The Psychology of Pain

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to why we do what we do? Welcome
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herding host, Abraham. That was kind of a zombie growl.

(00:23):
I didn't mean it that way.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
I mean I feel like zombies could be in pain.
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If you will, yeah, thanks, thanks the environment, Thanks evolution
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The song by Beyonce.

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Obviously Yeah, okay, cool.

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Love that. That's such a Southern thing, so into that.
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I don't know that means. I feel like that sounds
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That feels right, Okay.

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Get rid of them.

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Yeah, I mean, or maybe don't. I guess maybe like
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Those good joke in there. Yeah, yeah, to go with
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Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Anyway, those are the holidays. We talk about them because
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today's topic we are getting into is one that you

(03:18):
might maybe not necessarily think of as being directly related
to psychology, or maybe you do.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
I don't know how you feel about these things. But
we're talking about pain and it is I hope we
get this. We do this one justice. It is kind
of a difficult topic and there's a lot. There's a
lot that could be said about it. Pain is a
nearly universal experience for humans and we all universally pretty
much hate it. Yeah, although there are people who find

(03:45):
joy and pain, and we're not going to really get
into that. Also, I think we can understand and appreciate
the usefulness that the role pain can play during our lifetimes.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah, absolutely, So it is an interesting I'm on physically
maybe neurologically so to speak, and psychologically that we still
don't really understand. And that's kind of an interesting thing
about like bodies. I don't know if you all pay
attention to like studies that come out, but like we
discovered new things about human bodies all the time, true,
and it's because we really don't understand very much about

(04:18):
like how an electrified meat mech is walking around and
thinking and crying. You know, it's a strange thing.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
It is, And so we will do our best to
explain the ins and outs of pain and one single discussion.
Although there are entire organizations and lines of research that
all they do is study pain, entire podcasts where the
whole podcast's existence is just to talk about issues as
they relate to pain. There are journals scientific journals that

(04:48):
all they do is publish research on pain, So check
those out for more information if you are interested in
learning more about this topic. After we've gotten you very
curious from this discussion. Maybe or just because you heard
us talk about it and told you to go check
it out. I don't know, but yeah, that's what we're
going to try and take on in one single discussion today.
I think, well, we won't need to make this a
two parter. It's not super long. Yeah, although that is

(05:11):
always the case to just cursed that and then I
dis cursed it. Yeah. So yeah, pain is an interesting topic.
Let's go ahead and get into it to try and
break that curse, shall we?

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, here we go. All right. So pain is an
evolutionary adaptation. There are a few different ways that we
experience pain, but broadly, it is a biological process in
which a stimulus evokes behavior to reduce that stimulus.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
And that's an important part of this definition here. It's
the biological process in which a stimulus evokes behavior to
reduce that stimulus. The International Association for the Study of
Pain told you there was one of those at least,
defines pain as a quote unpleasant sensory and emotional experience

(05:55):
associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in
term of such damage end quote. And I mean you
hear that, and I feel like you sort of followed
it and maybe your eyes glossed over at some point.
There were some people who've at least added to or
expanded upon this idea. So one physician thoughtfully, in my opinion,

(06:15):
very thoughtfully argue that quote pain is whatever the patient
says it is end quote, which I actually thought was
a very kind of useful like clinical framework at least
for orienting to the idea of pain. Yeah, as long
as we have a colloquial understanding of what pain is,
we just take our patient at their word, because that
makes the most sense for being able to provide effective care.

(06:38):
And then doctor Craig Freud and Rich Freud and Reich,
maybe I'm gonna say Freud and Rich he helpfully suggested
a definition of pain that it is quote a warning
sensation to your brain that some type of stimulus is
causing or may cause damage, and you should probably do
something about it.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
End quote.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
That what I think is maybe the most useful of that.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Really like that one.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Actually, yeah, it's very good.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Yes, yeah, you should probably do something about it. Now,
there are arguments of confusion around the difference between perception
and sensation. If there is a difference between these and
whatever it is. Pain can be either or or both
of those things. And we'll get into some of the
psychological philosophy about this later, but it is worth noting
that the sensation of pain is called na susception.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yeah, you may hear us say that sometimes because we're
referring to it. The Latin root of this means hurt
while I looked at it up that far, But that
is no suception or a suception, whichever one it's supposed
to be, is that sensation of pain. Now, for now,
we'll focus on the physiological aspect of pain, the physical

(07:44):
like tissue part. We're going to get more into the
psychological stuff later, and only in so far as there
is a distinction that we can attempt to make between
physiological and psychological. But experts seem to broadly accept three
large categories of pain when we're talking about the physiological

(08:05):
piece of it, and that is that there is acute pain,
there is chronic pain, and there is malignant pain.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Ooh, evil pain, ooh.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Acute pain is a description applied to pain that is
relatively short lived. We saw in some of the research
less than three months or up to six months. So
there's a little bit of a range there, but it
typically has a rapid onset, is intensive, and has an
identifiable cause, such as physical trauma from injury, surgery, or infection. Behaviorally,
it is a reflexive response that recoils from stimulation that

(08:36):
can or does cause acute trauma. So when your skin
is scraped or cut, you sprain or break a joint,
or take blunt force trauma such as from a punch
or following down, these are examples of pain we might
generally call acute. Like these moments are going to give us,
like a rapid onset of some painful stimulus.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Yes, now three months seems like a long time. In
six months is even more if my math is right.
But to like be experiencing a cute you experiencing acute pain.
But then we get into what is called chronic pain,
and this lasts typically three or again more than three
or we also saw the six months, and this is

(09:16):
typically typically not always more than sometimes, but typically pain
that persists after trauma has healed or entirely in the
absence of some acute injury. This may have a slower onset,
It may have be sort of intermittent or sporadic bouts

(09:37):
of pain. It may be characterized as just ongoing just
all the time, all the pain, all the time, And behaviorally,
this is going to look more like a learned strategy
to move or position oneself or engage in other patterns
of behavior in such a way that noxious stimulation as
avoided or reduced, or to take measures to prevent those

(09:57):
experiences of pain perceived sense or otherwise. And this is
going to include things like spinal injuries, illnesses, amputations, and burns.
And that's not an exhaustive list. Those are just some
examples of the kinds of things that you can think
of that result in long lasting experiences of pain.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Right, and then finally we brought up malignant pain. And
that's similar to chronic pain because it is like a
long lasting thing, but it is specifically pain related to
or created by malignant tumors that put pressure on nearby
nerves and blood vessels and they kind of like create
kind of a cascading effect of additional painful stimuli.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
Yeah, this is sometimes even described as cancer pain. And
so this is intended to capture the experience of people
who are suffering from cancer, very serious disease obviously, and
that kind of pain that they get. Is this like
sort of its own sort of ballpark? Is how I
saw this described and segmented out? That makes sense?

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense. I was just curious though, like,
as you're going through the list, you said there were
three different types of pain. For some reason, when I
was doing some of the research, I saw a fourth one,
which was about ADS.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
All right, pain by virtue of suffering through ADS is
where we find ourselves. And on the other side of
that we shall get into the neurology of pain. All right,
some caveats here. This part is pretty complex. It is
above our level of expertise, at least mine. I'm not sure.

(11:35):
How do you have a lot of like training and
experience with researchfulness, No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
I struggle with words with more than four syllables. And
this is this is the entire field. All of neurology
is just super complex chemical reactions and nerves. I just
don't understand it. I do my best.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. We're gonna say it as we found it.
We're going to describe it as simply as we can,
do our best to unpack it and hope that that
lands like hope that that feels comprehensible in the things
that we say, and also know that, like this is
just not our area of expertise, so like we're kind
of just saying things how other people have said them,

(12:14):
and hopefully they have said them correctly, because we wouldn't
know otherwise. Really, I think, yeah, exactly, all right. So
there's essentially a four part process to pain. One is
a person contacts anxious stimulus. Two nerve ends respond to
the stimulus. Three the nerves transmit this stimulation through the

(12:35):
central nervous system to the brain, and four the brain
processes and responds to the incoming signal. Basically, it's like
pain is the touch point that leads to your brain
and then travels you know, it travels along your.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
Nerve system, your nervous system.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yes, now, it was once believed, not that long ago, really,
that there were not distinct nerves that respond to pain
specifically versus like any other kind of sensation hot, cold, pressure, touch,
and that the only thing that distinguished pain from other
sensations was the intensity of the sensation. That was kind

(13:10):
of the working idea for a while, however, for the
research really does suggest that instead of that, there really
are actually some different systems in the nerves going on,
where like a painful sensation does not need to be
that intense to be felt as pain, And so the
idea that pain is just intense sensation seems like it's
probably not right that the damage that comes from pain

(13:34):
specifically does in fact stimulate specific nerves that then respond
to that pain somewhat differently.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, so here we go, Super Technical Time. That's our
favorite news segment, So hopefully we have a jingle for that,
d D Super Technical Time. Not susceptor neurons sense pain
through what are called quote free nerve endings, which it
seems to mean there are nerves not specialized for a

(14:02):
specific sensitivity, kind of like how stem cells are. I
guess where. It's just kind of like unprogrammed nerves.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
I think more or less. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like
they don't have any generalist things. Yes, they're generalists, although
it seems like it's like anything that's bad yeah they
respond to.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, the non sceptor neurons use peripheral
sensory nerves. The cell bodies of no sceptor nerves can
be found in the dorsal root ganglia of peripheral nerves
inside the spine. Super elementary descriptions there.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, those are words, yeah, that have to do with
spine and brain things. Yeah, the no susceptive nerves seem
to have less myelination than other nerves. There was a
whole section of this and I kind of just decided
at some point it really wasn't worth digging into it. Now.
Something about this did surprise me because my lenation if

(14:56):
for those of you who are unfamiliar with essentially how
neurons work is most neurons have this sort of fatty
tissue surrounding them, and this sort of insulation tissue allows
signals to be sent faster. So it's almost a linear
correlation between how much myelination there is and how fast

(15:16):
a signal can travel down a nerve. And these pain
nerves seem to actually have less myelination, which surprisingly means
that they cut they conduct signals less quickly than most
other sensations, except apparently for heat.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
I found weird.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
So heat will travel basically right away, but the other
sensations that are pain will actually travel a little slowly.
And I was thinking about this, and you may have
actually noticed times where you injured yourself, and specifically, I'm
thinking of instances where I, like accidentally cut myself and
you actually don't immediately feel the pain. Sure, there's like
a cut and you see it and then you like

(15:54):
a moment later it hits, and so I was like, subjectively,
that is actually my experience is that the pain sensation
of a lot of those is not instantaneous. It's not
far behind, but it is not instantaneous.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
I wonder if and maybe we'll get into this, but
I wonder if it's because like humans are generally pretty
durable and like, despite being squishy meat sacks, like we're sensitive,
but we're also kind of durable in that, like if
I get an injury on my arm or my leg,
like it's not generally life threatening, so like it's not
gonna call for like such an immediate response.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
I don't know that could be any Speculating about evolution
is fun though.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, yeah, I do. I do like to talk about that. So,
I mean, if evolution were real, you know, so when
some sort of injury happens, potassium will be released from
the damage cells. There's likely some to be some inflammation
and chemical compounds prostaglandins, histamines, and Brandon Kinnon's. That sounds
like a that sounds like somebody that I grew up

(16:50):
down the road from here in South Datona. It's like, oh,
good old Brandon Kinning over there.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
I think it's Brady Kinnon's.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
Brady. Okay, you're right, there's no head in there at all,
So I just read because there's other ends in there,
Brady Kinnon. Well, also Brady kittens could be Brandy Kinnon's brother.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
True, no, very creatives.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
Now, for some reason, these processes seem to underlie the
experience of pain physiologically speaking.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Yes, so is something about the inflammation, something about the potassium,
something about those chemical compounds, maybe all of those things
together they do happen, and that seems to be sort
of where worse sensing pain, And that'll be relevant when
we get to pain management as we talk about that. Sure,
so these neurons the connect to so we're talking about

(17:34):
these pain neurons here. They connect with neurons in an
area called the dorsal horn, which is a section of
the spine with gray matter, and the connecting secondary neurons
from there travel through the medulla to the thalamus of
the brain. Or there's a new connection obviously. Yeah, and
they keep using the word synapse to describe connection, but

(17:55):
I think that we could just say connection.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
That's fine.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah, So anyway, that's metally how these neurons, the sort
of structure of these work as they connect that way.
And apparently what's kind of interesting here is the face.
Our face. It seems to have its own sort of
mini nervous system that connects to the spinal cord. It's
called the trigeminal nerve, and from there it proceeds to
the brain. But it doesn't have the same overall system

(18:20):
of pain that the rest of our body has.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Oh interesting, yeah, right, so when when somebody's like making
a mean face, you could be like, hey, fix your
face nerves because it is different.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah, fix your trigeminal nerves.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
Fixture trigeneral nerves. You just look mean right now. So
all of this has been described in such a way
that it seems that most pain researchers feel that they
have a handle on the general process of pain perception
up to this point. Once it gets to the brain,
we're actually not sure what happens, and that's because the
brain is strange. It's a weird thing.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
It is and we've talked about this before, but it's
a sort of like for bodies to operate efficiently, it's
useful for all of the body parts to connect to
one central hub that's kind of the control center, so
that it can coordinate all the systems together, which makes
a lot of sense. It's sort of like communication is
key is the underlying theme of what seems to be

(19:12):
how our brain works. And so anyway, like yeah, it
all sort of coalesces in the brain, and then from
there it becomes a little bit weird and hard to follow.
And for a variety of reasons, it seems that and
this should probably come as a surprise to no one,
but our brain seems to exercise some amount of control
over once the pain signal gets in. What happens to that,

(19:34):
How is the processed? What do we do? And for
one thing, evidence of this can be found in the
fact that simple distractions can pull your attention away from
your pain, so much so that it has been demonstrated
to successfully, albeit temporarily, reduce our reporting of pain just

(19:56):
a distraction. And I don't know if you've had this
experience yourself, Shane, I'd be curious to see if you have.
But if you've ever been to a dentist and if
they had to like give you a shot in the gums,
at least my dentists, they sort of did like a
wiggle on the cheek or the lip. And this is
using distraction in part to reduce your experience and your
attention to the pain produced when sticking a needle into

(20:19):
your gums, which is a painful thing. And it works
at least a bit, and I do appreciate it, like
it is like an effective strategy for having a reduced
experience of pain. Is just creating some other distraction.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, I've had a dentisty too, and I go, oh,
that's nice, thank you for thank you for pulling my
attention away from that needle that you're putting in my mouth.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
That's what they're doing. And you know, if we've seen
on TV shows, they like give people something to bite
down onto, and there are a variety of reasons for that,
but they'll also start like trying to pull their to
like think about this. Think about this, and although it
often is not enough to overcome the acute trauma of
the pain, it is can be enough to at least
distract them for a moment.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah. Absolutely, Also, we can respond to the fear of
pain and the absence of the actual physical sensation, So
beyond situations which people are acting for the sake of
a movie or play, we can even expect to feel
pain and report that we do, in fact subsequently feel pain.
We can behave with respect to hypothetical pain as intensely
or more so than the actual experience itself. Like we

(21:23):
have kind of this unique thing about the way that
we can kind of like mimic or like we said,
kind of like we can respond in like the in
response to the warning or the signal that like, hey,
things are about to get bad.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, exactly. And this is you know, speaking very colloquially.
The experience that we might have of someone being in
their own head about a situation and being frightened of
like the implication of the potential for pain is sort
of what we're talking about here, right. It's like you
can be so afraid of the pain that you might

(21:57):
feel that you actually then you know, I think I've
seen them do this in movies and shows and cartoons
and stuff, where they'll have someone close their eyes and
then they'll they'll like flinch into pain response, and they're like,
I haven't even done anything yet, right, It's like they're
sort of so freaked out about the potential for pain
that they actually experience some version of pain, at least

(22:18):
sort of subjectively in that moment. And subjectively experience of
pain is what we generally think of when I think
of ads. All right, we are back from that AD break.
Let's keep talking about physiology here with the brain involved.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
I love it. So. Another example that we're talking about
here is is that pain from acute injuries tends to
have an intense experiential onset but eventually fades to an
ongoing dull ache. So either the nerves are habituating to
the stimulation, the brain is titrating down the intensity of
the pain, or endorphins are dulling the sensation of pain,
or some combination of any of those things. Similarly, emotions

(23:03):
and thoughts seem to impact the extent to which pain
is experienced, suggesting a psycho neeurological interaction between our language
and the experience of physical sensations, in this case pain.
I actually think like this is a really good example
to me. I think of like getting tattooed. I just
got tattooed recently.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
And I always think of this as like the first
line or two not my favorite, because it's like I'm
not ready for it, Like I'm just kind of like suh, right,
you know they draw that line and you're like, oh, yeah,
I hate this. I forgot that I shouldn't be doing
this summer and then and that happens, and then after
a little bit, I start to habituate to it. I
feel like I get comfortable with it and I don't
really notice it for a period of time until it
gets too far, and then I'm like, all right, I'm done.

(23:40):
That's enough. You've you've done enough damage, you know. So
I could see that. And if you've ever had a
tattoo that's long lasting. For some folks that are on here,
you've probably had that experience.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, Once it hits like the new bundle of nerves
or something that it's like, oh, there it is, Oh
it's back.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah. He's like, why did you do that to my kneecap,
you know.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
And they're like, because you paid me too, Yeah, you
asked for this. Did you forget that part already?

Speaker 2 (24:04):
I did, and usually I did.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
Now I had one professor who argued that behaviorally, pain
is pain behavior, and that is that we can describe
pain in a relation to the behaviors with respect to
the stimuli and the nature of the behaviors that correspond
and correlate with the pain. Okay, that was sort of

(24:27):
the argument here, is he sort of like, any thing
that we see that is related to pain with respect
to what an organism is doing is pain behavior, and
that's what pain is, or at least a useful clinical
way to think about it, suggesting essentially that even if
we take someone who said, like they're not showing any

(24:47):
physical signs of pain, like wincing or anything like that,
but they're like, I need pain medication, like that is
a that is pain behavior. In a way, if we
see them, like again, they're not grimacing or showing any
signs of it, but they just choose to like move
very slowly or not move at all, that might be
an example of pain behavior. Is like holding still holding
a specific position. Sure, so anyway, that was sort of

(25:10):
the argument here is that like pain is pain behavior,
which is a clinically relevant way to think about it,
and not super different from that quote from the doctor
who said pain is whatever the patient says it is right, right,
And so this sort of similar idea here, And still
others have argued that to suggest that we can use
body language to interpret internal states scientifically ignores the fact

(25:33):
that a physical movement or expression cannot be accurately categorized
per individual experience, and that there are a lot of
factors that participate in the experience of pain, and the
overt actions can be observed to correspond to the stimulus
in that context. And I know that sounds very esoteric
and like very jargony, but essentially very jargony, But you know,

(25:56):
just I think using words in such a way that
the meaning does not flow easily from them. Sure, the
point I'm making here is that, like to say that
there is an expression that someone can make and that
that correlates reliably to an internal state, it ignores the
fact that there are a lot of features of our
environment in our learning history that shape our expressions and

(26:18):
our body language. Yeah, there are cultural ones, there are
personal ones, there are contextual moment to moment features of
a situation variables that are all relevant here. And so
the argument here was sort of like saying that pain
is pain behavior assumes that we accept ex observable behaviors

(26:39):
as a proxy for an internal state when it is
a complex tapestry of things that are happening in any
given moment emotionally, cognitively, or pain or otherwise, that we
shouldn't necessarily treat it as though we have learned something
unique about the internal state of an organism by observing
their external behavior. And I also can appreciate philosophically the

(27:01):
point that's being made there, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
Yeah, yeah, I think that makes sense. Now. The example holds, however,
that we use pain behaviors to study, measure, and respond
to pain in others. So we engage in pain behaviors
when when we experience pain, and these can include vocalizations
or even shifts in behavior patterns in which certain behaviors
a reduce or increase in frequency, like taking pain medication,
reducing overall movement, maybe gripping or grasping a body part

(27:27):
that's in pain, Like I know that, like every now
and again, I'll get like a sharp pain somewhere on
my torso and I'll go ah, like and I'll do
that real quick because it'll like catch you know, It's
like it'll catch me and like take my breath away
for a second. Yeah, but that's like that collateral response.
You're not actually seeing me in pain. You're seeing a
response related to pain and that pain behavior. And that's
a pretty decent indicator that like, hey, maybe there's something

(27:47):
going on.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
Well, and there's certainly something to do with respect to
that pain behavior, like clearly like either like do an
X ray or take some medication, or do some kind
of stretch or something like that. Like it suggests a
clinically relevant decision point, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
Now, most of us come readily equipped to physically experience
certain classes of stimulation that is, in this particular case,
noxious ones, and respond by attempting to reduce and remove
that stimulation. And what I mean by that is like,
this does seem to be a pretty human experience that
we we seem like we pretty for the most of us,

(28:27):
we can readily respond to that. Now that being said,
I think it is reasonable to consider that the first
times that we ever experience pain, we don't know. Like
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that
like any successful actions that we do that reduce that
pain start a process of learning by which we avoid

(28:49):
pain through our behaviors. Sure, so we think that we
were born basically preloaded to avoid pain, but I think
it's worth considering that. Like, I mean, we certainly have
the capacity to experience certain types of stimulation as noxious,
but the behaviors that we engage in to remove that
seems like it's probably initially we're just flopping around. We're

(29:12):
just doing anything right right as infants. It's just like
whatever thing that I can do that all of a sudden,
at various moments, I'm not feeling pain, do that thing,
and like then that's just the process that we for
the rest of our lives are learning. There is this
onset stimulus. Do a thing right, and whatever that thing is,
we'll get more and more efficient at understanding and being

(29:32):
able to respond to whatever that is. So I guess
what I'm trying to say is, like behaviors around this
I think are as much learned as anything else, but
obviously have roots and the biology that was evolved to
give us the capacity to feel that pain such in
such a way that it then motivates those behaviors.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, that makes sense, I think. With that being said, like,
I think, you know, just like any good scientists, you know,
you have to know that there are theories of things,
and there is, of course a theory of pain, right,
and so let's actually talk about the gate control theory
of pain, because I think this is kind of an
interesting fold to this entire discussion. So Ronald Melzach and
Patrick Wall proposed a hypothesis in nineteen sixty five to

(30:16):
describe how thoughts and emotions influence the experience of pain,
called the gate control theory of pain. Real quick, before
we get too far into this, did they talk about
profanity being part of this?

Speaker 1 (30:27):
No, at least I didn't see that. I didn't. I
didn't dig it up. It's possible that was in there somewhere.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, there were some studies that showed that, like people
who use profanity when they're in pain, like the use
of profanity may be correlated with a reduction in pain
as well.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
Oh, I love that. I hope that that is accurate. Yes,
let's just assume that that's true.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
Yeah, yeah, I love that. You're welcome, world.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yeah, this is a really interesting idea. And I remember
the first time I heard it, I was not sure
what to make of it. It kind of feels it
kind of feels like one of those like fit the
try and cram this into a world working hypothesis, but
they kind of make some really compelling arguments and their
examples kind of keep work. Like their hypothesis pretty accurately

(31:09):
predicts responses to pain, yeah, pretty much all the time.
So essentially, whether or not the exact mechanism that they
propose is what's going on, they do seem to be
onto something here. So they propose that there's this idea
of small nerve fibers and large nerve fibers synapse. Those
are basically the two classifications small nerves and large nerves,

(31:29):
and that they synaps on what are called projection cells
which travel up the spinothylamic tract to the brain and
inhibitory neurons in the dorsal horn. And so they inhibitory
neurons are either going to allow pain through or they're
going to block it from coming through.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
Right, And so then there are essentially three states that
can exist. One, there is not stimulation to either the
small or large nerve fibers. The gate is closed and
no pain is felt. Two, there is stimulation to the
large nerve fibers, which is normal sensation basic sure touch
the gate is closed and no pain is felt. Or
three there is stimulation to the small nerve fibers, which
is acute intensive pain sensations. The gate is open and

(32:09):
pain is felt. So either it is no stimulation. Gates
are closed, large fiber stimulation gates are closed, small fibers
sensations gates are open, and that's when we feel.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
Pain exactly right, So it can they can either be
open or closed, and it is whether or not you
have more stimulation to the large nerve fibers or the
small nerve fibers, and so said. More simply, what they're
sort of saying here is that if there is more
stimulation to the small nerve fibers, we feel the pain. However,

(32:40):
if there is more stimulation to the large nerve fibers
than there is to the small nerve fibers, even if
there is stimulation to those pain receptors, then the large
nerve fiber is what the stimulation there, It blocks the
experience of pain altogether because it closes the gate. That's
sort of how this works. Sure, this would predict and
it does seem to accurately describe experiences when you let's

(33:04):
say for example, bang your finger and then you rub
it or shake it to stimulate the somatosensory nerves which
close the gate and thus temporarily reduces the experience of pain.
And like, as soon as you don't have enough of
that large fiber stimulation, that pain starts to come back.
But it's like, if you can create enough stimulation of

(33:25):
the large nerve fibers here the like other sensations that
are not painful, then that can essentially override the opportunity
to experience pain. And I've certainly personally had that experience
where it's like, if you get enough stimulation that is
not the pain stimulation, it seems like the pain stimulation
goes away, at least for a moment.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Right.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
This is actually also what's at play when the dentist
shakes your lip or cheek to try and reduce the
pain from the needle shot. Is like it could function
as a distraction, and it could also function as stimulation
of the large nerve fibers, where it therefore then blocks
some of the pain from getting through if it's sufficiently stimulated. Yeah,
that's sort of the idea. At least that's in play. Thus,

(34:06):
this can be one of the ways that massage because
we did an episode a massage not that long ago,
and the research on it is just it's just been
done so poorly that it's like hard to say like
the extent to which it is effective. But like, massage
has been shown to help reduce experiences of pain, and
it seems that one of the ways it helps alleviate

(34:28):
pain again at least temporarily, is by producing more stimulation
than the pain would be otherwise causing Sure, there's enough
of that sort of stimulation that comes from the pressure
that comes from massage and just the overall sensation that
comes from massage that it can help block that pain
at least at various moments there. I also saw some

(34:49):
things that showed that, like it's the reason that hot
pads can also work, and that like alternating hot and cold,
is that it essentially can bring blood flow to the area,
which can help reduce the experience of pain as well.
But I think that it also is in response to
that stimulation. And for fun here this is also likely

(35:11):
how if it works, how acupuncture and homeopathic remedies quote
unquote work is by providing more stimulation than the pain.
That's what the acupuncture at least because it's like a
very light, painful stimulation that is sort of mostly pricking

(35:33):
your skin a thousand different places to override the stimulation
from whatever the other pain might be. So there's nothing
magical about it, and a matter of fact, the extent
to which it works is extremely questionable. The research on
this is so bad, so like there's really no scientific
backing for this as anything other than the extent to

(35:54):
which it gets. Sort of the effect of this for
some people not consistent anyway. And then homeopathic remedies, which
is we did an episode on that as well, just
essentially pretend magic water. Placebos can work, like they legitimately
can work. I can tell you, like I can hand
you a altoid and say this is a pain medication,

(36:15):
and whatever pain you're feeling will actually often start to
go away. Even and we did an episode on placebos,
but like, even if I tell you this is a
placebo pain medication, it can have that effect amazingly. Yeah,
So it's kind of impressive how that works. So if
there is an extense to which things like acupuncture, Cairo practice,
and homeopathic remedies work, it is through these placebos and

(36:38):
in some cases get control theory of pain, that they
probably are getting their effect.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah, but I mean even with all that stuff like acpuncture,
homeopathic remedies, like even placebos, like, I don't think that
there's really anything that's been proven to reduce the pain
of ADS at this point in time. Unless we have
something later we can talk about that. But I haven't
seen anything in the science that says that ADS are
pain free.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Just the skip forward button. Okay, we are back. So
we just finished covering the gate control theory of pain.
Let's talk about how to manage pain.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yes, so obviously the gate control theory of pain is
one way to temporarily relieve the experience of pain. But
medically we can use things like non opioid drugs like
asperintilet all ibuprofen and a leave and they interfere with
the enzymes produced during tissue damage and reduce inflammation and
pain itself.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
This is another space where there's like a lot of
technical jargon and how like certain chemicals bind to certain receptors.
And at some point I was just like, I feel like,
if you're listening to this particular podcast with a lens,
where like that's the kind of detail you're looking for.
I don't think that you made it to us for

(37:56):
that reason.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
No, we are too low brow for that, my friends.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
I'm not sure. I think we're low bro, but I
do think like we just don't get that technically into
the biological neurological aspects of these things.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
So anyway, so that was the non opioid drugs that
can be used for this. There's also, of course, then
the opioid analgesics. These are used for more intense pain,
and these work by binding to the opioid receptors in
our body. This is going to be drugs such as morphine, codeine, oxycodone,
and fentanyl that all do work this way. But of

(38:32):
course these come with the issue that because these are
more powerful medications, they are easier to overdose and easy
to get addicted to. Sure, and so these ones tend
to be more tightly controlled to avoid overdoing it with
people or having them become dependent on those drugs. But yes, essentially,
again very complicated, but essentially the way that it works

(38:53):
is that these binds two receptors that make it so
that we cannot get the pain stimulation. Yeah, Like it
basically turns it, right, off at almost is kind of
like the gate control theory of pain, but via drugs.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, surgery can be an extreme measure,
either when the pain is extreme enough or other pain
management strategies that failed. So this intervention attempts to alter
the physical structures that underlie the experience of pain. For example,
rhizotomy will remove your charisma, which can be painful for
some other folks. Maybe not so free, not so much
for you. Now. It's actually a surgery that destroys portions

(39:27):
of the peripheral nerves, cutting off the nerves that carry
pain signals to the brain. A cordotomy destroys ascending tracks
in the spinal cord. These surgeries can be irreversible and
cause significant damage, so they are typically saved as a
last ditch effort. I had a friend of mine who
had a back surgery that had something like that where
I don't know if they had which surgery they had,

(39:48):
but they did essentially have a surgery that removed nerve
endings that were possibly related to significant lower back pain.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
Interesting, there was another type of like it's called an analgesic.
It's called an adjuvant analgesic or coanalgesic. I didn't really
get into it because I had trouble sort of falling
what was even being talked about here. But it's like
some other condition other than the ones described sure, and

(40:16):
it happens to have like a pain reducing quality to it,
I think. So it's like medication that's not necessarily designed
to titrate pain, but it has that sort of an effect.
And like they actually give an example of an anti
epileptic drug that reduces membrane exciteability and therefore just reduces
the ability for like pain signals to be conducted across Sure.

(40:37):
But I just wanted to mention that is, yeah, a
piece in here as we're talking through it.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
Love that.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
Yeah, all right. So there are of course behavioral approaches
for pain, and you can kind of lump these into
two broad categories. You have approaches that are going to
include strategies that emphasize essentially behaviors around mitigating pain, and
so that would be like medication adherence Exer says, self
care routines, putting on a hot patch, taking a bath,

(41:05):
stretching like, these are all kinds of things that our
behavioral approaches where we might teach and help someone build
habits around those things to help them manage their pain.
So that's one way that this is. It's sort of
the behaviors around pain management, where we would help build
those as a habit essentially.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
The other way that we might have behavioral approaches include
sort of exercises around use of language to produce the
experience of pain. And this will include things like mindfulness exercises,
relaxation techniques, and some of the work that comes from
like the acceptance and commitment training or acceptance and commitment
therapy and things like values based exercises and acceptance practices

(41:45):
and that sort of thing. So those are also come
from the behavioral world of things, but they get as
sort of the psychological approach to managing pain.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
Yeah, I love that. And then even placebos and magical
thinkings such as chiropractic interventions, prayer or lucky coins can
wield enough influence to at least facilitate reporting less pain.
I know it sounds like we're being sarcastic there, but
like that's if you really think about it, Like some
of that is just kind of like some languaging or
placebo effects that can really be helpful for some folks.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yeah, and that's sort of the point is they say,
like I do lump those all together because they are
all magical thinking things. But the point being is like
they can be effective, like you can, they can at
least have some impact.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
Yeah, most definitely.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
All right, we're not quite the point for an ad
break again, so let's instead get into our next topic here,
which is called congenital analgija, which is not fun to say,
gija gija. All right, So we need to set some
context here because I think it makes the point punch

(42:52):
more intensely and therefore be more painful.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
The part of the purpose of this discussion, I think
is to highlight the unique feet feature of pain as
an evolutionary adaptation to have the capacity to respond to
exposure to noxious stimuli and evoke behaviors that reduce exposure
to that stimuli such that we are then more likely
to survive. Like that is part of the purpose here, Okay,

(43:17):
And so to that point, it seems aggressively, laughably arrogant
to think that only humans would have evolved this capacity, Right,
it is very likely that all behaving organisms, from the
lowliest insect to the most complex organism on Earth would
have benefited from evolving a response to painful stimulation is

(43:41):
it is simply the ability to remove noxious stimulation which
is likely to cause or is already causing, tissue damage,
and that, if not avoided, could result in serious damage
or death, such that that organism is no longer able
to reproduce. And so it makes a lot of sense
that selective pressures would mean that if you can do

(44:03):
something about this obnoxious stimulation, do something about it, right,
and that that would be something that we all that
all organisms evolve like. It is very silly for me
to think that like at some point along the trajectory
of all animal species, we eventually got to humans, and
up until that point there was no such thing as
pain until there were humans, and no other animals ever

(44:25):
evolved pain. That is so stupidly arrogant and dumb and
short sighted. So it makes sense to assume that at
least all behaving organisms have the capacity to feel and
response to.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Pain, right, And so the requisite physical structures for sensation
or feeling pain and responding to pain seem to be
a brain and essential nervous system. However, even then, even
with that, because nature breaks all sorts of laws, there
are plants that do move and react to quote unquote
stress such as like heat or other damage. As they
cannot physically remove themselves from a noxious stimulus, it seems

(44:59):
unlikely that it would also have evolved the ability to
sense pain in the same sense that we do, or
at least to sense it in a more acute way.
Right that is, they can't do anything about it, and
then it is not likely a trait that would have
been selected that that would have been selected for because
it increased survival. There are responses, there's all sorts of
things there, but maybe the way that plants experience pain

(45:20):
is a little bit different.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
Well, and I mean just thinking about the fact that, like,
what good would it do evolutionarily for a plan to
experience pain. It can't do anything about it, right, Like,
it does not increase that plan's ability to survive by
having the ability to sense pain, right, So, like, if
it can't do anything about it, like, it's very unlikely
it would have ever evolved in the first place. So anyway,

(45:42):
that's just I think a thing to consider here is that,
like they do seem to do some things that are
like behaviors, and they do respond to environmental conditions, but
they like, they just cannot do anything about pain. Now,
like we said, they might do things in response to
stress situations, and that might kind of look like behaviors

(46:02):
related to pain. But again, like unless they can turn
it off, there's no point in having the experience to
have it at all, right, And there is basically the
same like there's no point to us having ads. I
mean there is a point, but like not a great point.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
We didn't evolve to need it, but here we are.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
No, Yeah, they just happen. All right, we're back. We're
actually like I think we're making pretty good time through this. Yeah,
look at us go yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
All right. So pain is likely a universal experience, right,
It's defined by its discomfort. So wouldn't it be great
if we could get rid of it altogether? I think
that sounds lovely. And you know, we're not even talking
about emotional pain. We're just on a physical pain ent
of Now. Some people are actually born this way. They
can't experience pain. In a rare genetic condition called congenital analgesia,
children do not move away from pain or engage in

(46:54):
any other behaviors that indicate that they sense painful input
as pain and Wall describe a case in which a
girl crawls across a hot radiator and sustains third degree
burns to her legs without trying to remove the stimulation.
Because this child the stimulation, I should say, because she
does not feel pain in the stimulus, the stimulation is
not painful for her. I actually worked with a client

(47:16):
that had this, and it was fascinating. This client that
I worked with did not experience heat or cold, any
of those sensations that would have prompted her to remove
additional layers of clothing and stuff like that had engaged
in behaviors that she would bind her wrists and her
fingers and her ankles and her toes and did not

(47:37):
sense that she was losing sensations or feelings in her
hands and toes and like almost lost fingers as a
result of it. So it's one of those really interesting
things where it's like, when you see it in real life,
you're like, wow, how does this happen? It's really kind
of like a little bit it's a little bit scary.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
Yeah, No, it certainly would be like this is a
life threatening condition. Yeah, because pain stops us from doing
things or allowing things to happen that can cause significant damage,
and without that sensory input, these congenital analgesic children may
often die at a young age, and that's a terrible thing.
It's a horrible thing to think about. But like we

(48:14):
need that guidance that tells us when we're doing something
that is going to result in damage that would cause
us like would incapacitate us and moderate amounts, and when
applied in appropriate contexts, pain keeps us alive, Like it
is one of the most important things that keeps us alive.
And we really take for granted the fact that like

(48:35):
we have this as a sense as we go through
our day that we can respond to and do something
about things that are painful when they happen, because if
we didn't have that, we would be doing constant damage
to ourselves, as demonstrated by these kids who are born
without it. And so it is very instructive to have pain.
And I think while it sounds lovely to be able
to turn that off and make it go away, it

(48:57):
actually would be devastating to us overall. Well being all right,
let's talk some other sort of interesting tidbits here, as
we've covered so much of our content I.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
Love tid points. So researchers consistently find that women tend
to report a greater sensitivity to pain than men. However,
there are complex social factors to consider specifically around this. So,
for instance, in some cultures, definitely American culture, the social
context for men is such that they are monished for
expressing pain and that it is masculine to tolerate pain. Women,

(49:29):
on the other hand, are delivered no such exceptions and
requirements for that and are free to emote, you know,
as they feel appropriate. However, I do think also we
do live in a society where women will emote and
they will describe this, and it gets disregarded or kind
of like ignored as like, oh, you suck it up,
you'll be fine, Da da dada da, And it's like

(49:50):
kind of just really bad. We don't really take pain
very seriously here in the United States.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
I mean, if you're wealthy enough, sure I do. But yeah,
and actually this one kind of surprised me, and because
my own personal experience had me thinking that it was
the opposite, that women like tended to have greater thresholds
for pain. Is an example of this, Like, I've known
people who got tattoos in similar places to me, and
I remember sort of asking like, how was that, and like, oh,
it wasn't so bad, And I was like, man, that
was crippling to me what I was loving. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(50:17):
it was so painful. I could barely stand it. And
they're like, oh, it wasn't that bad. And I've also
just seen people like I have seen women who like
and again maybe this is a huge social context thing
that's relevant for them, but like they experience some amount
of pain and just kind of walk it off, and
I'm like, man, I feel like I would be just
incapacitated if I just went through what you just went through.

(50:39):
So I do think there is a cultural thing around
this or social things around this that's going to be
very individual differences around this. But the research that has
been done, quality of which we are not clear. I'm
guessing a lot of it is not super great, and
probably a lot of it is with college students. Sure
suggest that there's a pattern that emerges pretty consistently and

(51:03):
over and over again that women report being more sensitive
to the experience of pain. But I would take that
with a huge grain of salt. I think, first of all,
trying to dichotomize us as men and women by itself
as kind of a foolish task, and then to try
and search for any meaningful differences across those in those
patterns is also a meaningless task. Yeah, and so I
think that we don't necessarily learn anything from that, but

(51:24):
that is a thing that is reported.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Yeah, absolutely, So this is also true for elderly people.
The current understanding is that we physically wear down and
our bodies become less capable of preventing pain, and like
really kind of like, you know, we start to kind
of lose our capacities in a lot of different ways,
so we feel pain all the time and are less
tolerant to it. And again, personal experience may be different

(51:46):
for different folks. I know that as I approach forty,
I feel like I experience less pain on a day
to day basis. But also I am not doing the
same physical activities that I was when I was twenty.
You know, I'm not playing baseball anymore, I'm not touring anymore.
I'm not lifting you know, music gear every day, sleeping

(52:07):
in a van, I'm sleeping in a normal bed and
not hurting myself every night. So like I'm you know,
It's one of those things where it's kind of like
my social context is a little bit different too, very
much so.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
And I was actually going to say, like a very
similar thing for me personally, is that, like it's just different,
Like there are things now that hurt that didn't used
to hurt. But there's also like things that used to
hurt that like because I'm more used to them now,
I feel like I'm more tolerant of them. And I
have seen, you know, older people who it seems like

(52:38):
their threshold for pain is way above mine. Sure, and
again might just be an individual thing. And again, the
dichotomy of like old versus young probably not a thing
that exists, right, But I watched there recently. It was
Bill Murrie, and I forget who is with him. I
want to say Pete Davidson because they were in like
a movie coming out together or something. Yes, And they

(52:59):
were on Hot one yes and yeah yeah, and Bill
Murray was like totally fine the whole time, and like
that could have been Bill Murray being Bill Murray, but
like it seemed like he was legitimately fine the whole time.
And I feel like I've heard that that, like the
older people tend to be more and more resilient to
spicy food. But also just like I've seen like being
poked with needles to have blood drawn, they're just kind
of like whatever. Yeah, it's like their experience is with

(53:21):
the pain they've experienced, they are more tolerant too, But
there are just other pains that are like things that
didn't used to her that just now kind of always ache.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
And hurt all the time, right right, right, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
So I think it's just different, is the way to
think about.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
It, and it's good. I think it's a good way
to look at it. Now.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
We have mentioned this before and we're gonna mention it
again because it's fun. But there is a huge amount
of like metaphor around pain and our verbal behavior around this.
And so like when we talk about a pain inside,
will usually use metaphors by alluding to external things. So
we call something a sharp pain, and that is like

(53:57):
something that is sharp, which also by itself as it's
own subjective experience. But like we metaphorically call something internal
sharp even though there's not actually a sharp pain. Like
we looked inside, we wouldn't see a sharp thing happen.
But the best we can relate it to is verbally
through the metaphor of we do know what sharp things
feel like when we touch them with our skin, or

(54:19):
a dull pain, or like a butterflies or and we've
talked about all these examples, but you think about all
the language that we use to describe our internal subjective
experience of pain, and all or almost all of it
is going to be metaphorical language that refers to external
experiences that we can have. Sure, it's a useful way

(54:39):
of thinking about it because we can sort of follow
the logic of that metaphor, but it is kind of interesting.
It's just the thing to think about.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
I think of like when people even report pain, right,
they report it based on you know, like they compare
it to something, or they describe it in terms that
it's very subjective to like they use like skills to
describe it. Like there's lots of ways that people verbalize
pain and stuff like that, which is really interesting.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
Yeah. Absolutely. And then the last thing I'll say here
is like emotional pain can feel like physical pain. You know,
we've talked about people have talked about at least the
idea of like having your heart broken and you feel
actual physical pain tightening in your chest, maybe nausea or
upset stomach or something like that. Like these are physical

(55:26):
sensations we then experience that are unpleasant and uncomfortable, And
it's entirely in the context of an emotional thing that happens, right,
loss or trauma or something where we experience something psychologically
that then affects how we feel physically, which is really
interesting and I think it again speaks to the power

(55:48):
of language that this ability that we have to behave
arbitrarily to the world around us through our language, allows
us to experience pain in places we otherwise wouldn't. Like
I don't think any anybody has a pet that is
like thinking about the job that they need to get
to support the family, and they're like stressed out about

(56:08):
the support that they're the work they're going to have
to do right, or like is worried about some pain
they might experience that hasn't happened yet. Now, they obviously
can be very afraid and like understand a context like
where we're getting in the car. Now, that's never good
because we always end up at the vet whenever that happens, right,
or you know, we're getting in the part in that
car that's great because we end up at the lake
and I get to play. But depending on the kind

(56:29):
of pet that we're talking about here. But like, there
are contexts in which the situation has enough pairing and
overlap with the experiences of like discomfort, that they then
sort of behave with respect to it being pain. But again,
with humans, we have this acute, impressive ability to simply
have emotions feel like physical pain to us, and that

(56:50):
seems to be essentially accommodated by or afforded by our language.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
All right, Well, I think that's what you have to
say about. I think we did the thing, the pain thing.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
I am impressed that we got through this whole thing
without being saying something like oh man, what a pain
in the ass or something like that. We did we
got so far without doing that. I think that we've
I think that we've evolved, we've matured as a podcast.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
Yes, it wasn't too painful, so there it is.

Speaker 2 (57:19):
Well, there it is.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
We slip back into childish humor at the very end,
I guess, of course, speaking of which here are some
childish ads.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Oh boo.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
All right, I probably should have said, like, we are
coming back with reasonable meaningful content, so hopefully we didn't
just lose everyone. But at the end of our discussions,
if you haven't been with us before, you might not
know this that we recommend some things. They're usually unrelated
to the topic that we're discussing. But then the way
you just want to say, hey, we recommend you check
this out or just know about it or something. There's
variety of ways that this can look and it's really fun.

(57:58):
But before we do that, I do need to get
through the credits, which are important, and then we get
to the fun stuff, which is the recommendations. So as
I mentioned before, you can support us lots of ways,
like and subscribe. If you enjoy what you hear, then
leave us a nice five star rating, and if you're
feeling particularly ambitious, you can accompany that rating with the
review and that really helps us out. You can definitely
go tell a friends. One of the best ways to

(58:19):
spread podcast is just by sharing information with other people.
And of course you can join us on Patreon if
you're tired of hearing those ads and you want to
get rid of them. I understand. I wish I could
do that for you too, and I probably could, but
you know, we are trying to keep this podcast going,
so we're going to keep them there for now. But
if you join, you get ad free content, bonus content,
behind the scenes things, early episodes and free episodes, all

(58:43):
that kind of stuff. You can do that by heading
over to our Patreon account. There's a cool group of
people over there, and one more particularly delectable bonus of
joining that Patreon group is that I will read your
name at the end of each and every full length episode.
So a big thank you to the following people who
support us on Patreon. Mike m Meghan, Mike T, Justin,

(59:04):
Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley, Kiara and Charlie. Thank you
all for can your continued support and just being generally awesome.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
This is the part of the show where I do
the arsenio hall for all those folks, So thank you
for being here.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
Very nice. Yes, thank you so much or do really
appreciate it. And as I said, you can join that
group of people by heading over there. We also have
a discord server. We chat with each other on that
if you would not like to do that, but you'd
like to reach out and tell us your thoughts and
experiences with Paine maybe have us share that as a
listener mail or just share it privately. Either way, we
love hearing from people. You can reach us directly by

(59:41):
emailing us at info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com, and you
can also find us on the social media platforms, particularly
active on Blue Sky. I think that is the things
I have to say about that. Thank you so much
to my team of people, without whom I could not
make this podcast writing and fact checking from Shane and myself.
Thank you for recording with me today, Shane, Hey, thank
you for having me. Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson.

(01:00:03):
And the person who does audio stuff and makes it
good is Justin. He does all the music, all the sounds,
all the editing. So what comprehensive podcast you get with
like good listenable quality is because of him. So thank
you Justin.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Yes, Justin rules.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
Somehow he takes these discussions that we have and turns
them into listenable content. It's kind of miraculous.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Really, yeah, you don't even know. It's magic. Really, it's
truly magic.

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Yeah. And you can hear the uncut versions of these
if you join us on Patreon, and you will see
truly the job that Justin has to has to take on.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Yes, he doesn't get paid enough.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Exactly, all right, I think that's what I have to
say before we get to our recommendations. Is there anything
that I missed or that you would like to add
before we make our transition.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
No, I think that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
That's cue the music. Who recommendation. Okay, I'm recommending a movie.
This is called Mister Monk's Last Case a Monk movie.
This is a movie that follows the TV show called

(01:01:12):
Monk Mnk about a character who is essentially a freelance
detective living in San Francisco who's just like hyper observant
but also extremely quirky, and he also does a lot
of sort of deductive logic reasoning sort of things. And
it's a comedy TV show about solving crimes, like that's

(01:01:32):
basically what it is. Typically, crime solving stuff not my
cup of tea, But I do love comedies and I
think even the comedic value can transcend the low quality
that is crime storytelling in my opinion, although I know
a lot of people strongly disagree with that. That's okay,
I'm just espousing my opinion anyway. This was released on
Peacock I assume that you can get it elsewhere, but

(01:01:55):
this is the only place that I have seen it
because Monk was owned by Peacock as a TV show.
That's where the movie is available. And it was very good, Like,
it was very funny, it felt very true to the
original show. It was a very enjoyable story like it
just I think it worked really well and I think
they did a very good job with it. And so yeah,
mister Monk's Last Case a Monk movie. You can check

(01:02:17):
that out at least on Peacock, if not other places
if you're interested in like comedic crime storytelling.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
Sure. And I always like the actor too. I can't
remember his name is right now, but like Tony Tony Shalub,
that's what it is.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
He's great and every good. Yeah, he is really fantastically
like he is a really good actor legitimately.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
Yeah, he's so fun great. I love that. I am
going to recommend a book. I just finished this book
and it was pretty powerful for me and it made
me realize that I could probably be doing a little
bit more and also still protect my piece when it
comes to social justice stuff. And that is a book
called Let This Radicalize You. Organizing in the Revolution of
Reciprocal Care by Kelly Hayes and Mariami Kaba. And so

(01:02:57):
this book is not necessarily how too, but it's like
insightful stories and strategies for engaging in really good action
towards values and systems or values and like maybe causes
that you believe in. But it also does in a
way it's like very compassionate, it's very community focused and
community oriented, and it gives a lot of case examples

(01:03:18):
of how you can make impactful changes in your community
and be demonstrators and be protesters while still maintaining your sanity,
while still fostering hope in your communities, especially in a
world that's like completely on fire right now. And so
I do think it's a valuable read right now given

(01:03:39):
the current state of the world, especially for folks that
don't know what to do or where to start. This
is a really good place to kind of go, Hey,
like I can do good work and do this in
the way that I need to do this so that
I can be successful without being burnout. And it's really,
I think a really great read if you're interested at
all in social justice and protest behavior and things of

(01:04:01):
that nature.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
Wow, that was. You basically sold me on it before
you even got to the title, so I'm definitely gonna
have to check that out.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. I love it. Well.

Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
I think we said the things about reaching out to us.
We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you all
very much for listening. That was mister Monk's Last Case
a Monk movie on Peacock if you want to check
that out. And then Let's radicalize sorry, let this radicalize you.
Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care by Kelly Hayes
and Mary am Kaba the book. Those are the things
that you can check out if you'd like to take

(01:04:30):
those recommendations. And then I think that what we have
to say, is there anything that I'm missing or are
we ready to wrap this one up?

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
I think that covers this one perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
This is Abraham and this is Shane. We're out.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
So yeah, you've been listening to Why We Do what
we do. You can learn more about this and other
episodes by going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks
for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.

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