Novelty Junkies

Do you love new experiences and fresh ideas? Join Julie and Robert as they examine neophilia, the love of novelty. How can this swell-sounding human attribute lead one person down the road to ruin and another through a life of success?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglass. Julie,
what do you think when you hear novelty junkie? Like,
what does that entail? What's the division? Um? I think
about the dude who who came up with like this

(00:24):
squirrel jumping wingsuit and jumps regularly off cliffs. We'll see.
Now that's that's pretty cool. Like that's somebody that's like
in the novelty and they're out there and doing it right. Yeah,
they're getting done. Like the vision of novelty junkie, it
comes to me is actually, Um, there's a Portlandia sketch
the other day about where the the wife is going

(00:45):
to some sort of meeting in the evening and so
she has to get a babysitter for the husband so
that he doesn't sit around and watch random YouTube videos
all night, drink beer and then fall asleep in his
clothes with all the lights in the house on. Because
that's I mean the like things like YouTube, things like Wikipedia,
they allow one to really flex the novelty seeking muscle

(01:05):
in the brain to where it's like, you know, random
duck driving a car watching it, vomiting, competition waking. I
don't know, we just did a competitive eating related podcasts
like a vomiting on the brain. But you know it's
like one of both of these are examples if you
can just go from one subject in another, from one diverse,
tid dead or random weirdness to another without ever really

(01:25):
absorbing much of anything, sort of like an A D
D state, Right, Yeah, But I guess that is the
downside of it, right, because then a culture that we
have right now, you know, um, we apparently consume about
one hundred thousand words each day from various media, which,
according to Winnifred Gallagher and No Journalists says, that is

(01:46):
a walpping three increase measured invites over what we handled
back in nineteen Yeah, because I mean thinking back, like
even thinking back then when I was, when I was
a kid, Like if you wanted to learn new stuff,
like you're just sort of picking up new information or
fulfilling that novelty portion of your brain, Like you had
to go to library and you look around, you had
to look through your dad's, your your mom's books, and

(02:07):
you know old books and or encyclopedia. Like the encyclopedia
itself was always a great novelty seeking tool, but the
Internet really opens it up. You're just to keep a
few key strokes away from just an abyss of sometimes useless,
often useless information. Yeah, And I mean that's the thing
about neophilia or or seeking novelty really is that it

(02:27):
spurs us to try to explore and find new things,
which is really cool, but it can also feed into
ours restlessness or distraction. And by the way, did you
know that the word boring didn't even enter the dictionary
I think into like the nineteen hundreds, like it. That's
kind of fascinating, you mean, so it's like a twentieth
century luxury being able to board with anything right, right,

(02:48):
because you know, otherwise there's there's work to do, there's
stuff to do, like what are you doing? How can
you possibly be bored? Right? But when you start automating things,
all of a sudden, you've got extra time on your hands, right,
or once you know you which from being an a
grarian society to an industrialized society, than you know, you're
not in the fields for twelve hours a day, um,
And then of course, I think that we're seeing the

(03:09):
extreme example of this right now in our day and age. Um,
and that's what we're talking about today is just kind
of getting behind this idea of what is the science
behind novelty? Why do we seek out new experiences? How
many of us are neophobes, neophiles, neophiliacs, You're crazy maniac
novelty runner aftersh And that's what we're going to talk
about and try to explore. So, yeah, let me get

(03:32):
back to this Winnifred Gallagher character. Besides me or journalist,
she also has written a couple of books, and she
argues that neophilia, this this desire for new experiences has
always been the quintessential human survival skill, whether adapting to
climate change or um, you know, some sort of new
geographical area, or coping with the latest digital toy. Yeah,

(03:55):
it's like you're marching over a hill. Suddenly there's a
slightly different environment going on. You're like to do this.
Let's see what's edible, Let's see what's poisonous. Let's see
what animals I can domesticate, Which ones I I need
to kill with a rock, Let's do it. I'm all
up for new experiences when other people might peek over
that hill and they're like, I don't know about this
new environment. I'm just gonna creep back here and need

(04:15):
more of those grasshoppers. Right, you might be a neopho,
and you might have a different genetic disposition to explore
new things and infect In the article What's New Exuberance
for novelty has Benefits by John Tierney on The New
York Times, they actually talked about this migration gene. Yeah,
so this is the migration gene. This is a DNA
mutation that occurred roughly fifty thousand years ago. It's believed

(04:36):
as the humans we're leaving Africa, and these mutations are
actually the most prevalent in the in the most far
flung population so done, like Indian tribes in South America
that are descended from neophiliacs across the Bearing Straits. Understandably,
you see the strongest occurrence of these genes and the
people who traveled the farthest right, right. And the coolest
thing about this is that the genetic variations affect the

(04:58):
brains regulation of dopamine. And I feel like we've been
talking about Yeah, Yeah, The New York Transmitter that gives
us that kind of high that you know that the
ding ding reward. Right. So the variations, these variations have
been linked to more um, well it should say, faster
reaction times and individuals that possess them attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, right,

(05:21):
which we've seen a lot, or it seems like that's
been in the news a lot in the last decade
or so, and a higher penchant for novelty seeking and
risk taking. So it's like fascinating that so much of
this ties back to our DNA or our migratory patterns
that you know, you could come into this world and
be a bit hardwired for these experiences, maybe your neophobe

(05:43):
and you know you're not comfortable with new experiences and
you want to, you know, retract a little bit. You
can imagine individuals in that situation being more inclined to
stick around in their existing area and sort of fine
tune their exploitation of that environment, sort of like, well,
let's I'm I'm really not into going over that hill
and checking out what's going over there. I'm going to
figure out how to farm better here, or how to

(06:05):
better manage the animals I need to catch to survive
that kind of thing exactly. UM. And you know, maybe
these are the agrarians um of of history. Uh. And
of course it's not as simple as it just sort
of dills down to you having a you know, varying
to in this gene. There are other factors that play
environmental um. In fact, they were talking about in this
article uh from the New York Times about novelty perhaps

(06:28):
even um being the key to happiness, and a lot
of that again has to do with what sort of
environmental factors are present, not just what genes you possess, right,
only know, that's one of the whole reasons for like
most people are a lot of people. I mean, there's
sort of different versions of people going on vacation. Some
people like to go back to a familiar spot that
they have this investment and that's a place they go

(06:49):
every year and it's full of memories. Other people they
like something new, They want to they want to be
blown away by a new environment. Uh, new sides, new sounds.
I feel like my wife and I are definitely more
in that category. Worry. UM. I mean there are places
we have memories attached to as well, but there's nothing
like going to like a new city, a new place
and exploring it, and I mean it really your perception
of time changes in those environments, like because everything is novel,

(07:12):
everything is new. It's like your kid again because when
your kid, everything is everything is novel, and uh, you know,
in time slows down and everything's bright, Well you think
differently about your role. I mean to me, travel and
and having new experiences forever changes you as a person, right, yeah, right,
And that's what I love about. In fact, I took
the uh, the little quiz that New York Times article

(07:33):
has again, it's called what's new Exuberance for novelty has benefits?
And it turns out that I am a neophiliac. Huh.
You know. I started taking the same quiz, but then
someone something this YouTube video this go for right the
three wheeler, and it was amazing. All right, well let's
talk about that. Let's talk about this this idea that
neophiliacs or people who are neophiles, you know a little

(07:55):
bit to a lesser degree but still seeking out new experiences,
are their brains are bifurcated with all this different data
and harness it in a way that you can actually
make something of this yeah, it's estimated that you you
really need a trio of traits to really to to
to be the guy in the squirrel suit of skydiving,
as opposed to the guy who's falling asleep watching a

(08:18):
bunch of different YouTube videos. The individuals in this perdious study,
they scored high in noveli seeking as well as in
persistence and trelp and self transcendence. So persistence, of course
is the is sticking to it. Some some people are
may be disinclined to take up new hobbies because you
try it and you suck at it. Like that's pretty
much how a lot of things go. It's rare that

(08:39):
we find some new skill or some new you know,
artistic endeavor that we the first time we try it,
we got it. I mean a it's not very rewarding
if there's no room for growth, right. Part of the
reward is seeing your improvement. But you gotta have some
persistence to stick with it. You gotta be willing to
suck at something for a certain amount of time before
you are good at it and before it's maybe ultimately
more rewarding. Persistent like in our there are two opening examples.

(09:01):
The guy with the squirrel suit. That dude had a vision,
but he had to have a certain amount of persistence
to see it through. Like he couldn't just play like
what am I doing this weekend? I'm making a squirrel
suit and I'm gonna jump off of a mountain and
I'm gonna do that successfully my first try. Yeah, it's
not that's not gonna happen. Whereas the the individual watching
the YouTube videos, he might say, watch a video of
Australian rules football and be like, WHOA, that's weird. I

(09:23):
didn't know there was Australian rules football and that's the
end of it. Where he had more persistence, he might
be like, well, I'm gonna really look into this. I'm
gonna maybe, you know, get into watching Australian roles football.
Maybe I'm going to start a league. You know. There
would be this this higher level of engagement with the topic. Yeah,
and there would be this other thing called self transcendence,
and we'll talk about that right after this break. All right,

(09:49):
we're back. We're ready to self transcend letting right now. Okay,
that's not the same thing as it. Yeah, okay, so
self transcendence. We know about this in terms of let's
say that the flow state. This is something that um,
you're doing that you're really invested in, but you're also
getting a lot of reward out of you. That's again

(10:10):
what helps with the pursual and the persistence is that
you're achieving this state of flow, this self transcendence. Yeah,
like it's it's it's not like I'm going to work
on painting these miniatures and I'm gonna get really good
at it. I'm gonna get really good. You know, you're
not thinking like that, you get you're losing yourself in
the process of doing it. Like the again, the guy
making the squirrel suit, he is into the process of

(10:30):
doing it to the point where he's not thinking about
this is a results oriented adventure, right right, So, I
mean it's the short term payoff with a long term right.
And I was even thinking about this novelty and genius
because we've talked about this before. In fact, when we
were covering I believe it was the podcast on Einstein's brain. Right, Well,
thanks the brain of a genius. It's not just a

(10:50):
purely anatomical exercise because you're gonna have a genius level brain,
but it's only being used to watch YouTube videos. Right.
But the and we talked about this to this this uh,
this idea that the brain is not a static thing.
There's something called neural plasticity, which means that your brain
can change throughout your lifetime. And one of the key

(11:11):
ingredients in changing your brain for the better at least
is having new experiences. And when we talked about genius
in the podcast about Einstein, we talked about how some
people actually are more genetically predisposed to be open to
new experiences, and that certainly helps. But anytime you have
a new experience, um, you know, even like if you're
right handed and you brush your teeth with your left hand,

(11:33):
or you juggle and you're not a juggler, you're creating
new white cells, these glial cells, and you want to
do you want to throw in a juggling shown you.
I'm just thinking about, like like should we all do that?
Should we all go home this evening or you know,
the next scheduled brushing in our day, we should use
an opposite hand just to yeah, because this is the
glial cells, these white cells which are created from new experiences.

(11:57):
These are the things that help strengthen our helps think faster,
connect more ideas, new ideas, UM, and again neuroplasticity. We
can continue to change our brain as we age. Um.
Does it help if we have more experiences before the
age of twenty Yeah, yeah, because the bulk of your
brain is going to be established by age twenty UM.
So it's great for kids to have as many new

(12:20):
experiences and new skills as possible. But that doesn't mean
that we're stuck with the same clump of three pounds,
you know. For the restaurants, it's it's certainly what you have.
Like going to museums is important when you're when you're
growing up, traveling to whatever extent is manageable, it just
helps change you. Like I think I look back on
like you said, I feel like any travel, any worthwhile

(12:41):
trip changes who you are. You don't just go to
somewhere like like a Thailand or a Coasta, Rica or whatever.
You don't you don't just go to and come back.
You you go to and you come back with a
little of it in you, you know. Yeah. Yeah, because
and I'm not just talking about lower intestinal infections. Yeah,
I would just say or the Thaigh red Bull that
you speak so fondly of, Yeah, that was good. But

(13:02):
and like, I look back on trips that I took
before the age of twenty and I feel like they
definitely had an influence on decisions I made later. And however,
the world following Yeah, and again, in a very basic level,
there's those white uh you know, breen cells being created,
and it's just lovely to think that all these things
are happening behind the scenes and all you have to
do is brush your teeth with a non dominant hand

(13:23):
and when you master that, moved to your feet. Brushing
with your feet. Yeah, sure, why not? So it kind
of both new affiliate downstad it boils down like a
lot of things in human nature, you kind of want
a moderation of it, like too much neophilia. You end
up just being this YouTube junkie who maybe doesn't even
leave the house because he's not willing to actually or

(13:43):
she is not willing to actually invest in this novelty seeking.
They're not they're not actually getting any kind of transcendent
experience out of it. And then you have the other
individual who is not leaving the room because they don't
want the new experiences, right, They're they're afraid of encountering
them to log Yeah, neophiliax UM. In the past have
been tagged as as um as being a bit flighty

(14:06):
or impulsive or irritable um. And then neophobes again not
wanting to leave the house um, which is the extreme, extreme,
extreme example. But again, all of this is changeable, and
it depends on the experiences that you have throughout life.
A good example is Eleanor Roosevelt. I mean, she was
certainly a neophobe in her early life, but through her
experiences sort of switched over to neophilia UM. So it's

(14:29):
not again, it's just like the brain. It's it's not
a static thing, um, just like your personality is not
static and very much informed by your brain. And I
was even thinking about the podcast that we did about
how to Change your Brain the Hard Way John Gage,
who had um, you know, steel rod go through his
head and was his personality was completely changed. And of

(14:50):
course we don't need to all put steel rods in
our head to significantly change our world views or personality.
That it is interesting to think about all the little
different ways in life that we can change the way
we think. All right, So UM, on that note, let's
see what the neophiles out there and the listening audience
had to say, let's call over the robot. All right,

(15:14):
here's here's a little email from a listener by the
name of Don Don Wrightson and says, Robert and Julie,
thank you for the great podcast. My inner geek is
very happy. I just listened to your monogamy shamogamy podcast,
and I have to say I can never resist a
George Michael reference. However, as the queen of pop culture references,
I must insist that it was the I Want Your

(15:34):
Sex video that featured George Michael scrawling the world monogamy
on his lover's back and red lipstick. Of course, thanks
for being a part of what is now a fun commute.
Don So yeah, I think we who were thinking it
was is it freedom but not un totally makes sense
that it was I Want Your Sex. We have to
give George Michael a little apology there for tonal consistencycause

(15:55):
it turns out I Want Your Sex. Well no, I
don't know, maybe there's still a weirdness there, but at
any rate, it makes a little more sense with I
don't know. We we clearly need to go back on
our George Michael catalog and revisit. All right, there's another one.
This one is from Sean in Ottawa, Canada. Hi, long
time listener, first time writer, persistent procrastinator. I did have

(16:16):
one comment on your Gay Animals podcast. You repeated the
danger of anthropomorphizing animals, which I feel does us a
greater disservice in the end, which is failing to biomorphize humans. Uh.
The very fact that research into animal sexuality can help
shed light on human sexuality points to the fact that
try as we might to think ourselves separate from the

(16:37):
rest of nature, we most certainly are not. There maybe
qualities and motivations that guide human behavior that simply don't
exist or correlate outside of our culture, but not when
it comes to the birds and the bees. We are
all animals in the end. Some are more complex, some
more social, some more adaptable. Anthromomorphize away and in doing

(16:57):
so keep biomorphizing us. Huh. I thought that was really interesting.
We I apologize. I don't remember the person who put
on our Facebook page a comment about the same episode,
but he was sort of talking the taking the opposite
tact would which would be that we are not We
can't create ourselves with animals because then we're you know,

(17:17):
condoning incest or rape or other things. UM, so I don't.
This is all really interesting conversation that came from this. Um,
both sides of the perspective. I always like to get
different when we get emails about different sides of it,
because it makes me feel like everybody is really for
coming in on the conversation and considering all parts of it.

(17:38):
Stimulating the brain tanks for sure. UM. We also heard
from a listener by the name of h Ta Ta
right soon and says, do you Robert and Julie, I
sent this email last week, only to listen to one
of the more recent podcasts this morning and discovering that
your email has changed. And again we should mention this
at the end of the podcast too, but we are
now blow the mind at Discovery dot com right Um, anyway,

(18:01):
should continues. I just finished listening to the Santa Claus
Machine and wanted to let you know about something in
graphic novel Land that is very on topic with the
Universal Creator Machine in trans Metropolitan by Warren Ellis, there
are makers which create whatever you want you need in
your home, mostly food, but some of them have been
modded to create weapons, humorous part of the plot involves

(18:24):
the makers getting hooked on drugs. Because they can synthesize anything,
why not making toxicans for themselves. That has since been
stopped by some modifications by the producers of the maker. Additionally,
since everyone has them, there is a sort of hierarchy
of inputs. The official maker food. The source of the
output is base block, something that is super dense and
has to be replaced every so often. However, the poor

(18:47):
who cannot afford these these blocks collect garbage from the
streets and feed the makers. Anything goes. If you have
a chance check trans Metropolitanality. It's pretty excellent about a
rogue journalist in a very technological future. Indeed, I've I
haven't read the entire series, but I did read the
first not In addition, like the first volume of trans Metropolitan,
it's pretty gonzo. Character Spider Jerusalem is kind of this

(19:10):
like futuristic uh Like, he starts off kind of like
this bearded Alan Moore character who's held up in this cabin,
but then he ends up returning to the city to
do his gonzo journalism. And of course he's kind of
a futuristic Huntress Thompson character and all sorts of lackiness
occurs after that. I really need to pick him up again,
because I did enjoy the first one. I just never

(19:30):
got around a reading and against the others everything, I'm
here and I'm liking well cool. Um. So yeah, those
are some emails from listeners. We we have a whole
folder of them here, and we never used to. There
was a time when when we could individually like answer
every email that was sent to us, and then that
that hasn't only been the case recently, and and we
we do receive a lot of really cool emails that

(19:51):
I wish we had time to read, but we kind
of have to pick and choose at the last minute,
sometimes based on lenk. But that being said, please do
communicate with us, because even if you don't respond, we
do read them all well, and it also informs you know,
the direction of the podcast and what we want to
cover and all that good stuff. Yea, because we'll say
things like, oh man, that that podcast on such such

(20:13):
that was, We've received a lot of comments on that.
That's clearly the kind of thing that listeners want to
listen to. So let's find something, you know in that
vein because it's for you this. Yeah, yeah, whereas stuff
like Stapler Science. We know nobody like you know, we've
ever generally and nobody wants to listen to the Stapler podcast.
So probably not gonna do it unless you say differently,
unless it's like the coolest like futuristic Stapler that could

(20:35):
staple me to the ball without harming me right now,
and then I could staple myself unstable myself. I don't
know why i'd want to do that, but yeah, that's
just an idea, all right. So yes, you can get
in touch with us. You certainly can't. There's a little
thing helped Facebook. It's kind of taken off, and you
can find us on there as a stuff to below
your mind and just search for us, follow us, give

(20:56):
us more power that way. And then there's another little
thing called Twitter, and I'm there. You will find our
handle as blow the Mind, So just throw us a
message at blow the Mind follow us on there. We'll
throw you links to stuff about upcoming, current and past podcasts,
as well as blog entries and who knows, and if
you prefer, you can always get your rotary phone out

(21:16):
and you can email us at Blow the Mind at
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