February 16, 2012 • 36 mins
There's plenty of stuff in this world to summon your disgust. But why do we feel this way? Is there logic behind repulsion, and if so what is your brain trying to say? In this episode, Robert and Julie enter a world of hacking coughs, dog feces and more.
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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 Douglas. What
disgust you do? What? What? What do you regularly encounter
in the world around you that SUTs off the disgust
center of your brain. I was thinking about this, and
(00:25):
for me, it's um. I mean, I do have some
visual disgust, Like, for instance, if I watch Clockwork Orange
and they see the scene where they're peeling back his
eyes and they've got the little hooks right on his
the lids of his eyes, that just disgust me. It
makes my stomach turn. Um somehow, something about eyes really
(00:46):
and and poking at eyes disgusting to me. But more
than anything, I think smells, because it could be just
something as you know, normal, as hey, there's some stinky
garbage or cigarette butts that kind of makes me real
coil yourself. Well, I mean, certainly a bad odor will
get to me, but I guess things that seem like
(01:07):
unhygienic things often give me the all over. It's like
if I'm if there's somebody on on on the train
and they're coughing without covering their mouth. Or the time
I saw the chicken lady on the train. Have I
mentioned this before? I do believe I've heard of it.
And she was eating an entire rope. Well, she had
a rotisserie chicken that had been that she had been
(01:28):
eating on and it was down to just like the
little sort of gray slivers, and she was picking the
meat off of it on the train, and then she
would touch the pole on the train, and then she
would go back to eating her chicken, which just totally
freaking me out. I basically had to had to switch
cars at that point, you know, things things of that
nature where I'm like, this is kind of gross, and
that part of my brain is dis wanting me to
(01:48):
flee for for fear of all the diseases rolling off
the situation right right, It's like you're having this this
really powerful feeling for a reason, right. Your body, your mind,
everything is telling you like back away right now, um,
And there's a reason for this, and we're going to
talk about that. Um. I asked Jonathan Strickland of Tech
Stuff what disgusted him, and he gave me a very
(02:10):
specific answer that it was maggots emerging from carcasses, because
you might mistake the movement under the skin for something
else than they emerge, and uh, chaos and sues. Ah, well,
there's a there's a great example of that in the
book The Wasp Factory. It actually ends up driving a
character in saying that's a Banks book. The guy did
(02:33):
the culture series. Look it up if you want to
be disgusted. But why are we disgusted? Right? Why? Why
does this happen? And where does it occur in nature? Um?
Where does it occur in the brain? Why why is
it such a part of who we are? Well? Joshua
Tiber the universe, the U University excuse me in Amsterdam
proposed three domains of discussed three separate psychological programs. Yeah, okay,
(02:58):
and they all make sense, right, deseese what you talked about, right,
people coughing on the train. Yeah, with putting on their
their chicken juice on the poles. Uh, that just sounded wrong. Mate,
choice and moral judgment. Okay, we'll see, like all three
of those are rolled up in the Chicken Lady because
because I'm like, that's gross and potentially going to strepad
a disease. I really don't want to mate with you.
(03:20):
And uh, morally I think it's also yeah, morally, it's
against the rules to eat on the train. What the
heck are you doing? Um? Yeah, yeah, it's a little
bit reprehensible to sit there and basically, you know, essentially
like lick your hands and the chicken and then just
put it all over everything for other people who come
upon and transfer to themselves. Yeah. Though, if you touch
(03:41):
one of those poles with your bare skin, I mean
you're really asking for it. You are always looking arm yeah,
or wearing or just pull your sleep down, yeah, or
just or just fall. Better to fall on the floor
than to touch that pole. Yeah, roll around on that
floor is probably a lot that are Um. Apparently there
is a look of disgust that is universal. So when
(04:01):
we feel disgusted, this look crosses over our faces. Um,
and what it is and this is according to Paul
Ekman of the University of California at San Francisco, the
look is screwing up of our noses and pulling down
at the corners of our mouths. You're doing it right now, Yeah,
you look a little disgusted. And every culture all over
the world, this is the look of disgusting. Yeah look, yeah,
(04:25):
so I mean you know you're in another country you're
disgusted by something. Just keep that in mind that if
you happen to be over at someone's home in another
country and they're cooking you something and it's maybe not
something that you would try at your own home, trying
not to screw your nose, because there's something universal. It's
not like go in this country. It thumbs up is
good in this country. It's fighting word, you know, or
(04:46):
like or turn you know, the whole thing. Like if
you turn your glass upside down in Australia, it means
you're you're challenging everyone in the bar to a fight.
But I can't back that at That's one thing I've
heard our Australian listeners will sort of thought on that up. Yeah.
Or the soles of your shoes in Egypt, right that
I think I believe that's I put down, or or
(05:06):
like in Thailand, like setting so that your shoes pointing
at somebody, that's that's bad, you know, But here nobody cares.
Now they don't point your shoes all you want. Uh.
But Charles Darwin actually tackled this subject before and the
paper the expression of the emotions in man and animals,
and he described the face of disgust as if we're
(05:28):
expelling some horrible tasting substance from the mouth. So there
has been, you know, historical interest in disgust, but as
of late it's actually getting some some legs, as you
would say, in terms of being studied in earnest. Dr
Valerie Curtis of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine is a disgust bologist in fact, and she says,
(05:50):
disgust is in our everyday life. It determines our hygiene behaviors.
It determines how close we get to people, determines who
were going to kiss, who we're going to meet with,
who we're going to sit next to. It determines the
people that we shunned, and that is something that we
do a lot of. Yeah, and you look at the
list of things that are typically associated with the disgust
um and certainly it's one of the ones we already
mentioned are on there. I mean, you know, the basically
(06:11):
bodily secretion issues, feces, vomit, sweats, bit blood plus sexual fluids,
body parts, wounds, corpses, tonail, clippings, decaying food, certain living
creatures like the maggots, like lice, like worms, rats, some people,
dogs and cats, which to each their own. And then uh,
and then individuals who are ill the diseased right again,
(06:32):
then there's that visual of that person is someone I
need to back away from. Um. But yeah, and the
body parts uh universals list that you're talking about, toneail
clippings came up. Yeah, and I thought that was really
interesting because I thought I feel the same way. And no, Um,
I always attributed it to being some sort of weird
idea that I had that someone might take my tonail
clippings and that's just spell against me exactly. I mean,
(06:53):
that's the old magic of be careful with your hair.
Stuff into the side of you. Don't don't let anybody
get all of your brush or they could keeps cast
magical spells against you. Right. Yeah, there's irrational fears that
we have. Yeah, and it's actually interesting. You know, in
the past we've discussed sympathetic magic and our attitudes towards
discussed or somewhat wrapped up in sympathetic magic, like the
you know, the idea that say, something that has come
(07:16):
into contact with something gross is therefore gross, which is
a which, as a basic physical rule, tends to apply.
You know, if the fork has been in the toilet,
you're not going to eat with the fork, even if
you clean it. Sometimes, you know, to have this association
of the fork of the toilet trying to spear something right,
(07:37):
But then are you know, humans have the ability to
really get out and take things and extrapolate them to
ridiculous levels. So you end up with a situation where
you I mean, that's where we end up with things
like the idea that certain individuals are n'touchable because they
have a particular job in society that that puts them
in contact with foul things or foul ideas even you
(07:59):
know it, it ends up becoming a part of this
sympathetic magic and the idea that something can be not
only befouled but besmirched, you know. Yeah, and we'll talk
about that a little bit more too later about the
cultural aspect of it and what you're talking about um
in sympathetic magic, because that's really it's such an interesting
psychological component to this. Yeah, but back to the physiological
(08:21):
I found an interesting um uh description of this in
the book Clean A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity
by Virginia Smith, which I think I've mentioned for it
is just a great book on the history of of
hygiene and how hygiene ends up becoming interwoven with these
ideas of purity. But she refers to the nervous reflex
(08:41):
of disgust and repulsion as a physiological safety net, which
I think that you know, ties in nicely with the
with the with the disease and uh uh and and
mating aspect of this trifecta of repulsion. Okay, all right,
I can see that. All right. So diving into the brain,
where is this tech in place? When I when I
see the chicken lady on the on the train, like, like,
(09:04):
what's lighting up? If someone would strapped me into you know,
an fm R I or something. Yeah, if we could
see a scan your brain, we would see a lot
of activity in insula and the amygdala as well as
other especially this frontal insula. It's an area the brain
that in addition to the deep seated discuss you have,
you also have things such as addiction is sometimes tied
up there as well. So it's not it's not like
(09:25):
just the repulsion center of the brain. Um, there have
been studies that have shown that people would damage to
this portion of the brain were actually able to give
up cigarettes instantly. So so there's a lot going on there.
But one of the things that is it is definitely
going on there is repulsion. Yeah, and mygdala, of course
is processing emotions. That that makes sense that you're seeing
(09:49):
the chicken lady on Marta the train system and uh,
you're you're starting to form all of those opinions and
having a very big gut reaction to it. It's also
the like if you were to receive a centual touch
from one significant other that also ends up resonating in
the insula. So there's a lot of physical stimuli and
(10:09):
central simuli in the world around you. You wind up
figuring out what you're supposed to do with it. Yeah,
and it's interesting that you actually just brought up um,
someone that you know um touching you because in a
lot of these studies, and this is going to sound
like a no dumb moment, but of course we find
the people that we know less disgusting than the people
that we don't know. And a lot of that is
because you know, there's a familiarity there, even if that
(10:31):
person is truly disgusting. Um, but there's less and opportunity
to objectify that person, and maybe on some level you're like, okay,
well they're not maybe the cleanest of people, but there
are no threat to me. I know this, I know
my immune system knows that this no threat. Well here's
the This one actually came up among some friends. Where
do you stand on using a spouse's toothbrush? Um, okay, Well,
(10:55):
in a situation where it's the only choice, then I'm
fine with it. But when I've accidentally done it, or
my daughter grabbed my toothbrush actually this morning, and I
was like no, no, which was kind of ridiculous because um, certainly,
you know, I eat some of her sandwiches, she eat
some of mine, and we are all exchanging sandwiches sandwiches
and that makes you sound a little like birds, but
(11:16):
yeah we are. We have a little giant nest um.
But yeah, and you know kissing and everything, so yeah,
all the germs are being passed between one another. Well,
I found just in a few people have talked like
they tend to range. There's some people that are like, yeah,
like we're you know, you're on a trip and you
only have one toothbrush in the bag, It's no big deal.
And then other people were like, you know, absolutely not
(11:37):
one person gets to brush their teeth on that trip. Well,
it's kind of like my germs, just my germs, Okay,
no one else's germs. Um, which is just silly and funny. Um.
I guess what we just feel really like we've got
quite a connection with all of the bacteria on our body,
which we've talked about. It's like, you know, there's tenfold
of foreign bacteria to our to our own cells. So okay,
(12:01):
I guess we start to feel a little bit fuzzy
and lovy for our own bacteria. Um. But anyway, let's
talk about discussed from an evolutionary standpoint. Yeah, like, what
sense does it make, um, evolving? I mean, obviously, the
big pick I'm here is to is avoiding disease. For
for an organism to be successful and doesn't need it
(12:22):
needs to not get taken down by by predators, but
it also has to avoid the ailments that will weaken
it either unto death or into the hands of these predators. Right, So,
I mean, you know, it's makes sense that we would
have these sort of uh signals for us to visual accues,
(12:43):
smell cues that would make us stop in our tracks
and reassess or reevaluate, because this is how we have
been so successful as a species, right, this ability to
step back and evaluate and say this might be something
that would be harmful to me. Right. We talked about
some of this in the Science of Stink, where we're
we're talking about how like a like you, you get
hit with a bad smell, and the bad smell will
(13:06):
hit you square in the face, and it's your brain's
way of saying something is wrong here. This is potentially
poisonous or disease written in some way, shape or form.
So you need to at least think about it before
you touch it. You have not just completely avoid it entirely. Yeah.
In fact, the New York Times has an article called
(13:27):
the ick Factor, and in it they talk about how
smell is causes such a powerful response in the brain
that the U. S. Army has been trying to develop
a stink bomb with an odor foul enough to be
used for riot control, and that police are very interested.
And so it makes sense. I mean, that's the kind
of reaction you would have, right, that it could disperse
crowds because if something that your body is yelling, this
(13:48):
is bad for me, right without necessarily the more adverse
reactions ones and one encounters with like tear gas and
the like rubber bullets, and yeah, and I was actually
thinking about this too. It's just in terms of my
own personal experiences, uh, with getting ill. And this doesn't
happen every single time, but it's more likely than not
(14:10):
that a couple of days before I get ill, I
will have a dream actually, and in the dream, I
have to use the bathroom. But the only bathroom that's
available to me is one that's a public restroom. And
as soon as I walk in it, I realized that
is the most disgusting public restroom I've ever been in.
It's feces encrusted everywhere, like every you could not touch
(14:32):
something that's clean if you tried. And in the dream,
I always looked down and I'm barefoot, and there's a
stream of urine and flam and everything that you could
possibly Yeah, it's the Seriously, if you've ever seen Trainspotting,
it makes that that bathroom and Trainspotting look really spick
and span um. But this is and I always have
this stream, and I always like God, I got oh,
(14:53):
and I have had it so much that it's obvious
to me now that I'm about to get sick and
it's my body trying to tell me something. But it
wasn't until we were doing this research that I realized
that just what a big signal my mind and body
were trying to transmit to me. Wow. Have you tried
hitting that scenario with any lucid dreaming ever? Well, here's
the thing. I mean, I can lucid dream most of
the time, but it's always happens if you ever decided
(15:17):
like I'm going to clean this bathroom in turn, like
cleaning Superwoman, and you just stiff it all because my
because of what happens is the way to unfold is
that I am I look down in my feet and
are now you know, in the muck, and so I
have no I can't even I can't turn back. It
doesn't matter. I'm exposed as the point of the dream.
So because yeah, because sometimes I thought, oh, really seriously,
(15:38):
can I just go to another restroom? But it's too late,
But there you go. So, I mean, these these are
all things, you know, feces, um, whatever else is hiding
away in that public restroom that pretend potential disease and illness. Right,
those are the things that we look at we have
such a strong reaction to. And even in the animal world,
I mean anyone who's had a pet. I mean, granted,
(16:00):
if you have a dog, it does seem at times
like the like a dog is disgusted by nothing. But
but even even dogs occasionally encounter something where they're like
they're visibly not wanting any of it. They may not
actually smirk their face up, but they will move away
from it. They will kind of see it in their ears, right, right,
And uh, you know, certainly in my cat, I've seen
(16:20):
him do that, back off on things. Um especially like
if it's chemical too. He seems to have a problem
with that, which is pretty good. All right, Well, let's
take a quick break and when we come back, we
will get into uh, alright, we're back obsessive compulsion disorder. Right,
(16:42):
how does that time with a whole disgust scenario. Okay, Well,
just so everybody knows, this is something that affects about
three point three million people between the ages of eighteen
and fifty four in the United States alone. And the
classic example this off and turned around. They like somebody
who compulsively washed their hands, like their hands cannot I
mean they're basically lading with Beth because their hands never
feel completely clean exactly. So um. In the context of disgust,
(17:06):
researchers were interested to see how people with how CD
dealt with things that we're disgusting for those people, and
in a study by the University of Florida's Evelyn F.
And William L. McKnight Brain Institute, researchers compared the reactions
of eight people with contamination preoccupation O c D. Okay,
so a lot of handwashing with a group of healthy
(17:28):
adults to a set of thirty pictures that had been
rated in terms of emotional impact. So um, the pictures
that we're talking about had a series of threatening, disgusting,
our neutral images like snakes bearing their fangs, Carrie uh,
flies on pumpkin pie. Yeah, that's what you just swatted away. Okay,
(17:51):
See we have different disgustometers, right, I didn't do not
like flies landing on my food. I figured, like, you know,
it's kind of one of those things you dropped the
food and or three second roll the same thing with
a fly. I mean, I'm gonna probably still need it, okay, um,
all right, And the other picture they had was a
picture of a sunset lovely right uh, And then they
had Mr I skiing scans of their brains and researchers
(18:13):
found that pictures that induced fear discussed prompted reactions in
different parts of the brain and both groups of participants,
But the level of stimulation in certain areas of the
brain prompted by the disgusting images was greater with people
with O C D are greater for people with O
C D UM and this is really interesting too. The
areas of the brain most affected by these images included
(18:34):
those that process unpleasant taste and smells. So the difference
suggests that obsessive people driven to behaviors like constant handwashing
may be motivated by their extreme sensitivity to discuss, and not,
as commonly thought, by their fear of some sort of
awful outcome. Um, if they were to stop washing their hands. Okay,
(18:56):
So it's not just it's not like a conscious thing
like I have to wash my hands or I'm going
to catch the leg. It's it's it's tied up on
a much more primal level, right, yeah, exactly. I mean
that and I found that absolutely um fascinating because you
think about O c D and you think about hand washing,
and you think about it as some sort of crazy
prevention method, but in fact, it is that they're they're
(19:16):
having this reaction that's so heartfelt that you know, they're
overreacting to the stimuli in front of them, right, which
is why I mean, it's like you're not going to
talk somebody out of O c D. You're not gonna
be able to reason, and not because it's not coming
from a seed of reason. Uh, you know, you're not
gonna be able to say, like, well, logically you're washing
your hands too much and you're actually doing more damage
to your skin. Blah blah blah. It's not gonna well,
(19:37):
especially if you're Amingdala two is having such an overreaction.
I mean, this is these are things that are going
on undercover that you don't even know. So it's not
like you could I mean, I guess unless you're some
sort of end master, maybe you could step back and
you know, dial down your your brain waves there um,
but most likely you know, this is something that you
can't necessarily control all right now, when one thinks of
(20:01):
like discuss reactions, especially to smell instantly think of pregnant women. Yeah,
because I mean that's uh, I mean that that's just
one of those things. It's like like if anyone who
has who has been pregnant as a pregnant friend, there's
the whole thing about like suddenly like it'll be like
something like garlic. We'll totally set some people off and
they're like they can't even be in the same room
with somebody who just had breadsticks. It's true. Yeah, you
(20:22):
get very sensitive to it very quickly. Did you find
this to do the case? I did. Yeah, not the
entire time, but certain times where I was just like,
oh man, and my husband would be like, what what
are you smelling and be like, I don't know, Like
thirty yards away, someone just had some bob choy with
them with some ginger and curry, and the courage just
really very pungent. I thought, you can get the bob
choy is the culprit because botchoy didn't know smell like anything. Uh,
(20:46):
you know, after it's cooked, that's quite buttery, and it
kind of smells pottery. It does have a butteryodor. But
even things that really weren't offensive, I was just picking
up on them, and sometimes things that weren't offensive became inoffensive. Um.
But this is because what they found is that pregnant
women have elevated levels of progesteron. Yeah. Now, this is
a steroid hormone involved in the female minstrel cycle, pregnancy
(21:09):
and embryogenesis of humans and other species, so that's why
the levels are up obviously during pregnancy, yeah, and particularly
in the first trimester when derailing fetal development is is
UM usually could occur most often during the first trimester,
so that's when UM, a woman's censors would be sort
(21:31):
of ferreting out what might be dangerous for her to consume,
like the idea. An easy example this is of course
the cat box. Like anyone, like everyone knows, like pregnant
ladies don't mess with cat boxes because of the whole
um taxo plasmas. Yeah, um, and of course taxo plasmas.
That's an interesting topic and to itself, which we may
have to get into another time. But but obviously pregnan
(21:55):
lady should have avoid the cat box, so it would
make sense, but with the body would would on some
of the use the logic of well, she shouldn't go
near the cat box. So let's make the cat box
extra stinky just to hinge the bat, you know, just
to just to make sure. Yeah, and didn't you tell
And I know this is definitely something for another time.
It's told me an interesting little fact about taxo plasmosis
that the little critters what they do with the cat's
(22:17):
mind and the urine. Wasn't it something sort of Oh,
there's a lot of fast. I did some research on
it a year or two back for an Animal Planet
tie in, and there's there's all sorts of crazy research
on how it alters the behavior of animals, but also
people like making making rats and mice crave the smell
of cat urine so they'll basically steer the cat, I
(22:39):
mean steer the mouse towards the belly of a cat
so it can can complete its life cycle and can
potentially generate or stir up risk taking behavior even in
human males. It's fast, So I mean, I just that
brings me back to the podcast that we did about
Guts Gut Floor and how a lot of our behavior
is dependent on the materia that we have in there.
(23:01):
But but it's an example just in the whole idea
of like catpe. There's an example of on one hand,
the body making a tinkering with our disgust reactions to
steer one away from the cat urine. And then on
the other level, you have a parasite hijacking rats natural
repulsion by that smell and making it move towards it
(23:21):
because the parasite needs the animal to be eaten by
a cat. It's just amazing that it could that smell
could just you know, walked off and say, come to me,
consume me rat. But let's talk a little bit more
about disgust from a cultural perspective. Yes, so obviously humans
have a way of taking things that are sort of natural,
(23:44):
you know, that are just a natural process of our bodies.
We we add a couple of layers of reasoning and
faulty reasoning and cultural norms on top of that, and
things quickly get out of control. So we end up
attaching disgust to things that aren't really discussed, um, I mean,
ends up getting tied up in our politics, even certainly
(24:04):
in our moral views of the world. Yeah, this is
really interesting. Curtis, the disgust bologist, was talking about a
survey that she did in different countries to find out
what people found disgusting in those countries, and she uncovered
some interesting cultural pec peculiarities. For example, food cooked by
(24:24):
a menstruating woman was a frequent cause of disgust in
India against the pathetic magic here, right, Like, Okay, I'm
assuming that it was assumed that if they ate this
food that was cooked by a menstruating woman, that maybe
they would their masculinity would be downgraded. I'm not sure,
or there's maybe just such disgust in that culture with
(24:45):
that particular um part of the body. I say not
being in that culture, right, I mean because on one level, yes,
you would not want someone who is physically ill cooking
your food for for obvious reasons. So if you if
end up creating the stallacy that the menstruating woman is unclean,
and then and then then it makes a twisted kind
(25:06):
of sense that you would not want them cooking for you.
But again, a twisted kind of sense that emerges from
our our our human complication of all. Yeah yeah, yeah,
But it's funny because even if someone went to use
the bathroom and then cooked your food, right, You're still
there's still this idea that you could bring some sort
of contaminant from that atmosphere, So you know what I'm saying, Like,
(25:29):
it's I could see how maybe some of this is
this idea that menstreating women are unclean, but so are
people who just used the bathroom. Yeah, with the same
logic there um. But also Curtis uncovered that apparently the
Dutch thinks that fat people are disgusting too, so it
just kind of differs in each culture. Well, here's something
(25:50):
I do find disgusting that kind of falls into this
weird territory, and that is people talking on the phone
in the bathroom that I think it's just bad form.
And if I will say that if someone is doing that,
I will belch it's loudly as I can, because I
feel like this is some sort of place that a
retreat that I could actually go and use the bathroom
(26:10):
and not feel bad about it because it's a path room.
I mean, I I'm not going to name any names,
but there was an individual, uh it works for this
company that was talking on the phone while very audibly
going number two in the men's room, and it was weird,
like who, like, who are you? Do you either A
are you just sold? Are you a? So confident that
(26:32):
the other person on the other line is not going
to hear any of these sounds or be do you
just not care? Like is it not that important of
a contact. I don't know how I feel about that,
Like do I admire that? Or am I kind of
slightly disgusted? I mean that is that's got a lot
of hutzpah, you know, to to sit down and do that.
And then I mean, how would how do would you
react if you heard somebody? I mean I think David
(26:53):
Sedaris had a bit about this, like talking to his
sister and finding out that she had that she had
been talking while going to the bath room, and that
if anyone what she would do is just pretend that
she was opening a jar. If you had the audibly strange,
she would just be like, oh, just a second, I've
gotta get this jar, um, And that would he be
her way of explaining away from it. But but then
then it also reminds me to keep the comedy uh
(27:14):
train going here. I remember Kids in the Hall skit
where um you came out that like there was a
you know, all male board meeting and they're going over
some uh some sort of product reviews or something. And
they're reading one of these, uh these reviews, and then
one of the one of the individual's notices the like
a weird smile on the guy who wrote its face,
and he realizes, oh, did you write this naked? And
(27:35):
then everyone just feels kind of dirty for it, which
I think is you know, it's a it's a ridiculous
extreme comedy example, but it it does illustrate a lot
of the complexity of our repulsion uh two things, you know,
because the idea that somebody wrote something naked that's so
far removed from anything that could potentially I mean, it's
it's not it doesn't tie into the mating discussed, the
(27:56):
the moral discussed really well, and certainly not the disease discussed.
But you could see, like it makes it it makes
enough sense where you could imagine somebody finding it repulsive. Well,
I mean, certainly there are some Victorian ideas about nudity,
right that could you know, make someone think about it
would be repulsive by nudity. I mean, certainly Freud had
(28:16):
ideas about sex and the repulsion behind it. Um And
you know, again there's this idea of illness and disease
that could be transmitted through sex, so sympathetic magic right,
your naked all of a sudden you write something and
and and that's going to transfer, uh the clap. I
(28:37):
will say that in the last year, How Stuff Works
has relaxed its teleworking program somewhere, so you have more
people working from home, more people writing from home, and
invariably more people writing naked. So uh, they're they're they're
probably more articles and How Stuff Works than ever before
written by naked people. And it's uh it Fortunately, like
(28:59):
I said, now that will actually come. I'm just thinking
about everybody on their smartphones right now who are looking
up related articles and now feeling maybe a little bit dirty. Yeah,
I wonder how many of our listeners are naked right now.
You don't have to tell you, but but I mean
some of them are going to sleep. Some people sleep naked.
It's just how good it's true they do. Um Okay,
so so yeah, we kind of got off fisodic there.
(29:22):
It is cultural though, um. And although some people say
that we have this encoded hardwired in us right to
ferret out disgusted and it's to our advantage to do so.
But Paul Rosen, he's a psychologist, um, who's at the
University of Pennsylvania, and he's considered a pioneer of modern
disgusted research. Carried out his own survey on things people
(29:44):
found disgusting and discovered that causes of death rated the
highest amongst his North American subjects. Really, like, even things
like a sword would be disgusting because the sword is
like the least disgusting thing. Yeah, well, I mean it
can be. I mean, could have little bits of brain
hanging off of it. Well, even that's more awesome than disgusting. Yeah,
(30:05):
I agree, But I think he means that they're probably
instances of disgust that could lead to death, right as
opposed to just being like, you know, stepping back and
being for a moment out of joint about it. And
he says that anything that reminds us we are animals
elicits disgusted discussed functions like a defense mechanism to keep
human animal nous out of awareness. Okay, so things like
(30:29):
versus the cloak about that we know and love. Yes, Like,
the thing that makes that art installation brilliant is that
it does kind of force you to think about your
own biological functions and what that means. Yeah, and just
to refresh everybody's memory. This is the clerk about that. Um,
I can't remember them, yeah maybe yeah, something along this line. Okay,
(30:53):
so this is the artist, and he had the cloak
about and he had during the installation a chef feed
the bot three times a day and then he would add, um,
certain little chemicals that would mimic togestion. It would like
travel through like I think six different tanks and then
come out the other end onto a little conveyor belt
and it would be stone cole pooh. Yeah. So again
(31:15):
you're talking about the disgusted element there. And one of
the articles we read said that the little girls seeing
this contraption and this really sterile environment, started crying. So um,
you know we again, we all have different reactions to this.
All right, well, let's call over our sterile, totally non
disgusting robot to bring us some hygienic mail to Yeah,
(31:37):
we do not feed that robot three times a day
and then give it chemicals to pretend like it's going
to do it's thing. Just for the record, well, here's
when I here's when we heard. I heard from a
listener by the name of Stephen. Stephen writes in and
you know. I'm not even sure which podcast keeps responding
to because it was kind of a tangent I think,
but it says that I was actually in your my
(31:59):
computers right up when I finally cut up with some
older back episodes, I didn't have time to listen to
Thai Red Bull is terrifying. I did a study abroad
in chang Mine two thousand one, and after a couple
of guys got back from Christmas vacation in the Islands,
they introduced us to a truly horrific cocktail in a
picture of ice at one bottle of Makong whiskey, uh,
(32:19):
two cans of coke, and two bottles of Thai Red Bull.
I usually stuck to beer, but it was a recipe
for disaster for my compatriots. Tons of energy and way
too few inhibitions. Not to mention the rumors that Makong
whiskey is not fit for sale in the US for
human consumption due to a number of questionable added its. Huh,
I did not know that I had some Makeong whiskey
(32:41):
when you did. If you're not drinking beer in Thailand
like the other big drink, it's like a coke, Uh.
Like a like a whiskey and coke kind of a thing. Uh,
and like some of the like I remember reading, um,
like in some bars, you you go to the bar
with your whiskey bottle and they serve you coke and
ice and a little Seltzer water in it, and but
you could use your own whiskey. I guess there's like
(33:01):
a quorking. I can't remember the detail on that. Um.
And then sometimes if you don't drink at all, they
will keep it for you and you come back that
they'll put your name on you come back and you
get it the next night. So so it's like, I'm
not a beer drinker, and that's like it was a
real tie drink. So I was like, I should probably
have that one over there. I didn't know that it
might have had questionable added it is that could be
doing who knows what. Anyway, Stephen continues, you can occasionally
(33:23):
find those little glass bottles of rocket fuel in Southeast
Asian grocery stores. I've had the the red Bull cans
in China, and I can honestly say I'm not sure
which is worse. Um, there's enough caffeine to completely shut
off a migraine. But I wouldn't be surprised if it
also causes heart problems. Anyway, great job, always always on
the podcast, and I think, um, I should be all
(33:44):
caught up after this very slow kay at work. So
all right, yeah, I believe I put out a call
like as anyone else had an experience with tie red bull,
because when I had one in Thailand, it was it
was like crazy stimulated. We've heard from a few people
in the um. Consensus seems to be that it's diabolical.
And then we have another quick one here. This is
(34:07):
from a listener by the name of Stevie. Stevie right,
Tennis says, Hey, guys, it just I was just listening
to your neo evolution podcast where the INU made reference
to the nine nine nine Candles podcast, and it got
me thinking, if we did genetically mutate ourselves or have
the ability to replace parts over the years so we
could live this long, do you think women would have
the reproductive capability so last longer than fifty years until
(34:30):
they reached menopads. Just a thought on all of this.
I mean, if we replaced our reproductive organs over the years,
not for those eggs would end up being our own,
maybe a genetically engineered version. But how would this affect
the offspring we have with them in the future. I
thought this was something good to chew on. Keep on
casting your pods have the show cool. Yeah, that's an
interesting proposition, and certainly I would think that on the
(34:53):
horizon would be something like a uterine replicator. Yeah. I mean,
it's like, uh from the a pretty gray, the bearded one,
the beard one, like the point out, it's like a car,
the human body of all these parts they wear down,
either due to use or abuse, and the idea is
to better maintain the vehicle, which at times might need
(35:14):
replacing thoughts, right, And it also may mean that procreation
gets moved to the lab in some instances. So, um,
that's wed for a thought for another podcast, I believe. Yeah.
In fact, maybe when we're gonna record next we kind
of touch on it, I think, and the one next
Um well, hey, anyway, Stevie, thanks for the thoughts. I
(35:34):
love it when people take topics we bring up in
one podcast and combine them with another and start mixing
it together. I mean, that's what the whole podcast is
really about about, you know, stirring up the old mind.
Juices and h seeing what pops at the surface, taking
them in your head because otherwise the juices we'll keep
(35:54):
express them, express them through the mighty pen. Yeah, okay, board.
So hey, if you want to share something with us,
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and uh, you know, we have a wall. We put
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(36:17):
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(36:39):
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
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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 Douglas. What
disgust you do? What? What? What do you regularly encounter
in the world around you that SUTs off the disgust
center of your brain. I was thinking about this, and
(00:25):
for me, it's um. I mean, I do have some
visual disgust, Like, for instance, if I watch Clockwork Orange
and they see the scene where they're peeling back his
eyes and they've got the little hooks right on his
the lids of his eyes, that just disgust me. It
makes my stomach turn. Um somehow, something about eyes really
(00:46):
and and poking at eyes disgusting to me. But more
than anything, I think smells, because it could be just
something as you know, normal, as hey, there's some stinky
garbage or cigarette butts that kind of makes me real
coil yourself. Well, I mean, certainly a bad odor will
get to me, but I guess things that seem like
(01:07):
unhygienic things often give me the all over. It's like
if I'm if there's somebody on on on the train
and they're coughing without covering their mouth. Or the time
I saw the chicken lady on the train. Have I
mentioned this before? I do believe I've heard of it.
And she was eating an entire rope. Well, she had
a rotisserie chicken that had been that she had been
(01:28):
eating on and it was down to just like the
little sort of gray slivers, and she was picking the
meat off of it on the train, and then she
would touch the pole on the train, and then she
would go back to eating her chicken, which just totally
freaking me out. I basically had to had to switch
cars at that point, you know, things things of that
nature where I'm like, this is kind of gross, and
that part of my brain is dis wanting me to
(01:48):
flee for for fear of all the diseases rolling off
the situation right right, It's like you're having this this
really powerful feeling for a reason, right. Your body, your mind,
everything is telling you like back away right now, um,
And there's a reason for this, and we're going to
talk about that. Um. I asked Jonathan Strickland of Tech
Stuff what disgusted him, and he gave me a very
(02:10):
specific answer that it was maggots emerging from carcasses, because
you might mistake the movement under the skin for something
else than they emerge, and uh, chaos and sues. Ah, well,
there's a there's a great example of that in the
book The Wasp Factory. It actually ends up driving a
character in saying that's a Banks book. The guy did
(02:33):
the culture series. Look it up if you want to
be disgusted. But why are we disgusted? Right? Why? Why
does this happen? And where does it occur in nature? Um?
Where does it occur in the brain? Why why is
it such a part of who we are? Well? Joshua
Tiber the universe, the U University excuse me in Amsterdam
proposed three domains of discussed three separate psychological programs. Yeah, okay,
(02:58):
and they all make sense, right, deseese what you talked about, right,
people coughing on the train. Yeah, with putting on their
their chicken juice on the poles. Uh, that just sounded wrong. Mate,
choice and moral judgment. Okay, we'll see, like all three
of those are rolled up in the Chicken Lady because
because I'm like, that's gross and potentially going to strepad
a disease. I really don't want to mate with you.
(03:20):
And uh, morally I think it's also yeah, morally, it's
against the rules to eat on the train. What the
heck are you doing? Um? Yeah, yeah, it's a little
bit reprehensible to sit there and basically, you know, essentially
like lick your hands and the chicken and then just
put it all over everything for other people who come
upon and transfer to themselves. Yeah. Though, if you touch
(03:41):
one of those poles with your bare skin, I mean
you're really asking for it. You are always looking arm yeah,
or wearing or just pull your sleep down, yeah, or
just or just fall. Better to fall on the floor
than to touch that pole. Yeah, roll around on that
floor is probably a lot that are Um. Apparently there
is a look of disgust that is universal. So when
(04:01):
we feel disgusted, this look crosses over our faces. Um,
and what it is and this is according to Paul
Ekman of the University of California at San Francisco, the
look is screwing up of our noses and pulling down
at the corners of our mouths. You're doing it right now, Yeah,
you look a little disgusted. And every culture all over
the world, this is the look of disgusting. Yeah look, yeah,
(04:25):
so I mean you know you're in another country you're
disgusted by something. Just keep that in mind that if
you happen to be over at someone's home in another
country and they're cooking you something and it's maybe not
something that you would try at your own home, trying
not to screw your nose, because there's something universal. It's
not like go in this country. It thumbs up is
good in this country. It's fighting word, you know, or
(04:46):
like or turn you know, the whole thing. Like if
you turn your glass upside down in Australia, it means
you're you're challenging everyone in the bar to a fight.
But I can't back that at That's one thing I've
heard our Australian listeners will sort of thought on that up. Yeah.
Or the soles of your shoes in Egypt, right that
I think I believe that's I put down, or or
(05:06):
like in Thailand, like setting so that your shoes pointing
at somebody, that's that's bad, you know, But here nobody cares.
Now they don't point your shoes all you want. Uh.
But Charles Darwin actually tackled this subject before and the
paper the expression of the emotions in man and animals,
and he described the face of disgust as if we're
(05:28):
expelling some horrible tasting substance from the mouth. So there
has been, you know, historical interest in disgust, but as
of late it's actually getting some some legs, as you
would say, in terms of being studied in earnest. Dr
Valerie Curtis of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine is a disgust bologist in fact, and she says,
(05:50):
disgust is in our everyday life. It determines our hygiene behaviors.
It determines how close we get to people, determines who
were going to kiss, who we're going to meet with,
who we're going to sit next to. It determines the
people that we shunned, and that is something that we
do a lot of. Yeah, and you look at the
list of things that are typically associated with the disgust
um and certainly it's one of the ones we already
mentioned are on there. I mean, you know, the basically
(06:11):
bodily secretion issues, feces, vomit, sweats, bit blood plus sexual fluids,
body parts, wounds, corpses, tonail, clippings, decaying food, certain living
creatures like the maggots, like lice, like worms, rats, some people,
dogs and cats, which to each their own. And then uh,
and then individuals who are ill the diseased right again,
(06:32):
then there's that visual of that person is someone I
need to back away from. Um. But yeah, and the
body parts uh universals list that you're talking about, toneail
clippings came up. Yeah, and I thought that was really
interesting because I thought I feel the same way. And no, Um,
I always attributed it to being some sort of weird
idea that I had that someone might take my tonail
clippings and that's just spell against me exactly. I mean,
(06:53):
that's the old magic of be careful with your hair.
Stuff into the side of you. Don't don't let anybody
get all of your brush or they could keeps cast
magical spells against you. Right. Yeah, there's irrational fears that
we have. Yeah, and it's actually interesting. You know, in
the past we've discussed sympathetic magic and our attitudes towards
discussed or somewhat wrapped up in sympathetic magic, like the
you know, the idea that say, something that has come
(07:16):
into contact with something gross is therefore gross, which is
a which, as a basic physical rule, tends to apply.
You know, if the fork has been in the toilet,
you're not going to eat with the fork, even if
you clean it. Sometimes, you know, to have this association
of the fork of the toilet trying to spear something right,
(07:37):
But then are you know, humans have the ability to
really get out and take things and extrapolate them to
ridiculous levels. So you end up with a situation where
you I mean, that's where we end up with things
like the idea that certain individuals are n'touchable because they
have a particular job in society that that puts them
in contact with foul things or foul ideas even you
(07:59):
know it, it ends up becoming a part of this
sympathetic magic and the idea that something can be not
only befouled but besmirched, you know. Yeah, and we'll talk
about that a little bit more too later about the
cultural aspect of it and what you're talking about um
in sympathetic magic, because that's really it's such an interesting
psychological component to this. Yeah, but back to the physiological
(08:21):
I found an interesting um uh description of this in
the book Clean A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity
by Virginia Smith, which I think I've mentioned for it
is just a great book on the history of of
hygiene and how hygiene ends up becoming interwoven with these
ideas of purity. But she refers to the nervous reflex
(08:41):
of disgust and repulsion as a physiological safety net, which
I think that you know, ties in nicely with the
with the with the disease and uh uh and and
mating aspect of this trifecta of repulsion. Okay, all right,
I can see that. All right. So diving into the brain,
where is this tech in place? When I when I
see the chicken lady on the on the train, like, like,
(09:04):
what's lighting up? If someone would strapped me into you know,
an fm R I or something. Yeah, if we could
see a scan your brain, we would see a lot
of activity in insula and the amygdala as well as
other especially this frontal insula. It's an area the brain
that in addition to the deep seated discuss you have,
you also have things such as addiction is sometimes tied
up there as well. So it's not it's not like
(09:25):
just the repulsion center of the brain. Um, there have
been studies that have shown that people would damage to
this portion of the brain were actually able to give
up cigarettes instantly. So so there's a lot going on there.
But one of the things that is it is definitely
going on there is repulsion. Yeah, and mygdala, of course
is processing emotions. That that makes sense that you're seeing
(09:49):
the chicken lady on Marta the train system and uh,
you're you're starting to form all of those opinions and
having a very big gut reaction to it. It's also
the like if you were to receive a centual touch
from one significant other that also ends up resonating in
the insula. So there's a lot of physical stimuli and
(10:09):
central simuli in the world around you. You wind up
figuring out what you're supposed to do with it. Yeah,
and it's interesting that you actually just brought up um,
someone that you know um touching you because in a
lot of these studies, and this is going to sound
like a no dumb moment, but of course we find
the people that we know less disgusting than the people
that we don't know. And a lot of that is
because you know, there's a familiarity there, even if that
(10:31):
person is truly disgusting. Um, but there's less and opportunity
to objectify that person, and maybe on some level you're like, okay,
well they're not maybe the cleanest of people, but there
are no threat to me. I know this, I know
my immune system knows that this no threat. Well here's
the This one actually came up among some friends. Where
do you stand on using a spouse's toothbrush? Um, okay, Well,
(10:55):
in a situation where it's the only choice, then I'm
fine with it. But when I've accidentally done it, or
my daughter grabbed my toothbrush actually this morning, and I
was like no, no, which was kind of ridiculous because um, certainly,
you know, I eat some of her sandwiches, she eat
some of mine, and we are all exchanging sandwiches sandwiches
and that makes you sound a little like birds, but
(11:16):
yeah we are. We have a little giant nest um.
But yeah, and you know kissing and everything, so yeah,
all the germs are being passed between one another. Well,
I found just in a few people have talked like
they tend to range. There's some people that are like, yeah,
like we're you know, you're on a trip and you
only have one toothbrush in the bag, It's no big deal.
And then other people were like, you know, absolutely not
(11:37):
one person gets to brush their teeth on that trip. Well,
it's kind of like my germs, just my germs, Okay,
no one else's germs. Um, which is just silly and funny. Um.
I guess what we just feel really like we've got
quite a connection with all of the bacteria on our body,
which we've talked about. It's like, you know, there's tenfold
of foreign bacteria to our to our own cells. So okay,
(12:01):
I guess we start to feel a little bit fuzzy
and lovy for our own bacteria. Um. But anyway, let's
talk about discussed from an evolutionary standpoint. Yeah, like, what
sense does it make, um, evolving? I mean, obviously, the
big pick I'm here is to is avoiding disease. For
for an organism to be successful and doesn't need it
(12:22):
needs to not get taken down by by predators, but
it also has to avoid the ailments that will weaken
it either unto death or into the hands of these predators. Right, So,
I mean, you know, it's makes sense that we would
have these sort of uh signals for us to visual accues,
(12:43):
smell cues that would make us stop in our tracks
and reassess or reevaluate, because this is how we have
been so successful as a species, right, this ability to
step back and evaluate and say this might be something
that would be harmful to me. Right. We talked about
some of this in the Science of Stink, where we're
we're talking about how like a like you, you get
hit with a bad smell, and the bad smell will
(13:06):
hit you square in the face, and it's your brain's
way of saying something is wrong here. This is potentially
poisonous or disease written in some way, shape or form.
So you need to at least think about it before
you touch it. You have not just completely avoid it entirely. Yeah.
In fact, the New York Times has an article called
(13:27):
the ick Factor, and in it they talk about how
smell is causes such a powerful response in the brain
that the U. S. Army has been trying to develop
a stink bomb with an odor foul enough to be
used for riot control, and that police are very interested.
And so it makes sense. I mean, that's the kind
of reaction you would have, right, that it could disperse
crowds because if something that your body is yelling, this
(13:48):
is bad for me, right without necessarily the more adverse
reactions ones and one encounters with like tear gas and
the like rubber bullets, and yeah, and I was actually
thinking about this too. It's just in terms of my
own personal experiences, uh, with getting ill. And this doesn't
happen every single time, but it's more likely than not
(14:10):
that a couple of days before I get ill, I
will have a dream actually, and in the dream, I
have to use the bathroom. But the only bathroom that's
available to me is one that's a public restroom. And
as soon as I walk in it, I realized that
is the most disgusting public restroom I've ever been in.
It's feces encrusted everywhere, like every you could not touch
(14:32):
something that's clean if you tried. And in the dream,
I always looked down and I'm barefoot, and there's a
stream of urine and flam and everything that you could
possibly Yeah, it's the Seriously, if you've ever seen Trainspotting,
it makes that that bathroom and Trainspotting look really spick
and span um. But this is and I always have
this stream, and I always like God, I got oh,
(14:53):
and I have had it so much that it's obvious
to me now that I'm about to get sick and
it's my body trying to tell me something. But it
wasn't until we were doing this research that I realized
that just what a big signal my mind and body
were trying to transmit to me. Wow. Have you tried
hitting that scenario with any lucid dreaming ever? Well, here's
the thing. I mean, I can lucid dream most of
the time, but it's always happens if you ever decided
(15:17):
like I'm going to clean this bathroom in turn, like
cleaning Superwoman, and you just stiff it all because my
because of what happens is the way to unfold is
that I am I look down in my feet and
are now you know, in the muck, and so I
have no I can't even I can't turn back. It
doesn't matter. I'm exposed as the point of the dream.
So because yeah, because sometimes I thought, oh, really seriously,
(15:38):
can I just go to another restroom? But it's too late,
But there you go. So, I mean, these these are
all things, you know, feces, um, whatever else is hiding
away in that public restroom that pretend potential disease and illness. Right,
those are the things that we look at we have
such a strong reaction to. And even in the animal world,
I mean anyone who's had a pet. I mean, granted,
(16:00):
if you have a dog, it does seem at times
like the like a dog is disgusted by nothing. But
but even even dogs occasionally encounter something where they're like
they're visibly not wanting any of it. They may not
actually smirk their face up, but they will move away
from it. They will kind of see it in their ears, right, right,
And uh, you know, certainly in my cat, I've seen
(16:20):
him do that, back off on things. Um especially like
if it's chemical too. He seems to have a problem
with that, which is pretty good. All right, Well, let's
take a quick break and when we come back, we
will get into uh, alright, we're back obsessive compulsion disorder. Right,
(16:42):
how does that time with a whole disgust scenario. Okay, Well,
just so everybody knows, this is something that affects about
three point three million people between the ages of eighteen
and fifty four in the United States alone. And the
classic example this off and turned around. They like somebody
who compulsively washed their hands, like their hands cannot I
mean they're basically lading with Beth because their hands never
feel completely clean exactly. So um. In the context of disgust,
(17:06):
researchers were interested to see how people with how CD
dealt with things that we're disgusting for those people, and
in a study by the University of Florida's Evelyn F.
And William L. McKnight Brain Institute, researchers compared the reactions
of eight people with contamination preoccupation O c D. Okay,
so a lot of handwashing with a group of healthy
(17:28):
adults to a set of thirty pictures that had been
rated in terms of emotional impact. So um, the pictures
that we're talking about had a series of threatening, disgusting,
our neutral images like snakes bearing their fangs, Carrie uh,
flies on pumpkin pie. Yeah, that's what you just swatted away. Okay,
(17:51):
See we have different disgustometers, right, I didn't do not
like flies landing on my food. I figured, like, you know,
it's kind of one of those things you dropped the
food and or three second roll the same thing with
a fly. I mean, I'm gonna probably still need it, okay, um,
all right, And the other picture they had was a
picture of a sunset lovely right uh, And then they
had Mr I skiing scans of their brains and researchers
(18:13):
found that pictures that induced fear discussed prompted reactions in
different parts of the brain and both groups of participants,
But the level of stimulation in certain areas of the
brain prompted by the disgusting images was greater with people
with O C D are greater for people with O
C D UM and this is really interesting too. The
areas of the brain most affected by these images included
(18:34):
those that process unpleasant taste and smells. So the difference
suggests that obsessive people driven to behaviors like constant handwashing
may be motivated by their extreme sensitivity to discuss, and not,
as commonly thought, by their fear of some sort of
awful outcome. Um, if they were to stop washing their hands. Okay,
(18:56):
So it's not just it's not like a conscious thing
like I have to wash my hands or I'm going
to catch the leg. It's it's it's tied up on
a much more primal level, right, yeah, exactly. I mean
that and I found that absolutely um fascinating because you
think about O c D and you think about hand washing,
and you think about it as some sort of crazy
prevention method, but in fact, it is that they're they're
(19:16):
having this reaction that's so heartfelt that you know, they're
overreacting to the stimuli in front of them, right, which
is why I mean, it's like you're not going to
talk somebody out of O c D. You're not gonna
be able to reason, and not because it's not coming
from a seed of reason. Uh, you know, you're not
gonna be able to say, like, well, logically you're washing
your hands too much and you're actually doing more damage
to your skin. Blah blah blah. It's not gonna well,
(19:37):
especially if you're Amingdala two is having such an overreaction.
I mean, this is these are things that are going
on undercover that you don't even know. So it's not
like you could I mean, I guess unless you're some
sort of end master, maybe you could step back and
you know, dial down your your brain waves there um,
but most likely you know, this is something that you
can't necessarily control all right now, when one thinks of
(20:01):
like discuss reactions, especially to smell instantly think of pregnant women. Yeah,
because I mean that's uh, I mean that that's just
one of those things. It's like like if anyone who
has who has been pregnant as a pregnant friend, there's
the whole thing about like suddenly like it'll be like
something like garlic. We'll totally set some people off and
they're like they can't even be in the same room
with somebody who just had breadsticks. It's true. Yeah, you
(20:22):
get very sensitive to it very quickly. Did you find
this to do the case? I did. Yeah, not the
entire time, but certain times where I was just like,
oh man, and my husband would be like, what what
are you smelling and be like, I don't know, Like
thirty yards away, someone just had some bob choy with
them with some ginger and curry, and the courage just
really very pungent. I thought, you can get the bob
choy is the culprit because botchoy didn't know smell like anything. Uh,
(20:46):
you know, after it's cooked, that's quite buttery, and it
kind of smells pottery. It does have a butteryodor. But
even things that really weren't offensive, I was just picking
up on them, and sometimes things that weren't offensive became inoffensive. Um.
But this is because what they found is that pregnant
women have elevated levels of progesteron. Yeah. Now, this is
a steroid hormone involved in the female minstrel cycle, pregnancy
(21:09):
and embryogenesis of humans and other species, so that's why
the levels are up obviously during pregnancy, yeah, and particularly
in the first trimester when derailing fetal development is is
UM usually could occur most often during the first trimester,
so that's when UM, a woman's censors would be sort
(21:31):
of ferreting out what might be dangerous for her to consume,
like the idea. An easy example this is of course
the cat box. Like anyone, like everyone knows, like pregnant
ladies don't mess with cat boxes because of the whole
um taxo plasmas. Yeah, um, and of course taxo plasmas.
That's an interesting topic and to itself, which we may
have to get into another time. But but obviously pregnan
(21:55):
lady should have avoid the cat box, so it would
make sense, but with the body would would on some
of the use the logic of well, she shouldn't go
near the cat box. So let's make the cat box
extra stinky just to hinge the bat, you know, just
to just to make sure. Yeah, and didn't you tell
And I know this is definitely something for another time.
It's told me an interesting little fact about taxo plasmosis
that the little critters what they do with the cat's
(22:17):
mind and the urine. Wasn't it something sort of Oh,
there's a lot of fast. I did some research on
it a year or two back for an Animal Planet
tie in, and there's there's all sorts of crazy research
on how it alters the behavior of animals, but also
people like making making rats and mice crave the smell
of cat urine so they'll basically steer the cat, I
(22:39):
mean steer the mouse towards the belly of a cat
so it can can complete its life cycle and can
potentially generate or stir up risk taking behavior even in
human males. It's fast, So I mean, I just that
brings me back to the podcast that we did about
Guts Gut Floor and how a lot of our behavior
is dependent on the materia that we have in there.
(23:01):
But but it's an example just in the whole idea
of like catpe. There's an example of on one hand,
the body making a tinkering with our disgust reactions to
steer one away from the cat urine. And then on
the other level, you have a parasite hijacking rats natural
repulsion by that smell and making it move towards it
(23:21):
because the parasite needs the animal to be eaten by
a cat. It's just amazing that it could that smell
could just you know, walked off and say, come to me,
consume me rat. But let's talk a little bit more
about disgust from a cultural perspective. Yes, so obviously humans
have a way of taking things that are sort of natural,
(23:44):
you know, that are just a natural process of our bodies.
We we add a couple of layers of reasoning and
faulty reasoning and cultural norms on top of that, and
things quickly get out of control. So we end up
attaching disgust to things that aren't really discussed, um, I mean,
ends up getting tied up in our politics, even certainly
(24:04):
in our moral views of the world. Yeah, this is
really interesting. Curtis, the disgust bologist, was talking about a
survey that she did in different countries to find out
what people found disgusting in those countries, and she uncovered
some interesting cultural pec peculiarities. For example, food cooked by
(24:24):
a menstruating woman was a frequent cause of disgust in
India against the pathetic magic here, right, Like, Okay, I'm
assuming that it was assumed that if they ate this
food that was cooked by a menstruating woman, that maybe
they would their masculinity would be downgraded. I'm not sure,
or there's maybe just such disgust in that culture with
(24:45):
that particular um part of the body. I say not
being in that culture, right, I mean because on one level, yes,
you would not want someone who is physically ill cooking
your food for for obvious reasons. So if you if
end up creating the stallacy that the menstruating woman is unclean,
and then and then then it makes a twisted kind
(25:06):
of sense that you would not want them cooking for you.
But again, a twisted kind of sense that emerges from
our our our human complication of all. Yeah yeah, yeah,
But it's funny because even if someone went to use
the bathroom and then cooked your food, right, You're still
there's still this idea that you could bring some sort
of contaminant from that atmosphere, So you know what I'm saying, Like,
(25:29):
it's I could see how maybe some of this is
this idea that menstreating women are unclean, but so are
people who just used the bathroom. Yeah, with the same
logic there um. But also Curtis uncovered that apparently the
Dutch thinks that fat people are disgusting too, so it
just kind of differs in each culture. Well, here's something
(25:50):
I do find disgusting that kind of falls into this
weird territory, and that is people talking on the phone
in the bathroom that I think it's just bad form.
And if I will say that if someone is doing that,
I will belch it's loudly as I can, because I
feel like this is some sort of place that a
retreat that I could actually go and use the bathroom
(26:10):
and not feel bad about it because it's a path room.
I mean, I I'm not going to name any names,
but there was an individual, uh it works for this
company that was talking on the phone while very audibly
going number two in the men's room, and it was weird,
like who, like, who are you? Do you either A
are you just sold? Are you a? So confident that
(26:32):
the other person on the other line is not going
to hear any of these sounds or be do you
just not care? Like is it not that important of
a contact. I don't know how I feel about that,
Like do I admire that? Or am I kind of
slightly disgusted? I mean that is that's got a lot
of hutzpah, you know, to to sit down and do that.
And then I mean, how would how do would you
react if you heard somebody? I mean I think David
(26:53):
Sedaris had a bit about this, like talking to his
sister and finding out that she had that she had
been talking while going to the bath room, and that
if anyone what she would do is just pretend that
she was opening a jar. If you had the audibly strange,
she would just be like, oh, just a second, I've
gotta get this jar, um, And that would he be
her way of explaining away from it. But but then
then it also reminds me to keep the comedy uh
(27:14):
train going here. I remember Kids in the Hall skit
where um you came out that like there was a
you know, all male board meeting and they're going over
some uh some sort of product reviews or something. And
they're reading one of these, uh these reviews, and then
one of the one of the individual's notices the like
a weird smile on the guy who wrote its face,
and he realizes, oh, did you write this naked? And
(27:35):
then everyone just feels kind of dirty for it, which
I think is you know, it's a it's a ridiculous
extreme comedy example, but it it does illustrate a lot
of the complexity of our repulsion uh two things, you know,
because the idea that somebody wrote something naked that's so
far removed from anything that could potentially I mean, it's
it's not it doesn't tie into the mating discussed, the
(27:56):
the moral discussed really well, and certainly not the disease discussed.
But you could see, like it makes it it makes
enough sense where you could imagine somebody finding it repulsive. Well,
I mean, certainly there are some Victorian ideas about nudity,
right that could you know, make someone think about it
would be repulsive by nudity. I mean, certainly Freud had
(28:16):
ideas about sex and the repulsion behind it. Um And
you know, again there's this idea of illness and disease
that could be transmitted through sex, so sympathetic magic right,
your naked all of a sudden you write something and
and and that's going to transfer, uh the clap. I
(28:37):
will say that in the last year, How Stuff Works
has relaxed its teleworking program somewhere, so you have more
people working from home, more people writing from home, and
invariably more people writing naked. So uh, they're they're they're
probably more articles and How Stuff Works than ever before
written by naked people. And it's uh it Fortunately, like
(28:59):
I said, now that will actually come. I'm just thinking
about everybody on their smartphones right now who are looking
up related articles and now feeling maybe a little bit dirty. Yeah,
I wonder how many of our listeners are naked right now.
You don't have to tell you, but but I mean
some of them are going to sleep. Some people sleep naked.
It's just how good it's true they do. Um Okay,
so so yeah, we kind of got off fisodic there.
(29:22):
It is cultural though, um. And although some people say
that we have this encoded hardwired in us right to
ferret out disgusted and it's to our advantage to do so.
But Paul Rosen, he's a psychologist, um, who's at the
University of Pennsylvania, and he's considered a pioneer of modern
disgusted research. Carried out his own survey on things people
(29:44):
found disgusting and discovered that causes of death rated the
highest amongst his North American subjects. Really, like, even things
like a sword would be disgusting because the sword is
like the least disgusting thing. Yeah, well, I mean it
can be. I mean, could have little bits of brain
hanging off of it. Well, even that's more awesome than disgusting. Yeah,
(30:05):
I agree, But I think he means that they're probably
instances of disgust that could lead to death, right as
opposed to just being like, you know, stepping back and
being for a moment out of joint about it. And
he says that anything that reminds us we are animals
elicits disgusted discussed functions like a defense mechanism to keep
human animal nous out of awareness. Okay, so things like
(30:29):
versus the cloak about that we know and love. Yes, Like,
the thing that makes that art installation brilliant is that
it does kind of force you to think about your
own biological functions and what that means. Yeah, and just
to refresh everybody's memory. This is the clerk about that. Um,
I can't remember them, yeah maybe yeah, something along this line. Okay,
(30:53):
so this is the artist, and he had the cloak
about and he had during the installation a chef feed
the bot three times a day and then he would add, um,
certain little chemicals that would mimic togestion. It would like
travel through like I think six different tanks and then
come out the other end onto a little conveyor belt
and it would be stone cole pooh. Yeah. So again
(31:15):
you're talking about the disgusted element there. And one of
the articles we read said that the little girls seeing
this contraption and this really sterile environment, started crying. So um,
you know we again, we all have different reactions to this.
All right, well, let's call over our sterile, totally non
disgusting robot to bring us some hygienic mail to Yeah,
(31:37):
we do not feed that robot three times a day
and then give it chemicals to pretend like it's going
to do it's thing. Just for the record, well, here's
when I here's when we heard. I heard from a
listener by the name of Stephen. Stephen writes in and
you know. I'm not even sure which podcast keeps responding
to because it was kind of a tangent I think,
but it says that I was actually in your my
(31:59):
computers right up when I finally cut up with some
older back episodes, I didn't have time to listen to
Thai Red Bull is terrifying. I did a study abroad
in chang Mine two thousand one, and after a couple
of guys got back from Christmas vacation in the Islands,
they introduced us to a truly horrific cocktail in a
picture of ice at one bottle of Makong whiskey, uh,
(32:19):
two cans of coke, and two bottles of Thai Red Bull.
I usually stuck to beer, but it was a recipe
for disaster for my compatriots. Tons of energy and way
too few inhibitions. Not to mention the rumors that Makong
whiskey is not fit for sale in the US for
human consumption due to a number of questionable added its. Huh,
I did not know that I had some Makeong whiskey
(32:41):
when you did. If you're not drinking beer in Thailand
like the other big drink, it's like a coke, Uh.
Like a like a whiskey and coke kind of a thing. Uh,
and like some of the like I remember reading, um,
like in some bars, you you go to the bar
with your whiskey bottle and they serve you coke and
ice and a little Seltzer water in it, and but
you could use your own whiskey. I guess there's like
(33:01):
a quorking. I can't remember the detail on that. Um.
And then sometimes if you don't drink at all, they
will keep it for you and you come back that
they'll put your name on you come back and you
get it the next night. So so it's like, I'm
not a beer drinker, and that's like it was a
real tie drink. So I was like, I should probably
have that one over there. I didn't know that it
might have had questionable added it is that could be
doing who knows what. Anyway, Stephen continues, you can occasionally
(33:23):
find those little glass bottles of rocket fuel in Southeast
Asian grocery stores. I've had the the red Bull cans
in China, and I can honestly say I'm not sure
which is worse. Um, there's enough caffeine to completely shut
off a migraine. But I wouldn't be surprised if it
also causes heart problems. Anyway, great job, always always on
the podcast, and I think, um, I should be all
(33:44):
caught up after this very slow kay at work. So
all right, yeah, I believe I put out a call
like as anyone else had an experience with tie red bull,
because when I had one in Thailand, it was it
was like crazy stimulated. We've heard from a few people
in the um. Consensus seems to be that it's diabolical.
And then we have another quick one here. This is
(34:07):
from a listener by the name of Stevie. Stevie right,
Tennis says, Hey, guys, it just I was just listening
to your neo evolution podcast where the INU made reference
to the nine nine nine Candles podcast, and it got
me thinking, if we did genetically mutate ourselves or have
the ability to replace parts over the years so we
could live this long, do you think women would have
the reproductive capability so last longer than fifty years until
(34:30):
they reached menopads. Just a thought on all of this.
I mean, if we replaced our reproductive organs over the years,
not for those eggs would end up being our own,
maybe a genetically engineered version. But how would this affect
the offspring we have with them in the future. I
thought this was something good to chew on. Keep on
casting your pods have the show cool. Yeah, that's an
interesting proposition, and certainly I would think that on the
(34:53):
horizon would be something like a uterine replicator. Yeah. I mean,
it's like, uh from the a pretty gray, the bearded one,
the beard one, like the point out, it's like a car,
the human body of all these parts they wear down,
either due to use or abuse, and the idea is
to better maintain the vehicle, which at times might need
(35:14):
replacing thoughts, right, And it also may mean that procreation
gets moved to the lab in some instances. So, um,
that's wed for a thought for another podcast, I believe. Yeah.
In fact, maybe when we're gonna record next we kind
of touch on it, I think, and the one next
Um well, hey, anyway, Stevie, thanks for the thoughts. I
(35:34):
love it when people take topics we bring up in
one podcast and combine them with another and start mixing
it together. I mean, that's what the whole podcast is
really about about, you know, stirring up the old mind.
Juices and h seeing what pops at the surface, taking
them in your head because otherwise the juices we'll keep
(35:54):
express them, express them through the mighty pen. Yeah, okay, board.
So hey, if you want to share something with us,
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(36:17):
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So send us a letter let us know the uh
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(36:39):
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