October 13, 2011 • 30 mins
Can a grieving mother summon the strength of 12 Hulk Hogans and lift a full-sized automobile up off the ground to save her son? In this episode, Robert and Julie take on the subject of hysterical strength and discuss the science behind hulking out.
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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. Julie
tell me this. If you ever just holked out something,
we'll provoke you. And if you're just flying to over
like a rage and you're suddenly able to tap previously
inaccessible reserves of strength in order to demolish things. Yeah,
(00:27):
it was so hungry. One time I was angry and
there was his jar of pasta sauce, and I just
and I popped it open like that. Is that what
you're talking about? More or less? You know, Holking out
like tends to of course imply a you've got the
Incredible Hulk Bruce Bruce Banner due to get my shirt
tour and everything. Yeah, Twin Green, did you okay? Was
(00:49):
that after you ate the sauce? This wine? It was
so easy to open it expired? But of course the
incredible Hulk comic character, due to radiation, he gets angry.
He muta into this genormous green muscle man who just
goes on a rampage in destroy right, and he's usually
angry or stressed. I mean, he's he's an agitated state,
(01:11):
right right, And then of course there's Huole Cogan who
also hulks out. Are you familiar with this? Yes I am, Yes,
So you've seen a Whole Cogan match? I have, yeah,
how on the TV and I turned it on once
and I admired his his wonderful mustache and how could
I not sit there and be riveted by his blonde
(01:33):
sheen of hair. Well, the man was a consinate performer,
it's true. But he would do this thing where he
would get beat down at last by the bad guy,
by the enemy, by the heel, and then he starts
hulking out. He's he starts getting up like he's he's
shakes his arms, there's a lot of shaking of the body.
But but what is implied is that he has been
beaten down to the point where the rage is building
(01:56):
and he's hulking out his superhuman strength is kicking. Yeah. Yeah,
And that's what we're talking about, what not Whole Cogan,
of course, but we're talking or like I don't know,
a hundred pound moms who are lifting pound cars off
of their kid who's pinned underneath. Yes, that's the yeah, yeah,
(02:16):
I think we've seen this motif pop up in any
number things where it's the idea that the average person,
you don't have to be Hulk Cogan or Bruce Banner,
but the average person can somehow tap into the strength
and and suddenly someone in human strength to save somebody
or to get out of some sort of um bad situation. Yeah,
(02:37):
And it's it's an intriguing idea because I know we've
talked about this idea before about how we only use
tempercent of our brain, which we know is a myth, right,
but it's sort of similar like, oh, well, we only
use perhaps of our muscle fibers, and that there's a
super human strength available to us. And that's sort of right. Yeah,
I mean, under the right circumstances, this could be a
(03:00):
a possible condition. Now, of course, medical science doesn't actually
recognize something called hysterical strength, which is what we're talking right,
because for I mean, for one thing, how do you
study it? Um? Yeah? Do you you'd be like, all right,
we need um, you know, eighteen moms and their beloved
children to participate in the study. Um. Just warning, fair warning,
(03:20):
we may have to stick your toddler under a buick
you know, fall down on the kid um, you will
sign right here, right, it's not gonna fly. And in
most studies so it's difficult to to to study. But
we do know some I mean, we've know a lot
about how the human body works, so we are able
to to say, yeah, some version of this exists, and
(03:43):
adrenaline is the key player, right, and we again, this
has been observed over and over again, and and you know,
we've got anecdotal evidence of it. I've got a few here.
Two Lawrence Pille, Georgia. Right around the corner. Right around
the corner, Angela Cavallo lifted a Chevrolet and Paula from
her son Tony after it fell off the jacks that
(04:04):
it held it up while he worked underneath the car.
She lifted the car high enough and long enough for
two neighbors to replace the jacks uh and pull Tony
from beneath the car, but she didn't actually hold it
up long enough for them to finish working on it. Yeah,
here's another. In two thousand six Tuson, Arizona, Tim Boyle
watched as a Chevrolet Camaro hit an eighteen year old
by the name of Kyle. The car pinned tile to
(04:26):
the ground. He's still alive right underneath it. So Boyle
runs out to the scene of the accident and lifts
the car up while the driver of the car pull
and pulled the kid to safety. So again a situation
where cars pinning somebody. Somebody sees it happen, runs out,
hulks out, Yeah, you don't have to be a mom.
You can be a concerned citizen, which which I kind
of like because you know, we recently did the podcast
about how people behave in crowds, and so I feel
(04:49):
like this is a nice little panacea too, like, well, okay,
people can be jerks sometimes, but they can also be
um terribly great. And there are some there are also
some phenomenal videos of of multiple people coming to the
ascue of of individuals that are trapped in or under vehicles.
There's one recent one who that was, you know, a
huge success on YouTube. Whar It's like an entire town
coming out to help. So it's pinned um and and
(05:11):
that also was a nice counterweight to the crowd apathy
we were talking about before. UM. But let's talk about
why this could happen. What you know, again, medical science
doesn't necessarily recognize it that we don't we can't really
study it, but we know in theory that it's very
possible and adrenaline has a lot to do with it. Yeah. Basically,
(05:31):
I have one thing you have to do is just
think about, like the last time you were afraid or stressed,
and think about how your body felt, all right, because
generally what we're talking about here is adrenaline's effect on
the body all part of the flight or light situation
where there's some sort of danger, so you need to
be able to run towards it and run away from it,
run away from it, and adrenaline put your body through
(05:52):
a number of changes to facilitate either of those, because
you're gonna want to run fast or you're gonna you're
gonna want to be able to hit heart. Yeah, and
let's talk about the nuts and bolts about this, okay. Um. Basically,
you've got stressors engaging the hypothalamus. There is the region
of the brain that's responsible for maintaining the balance between
stress and relaxation. Right, it's the homeostasis part. Right, keeps
everything nice and calm unless it needs to to hook out. Um.
(06:15):
And that is so when you are hooking out, that
that hypothalamus then says to your adrenal glands, hey, you
need to go ahead and tell the sympathetic nervous system
that you've just hit defcon for you know, and adonlin
and nora adrenaline are then released and they just completely
flood your body. So the heart rate rises, increasing, respiration
(06:37):
dilation with the pupils, digestion slows down, and then the
most important part, it allows your muscles to contract more
than normal. This is if we could, you know, underline
with our voices, this is the most important part that
muscles contracting. Right, Yeah, I think of it. It's kind
of like the government of your nervous system is temporarily
giving increased power to the muscles. It's it's like putting
(06:57):
your body under martial law and saying, all right, armed
forces of the muscles. Normally you don't have this much power.
But but since we're in a pretty dire situation, I'm
temporarily authorizing you the use of additional force, which I
am I'm hoping you will use to run away from
the enemy or leg drop it. Right, We're taking resources
away from digestion and give them to you muscle fibers.
(07:19):
The lucky ducks. Um. So yeah, they adrenal and just
completely acts on the muscles. It allows them to contract more.
And then when the body is in a calm um
allowing them to contract more than if the body is
in a calm or neutral state. And um, it allows
for blood to flow more easily to your muscles and
more oxygen is carried to your muscles. So that results
in a muscle activation at a much higher level. And
(07:41):
you're also converting gluck again uh into glucose, which gives
muscles a sudden burst of energy. And again, this is
what is happening when you're lifting a really heavy object,
or you're running for your life or uh, you're running
to something or if if I hope this is an
up and you're electrocuted. Yeah, now this this is really
(08:02):
mind blowing. Here is an example of how we we
think this works with with the hulking out. You could
in theory hulk out if if a live wire, we're struck,
we're stuck to your body. Or he was struck by lightning,
which explains why whole Cogan when he's walking out does
kind of look like he's being shocked by He does
kind of look like tesla like undergoing the currents. Yes,
(08:24):
I mean, anyone who's ever touched a live electrical connection
on on accident, of course, knows that it's quite possible
to be blown clear across the room. And I cannot
stress how little we want you to try this at home.
Do not touch a live wire just to experience muscle.
And we'll talk about why you would never want to
do that in a moment um because sometimes, I mean,
(08:46):
the best case scenarios that you get blown across the room,
right to survive that. And the reason that you're blown
across the room isn't because the electrical current pushed you.
The force is actually coming from your own muscles. Yeah,
and that's that's just crazy to think about, because we've
seen this is one of those things that like hulking
out just shows up again and again and TV shows,
movies and and it's and it's generally um, you know,
(09:08):
done with like they do the effect by attaching a
wire to somebody's back and jerking them back, and so
it creates this uh, this this idea that that the
blast of the shock or something, you know, it's like
thrown away from an explosion or something. But it's really
a situation where your your limbs just suddenly just spasm
out with this strength, and you it's kind of like
(09:29):
a cat being startled and leaping off its feet step
instead of just going up into the air, you're across
the room and through the coffee table. And think of
it this way too. It's it's the same extreme stress
right like your body is just getting it instantaneously, just
like it would in another instance. But you know, you
just don't normally put the two together. Electrical current and
child trapped under car. It's the same. Your body as
(09:49):
undergoing the same response. And this is from a New
Scientist article. It says the electric current typically flows into
one arm, through the abdomen, and out one or both legs,
which can cause mos to the muscles and the body
to contract at once. The results are unpredictable, but given
the strength of the leg and buck muscles um this
can often send the victims flying across the room with
(10:10):
no voluntary action on their part. Combined with the unexpected
shock of an electrocution, this feels as if you are
flung rather than flinging yourself. Wow. Now imagine that we
could manipulate this, and we took all our nb NBA
players and I had like some sort of electrical device
and planet so that at just the right time when
(10:31):
they're about to go put a layoup. I don't know,
I'll go up, you know, when they're about to score
a basketball goal on the basketball hole. Um they they yeah,
the fish net on the circle. Yeah. So so like
you know, the basketball player will hit a button on
his wrist and then wham, he starts flying through the
(10:52):
air and just massive slam dunk. I'm just saying that
maybe we'll get there with science, yeah, yeah, or we
could harness the power of lightning, yes, and just make
them play into Yeah, so you just able to have
random bursts of incredible strength throughout. Can you imagine Michael
Jordan's like lightning, like just flying through the air and dunking. Yeah.
I mean I'm not a big basketball person, but that
(11:14):
is exciting. Yeah, although I wouldn't want any harm to
come to them. More lightning and super strength in my
team's sports place. Yes, then I'll watch. So. Yeah, being
thrown across the room can save your life, you know,
by breaking the electrical contact that you are holding onto. Right,
So this is actually a good thing. But there are
other cases, particularly where the source of the current is
(11:34):
something that the person is holding. The victims arms and
hand muscles may actually lock onto it. Yeah, and this
is where it gets deadly. They're unable to let go,
and if nobody intervenes, or nothing else intervenes, then they
could die through heart up fibrillation or electrocution. Yeah, this
is where we get the whole idea of life. If
somebody's being shocked, you're supposed to hit them away from
(11:54):
it with a broom handle or something. I've never heard that,
but it's good to know. Yeah, I don't know. I
can't remember the origin of that. Maybe it's a story
from like my family's history, like somebody who's being shocked
and somebody had to hit sixty four. And yeah, sometimes
it's an individual shocked and they don't fly away. They're
stuck there is getting more and more electrocuted, more and
(12:16):
more a power coursing through their body, and the only
way to get them off is to knock them away
with something that is not going to conduct electricity. Yeah,
because again remember that this is a massive skeletal muscle contraction,
and yeah, they're they're not going to be able to
you know, let go of this themselves. So that's good
to know in case I'll always have a broom nearby
in my house. Well that's because of you're a witch. Yeah,
(12:39):
more than that in a future episode. Yeah yeah, I
mean Halloween's coming up. We can talk about that more later.
Um that, I did want to mention that that I'm
sure a lot of people have. You know, everybody actually
has had some sort of um dalliance with adrenaline, right,
I mean, whether it's you know that you picked up
a thirty pound car, or you just felt fearful, you've
(13:00):
something in the middle of the night and you know,
you just your your body is just flooded with energy,
or even something like an EpiPen for people who have allergies,
you know what I'm talking about, or albuter all the inhaler.
It's like you get that feeling like you just run
a marathon. Also, if you ever go to Thailand, a
tie red bull kind of feels like this. Yeah, it's
(13:22):
like it's different than normal. I don't know the exactly people,
because it's like back in the day when Coca Cola
actually contained cocaine, that this red bull, this tie red
bull has some sort of like crystalline. I wouldn't. I
don't know if it actually contains um, you know, anything nefarious,
but it is. It's like sweeter tasting, definitely like blows
(13:44):
you up in terms of energy. And it also comes
in like a little bottle that looks kind of like
a medicine bottle. Wow, this is just getting atter. And
and it's red Bull. Yeah, it's red Bull. It's branded
red Bull, or at least the bottle I I purchased
from a street vendor had red Bull on the side
of it. So now I know what you did. The
our time you're in Thailand. I only had the one,
but ever since I've kind of every now and then
(14:04):
I'll be like, I could order some thy red Bull online.
That's somebody's got to be sold it on eBay. But
if you've ever been if anyone listening to this has
ever been to Thailand and and or lives in Thailand
and uh and has access to Thai red Bull, I'm
not asking you to send it to me, but do
you send us I would be very curious to see
if everybody else has had the same same experience. It
(14:24):
is actually a different, different kind of chemical things and
just out of nowhere, like you know, months later thinking
oh I should really get some of this online. Yeah, okay,
I'm just here amazing because it's possibly I had an
isolated incident where I'm just kind of like, oh wow,
this is an amazing it's all in my head. But anyway,
I'm digressing away from our hulking here. Yeah. Yeah, Actually,
(14:45):
right after this break, we are going to talk more
about adrenaline and what it has to do with cherry
Trees in Washington, d C. This podcast is brought to
you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel.
At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation.
Join us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers
(15:08):
to life's questions. All right, now we're back, and before
we get back, I do want to mention that the
hulking out that is experienced by UM wrestlers like Hulk
Hogan in the United States in in Japanese pro wrestling, Uh,
they have a very similar thing where it's like the
individual summons their fighting spirit and I think it's tied
(15:28):
very much in with like you know, old Bushito code stuff,
but it's a very similar situation. Where the individual has
been beaten down, he's taken damage, and suddenly he's able
to tap into this warrior spirit and fight back. So
I'm just throwing it up, Okay, Yeah, I mean, and
I'm sure that whole Cogan was legitimately hulking out to
right like it wasn't just a show. Well, the warrior
(15:49):
spirit was shining for take it till you make it right.
But speaking of of the Japanese um um, an individual
of Japanese descent actually plays the crucial role in the
isolation of adrenaline. Yeah, Jochici Takamini. Uh, he's a Japanese
chemist who was actually in the United States, and well
I believe he was between Japan and the United States
(16:12):
of the time that he was looking into this. He
actually brought it to the market. As you say, he
isolated adrenaline and this was the first hormone to be
obtained in pure form and called quote the blood pressure
raising principle of the super renal glands. You may know
it as US patent. Yes, and we're talking one made
(16:32):
interested in that. But before then, George Oliver and Edward
Shaeffer had discovered that when the secretions of adrenal plans
were extracted and injected into an experimental animal that could
raise blood pressure, and a lot of people took interest
from that. Uh Takamini actually visited their lab at Johns
Hopkins and he was welcomed there and he was shown
(16:53):
the full scientific cur courtesy of you know how they
did it, um, and then he took that knowledge with
him m back to his own lab and crystallize the
hormone and then filed a patent. He was incredibly savvy,
and he had studied patent law, and some people would
accuse him of sort of taking that technology and and
(17:14):
and um being a bit of a scoundrel. But the
fact of the matter is is that he actually was
taking it to another level and he did have the smarts,
the patent lost smarts. So how's it used? Back in
the day? Physicians carried it in their bags, and it's
said that Gene Tunney, the champion boxer, always kept some
on hand when he went into the ring. Yeah, so
(17:35):
you know, it wasn't just our our current day UH
sports stars trying to bulk themselves up or hold themselves up. Now,
I also know there is there is an adrenaline concoction
that's used when the you know, when when they're doing
the whole cut me thing with the boxer, you know,
and they're they're like touching up their face. There was
something Oh yeah, yeah, I'm thinking Rocky right now, exactly
(17:57):
what you're talking about. One of the things that they
smear on their faces. So like, is uh some is
some sort of topical Yeah, topical thing to cut down
on bleeding. Huh, but yeah, not the kind of makes
that part of their face whole coat. Yeah yeah, but
but I mean it's it's not not the kind of
reaction we're talking about here. It's yeah, yeah, yeah. But
(18:18):
the drug transformed surgery at that time, where it was
usually used to control hemorrhages you just pointed out. Um.
It also found uses in cardiology and the treatment of
asthma and other allergies, and of course it was the
wonder drug touted to help everything, although it could not.
But it was prescribed for conditions like deafness, um in
Addison's disease, which it actually didn't do anything. In the
(18:40):
Nightmare on Elm Street remake, some kids injected to stay
awake so that Freddie doesn't get them. It seems like
that would just go terribly awry. Well I think it.
Well it did. Yeah, that didn't really work out for
everybody because now now you're you're all pumped up on
adrenaline and Freddy's coming after you, so you're like, your
heart's got to be bursting. Yeah, but the thing is
(19:01):
he comes for your in your dreams. So it's like
they're keeping from Yeah, but somehow, I'm gonna guess they
still fell asleep even though they were pumped up with adrenaline. Right,
I haven't seen it, but that's how those kids go. Yeah. Yeah,
it's just that's how the cookie crumbles. Um. So cherry Trees, Yeah,
what does adrenaline have to do with cherry trees? Exactly?
Tack Amine just he did great with this drug, right,
(19:23):
He just got all sorts of riches and jewels from it,
and he used the royalties from it to create diff
like three new companies, and he got very interested in
Japanese American relations, right yeah. So, so as a token
of goodwill from the Japanese people to the United States,
cherry Trees. Yeah. First, Lady Helen Herron Taft was working
(19:45):
to beautify the title basin around the Potomac River in Washington,
d C. And he gave them two thousand cherry trees, so,
which I thought was fascinating because you don't mean, you
know of DC is you know cherry tree blossoms. That's
when the finding things physical features of Washington, d C.
But but there you go. It's all has its ties
(20:06):
back to adrenaline. Huh. Now, now do these trees hulk out?
I don't know. I doubt it. I'm not going to
hazard to guess. Yeah, alright, so we mentioned about before
the hype of aalmus is the region of the brain
that's responsible for maintaining the balance between stress and relaxation,
between pulk Cogan and like the dude, between between being
(20:26):
chill and being out of control. Um and of course
you know, it's it's kind of like the yoga of
the brain. It's all about like maintaining that balance because
in in the the you know, extremes are bad. You
don't want to be chilled out all the time because
you're going to forget to eat or you know, or
something I don't know, You're just gonna you're not gonna
get anything done or and if you're agitated all the time, Um,
(20:48):
you you may die. Well, we talked about this before,
particularly with nightmares, right right, Um, when we talked about
the ocean refugees who I think within like a four
year span of eighteen of them had died in their sleep.
They had sudden death. And the reason for this, we
know are part of part of the reason is that
they're under a great stress at that time they were
(21:10):
they were escaping some just really brutal conditions in their
home country. And uh, and yes, so they're under a
lot of stress, and a lot of stress, like we're saying,
produces adrenaline, and this can have a rather detrimental effect
on your health. That's right. Adrenaline is toxic in large amounts.
It damages the visceral internal organs such as the heart, lungs, liver,
and kidneys. And it's believed that, as you know, as
(21:32):
we talked about, that almost all sudden deaths are caused
by damage to the heart. Um. There's almost no other
organ that would fail so fast as to cause sudden death.
Kidney failure, liver failure, those things don't kill you suddenly, right, Um.
Adrenaline from the nervous system lands on receptors of cardiac
misa sietes okay, and those are the heart muscle cells,
(21:54):
and this causes calcium channels and the membranes of those
cells to open, making the heart muscles contract. And if
it's a massive overwhelming storm of adrenaline, calcium keeps pouring
into the cells and then your muscles just can't relax.
This is why we go into cardiac arrest, right, So
it's really interesting. Neurologist Martin A. Samuel says that it's
(22:15):
not just fear that can cause us. According to him,
any strong positive or negative emotions such as happiness or
sadness could also cause it. And he says there are
people who have died in intercourse or in religious passion.
And there's one case of a golfer who hit a
hole in one turned to his partner and said, I
can die now and then drop dead. I have to
(22:37):
say that seems all dubious to me, but he said
a study in Germany found an increase in sudden cardiac
deaths on the days that the German soccer teams were
playing in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because they're they're
getting the ideas that these individuals are kind of on
the edge anyway through a really exciting soccer game at
him and that's all she wrote. Boom right, So it's
(22:59):
not just us fear sometimes it just you know, I
guess it could be fair. I suppose if you're a
fan and you're you're frightened that your team might not,
you know, pull through, and yeah, if you have. If
there's someone in your life as a sports fan who
has a delicate heart, try and get them to support
teams that that pretty much consistently stuck because because is
gonna be the less likelihood of their team killing them. Yeah,
(23:21):
lower the bar they are for them, do my favor.
But yeah, I mean, prolonged state of stress can lead
to complications, and it doesn't you don't have to be
like a raving sports fan. It can just be that
you have workplace stress, and you have it, uh for
a long period of time. Your body is in constant
go mode and it's misinterpreting what's a threat and what's
not right false threats. As a result, your immune system
(23:43):
suffers and your cortosol levels can shoot up. And as
we know, cortosol levels are really important in regulating our
sleep too. So if your levels are or nuts, at night,
then you're probably not getting the kind of sleep you need.
So it's unfortunately, it's just kind of um, sort of
the vortex fall fall into, right, a sleep vortex or no,
an awakeness vortex. I think an anxiety vortex. I'll go
(24:07):
with that. Yeah, yeah, So it's the moral of the story.
The moral of the story is that adrenaline is a
precious commodity that's really powerful. Uh, and your nervous system
tries to use good judgment about win and how it
is used. That's right. Yeah, And that if you beat
whole Cogan down enough, he is going to hulk out
(24:30):
and probably to thee and don't make Bruce Fanner angry.
I'll go with that. Yeah, you wouldn't like him, he's ancred.
Um nice. But let's let's uh, let's go ahead and
reach into the basket of listener mail. Here a few
here to read. We continue to hear a lot from
(24:51):
listeners about our Misophonia and Pet Peeves podcast. You dealt
with the sounds that drive people crazy, um, other little
perks that annoy We've heard from a listener by the
name of Hunter. Hunter says, I listened to your Mesophonia
podcast and I wanted to tell you this. My misophonia
is the sound of a wooden pencil writing on paper.
(25:12):
I use the mechanical pencils due to this. I'm a
big fan of the show and I would love it
to have one of you great podcasters would email me
back smile, I face. Um, and you did email I did,
You're back? Um? And am I correct? Unless you share
this with Hunter, you you don't like the sound of
a pencil on paper. Oh no, no, actually that Um.
(25:32):
What I was saying to Hunter is that that we've
got a couple of email from people who have a
pencil paper issue. Um, similar like but but interesting really enough,
some people can't stand the sound of the mechanical pencil
because it's the metal hitting the paper. Just to show
as you can't please everybody, yeah yeah, But then we
(25:53):
had another person to who was like, I can't stand
a mechanical so I went to the wooden So it's
really interesting to see that there's there's someone of a
pad and here emerging. I'm still kind of firmed by
the socks though. The socks when you know, the listener
who was irritated by the sound of socks on carpet, right. Yeah, well,
just for the sake of fun. Um socks on hardwood
(26:14):
is the best because you get a running start and
then you put it on the brakes and you can
you can go like can I tell you that I
did at least once a week. Oh that's awesome. It's
a great joy of mine. It's why I look forward
to winter yoga because I can come into the yoga
room with my socks on. You skid right in like
like like Tom Cruise in Brisky Business. Yeah, except with pants,
you know, but pretty good test. Let's see. We also
(26:37):
heard from Jeremy Jeremy Writston, and he was talking about
the first of all the Lewis Black quote that I
alluded to about in our Pet Peeves episode, talking about
the annoyance of hearing like half a conversation. And he's
straightened this out and says that the quote was I
never would have gotten into college if it weren't for
my horse. And then he goes on to say, I
can attest to the winding child. I have a two
(26:58):
point five year old and he's getting into the defiant stage.
We're choosing not to call it the terrible twos, where
he loves to wine. The worst part about it is
knowing that it's not even real. The whinding that I've
encountered fake. I'll catch him off guard at times when
he's distracted by something bright and shiny and he stops,
realizes that he did stop, and goes right back into
winding mode. Fortunately, I have a terrible listening problem, and
(27:20):
I'm able to drown it out with little problems. Keep
up with fun podcast. Yeah, I have to say my
I have a two and a half year old too,
same thing. Yeahs constant winding. Yeah, but she starts laughing
because she I think hicly because she's like ha ha,
well kinda. I don't know what she's doing there, but
but sometimes I think she knows that she's such a
faker that she starts laughing because she's not really pulling
at all. And we have one more email here from Mike.
(27:43):
Mike writes in and says, I just got to finished
listening to your Decision Fatigue podcast, and I have an
interesting story related to this as you that you brought up.
I just got married on Congratulations and was very aware
that the week leading up to my wedding I was
doing a very poor job at work and was for
getting all sorts of things at home. I've been back
to work a week now and I found things are
(28:05):
slowly getting better. Also noted that doing our registry it
was a very stressful time. At some point in this time,
I zoned out and started scanning random things around the store.
And this is of course of its referring to the
fact that they give you a scanner these days and
a lot of these stores, and they're like, here, take
this scan the items that that you would like to
put on your registry. And as we discussed in the podcast,
(28:26):
picking out things through your registry, it's just one decision
after another, and after a while it adds up in
your your brain is just for the day. Yeah, and
so so I love this example because it's like you're
making careful choices early on, and by the end of
the process you're just like scanning random objects just to
be done with it, which is a great example of
really how decision fatigue works. The problem, as we discussed
(28:49):
in that podcast, being that instead of it just being
a situation where your later decisions are just the scanning
of random objects, that you end up dealing with bigger
decisions and more weighty decisions with that kind of apathy, right, Like,
you wouldn't want to make have to make a really
important decision later on in that day, if you had
to register that morning, it would be awful. Whatever choice
(29:13):
you made would be wrong probably. So there you have it.
If you have us some interesting factoids to share with us,
there are multiple ways to get in touch with us,
two of which are Facebook and Twitter, which are two
new social media sites that people are really getting into.
I think I think they're going to take off if
you can find us on both of those as blow
the Mind. That's one word, blows on mind, and uh,
(29:35):
I think there's another way. Oh yeah, if you're feeling
old fashioned, you can always drop us a line at
blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
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. Julie
tell me this. If you ever just holked out something,
we'll provoke you. And if you're just flying to over
like a rage and you're suddenly able to tap previously
inaccessible reserves of strength in order to demolish things. Yeah,
(00:27):
it was so hungry. One time I was angry and
there was his jar of pasta sauce, and I just
and I popped it open like that. Is that what
you're talking about? More or less? You know, Holking out
like tends to of course imply a you've got the
Incredible Hulk Bruce Bruce Banner due to get my shirt
tour and everything. Yeah, Twin Green, did you okay? Was
(00:49):
that after you ate the sauce? This wine? It was
so easy to open it expired? But of course the
incredible Hulk comic character, due to radiation, he gets angry.
He muta into this genormous green muscle man who just
goes on a rampage in destroy right, and he's usually
angry or stressed. I mean, he's he's an agitated state,
(01:11):
right right, And then of course there's Huole Cogan who
also hulks out. Are you familiar with this? Yes I am, Yes,
So you've seen a Whole Cogan match? I have, yeah,
how on the TV and I turned it on once
and I admired his his wonderful mustache and how could
I not sit there and be riveted by his blonde
(01:33):
sheen of hair. Well, the man was a consinate performer,
it's true. But he would do this thing where he
would get beat down at last by the bad guy,
by the enemy, by the heel, and then he starts
hulking out. He's he starts getting up like he's he's
shakes his arms, there's a lot of shaking of the body.
But but what is implied is that he has been
beaten down to the point where the rage is building
(01:56):
and he's hulking out his superhuman strength is kicking. Yeah. Yeah,
And that's what we're talking about, what not Whole Cogan,
of course, but we're talking or like I don't know,
a hundred pound moms who are lifting pound cars off
of their kid who's pinned underneath. Yes, that's the yeah, yeah,
(02:16):
I think we've seen this motif pop up in any
number things where it's the idea that the average person,
you don't have to be Hulk Cogan or Bruce Banner,
but the average person can somehow tap into the strength
and and suddenly someone in human strength to save somebody
or to get out of some sort of um bad situation. Yeah,
(02:37):
And it's it's an intriguing idea because I know we've
talked about this idea before about how we only use
tempercent of our brain, which we know is a myth, right,
but it's sort of similar like, oh, well, we only
use perhaps of our muscle fibers, and that there's a
super human strength available to us. And that's sort of right. Yeah,
I mean, under the right circumstances, this could be a
(03:00):
a possible condition. Now, of course, medical science doesn't actually
recognize something called hysterical strength, which is what we're talking right,
because for I mean, for one thing, how do you
study it? Um? Yeah? Do you you'd be like, all right,
we need um, you know, eighteen moms and their beloved
children to participate in the study. Um. Just warning, fair warning,
(03:20):
we may have to stick your toddler under a buick
you know, fall down on the kid um, you will
sign right here, right, it's not gonna fly. And in
most studies so it's difficult to to to study. But
we do know some I mean, we've know a lot
about how the human body works, so we are able
to to say, yeah, some version of this exists, and
(03:43):
adrenaline is the key player, right, and we again, this
has been observed over and over again, and and you know,
we've got anecdotal evidence of it. I've got a few here.
Two Lawrence Pille, Georgia. Right around the corner. Right around
the corner, Angela Cavallo lifted a Chevrolet and Paula from
her son Tony after it fell off the jacks that
(04:04):
it held it up while he worked underneath the car.
She lifted the car high enough and long enough for
two neighbors to replace the jacks uh and pull Tony
from beneath the car, but she didn't actually hold it
up long enough for them to finish working on it. Yeah,
here's another. In two thousand six Tuson, Arizona, Tim Boyle
watched as a Chevrolet Camaro hit an eighteen year old
by the name of Kyle. The car pinned tile to
(04:26):
the ground. He's still alive right underneath it. So Boyle
runs out to the scene of the accident and lifts
the car up while the driver of the car pull
and pulled the kid to safety. So again a situation
where cars pinning somebody. Somebody sees it happen, runs out,
hulks out, Yeah, you don't have to be a mom.
You can be a concerned citizen, which which I kind
of like because you know, we recently did the podcast
about how people behave in crowds, and so I feel
(04:49):
like this is a nice little panacea too, like, well, okay,
people can be jerks sometimes, but they can also be
um terribly great. And there are some there are also
some phenomenal videos of of multiple people coming to the
ascue of of individuals that are trapped in or under vehicles.
There's one recent one who that was, you know, a
huge success on YouTube. Whar It's like an entire town
coming out to help. So it's pinned um and and
(05:11):
that also was a nice counterweight to the crowd apathy
we were talking about before. UM. But let's talk about
why this could happen. What you know, again, medical science
doesn't necessarily recognize it that we don't we can't really
study it, but we know in theory that it's very
possible and adrenaline has a lot to do with it. Yeah. Basically,
(05:31):
I have one thing you have to do is just
think about, like the last time you were afraid or stressed,
and think about how your body felt, all right, because
generally what we're talking about here is adrenaline's effect on
the body all part of the flight or light situation
where there's some sort of danger, so you need to
be able to run towards it and run away from it,
run away from it, and adrenaline put your body through
(05:52):
a number of changes to facilitate either of those, because
you're gonna want to run fast or you're gonna you're
gonna want to be able to hit heart. Yeah, and
let's talk about the nuts and bolts about this, okay. Um. Basically,
you've got stressors engaging the hypothalamus. There is the region
of the brain that's responsible for maintaining the balance between
stress and relaxation. Right, it's the homeostasis part. Right, keeps
everything nice and calm unless it needs to to hook out. Um.
(06:15):
And that is so when you are hooking out, that
that hypothalamus then says to your adrenal glands, hey, you
need to go ahead and tell the sympathetic nervous system
that you've just hit defcon for you know, and adonlin
and nora adrenaline are then released and they just completely
flood your body. So the heart rate rises, increasing, respiration
(06:37):
dilation with the pupils, digestion slows down, and then the
most important part, it allows your muscles to contract more
than normal. This is if we could, you know, underline
with our voices, this is the most important part that
muscles contracting. Right, Yeah, I think of it. It's kind
of like the government of your nervous system is temporarily
giving increased power to the muscles. It's it's like putting
(06:57):
your body under martial law and saying, all right, armed
forces of the muscles. Normally you don't have this much power.
But but since we're in a pretty dire situation, I'm
temporarily authorizing you the use of additional force, which I
am I'm hoping you will use to run away from
the enemy or leg drop it. Right, We're taking resources
away from digestion and give them to you muscle fibers.
(07:19):
The lucky ducks. Um. So yeah, they adrenal and just
completely acts on the muscles. It allows them to contract more.
And then when the body is in a calm um
allowing them to contract more than if the body is
in a calm or neutral state. And um, it allows
for blood to flow more easily to your muscles and
more oxygen is carried to your muscles. So that results
in a muscle activation at a much higher level. And
(07:41):
you're also converting gluck again uh into glucose, which gives
muscles a sudden burst of energy. And again, this is
what is happening when you're lifting a really heavy object,
or you're running for your life or uh, you're running
to something or if if I hope this is an
up and you're electrocuted. Yeah, now this this is really
(08:02):
mind blowing. Here is an example of how we we
think this works with with the hulking out. You could
in theory hulk out if if a live wire, we're struck,
we're stuck to your body. Or he was struck by lightning,
which explains why whole Cogan when he's walking out does
kind of look like he's being shocked by He does
kind of look like tesla like undergoing the currents. Yes,
(08:24):
I mean, anyone who's ever touched a live electrical connection
on on accident, of course, knows that it's quite possible
to be blown clear across the room. And I cannot
stress how little we want you to try this at home.
Do not touch a live wire just to experience muscle.
And we'll talk about why you would never want to
do that in a moment um because sometimes, I mean,
(08:46):
the best case scenarios that you get blown across the room,
right to survive that. And the reason that you're blown
across the room isn't because the electrical current pushed you.
The force is actually coming from your own muscles. Yeah,
and that's that's just crazy to think about, because we've
seen this is one of those things that like hulking
out just shows up again and again and TV shows,
movies and and it's and it's generally um, you know,
(09:08):
done with like they do the effect by attaching a
wire to somebody's back and jerking them back, and so
it creates this uh, this this idea that that the
blast of the shock or something, you know, it's like
thrown away from an explosion or something. But it's really
a situation where your your limbs just suddenly just spasm
out with this strength, and you it's kind of like
(09:29):
a cat being startled and leaping off its feet step
instead of just going up into the air, you're across
the room and through the coffee table. And think of
it this way too. It's it's the same extreme stress
right like your body is just getting it instantaneously, just
like it would in another instance. But you know, you
just don't normally put the two together. Electrical current and
child trapped under car. It's the same. Your body as
(09:49):
undergoing the same response. And this is from a New
Scientist article. It says the electric current typically flows into
one arm, through the abdomen, and out one or both legs,
which can cause mos to the muscles and the body
to contract at once. The results are unpredictable, but given
the strength of the leg and buck muscles um this
can often send the victims flying across the room with
(10:10):
no voluntary action on their part. Combined with the unexpected
shock of an electrocution, this feels as if you are
flung rather than flinging yourself. Wow. Now imagine that we
could manipulate this, and we took all our nb NBA
players and I had like some sort of electrical device
and planet so that at just the right time when
(10:31):
they're about to go put a layoup. I don't know,
I'll go up, you know, when they're about to score
a basketball goal on the basketball hole. Um they they yeah,
the fish net on the circle. Yeah. So so like
you know, the basketball player will hit a button on
his wrist and then wham, he starts flying through the
(10:52):
air and just massive slam dunk. I'm just saying that
maybe we'll get there with science, yeah, yeah, or we
could harness the power of lightning, yes, and just make
them play into Yeah, so you just able to have
random bursts of incredible strength throughout. Can you imagine Michael
Jordan's like lightning, like just flying through the air and dunking. Yeah.
I mean I'm not a big basketball person, but that
(11:14):
is exciting. Yeah, although I wouldn't want any harm to
come to them. More lightning and super strength in my
team's sports place. Yes, then I'll watch. So. Yeah, being
thrown across the room can save your life, you know,
by breaking the electrical contact that you are holding onto. Right,
So this is actually a good thing. But there are
other cases, particularly where the source of the current is
(11:34):
something that the person is holding. The victims arms and
hand muscles may actually lock onto it. Yeah, and this
is where it gets deadly. They're unable to let go,
and if nobody intervenes, or nothing else intervenes, then they
could die through heart up fibrillation or electrocution. Yeah, this
is where we get the whole idea of life. If
somebody's being shocked, you're supposed to hit them away from
(11:54):
it with a broom handle or something. I've never heard that,
but it's good to know. Yeah, I don't know. I
can't remember the origin of that. Maybe it's a story
from like my family's history, like somebody who's being shocked
and somebody had to hit sixty four. And yeah, sometimes
it's an individual shocked and they don't fly away. They're
stuck there is getting more and more electrocuted, more and
(12:16):
more a power coursing through their body, and the only
way to get them off is to knock them away
with something that is not going to conduct electricity. Yeah,
because again remember that this is a massive skeletal muscle contraction,
and yeah, they're they're not going to be able to
you know, let go of this themselves. So that's good
to know in case I'll always have a broom nearby
in my house. Well that's because of you're a witch. Yeah,
(12:39):
more than that in a future episode. Yeah yeah, I
mean Halloween's coming up. We can talk about that more later.
Um that, I did want to mention that that I'm
sure a lot of people have. You know, everybody actually
has had some sort of um dalliance with adrenaline, right,
I mean, whether it's you know that you picked up
a thirty pound car, or you just felt fearful, you've
(13:00):
something in the middle of the night and you know,
you just your your body is just flooded with energy,
or even something like an EpiPen for people who have allergies,
you know what I'm talking about, or albuter all the inhaler.
It's like you get that feeling like you just run
a marathon. Also, if you ever go to Thailand, a
tie red bull kind of feels like this. Yeah, it's
(13:22):
like it's different than normal. I don't know the exactly people,
because it's like back in the day when Coca Cola
actually contained cocaine, that this red bull, this tie red
bull has some sort of like crystalline. I wouldn't. I
don't know if it actually contains um, you know, anything nefarious,
but it is. It's like sweeter tasting, definitely like blows
(13:44):
you up in terms of energy. And it also comes
in like a little bottle that looks kind of like
a medicine bottle. Wow, this is just getting atter. And
and it's red Bull. Yeah, it's red Bull. It's branded
red Bull, or at least the bottle I I purchased
from a street vendor had red Bull on the side
of it. So now I know what you did. The
our time you're in Thailand. I only had the one,
but ever since I've kind of every now and then
(14:04):
I'll be like, I could order some thy red Bull online.
That's somebody's got to be sold it on eBay. But
if you've ever been if anyone listening to this has
ever been to Thailand and and or lives in Thailand
and uh and has access to Thai red Bull, I'm
not asking you to send it to me, but do
you send us I would be very curious to see
if everybody else has had the same same experience. It
(14:24):
is actually a different, different kind of chemical things and
just out of nowhere, like you know, months later thinking
oh I should really get some of this online. Yeah, okay,
I'm just here amazing because it's possibly I had an
isolated incident where I'm just kind of like, oh wow,
this is an amazing it's all in my head. But anyway,
I'm digressing away from our hulking here. Yeah. Yeah, Actually,
(14:45):
right after this break, we are going to talk more
about adrenaline and what it has to do with cherry
Trees in Washington, d C. This podcast is brought to
you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel.
At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation.
Join us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers
(15:08):
to life's questions. All right, now we're back, and before
we get back, I do want to mention that the
hulking out that is experienced by UM wrestlers like Hulk
Hogan in the United States in in Japanese pro wrestling, Uh,
they have a very similar thing where it's like the
individual summons their fighting spirit and I think it's tied
(15:28):
very much in with like you know, old Bushito code stuff,
but it's a very similar situation. Where the individual has
been beaten down, he's taken damage, and suddenly he's able
to tap into this warrior spirit and fight back. So
I'm just throwing it up, Okay, Yeah, I mean, and
I'm sure that whole Cogan was legitimately hulking out to
right like it wasn't just a show. Well, the warrior
(15:49):
spirit was shining for take it till you make it right.
But speaking of of the Japanese um um, an individual
of Japanese descent actually plays the crucial role in the
isolation of adrenaline. Yeah, Jochici Takamini. Uh, he's a Japanese
chemist who was actually in the United States, and well
I believe he was between Japan and the United States
(16:12):
of the time that he was looking into this. He
actually brought it to the market. As you say, he
isolated adrenaline and this was the first hormone to be
obtained in pure form and called quote the blood pressure
raising principle of the super renal glands. You may know
it as US patent. Yes, and we're talking one made
(16:32):
interested in that. But before then, George Oliver and Edward
Shaeffer had discovered that when the secretions of adrenal plans
were extracted and injected into an experimental animal that could
raise blood pressure, and a lot of people took interest
from that. Uh Takamini actually visited their lab at Johns
Hopkins and he was welcomed there and he was shown
(16:53):
the full scientific cur courtesy of you know how they
did it, um, and then he took that knowledge with
him m back to his own lab and crystallize the
hormone and then filed a patent. He was incredibly savvy,
and he had studied patent law, and some people would
accuse him of sort of taking that technology and and
(17:14):
and um being a bit of a scoundrel. But the
fact of the matter is is that he actually was
taking it to another level and he did have the smarts,
the patent lost smarts. So how's it used? Back in
the day? Physicians carried it in their bags, and it's
said that Gene Tunney, the champion boxer, always kept some
on hand when he went into the ring. Yeah, so
(17:35):
you know, it wasn't just our our current day UH
sports stars trying to bulk themselves up or hold themselves up. Now,
I also know there is there is an adrenaline concoction
that's used when the you know, when when they're doing
the whole cut me thing with the boxer, you know,
and they're they're like touching up their face. There was
something Oh yeah, yeah, I'm thinking Rocky right now, exactly
(17:57):
what you're talking about. One of the things that they
smear on their faces. So like, is uh some is
some sort of topical Yeah, topical thing to cut down
on bleeding. Huh, but yeah, not the kind of makes
that part of their face whole coat. Yeah yeah, but
but I mean it's it's not not the kind of
reaction we're talking about here. It's yeah, yeah, yeah. But
(18:18):
the drug transformed surgery at that time, where it was
usually used to control hemorrhages you just pointed out. Um.
It also found uses in cardiology and the treatment of
asthma and other allergies, and of course it was the
wonder drug touted to help everything, although it could not.
But it was prescribed for conditions like deafness, um in
Addison's disease, which it actually didn't do anything. In the
(18:40):
Nightmare on Elm Street remake, some kids injected to stay
awake so that Freddie doesn't get them. It seems like
that would just go terribly awry. Well I think it.
Well it did. Yeah, that didn't really work out for
everybody because now now you're you're all pumped up on
adrenaline and Freddy's coming after you, so you're like, your
heart's got to be bursting. Yeah, but the thing is
(19:01):
he comes for your in your dreams. So it's like
they're keeping from Yeah, but somehow, I'm gonna guess they
still fell asleep even though they were pumped up with adrenaline. Right,
I haven't seen it, but that's how those kids go. Yeah. Yeah,
it's just that's how the cookie crumbles. Um. So cherry Trees, Yeah,
what does adrenaline have to do with cherry trees? Exactly?
Tack Amine just he did great with this drug, right,
(19:23):
He just got all sorts of riches and jewels from it,
and he used the royalties from it to create diff
like three new companies, and he got very interested in
Japanese American relations, right yeah. So, so as a token
of goodwill from the Japanese people to the United States,
cherry Trees. Yeah. First, Lady Helen Herron Taft was working
(19:45):
to beautify the title basin around the Potomac River in Washington,
d C. And he gave them two thousand cherry trees, so,
which I thought was fascinating because you don't mean, you
know of DC is you know cherry tree blossoms. That's
when the finding things physical features of Washington, d C.
But but there you go. It's all has its ties
(20:06):
back to adrenaline. Huh. Now, now do these trees hulk out?
I don't know. I doubt it. I'm not going to
hazard to guess. Yeah, alright, so we mentioned about before
the hype of aalmus is the region of the brain
that's responsible for maintaining the balance between stress and relaxation,
between pulk Cogan and like the dude, between between being
(20:26):
chill and being out of control. Um and of course
you know, it's it's kind of like the yoga of
the brain. It's all about like maintaining that balance because
in in the the you know, extremes are bad. You
don't want to be chilled out all the time because
you're going to forget to eat or you know, or
something I don't know, You're just gonna you're not gonna
get anything done or and if you're agitated all the time, Um,
(20:48):
you you may die. Well, we talked about this before,
particularly with nightmares, right right, Um, when we talked about
the ocean refugees who I think within like a four
year span of eighteen of them had died in their sleep.
They had sudden death. And the reason for this, we
know are part of part of the reason is that
they're under a great stress at that time they were
(21:10):
they were escaping some just really brutal conditions in their
home country. And uh, and yes, so they're under a
lot of stress, and a lot of stress, like we're saying,
produces adrenaline, and this can have a rather detrimental effect
on your health. That's right. Adrenaline is toxic in large amounts.
It damages the visceral internal organs such as the heart, lungs, liver,
and kidneys. And it's believed that, as you know, as
(21:32):
we talked about, that almost all sudden deaths are caused
by damage to the heart. Um. There's almost no other
organ that would fail so fast as to cause sudden death.
Kidney failure, liver failure, those things don't kill you suddenly, right, Um.
Adrenaline from the nervous system lands on receptors of cardiac
misa sietes okay, and those are the heart muscle cells,
(21:54):
and this causes calcium channels and the membranes of those
cells to open, making the heart muscles contract. And if
it's a massive overwhelming storm of adrenaline, calcium keeps pouring
into the cells and then your muscles just can't relax.
This is why we go into cardiac arrest, right, So
it's really interesting. Neurologist Martin A. Samuel says that it's
(22:15):
not just fear that can cause us. According to him,
any strong positive or negative emotions such as happiness or
sadness could also cause it. And he says there are
people who have died in intercourse or in religious passion.
And there's one case of a golfer who hit a
hole in one turned to his partner and said, I
can die now and then drop dead. I have to
(22:37):
say that seems all dubious to me, but he said
a study in Germany found an increase in sudden cardiac
deaths on the days that the German soccer teams were
playing in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because they're they're
getting the ideas that these individuals are kind of on
the edge anyway through a really exciting soccer game at
him and that's all she wrote. Boom right, So it's
(22:59):
not just us fear sometimes it just you know, I
guess it could be fair. I suppose if you're a
fan and you're you're frightened that your team might not,
you know, pull through, and yeah, if you have. If
there's someone in your life as a sports fan who
has a delicate heart, try and get them to support
teams that that pretty much consistently stuck because because is
gonna be the less likelihood of their team killing them. Yeah,
(23:21):
lower the bar they are for them, do my favor.
But yeah, I mean, prolonged state of stress can lead
to complications, and it doesn't you don't have to be
like a raving sports fan. It can just be that
you have workplace stress, and you have it, uh for
a long period of time. Your body is in constant
go mode and it's misinterpreting what's a threat and what's
not right false threats. As a result, your immune system
(23:43):
suffers and your cortosol levels can shoot up. And as
we know, cortosol levels are really important in regulating our
sleep too. So if your levels are or nuts, at night,
then you're probably not getting the kind of sleep you need.
So it's unfortunately, it's just kind of um, sort of
the vortex fall fall into, right, a sleep vortex or no,
an awakeness vortex. I think an anxiety vortex. I'll go
(24:07):
with that. Yeah, yeah, So it's the moral of the story.
The moral of the story is that adrenaline is a
precious commodity that's really powerful. Uh, and your nervous system
tries to use good judgment about win and how it
is used. That's right. Yeah, And that if you beat
whole Cogan down enough, he is going to hulk out
(24:30):
and probably to thee and don't make Bruce Fanner angry.
I'll go with that. Yeah, you wouldn't like him, he's ancred.
Um nice. But let's let's uh, let's go ahead and
reach into the basket of listener mail. Here a few
here to read. We continue to hear a lot from
(24:51):
listeners about our Misophonia and Pet Peeves podcast. You dealt
with the sounds that drive people crazy, um, other little
perks that annoy We've heard from a listener by the
name of Hunter. Hunter says, I listened to your Mesophonia
podcast and I wanted to tell you this. My misophonia
is the sound of a wooden pencil writing on paper.
(25:12):
I use the mechanical pencils due to this. I'm a
big fan of the show and I would love it
to have one of you great podcasters would email me
back smile, I face. Um, and you did email I did,
You're back? Um? And am I correct? Unless you share
this with Hunter, you you don't like the sound of
a pencil on paper. Oh no, no, actually that Um.
(25:32):
What I was saying to Hunter is that that we've
got a couple of email from people who have a
pencil paper issue. Um, similar like but but interesting really enough,
some people can't stand the sound of the mechanical pencil
because it's the metal hitting the paper. Just to show
as you can't please everybody, yeah yeah, But then we
(25:53):
had another person to who was like, I can't stand
a mechanical so I went to the wooden So it's
really interesting to see that there's there's someone of a
pad and here emerging. I'm still kind of firmed by
the socks though. The socks when you know, the listener
who was irritated by the sound of socks on carpet, right. Yeah, well,
just for the sake of fun. Um socks on hardwood
(26:14):
is the best because you get a running start and
then you put it on the brakes and you can
you can go like can I tell you that I
did at least once a week. Oh that's awesome. It's
a great joy of mine. It's why I look forward
to winter yoga because I can come into the yoga
room with my socks on. You skid right in like
like like Tom Cruise in Brisky Business. Yeah, except with pants,
you know, but pretty good test. Let's see. We also
(26:37):
heard from Jeremy Jeremy Writston, and he was talking about
the first of all the Lewis Black quote that I
alluded to about in our Pet Peeves episode, talking about
the annoyance of hearing like half a conversation. And he's
straightened this out and says that the quote was I
never would have gotten into college if it weren't for
my horse. And then he goes on to say, I
can attest to the winding child. I have a two
(26:58):
point five year old and he's getting into the defiant stage.
We're choosing not to call it the terrible twos, where
he loves to wine. The worst part about it is
knowing that it's not even real. The whinding that I've
encountered fake. I'll catch him off guard at times when
he's distracted by something bright and shiny and he stops,
realizes that he did stop, and goes right back into
winding mode. Fortunately, I have a terrible listening problem, and
(27:20):
I'm able to drown it out with little problems. Keep
up with fun podcast. Yeah, I have to say my
I have a two and a half year old too,
same thing. Yeahs constant winding. Yeah, but she starts laughing
because she I think hicly because she's like ha ha,
well kinda. I don't know what she's doing there, but
but sometimes I think she knows that she's such a
faker that she starts laughing because she's not really pulling
at all. And we have one more email here from Mike.
(27:43):
Mike writes in and says, I just got to finished
listening to your Decision Fatigue podcast, and I have an
interesting story related to this as you that you brought up.
I just got married on Congratulations and was very aware
that the week leading up to my wedding I was
doing a very poor job at work and was for
getting all sorts of things at home. I've been back
to work a week now and I found things are
(28:05):
slowly getting better. Also noted that doing our registry it
was a very stressful time. At some point in this time,
I zoned out and started scanning random things around the store.
And this is of course of its referring to the
fact that they give you a scanner these days and
a lot of these stores, and they're like, here, take
this scan the items that that you would like to
put on your registry. And as we discussed in the podcast,
(28:26):
picking out things through your registry, it's just one decision
after another, and after a while it adds up in
your your brain is just for the day. Yeah, and
so so I love this example because it's like you're
making careful choices early on, and by the end of
the process you're just like scanning random objects just to
be done with it, which is a great example of
really how decision fatigue works. The problem, as we discussed
(28:49):
in that podcast, being that instead of it just being
a situation where your later decisions are just the scanning
of random objects, that you end up dealing with bigger
decisions and more weighty decisions with that kind of apathy, right, Like,
you wouldn't want to make have to make a really
important decision later on in that day, if you had
to register that morning, it would be awful. Whatever choice
(29:13):
you made would be wrong probably. So there you have it.
If you have us some interesting factoids to share with us,
there are multiple ways to get in touch with us,
two of which are Facebook and Twitter, which are two
new social media sites that people are really getting into.
I think I think they're going to take off if
you can find us on both of those as blow
the Mind. That's one word, blows on mind, and uh,
(29:35):
I think there's another way. Oh yeah, if you're feeling
old fashioned, you can always drop us a line at
blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
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