Endless Thread - Encore: Call of the Void

Episode Date: February 28, 2020

When you’re in a high place, peering over a ledge, do you ever get that super weird feeling that you should just... jump? This is a real scientific phenomenon that a lot of people experience, and it has a name: the call of the void. This week, we're listening back to an episode that made a lot of people feel less alone.

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. What up, endless threadheads? We are hard at work cooking up a new special series that we cannot wait to share. But this week, we thought we'd listen back to a favorite episode of ours from the early days of the show. It's one that I think made us all feel a lot less alone with our thoughts, even our intrusive thoughts. That's all I'll say. Enjoy the show. And stay subscribed for more snacks and bonuses between now and April. when we'll be back and better than ever.

Produced by the I-Lap at WBUR, Boston. Quick note before we start our show, if you're afraid of heights, you should probably listen to this episode, but you should know we are about to talk about jumping off of things. If you are having distressing thoughts, you should call 1-800-273 Talk. Anonymous and open 24-7, get some help if you need it.

Okay, let's go. Emery, this is your favorite kind of place. We went to your favorite kind of place, the top of a very tall building. This is my least favorite moment of working with you so far. I can honestly say that. And that's saying something. Yes, true. We're on top of the building right now on the rooftop, right next to the railing above a highway.

10 Buick Street. In Boston, right across from our office. Why are we here, though? I don't know. I don't know. I know, but why we had to do this, I'm not entirely sure. We had to, though. We had to go to the top of one of the tallest buildings in Boston, 10 Buick Street.

Okay, maybe not the tallest building in Boston or even close, but it's like the tallest building we could sneak onto the roof of and be relatively sure we're not going to get arrested because a fine gentleman has led us up here. And also, we're testing a theory of fear and fearlessness. Mostly of fear, in my case. It's actually a phenomenon, a phenomenon that half of the world's population supposedly feels in their gut when they're in a place like this. All right, Amory, get as close as you can to the edge.

Come on, you can do it. I'm at the edge. Let's look over a little bit. Let's just see if we can see. I might need to crouch down a little bit. I'm not kidding. Okay, that's fine. If I can like push my...

Do whatever is comfortable. I mean, as uncomfortable as you are, do whatever is comfortable. This is the worst. Okay. Okay. What do you feel in your gut right now when you look over? Look over again and tell me what you feel. I can just visualize myself falling to my death.

How you doing over there? So I have that too, but I have this other feeling. And it's really weird. It's kind of a weightlessness. I can almost describe it as like I feel like the bottoms of my feet feel tickly and like they could come off of the top of the building really easily. And also I kind of hear a voice whispering something is telling me to jump.

There's a name for it. It's also the name of our episode. Emery, I'm going to count to three. Okay. One, two, three. Call of the Void! I'm Ben Brock Johnson, and this is Endless Thread, a show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem

of online communities called Reddit. I'm here with my co-host, Amory Sievertson, and we are coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. So this is a thing that apparently a lot of people feel, and most people don't really talk about it, except some people do on Reddit. There are actually several threads that discuss this feeling that is unofficially referred to as the Call of the Void,

or La Pelle du Ville, in French, where it was coined first. And we're going to get to what exactly that means. and why it's called that. But first, we've got to get to a spot that is firmly on solid ground, and occupied by a redditor named Swantia. I am on my couch, which is located in Germany. She's 25 years old, she's a single mom, and she's a student, finishing her education, something that was slowed down when she had her daughter.

About a year ago, Swantia was going through treatment for ADHD and depression, which she's pretty up front about. She was in a small town in Germany getting that treatment, and the town had some abandoned hospitals in it. Swanty and some of the friends she'd made in town were into exploring some of these abandoned hospitals because I guess, unlike some of us, exploring an abandoned hospital isn't something that sounds terrifying?

And one of these hospitals had these two towers. Each one was 10 stories tall. Swanti and her friends were hanging out on the rooftop of one of those towers. My mom always said I was really hard. to watch because I would always be around climbing on stuff. Pushing the limits. Yeah. Swansea found herself kind of staring across the gap between the two towers.

I'm not really good at distances, but they are quite some gap away from each other. I'm not one for jumping, actually, not really. So I like to climb high, but I don't like to jump over hate at all. and I'm not like to be near an edge. So it might have been that I felt very sporty during that time. I didn't know, whatever pushed me there, but I just ran and jumped. And while I was jumping, I was totally blanked out. And when I landed, I was still blanked out except for, oh shit, what have you done?

And then I went like really shivering and ice cold sweat all over me. Well, yeah. That was a weird feeling, definitely. Like, not being controlled. That was a very impulsive thing to do. This is maybe a strange question, but were you sober at the time? Yes. Yes, I had to be sober to go to therapy.

Yeah. Mm. Why do you think you did this? I'm not sure. I'm not surprised about that, actually, because I do have some poor, impulse control sometimes.

I think it might have been something like you know that little voice you sometimes have that dares you to try your own borders, like to go. Yeah, that kind of stuff. And it's really quiet, but it's very powerful. And I think that was what happened. Were you already a mother at this time

when you made this jump? Yeah, yeah. That's why I was so angry with me too. I was, and yeah, that's not really cool to do if you have a kid. It's not cool at all. How old is your daughter? She's six now, freshly turned six. Is she a thrill-seeker as well?

No, no. Thankfully not. No, she's really, really calm. She's totally like my sister, actually, which is good. Totally leveled out, very responsible. Not at all like me. Swantia says she's better at impulse control now, thanks to therapy. She keeps a diary.

And that helps too. Her story is pretty unique, though. At least it's unusual to find someone who gave into this impulsive, intrusive thought and lived to talk about it. It still doesn't answer the question of why people have this voice in their heads, though. But she knows she's far from the only one to have this little voice whispering to her. And that's okay. If we talk about some evil aspects of bad aspects or morally not acceptable aspects that are inside of us, we open ourselves to the possibility of talking about stuff that's going on between us

so we could help people who would like to act on these paws instead of shutting them out socially. So we actually found several examples of people having these thoughts on Reddit. Another one we found was this next comment. The person who commented didn't really want to talk. But they told us we could read the comment. This is from user extremely correct. I stood on a rocky mountainside next to the ocean once. Below were more rocks and waves splashing over them.

I felt an extreme urge to jump down. I have never felt such a strong urge before. It literally felt like the devil was sitting on my shoulder, whispering in my ear to jump. The devil's sitting on my shoulder whispering in my ear to jump. It's a pretty intense image. I know, right? But it's there. This devil voice, this pull, when you're in a high,

place. Or maybe it's a push. Something drawing you to the edge. And even if it's not something a lot of people talk about, if you look closely, the examples are there, like in movies. Not the kind of movie you might expect, like a documentary or vertigo or something, but the kind of movie featuring Johnny Depp playing Keith Richards playing a pirate. You know that feeling you get sometimes when you're standing in a high place? Suddenly it is to jump. I don't have it. Captain Jack is like me. He doesn't have the urge to jump. True.

And Pirates of the Caribbean on Stranger Tides was, strangely enough, mentioned in a scientific study, the only scientific study looking at this phenomenon, the call of the void. Yep, we've got a scientific study and a real scientist. Science! In a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science. neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories.

Stories about policing or politics. Country music. Hockey. Sex. Of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew.

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Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Okay. So we've established that, at least at a moment. Totally, this devil in your ear when you're in a high place, this urge to jump, this call of the void, if you will, it's a thing. Right, but you don't have to take it from us. Take it from April. Hello, this is April.

April Smith is an associate professor of psychology at Miami University, which is in Ohio. And I teach and do research on eating disorders and suicidal behavior. And back in 2011, April co-authored a study. It's called An Urge to Jump a Furrude. the urge to live, an empirical examination of the high place phenomenon. And April says that this study came about in kind of an unusual way. I imagine this is how scientists always do science. Like they're sitting around measuring the circumference of a human skull or like looking in a petri dish and thinking about aliens or something. And one of them says like, hey, Terry or like, hey, Tiffany, you ever think about X?

This is a very good example of why you are not a scientist. Okay, fair. But this is actually how April says this particular study came about. Vindicated. Yep, it's the exception to the rule in a way. A bunch of graduate students got talking. And we were in a lab that studied suicidal behavior, and we thought this was weird because we ourselves weren't suicidal.

But several of us could actually relate to this. You know, oh, yeah, I've been on a bridge and felt like I wanted to jump. And that was so odd what was going on with that. And so it really kind of started out as just sort of a... workplace conversation, but being scientists, you know, we actually thought, well, you know, we could actually kind of study this and see, you know, is this a phenomenon that does exist more broadly? And is it the case that mostly suicidal people have this urge? Or might it be that people who aren't suicidal can still have these kind of weird thoughts about jumping?

Talk to me about the other name for this, Call of the Void. What's the difference there? That would probably be more of the kind of term of art and maybe fiction or literature. You know, it does sound perhaps more romantic. Okay, all right, fair enough. The call of the void is for plebs like me. And the high-place phenomenon is for... A little bit more empirical sounding, sure. So April and her co-authors came up with an online survey for undergrad students.

They were looking for 400 response. That would give them a large enough sample of people that would include a few from the supposed 10 to 12 percent of people who have considered suicide. But also, people who have felt call of the void or high place phenomenon but hadn't ever considered suicide. They needed 400. They got 431. So the first big takeaway was kind of a confirmation that people do have these thoughts. This is a thing. This is a thing. Yeah, yeah. You know, basically, depending on, you know, kind of who you're asking or what question you're asking, close to 50% of people have experienced this.

This is the 50% number we keep mentioning. And this is surprisingly high. But it bears out. Then when you and I were on the rooftop, one of us felt it. The other one didn't. Right. But one of the other goals of the study was to figure out why this is a thing. Like what is happening in the human psyche that supposedly makes half. half of the population think about or imagine themselves jumping. April says it's about different parts of the brain. We basically have different ways of processing information. And so there are some systems that are super fast. They're operating at the level of basic automaticity.

They're kind of outside of our conscious control. But then, of course, we also have more deliberative ways of processing information. You know, for example, what you're going to eat for lunch, that kind of thing. Okay. And so it could be the case that when you're up somewhere high, your brain is basically sending an alarm signal, you know, hey, be careful. And that could actually lead you to take a step back or, you know, kind of notice your surroundings. And then that more deliberative process kind of kicks in. And you start to think, you know, why did I just take a step

back? I'm, you know, totally fine. There's no reason for me to be afraid. Oh, I must have wanted to jump. That's so interesting. It's like a conversation that you're having with yourself. Yep. Are you basically saying that you don't actually have the thought I should jump? It's like a trick of the mind somehow? Among people who aren't suicidal, yes. It's kind of this post-talk rationalization of a behavior or a noticing of your surroundings. Okay, I love this. You know, you would love this. As someone who feels the urge. No, but this explanation is so cool. The idea that basically, in this split second, when you're in this high place, two parts of your brain are trying to have

a conversation and you're sort of like misinterpreting the conversation. Your biological computer is like glitching out trying to reconcile these two separate ideas. I'm fine, but I'm close to not being fine, which must mean I want to not be fine. Maybe I want to jump. That's fascinating. The study also goes against what April says are some common myths about suicide. There's this misperception that sometimes suicide is engaged in impulsively so that somebody might just have the thought to kill themselves and act on it. And at least from the research that I'm aware of and that our lab is conducted, that's really not supported. What we know is that typically people have often thought about their suicides in advance, if not hours, often days, weeks, even years in advance. Okay, so this call of the void isn't directly connected to suicide, which is often more premeditated than this feeling, which is more instinctual.

But do these non-suicidal thoughts about jumping tell us anything bigger about ourselves? It does in the sense that we all have weird idiosyncratic thoughts, and that doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, we have death wishes or, you know, we have. you know, there's something murderous or wrong. You know, it could just be the case that, you know, our brains are processing information so quickly. And, you know, when it rises to the level of an alarm, then we start to try to interpret, like, what was going on. We don't necessarily need to take all of our thoughts actually as true, which is weird.

So a certain percentage of our thoughts, it's good to remember, are just like... Just chatter. Static, yeah. Yeah, static. Yeah. That's a great description. Yeah. Huh. So the Call of the Void, High Place phenomenon, devil voice, whatever you want to call it, it's part of this static.

And there's a whole genre of thoughts like this called intrusive thoughts, a lot of which have nothing to do with high places. These could be thoughts like you're driving down the road and you think about hitting a pedestrian. or you're washing your child and you think about causing harm to your child. Or you might think about harm coming to a partner or spouse. You know, they get in a car crash or they get in a plane accident. So they're intrusive. They're uncomfortable.

And most people actually have had an experience where they've had some kind of intrusive thought like that. I totally get these. Like I want to scream something crazy in the middle of a recital or something. or do something incredibly violent. I get these. I get these too, and sometimes they are definitely violent. Yeah, like you just told me the other day that you get stabby. I do. I get a little stabby. Not actually stabby, just mentally stabby.

$200,000. Are you mad? I don't get mad. I get stabby. The Simpsons, man. They just get me. Congratulations, but we did find a Redditor who also totally gets these violent feelings. My name is Justin. I live in Dendra. Justin's experience matches April's description of these more general, intrusive thoughts. They sort of drift in like a wave. So they're kind of disturbing thoughts, not in a way that I feel scared or uncomfortable,

or it doesn't make me question myself. It's never an urge to act on any thought, but it's an urge to do... It's almost a feeling of thinking about the worst-case scenario. in a situation, what it would feel like to be in a van that's rolling down the side of a cliff? What it would feel like to drive an oncoming traffic and they're disturbing thoughts,

but it never disturbed me to have them? Because I thought in some way maybe it was just healthy to think about and prepare yourself for an awful situation. The darkest of these thoughts started about three years ago when Justin became a dad. And just a heads up, this is upsetting. And that is why it's important to play this next bit,

because we're talking about things that we're afraid to talk about. Thoughts we usually don't admit that we have, even if we'd never act on them. So the most disturbing, and one that's probably the hardest to talk about, are the thoughts that I've had with my son. And the reason I mentioned that it happens a lot when we're cooking or in the kitchen is sometimes if I'm cutting vegetables with a knife and he's standing on a stool, you know, helping the best he can,

I'll think about things about how it might feel to stab him, which is a really disturbing thought. I would obviously never stab my son the same as I would never jump off a building or drive my van off a cliff, but it's somehow it's like the thought just wandered in and I'm like, oh, that's pretty messed up. Maybe it's like 30 seconds I'll spend on the thought of like

how he would feel. And then I kind of think, oh, how would it feel if I got stabbed? And then I'm just like back to cutting carrots. And the thought just kind of drifts away. I don't know what it is. I can't explain it.

But I have heard many parents talk about those same sort of thoughts. Now, if you're thinking, weight, call child services, take a step back from the edge, because again, these thoughts are common. Justin's not planning on doing this. He's just picturing it. And this goes back a bit to April's point that some thoughts, well, they're just brain static. And it's important to remember that, because the real danger here might be more about how we feel about ourselves for just having these intrusive thoughts. Where we can see it becomes problematic is if they start to think,

well, you know, because I have the thought that's basically the same as doing it. Or, you know, because I had the thought that that must mean that I want to do it. Or there's something wrong about me that I'm having these thoughts in the first place. Or, you know, gosh, that was a really upsetting thought. Now I really need to not think about it. And then, of course, they think about it more. April hopes there's more study of these ideas. But for now, she's just glad to have proven to a reasonable

degree that she's not the only one with high place phenomenon. Call of the void. Whatever you want to call it. Can we talk about one more example, though, the funny one? You're talking about the Reddit user with the paper? That's right. Didn't want to talk to us because they said they're shy, but they were cool with us, including their story.

Posted on the same thread as the German woman, Swantia, in the Ask Reddit community. The question was, people who have succumbed to the call of the void, what happened? And this person writes, six out of ten would not recommend to a friend, but maybe for the daring. Call of the paper. This is the kind of intrusive thought that is more at my speed. Same. Although, you know, I've already put it out there.

I've got the darker thoughts. I can't help it. Yeah, you're not so wholesome after all. Maybe none of us are. No, but that's why this episode is refreshing, right? We think that we're messed up. Here I was thinking like, oh no, they have no idea. Right.

But the truth is, You were not alone. We're all full of dark thoughts. Ben Johnson is eating paper, ladies and gentlemen. It's an intrusive thought. I've succumbed to call of the void. Okay, can you read the credits with that paper in your mouth, or are you going to swallow?

Enlist Red is a production of WBOR, Boston's NPR station, in partnership with Reddit. Our show is a dream. realized by Jessica Alpert, who, when we ask if she likes the episode we've put together, she says, W-T-F. Iris Adler is our executive producer, and she makes sure our stories meet the bar of mildly interesting. Mix and sound design by John Parati and Paul Vicus, who, whenever we go to record in the field

with them, they remind us, nature is flat lit. Our web producer is Megan Kelly, who looks at our attempts at writing web copy and goes, Aw. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit, and whenever we try to have a serious, meeting with him. He's all... I'm a toddler. Our interns are James Lindberg and Josh Luckens.

Our theme music is by Squelcher. Thanks to Redditor Creative Adam for our artwork this week. Creative Adams' Instagram, by the way, is Hi Adam Roberts. On Reddit, we are endless underscore thread. If you want to contribute art for an upcoming episode

or give us a juicy story tip so we can tell it like we did today, hit us up there. Quick bit of housekeeping. We are taking some time off from publishing our usual episodes during July. Call it the end of season one.

Call it summer vacay. Call it Ben, Josh, and Amory continue to work their butts off on future amazing episodes. Call it what you will. The good news is we'll be dropping some bits and bobs and snacks into the feed so you won't forget about us. Some updates to our favorite episodes, maybe a few other fun experimental things as well. So bear with us while we're tripping through time. Don't go anywhere. We've got more goods coming at you.

Even while we are in the podcast lab cooking up big things for the fall, we'll be back in August. We just A freaking falcon. A falcon just flew by. Our show is produced by Josh Schwartz. Also my co-host and producer, Amory Siebertson. I'm senior producer and host Ben Brock Johnson.

I'll let myself out. And just one other note, you know, if there is room on the podcast, in case people are, after listening to it, you know, having any distressing thoughts, I always like to recommend 1-800-273 talk,

which is the national. suicide prevention lifeline, 24-7, anonymous, and can get people connected to resources.