aside, ancient rome aside, the belief in
(10:16):
this relationship between the moon waxing and people acting unstable
persist in the modern day. You will see the lunar
cycle blamed for everything from spikes and suicide attempts and
psychiatric hospital emissions, to emergency room calls and reports, to
traffic accidents, to dog bites and more and more and
(10:38):
more and again. Just hanging it back to our wife
and just for a second, she believes this kind of
her theory or her hypothesis is that the amount of
light shining down on a darkened earth at any given
time can affect sleep patterns, the way a child or
an adult falls asleep, how long it takes to false,
(11:00):
how how well they're able to sleep, just because of
an increased amount of light within a room, unless they
are blackout curtains or something like that. She thinks that
can have an effect on the next day. Essentially, I see, Yeah,
it's um disturbance and circadian rhythm, right that. I mean,
that's that's a good argument. I would I would want
to hear the opinion too of how that if light
(11:23):
is if light is the cause there ultimately of some
sort of disturbance in otherwise normal behavior. Is it dependent
on the type of light? Is that what creates the disturbance?
Because now we live in a place where many, many,
many people have artificial lights, whether they're even just computer
(11:43):
screens of television screens on while they sleep. So are
you know, as a disturbed circadian rhythm the new normal?
I could definitely see it uh being really solid uh
proposition in the days before electricity, you know, I like
maybe maybe the disturbance has changed over time because of
the rise of electric lights. So yeah, I would just
(12:05):
say from you know, not to get into an argument
about this, but within at my home, the moon's light
uh comes into our windows at my house to such
a significant effect that it looks like we've got lights
on outside. Um, when there's a full moon compared to
when there's even a half moon or or you know, lesser. Um,
(12:26):
do you feel that's pushing closer to like anthropy or
I'm not sure, but but it certainly does affect my
ability to get to sleep and just personally. And I
just wonder how how much of an effect that would
be outside of computer screens, outside of you know, artificial life,
and yeah, that's that's again, that's one of my big questions.
There would be the type of light, you know what
(12:48):
I mean? Is it uv thing? Is it something in
the led displays? People are still debating about this, and
there's an interesting scientific quibble here. Py Chiatrists across the
planet and certainly throughout the West, including people like Miami
psychiatrists Arnold Lieber, have argued um have argued less about
(13:10):
light and more about water, the idea that just like
Aristotle and Plenty said, the full moon has an effect
on behavior because the human body is almost water. So again,
maybe the moon is disrupting something about the way water
(13:30):
functions in our nervous systems. Specifically, Other people, not just psychiatrists,
tend to agree, and large groups of people tend to
agree that the moon does something wonky to human beings
or is this survey a few years back that said
around forty of college students believe yes, the moon can
affect human behavior in increasing their likelihood of doing something
(13:54):
unusual for them. That's the thing's all case by case
unusual for them. For some one, unusual might be staying
up till three am and eating a pint of ice
cream for other people. Unusual maybe you know robbing. Uh,
toys r us. I'm trying to think of things that
aren't around, so we don't get any angry letters. Toys
(14:16):
r us or radio shack somewhere there we go I
kept its stores unlocked. A media play. Uh, there are
still sears in Alaska. Isn't that weird? So this this
is interesting because this isn't just cherry picking one survey.
Other surveys seemed to indicate that mental health professionals might
(14:40):
be more likely than the average person to believe in
this relationship, and sectors of law enforcement. That should not
surprise anybody, whether you yourself or l e O, or
whether you have one in your friend group or your family.
A lot of members of law enforcements share this belief.
As a matter of fact. Back in the nineties seventies,
the International Association of the Chiefs of Police put their
(15:01):
money where their mouth is. They commissioned a study to
discover whether there was in a scientific basis to the
belief that the full moon makes people Let's not say crazy,
let's say weird. What do we know? What they found?
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's
(15:27):
where it gets crazy. Oddly enough, multiple studies, not all
the studies, but the majority of studies conducted in this
field or towards this question, have found no discernible scientific
evidence that the full moon has any sort of physiological
effect on the human mind. So we can we can
(15:49):
bust the water myth first. Before we get to that,
Please note everyone the way we phrased that finding that
the full moon does not have any sort of physiological
effect on the human mind that is different from a
psychological effect. Right, So there's a dilemma there, But we're
we're pretty sure as a species that if the moon
(16:13):
has some sort of, uh, some sort of delatorious effect
on human beings, it is not due to the water
content of our bodies. Let's go to the Scientific American
with some quotes that list the problems with this whole
water gravity theory, like, is the moon actually changing the
water inside of us? It says, quote first, the gravitational
(16:36):
effects of the moon are far too minuscule to generate
any meaningful effects on brain activity, let alone behavior. As
the late astronomer George Bell of the University of California,
Los Angeles noted, a mosquito sitting on your arm exerts
a more powerful gravitational effect on us than the moon does.
Now that's intense. This is me speaking outside of the quote.
(16:57):
That's an intense fact. If it is indeed affect and
it was said by a former astronomer, so we must
believe it. Let's continue on. Yet, to the best of
our knowledge, there have been no reports of a mosquito
lunacy effect. So there's a little biting remark there. Um,
let's go on. Second, the Moon's gravitational force affects only
(17:19):
open bodies of water, such as oceans and lakes, but
not contained sources of water such as the human brain.
Pretty rock solid, it really is. It is contained within
our skulls. This last one is the most interesting. Yes. Quote. Third,
the gravitational effect of the moon is just as potent
during new moons, when the moon is visible to us,
(17:41):
as it is during full moons. So ha ha, the
light of the moon is a more likely candidate for
affecting us. I'm just kidding, but it is sure. I mean, well,
let's find out. Going back to water. What this means
is that the perception that we have, well, it does
(18:03):
hold its own internal logic. You know, there's some analog there.
The moon affects water in certain ways or in certain
you know, situations, then why not the human brain. What's
so special about the water and the human body? Nothing
except temporarily it's location. This means that if we want
(18:23):
to dive into the belief that there's some sort of
causal relationship between the moon and specifically crime, right, if
we want to look at law enforcement data, then we
will need to reject the water myth or the water
part of the moon myth, and will need to regard,
at least as some degree, the huge amount of anecdotal
(18:46):
evidence from police officers across the planet because a lot
of these folks wholeheartedly believe in this, but maybe maybe
not the way you think, because often you know, people
who work in law enforcement or trained to apply critical thinging,
so they will, hopefully they're paying attention and training, be
some of the more skeptical members of society at large.
(19:09):
So let's consider the work of a guy named David Hunter.
David Hunter was a retired deputy from Knox County, Tennessee.
In his book The Moon Is Always Full, he collected
multiple stories of police officers relaying strange events let's call
them lunar war stories, things that happened while they were
on duty during the full moon. However, a hunter does
(19:32):
not believe that there is a physiological mechanism at play here. Instead,
he believes it is squarely something in the sphere of
the psychological. He says that the moon crime relationship, or
perception thereof, is a matter of self fulfilling prophecies. And
he notes, he says, hey, you know, almost cops, the
adrenaline junkies, if nothing happens on a graveyard shift, they get,
(19:55):
you know, disappointed. So the full moon gives a cop
of reason to investigate things he I usually ignore. H So,
just the fact that it is a full moon. The
police officer thinking to him or herself, Oh, it's a
full moon. I gotta check this out right right right.
(20:15):
I've seen the movies, I've seen the tropes or you know,
it's it's similar to I guess bade or mine huff
to where you know you you here, turn the beat
around once and then are you think of the song
and then you feel like you've heard it three times
in the past forty eight hours? But have you or
were you just noticing more. You know, are you using
(20:36):
turn the beat around as like a verb, like I
did a thing I turned the beat around, I mean
the song. But yeah, you turn the beat around if
you'd like, you know, But but you know, this doesn't
take into account like I'm just imagining. I'm not cooping
Hunters writing here. I'm just saying there's a differ prints
(21:00):
between investigating, like having something to investigate and choosing to
investigate something. And so I guess what I'm trying to
say is a police officer generally is going to respond
to calls that come through, especially you know, uniform police
officer that's in a patrol vehicle or is on patrol.
(21:23):
They will get called to a thing to investigate something,
or they will observe something and investigate it. Right, those
are generally the two ways in which, uh, a report
is going to get generated for you know, something that
the police officer did that evening. I don't know how
(21:43):
them choosing to or not to investigate something would differ
with the moon, because that would also happen. What I
think you're raising is a fascinating point because in the
order of operations, right, the chain of events, their decision
to whether or not to investigate something a k a.
Do their job occurs after something has already happened, Right,
(22:07):
so they are reacting to an event, hopefully rather than
just going out there and whatever. Right, I doubt that.
I doubt that, but I see what you're saying. It's
very important because then that means that their decision has
very little to do with whether or not there is
a higher a higher number of incidents during the evening
(22:32):
of a full moon. Right, yeah, one would have to
come before the other. Okay, uh And interesting too, because
I know I feel like you're big proponent of the
light argument, just feeling it. It's interesting. Well what about
when a full moon is out during the day? Oh yeah,
and it's observable, crazy pandemonium kids everywhere like the moon there. Yeah,
(22:55):
I think I don't know if anybody else remembers this,
but I very clearly the first time I saw the
moon during the day and I thought the jig was up.
I thought it was the end, you know what I mean.
I was like, well, the quality is going to fall
off a little bit at the end, so we had
a good run. Well, it is a weird. That is
a weird thing. I wonder how universal the concept is. Um.
(23:19):
I think there's a sense growing up that the sun
is out or the moon is out right and the
moon is out at night, of the sun is out
at day, and you cannot have both because how could
it be night end day. That's not a thing, that's
not possible. But then you, you know, begin to realize
that the sun and moon, like all things, are a
sliding scale or a spectrum of almost all things. It's
(23:43):
this weird it's this weird function of reality night and
day or just part of the same wheel man. Yeah,
that's true. Uh So let's let's go back, because we
do have to point out, in all fairness to the
retired depth the hunter that he is, by his own admission,
not a scientist. He is collecting this in in a
(24:07):
way that's very similar to um, the way someone would
collect folklore, you know what. I So, let's go to
members of academia, members of the Ivory Tower, the capital
a academy. Finally, uh University California, Irvine criminology professor Karis
Kubrin calls this perception amongst l e O s a
(24:30):
kind of confirmation bias, adding that the officers are looking
for evidence that confirms their pre existing belief. Pre Existing
is a phrase I I inserted into that quotation. So
let me not mislead you, fellow listeners. This is something personally,
and this is just one person's opinion that I could
(24:52):
get behind, because we know that happens. We know this
happens often to everyone. We we build coincidences or we
curate coincidence in a way that um most aids, and
it bets our own narrative. So you could go through
a troublesome traffic light fifty times, right, and it's it.
(25:17):
Maybe it's always green, right, except for the twelve times
that you happen to catch it when it's red light.
And then by time eleven, you're like, this light sucks.
This happens all the time. How much of my life
have I spent here waiting at this pos traffic light?
And then you know the way other people work. If
you say that, especially if you're complaining about traffic, other
(25:39):
people are not going to go what is wrong with you?
That light is awesome. I looked at my stats for
that light, and Buddy, I am green sixty percent at
the time. No, they're gonna go, yeah, man, traffic lights blow.
I don't know what it is. It's like they should
just pay them red because the color never changes. There
are very few of us, but there are a few
of us who would take the side of the traffic
(25:59):
light just by default because somebody's complaining. Oh yeah, yeah,
I I. I don't want to get too far into this,
but I've been involved. It's when we're traffic light conversations.
Do you know how easy those systems are to hack? Yeah?
It is frightening, dude, It is frightening. How uh how
(26:22):
little effort it would take to totally collapse some traffic
systems in cities here in the US. We're supposed to
be a developed country. In Atlanta, it takes about three
broken lights to just screw up the whole thing. I know. Yeah,
we all call it a day at that point. That's why. Yeah,
it's it's pretty it's pretty rough, especially especially neighbor were working.
(26:44):
It's funny. I'm doing a I'm doing an episode later
this week spoiler alert for our show car Stuff, which
has hit the road again, and one of the one
of the things we're gonna look at is the cost
of traffic. Like traffic, it is expensive. I had no idea.
Forget millions, forget billions. It costs like trillions of dollars
(27:05):
a year. Yeah, but dude, strategic traffic. If you've got
a business that's on like a major road, yeah, traffic
is the stuff. Man. I was thinking that, Okay, this
is a terrible idea. I want to preface this. This
is a terrible idea. No one do it. It's not cool.
But it would work. Oh god, I added that at
(27:26):
the end. So, we have a lot of traffic jams.
Right in other cities, you'll see people who wait at
traffic jams to sell things, right, So what if we
had our worst traffic jams here in Atlanta tend to
be on interstates. What if we had some kind of
like side scooter type things that could go out when
(27:47):
traffic is stopped when it's good blocked and sell snacks,
uh sell, sell beverages, non alcohol like uh sell you know,
do dads, flowers toys. It's it's like a rolling convenience
store on the highways, on the highway, on the shoulder
of the highway in places where again like four thirty
(28:09):
to seven thirty, it's the only time they're open because
that's the only time traffic is slow enough for these
people not to get killed. Now Here the three reasons
it is a horrible idea. One, I would want to
operate it as a nonprofit and give the money to
disadvantage people, which is never gonna fly with Atlanta's government. Two. Uh,
(28:33):
we're talking about sending people out in traffic. Even if
the speed is zero that could very quickly become sixty
and then we're just like one scrape up away from
the whole thing collapsing. Yeah, but I bet you could
charge a premium on this is this is my solution, right,
Because people are stuck in traffic, they can't escape on
(28:56):
some exit because they know if they go escape on
the exit to hit up whatever fast food joint or
let's say a racetrack or q T here or insert
your gas station seven eleven here, Um, they know it's
just gonna take even longer to get back on the
highway and they won't be able to get where they're going.
But if somebody, let's say, was on the side of
(29:17):
the road and they could make it to you, if
they could get to your car door your window, roll
it down and that's all you gotta do. Roll down
your window and swipe your card and you can have
let's just say, some something as simple as some chips
and an ice cold beverage. They will pay you like
movie theater prices. And if they're paying movie theater prices,
(29:40):
not only can you pay for your staff and they'll
have a pretty nice wage. You'll be able to donate
a good chunk of that the way you wanted to
donate it. Again, the city government will never let it happen.
But I like what you're saying because then also think
about this, Uh well, the last problem, the last problem,
of course, I think I have a solution to the
last problem is in the biggest ones, which is it
(30:02):
would further ruin cripple traffic to have everybody trying to
get to the shoulder at a stopping point. You know,
of course there it's a very self centered species, so
there will be a lot of people in the middle
who are like, hey, forget you buddy, bring that RBS
to me. I got things to do. Uh, it's true.
(30:23):
But here's the solution. Instead of people, when we just
send drones out. That was good. That was literally the
thing next. Yeah, drones, you just need uh reliably for
them to operate at peak efficiency. You need a sunroof, though,
so it's already kind of for the elite. I mean
it would be anyway, if you're gonna pay movie theater
prices for anything, right, I guess, I guess there aren't
(30:46):
a lot of people who who are just scraping by
so they could save up for their drone. Uh chloopas drone,
chalupas man. You know what, I apologize for derailing us here.
Let us know what you think of this idea. Matt.
You're kind, you're you're kind of turning me back into
a proponent of it. You know, I would, I'd get
(31:07):
into this venture. Cool. I think I agree with you. Also,
if we partner up with a fast food franchise, since
we're already ruining the world with drones them, we could
we could get them to sink some of the overhead
costs for us. Um. You know there's this fast food
chain that makes chicken sandwiches. Not the one you're thinking about,
(31:29):
it's that one from Louisiana. Uh if you had them
with their chicken sandwiches. Oh, my goodness, food for thought,
literally food for thought. Let's let's go back to Sorry,
I got us to traffic from from folklore in the moon.
But let's go back to the Academy capital A. There's
(31:53):
another professor who attributes this perception, this causual perception between
the moon and extraordinary behavior to folklore rather than to science.
Professor Elizabeth Loftis says she will not outright condone a
(32:14):
correlation between the moon and craziness, but she does concede
that quote. Maybe mentally ill people get weirded out by
the full moon and behave in strange ways. If this
is the case, then what we might be perceiving as
a weird effect of moonlight or gravity or water, what
(32:34):
have you, may in fact just be a collection of
isolated incidents wherein people who were already unwell, where somehow
triggered by a specific environmental event. And in these cases,
maybe it just happened to be the moon. Maybe we're
not paying enough attention to other things, like an eclipse.
(32:54):
People go nuts steering an eclipse, you know, for one
reason or another. Back to what you said about religio,
Some religions are founded on being able to predict an
eclipse and then go absolutely ham when one happens. They
are wonderful, they are they are but you know, if
you can get a spot where you get totality. Ah,
(33:14):
but but the moon is the moon alone, is not
the weather nor the environment entire So we mentioned sad earlier,
but what exactly is it? How does it work? Will
tell you after a word from our sponsors, and we
(33:36):
are back. So let's get sad everybody. Um sorry, um,
so let's let's discuss seasonal effective disorder. It's um it's
more rare than probably the media would want you to believe,
or has made us believe, but it is indeed very
much a real thing. And let's just talk about what
(33:59):
it means. Seasonality or this disorder is reported by approximately
ten people with depression. So that's somebody who already is
feeling depression or having depression, and they are either saying
this is a part of it or the entirety of
their depression, of the changes in season. Then of those
(34:20):
with bipolar disorder also, you know, report that seasonality or
seasonal effective disorder is also affecting them, right right, Like,
I I know what my uh my variation may be
mood and emotion values, peaks and values exactly, and even
correcting for that, I notice some enormous values and there
(34:45):
are some fascinating real reasons behind some of this stuff.
That again, as we're talking a little bit more about
the chemicals in our bodies and how those change this stuff, Um,
it goes deeper in it and it speaks to our connection,
humanity's connection to the sun. Oh sure, yeah. According to
(35:08):
the Mayo Clinic, SAD or seasonal effective disorder, it's a
type of depression that's related to changes in the seasons.
It begins and ends around the same couple of times
every year. And if you're like most people with this condition,
your symptoms start in autumn. They begin in the fall,
they continue into the winter months. You are lethargic, your
(35:30):
energy is sapped, you feel moody less often. We have
seen cases of people reporting SAD in the other direction
in the spring or early summer. The signs and symptoms
are going to be very familiar for anyone who has
had these win tree blues before. You will feel depressed
(35:53):
most of the day, almost every day. The stuff that
you enjoyed, video games, volleyball, cyber bullying, Twitter, people or whatever,
you don't enjoy it anymore. You have low energy. But
even though you feel tired all the time you cannot sleep.
You also don't enjoy a lot of the food you
used to like. A lot of people report that they
(36:16):
feel agitated when when they're experiencing this, or or sluggish,
having a difficult time concentrating, like let's say, if you're
at school or at work, just can't really wrap your
mind around one thing. Um, feeling hopeless, sometimes feeling guilty
or worthless. Again, these are a lot of a lot
(36:37):
of these symptoms of just overall depression too, having frequent
thoughts of death or suicide. And there's some science to this.
As you would as you had said met, we know
that when your body, as long as you qualify as
a human being, when your body is exposed to less sunlight,
it produces more melatonin. Melatonin is the hormone that makes
(37:00):
you sleepy. It's pretty popular in the West as a
sleep aid nowadays. Then there's also a pretty solid idea
called the face shift hypothesis. The face shift hypothesis proposes
what we had just talked about earlier in the beginning
of the show, and it says that shortened days caused
the timing of our circadian rhythms to fall out of
(37:22):
sync with the actual time of day because there's this
delay in the release of melatonin. And just as your body,
your flesh bag, begins craving these mid day naps, your
brain begins producing lower levels of serotonin. Yeah, the tickle,
that's what I call it. Yeah, your brain stops making
(37:42):
the tickle that is with a capital T. So your mood,
your appetite, your sleep, your sexual desire, none of them,
none of them scratch the itch anymore. You know, you
don't get the tickle. What's the point of living if
you don't have to, you know, if you don't enjoy
the way stuff taste, if you're not excited about doing something,
you're just sort of getting a participation grade. Yeah, the
(38:03):
tickle of it's of the highest import and that stinks
to have it deadened, a little bit nullified in a way. Yeah,
And how like, for instance, I'm a I'm a person
who goes through i mean dark times pretty regularly. Yeah, right,
(38:25):
So I think that's one of the reasons we get
a logged for. Well, but but we did, we did
find the science here, and then we not only found
the science, we found beyond the microcosmic neurochemical mechanisms of
every individual brain we found that society's wherein people regularly
(38:46):
experience this deprivation of light to an extreme degree. The
societies have banded together and created group solutions or attempts
at group solutions for sunlight deprivation. That's why a lot
of people living in the Arctic Circle, a lot of
people living in against Scandinavian countries that have the infrastructure
(39:12):
to support community solutions like this, they have. They've done
some groundbreaking work with light therapy, and we we found
some pretty cool examples of this too. Oh yeah, there's
an Atlantic article called will Norway Ever Beat the Winter
Blues that you shared Ben and in here it talks
about a southern town in Norway called Rijukon or r
(39:35):
j u k a n And it's kind of in
a bit of a valley between two large mountains, and
during certain times of the seasons there, the sun basically
hits the peaks of the mountains are are high up
on the mountains, but doesn't actually ever get down into
the valley, so it doesn't actually ever touch the town
(39:56):
for long periods of time. And they figured out a
way to get um these large I think seventeen meter
wide mirrors that reflect the sunlight from the higher peaks
of that mountain down into the town square. And it's
a it's a fascinating idea. It's genius and very simple
(40:19):
in a way, but just the concept of bringing a
little bit of light into the town square so that
people during midday, like I think it was noon to
two or something like that, people can go out and
experience sunlight in a time when they haven't felt it
on their skin in days, if not weeks. And another
thing interesting that's happening in that town um in the
(40:42):
surrounding areas as well. There's a company called brain Lit.
It's a Swedish company and what they hear what they
do is they outfit a whole building, sometimes a classroom,
sometimes a home with smart lighting that mimics day and
night cycles essentially. So the idea here is to get
(41:02):
a human being circadian rhythms back on track just by
having their eyes experienced the light and the feeling on
their skin all those things haven't occurred indoors rather than
outside being affected by the sun. And then again we
returned to the nature of the light, right, it's a
it's a specific type of light, correct, Yeah, it's HC
(41:24):
L and l E ed the two solutions they have
and they call it biocentric lighting. It's really interesting stuff
if you want to learn more. We are not promoting
this this company or this brand, but it's called brain
lit b R A I N L I T dot
S E slash e N. That's where we were looking about,
looking at it, and we know that the research in
(41:47):
this field is continuing. Light at least affects us more
than we might like to believe. This is not Hey,
I'm going on record. Man, you know I respect you.
This is not me agreeing with the light hyper This
is relucy. This is not This is not me agreeing
with that because I just I couldn't find any science
to bear it out. But that doesn't mean it's not true.
(42:08):
It just means maybe the science hasn't caught up with
the human belief yet. Um I told you just my belief.
I don't got no science, but it might be out
there and it's worth searching for In some people with
bipolar disorder. We also know that spring and summer can
bring on symptoms of mania or a less intense form
of mania hypomania, and fall and winter can be a
(42:29):
time of deep depression. Here's another. Here's the ultimate answer.
Though not just counting light, which is only one part
of our environment. Let's think of the weather all the
other things. The weather is wind, barometric pressure, niddity things
like that. Pressure is a big one. Pressure is a
huge one. And it turns out that everyday weather can
(42:50):
change your mood. If you are already unhappy, if you're
already having a bad time, don't worry. Weather can make it.
If you're in a good mood. Uh, you are more,
you are less susceptible to changes in environment or changes
in you know, weather affecting you are a mental state.
(43:12):
I'll go with this. I've got stuff to add. I'll
bring it back later. Let's let's go through this. Okay,
So first things first, two thousand eight study associated with
the a P a American Psychological Association, published in the
journal Emotion indicates the weather can indeed mess with you
if you're already feeling down in the dumps, morose, sad, etcetera.
(43:33):
Researchers evaluated the personalities and moods of more than twelve
hundred adults through these daily questionnaires. So they're self reporting. Alright,
a little sticky, but these these questionnaires were cross referenced
with the local weather during the day when they answered
these questions, and they found that related like climate factors
like temperature, sunlight, wind, precipitation, so on, had no impact whatsoever.
(43:59):
I'm positive mood, but the temperature, wind, and sunlight did
have a measurable effect on negative mood. And when we
say negative, we're using it in the colloquial way, not
the scientific way. Negative in science means absence of here,
it means bad. So so yeah, right, So, increased temperatures
(44:19):
had a positive effect on bad moods, while increased wind
and decreased sunlight had a worsening effect on a bad mood.
Although these effects did vary from one individual to another
in terms of um the degree of change, like how
extremely or profoundly they were affected, it did bear out
(44:39):
across again more than a thousand people, that there was
some sort of correlation. And additionally, this is just the
lead we're gonna drop. We're not gonna follow up. Additionally,
there are a surprising number of studies uh into the
correlation between high temperatures and crime, and from what we
can it is real when the heat spikes more crimes
(45:04):
occur hot time somewhere in the city. My friend, back
your neck, right, but no, but it's true. And from
what I was reading just this morning, you know, the
science isn't necessarily in on that, but it does make
sense on a very base level. If it is warm
outside and it is warm inside, a lot of people
(45:27):
will probably be going outside. There will be more people
on the street. There will be more people, you know,
mulling around. There will be more people with bikes, more
people making a trip with their um, their briefcases for
whatever they're carrying with them that may have something in there.
Perhaps more opportunity for crime, more opportunity like more victims,
(45:51):
like potential victims in an area, and also more people
who were not hold up in their house because it's
cold and rainy, who be the you know, potential mugger
or burglar or whatever. Um, it does feel like there's
a real correlation there, Like if you just imagine yourself
if it's cold and rainy making the decision to go
(46:14):
out and do something nefarious versus if it's hot and
you've got nothing else to do and very dry. I
don't know, I feel it feels it feels real. So
there we have it. We know that the weather is
not conspiring against us, because the weather itself, as far
(46:37):
as we know, is not sentient, right, And if we
go down that route, we end up at the Guia hypothesis,
which is a fascinating thought experiment uh superorganisms at all.
While there is no currently well there's no scientific proof
that a full moon affects the human brain, and the
way that folklore tells us it does, the strength of
(46:58):
confirmation bias and self filling prophecy might render that exact
same science moot because some people maybe having stability issues
during the full moon just because they believe that's what happens.
We all grow up in a world where full moons
are portrayed as harbingers of doom or eeriness in works
(47:18):
of fiction right dating back centuries, so of course we
believe it. We've been brought up to believe that some
medical law enforcement professionals may be suffering from their own
illusory pattern recognition, But it also seems like they are
a little bit more likely than the average Jane or
Joe whatever to believe in this correlation because they feel
(47:39):
they've personally experienced it. And while the moon may not
affect your mind. The sun most certainly does in ways
that you might not even notice, as can barometric pressure,
bringing about some pain. It affects my dog. If my
dog feels barometric pressure changing, especially if it's lessening, she
gets all freaked out because she knows the storm's coming.
(48:02):
It's crazy and it's and it's like half an hour
to twenty minutes before a storm starts. It's weird. Um.
And that's why you know, we didn't even really talk
about rain much at all. No, no, we haven't even
talked about rain. Luckily we did. I think we have
an earlier video on dogs and other animals being able
to predict the weather, right do we do? That? Make
me think that is one of the other video shows.
(48:25):
I'm remembering a different timeline. Maybe it's it's I think
it's one of the other views. Oh man, Okay, well,
if it's one of the other video shows, I guess
you could still check it out. Yeah, it was probably
brain stuff or what was the other one called? Oh no,
what the stuff? The stuff? Gosh Bury it That was
(48:46):
Paul's favorite thing that we ever made with salt Bury,
that Let No Stand, Let No Stone Stand. On another video,
Stone there. But anyhow, what do you think, folks? Is
there more to the moon? Myth then meets the eye?
As as Matt and I and Noel and Paul have
always have always said and always prided ourselves on, we're
(49:08):
we're not afraid to have differing opinions. And it feels
like I'm a little more on the skeptical side of this,
And it feels like Matt, nuts, but where's in your mouth?
It feels like you are a little more on board
with maybe the science isn't there yet, and the science
might find something proving this, this hypothesis about light. It's
one of those things. It feels like the science should
(49:29):
have been here a long time ago, and it just
feels correct to me. But I acknowledge that it's probably
not scientifically valid. I don't know, though, because we we
know that light does affect sleep patterns, like it seems
seems pretty solid. Feelings and feeling and knowing two very
different things. What what's the weather like in your neck
(49:53):
of the woods? Fellow conspiracy realists, tell us and tell
us your craziest full moon war stories. Bonus points if
they somehow involve shape shifters, Yeah, yes, or UFOSI or
UFOs or shape ship. If you've seen someone transform into
a UFO, you win. Oh my god, I don't know
(50:16):
what you win, but we'll we'll figure out something. If
you have video proof, go ahead and you can replace
me as host on this show. Put that out there.
If you've got video proof of weather affecting something with
a UFO shape shifter, yeah, you're in. I accept. You
can appear on an episode. Don't please don't pod people.
My good friend Matt Frederick here where Okay, let's say
(50:40):
somebody does have that kind of stuff, Matt, how can
they get it to us? Oh? Well, you can find
us on Twitter, where we're conspiracy stuff, or on Facebook
where we're also conspiracy stuff. Or you can join our
Facebook group here's where it gets crazy, where you can
meet all sorts of other us. Of course, when I
say you, I mean you, but then also you, so
there's so many different us out there. What I'm saying
(51:02):
is we all get together as we and have discussions
about the show. I hope that wasn't weird enough for you.
Altered versions of yourself and so on. Yes, if you
do not care for the social meats, you can always
call us we have a phone number. That is a
true story. Um, maybe wait till the moon is full
(51:23):
and dial in. Yes, we are one eight three three
S T d W y t K. Leave us a message.
We might do something with it. We might just listen
to it in a room in a circle, turn bead,
then your message is inserted there. Um. If you don't
want to do any of that stuff. Oh, by the way,
(51:44):
Instagram or conspiracy stuff show. That's right. That's a very
good point. And you can find us. So you can
find Ben. It's pretty easy. Actually, if you type in
Ben Bowl and I've tried it a couple of times,
you can find them. You can also find that if
you are intrepid. Yes, but the difficulty level is higher.
That's actually not true because my heart is literally in
my user name. If none of that quite bags your
(52:09):
badgers hangs your moon or helio stats are sparse, Sunlight
of life. We have one last way to contact us,
even though it's twenty nineteen, still as we record this,
we have an old fashioned email address. You can write
to us. We are conspiracy at I heart radio dot com.
(52:47):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of i Heeart Radio's how stuff Works. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, Welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt. They call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Paul Mission Control deck, and most importantly, you are you.
You are here and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. How you feeling today, Matt, I'm
feeling feeling well. It's finally colder here, so much colder
(00:47):
than it has been that I get to wear my
you know, my black leather gloves, in my big black jacket,
in my black hat when I'm driving, and I feel
like some kind of anti super serial killer hero. Uh
side know, Paul michigantrol dec and just chimed in with
(01:08):
serial killer. I don't know if that made it on
the mike. No, I don't think it did, but that's
why it was a super serial killer hero. Yeah. Driving
with your balaklava on h Yeah, it just feels good. Yeah.
I believe this is one of the states where it
is technically illegal to operate a motor vehicle wearing a mask.
(01:29):
Yeah have you heard about that? Probably, but they haven't
caught me yet. Yeah. I don't see how that would
apply to things that require helmets like motorcycles and so on. Anyhow, Yeah,
I also felt the strange switch. Suddenly we woke up
and it was fall, you know, or maybe we skipped
fall and it's just winter now. Yeah, it's getting pretty close.
And you know, like many people dealing with the rapidly
(01:54):
changing climate, we are discovering a paradigm shift in conversation.
Remember those old house yon days where it was considered
boring or small talk to talk about the weather. We
were growing up. That's something old people and boring people did. Yeah,
but I think maybe we're just a little older and
more boring that that is a valid that's a valid assertion.
(02:16):
It's happening more frequently in my life at least, or
I would say, I would say valid proposition because I
would I would argue that now the weather is becoming
so unpredictable and wild card esque, we all tend to
talk about the weather more because we have to check in,
because no one knows what's going to happen, you know,
(02:36):
is it is it used to. We're no longer shooting
the breeze. We're we're ensuring people's safety and livelihood. You
don't know, if you ask somebody what the weather, what
the weather is like in their part of town, they
might say, well, the tornado has gained sentience, which we
were not expecting. But scientists say that's because we didn't
recycle or something like that. Sure, I'm I'm not exaggerating
(02:58):
a bit, but today's episode is in a way about
the weather. It is in a way about the environment,
because whether you live in the frozen wilds of the
Arctic North or the sweltering climes of the Tropic or
the you know, objectively perfect environment of Hawaii, you've doubtlessly
had one of those weird conversations about whether with outsiders.
(03:21):
You know, yes, says somebody in the upper reaches of Scandinavia.
Sometimes the sun sets at four pm here. Other times
it's dark for you know, weeks on end, or the
sun just doesn't leave at all. It's it's normal for us.
And while weather across the planet can vary to a
wide degree, it is a pretty impressive that our species,
(03:42):
um most of whom were largely identical to one another
in terms of physiological requirements. It's impressive that we can
all exist for long periods of time and these very
different conditions you know, you know, in our cultures have
of kind of been tailored in a lot of ways
(04:03):
to these different weather patterns and the climates in which
we've you know, existed. Yeah, religions are born a lot
of times early on at least out of these patterns.
Good call. Right, Yeah, we're toolmakers, were arrogant, we are explainers,
and we are woefully satisfied with our own explanations. Yeah,
(04:25):
but we're also feelers because we've got a lot of
chemicals that float around in us that cause us to
feel ways, or at least they affect the way we
feel about things sometimes. Right, And I was thinking about
this too with the old Robert Frost poem Tree at
my window. You remember that, So there's this line tree
(04:46):
in my window is obviously it's about this tree that
Robert Frost is really digging at the time, or to
be fair, the speaker of the poem if not, you know,
maybe he's faking it. Maybe he didn't have a tree.
It could be a character. Yeah, maybe it's like a
metaphor for nuke. The war is something who knows, right, Well,
there's this, there's this thought in the last two lines
where he talks about the tree experiencing outer weather and
(05:09):
himself or again the speaker of the poem being concerned
with their own inner weather. And today's episode is about that.
I love that you set up uh, the the idea
of all these neurochemicals and reactions just bouncing willy nilly
and unseen in every person's brain box. Because today's episode
does not center around climate change, it's about a more
(05:30):
primal question people have been asking for the very least centuries.
That is, how does the outer weather, the environment affect
our own inner psychological weather. Can something in the air,
some lack of sunlight, or some overabundance of moonlight really
make us, for lack of a better phrase, hesitate to
(05:51):
say it, but go crazy. Yes, let's say, act abnormally
through ourselves, at least to ourselves, um in the ways
we've we've come to see ourselves. Here are the facts.
There is a common wisdom that floats around the internet,
(06:12):
has been around for a long time that whether in
some ways can affect people's moods, how they feel whether
or not they're excited to wake up in the morning,
or you know, if they're feeling a little sad now
and then. And there is this idea of it is
it has a name that is kind of delightful, but
at the same time, it's just delightful to speak of.
(06:35):
It's called SAD Seasonal effective disorder SAD. Yes, And we'll
talk about that a little bit later on. Yeah, we're
just planning the seed for sad. We're here. It will
it will be fruitful later on. Now. Um, there's an
unrelated idea that my wife and I have talked about
a lot of times because of her involvement with children,
(06:59):
um in in a school environment, of whether or not
the moon can actually affect us as well to the
amount of light that's being reflected upon us by the moon. Really,
that's what they're talking about, where the moon is and
how much light is being reflected. Can this make us
feel different? Yeah, stable perhaps? Yeah. Yeah. This is an
(07:20):
ancient idea, and it goes in a couple of different directions.
The ancient idea is um the concept that the moon
maybe not so much the light sometimes light Sometimes it's
just the idea that a more visible moon means a
moon is physically closer. Uh. This this dates back all
the way to philosophers like Aristotle and the often hilariously
(07:45):
incorrect historian Pliny the Elder. From the Roman historian, they
thought that the brain was the moistest oregon in the body,
and that therefore, like the oceans, it was the most
susceptible to the insidious influences of the moon because of
the way the moon can affect the tides and the oceans.
(08:08):
And this went through this idea, which again as ancient,
has gone through many different iterations and names. Sometimes it
was called the lunar lunacy effect or the Transylvania effect,
and it's the belief, you know, survived the fall of
the Roman Empire and survived the fall of the ancient
(08:28):
Greeks in the Middle Ages when people when when it
was just commonly accepted that some people turn into wolves,
you know, some people are in league with infernal powers
and they turn into wolves, and that's just how the
cookie crumbles, right, Uh. They they of course thought that
the moon had these unholy influences even on um people
(08:51):
who say their prayers at night, you know, and the
the wolfs bane reference. Yeah, the full moon is a
weird thing. It's a weird thing. Back in the nineteenth century,
there is even this thing that you could argue in
court that, uh, you could argue that somebody was not
guilty by reason of the full moon. Let's say, if
(09:11):
you're a defense lawyer and you're representing somebody, and they
would make their their claim that this quote unquote lunatic
client was you know, not accountable for whatever he or
she did because the full moon was there. And we
all know how the full moon affects us, especially when
we're turning into wolves and such. Just kidding. This is
(09:32):
now the nineteenth century, So we've moved beyond werewolves, not
not fully, but we moved a bit beyond werewolves eight
hundreds Eastern Europe, people people were still certain, you know,
and and in in less uh you know, in less
densely populated areas in the world today, belief in physical
(09:53):
shape shifters. It's it's still around, you know, it's not
as popular. Yeah, well, I mean, and there's there's lot
too to be said there on the full moon. There's
there's a ton of things here about how the full
moon can possibly affect us. So That's that's the interesting part,
right where wolves aside, ancient rome aside, the belief in
(10:16):
this relationship between the moon waxing and people acting unstable
persist in the modern day. You will see the lunar
cycle blamed for everything from spikes and suicide attempts and
psychiatric hospital emissions, to emergency room calls and reports, to
traffic accidents, to dog bites and more and more and
(10:38):
more and again. Just hanging it back to our wife
and just for a second, she believes this kind of
her theory or her hypothesis is that the amount of
light shining down on a darkened earth at any given
time can affect sleep patterns, the way a child or
an adult falls asleep, how long it takes to false,
(11:00):
how how well they're able to sleep, just because of
an increased amount of light within a room, unless they
are blackout curtains or something like that. She thinks that
can have an effect on the next day. Essentially, I see, Yeah,
it's um disturbance and circadian rhythm, right that. I mean,
that's that's a good argument. I would I would want
to hear the opinion too of how that if light
(11:23):
is if light is the cause there ultimately of some
sort of disturbance in otherwise normal behavior. Is it dependent
on the type of light? Is that what creates the disturbance?
Because now we live in a place where many, many,
many people have artificial lights, whether they're even just computer
(11:43):
screens of television screens on while they sleep. So are
you know, as a disturbed circadian rhythm the new normal?
I could definitely see it uh being really solid uh
proposition in the days before electricity, you know, I like
maybe maybe the disturbance has changed over time because of
the rise of electric lights. So yeah, I would just
(12:05):
say from you know, not to get into an argument
about this, but within at my home, the moon's light
uh comes into our windows at my house to such
a significant effect that it looks like we've got lights
on outside. Um, when there's a full moon compared to
when there's even a half moon or or you know, lesser. Um,
(12:26):
do you feel that's pushing closer to like anthropy or
I'm not sure, but but it certainly does affect my
ability to get to sleep and just personally. And I
just wonder how how much of an effect that would
be outside of computer screens, outside of you know, artificial life,
and yeah, that's that's again, that's one of my big questions.
There would be the type of light, you know what
(12:48):
I mean? Is it uv thing? Is it something in
the led displays? People are still debating about this, and
there's an interesting scientific quibble here. Py Chiatrists across the
planet and certainly throughout the West, including people like Miami
psychiatrists Arnold Lieber, have argued um have argued less about
(13:10):
light and more about water, the idea that just like
Aristotle and Plenty said, the full moon has an effect
on behavior because the human body is almost water. So again,
maybe the moon is disrupting something about the way water
(13:30):
functions in our nervous systems. Specifically, Other people, not just psychiatrists,
tend to agree, and large groups of people tend to
agree that the moon does something wonky to human beings
or is this survey a few years back that said
around forty of college students believe yes, the moon can
affect human behavior in increasing their likelihood of doing something
(13:54):
unusual for them. That's the thing's all case by case
unusual for them. For some one, unusual might be staying
up till three am and eating a pint of ice
cream for other people. Unusual maybe you know robbing. Uh,
toys r us. I'm trying to think of things that
aren't around, so we don't get any angry letters. Toys
(14:16):
r us or radio shack somewhere there we go I
kept its stores unlocked. A media play. Uh, there are
still sears in Alaska. Isn't that weird? So this this
is interesting because this isn't just cherry picking one survey.
Other surveys seemed to indicate that mental health professionals might
(14:40):
be more likely than the average person to believe in
this relationship, and sectors of law enforcement. That should not
surprise anybody, whether you yourself or l e O, or
whether you have one in your friend group or your family.
A lot of members of law enforcements share this belief.
As a matter of fact. Back in the nineties seventies,
the International Association of the Chiefs of Police put their
(15:01):
money where their mouth is. They commissioned a study to
discover whether there was in a scientific basis to the
belief that the full moon makes people Let's not say crazy,
let's say weird. What do we know? What they found?
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's
(15:27):
where it gets crazy. Oddly enough, multiple studies, not all
the studies, but the majority of studies conducted in this
field or towards this question, have found no discernible scientific
evidence that the full moon has any sort of physiological
effect on the human mind. So we can we can
(15:49):
bust the water myth first. Before we get to that,
Please note everyone the way we phrased that finding that
the full moon does not have any sort of physiological
effect on the human mind that is different from a
psychological effect. Right, So there's a dilemma there, But we're
we're pretty sure as a species that if the moon
(16:13):
has some sort of, uh, some sort of delatorious effect
on human beings, it is not due to the water
content of our bodies. Let's go to the Scientific American
with some quotes that list the problems with this whole
water gravity theory, like, is the moon actually changing the
water inside of us? It says, quote first, the gravitational
(16:36):
effects of the moon are far too minuscule to generate
any meaningful effects on brain activity, let alone behavior. As
the late astronomer George Bell of the University of California,
Los Angeles noted, a mosquito sitting on your arm exerts
a more powerful gravitational effect on us than the moon does.
Now that's intense. This is me speaking outside of the quote.
(16:57):
That's an intense fact. If it is indeed affect and
it was said by a former astronomer, so we must
believe it. Let's continue on. Yet, to the best of
our knowledge, there have been no reports of a mosquito
lunacy effect. So there's a little biting remark there. Um,
let's go on. Second, the Moon's gravitational force affects only
(17:19):
open bodies of water, such as oceans and lakes, but
not contained sources of water such as the human brain.
Pretty rock solid, it really is. It is contained within
our skulls. This last one is the most interesting. Yes. Quote. Third,
the gravitational effect of the moon is just as potent
during new moons, when the moon is visible to us,
(17:41):
as it is during full moons. So ha ha, the
light of the moon is a more likely candidate for
affecting us. I'm just kidding, but it is sure. I mean, well,
let's find out. Going back to water. What this means
is that the perception that we have, well, it does
(18:03):
hold its own internal logic. You know, there's some analog there.
The moon affects water in certain ways or in certain
you know, situations, then why not the human brain. What's
so special about the water and the human body? Nothing
except temporarily it's location. This means that if we want
(18:23):
to dive into the belief that there's some sort of
causal relationship between the moon and specifically crime, right, if
we want to look at law enforcement data, then we
will need to reject the water myth or the water
part of the moon myth, and will need to regard,
at least as some degree, the huge amount of anecdotal
(18:46):
evidence from police officers across the planet because a lot
of these folks wholeheartedly believe in this, but maybe maybe
not the way you think, because often you know, people
who work in law enforcement or trained to apply critical thinging,
so they will, hopefully they're paying attention and training, be
some of the more skeptical members of society at large.
(19:09):
So let's consider the work of a guy named David Hunter.
David Hunter was a retired deputy from Knox County, Tennessee.
In his book The Moon Is Always Full, he collected
multiple stories of police officers relaying strange events let's call
them lunar war stories, things that happened while they were
on duty during the full moon. However, a hunter does
(19:32):
not believe that there is a physiological mechanism at play here. Instead,
he believes it is squarely something in the sphere of
the psychological. He says that the moon crime relationship, or
perception thereof, is a matter of self fulfilling prophecies. And
he notes, he says, hey, you know, almost cops, the
adrenaline junkies, if nothing happens on a graveyard shift, they get,
(19:55):
you know, disappointed. So the full moon gives a cop
of reason to investigate things he I usually ignore. H So,
just the fact that it is a full moon. The
police officer thinking to him or herself, Oh, it's a
full moon. I gotta check this out right right right.
(20:15):
I've seen the movies, I've seen the tropes or you know,
it's it's similar to I guess bade or mine huff
to where you know you you here, turn the beat
around once and then are you think of the song
and then you feel like you've heard it three times
in the past forty eight hours? But have you or
were you just noticing more. You know, are you using
(20:36):
turn the beat around as like a verb, like I
did a thing I turned the beat around, I mean
the song. But yeah, you turn the beat around if
you'd like, you know, But but you know, this doesn't
take into account like I'm just imagining. I'm not cooping
Hunters writing here. I'm just saying there's a differ prints
(21:00):
between investigating, like having something to investigate and choosing to
investigate something. And so I guess what I'm trying to
say is a police officer generally is going to respond
to calls that come through, especially you know, uniform police
officer that's in a patrol vehicle or is on patrol.
(21:23):
They will get called to a thing to investigate something,
or they will observe something and investigate it. Right, those
are generally the two ways in which, uh, a report
is going to get generated for you know, something that
the police officer did that evening. I don't know how
(21:43):
them choosing to or not to investigate something would differ
with the moon, because that would also happen. What I
think you're raising is a fascinating point because in the
order of operations, right, the chain of events, their decision
to whether or not to investigate something a k a.
Do their job occurs after something has already happened, Right,
(22:07):
so they are reacting to an event, hopefully rather than
just going out there and whatever. Right, I doubt that.
I doubt that, but I see what you're saying. It's
very important because then that means that their decision has
very little to do with whether or not there is
a higher a higher number of incidents during the evening
(22:32):
of a full moon. Right, yeah, one would have to
come before the other. Okay, uh And interesting too, because
I know I feel like you're big proponent of the
light argument, just feeling it. It's interesting. Well what about
when a full moon is out during the day? Oh yeah,
and it's observable, crazy pandemonium kids everywhere like the moon there. Yeah,
(22:55):
I think I don't know if anybody else remembers this,
but I very clearly the first time I saw the
moon during the day and I thought the jig was up.
I thought it was the end, you know what I mean.
I was like, well, the quality is going to fall
off a little bit at the end, so we had
a good run. Well, it is a weird. That is
a weird thing. I wonder how universal the concept is. Um.
(23:19):
I think there's a sense growing up that the sun
is out or the moon is out right and the
moon is out at night, of the sun is out
at day, and you cannot have both because how could
it be night end day. That's not a thing, that's
not possible. But then you, you know, begin to realize
that the sun and moon, like all things, are a
sliding scale or a spectrum of almost all things. It's
(23:43):
this weird it's this weird function of reality night and
day or just part of the same wheel man. Yeah,
that's true. Uh So let's let's go back, because we
do have to point out, in all fairness to the
retired depth the hunter that he is, by his own admission,
not a scientist. He is collecting this in in a
(24:07):
way that's very similar to um, the way someone would
collect folklore, you know what. I So, let's go to
members of academia, members of the Ivory Tower, the capital
a academy. Finally, uh University California, Irvine criminology professor Karis
Kubrin calls this perception amongst l e O s a
(24:30):
kind of confirmation bias, adding that the officers are looking
for evidence that confirms their pre existing belief. Pre Existing
is a phrase I I inserted into that quotation. So
let me not mislead you, fellow listeners. This is something personally,
and this is just one person's opinion that I could
(24:52):
get behind, because we know that happens. We know this
happens often to everyone. We we build coincidences or we
curate coincidence in a way that um most aids, and
it bets our own narrative. So you could go through
a troublesome traffic light fifty times, right, and it's it.
(25:17):
Maybe it's always green, right, except for the twelve times
that you happen to catch it when it's red light.
And then by time eleven, you're like, this light sucks.
This happens all the time. How much of my life
have I spent here waiting at this pos traffic light?
And then you know the way other people work. If
you say that, especially if you're complaining about traffic, other
(25:39):
people are not going to go what is wrong with you?
That light is awesome. I looked at my stats for
that light, and Buddy, I am green sixty percent at
the time. No, they're gonna go, yeah, man, traffic lights blow.
I don't know what it is. It's like they should
just pay them red because the color never changes. There
are very few of us, but there are a few
of us who would take the side of the traffic
(25:59):
light just by default because somebody's complaining. Oh yeah, yeah,
I I. I don't want to get too far into this,
but I've been involved. It's when we're traffic light conversations.
Do you know how easy those systems are to hack? Yeah?
It is frightening, dude, It is frightening. How uh how
(26:22):
little effort it would take to totally collapse some traffic
systems in cities here in the US. We're supposed to
be a developed country. In Atlanta, it takes about three
broken lights to just screw up the whole thing. I know. Yeah,
we all call it a day at that point. That's why. Yeah,
it's it's pretty it's pretty rough, especially especially neighbor were working.
(26:44):
It's funny. I'm doing a I'm doing an episode later
this week spoiler alert for our show car Stuff, which
has hit the road again, and one of the one
of the things we're gonna look at is the cost
of traffic. Like traffic, it is expensive. I had no idea.
Forget millions, forget billions. It costs like trillions of dollars
(27:05):
a year. Yeah, but dude, strategic traffic. If you've got
a business that's on like a major road, yeah, traffic
is the stuff. Man. I was thinking that, Okay, this
is a terrible idea. I want to preface this. This
is a terrible idea. No one do it. It's not cool.
But it would work. Oh god, I added that at
(27:26):
the end. So, we have a lot of traffic jams.
Right in other cities, you'll see people who wait at
traffic jams to sell things, right, So what if we
had our worst traffic jams here in Atlanta tend to
be on interstates. What if we had some kind of
like side scooter type things that could go out when
(27:47):
traffic is stopped when it's good blocked and sell snacks,
uh sell, sell beverages, non alcohol like uh sell you know,
do dads, flowers toys. It's it's like a rolling convenience
store on the highways, on the highway, on the shoulder
of the highway in places where again like four thirty
(28:09):
to seven thirty, it's the only time they're open because
that's the only time traffic is slow enough for these
people not to get killed. Now Here the three reasons
it is a horrible idea. One, I would want to
operate it as a nonprofit and give the money to
disadvantage people, which is never gonna fly with Atlanta's government. Two. Uh,
(28:33):
we're talking about sending people out in traffic. Even if
the speed is zero that could very quickly become sixty
and then we're just like one scrape up away from
the whole thing collapsing. Yeah, but I bet you could
charge a premium on this is this is my solution, right,
Because people are stuck in traffic, they can't escape on
(28:56):
some exit because they know if they go escape on
the exit to hit up whatever fast food joint or
let's say a racetrack or q T here or insert
your gas station seven eleven here, Um, they know it's
just gonna take even longer to get back on the
highway and they won't be able to get where they're going.
But if somebody, let's say, was on the side of
(29:17):
the road and they could make it to you, if
they could get to your car door your window, roll
it down and that's all you gotta do. Roll down
your window and swipe your card and you can have
let's just say, some something as simple as some chips
and an ice cold beverage. They will pay you like
movie theater prices. And if they're paying movie theater prices,
(29:40):
not only can you pay for your staff and they'll
have a pretty nice wage. You'll be able to donate
a good chunk of that the way you wanted to
donate it. Again, the city government will never let it happen.
But I like what you're saying because then also think
about this, Uh well, the last problem, the last problem,
of course, I think I have a solution to the
last problem is in the biggest ones, which is it
(30:02):
would further ruin cripple traffic to have everybody trying to
get to the shoulder at a stopping point. You know,
of course there it's a very self centered species, so
there will be a lot of people in the middle
who are like, hey, forget you buddy, bring that RBS
to me. I got things to do. Uh, it's true.
(30:23):
But here's the solution. Instead of people, when we just
send drones out. That was good. That was literally the
thing next. Yeah, drones, you just need uh reliably for
them to operate at peak efficiency. You need a sunroof, though,
so it's already kind of for the elite. I mean
it would be anyway, if you're gonna pay movie theater
prices for anything, right, I guess, I guess there aren't
(30:46):
a lot of people who who are just scraping by
so they could save up for their drone. Uh chloopas drone,
chalupas man. You know what, I apologize for derailing us here.
Let us know what you think of this idea. Matt.
You're kind, you're you're kind of turning me back into
a proponent of it. You know, I would, I'd get
(31:07):
into this venture. Cool. I think I agree with you. Also,
if we partner up with a fast food franchise, since
we're already ruining the world with drones them, we could
we could get them to sink some of the overhead
costs for us. Um. You know there's this fast food
chain that makes chicken sandwiches. Not the one you're thinking about,
(31:29):
it's that one from Louisiana. Uh if you had them
with their chicken sandwiches. Oh, my goodness, food for thought,
literally food for thought. Let's let's go back to Sorry,
I got us to traffic from from folklore in the moon.
But let's go back to the Academy capital A. There's
(31:53):
another professor who attributes this perception, this causual perception between
the moon and extraordinary behavior to folklore rather than to science.
Professor Elizabeth Loftis says she will not outright condone a
(32:14):
correlation between the moon and craziness, but she does concede
that quote. Maybe mentally ill people get weirded out by
the full moon and behave in strange ways. If this
is the case, then what we might be perceiving as
a weird effect of moonlight or gravity or water, what
(32:34):
have you, may in fact just be a collection of
isolated incidents wherein people who were already unwell, where somehow
triggered by a specific environmental event. And in these cases,
maybe it just happened to be the moon. Maybe we're
not paying enough attention to other things, like an eclipse.
(32:54):
People go nuts steering an eclipse, you know, for one
reason or another. Back to what you said about religio,
Some religions are founded on being able to predict an
eclipse and then go absolutely ham when one happens. They
are wonderful, they are they are but you know, if
you can get a spot where you get totality. Ah,
(33:14):
but but the moon is the moon alone, is not
the weather nor the environment entire So we mentioned sad earlier,
but what exactly is it? How does it work? Will
tell you after a word from our sponsors, and we
(33:36):
are back. So let's get sad everybody. Um sorry, um,
so let's let's discuss seasonal effective disorder. It's um it's
more rare than probably the media would want you to believe,
or has made us believe, but it is indeed very
much a real thing. And let's just talk about what
(33:59):
it means. Seasonality or this disorder is reported by approximately
ten people with depression. So that's somebody who already is
feeling depression or having depression, and they are either saying
this is a part of it or the entirety of
their depression, of the changes in season. Then of those
(34:20):
with bipolar disorder also, you know, report that seasonality or
seasonal effective disorder is also affecting them, right right, Like,
I I know what my uh my variation may be
mood and emotion values, peaks and values exactly, and even
correcting for that, I notice some enormous values and there
(34:45):
are some fascinating real reasons behind some of this stuff.
That again, as we're talking a little bit more about
the chemicals in our bodies and how those change this stuff, Um,
it goes deeper in it and it speaks to our connection,
humanity's connection to the sun. Oh sure, yeah. According to
(35:08):
the Mayo Clinic, SAD or seasonal effective disorder, it's a
type of depression that's related to changes in the seasons.
It begins and ends around the same couple of times
every year. And if you're like most people with this condition,
your symptoms start in autumn. They begin in the fall,
they continue into the winter months. You are lethargic, your
(35:30):
energy is sapped, you feel moody less often. We have
seen cases of people reporting SAD in the other direction
in the spring or early summer. The signs and symptoms
are going to be very familiar for anyone who has
had these win tree blues before. You will feel depressed
(35:53):
most of the day, almost every day. The stuff that
you enjoyed, video games, volleyball, cyber bullying, Twitter, people or whatever,
you don't enjoy it anymore. You have low energy. But
even though you feel tired all the time you cannot sleep.
You also don't enjoy a lot of the food you
used to like. A lot of people report that they
(36:16):
feel agitated when when they're experiencing this, or or sluggish,
having a difficult time concentrating, like let's say, if you're
at school or at work, just can't really wrap your
mind around one thing. Um, feeling hopeless, sometimes feeling guilty
or worthless. Again, these are a lot of a lot
(36:37):
of these symptoms of just overall depression too, having frequent
thoughts of death or suicide. And there's some science to this.
As you would as you had said met, we know
that when your body, as long as you qualify as
a human being, when your body is exposed to less sunlight,
it produces more melatonin. Melatonin is the hormone that makes
(37:00):
you sleepy. It's pretty popular in the West as a
sleep aid nowadays. Then there's also a pretty solid idea
called the face shift hypothesis. The face shift hypothesis proposes
what we had just talked about earlier in the beginning
of the show, and it says that shortened days caused
the timing of our circadian rhythms to fall out of
(37:22):
sync with the actual time of day because there's this
delay in the release of melatonin. And just as your body,
your flesh bag, begins craving these mid day naps, your
brain begins producing lower levels of serotonin. Yeah, the tickle,
that's what I call it. Yeah, your brain stops making
(37:42):
the tickle that is with a capital T. So your mood,
your appetite, your sleep, your sexual desire, none of them,
none of them scratch the itch anymore. You know, you
don't get the tickle. What's the point of living if
you don't have to, you know, if you don't enjoy
the way stuff taste, if you're not excited about doing something,
you're just sort of getting a participation grade. Yeah, the
(38:03):
tickle of it's of the highest import and that stinks
to have it deadened, a little bit nullified in a way. Yeah,
And how like, for instance, I'm a I'm a person
who goes through i mean dark times pretty regularly. Yeah, right,
(38:25):
So I think that's one of the reasons we get
a logged for. Well, but but we did, we did
find the science here, and then we not only found
the science, we found beyond the microcosmic neurochemical mechanisms of
every individual brain we found that society's wherein people regularly
(38:46):
experience this deprivation of light to an extreme degree. The
societies have banded together and created group solutions or attempts
at group solutions for sunlight deprivation. That's why a lot
of people living in the Arctic Circle, a lot of
people living in against Scandinavian countries that have the infrastructure
(39:12):
to support community solutions like this, they have. They've done
some groundbreaking work with light therapy, and we we found
some pretty cool examples of this too. Oh yeah, there's
an Atlantic article called will Norway Ever Beat the Winter
Blues that you shared Ben and in here it talks
about a southern town in Norway called Rijukon or r
(39:35):
j u k a n And it's kind of in
a bit of a valley between two large mountains, and
during certain times of the seasons there, the sun basically
hits the peaks of the mountains are are high up
on the mountains, but doesn't actually ever get down into
the valley, so it doesn't actually ever touch the town
(39:56):
for long periods of time. And they figured out a
way to get um these large I think seventeen meter
wide mirrors that reflect the sunlight from the higher peaks
of that mountain down into the town square. And it's
a it's a fascinating idea. It's genius and very simple
(40:19):
in a way, but just the concept of bringing a
little bit of light into the town square so that
people during midday, like I think it was noon to
two or something like that, people can go out and
experience sunlight in a time when they haven't felt it
on their skin in days, if not weeks. And another
thing interesting that's happening in that town um in the
(40:42):
surrounding areas as well. There's a company called brain Lit.
It's a Swedish company and what they hear what they
do is they outfit a whole building, sometimes a classroom,
sometimes a home with smart lighting that mimics day and
night cycles essentially. So the idea here is to get
(41:02):
a human being circadian rhythms back on track just by
having their eyes experienced the light and the feeling on
their skin all those things haven't occurred indoors rather than
outside being affected by the sun. And then again we
returned to the nature of the light, right, it's a
it's a specific type of light, correct, Yeah, it's HC
(41:24):
L and l E ed the two solutions they have
and they call it biocentric lighting. It's really interesting stuff
if you want to learn more. We are not promoting
this this company or this brand, but it's called brain
lit b R A I N L I T dot
S E slash e N. That's where we were looking about,
looking at it, and we know that the research in
(41:47):
this field is continuing. Light at least affects us more
than we might like to believe. This is not Hey,
I'm going on record. Man, you know I respect you.
This is not me agreeing with the light hyper This
is relucy. This is not This is not me agreeing
with that because I just I couldn't find any science
to bear it out. But that doesn't mean it's not true.
(42:08):
It just means maybe the science hasn't caught up with
the human belief yet. Um I told you just my belief.
I don't got no science, but it might be out
there and it's worth searching for In some people with
bipolar disorder. We also know that spring and summer can
bring on symptoms of mania or a less intense form
of mania hypomania, and fall and winter can be a
(42:29):
time of deep depression. Here's another. Here's the ultimate answer.
Though not just counting light, which is only one part
of our environment. Let's think of the weather all the
other things. The weather is wind, barometric pressure, niddity things
like that. Pressure is a big one. Pressure is a
huge one. And it turns out that everyday weather can
(42:50):
change your mood. If you are already unhappy, if you're
already having a bad time, don't worry. Weather can make it.
If you're in a good mood. Uh, you are more,
you are less susceptible to changes in environment or changes
in you know, weather affecting you are a mental state.
(43:12):
I'll go with this. I've got stuff to add. I'll
bring it back later. Let's let's go through this. Okay,
So first things first, two thousand eight study associated with
the a P a American Psychological Association, published in the
journal Emotion indicates the weather can indeed mess with you
if you're already feeling down in the dumps, morose, sad, etcetera.
(43:33):
Researchers evaluated the personalities and moods of more than twelve
hundred adults through these daily questionnaires. So they're self reporting. Alright,
a little sticky, but these these questionnaires were cross referenced
with the local weather during the day when they answered
these questions, and they found that related like climate factors
like temperature, sunlight, wind, precipitation, so on, had no impact whatsoever.
(43:59):
I'm positive mood, but the temperature, wind, and sunlight did
have a measurable effect on negative mood. And when we
say negative, we're using it in the colloquial way, not
the scientific way. Negative in science means absence of here,
it means bad. So so yeah, right, So, increased temperatures
(44:19):
had a positive effect on bad moods, while increased wind
and decreased sunlight had a worsening effect on a bad mood.
Although these effects did vary from one individual to another
in terms of um the degree of change, like how
extremely or profoundly they were affected, it did bear out
(44:39):
across again more than a thousand people, that there was
some sort of correlation. And additionally, this is just the
lead we're gonna drop. We're not gonna follow up. Additionally,
there are a surprising number of studies uh into the
correlation between high temperatures and crime, and from what we
can it is real when the heat spikes more crimes
(45:04):
occur hot time somewhere in the city. My friend, back
your neck, right, but no, but it's true. And from
what I was reading just this morning, you know, the
science isn't necessarily in on that, but it does make
sense on a very base level. If it is warm
outside and it is warm inside, a lot of people
(45:27):
will probably be going outside. There will be more people
on the street. There will be more people, you know,
mulling around. There will be more people with bikes, more
people making a trip with their um, their briefcases for
whatever they're carrying with them that may have something in there.
Perhaps more opportunity for crime, more opportunity like more victims,
(45:51):
like potential victims in an area, and also more people
who were not hold up in their house because it's
cold and rainy, who be the you know, potential mugger
or burglar or whatever. Um, it does feel like there's
a real correlation there, Like if you just imagine yourself
if it's cold and rainy making the decision to go
(46:14):
out and do something nefarious versus if it's hot and
you've got nothing else to do and very dry. I
don't know, I feel it feels it feels real. So
there we have it. We know that the weather is
not conspiring against us, because the weather itself, as far
(46:37):
as we know, is not sentient, right, And if we
go down that route, we end up at the Guia hypothesis,
which is a fascinating thought experiment uh superorganisms at all.
While there is no currently well there's no scientific proof
that a full moon affects the human brain, and the
way that folklore tells us it does, the strength of
(46:58):
confirmation bias and self filling prophecy might render that exact
same science moot because some people maybe having stability issues
during the full moon just because they believe that's what happens.
We all grow up in a world where full moons
are portrayed as harbingers of doom or eeriness in works
(47:18):
of fiction right dating back centuries, so of course we
believe it. We've been brought up to believe that some
medical law enforcement professionals may be suffering from their own
illusory pattern recognition, But it also seems like they are
a little bit more likely than the average Jane or
Joe whatever to believe in this correlation because they feel
(47:39):
they've personally experienced it. And while the moon may not
affect your mind. The sun most certainly does in ways
that you might not even notice, as can barometric pressure,
bringing about some pain. It affects my dog. If my
dog feels barometric pressure changing, especially if it's lessening, she
gets all freaked out because she knows the storm's coming.
(48:02):
It's crazy and it's and it's like half an hour
to twenty minutes before a storm starts. It's weird. Um.
And that's why you know, we didn't even really talk
about rain much at all. No, no, we haven't even
talked about rain. Luckily we did. I think we have
an earlier video on dogs and other animals being able
to predict the weather, right do we do? That? Make
me think that is one of the other video shows.
(48:25):
I'm remembering a different timeline. Maybe it's it's I think
it's one of the other views. Oh man, Okay, well,
if it's one of the other video shows, I guess
you could still check it out. Yeah, it was probably
brain stuff or what was the other one called? Oh no,
what the stuff? The stuff? Gosh Bury it That was
(48:46):
Paul's favorite thing that we ever made with salt Bury,
that Let No Stand, Let No Stone Stand. On another video,
Stone there. But anyhow, what do you think, folks? Is
there more to the moon? Myth then meets the eye?
As as Matt and I and Noel and Paul have
always have always said and always prided ourselves on, we're
(49:08):
we're not afraid to have differing opinions. And it feels
like I'm a little more on the skeptical side of this,
And it feels like Matt, nuts, but where's in your mouth?
It feels like you are a little more on board
with maybe the science isn't there yet, and the science
might find something proving this, this hypothesis about light. It's
one of those things. It feels like the science should
(49:29):
have been here a long time ago, and it just
feels correct to me. But I acknowledge that it's probably
not scientifically valid. I don't know, though, because we we
know that light does affect sleep patterns, like it seems
seems pretty solid. Feelings and feeling and knowing two very
different things. What what's the weather like in your neck
(49:53):
of the woods? Fellow conspiracy realists, tell us and tell
us your craziest full moon war stories. Bonus points if
they somehow involve shape shifters, Yeah, yes, or UFOSI or
UFOs or shape ship. If you've seen someone transform into
a UFO, you win. Oh my god, I don't know
(50:16):
what you win, but we'll we'll figure out something. If
you have video proof, go ahead and you can replace
me as host on this show. Put that out there.
If you've got video proof of weather affecting something with
a UFO shape shifter, yeah, you're in. I accept. You
can appear on an episode. Don't please don't pod people.
My good friend Matt Frederick here where Okay, let's say
(50:40):
somebody does have that kind of stuff, Matt, how can
they get it to us? Oh? Well, you can find
us on Twitter, where we're conspiracy stuff, or on Facebook
where we're also conspiracy stuff. Or you can join our
Facebook group here's where it gets crazy, where you can
meet all sorts of other us. Of course, when I
say you, I mean you, but then also you, so
there's so many different us out there. What I'm saying
(51:02):
is we all get together as we and have discussions
about the show. I hope that wasn't weird enough for you.
Altered versions of yourself and so on. Yes, if you
do not care for the social meats, you can always
call us we have a phone number. That is a
true story. Um, maybe wait till the moon is full
(51:23):
and dial in. Yes, we are one eight three three
S T d W y t K. Leave us a message.
We might do something with it. We might just listen
to it in a room in a circle, turn bead,
then your message is inserted there. Um. If you don't
want to do any of that stuff. Oh, by the way,
(51:44):
Instagram or conspiracy stuff show. That's right. That's a very
good point. And you can find us. So you can
find Ben. It's pretty easy. Actually, if you type in
Ben Bowl and I've tried it a couple of times,
you can find them. You can also find that if
you are intrepid. Yes, but the difficulty level is higher.
That's actually not true because my heart is literally in
my user name. If none of that quite bags your
(52:09):
badgers hangs your moon or helio stats are sparse, Sunlight
of life. We have one last way to contact us,
even though it's twenty nineteen, still as we record this,
we have an old fashioned email address. You can write
to us. We are conspiracy at I heart radio dot com.
(52:47):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of i Heeart Radio's how stuff Works. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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