November 10, 2022 • 52 mins
It’s that time of year again! Join Robert and guest co-host Seth as they discuss some of this year’s Ig Nobel prize-winning scientific studies and papers – honored as always for first making us laugh, then making us think.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Land, and I'm Seth
Nicholas Johnson. That's right, Joe is still out on parentally. Uh.
He and his wife are somewhere in the zombie land
(00:25):
of of of early parenthood. Uh, they're because they're completely
in the dark. I haven't heard from him in a
few days, so I think everything. I think he's in
the upside down basically right now where where up is
up is down, down is up. Uh. Sleep takes place
whenever it can be obtained. Uh. Now how long does
(00:45):
this period last? Do you know? Rob like like like
the like baby won't sleep through the night phase. I
I have no idea. Um, I'm not certain either. I
think to some extent it varies from child to child.
And yeah, I'm more knowledgeable what's sort of like general
trends in in child sleep habits. And I know that
that that, of course is going to vary a lot
(01:06):
from kid to kid. Uh. My wife and I are
fortunate that our our child has always been a very
very committed sleeper. But but I know that's that's not
always the case, well, well, best of luck to Joe
right now in his uh, you know, parental duties right now,
and I'm sure he is spending his free time listening
(01:27):
to this podcast. So hello Joe. All right, So if
you joined us on Tuesday, then you know that we
began discussing some of this year's winners of the ig
Nobel Prizes. Uh. This is a series of awards that
are given out each year by the scientific humor journal,
(01:48):
the Annals of Improbable Research, that has been edited for
many years now by Mark Abrams and their stated purposes
to quote honor achievements that make people laugh and then
make them think, and so every year on stuff to
bow your mind. Since I don't know how long I
don't know how long I've been doing this, we generally
look at at least some of the winners from from
(02:09):
that given year and discuss them, talking about, you know,
why they're funny, what's important about the studies, what's interesting
about the studies. And it's generally a great exercise because
a lot of times the stuff that wins it gets
into an area that we might not otherwise explore, or
we wouldn't devote an entire episode to certainly, and uh yeah,
I always learned something new. So this is the second episode.
(02:32):
But this is one of those situations where if you
missed Tuesday and you're already listening to today's episode Thursday's episode,
you're still probably good to go, because we're just looking
at individual winners that revolve around generally one study. Maybe
you're a handful of studies, but each one is kind
of a self contained topic. So go ahead, feel free
to listen to this one and then go back and
(02:53):
listen to Tuesday's You'll be just fine. So last time,
I think we talked about three different studies, and once
again we're gonna talk about three more today. Uh seth,
why don't you start us off with your first selection?
This one is the winner of the Safety Engineering Prize.
This was a paper written by Magnus Gens and it
(03:14):
was for developing a moose crash test dummy. And uh
that this was out of Sweden. This was published by
the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, and it's
it's just fun to picture crash test dummies in general.
Do you remember in like the gosh, late eighties, early nineties,
there was a crash test dummy trend for some reason. Yeah,
(03:37):
I I definitely remember this because I remember being a
bit into it. There were commercials right and had crash
test dummies, but they also at least made action figures
and in little crash sets, and I think I might
have even had one of the action figures. I had
a couple of myself. I had a car and two
of the action figures of the dummies, because I believe
(03:59):
they made an anime series based on it as well.
My memory is kind of fuzzy about this, but I
definitely remember the toys, and I definitely remember the live
action commercials, and yeah, that the toys were interesting because
they often had some sort of action where if you
like pressed a button on their chest, you know, their
arms would fly off or or like the doors would
come off the cars or something. And yeah, hey, trends
(04:19):
for children are very strange, but there was definitely a
crash test dummy trend for children, uh, late eighties, early nineties.
But but anyway, Oh no, no, I have to keep
going on this because it raises the question now that
I think I haven't really thought about this in a
long time, but do you think that this was a
situation where our desire as children to have action figures
(04:40):
of dummies that were used in crash tests like industrial
crash test. Was this entirely manufactured this desire and marketed
to us, or did they anticipate the fact that children
would see these ads and say, hey, I want one
of those. This looks fun. I'm in I think this
was a Geico Caveman situation where a company probably paid
(05:02):
just for some standard like you know, public service announcement
ads made some very colorful, friendly looking live action p
s as, and when they aired on television, for some reason,
children really glommed onto it. Maybe they were aired during
the Saturday morning cartoon breaks or something, and for some reason,
maybe the bright colors, maybe the action, the goofy like,
(05:23):
you know, almost like live action Looney Tunes esqueness of
like the explosions and whatnot. Maybe that just appealed to
children so hard that some enterprising, you know, business person went,
I know, let's sell this to those kids, you know.
So I I think it was a television commercial they
got too popular for its own good, and then they
(05:45):
took advantage of it. That that's my guess. Imagine if
they had known, they could have introduced a moose trash
test down me as well, a talking moose that would
have been amazing, like a funny sidekick Bowwinkle style. Everyone.
I love that. So, so that is what we're discussing today.
Just picture a moose crash test dummy and why they
(06:06):
would need it. And here's a little chunk from the
abstract from this paper quote. In certain areas of our
planet there are big wild animals. One big species is
the moose called elk in certain regions. Scandinavia has a
very large moose population and car moose collision is a
(06:26):
huge problem with many fatal outcomes. In order to reduce
the number of injuries caused by passenger cars colliding with moose,
a valid and repeatable method to arrange staged accidents is needed.
A moose dummy was constructed after thorough research work. Yeah,
so a couple of things, Like, first of all, like
(06:46):
the moose is very large. The moose is much larger
than a deer, and and hitting a deer with an
automobile is already a serious concern. But on top of that,
you also have behavioral differences with the moose, like a
moose uh has a different or can have a different
um attitude toward vehicles and in encounters. I've certainly heard
tales of vehicles being charged by a moose before. Oh yeah,
(07:09):
and and they're huge, which we we will get to.
We'll get into some very specific stats very soon. So, so,
the two primary goals of this research were accuracy, and
they wanted the cars that collided with the dummy moose
to have a comparable damage to real cars that collided
with real moose. So you know, I think most crash
test folks have that goal in mind. And the second
(07:31):
was repeatability. They wanted this moose dummy to be able
to endure many crash tests before it had to be replaced. Again,
makes sense. These are very expensive to construct. You know,
you want to get your money's worth out of them.
So first and foremost, animal collisions with cars are very common.
They're dangerous, and they're also very unpredictable. Animals simply don't
(07:52):
tend to follow the rules of the road. Uh, no
matter how many signs we put up for them. You know,
cross here, your dumb dear, this is your cross swak.
But but they just don't pay attention to that. Yeah,
add into that, having a disrupted environment which there are
fewer predators to actually keep the numbers of say, dear down. Yeah,
it becomes becomes a huge issue. No, No, this is
their faults. We gave them a side cross here, this
(08:15):
is your crosswalk, and they just don't they don't do it.
So not. Now. Moose collisions are particularly dangerous because they
are very top heavy, very tall, and have relatively spindly
legs for a creature of their size. So the average
moose is about six ft tall at the shoulder, and
it can get obviously much bigger than that, and they
(08:36):
can weigh as much as fourteen hundred pounds, and like
I said, most of that weight is you know, pretty
high up in the air. And if anyone out there
has ever like seen a moose in real life, it's
it's actually kind of kind of like, I don't know,
it's it's it's awesome. It feels shocking to see a
(08:57):
creature that large in person. Yeah, I have. I have
very vague memories of my childhood and Canada of seeing
these seeing a moose and it was quite I mean,
I wouldn't say it was terrifying, but yeah, it was
kind of on inspiring. They're just so huge, Yeah, for sure.
So this study took place in Sweden, where annually thirty
(09:18):
thousand car accidents involving cloven footed animals occur. That means
ninety accidents daily, and thirteen of those ninety involved a moose.
Unrelated to this study, the row deer is actually the
cause of the majority of these collisions, but they are
much smaller and lighter, so they cause far less damage.
(09:39):
Those thirteen out of the ninety daily accidents are the
ones that are I'm not gonna say almost always fatal,
but are often fatal because, like I said, fourteen hundred pounds,
six ft tall, and it's it's they're they're like a
very heavy anvil on top of a very small spindle
legged table. Like there, it's it's just not it's not smart,
(10:00):
you know. So our researcher then has pages and pages
of research to determine like the physiology of the moose
to be replicated by the dummy UH formulas to determine
the velocity during collisions typical car sifty practices that might
be found in the average vehicle models, etcetera, ETCeteras. Now
that they're going to start to build up this dummy
(10:21):
moose one version, they take a bunch of water filled hoses,
you know, to try and get that weight and that
kind of like oh um that that animal pu push
but also solidity didn't quite work. They tried another version
with wires and would but but once again it was
a bit too fragile that couldn't get the weight quite
(10:43):
right with it, but ultimately ended up working. Were these
big thick slabs of rubber kind of cross cut um. Specifically,
they were thirty six rubber plates assembled vertically and assembled
together through through through locking wires. The the way I
can describe this is um. I remember as a child
(11:03):
there were these like model kits where where they were um, hundreds,
if not thousands, of these little flat you know, shapes
that you would then stack on top of one another,
and it would build like a three D model of something,
usually a bust or something like that. You know I'm
talking about rob Yeah, I had one of these of
jar Jar Binks before the film came out. I didn't
(11:26):
I didn't know who this character was. After the film,
I perhaps would not have cared to build a model
of this character. Uh So you can see these pretty
easily online too, if you just search um crash test moose.
I'm sure you'll be able to find them. You can
also find actually some pretty good footage on television shows
(11:47):
or things like that of people using them, and it's
it's it's pretty beautiful. You'll know we're talking about the
same one if you see this. There's basically like it
looks kind of like a swing set hanging above the moose,
and then there's a releasing mechanism with electrical magnets that
will hold the moose like the correct height pre collision,
but then ensuring that the mechanism won't contribute to the
(12:09):
results of the damage. It will be completely free and
clear when the collision actually occurs. Because once again, these
animals are a mystery. So the dummy cannot stand on
these little spindle legs on its own. It needs a
little support structure to hold it at the correct height
before the car actually gets there. Yeah, the sense I
kind of get from the image here. It's like if
(12:29):
you if you three D printed the torso of a moose,
like from from romp to next dump, and then you
you hung it from like a swing set structure of
some sorry. Yeah, and and to represent the legs they
got these uh, big wires hanging down, and they covered
it with more rubber disks to represent the weight and
(12:50):
the size of each leg. And there there are subtle
variations between front legs and back legs. But but but
you know, uh, the body was the big concern of this, know, uh,
more or less it's um it's that big weight. It's
that big high center of gravity weights that just falls
on the car. Because I mean, if you think about it,
(13:12):
um here here's more or less what happens to think
about a typical car's height in relation to a moose
and its anatomy, especially when you think about like where
a bumper is on a typical sedan. So so the
bumper is gonna come in real low, it's just a
couple of feet from the ground, hits the moose in
its tall, thin legs, and as a result, the animal
will then rotate over the engine hood and crashed through
(13:35):
the windshield pounds, which then releases all that weight directly
onto the driver and the passenger. That's why it's often
so deadly. It's it's not because it's heavy. It's not
because they stand in the road and sometimes charge at you.
It's because they're heavy and they're tall, so that our
cars are almost like engineered to get hurt the most
(13:57):
from this creature. It's it's it's a it's a difficult thing.
So ultimately this stummy was successful. They were able to
you know, repeat their crashes multiple times with this giant
rubber body. And also it was able to accurately duplicate
the real life damage from these creatures. So. Um, currently,
(14:18):
if if you see the images of this, I haven't
seen any with a head yet. They say that eventually
they do plan to build one with a head and
antlers because apparently there's a pendulum like effect when the
body is hit, then the head follows afterwards, etcetera, etcetera. Um,
but that's secondary damage. Like I said, they're focusing on
that big, hulking pound body. And this study came out
(14:41):
in two thousand one, so maybe they have done the
head since then. Yes, yes, perhaps so. Uh So, So
why is this funny? Um, it's a it's a most stummy.
It's it's very specific, it's very silly, and ultimately moose
are just kind of like an interesting, odd creature. Um. Also,
I can say that as as a lifelong fan of
the TV show MythBusters. I have to mention that this
(15:03):
subject was also tackled in season six, episode one of
that show. This was in their Alaska special UH. Specifically,
what they did is they tested the myth that it's
better to hit a moose going quickly rather than slowing down.
So so, like I, I I believe in this show they
may have used the exact same crash test dummy from
(15:25):
this UM from this UH, from this paper. However, I
couldn't find the exact footage, so I can't confirm that
I'm just going based on memory that myth was busted
going really fast. The The myth was that if you're
going really fast when you hit the moose, that like
like the aerodynamic kind of curve of a car will
just fling the moose directly over your car and you'll
be perfectly safe. That is not the case. Like I said,
(15:48):
it's four pounds, Nah, it's it's it's crushing that front
of your car. Unfortunately, you can, like I said, you
can see footage. You can look this up on YouTube.
It's wild to see. UM. So yes was busted. Don't
think that going extra fast will make you safer when
when running into a moose and which brings me to
why this is important. This can genuinely lead to saving lives,
(16:11):
particularly in areas like Scandinavia or the Pacific Northwest regions
of of the of North America, basically anywhere that a
moose can be found easily. This data can you know,
be duplicated and given to car manufacturers, so they can
know which parts of their cars, especially cars that are
sold often in these regions where they need extra you
(16:34):
know enforcement, you know, Uh, can they make a moose
proof windshield? Is that even possible? Will will cars have
like not not not a cow catcher, but a moose
catcher in the in the near future who knows, who knows?
But but now they can test it over and over
again and hopefully make safer cars for these regions that uh,
(16:55):
you know, are I want to say moose proof, but
that's probably a bit too ambitious. Well, I mean, the
moose test is definitely a thing. Um. Just doing a
little searching around, I found this is a website called
hot cars dot com and they have an article five
cars that have passed Sweden's moose test and five that failed.
And yeah, these are all different vehicles and they just
(17:17):
look like normal automobiles are just about normal automobiles with
enough like safety protocol and um like structural integrity I suppose,
and in some cases larger looking vehicles but sometimes not
so large um that that have done well. So I
guess in a way, I'm not disappointed that there are
no crazy Swedish moose proof vehicles that look like the
(17:39):
front of a train, but it is great that they've
been able to take this data and then use it
to ensure safety in various vehicles. This is a complete tangent.
But have you ever seen Land of the Dead, the
George A. Romero film? Is that the one with the
tower and John Lacosama. Yes, yes, exactly, I have, but
I haven't seen it since it came out, so I'm
(17:59):
a little foggy. There's a vehicle there's a vehicle in
in that film called Dead Reckoning, which is like their
major like vehicle for like going out into the world,
and it's basically zombie proof. And in the end of
that movie they all hop in Dead Reckoning and they
drive to Canada and that's like they're like, hey, where
we're okay? And I think you know what, I think
Dead Reckoning is moose proof. So that would be that'd
(18:22):
be a real kicker, that'd be a real down or
ending where they escape in this vehicle, then they hit
their first moose and they're just done for. They could
survive the zombie hordes, but they can't survive a zombie moose.
(18:43):
All Right, For the next one, I'm gonna be talking
about the Art History Prize. So I suppose the other
side of covering Ignobile Award winning studies is that sometimes
it forces us to cover topics that we might not
otherwise cover um at least these days, and that's certainly
the case with the r History winner. For two honored
are this page is This paper from was published in
(19:06):
the Journal of ethno Pharmacology by Peter de Smett and
Nicholas Hellmuth, titled a Multidisciplinary Approach to Ritual Enema Scenes
on Ancient Maya Pottery. So, just to kick things off,
why is it funny? Well, I guess it's supposed to
be funny because it features enemas, but I also kind
of have to I mean, just in general, yes, I
(19:28):
buy that logic. I didn't particularly find this one to
be a humorous inclusion, but I mean everyone's sense of
humor is going to vary on this sort of thing,
and I suppose it's it's the juxtaposition to that, if
you are to see depictions of enemas, you don't expect
it to be on your your pottery, on on your
on your fine china. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose so like that,
(19:49):
it's art history and that and and that's the thing
because because the next question why is it important? Well,
it's kind of a double whammy here, because first of all,
the discipline of ethno pharmacology is highly fascinating. It can
also be illuminate. It can also be rather illuminating and
potentially illuminating about the use of various substances that Western
medicine has not quite come around to yet. And then
(20:11):
also we're talking about Mayan history here, my in history
and culture, so I feel like it is the sort
of thing that shouldn't be ignored. So I'm not going
to lean as much into the humor on this one,
but it was all very fascinating and I want to
explain it all a bit, maybe demystify it. So to
kick things off, though, I feel like what we should
have a little refresher on Mayan civilization that kind of
(20:34):
refresher is very much in order. So we're talking about
the Mesoamerican civilization that occupied southern Mexico, Guatemala, and northern Belize.
The Mayan pre Classic period is measured back to two
thousand b C, with the Classic period running to fifty
c Eed and nine and the post Classic period running
up until fifteen thirty nine. This was an advanced civilization
(20:57):
with agriculture, a sophisticated right system, mathematics, calendar and astronomical systems,
and a highly developed architectural and artistic style, as we've
discussed on the show before. Of course, the arrival of
Europeans to to this region constituted a kind of outside
context event that designated the civilizations and cultures of the Americas.
(21:20):
But many aspects of Mind culture survived and are cherished.
I believe something like thirty Mind languages are still spoken today.
And there has been a pan Maya movement that's an
ethno political movement in Mexico and Guatemala by often marginalized
Maya people there. And of course, on top of this,
there have been many efforts to better understand and celebrate
(21:40):
the culture and history of the Mayans. Despite all the
Spanish initially destroyed. Okay, so that's your refresher on the Mayans.
Now let's get into a refresh on enemies. So strictly speaking, uh,
an enema is an injection of liquid into the lower
bowel through the rectum, and the most often reason for
this procedure is to relieve constipation or to prepare for
(22:04):
medical procedures. It's it's simply stool evacuation. It's liquid aided
stool evacuation. Now, the mere act of waste leaving the
body already kind of has a myriad of real and
imagine benefits, because obviously waste leaving the body is a
good thing. We've kind of talked about this in the
last episode. What happens when a scorpion loses its anus
(22:25):
and it cannot relieve itself, Well, its stuff builds up
and uh and it's it's not necessarily great for the scorpion.
So excess materials do need to leave the body after
our bodies have extracted as much from the matter as
can be extracted. But then on top of that, again
we have this, we have this deep history of humanity's
(22:48):
attempt to to understand our bodies and also conflating and
confusing hygiene with purity at times. I'm reminded particularly of
a book I had to pick this one off the
shelf for this one A little Bit UH by Virginia
Smith titled Clean, A History of Personal Hygiene Impurity, which
is a great read if anyone's interested in like the
history of things like like just bathing rituals and so forth.
(23:10):
Sona rituals and how you have these sort of dual
columns of the ways that these things are actually good
for us, the way they actually cleanse us. And then
on the other side are complicated understanding of purity, spiritual purity,
and also getting into various um, you know, pre medical
theories of how the body works. So, for instance, Smith
(23:32):
points out that according to Greek humoral theory UH, a
strong bowel movement was an indicator of of a healthy
body ridding itself of dangerous waste. And if this didn't
seem to be the case with them in a an
an individual, if you didn't seem to to to be
having good strong bowel movements, well, then a whole host
of quote herbal or mineral purges and emetics might ensue.
(23:57):
Now coming back to those to the detail that the
entire gut is all about processing organic material and absorbing
water and nutrients from it, and then displacing whatever can't
be digested at all or can't be digested in a
timely matter. UH. It shouldn't come as a surprise that
even at the very final leg of the journey, the
system is still capable of absorbing water and due to
(24:21):
the rectum's blood supply, the rectum can also absorb various
substances and drugs such as alcohol, tobacco, and UH, and
also various like hallucinogenic materials as well. Now at this point,
I know some of you might be thinking of various
like shocking headlines and scare headlines that have appeared in
(24:42):
the media over the years, and I do want to
just drive home. Do that you should not try this
at home. UH. Do not try to absorb things on
your own recreationally through your rectum. UH. Two major issues
to keep in mind here is that, first of all,
there's usually a lower threshold for the side effects of
(25:02):
a given substance if it's taken rectally. And also if
you take it rectly, it bypasses your body's natural defense
of vomiting. UH. So the the level entering your system
might be too high and you can't just vomit as
a means of your body trying to rid yourself of
that substance. This makes me wonder if there has ever
(25:23):
been a headline where someone, let's say, did get alcohol
poisoning through a ingesting alcohol the wrong way and basically
the headline just said rectum damn never killed him. Maybe
so and some of you more scandalous newspapers and the
kind of newspaper you find in a barber shop that
kind or if you get your news from like a
(25:46):
mad magazine that sort of thing, you know, or the
crip keeper, I guess. But but at any rate, this
is the same issue though. This is why it is
sometimes an advantageous route for medication and by medical professionals,
because it's a way of bypassing nausea and vomiting. So
if some sort of condition is keeping the individual from
(26:08):
you know, being able to really keep anything down, well,
then the the rectal application of the medication might be
the best way to go via suppository. So this is
nothing that the humans figured all of this out quite
a long time ago. I was reading about this a
little bit the ancient Egyptian uh Ebber's Papyrus from fifteen
(26:29):
fifty b c. E makes mention of of medical enemas,
and other evidence indicates that it was an important tool
of ancient Egyptian medical practice, and it was said to
have been invented by the god thought, the divine physician,
and the God of secret knowledge. Now I'm not going
to go through the entire global history of enema usage,
but I think if one had the appetite for it,
(26:52):
one could probably do an entire episode of stuff to
blow your mind on it. There's a lot of stuff
out there. They are numerous notable examples from historic writings
from Greece, from Babylon, from China, and of course Western
European cultures across the centuries. And the reasons for these
practices breakdown into basic traditions of of either cleansing or
(27:16):
drug and alcohol absorption, or in some cases mere sensation.
So I'm not gonna I'm not gonna listen through all these,
but I did have two that I wanted to bring
up because I was cross checking some stuff in a
book titled The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other
Curiosities from the History of Medicine by Thomas Morris. This
is a really fun book and it contains multiple mentions
(27:37):
of enemas. Uh some Sometimes you'll you'll have a even
a very serious history book and you go to the
index and they don't have anything about enemas. Uh clean.
The book I referenced earlier really only has one mention
of enemas in it, and it's not listed in the index.
But Morris has your back on enema mentions multiple mentions
(27:57):
in this in this tone, and want to I want
to highlight a couple of them. First of all, this
is a headline from an eighteen fifty eight study published
in the British Medical Journal eight quote port wine in
amata as a substitute for transfusion of blood in cases
(28:17):
of postpartum hemorrhage. Needless to say this, uh this, This
may have seemed like a possible sensible alternative at the time,
but it turns out this would this would not be
the best practice. Yikes. I mean, I'm not going to
jump into conclusions. But what they like, their their their
(28:38):
their structure of thought was back then, But was the
idea like, oh it's red wine, so you know, it
looks like blood. What I didn't get into this one's
super deep. But it does seem a little late for
for that kind of logic, but uh, it was. It
was presented as a possibility. Morris also discusses a seventeen
(28:59):
sixty nine version of the Swiss physician Samuel Tissot's medical writings,
but and and so this was like a Swiss physicians
writings that then were then also published. And to some
extent it was a little foggy on what exactly has
meant here. But essentially this comes out again. It's from
(29:19):
years earlier, but then it comes out again in seventeen
sixty nine, with amateur physician and founder of Methodism John
Wesley also credited on it. I think basically Wesley was
a fan of Samuel Tissett's writings, and one of the
recommendations in the book is to revive near drowned individuals
(29:40):
by not only blowing tobacco smoke into their lungs through
their mouths, but also pumping it into quote the fundament.
Tissa advised using pipe and bladder system to do this,
which was not a new method, as European doctors were
already using this treatment as an attempt to revive the sick.
Elsewhere in Europe, I think it was like there there
(30:01):
was a Dutch method in particular that used this technology.
So this was not new. This was not an invention
of Samuel Tessed, but he was very much advocating, Yes,
if you have somebody that may have been underwater too long,
then you might want to pump smoke into any orifice
available to you. Wow, and we all have a new
(30:22):
uh euphemism, the fundament, The fundament. Yes, I've never heard
that one before. Yeah. This, Uh, that's another thing. Some
of these writings will you'll find. I mean it varies,
I guess from source to source. But some don't really
want to get into this particular part of the human
anatomy or into various animate treatments. But I mean, I
(30:42):
guess one of the things is, first of all, clearly
humans have been using this technology for a very long time.
And I guess if you're getting into situations of life
and death, yeah, I mean, people were like, well, what
can we try? What have we not tried? Have we
tried pumping tobacco smoke uh into their body by any
means necessary? Yeah? Wild? I mean, hey, trial and error,
(31:04):
you know, over the years, it has benefited us that
someone tried putting tobacco smoke in someone's fundaments. Again, listening
at home, do not attempt any of this at home. Meanwhile,
in the Americas, however, where of course we're ultimately going
with all of this, there's evidence that the oldmes used
inema technology to administer psychoactive substances and smoke inemas were
(31:26):
definitely used by various North American tribes, and this is
also mentioned in Morris's book. But finally coming back around
to the Mayans. So the Mayans certainly engaged in ritual intoxication.
For example, they drank this substance called bal cha, which
was made from the bark of the evergreen tree Luncho
(31:47):
Carpus violachias. It was soaked in water and honey and
then it was fermented. So they had this this drink,
this balcha. Also, the honey apparently would have been from
ease who fed on a high ergine morning glory. This,
according to F. J. Kared artall in hallucinogenic drugs in
(32:08):
pre Columbian Mesoamerican cultures from So this is where it
gets interesting with the ball cha though, And this is
this is the way Kara Artel explains it. So ball
cha is alcoholic at the end of this process, but
it's it's kind of low in its alcohol level, so
you have to drink a lot of it to reach
the desired level of intoxication to the point. It sounds
(32:31):
like that you'd become sick well before you reach that point.
So there are a lot of images in the Mayan
art of individuals vomiting from the drink. And it also
sounds like you would actually wear some manner of of
bag around your neck, like essentially you'd have a barf
bag on hand um to use while consuming it. Now,
(32:52):
of course, this this wouldn't be the only right of
using some sort of a substance that involved vomiting. I
mean this is also common to things like you hear
about this in ayahuasca uh ceremonies and so forth. So
at any rate, very hard to reach this desired level
of intoxication with this stuff, you're gonna be vomiting. Also,
other substances were also taken, including tobacco laced with datura
(33:15):
and in addition to ball chay, psycho stimulants and hallucinogens
were also consumed and ritual animals were also taken, and
we see that on various surviving examples of Mayan pottery,
including I included a picture of this for you. Seth Uh.
There is a ritual jar from the met collection and
(33:35):
it's from the eighth to ninth century, and it seems
to display wise women aiding or instructing men in the
use of the enemas with the liquid for the enemies
originating from a large jar like the artifact itself here
with some sort of foaming liquid in it. And this
is I think widely thought to be a fermented drink,
(33:55):
likely ball chay. It's quite beautiful to this piece of pottery. Um,
if you were just walking through a museum and you
glanced at it, you wouldn't think twice about it. But
then you you take that second look, and uh, yeah,
it's it's even more interesting. Yeah. I don't remember this
from any visit I've I've had to the mat. It
may not be something that is of course on regularly
(34:16):
on display, uh, but it does seem like the kind
of thing that one could easily walk by and you
not realize that this is the subject of it, and
this was perhaps the purpose for the artifact. I think
this is an important lesson to all of us that
we need to pay more attention when we're in the museums. Yes,
I mean especially in the matt there's so much to see.
But at any rate, this would all make sense given
(34:37):
the fact that again balja had a lower alcohol content
to it, and if you were to take it via enema,
this would enhance absorption of set alcohol and also it
would bypass the whole barfing thing. Now what where it
gets also interesting here is that you might hear all
this and it sounds um hedonic, you know, it sounds
like some sort of you know, crazy rich will um.
(35:01):
But according to smit at All, this is the This
is the the the authors of the ignoble winning paper,
the Mayans were largely understood to have been a contemplative people.
So on one hand, this seems to have sort of
presented a conundrum to some people studying the Mayans, because
it seemed maybe out of character that they would that
they would, you know, do all these other serious minded things,
(35:21):
but then engage in this sort of ritual. Well uh,
And I should also add that smit at All also
suggests that while the substance used may well have been alcohol.
Some scenes also might suggest the use of tobacco and
quote water lily or some other flowering plant as key ingredients.
At any rate, the argument, sort of the counter argument,
(35:43):
I guess made by a caret artal is that this
wasn't a hedonic practice. This was a spiritual practice, and
it was typically conducted in caves uh and these would
have been considered places that were closer to the spirit realm.
And that the consumption of the these various substances I
mean basically like a whole cocktail of mind and body
(36:05):
alternating substances that would have included apparently psychoactive mushrooms as
well potentially, and these were widely used among Mesoamerican cultures.
That all of this the location the ritual, like the
non psychoactive aspects of the ritual, just the performative aspects
of it, and then of course the psychoactive aspects of it.
That this would all serve to bring you closer in
(36:26):
line with the spirit world. And again this would have
been a spiritual ritual that everyone was engaging in here.
Needless to say, the Spanish disapproved of all of this,
even the production of ball Chay itself, So I find
I found all this rather interesting. Um again, not a
topic I would think I would I would have I
would have normally researched on my own. But once you
start getting into it and uh and taking it apart.
(36:48):
Uh yeah, very fascinating. Yeah yeah, the the the twists
and turns of this, it goes deeper than I would
have would have thought. It's it's not not just the
punch line, right, but if that punchline forces people to
look a little closer at it than than Yes, the
Ignal Bells have done their purpose here sneaker at the
study or the or the paper, but then look closer
(37:11):
and and learn a few things. So I applaud them
for this selection. Thank you, thank you. All Right, We've
got one last study today from the Igno Bell Award winners.
This was the Applied Cardiology Prize, so this had multiple contributors.
(37:35):
We had pro Jakova, Saksi, Baron's, Lynde, and Kretz. And
this was for seeking and finding evidence that when new
romantic partners meet for the first time and feel attracted
to each other, their heart rates synchronize. It's a bold
claim and I was fascinated by this just from the beginning,
(37:57):
and I will say that's that's a bit of a
sensationalist headline, and I think it's actually a bit deeper
than that, but but still it's it's it's pretty accurate, yeah,
because if you're just taking it faith value, it sounds
sort of like a scientific attempt to understand something you
saw on a Looney Tunes cartoon. It's like when a
wolf sees of a pretty lady, does do his eyeballs
really stick out like that and his heart fall on
(38:19):
the table and crawl around and his tongue grows twelve
sizes and and unrolls like a carpets. Yeah. Yeah, these
are all facts. So to determine what drives attraction, the
researchers measured the physiological dynamics between real people on real dates.
And this was outside of the lab environments. It was
still controlled environments, but it was not happening inside a lab.
(38:41):
They gathered the data in multiple ways. Um they had
eye tracking glasses with embedded cameras. They had a heart
rate monitors and skin conductivity sensors all happening at the
same time while they did their multiple prodding and testing,
which I'll get into. So so there were multiple findings.
Three specifically, one, women were typically more expressive than males. Two,
(39:05):
men stared at women more than women stared at men.
And most importantly the point of this paper from from
the ignoble point of view, three visible signals that can
be controlled, such as facial expression or gaze did not
predict attraction. Instead, attraction was predicted by synchrony and heart
(39:26):
rate and skin conductance between partners, which is involuntary, unconscious,
and very difficult to regulate. So with a modern dating
culture the way it is right now, you know, you'll
just go into your mind of either things you experience
or your friends experience. Uh, you know, we're all utilizing
dating apps and dating websites, which has become far more
(39:48):
common than it ever has been before. The three big
consequences that this paper pointed out from that are that
people are dating strangers far more often. It's not just
like your friend's friend or a co worker or whatever,
it's just someone you met online. Um, so ergo, less
time is spent with a potential partner before you decide
on having subsequent dates, and that like the potential dating
(40:10):
pool and the candidates for dating is much much larger.
But also kind of much more anonymous. So, you know,
with all these potential limiting factors with relationships that's happening
in today's world, people still, you know, get attracted to
each other, People still date, people still get married. So
they really wanted to research what was the root predictor
(40:33):
for attraction and that was the goal of this research.
So they set up a series of tests and they
were fascinating and really wild. But um, I'm going to
try and describe it, but they they had actual graphs
in the paper, So look up the paper if you
want to see some artists renderings of how this all looked.
But basically, they set up a blind date for the participants.
(40:54):
They set them up in this nice little cabin where
they set them down at a table and then there's
a partition and in between them, okay, and it can
raise and lower on a timer or as the researchers needed.
So with the the there was a wide variety of circumstances.
You know, the partition is up, the partition is closed.
Now I want you to talk freely for two minutes.
(41:15):
I want you to look at each other for two
minutes but not talk, etcetera, etcetera. Etcetera. All kinds of
different tests and variables and controls. They they all were
there and they were all pointed out in this paper.
After gathering their data from this you know, blind date
into cabin with robots, uh, the researchers would then ask
(41:36):
the participants a series of questions about their date. Number one,
do you think your partner would want to date you again?
Number two? How attractive do you think your partner is?
And number three how attractive do you think your partner
finds you? So here here are the findings with the
question do you think your partner would want to date
(41:57):
you again? Only about fifty were correct. Females were slightly
more accurate than males. Females got correct while males got fifty,
but all pretty close to overall pretty much just you know,
flip of a coin. With the questions involved in attractiveness,
their findings were pretty fascinating. The more attractive the subject
(42:19):
found their partner, the more likely they were to think
that their partner was attracted to them. I'm gonna say
that again, just kind of be as clear as possible.
The more attractive the subject found their partner, the more
likely they were to think that their partner was attracted
to them. Okay, So so to sort of translate, like,
(42:42):
the more out of your league you find the other person, statistically,
the more likely you think that that person is actually
attracted Yes, yes, which which is fascinating I I I
would think that that that the opposite was true. But
but here we are now. May maybe it's got something
to do with like flood Like maybe it's like part
(43:03):
of our evolution of like flooding our body with endorphins
when you are attracted to someone just to give you
the confidence to ask them out on a date or whatever.
So huh but uh, there was no correlation found in
that at all, and it was actually found to be counterintuitive. Uh.
If you look at the graphs, it's not exactly a
(43:26):
wrong to right, but it's close to it. The graphs
are moving in opposite directions, so so that is a
wrong estimation. And in general, it was just proven that
people are not very accurate when reading a partner's romantic
intentions full stop. Like that's just one of the biggest
things they found. Um, so, ultimately, our biology is a
(43:47):
much better judge of what's happening than our than our
thoughts that are than our brains. More or less, here's
a chunk that's going to kind of explain that this
is directly from the paper quote. Intriguingly, people are often
una were of being influenced by others effective displays. This
is evident from studies showing that friends and lovers implicitly
(44:08):
mimic each other's nonverbal behavior, such as gaze and facial expressions. Remarkably,
a series of recent studies demonstrated that committed romantic partners
synchronize their heart rate and skin conductance, and that the
level of synchrony was positively associated with the quality of
relationship emotional ties, such as the amount of time spent
(44:29):
together and the ability to identify the emotions of one's partner.
Contemporary theories proposed that behavioral and psychological synchrony results from
the biologically mediated tendency to adapt to incoming social information. Specifically,
during an interaction, individuals continuously exchange information via verbal and
(44:50):
non verbal routes like a date, for example. Continuing during
this process, the sensory receptors convert vibrational energy from the
partner's face and body to electrical impulses that the brain
then uses to acquire social and emotional information. A recent
fmr I study showed that the human brain possesses a
(45:13):
neural mechanism which attracts individuals to partners who effective nonverbal behavior.
They can easily understand. From this point of view, emotional
expressions that people display do not only communicate emotions, they
embody human feelings, build social bonds, and promote attraction. It's
a pretty big thing to find. I mean that that
(45:37):
that really does I. I know you and I are
both both married men, but it makes me think that
I would approach dating differently knowing that, you know, like
like just just kind of thinking about like how I
feel and and just kind of like duplicating the intentions
and the subtle signals of of my potential dating partner.
(45:58):
Like it's just I don't I think, thankfully I haven't
had had to date someone in like twenty years, but
it's still it's a fascinating idea. Yeah, I mean, especially
when you think about the things that prepare one to
enter the dating world are it's it's stuff you're you're hearing,
maybe parentally, just to varying degrees depending on what the
parental presence is, like also socially, Also things that are
(46:19):
presented to you in media, but and in music, you know,
obviously in movies and so forth. But uh, but there's
there's never I don't think there's ever like a time
when someone says, all right, here's the science of what
you're about to go out and do. I mean, certainly
when you get down to uh, physical sexuality, yes, hopefully
there is going to be that in place, but in
terms of like, this is actually what's going on when
(46:41):
you're just even anticipating how another person feels about you. Yeah,
this is so going back to the data, this is
what they found to be true, Um, when these attractions
were genuine, not based on what people thoughts, but actually
like you know, is this person attractive yes? Is this
person attractive yes? Completely separates isolated answers. They found that
(47:02):
analyzing the heart rates during the dates, it was far
more accurate, I mean, like absurdly more accurate than just
asking you know, do you think they liked you? Like
it was it's just off the charts different. This also
went with uh, skin conductivity, but the heart rate was
the part that they really focused on on this paper. Um, so,
(47:24):
I mean they even did some things. Once again, you
should read the paper, it's fascinating where they just just
to test their theory, they started matching the heart rates
from randomly selected other dates to see if perhaps this
was just something that happened to anyone on a date
with anyone. But no, no, they didn't match up at all,
Like like, it wasn't something that happened. That there is
(47:45):
a subtle, unconscious, non verbal pairing that's happening, and and
the closer that pairing occurs biologically, the more you are
attracted to each other. And it's fascinating that that this
might have much deeper implications that are provided just here
(48:05):
in this paper. But it's it's it's a really interesting,
uh piece of information. Uh So, So basically keep in
mind that facial cues, movements, and words would sometimes attempt
a similar mimicry in these dates, but the heart was
the best indicator for sure. So why is this funny?
It's it's kind of proving like an old adage, you know,
(48:26):
you should listen to your heart, you know, if you're
out on a date with someone, you know. It's it's
funny because in so many um instances of like you know,
romantic love, the heart really is like the center point.
It's saying like this is you know where love comes from?
Valentine's etcetera, etcetera. Hearts, hearts, hearts, and then like you know,
(48:46):
maybe being a bit cynical, we go, oh, it's actually
from the brain, it's from personality, etcetera, etcetera. No, No, no, actually,
you know Valentine's are kind of right that that your
heart really does factor in in a pretty substantial at
least in terms of accurately predicting attraction. And why this
is important is that self awareness and self analysis is
(49:08):
always a good thing. It's it's important first of all
to know that perhaps your um perception of whether or
not someone is attracted to you, you could be way
off on that, substantially way off. And perhaps if you
use heart monitors on yourself and your date, then you'll
have a more accurate representation. Uh. If this is actually
(49:28):
going somewhere, so that rock Set was right, listen to
your heart. There's nothing else to Rocks that were right.
Rock Set was a duo now I'm remembering, Yes, the
Rocks that was not was not an individual but to
Swedish pop stars, I believe, and I think that wraps
up our Ignobles for two. I believe it does now.
(49:49):
There there were some other winning studies from this year
we're not going to cover here. If you want the
full list, you're gonna have to go to Improbable dot
com slash i g. That's their website and just look
look up Improbable Research on any search engine and it
will be one of the first two things that come
up for you. They always do a great job of
just on one page you can see all the winner
(50:12):
since they have links to the various studies. Now, sometimes
those studies are gonna be hidden behind pay walls or
in one case, for one of the award winners this
year entirely in Japanese. There's one about like how do
people turn a door knob? That I wanted to know
more about, but I could not find an English translation
(50:32):
of the study, so I'm just had to be like,
all right, I just I'm gonna have to leave this
whe it phays value. So anyway, check that out. There
always a lot of fun, and of course we have
past episodes of stuff to blow your mind that have
looked at winners from years past. So that's gonna be
it for this episode. But let's see just to run
through a few things here. Um. First of all, yes,
(50:53):
core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind come to
you on two days and Thursdays. And the Stuff to
Blow your Mind podcast feed, where you can find wherever
you get your pot gusts. On Monday's we do listener mail,
on Wednesday's we do a short form monster fact or
artifact episode, and on Fridays we do Weird How Cinema.
That's their time to set aside most serious concerns and
just talk about a weird film. Thanks as always to
(51:14):
Set for producing the show and of course on this
episode co hosting while Joe was out on for rental leave.
And if you want to get in touch with us
about anything we discussed here about other ig Nobel Prize
winning studies, about past episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
present episodes and Stuff to Blow Your Mind or future episodes,
just drop us a line at contact at Stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind
(51:43):
is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for My
Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. Times to three
po
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Land, and I'm Seth
Nicholas Johnson. That's right, Joe is still out on parentally. Uh.
He and his wife are somewhere in the zombie land
(00:25):
of of of early parenthood. Uh, they're because they're completely
in the dark. I haven't heard from him in a
few days, so I think everything. I think he's in
the upside down basically right now where where up is
up is down, down is up. Uh. Sleep takes place
whenever it can be obtained. Uh. Now how long does
(00:45):
this period last? Do you know? Rob like like like
the like baby won't sleep through the night phase. I
I have no idea. Um, I'm not certain either. I
think to some extent it varies from child to child.
And yeah, I'm more knowledgeable what's sort of like general
trends in in child sleep habits. And I know that
that that, of course is going to vary a lot
(01:06):
from kid to kid. Uh. My wife and I are
fortunate that our our child has always been a very
very committed sleeper. But but I know that's that's not
always the case, well, well, best of luck to Joe
right now in his uh, you know, parental duties right now,
and I'm sure he is spending his free time listening
(01:27):
to this podcast. So hello Joe. All right, So if
you joined us on Tuesday, then you know that we
began discussing some of this year's winners of the ig
Nobel Prizes. Uh. This is a series of awards that
are given out each year by the scientific humor journal,
(01:48):
the Annals of Improbable Research, that has been edited for
many years now by Mark Abrams and their stated purposes
to quote honor achievements that make people laugh and then
make them think, and so every year on stuff to
bow your mind. Since I don't know how long I
don't know how long I've been doing this, we generally
look at at least some of the winners from from
(02:09):
that given year and discuss them, talking about, you know,
why they're funny, what's important about the studies, what's interesting
about the studies. And it's generally a great exercise because
a lot of times the stuff that wins it gets
into an area that we might not otherwise explore, or
we wouldn't devote an entire episode to certainly, and uh yeah,
I always learned something new. So this is the second episode.
(02:32):
But this is one of those situations where if you
missed Tuesday and you're already listening to today's episode Thursday's episode,
you're still probably good to go, because we're just looking
at individual winners that revolve around generally one study. Maybe
you're a handful of studies, but each one is kind
of a self contained topic. So go ahead, feel free
to listen to this one and then go back and
(02:53):
listen to Tuesday's You'll be just fine. So last time,
I think we talked about three different studies, and once
again we're gonna talk about three more today. Uh seth,
why don't you start us off with your first selection?
This one is the winner of the Safety Engineering Prize.
This was a paper written by Magnus Gens and it
(03:14):
was for developing a moose crash test dummy. And uh
that this was out of Sweden. This was published by
the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, and it's
it's just fun to picture crash test dummies in general.
Do you remember in like the gosh, late eighties, early nineties,
there was a crash test dummy trend for some reason. Yeah,
(03:37):
I I definitely remember this because I remember being a
bit into it. There were commercials right and had crash
test dummies, but they also at least made action figures
and in little crash sets, and I think I might
have even had one of the action figures. I had
a couple of myself. I had a car and two
of the action figures of the dummies, because I believe
(03:59):
they made an anime series based on it as well.
My memory is kind of fuzzy about this, but I
definitely remember the toys, and I definitely remember the live
action commercials, and yeah, that the toys were interesting because
they often had some sort of action where if you
like pressed a button on their chest, you know, their
arms would fly off or or like the doors would
come off the cars or something. And yeah, hey, trends
(04:19):
for children are very strange, but there was definitely a
crash test dummy trend for children, uh, late eighties, early nineties.
But but anyway, Oh no, no, I have to keep
going on this because it raises the question now that
I think I haven't really thought about this in a
long time, but do you think that this was a
situation where our desire as children to have action figures
(04:40):
of dummies that were used in crash tests like industrial
crash test. Was this entirely manufactured this desire and marketed
to us, or did they anticipate the fact that children
would see these ads and say, hey, I want one
of those. This looks fun. I'm in I think this
was a Geico Caveman situation where a company probably paid
(05:02):
just for some standard like you know, public service announcement
ads made some very colorful, friendly looking live action p
s as, and when they aired on television, for some reason,
children really glommed onto it. Maybe they were aired during
the Saturday morning cartoon breaks or something, and for some reason,
maybe the bright colors, maybe the action, the goofy like,
(05:23):
you know, almost like live action Looney Tunes esqueness of
like the explosions and whatnot. Maybe that just appealed to
children so hard that some enterprising, you know, business person went,
I know, let's sell this to those kids, you know.
So I I think it was a television commercial they
got too popular for its own good, and then they
(05:45):
took advantage of it. That that's my guess. Imagine if
they had known, they could have introduced a moose trash
test down me as well, a talking moose that would
have been amazing, like a funny sidekick Bowwinkle style. Everyone.
I love that. So, so that is what we're discussing today.
Just picture a moose crash test dummy and why they
(06:06):
would need it. And here's a little chunk from the
abstract from this paper quote. In certain areas of our
planet there are big wild animals. One big species is
the moose called elk in certain regions. Scandinavia has a
very large moose population and car moose collision is a
(06:26):
huge problem with many fatal outcomes. In order to reduce
the number of injuries caused by passenger cars colliding with moose,
a valid and repeatable method to arrange staged accidents is needed.
A moose dummy was constructed after thorough research work. Yeah,
so a couple of things, Like, first of all, like
(06:46):
the moose is very large. The moose is much larger
than a deer, and and hitting a deer with an
automobile is already a serious concern. But on top of that,
you also have behavioral differences with the moose, like a
moose uh has a different or can have a different
um attitude toward vehicles and in encounters. I've certainly heard
tales of vehicles being charged by a moose before. Oh yeah,
(07:09):
and and they're huge, which we we will get to.
We'll get into some very specific stats very soon. So, so,
the two primary goals of this research were accuracy, and
they wanted the cars that collided with the dummy moose
to have a comparable damage to real cars that collided
with real moose. So you know, I think most crash
test folks have that goal in mind. And the second
(07:31):
was repeatability. They wanted this moose dummy to be able
to endure many crash tests before it had to be replaced. Again,
makes sense. These are very expensive to construct. You know,
you want to get your money's worth out of them.
So first and foremost, animal collisions with cars are very common.
They're dangerous, and they're also very unpredictable. Animals simply don't
(07:52):
tend to follow the rules of the road. Uh, no
matter how many signs we put up for them. You know,
cross here, your dumb dear, this is your cross swak.
But but they just don't pay attention to that. Yeah,
add into that, having a disrupted environment which there are
fewer predators to actually keep the numbers of say, dear down. Yeah,
it becomes becomes a huge issue. No, No, this is
their faults. We gave them a side cross here, this
(08:15):
is your crosswalk, and they just don't they don't do it.
So not. Now. Moose collisions are particularly dangerous because they
are very top heavy, very tall, and have relatively spindly
legs for a creature of their size. So the average
moose is about six ft tall at the shoulder, and
it can get obviously much bigger than that, and they
(08:36):
can weigh as much as fourteen hundred pounds, and like
I said, most of that weight is you know, pretty
high up in the air. And if anyone out there
has ever like seen a moose in real life, it's
it's actually kind of kind of like, I don't know,
it's it's it's awesome. It feels shocking to see a
(08:57):
creature that large in person. Yeah, I have. I have
very vague memories of my childhood and Canada of seeing
these seeing a moose and it was quite I mean,
I wouldn't say it was terrifying, but yeah, it was
kind of on inspiring. They're just so huge, Yeah, for sure.
So this study took place in Sweden, where annually thirty
(09:18):
thousand car accidents involving cloven footed animals occur. That means
ninety accidents daily, and thirteen of those ninety involved a moose.
Unrelated to this study, the row deer is actually the
cause of the majority of these collisions, but they are
much smaller and lighter, so they cause far less damage.
(09:39):
Those thirteen out of the ninety daily accidents are the
ones that are I'm not gonna say almost always fatal,
but are often fatal because, like I said, fourteen hundred pounds,
six ft tall, and it's it's they're they're like a
very heavy anvil on top of a very small spindle
legged table. Like there, it's it's just not it's not smart,
(10:00):
you know. So our researcher then has pages and pages
of research to determine like the physiology of the moose
to be replicated by the dummy UH formulas to determine
the velocity during collisions typical car sifty practices that might
be found in the average vehicle models, etcetera, ETCeteras. Now
that they're going to start to build up this dummy
(10:21):
moose one version, they take a bunch of water filled hoses,
you know, to try and get that weight and that
kind of like oh um that that animal pu push
but also solidity didn't quite work. They tried another version
with wires and would but but once again it was
a bit too fragile that couldn't get the weight quite
(10:43):
right with it, but ultimately ended up working. Were these
big thick slabs of rubber kind of cross cut um. Specifically,
they were thirty six rubber plates assembled vertically and assembled
together through through through locking wires. The the way I
can describe this is um. I remember as a child
(11:03):
there were these like model kits where where they were um, hundreds,
if not thousands, of these little flat you know, shapes
that you would then stack on top of one another,
and it would build like a three D model of something,
usually a bust or something like that. You know I'm
talking about rob Yeah, I had one of these of
jar Jar Binks before the film came out. I didn't
(11:26):
I didn't know who this character was. After the film,
I perhaps would not have cared to build a model
of this character. Uh So you can see these pretty
easily online too, if you just search um crash test moose.
I'm sure you'll be able to find them. You can
also find actually some pretty good footage on television shows
(11:47):
or things like that of people using them, and it's
it's it's pretty beautiful. You'll know we're talking about the
same one if you see this. There's basically like it
looks kind of like a swing set hanging above the moose,
and then there's a releasing mechanism with electrical magnets that
will hold the moose like the correct height pre collision,
but then ensuring that the mechanism won't contribute to the
(12:09):
results of the damage. It will be completely free and
clear when the collision actually occurs. Because once again, these
animals are a mystery. So the dummy cannot stand on
these little spindle legs on its own. It needs a
little support structure to hold it at the correct height
before the car actually gets there. Yeah, the sense I
kind of get from the image here. It's like if
(12:29):
you if you three D printed the torso of a moose,
like from from romp to next dump, and then you
you hung it from like a swing set structure of
some sorry. Yeah, and and to represent the legs they
got these uh, big wires hanging down, and they covered
it with more rubber disks to represent the weight and
(12:50):
the size of each leg. And there there are subtle
variations between front legs and back legs. But but but
you know, uh, the body was the big concern of this, know, uh,
more or less it's um it's that big weight. It's
that big high center of gravity weights that just falls
on the car. Because I mean, if you think about it,
(13:12):
um here here's more or less what happens to think
about a typical car's height in relation to a moose
and its anatomy, especially when you think about like where
a bumper is on a typical sedan. So so the
bumper is gonna come in real low, it's just a
couple of feet from the ground, hits the moose in
its tall, thin legs, and as a result, the animal
will then rotate over the engine hood and crashed through
(13:35):
the windshield pounds, which then releases all that weight directly
onto the driver and the passenger. That's why it's often
so deadly. It's it's not because it's heavy. It's not
because they stand in the road and sometimes charge at you.
It's because they're heavy and they're tall, so that our
cars are almost like engineered to get hurt the most
(13:57):
from this creature. It's it's it's a it's a difficult thing.
So ultimately this stummy was successful. They were able to
you know, repeat their crashes multiple times with this giant
rubber body. And also it was able to accurately duplicate
the real life damage from these creatures. So. Um, currently,
(14:18):
if if you see the images of this, I haven't
seen any with a head yet. They say that eventually
they do plan to build one with a head and
antlers because apparently there's a pendulum like effect when the
body is hit, then the head follows afterwards, etcetera, etcetera. Um,
but that's secondary damage. Like I said, they're focusing on
that big, hulking pound body. And this study came out
(14:41):
in two thousand one, so maybe they have done the
head since then. Yes, yes, perhaps so. Uh So, So
why is this funny? Um, it's a it's a most stummy.
It's it's very specific, it's very silly, and ultimately moose
are just kind of like an interesting, odd creature. Um. Also,
I can say that as as a lifelong fan of
the TV show MythBusters. I have to mention that this
(15:03):
subject was also tackled in season six, episode one of
that show. This was in their Alaska special UH. Specifically,
what they did is they tested the myth that it's
better to hit a moose going quickly rather than slowing down.
So so, like I, I I believe in this show they
may have used the exact same crash test dummy from
(15:25):
this UM from this UH, from this paper. However, I
couldn't find the exact footage, so I can't confirm that
I'm just going based on memory that myth was busted
going really fast. The The myth was that if you're
going really fast when you hit the moose, that like
like the aerodynamic kind of curve of a car will
just fling the moose directly over your car and you'll
be perfectly safe. That is not the case. Like I said,
(15:48):
it's four pounds, Nah, it's it's it's crushing that front
of your car. Unfortunately, you can, like I said, you
can see footage. You can look this up on YouTube.
It's wild to see. UM. So yes was busted. Don't
think that going extra fast will make you safer when
when running into a moose and which brings me to
why this is important. This can genuinely lead to saving lives,
(16:11):
particularly in areas like Scandinavia or the Pacific Northwest regions
of of the of North America, basically anywhere that a
moose can be found easily. This data can you know,
be duplicated and given to car manufacturers, so they can
know which parts of their cars, especially cars that are
sold often in these regions where they need extra you
(16:34):
know enforcement, you know, Uh, can they make a moose
proof windshield? Is that even possible? Will will cars have
like not not not a cow catcher, but a moose
catcher in the in the near future who knows, who knows?
But but now they can test it over and over
again and hopefully make safer cars for these regions that uh,
(16:55):
you know, are I want to say moose proof, but
that's probably a bit too ambitious. Well, I mean, the
moose test is definitely a thing. Um. Just doing a
little searching around, I found this is a website called
hot cars dot com and they have an article five
cars that have passed Sweden's moose test and five that failed.
And yeah, these are all different vehicles and they just
(17:17):
look like normal automobiles are just about normal automobiles with
enough like safety protocol and um like structural integrity I suppose,
and in some cases larger looking vehicles but sometimes not
so large um that that have done well. So I
guess in a way, I'm not disappointed that there are
no crazy Swedish moose proof vehicles that look like the
(17:39):
front of a train, but it is great that they've
been able to take this data and then use it
to ensure safety in various vehicles. This is a complete tangent.
But have you ever seen Land of the Dead, the
George A. Romero film? Is that the one with the
tower and John Lacosama. Yes, yes, exactly, I have, but
I haven't seen it since it came out, so I'm
(17:59):
a little foggy. There's a vehicle there's a vehicle in
in that film called Dead Reckoning, which is like their
major like vehicle for like going out into the world,
and it's basically zombie proof. And in the end of
that movie they all hop in Dead Reckoning and they
drive to Canada and that's like they're like, hey, where
we're okay? And I think you know what, I think
Dead Reckoning is moose proof. So that would be that'd
(18:22):
be a real kicker, that'd be a real down or
ending where they escape in this vehicle, then they hit
their first moose and they're just done for. They could
survive the zombie hordes, but they can't survive a zombie moose.
(18:43):
All Right, For the next one, I'm gonna be talking
about the Art History Prize. So I suppose the other
side of covering Ignobile Award winning studies is that sometimes
it forces us to cover topics that we might not
otherwise cover um at least these days, and that's certainly
the case with the r History winner. For two honored
are this page is This paper from was published in
(19:06):
the Journal of ethno Pharmacology by Peter de Smett and
Nicholas Hellmuth, titled a Multidisciplinary Approach to Ritual Enema Scenes
on Ancient Maya Pottery. So, just to kick things off,
why is it funny? Well, I guess it's supposed to
be funny because it features enemas, but I also kind
of have to I mean, just in general, yes, I
(19:28):
buy that logic. I didn't particularly find this one to
be a humorous inclusion, but I mean everyone's sense of
humor is going to vary on this sort of thing,
and I suppose it's it's the juxtaposition to that, if
you are to see depictions of enemas, you don't expect
it to be on your your pottery, on on your
on your fine china. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose so like that,
(19:49):
it's art history and that and and that's the thing
because because the next question why is it important? Well,
it's kind of a double whammy here, because first of all,
the discipline of ethno pharmacology is highly fascinating. It can
also be illuminate. It can also be rather illuminating and
potentially illuminating about the use of various substances that Western
medicine has not quite come around to yet. And then
(20:11):
also we're talking about Mayan history here, my in history
and culture, so I feel like it is the sort
of thing that shouldn't be ignored. So I'm not going
to lean as much into the humor on this one,
but it was all very fascinating and I want to
explain it all a bit, maybe demystify it. So to
kick things off, though, I feel like what we should
have a little refresher on Mayan civilization that kind of
(20:34):
refresher is very much in order. So we're talking about
the Mesoamerican civilization that occupied southern Mexico, Guatemala, and northern Belize.
The Mayan pre Classic period is measured back to two
thousand b C, with the Classic period running to fifty
c Eed and nine and the post Classic period running
up until fifteen thirty nine. This was an advanced civilization
(20:57):
with agriculture, a sophisticated right system, mathematics, calendar and astronomical systems,
and a highly developed architectural and artistic style, as we've
discussed on the show before. Of course, the arrival of
Europeans to to this region constituted a kind of outside
context event that designated the civilizations and cultures of the Americas.
(21:20):
But many aspects of Mind culture survived and are cherished.
I believe something like thirty Mind languages are still spoken today.
And there has been a pan Maya movement that's an
ethno political movement in Mexico and Guatemala by often marginalized
Maya people there. And of course, on top of this,
there have been many efforts to better understand and celebrate
(21:40):
the culture and history of the Mayans. Despite all the
Spanish initially destroyed. Okay, so that's your refresher on the Mayans.
Now let's get into a refresh on enemies. So strictly speaking, uh,
an enema is an injection of liquid into the lower
bowel through the rectum, and the most often reason for
this procedure is to relieve constipation or to prepare for
(22:04):
medical procedures. It's it's simply stool evacuation. It's liquid aided
stool evacuation. Now, the mere act of waste leaving the
body already kind of has a myriad of real and
imagine benefits, because obviously waste leaving the body is a
good thing. We've kind of talked about this in the
last episode. What happens when a scorpion loses its anus
(22:25):
and it cannot relieve itself, Well, its stuff builds up
and uh and it's it's not necessarily great for the scorpion.
So excess materials do need to leave the body after
our bodies have extracted as much from the matter as
can be extracted. But then on top of that, again
we have this, we have this deep history of humanity's
(22:48):
attempt to to understand our bodies and also conflating and
confusing hygiene with purity at times. I'm reminded particularly of
a book I had to pick this one off the
shelf for this one A little Bit UH by Virginia
Smith titled Clean, A History of Personal Hygiene Impurity, which
is a great read if anyone's interested in like the
history of things like like just bathing rituals and so forth.
(23:10):
Sona rituals and how you have these sort of dual
columns of the ways that these things are actually good
for us, the way they actually cleanse us. And then
on the other side are complicated understanding of purity, spiritual purity,
and also getting into various um, you know, pre medical
theories of how the body works. So, for instance, Smith
(23:32):
points out that according to Greek humoral theory UH, a
strong bowel movement was an indicator of of a healthy
body ridding itself of dangerous waste. And if this didn't
seem to be the case with them in a an
an individual, if you didn't seem to to to be
having good strong bowel movements, well, then a whole host
of quote herbal or mineral purges and emetics might ensue.
(23:57):
Now coming back to those to the detail that the
entire gut is all about processing organic material and absorbing
water and nutrients from it, and then displacing whatever can't
be digested at all or can't be digested in a
timely matter. UH. It shouldn't come as a surprise that
even at the very final leg of the journey, the
system is still capable of absorbing water and due to
(24:21):
the rectum's blood supply, the rectum can also absorb various
substances and drugs such as alcohol, tobacco, and UH, and
also various like hallucinogenic materials as well. Now at this point,
I know some of you might be thinking of various
like shocking headlines and scare headlines that have appeared in
(24:42):
the media over the years, and I do want to
just drive home. Do that you should not try this
at home. UH. Do not try to absorb things on
your own recreationally through your rectum. UH. Two major issues
to keep in mind here is that, first of all,
there's usually a lower threshold for the side effects of
(25:02):
a given substance if it's taken rectally. And also if
you take it rectly, it bypasses your body's natural defense
of vomiting. UH. So the the level entering your system
might be too high and you can't just vomit as
a means of your body trying to rid yourself of
that substance. This makes me wonder if there has ever
(25:23):
been a headline where someone, let's say, did get alcohol
poisoning through a ingesting alcohol the wrong way and basically
the headline just said rectum damn never killed him. Maybe
so and some of you more scandalous newspapers and the
kind of newspaper you find in a barber shop that
kind or if you get your news from like a
(25:46):
mad magazine that sort of thing, you know, or the
crip keeper, I guess. But but at any rate, this
is the same issue though. This is why it is
sometimes an advantageous route for medication and by medical professionals,
because it's a way of bypassing nausea and vomiting. So
if some sort of condition is keeping the individual from
(26:08):
you know, being able to really keep anything down, well,
then the the rectal application of the medication might be
the best way to go via suppository. So this is
nothing that the humans figured all of this out quite
a long time ago. I was reading about this a
little bit the ancient Egyptian uh Ebber's Papyrus from fifteen
(26:29):
fifty b c. E makes mention of of medical enemas,
and other evidence indicates that it was an important tool
of ancient Egyptian medical practice, and it was said to
have been invented by the god thought, the divine physician,
and the God of secret knowledge. Now I'm not going
to go through the entire global history of enema usage,
but I think if one had the appetite for it,
(26:52):
one could probably do an entire episode of stuff to
blow your mind on it. There's a lot of stuff
out there. They are numerous notable examples from historic writings
from Greece, from Babylon, from China, and of course Western
European cultures across the centuries. And the reasons for these
practices breakdown into basic traditions of of either cleansing or
(27:16):
drug and alcohol absorption, or in some cases mere sensation.
So I'm not gonna I'm not gonna listen through all these,
but I did have two that I wanted to bring
up because I was cross checking some stuff in a
book titled The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other
Curiosities from the History of Medicine by Thomas Morris. This
is a really fun book and it contains multiple mentions
(27:37):
of enemas. Uh some Sometimes you'll you'll have a even
a very serious history book and you go to the
index and they don't have anything about enemas. Uh clean.
The book I referenced earlier really only has one mention
of enemas in it, and it's not listed in the index.
But Morris has your back on enema mentions multiple mentions
(27:57):
in this in this tone, and want to I want
to highlight a couple of them. First of all, this
is a headline from an eighteen fifty eight study published
in the British Medical Journal eight quote port wine in
amata as a substitute for transfusion of blood in cases
(28:17):
of postpartum hemorrhage. Needless to say this, uh this, This
may have seemed like a possible sensible alternative at the time,
but it turns out this would this would not be
the best practice. Yikes. I mean, I'm not going to
jump into conclusions. But what they like, their their their
(28:38):
their structure of thought was back then, But was the
idea like, oh it's red wine, so you know, it
looks like blood. What I didn't get into this one's
super deep. But it does seem a little late for
for that kind of logic, but uh, it was. It
was presented as a possibility. Morris also discusses a seventeen
(28:59):
sixty nine version of the Swiss physician Samuel Tissot's medical writings,
but and and so this was like a Swiss physicians
writings that then were then also published. And to some
extent it was a little foggy on what exactly has
meant here. But essentially this comes out again. It's from
(29:19):
years earlier, but then it comes out again in seventeen
sixty nine, with amateur physician and founder of Methodism John
Wesley also credited on it. I think basically Wesley was
a fan of Samuel Tissett's writings, and one of the
recommendations in the book is to revive near drowned individuals
(29:40):
by not only blowing tobacco smoke into their lungs through
their mouths, but also pumping it into quote the fundament.
Tissa advised using pipe and bladder system to do this,
which was not a new method, as European doctors were
already using this treatment as an attempt to revive the sick.
Elsewhere in Europe, I think it was like there there
(30:01):
was a Dutch method in particular that used this technology.
So this was not new. This was not an invention
of Samuel Tessed, but he was very much advocating, Yes,
if you have somebody that may have been underwater too long,
then you might want to pump smoke into any orifice
available to you. Wow, and we all have a new
(30:22):
uh euphemism, the fundament, The fundament. Yes, I've never heard
that one before. Yeah. This, Uh, that's another thing. Some
of these writings will you'll find. I mean it varies,
I guess from source to source. But some don't really
want to get into this particular part of the human
anatomy or into various animate treatments. But I mean, I
(30:42):
guess one of the things is, first of all, clearly
humans have been using this technology for a very long time.
And I guess if you're getting into situations of life
and death, yeah, I mean, people were like, well, what
can we try? What have we not tried? Have we
tried pumping tobacco smoke uh into their body by any
means necessary? Yeah? Wild? I mean, hey, trial and error,
(31:04):
you know, over the years, it has benefited us that
someone tried putting tobacco smoke in someone's fundaments. Again, listening
at home, do not attempt any of this at home. Meanwhile,
in the Americas, however, where of course we're ultimately going
with all of this, there's evidence that the oldmes used
inema technology to administer psychoactive substances and smoke inemas were
(31:26):
definitely used by various North American tribes, and this is
also mentioned in Morris's book. But finally coming back around
to the Mayans. So the Mayans certainly engaged in ritual intoxication.
For example, they drank this substance called bal cha, which
was made from the bark of the evergreen tree Luncho
(31:47):
Carpus violachias. It was soaked in water and honey and
then it was fermented. So they had this this drink,
this balcha. Also, the honey apparently would have been from
ease who fed on a high ergine morning glory. This,
according to F. J. Kared artall in hallucinogenic drugs in
(32:08):
pre Columbian Mesoamerican cultures from So this is where it
gets interesting with the ball cha though, And this is
this is the way Kara Artel explains it. So ball
cha is alcoholic at the end of this process, but
it's it's kind of low in its alcohol level, so
you have to drink a lot of it to reach
the desired level of intoxication to the point. It sounds
(32:31):
like that you'd become sick well before you reach that point.
So there are a lot of images in the Mayan
art of individuals vomiting from the drink. And it also
sounds like you would actually wear some manner of of
bag around your neck, like essentially you'd have a barf
bag on hand um to use while consuming it. Now,
(32:52):
of course, this this wouldn't be the only right of
using some sort of a substance that involved vomiting. I
mean this is also common to things like you hear
about this in ayahuasca uh ceremonies and so forth. So
at any rate, very hard to reach this desired level
of intoxication with this stuff, you're gonna be vomiting. Also,
other substances were also taken, including tobacco laced with datura
(33:15):
and in addition to ball chay, psycho stimulants and hallucinogens
were also consumed and ritual animals were also taken, and
we see that on various surviving examples of Mayan pottery,
including I included a picture of this for you. Seth Uh.
There is a ritual jar from the met collection and
(33:35):
it's from the eighth to ninth century, and it seems
to display wise women aiding or instructing men in the
use of the enemas with the liquid for the enemies
originating from a large jar like the artifact itself here
with some sort of foaming liquid in it. And this
is I think widely thought to be a fermented drink,
(33:55):
likely ball chay. It's quite beautiful to this piece of pottery. Um,
if you were just walking through a museum and you
glanced at it, you wouldn't think twice about it. But
then you you take that second look, and uh, yeah,
it's it's even more interesting. Yeah. I don't remember this
from any visit I've I've had to the mat. It
may not be something that is of course on regularly
(34:16):
on display, uh, but it does seem like the kind
of thing that one could easily walk by and you
not realize that this is the subject of it, and
this was perhaps the purpose for the artifact. I think
this is an important lesson to all of us that
we need to pay more attention when we're in the museums. Yes,
I mean especially in the matt there's so much to see.
But at any rate, this would all make sense given
(34:37):
the fact that again balja had a lower alcohol content
to it, and if you were to take it via enema,
this would enhance absorption of set alcohol and also it
would bypass the whole barfing thing. Now what where it
gets also interesting here is that you might hear all
this and it sounds um hedonic, you know, it sounds
like some sort of you know, crazy rich will um.
(35:01):
But according to smit at All, this is the This
is the the the authors of the ignoble winning paper,
the Mayans were largely understood to have been a contemplative people.
So on one hand, this seems to have sort of
presented a conundrum to some people studying the Mayans, because
it seemed maybe out of character that they would that
they would, you know, do all these other serious minded things,
(35:21):
but then engage in this sort of ritual. Well uh,
And I should also add that smit at All also
suggests that while the substance used may well have been alcohol.
Some scenes also might suggest the use of tobacco and
quote water lily or some other flowering plant as key ingredients.
At any rate, the argument, sort of the counter argument,
(35:43):
I guess made by a caret artal is that this
wasn't a hedonic practice. This was a spiritual practice, and
it was typically conducted in caves uh and these would
have been considered places that were closer to the spirit realm.
And that the consumption of the these various substances I
mean basically like a whole cocktail of mind and body
(36:05):
alternating substances that would have included apparently psychoactive mushrooms as
well potentially, and these were widely used among Mesoamerican cultures.
That all of this the location the ritual, like the
non psychoactive aspects of the ritual, just the performative aspects
of it, and then of course the psychoactive aspects of it.
That this would all serve to bring you closer in
(36:26):
line with the spirit world. And again this would have
been a spiritual ritual that everyone was engaging in here.
Needless to say, the Spanish disapproved of all of this,
even the production of ball Chay itself, So I find
I found all this rather interesting. Um again, not a
topic I would think I would I would have I
would have normally researched on my own. But once you
start getting into it and uh and taking it apart.
(36:48):
Uh yeah, very fascinating. Yeah yeah, the the the twists
and turns of this, it goes deeper than I would
have would have thought. It's it's not not just the
punch line, right, but if that punchline forces people to
look a little closer at it than than Yes, the
Ignal Bells have done their purpose here sneaker at the
study or the or the paper, but then look closer
(37:11):
and and learn a few things. So I applaud them
for this selection. Thank you, thank you. All Right, We've
got one last study today from the Igno Bell Award winners.
This was the Applied Cardiology Prize, so this had multiple contributors.
(37:35):
We had pro Jakova, Saksi, Baron's, Lynde, and Kretz. And
this was for seeking and finding evidence that when new
romantic partners meet for the first time and feel attracted
to each other, their heart rates synchronize. It's a bold
claim and I was fascinated by this just from the beginning,
(37:57):
and I will say that's that's a bit of a
sensationalist headline, and I think it's actually a bit deeper
than that, but but still it's it's it's pretty accurate, yeah,
because if you're just taking it faith value, it sounds
sort of like a scientific attempt to understand something you
saw on a Looney Tunes cartoon. It's like when a
wolf sees of a pretty lady, does do his eyeballs
really stick out like that and his heart fall on
(38:19):
the table and crawl around and his tongue grows twelve
sizes and and unrolls like a carpets. Yeah. Yeah, these
are all facts. So to determine what drives attraction, the
researchers measured the physiological dynamics between real people on real dates.
And this was outside of the lab environments. It was
still controlled environments, but it was not happening inside a lab.
(38:41):
They gathered the data in multiple ways. Um they had
eye tracking glasses with embedded cameras. They had a heart
rate monitors and skin conductivity sensors all happening at the
same time while they did their multiple prodding and testing,
which I'll get into. So so there were multiple findings.
Three specifically, one, women were typically more expressive than males. Two,
(39:05):
men stared at women more than women stared at men.
And most importantly the point of this paper from from
the ignoble point of view, three visible signals that can
be controlled, such as facial expression or gaze did not
predict attraction. Instead, attraction was predicted by synchrony and heart
(39:26):
rate and skin conductance between partners, which is involuntary, unconscious,
and very difficult to regulate. So with a modern dating
culture the way it is right now, you know, you'll
just go into your mind of either things you experience
or your friends experience. Uh, you know, we're all utilizing
dating apps and dating websites, which has become far more
(39:48):
common than it ever has been before. The three big
consequences that this paper pointed out from that are that
people are dating strangers far more often. It's not just
like your friend's friend or a co worker or whatever,
it's just someone you met online. Um, so ergo, less
time is spent with a potential partner before you decide
on having subsequent dates, and that like the potential dating
(40:10):
pool and the candidates for dating is much much larger.
But also kind of much more anonymous. So, you know,
with all these potential limiting factors with relationships that's happening
in today's world, people still, you know, get attracted to
each other, People still date, people still get married. So
they really wanted to research what was the root predictor
(40:33):
for attraction and that was the goal of this research.
So they set up a series of tests and they
were fascinating and really wild. But um, I'm going to
try and describe it, but they they had actual graphs
in the paper, So look up the paper if you
want to see some artists renderings of how this all looked.
But basically, they set up a blind date for the participants.
(40:54):
They set them up in this nice little cabin where
they set them down at a table and then there's
a partition and in between them, okay, and it can
raise and lower on a timer or as the researchers needed.
So with the the there was a wide variety of circumstances.
You know, the partition is up, the partition is closed.
Now I want you to talk freely for two minutes.
(41:15):
I want you to look at each other for two
minutes but not talk, etcetera, etcetera. Etcetera. All kinds of
different tests and variables and controls. They they all were
there and they were all pointed out in this paper.
After gathering their data from this you know, blind date
into cabin with robots, uh, the researchers would then ask
(41:36):
the participants a series of questions about their date. Number one,
do you think your partner would want to date you again?
Number two? How attractive do you think your partner is?
And number three how attractive do you think your partner
finds you? So here here are the findings with the
question do you think your partner would want to date
(41:57):
you again? Only about fifty were correct. Females were slightly
more accurate than males. Females got correct while males got fifty,
but all pretty close to overall pretty much just you know,
flip of a coin. With the questions involved in attractiveness,
their findings were pretty fascinating. The more attractive the subject
(42:19):
found their partner, the more likely they were to think
that their partner was attracted to them. I'm gonna say
that again, just kind of be as clear as possible.
The more attractive the subject found their partner, the more
likely they were to think that their partner was attracted
to them. Okay, So so to sort of translate, like,
(42:42):
the more out of your league you find the other person, statistically,
the more likely you think that that person is actually
attracted Yes, yes, which which is fascinating I I I
would think that that that the opposite was true. But
but here we are now. May maybe it's got something
to do with like flood Like maybe it's like part
(43:03):
of our evolution of like flooding our body with endorphins
when you are attracted to someone just to give you
the confidence to ask them out on a date or whatever.
So huh but uh, there was no correlation found in
that at all, and it was actually found to be counterintuitive. Uh.
If you look at the graphs, it's not exactly a
(43:26):
wrong to right, but it's close to it. The graphs
are moving in opposite directions, so so that is a
wrong estimation. And in general, it was just proven that
people are not very accurate when reading a partner's romantic
intentions full stop. Like that's just one of the biggest
things they found. Um, so, ultimately, our biology is a
(43:47):
much better judge of what's happening than our than our
thoughts that are than our brains. More or less, here's
a chunk that's going to kind of explain that this
is directly from the paper quote. Intriguingly, people are often
una were of being influenced by others effective displays. This
is evident from studies showing that friends and lovers implicitly
(44:08):
mimic each other's nonverbal behavior, such as gaze and facial expressions. Remarkably,
a series of recent studies demonstrated that committed romantic partners
synchronize their heart rate and skin conductance, and that the
level of synchrony was positively associated with the quality of
relationship emotional ties, such as the amount of time spent
(44:29):
together and the ability to identify the emotions of one's partner.
Contemporary theories proposed that behavioral and psychological synchrony results from
the biologically mediated tendency to adapt to incoming social information. Specifically,
during an interaction, individuals continuously exchange information via verbal and
(44:50):
non verbal routes like a date, for example. Continuing during
this process, the sensory receptors convert vibrational energy from the
partner's face and body to electrical impulses that the brain
then uses to acquire social and emotional information. A recent
fmr I study showed that the human brain possesses a
(45:13):
neural mechanism which attracts individuals to partners who effective nonverbal behavior.
They can easily understand. From this point of view, emotional
expressions that people display do not only communicate emotions, they
embody human feelings, build social bonds, and promote attraction. It's
a pretty big thing to find. I mean that that
(45:37):
that really does I. I know you and I are
both both married men, but it makes me think that
I would approach dating differently knowing that, you know, like
like just just kind of thinking about like how I
feel and and just kind of like duplicating the intentions
and the subtle signals of of my potential dating partner.
(45:58):
Like it's just I don't I think, thankfully I haven't
had had to date someone in like twenty years, but
it's still it's a fascinating idea. Yeah, I mean, especially
when you think about the things that prepare one to
enter the dating world are it's it's stuff you're you're hearing,
maybe parentally, just to varying degrees depending on what the
parental presence is, like also socially, Also things that are
(46:19):
presented to you in media, but and in music, you know,
obviously in movies and so forth. But uh, but there's
there's never I don't think there's ever like a time
when someone says, all right, here's the science of what
you're about to go out and do. I mean, certainly
when you get down to uh, physical sexuality, yes, hopefully
there is going to be that in place, but in
terms of like, this is actually what's going on when
(46:41):
you're just even anticipating how another person feels about you. Yeah,
this is so going back to the data, this is
what they found to be true, Um, when these attractions
were genuine, not based on what people thoughts, but actually
like you know, is this person attractive yes? Is this
person attractive yes? Completely separates isolated answers. They found that
(47:02):
analyzing the heart rates during the dates, it was far
more accurate, I mean, like absurdly more accurate than just
asking you know, do you think they liked you? Like
it was it's just off the charts different. This also
went with uh, skin conductivity, but the heart rate was
the part that they really focused on on this paper. Um, so,
(47:24):
I mean they even did some things. Once again, you
should read the paper, it's fascinating where they just just
to test their theory, they started matching the heart rates
from randomly selected other dates to see if perhaps this
was just something that happened to anyone on a date
with anyone. But no, no, they didn't match up at all,
Like like, it wasn't something that happened. That there is
(47:45):
a subtle, unconscious, non verbal pairing that's happening, and and
the closer that pairing occurs biologically, the more you are
attracted to each other. And it's fascinating that that this
might have much deeper implications that are provided just here
(48:05):
in this paper. But it's it's it's a really interesting,
uh piece of information. Uh So, So basically keep in
mind that facial cues, movements, and words would sometimes attempt
a similar mimicry in these dates, but the heart was
the best indicator for sure. So why is this funny?
It's it's kind of proving like an old adage, you know,
(48:26):
you should listen to your heart, you know, if you're
out on a date with someone, you know. It's it's
funny because in so many um instances of like you know,
romantic love, the heart really is like the center point.
It's saying like this is you know where love comes from?
Valentine's etcetera, etcetera. Hearts, hearts, hearts, and then like you know,
(48:46):
maybe being a bit cynical, we go, oh, it's actually
from the brain, it's from personality, etcetera, etcetera. No, No, no, actually,
you know Valentine's are kind of right that that your
heart really does factor in in a pretty substantial at
least in terms of accurately predicting attraction. And why this
is important is that self awareness and self analysis is
(49:08):
always a good thing. It's it's important first of all
to know that perhaps your um perception of whether or
not someone is attracted to you, you could be way
off on that, substantially way off. And perhaps if you
use heart monitors on yourself and your date, then you'll
have a more accurate representation. Uh. If this is actually
(49:28):
going somewhere, so that rock Set was right, listen to
your heart. There's nothing else to Rocks that were right.
Rock Set was a duo now I'm remembering, Yes, the
Rocks that was not was not an individual but to
Swedish pop stars, I believe, and I think that wraps
up our Ignobles for two. I believe it does now.
(49:49):
There there were some other winning studies from this year
we're not going to cover here. If you want the
full list, you're gonna have to go to Improbable dot
com slash i g. That's their website and just look
look up Improbable Research on any search engine and it
will be one of the first two things that come
up for you. They always do a great job of
just on one page you can see all the winner
(50:12):
since they have links to the various studies. Now, sometimes
those studies are gonna be hidden behind pay walls or
in one case, for one of the award winners this
year entirely in Japanese. There's one about like how do
people turn a door knob? That I wanted to know
more about, but I could not find an English translation
(50:32):
of the study, so I'm just had to be like,
all right, I just I'm gonna have to leave this
whe it phays value. So anyway, check that out. There
always a lot of fun, and of course we have
past episodes of stuff to blow your mind that have
looked at winners from years past. So that's gonna be
it for this episode. But let's see just to run
through a few things here. Um. First of all, yes,
(50:53):
core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind come to
you on two days and Thursdays. And the Stuff to
Blow your Mind podcast feed, where you can find wherever
you get your pot gusts. On Monday's we do listener mail,
on Wednesday's we do a short form monster fact or
artifact episode, and on Fridays we do Weird How Cinema.
That's their time to set aside most serious concerns and
just talk about a weird film. Thanks as always to
(51:14):
Set for producing the show and of course on this
episode co hosting while Joe was out on for rental leave.
And if you want to get in touch with us
about anything we discussed here about other ig Nobel Prize
winning studies, about past episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
present episodes and Stuff to Blow Your Mind or future episodes,
just drop us a line at contact at Stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind
(51:43):
is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for My
Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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