Ologies with Alie Ward - Fearology Pt. 2 (FEAR) with Mary Poffenroth

Episode Date: May 1, 2018

FEAR. Anxiety. Stress. Dread. It's all the same dang thing, as it turns out. Biologist and fear expert Mary Poffenroth is back for Part 2 of what has been one of the most helpful interviews of ol' Alie Ward's life. Learn how super successful people approach fear, Mary’s scariest hour, plus answers to all of your questions about night terrors, self-spookery, sharks' bad PR image to how likely it is that a snake will bite your butt. Plus: the best thing about following your passions in life. If this episode helped you at all, consider telling friends about it so we can all get over being chicken sh*ts and, as Mary would say "die with great stories."For more info on Mary Poffenroth, see her website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.More episode sources & linksSupport Ologies on Patreon for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Steven Ray MorrisMusic by Nick Thorburn

Oh, hello. Hi. It's your old dog hiding behind the couch because I ate from the garbage again for week two. It's a lally ward. Okay, why? Well, because we're back for part two of Fierology, folks. Did you listen to part one? I hope you did. If you haven't, then just stop this. Go back, listen to part one. That's how things work sequentially. And part one is bananas. How crazy bananas was that episode? So I heard from so many of you that it was like life changing. It totally was for me too. And so we're back for the last half of the interview because I did talk to thatologist for one million hours. So I split it into two. Fun fact. Did you know that you can't spell interview without review? Got it? And when you rate and review and subscribe

to this podcast, it keeps it up in the charts and it helps other people see it. And then boom, you have more people to talk about this stuff with at dinner parties. So and I read every single one of your reviews, every single one. Is that weird? I do it. No shame. And this week's review was just so kind. The review I picked to read is from stir-fried, the part I loved said, even when I see a topic and I'm like, meh, I give it a listen. And I get wrapped up in it as if it were a topic that I was enthralled with. Keep it up, Allie. And so if there are any episodes that you haven't listened to, because you're like, I don't think I'm gonna like that. Go back and listen to them. I promise. I put stuff in there for everyone. And you're gonna be like, who knew? I'm now very,

very excited about gemstones and birds. So head on back. Okay, but let's get back to it. So we learned last week that fearology is indeed a real word. It has been cited in the literature and that stress is just a sneaky, deaky word for fear that blew my mind and that fear is not helpful unless it's factual and you need your muscles tense to outrun an angry animal. And that a lot of our fictional fears stem from just plain old human not being good enough or from being out of control. So why did I never learn that in therapy? Ever. Why not? Anyway, no matter. Also, if this podcast makes your life any better, here's where I say maybe consider being a patron for like a dollar a month. I'm not afraid to put that out there. Patrons get to ask their questions to

theologists and also you help support the making of the show, which requires like web hosting and editing and microphones and all sorts of other bullshit. Anyway, back to fear. So this week, we'll find out how super successful people approach fear. We'll learn about Mary's scariest hour of her life and what she learned plus all your questions about everything from night terrors to self-spookery to sharks, bad PR image to how likely is it that a snake bites your butt and also the best thing about following your passions in life. So sit back, breathe deep and hold on to your amygdala, folks, for fearologist part two, Mary Poffenroth. And it sounds like a Harry Potter name, which is totally fine.

Let's get right into it. Let's talk about what is the most afraid Mary Poffenroth fearologist has ever been. Do you know the most afraid you've ever been? Let's see. I'm afraid a lot. Probably one story that pops in my mind. It's usually when you think about all the things you're really afraid of, it's like death, right? Of some kind. Like your death or someone that you love's death because death is final. It's one of those things that generally you can't live through by definition. And even living through someone else's death is always really challenging. For more about fearing death, you can see or revisit the episode on Thanatology with Cole and Perry. Okay, sorry. Let's get back to our story. Once I was doing my

graduate work in biology in the water mountains of California, which is like very northeastern corner in the middle of nowhere. And it's like an eight hour drive from the Bay Area, which means that I had to like go by myself to do live trapping like a lot. And it's probably like 23 at the time, 24. And it's a bunch of sagebrush scrub, which is kind of like a, like a tawny blue color, almost like a gray blue color. And I'm dressed in gray field pants and a gray vest because I'm smart. And it's hunting season because it's the middle of nowhere. So I'm out by myself in the middle of like the sagebrush grub checking my traps, studying the habitat partitioning of chipmunk species. So out there doing my thing. And here's like pop, pop, pop. And I like just hit like my

initial like, you know, reaction is to get super small, hit the deck, like you really, really tiny. And at this point, I know I'm getting shot at. Oh my God. But I don't know if they're doing it because they don't see me or because they do see me. So, and as a woman, the first thing in my mind is like, not death, but like, oh my God, these are hunters, they're going to be like cowboys, and they're going to rape me. That's like, that's where my mind initially goes. And as you do, yeah, as you do, right? And then like, okay, what do I do? And I'm trying to get really small under the sagebrush grub. And I turn over to my left. And there's a giant fire ant hill, like, right in front of my face. So I have to make some decisions about my life right now. The truck

that I had is, is, even if I ran, I'm not a good runner, would be like a, like a 10 minute run to get back to the truck. So I'm like, okay, do I just stay still? Do I do like, like, I don't like, I can't stay right here. Because there's fire ants literally in my face. And at this point, I'm going through all of the scenarios of what could happen. And do, do I deal with the very real in my face fire ants, and just stay where I am and don't move, because they might see if I move. Do I like make noise, because maybe they don't don't see me, because I want to trust that humans are good. And you're like, what are, what are I'm asking? And then I'm thinking like, the news, right of, like, young field biologists found in water mountains. And this happens within

seconds, right? All of these scenarios play out in your head. And I definitely, and being alone, right? Because it, like, if I had been with someone else, that ability to reach out would have made everything so much better, you know, safety in numbers. And this was like, before cell phones were a thing. Right. So you're just in nature. I love nature. I'm a biologist, but also nature is scary. Because we're not good at defending ourselves. We're pretty, like, we don't have things. We don't have a good ability to do much of anything physical. Yeah, we'll think our way out of it. Yeah, exactly. Good luck. Right. Yeah, we've got opposable thumbs. That's kind of cool. That helps. And so I think that probably is one, definitely one of like the, like, scariest factual

situation. How did you resolve it? So I kind of like scooted down again, like, lucky I'm kind of, you know, like very, very tiny, I like to say, fun sized. And I just scooted like a round away from the ants and just kind of like froze there and like wait and then like waited to hear stuff. So they were like in an ATV, which made noise and just waited for the ATV sounds to like move away. And I have no idea how long I was there. But just like made myself small, like, you know, because the fighting, that wasn't really going to help. And like flying, I knew I was too far. So I'm like, I will just hide. Oh my God, what were they shooting at? Do you think? Probably deer. Yeah, it's, it's like really middle of nowhere. California, like the one town. And by town,

I mean, there was a gas station and a bar. That was the town. And that was like an hour and 15 minutes away drive. Oh my God. Just a quick note. So curiosity got the better me. And I was like, what happens if you do bury your face in a pile of fire ants? What happens? And it led me to a YouTube video with 14 million views in which a guy named Coyote Peterson inserts his hands into a mound of loose, sandy soil, like he's just getting the world's worst manicure by thousands of Satan servants giving him itchy lumps and pustules. Let's listen in. I'm Coyote Peterson. And I'm about to enter the strike zone with the fire ant. You guys ready? You shot good? One, two, three.

Holy cow. Ow, ow, ow, oh. Holy cow. That's a lot of things already. Anyway, he tries to keep them in there for like 60 full seconds, just like a good cuticle soak. But he lasts maybe 25 because he's like, fuck this shit. I hate science now. He doesn't say that vocally, but I bet it's in his head a little bit. Okay, back to Mary. Who were they shooting at and what happened? It was, it was definitely one of those like, I'm actually kind of screwed if they were shooting at me because they saw me. But then the reality is the chances are they probably were shooting at a deer and

not me and they didn't see me because I was all in gray. And still, yeah. That's, I'm going to put that in the factual. Yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. It was, you know, the getting shot at was super factual. You're going to put that in the factual bucket. But then, you know, my mind continued to make all different reasons. And in that situation, you know, you don't know. Yeah. And so I just kind of like waited it out until I heard them like really far away and then just like took off for a friend. God, you're like, oh, someone money? Am I in the mob? What's happening? Is this a political assassination? So yes, even fearologists get afraid. It happens. But like super successful,

crazy successful people, they must just lack a gene. They just must not feel fear, right? So actually, I want to come back to that. It was the beginning of the top of the talk. I was saying that there's a guy who did some research looking at how what vocabulary was being used of super successful people versus like less than successful or mediocre people. And like the hyper successful people like the Richard Branson's and the Ed Katmell Pixar. And like, I mean, wow, have done crazy stuff. They use the word fear. They use the word afraid. And they use the word scared. No. Yeah. So yeah, like in Ed Katmell's book that he wrote about creativity, creativity, Inc. I think he he used the exact word fear like

98 times. Oh my God. And people that are less successful. Guess what word they use stress shut up. Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. So like like Ed Katmell said, if we're not afraid, we're not doing our job. Because that means we are plain small. And we're not pushing our limits. So learning that fear is something you should run towards in a healthy way with those fictional fears, not like you run towards your mugger. Right. But you're making those adult decisions. But but feeling that fear and being like, oh, okay, this is maybe an area that I don't feel confident in. So what can I do to push that a little harder instead of running away from it? And that is in terms of and, you

know, this is a different episode. But in terms of phobias like that is why exposure therapy can be helpful. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of work being done with like VR with phobias and exposure therapy. So it's they feel a little bit safe, but still their brain is getting trained. It's okay to, you know, get on a plane or wear a sweater or whatever that is to help their retrain themselves. It would just be me in a spreadsheet, spreadsheet, be like Ali spreadsheet phobia. Excel phobia. Yes. I hate them so much. Okay. You ready for rapid fire? Okay, I'm just going to throw these at you. You can answer as quickly as you want. Okay. These are from Patreon's patrons on Patreon who support the show. Thanks guys. Tyler Fox wants to know,

is fear of the dark mostly universal? I would say yes, because as humans, we have really poor eyesight at night. We're a diurnal species. That means that we're going to be naturally, you know, awake during the day, even though in modern times, we have the ability to have fancy electric light, our bodies are meant to be active hunting in the day. So at night, we would naturally get in our little safe protective area, whatever, you know, that would be whether that is, you know, a tribal situation or if you're a primate and you're a little nest. And then we don't leave because we can't see. And there's predators out there. And we can't see that well at night, like walk into your room or like the bathroom. And this is, and when you talk about fear,

you want to really try and separate the ones you just are going to be part of your life forever. So I'm still afraid to go in the bathroom when it's dark at night, but I don't want to turn on a light because I'm going to be able to go back to bed, but I have to pee. And I just keep thinking like, what if there's, what if there's a snake in the toilet? I live in downtown LA, y'all. Like there's not, I mean, I don't live in the tropics. I mean, that's, but I, I just, I don't know why. And it's like, what if it bites my butt? I don't know. I'm really, it's so cute. I'm like, how cute would that be? Just be like, hi, I mean, but the probability very slim. I mean, it's very slim. Okay, quick note here. How probable is it that a snake will bite your butt? I started looking

into this to prove that it's happened like one time and the news likes to sell fear. And yes, sure enough, a family in Seattle a few years ago found an enormous ball python in their apartment toilet. And that kind of blew the notion up a bit. But I then I started finding more and more stories. Apparently this is not an isolated incident. So the BBC did a piece on toilet critters. And one Australian wildlife worker says that rats sometimes hang out in sewer pipes, which is like so on brand for them. And the snakes follow the rats. They're just like walking hamburgers. So this guy gets called on about four or five times a year. And he was like not vague about his feelings. He said, quote, it's the worst job. You get a toilet bowl that's

been there 30, 40 years, we see the bit that gets cleaned, but the rest of it doesn't. So when you go to pull the thing out of there, it's not fun. I usually have a bottle of disinfectant with me. Only imagine he said all of that in a very charming wildlife Australian accent. Okay, so then I scrolled through a large volume of images online of things in your toilet that should not be in your toilet. And I found photos of very wet baby bunnies, a dazed and sopping squirrel and dozens of bright green toilet frogs that had just sauntered up a pipe after a rainstorm. So it happens. But it's still rare. And most of the time, just think of it as the universe delivering you a new temporary pet. But it's one of those things that I think about and be like,

okay, it's irrational. I'm just going to just let it go. And so in part of it is when you go into a dark room is you don't know what's going to be there. And this is why when we look at horror movies and the tropes that are in there, they're very specifically tapping into those natural fears, you know, like horror movies are usually dark and there's a spooky house or there's a cornfield. And it's not like bright sunny, beautiful day. Usually it's like dark so that you can hide in the shadows. Yeah, they're never like they never take place in like a brightly lit Walmart or something. Yeah, that strikes terror in a lot of people, I'm sure. Topher Mendoza wants to know is fear a learned behavior says I used to be afraid of a lot of

things and then my belief structure changed. And now I find it really hard to be scared by things that are supposed to be scary. So with fear, there's both like we're saying fictional and factual fear. So we're always going to have a natural fear response. So at the top of the hour, we're talking about stressors versus stress. So as those stressors change, we can have a different perception of how we're going to react to those stressors. And everyone's going to have a little bit of a different tolerance for dealing with different stressors. So you can learn to be more afraid, you can be you can learn to be less afraid. But you're always going to have fear in some way, shape or form. It might not be something you're dealing with daily, right,

like that factual fear of having your life physically threatened or someone that you love that, you know, you're out of control to impact it or, you know, those kind of fears, hopefully are very minimal in our lives. So really, the fictional fear is where we can do the most work and we have the most impact. So it sounds like the Patreon there was able to do that work with the fictional fears and start whittling down their reaction to those things that are not directly impacting their ability to survive. And even within factual fears, like you look at military training, where they're trying to get people to move past what their initial like fear reaction would be with, you know, someone literally coming to pretend kill them. Military training involves

something called fear inoculation, which is getting exposed to scary ish situations in kind of small amounts until you're just no longer shocked by them, you're just kind of over it. So how do they do this? They simulate battle via, in this kind of blew my mind, paintball and laser tag, which now totally justifies my dislike of these recreational activities. If someone's like, hey, it's Saturday afternoon, you want to go do mini golf or like pancakes on a patio or pretend to kill each other with lasers, there's one of those things that I'm like, no, I'm good. And that's training and it takes a while. But to say that even a highly trained Navy SEAL is not afraid is ridiculous. They're still they're going to acknowledge it, but they're going to have the

skills and training to move past it to do what they need to do. It'd be interesting to make a list of the things that scare you most or the times you've been most afraid and go back and think was there an actual danger there? You know what I mean? And how would I handle that fear in hindsight knowing I'm thinking about the times I've been most afraid. And yeah, I think about like the centrifuge and I'm like, yeah, no, I didn't need to be afraid. Even the munging, I got through it. I threw my purse really far. I distracted them. I memorized their plates. I took them to court. Like, you know, it was not a pleasant experience. And I had PTSD for a while. But I clearly, you know, I think that if I if you look back on all the times that you've you've been afraid

and thought, well, I handled it in some I survived, you know, then it almost feels more empowering. But you know, Jordan S wants to know weird and dumb question, why does anxiety slash dread give us that stomach achy, crampy feeling? I understand the racing heart and fast breathing, but I can never really get why that stomach cramp feeling happens in the big D word. Yeah. I love that Rhea is the way to get yourself out of it. You're like Rhea, Rhea. So if you listen to part one, you may remember that Mary's tactic when you feel stressed out or angry or fretful is to stop and do some RIA, some Rhea, which stands for recognize, identify,

and address a fear or a stress when it comes up to figure out exactly what it is that you're afraid of. Throughout the the work that I do, I like to have a dichotomy because people love one or the other, right, like binary of like, left, right, good, bad, up, down. So in particularly for that question, we're talking about digestion, it's because digestion is a non essential function of when we are in fear. So this is also why a sustained fear response leads to part of the obesity epidemic that we're seeing in the United States and throughout the developed world. Because when our bodies in fear, it's not trying to digest properly. It's just be like, okay, shut it down because that's not going to our digestive system is not going to help us

fight off the stuff. So when like the grumbly, tumbling stuff, that's more of the digestion system, like trying to like take things offline. And with the excavation aspect, that's trying to trying to lighten the payload so that we, we just, you know, like dump the cargo so you can run faster, which is which is an animal response. Like when birds, like take off for flight, they want to lighten the cargo load, which is why they like poo before flight, right? You want to, you know, make the journey as light as possible. I feel like anytime you have loaded a pet into the car to go to the vet, you've probably gotten shit on, like at least once, like I remember having to take a cat to the vet once and it was just explosion. It was like you stepped on

a pastry bag and I was like, why? And it's like, I'm scared. I don't know what a car, I don't understand cars. Yeah. Like I guess that our bodies do that before a big presentation or whatever, you know, your body's like, you know what would help this presentation? It's just a little bit of diarrhea. Give that something extra. This is what's going to help you survive your like PhD dissertation is just explode your butthole. I've also heard that right before a fight, your body wants to lighten your load in case you get stabbed by claws, like in your colon, and then the less you have on board, the smaller your risk of contaminating your own body with the filthy contents that is the bag of waste that is your guts. I hope you're not eating.

So I looked for some articles on this and I can't confirm it, but I think it's a cute idea. Kind of like your body just like tossing a bullet chili in the bushes before a fist fight, so it doesn't stain your shirt. Now, okay, what if you're just blessed with not feeling any fear at all? Well, there's this disease called urbac wife, I think that's how you pronounce it, that can cause calcium deposits and lesions on the little almond fear factory that is your amygdala, and thus it can reduce a patient's fear response to next to nothing. My friend Dr. Tegan-Wall, thank you by the way for telling me about this over dinner. So one sufferer of this disease is identified only as SM. It's probably at the behest of the researchers for an anonymity,

but she's probably like, so what if people find out who I am? I literally fear nothing. That's probably not true. But according to Wikipedia, quote, SM appears to experience relatively little negative emotion while simultaneously experiencing a relatively high degree of positive effect, despite great adversity in her life. So researchers are like, yeah, she's pretty happy, man. She's kind of shit life, but she's pretty happy. So researchers took SM to an exotic pet store. They had her hold snakes and spiders and she was fine. She was like, this is dope, which I kind of have to agree with her. That would be pretty cool. But they also took her to a haunted Halloween house and she was just chill. She was like, this is fun. Her lack of

anticipatory fear though has had us consequences. She walks alone at night, whatever she wants, and she's been mugged. But she continues to take the same walk home, something that her amygdala in a healthy state would otherwise be screaming at her like, no, recalculating routes, bitch, no, do not go down that street. But SM is said to be super friendly to strangers. So I imagine she's probably like a hoot at a cocktail party. Megan Gerard asks, setting aside really split second super bad situations, factional, what can we do to help control or tamp down fear for things that we know logically are not dangerous or scary? So once again, Rhea. Yeah, you know, like try and recognize even just the, I mean, there's so much power in just having the self awareness saying,

Oh, I'm having a fear response right now. Instead of just following that fear response, like Alice in Wonderland down the rabbit hole, being like, should I should I follow that rabbit? Or should I maybe just chill out and see what the situation is. So recognizing that in the moment, identifying it, you know, like name it to claim it saying, okay, so what is this? Is it is it dread? Do I just kind of like, am I anxious that something's going to happen? Am I actually terrified? Am I am I feeling just insecure? Like, I just I don't have control over the situation. And like I said before, those two are usually like enough to start pulling you out of it. And then really address what kind of outcomes can be managed here? Is there a strategy you can employ

that would help to alleviate what you're feeling right now? Or just even doing kind of what's the worst that could happen? That if you play that little game, you know, in your head, what's the worst that could happen and just keep going for like five or six times, you get to a point like, okay, I'm actually not going to die. Then your brain's like, okay, we're not going to die. Cool. I'm going to go back to sleep. Good night. This is I'm going to have to just carry that around on a like a emergency bracelet. It's like, in case of emergency, RIA. Sarah Nichelle asks, how can someone be afraid of something they haven't necessarily experienced? Like sharks, for example, like what triggers a fearful response if you've never even been scared of it in person?

Part of that can be media and sharks is such a good example because like toasters and vending machines kill more people every year than sharks. Right. For real. And unless you are a scuba diver or a surfer, like it's not going to shark NATO. Yeah, like up in your hometown, Nebraska, like why it's they're literally in the ocean. But, but we have a terror of sharks because they make a really good villain because they're not that cute. They have like funky teeth. They're big. They're cold blooded. And so they make a really good way for stories to have a big scary monster because we like to be scared in a safe way. And we want those big scary monsters and sharks just fit the bill really well. So we have been

trained to be scared of sharks. And part of that is good storytelling of the build up and and not having control like, you know, in jobs where you have like the little swimmer on the top and why are they always women and bikinis that get eaten? And so you, you know, and we're not made to be in water. We can be in water for a short amount of time, but we're not that good. We're kind of clunky and like, yeah. And so we don't have full control over over our faculties. And that's already putting us in a vulnerable position. So already kind of like on edge. And then you have something coming from the deep. And it's, you know, like, I just scary Mufasa. So you have darkness and you have the inability to, I mean, you probably can't fight it because you just, you got these

dumb little arms and then flight is difficult because you're, you can't swim as fast as you can run. Yeah. Yeah. You can't see it. Yeah. You probably can't hear it because it's under the ocean. They're not like, Hey, I'm a shark. I'm coming. So all of our senses that keep us safe, that let us understand our outside world, aren't really that great in the water. And that makes us vulnerable to actual death. And that's what is really good to tap into the big scary monster idea. So sharks just get a bad rap. I know. Poor sharks. Poor sharks, vending machines. Watch out. I did some research on that one. So once I was hosting and writing on this show about fearful situations and the science behind them. And so before we shot,

I did some digging on air show fighter pilot dangers versus shark dangers versus vending machines. And it turns out that sharks in the US kill like one person every two years. And maybe one or two deaths a year happen in fighter jet aeronautic flights like air shows. But vending machines tipping over kill two people a year. Usually people who've been trying to shake snacks free from their coiled grip. While I was on location with fighter pilots shooting the show, a vending machine at the air force base started to dispense some barbecue potato chips about which I was very excited. But then just dangled them mercilessly at me. And these two fighter pilots were like, Yeah, sometimes you just have to kind of shake the machine. And I was like, No,

y'all can't go out like this of all the ways. This is the most dangerous. But it was fine. And the chips, the chips were good. And I was like, Dang, vending machines are dangerous. Yep. Yep. And it's perception, right? And data will only go so far to calling your perceived fears like no one's afraid of a vending machine. Yet the data shows that more people die from vending machines than sharks. But our brain has that such that de bias of like, I'm still, I'm still not going to be afraid of a vending machine. And that doesn't even count the cholesterol problems that might happen with a machine or like, you know, the coronary disease that happens. I mean, you're talking to someone who used to eat ham sandwiches out of vending machines at the

I had a job where they that was dinner at like midnight as I would go down and get a ham sandwich. So yeah, they're dangerous on a lot of fronts. Bob wants to know how clear is the line between anxiety and fear? And can you tell me a little bit more about those negative health effects of living with fear? Now you said anxiety and fear are pretty much the same thing. Pretty much the same thing. Now we're talking about clinical level anxiety. That's going to be a like actual thing that needs to be addressed in a professional setting. So that's when you aren't able to adequately handle your fear and your anxiety is negatively impacting your life. And it's that line is always fuzzy. It's kind of like addiction, right? Where are you someone

that just likes to drink or is the drinking impacting your life where you can't be successful, you're not having good relationships, you can't get to work or school, you know, where is that line? Not everyone that drinks wine needs to be treated at an addiction center. But there are some people that go to that level of the spectrum that they they can't handle their consumption of alcohol and need to go be treated. I find addiction one of those things that's almost easier to talk about than fear and anxiety in society, which is why I use it as an analogy. Because sometimes, you know, the brain has gotten to the point where just having these strategies isn't going to help. And you need to kind of get to that root of, you know, what's it trauma driven?

You know, what's going on for that individual person and where that threshold is seriously just a person by person thing. And some of the health effects of fear, you're saying cell regeneration, skin digestive health, like scare me a little bit more about not being scared. You know, and it's definitely not in my nature to try and bring the doom and gloom. But when we look at like more and more research is coming out, associating the way we live our lives and the fear responses and the stress response to these, like what we thought were unrelated, like large issues in health. So the top killers of humans in the United States is heart disease, stroke and cancer. So those are going to be like your big three and they're

all associated with stress and fear. Now there's going to be a like genetic component of it. But you can't control your genetic component. You can control your stress level and you can control your lifestyle choices. So, you know, those are the things you want to focus on. And just looking at the three, the big three, stroke, heart disease and cancer. I mean, I don't have stitches on me, but like they kill a lot of people. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to rattle these off as fast as I can. So no one is too bummed out. But heart disease is 630,000 deaths a year cancer about 600,000 deaths a year and then lower respiratory disease is 150,000 a year. So, okay, be less afraid of sharks and spiders and toilet snakes and public speaking.

And I guess be more afraid of ice cream. It's so weird to think that gelato looks like your friend, but it could actually be your murderer. Like our typical American diet is just in menacing cahoots with stress and sleep deprivation. And they're all going to have that component of fear and stress because they are something that is cultivated every day. You know, like cancer is one of those things that lifestyle choices are going to impact it. So it depends. Cancer is one of those really tricky things to talk about with just one word because every cancer is very different and how it behaves and how it's going to like come about in the body. But at the heart of it, it's a disease of the cell cycle. So during that cellular generation process, something went wrong.

The cell is like chugging along, wanted to do its thing and something went wrong and it starts making cells that it didn't mean to make. And those are going to turn into those cancer cells. And depending on what type of cancer you're looking at, they're going to be an impact of how your body is constantly in that stress state and not focusing energy on cellular regeneration and keeping up the housekeeping. So like your cell house is getting super messy because your brain is like, no, we need to focus all the energy on the stress responses because we think that we're dying all the time. Because our body's not meant to be in that constant state of, oh my gosh, we're going to die. And now I imagine also that must affect immunology and

your immune system's ability to kind of police things and say, do we need to send some cells after this thing? Well, I mean, the biggest part of your immunity is contained in your digestive system. So if your digestive system is not getting any attention because your body's like, sorry, digestive system, we need to take care of other things. And then in the moments that you do calm down, a lot of people turn to food to help like get those like happy feelings going. So they're shoving a bunch of food, usually not Brussels sprouts, like no one stress eats broccoli. Like I've had such a hard day, babe, I just I need some broccoli before I can talk to you. Literally said no one ever did some research on this. And I found at least one person who might

argue otherwise. So on September 14, 2016, someone on the website, twitter.com, with the handle blanket person tweeted, quote, I think I'm addicted to broccoli. I'm going to fave and retweet this from the ology's Twitter. And perhaps, just perhaps we can follow up to see if he's still struggling with that. Meanwhile, the rest of us tend to make less healthy choices when we numb out. So what do you do? You go for the sugars, you go for the fats, you go for the crunchy, the things that you probably shouldn't be eating anyway, but you want to get some, you know, happy brain chemicals happening. So you're shoving that into your body,

then maybe you go back in your email, you start the whole thing over again. And your body is not really properly digesting things. The bacterial flora in your digestive system isn't, you know, up to par. You could have bacterial die off with stress, which is decreasing your immunity. So it's like a total body thing. You know, I have to say also, I think that like, if you're going to spend time doing serums and sheet masks, it's probably also good for your skin to just talk yourself through your fear storms. You know what I mean? I had to say when I was meditating more, people were like, your skin looks amazing. And I was like, really? And dang, I didn't, I was probably changing my body's priorities a little bit. I'll have to look into

that. All right. I looked into this and apparently it is a thing. So being in a constant state of fear ups your cortisol, which boosts oil production and gives you breakouts. It also boosts sugar levels in the blood, which breaks down collagen. And that makes your skin look old and wrinkly and dry. So if people are starting to tell you that you look like your dad and you're like, dude, I'm 30 or you're missing out on sleep because you're up watching videos about what serums to spend $46 on, there's so many serums. Maybe we should all just give this meditation thing a good go and just calm this amygdala. Meditation, it seems kind of annoying if it's just like a hocus pocus, but when you look at it as a brief respite from terror and the chemical

effects of just having like a fire alarm happening in your brain or body, you're like, yes, sure, Namaste, let's do this. I mean, it is, it's cheaper than sheet masks and it takes way less time per day than under-eye spackle. And you might end up crying less in airport bathrooms. I'm talking exclusively to myself on that last one. Courtney Sobieski asks, why do we sometimes rescare ourselves if our minds wander? Like, say I listen to a scary story and then a week later, as I'm falling asleep, I think about the scary story and experience the fear reaction all over again, unprompted. Why does my body do that to me? She asks. Because we're kind of like masochistic and we just, there's that burst of our brain. Part of it is that we like to dress for her

tragedy. Because there's a portion of our like dysfunctional mind that thinks that if we just practice enough, we will be prepared. We will be safe. We're constantly looking for safety. And even though safety really doesn't exist, that we're constantly striving for it. And by dress rehearsing that tragedy, our mind's like, okay, cool, I will be ready. I will be ready. And you keep going back to it. And part of it is we just have this like sick fascination with beating ourselves up or for stuff. I think that's, that's never going to go away. But you definitely can manage it in a way where it stops being so negative on your life. And it's going to pop up, especially if you're someone that naturally goes to those places. It's not like

it's going to just magically disappear. But you can turn down the dial a whole lot to where it's a whisper instead of like blaring in your ear and you can't focus on anything else. A bullhorn of fear. Just for a foghorn, but a foghorn. It's next level, man. A lighthouse of anxiety. Jim Merson, who is a wonderful person, I know him personally. Hi, Jim. Says, I'm so curious as to the ethical implications in studying fear. How does one conduct an experiment that requires someone to feel afraid that doesn't also harm them? So do scientists have to make sure to reinforce the subject safety after they've made them feel afraid?

So how is fear studied in a clinical aspect? How do clinicians do experiments on stress response? Yeah. So fear as like a study is, is massive, right? If you're going to focus on humans and like more of the clinical extremes, the outliers of the populations. In terms of ethics, it depends what year you're looking at. So, you know, pre 1980s, not gray, pre 1920s, really not gray. Oh, the bottom is, yeah, but she totally did that. So in mental health is one of those things that there's still stigma around mental wellness and mental health. It used to be where people had no rights. If you were like mentally unwell, you were put in the silence, you were abused. I mean, so, I mean, in terms of ethics, wasn't a lot of ethics. So it depends on what time period you're

looking at. If you're looking at modern studies, it's definitely, and if it's in a clinical situation and it's, you know, United States based again, every country's a little bit different on their laws. Now we have a lot of protections for patients and their wellbeing. And it's part of the design process before whatever institutional organization you're at, you have to have really, really like strong safeguards in there to be able to have that study approved. So now it's much more ethical. Usually it's partnered with a treatment. Right now, the newest thing, like I was saying before is VR and how we can use VR to give some of that experience and exposure therapy, but in the safest way, because it used to be, you know, like, oh, I'm afraid of

spiders. Okay, we're going to put your hand in a box of spiders. You're like, what? Most people just even like, or not, no, I'll just be afraid of spiders. That's fine. But with VR, because people know it's quote unquote fake, but it's kind of, your brain doesn't know that. Your like, conscious brain knows that, but your, your subconscious brain doesn't. And so they're a little bit more open to be like, okay, I'll give it a try. It doesn't sound fun, but it doesn't sound as bad as some other exposure therapy. So it's going to open a lot more ability to research and just asking people, right? Humans, staying humans is hard. So a lot of it is asking, okay, what are your perceptions? What is your level of fear on spiders before you went into the VR? What's your level after?

And just really exploring that. By the way, VR stands for virtual reality, which is like those Oculus Rift, like the huge goggles that cover your face and like an immersive crazy situation. So I didn't want to interrupt before, but yeah, that's what that means. So virtual spiders may pave the way to calming your shit around three dimensional alive ones. And here's a secret, the alive ones, they usually just, they want to hang out in your shower. They just want to look up at you. They want to hear you sing. You're like their nude Celine Dion. So do not smear your biggest fans into a paste with a paper towel. They love you. There's also some research in the clinical setting around depression and using really delicate electrical current and like outside

of the skull. So it would be like an in office visit where you'd have like little pads and they'd put it on your forehead and your skull to kind of like see if they can get away from so much medication based treatments and start to kind of almost reset the electrical currents in your brain. And some people find a lot of therapeutic stuff with that. So there's going to be a lot more research again with people that are already struggling with that thing and seeing how those treatment options are helping to impact them to get them back to like a baseline where they're a higher functioning in that area. So instead of just like going to the mall and kidnapping someone and saying, I'm going to show you a bunch of weapons and see how scared you get. It's

some of the research is more like you have a problem. Yeah. Come on into the study. Let's see if we can help with the problem. Yeah, exactly. And the other kind of aspect and we've done this forever. A lot of the biology and physiological studies are usually done on soldiers because it's a captive audience. You don't really need their permission. And yeah, there's I mean, it's so, you know, the ethics have gotten better around that. But in terms of fear, it's very common to study special ops groups or incoming cadets. And because they're, you know, they're going to be the same place, they live together. So it's kind of like in ecological studies, we love to study islands because you start to decrease the number of variables. So we study our military a lot.

But then you run into the situation of those aren't everyone's experiences. Very few people when you look at the whole population are ever going to be Navy SEALs. Like I can't even do a pushup. Like I could do a plank, but like, I mean, I'm not not even a real pushup. So they keep trying to recruit me and I'm like, you guys not now. It's not I'm going to be in my peak form two, three years from now. Ask me again. Ping me then. Right. But we so we can use them though, maybe to look at trends or to look at models and then apply that in once we've refined them into into the greater population. Okay, that's fascinating. Jessica Geisler wants to know, is there a biological advantage to a metaphobia? I haven't been able to shake it my entire life.

I think that is the fear of barfing, because there is a barfing emoji. And I don't know about that. That might be a phobic question. I think that's a fear of barfing. Yeah, I've never heard of that. But I mean, if there's a barfing emoji, yeah, yes, that is, I just looked it up and it is a fear of barfing. Okay. Um, you know, I don't personally study phobias. So I would be hesitant to say if there's, I mean, the ability to vomit is a evolutionary adaptation for survival in and of itself of all humans, which is one of the, I know I keep coming back to AR and VR because I'm actually doing AR and VR work and education. So it's like on my mind. So there is a, you know, as they're continuing to develop VR is that a lot of people get nauseous from it. And that's because

when our body has perceived that something is making like our ability to see things correctly, it assumes that it's like something we've eaten that's bad. So our body is like, oh, no, we've been poisoned, eject, you know, stomach contacts, right? This is why like if you put someone else's glasses on that they will make you like, oh, like it starts to make you dizzy or nauseous or if your glasses aren't quite where they need to be. So it could be like something, you know, over developed in that area. Cause I mean, it is a way that if we have eaten something bad, our body can purge it, but I've had to guess that would be my, my two cent answer. Isn't that nuts? So the little fluid filled tubes in your ears are like, okay, I'm sensing motion. Yep. That was a corner.

We're moving. Holy shit. And your body's like, no, no, no, no, no, dude, I'm just sitting here in the seat. I'm not even moving my legs or anything. So they have a meeting about it. And the consensus is we're hallucinating. We've eaten moldy garbage. We're hallucinating. Let's barf. So okay, this is not an episode on phobias, but Jessica, I don't want to leave you hanging. So I did look it up and one method of getting over it involves confronting the fear head on and then abstaining from any rituals that you might do to avoid it, like running away or praying for the apocalypse. This kind of therapy is called exposure and response prevention, aka ERP or ERP, which is coincidentally the noise I made before unpoisoning myself over my snake basin when I last had the stomach flu.

I don't know how the exposure part works, by the way, but maybe they just take you to a spring break party. Let me know how it goes. Dane Goding wants to know, does your body have the same chemical and autonomic reactions to fear when you're asleep and having a nightmare as it does when you're awake and conscious? The fear and stress response system is the same all the time. When we're asleep, our body has created a system to essentially paralyze us, so we don't act out our dreams, which is good for our bed partners. We still have the physiological system. If you have a really vivid nightmare and you wake up and you're probably sweating and you feel like you've been running and it takes you a second to figure out that it was just a dream, so our body

is still having that physiological response, but because we're in sleep, we also have that kind of protective sheath of sleep that is preventing us from acting out our dreams. Now, sometimes people don't always have that strong of sheath, and that's why you can have a night terrors, or if you are taking a sleeping pill like Ambien, this is why sometimes people will have, you know, get up and drive a car or do things on sleep medication. So it doesn't always work, but that's usually why we wake up and we haven't pummeled our bed partner, but we're all like sweaty and out of breath. That's so nuts. Anna Marie says, I have chronic night terrors. I had chronic night terrors as a child, and I still have them occasionally as a 35-year-old. This is

something that ever fully goes away. That's probably going to be like a person-by-person basis. So usually night terrors are going to be like really extreme nightmares and they're recurring. Generally, you know, they could be associated with the trauma, like they're reliving that trauma because they haven't like fully dealt with it. It could just be something that their psyche is trying to like act out and express in their dream state. So, you know, it's kind of, I don't think that anyone has one answer that fits all humans. It also kind of probably depends on what they're doing to address it, right? Like, are they getting professional therapy where they're able to say, like, oh, this is happening, and, you know, oh, maybe this is why, or maybe you could address this

kind of thing, or they, you know, just numbing it out with particular substances, or they just ignoring it. So I think it also depends on what that like individual or any individual is doing to kind of address it. That's a good answer. So I know I just watched a bunch of videos on YouTube about night terrors, and I don't recommend it. Although I do have to give credit to Britain for making sympathetic TV shows, exploring these really frightening medical topics such as their program titled quote, embarrassing bodies. Is there anything embarrassing or challenging about Mary's job? What is the crappiest thing about your job? What is the hardest thing? What is the most annoying thing? Is it scheduling? Is it having to look at your own internal workings? Like, what's the,

is it email taxes? I would say, like, I mean, about my, like, professional job, it's constantly dealing with, like, imposter syndrome of being, what I do is so weird and so interdisciplinary that I'm, you know, specifically trained with, and you know, I have graduate degrees in biology. My science communication master's is from Imperial College. And those make me feel good about what I'm saying for about five seconds. And then, you know, it's, it's one of those things that because it's so weird, I feel like, Oh, I'm not, I'm not good enough to do these things. Or like, who am I to, you know, like, have this, share this knowledge and stuff. And, and that's why I'm always really, really careful to say, like, I'm not a clinical psychologist. I don't see clients

or patients. So that people know, like, I'm, I am getting this stuff from some of my own research, but also research in the literature. And that just continuing to convince myself that this work is important, because other people will have value from it. And that's a constant conversation for me. Because I think it's, you know, it's so much easier. I've been teaching at San Jose State University. This is my 11th year now. And, and I could just, I can continue doing exactly only that role until I retire. And it'd be safe, and it'd be comfortable. And I mean, I know that I'm a good teacher, I feel confident in it, because I've been doing it for 11 years. But that's not going to ever allow me to grow. And if I want to experience the world in a greater, more colorful way,

then, then I have to do the things that scare me. And that means constantly pushing the, like, boundaries of my own personal boundaries. And I also do a lot of, like, public speaking. And every time, you know, like, I, before I go on stage, I'm just like, on the text with my friends, oh my God, oh my God, I'm gonna die. Okay, like, at what point do you stop being freaked out by, like, a really big talk? And maybe that's never, right? But I always feel really good coming off stage. I feel really good having that ability to connect with people and, and they find value in, in these tips and tricks that they can then apply to their lives. And, and for me, having that as, like, a bigger goal helps with the imposter syndrome.

But I think, I think everyone really, you know, like, so many people have roles with that of like, so many people, it's amazing. Yeah. And people that you would be like, you have a brother, you're the boy, you make me have imposter syndrome. You're so amazing. So yeah, I think, you know, I talked to the, in the gynecology episode about that to the gynecologist who didn't feel comfortable saying she was a doctor for a while, and how the imposter syndrome is more prevalent in people who are capable and intelligent, which is so annoying because you're like, so if you have imposter syndrome, chances are you don't need to have it. That's, there you go, I fixed it. What's, what's your favorite part about what you do?

I think that it allows me to have, I've taken a long time to craft a lifestyle that is really feral, where I'm a full digital nomad. I do everything on a weird schedule. I'm constantly traveling. And I love that lifestyle of not being in a tiny box and not having a time to, like, you know, punch the clock. And that's something that I've really been able to find a lot of joy in, that I could pair my research and my science communication and my teaching and my love of travel and put all those things together is just, you know, like really, really special. And I'm very privileged to be able to do that of, you know, posting the like, here's my office today with my laptop on the beach, right? And it's, it's such a unique

experience that there's not all the jobs in the world that you could do that. So, so really lucky that I can pull all these things in. Everything I do has been driven by my interests, which is also a privilege. At times, you know, people are in jobs, they're like, the reason why they're unhappy is because they have no interest in what they're doing, where I do this because I love it. That means I don't have a distinct off switch. Yeah. It's, you know, it's, it's a lifestyle, not a job that you clock in and clock out of. My mind's always thinking about things, you know, like writing down stories that would be good to tell on stage. I'm thinking about how I could do an activity in a workshop. So,

that's not for everyone. Yeah. Right. A lot of people want to just like leave it at the office. And, you know, since my office is the planet, you know, but it's such a privilege to be able to do that. It's funny too, because that was one of your mother's greatest fears. And that was one of your greatest fears is leaving home. And that's one of your greatest joys now. Yeah. Run towards your fear. Yeah. Which is amazing. It almost makes, it makes me want to write down what I am most afraid of and really examine it differently. Because I think that I just let fear kind of knock on my door and I'm like, who is it? Come in and ruin my life. You know what I mean? Like I don't really, I don't necessarily like run toward things that, that might be scary and kind

of get over them. So, that's really inspiring. I can tell you that you do not have any of the markings of an imposter. I think you are very good at what you do. Please take that, throw it into the ocean. You're amazing. Oh, thank you. Thank you for letting me talk to you. This is the longest interview I've ever done because I cannot stop asking you questions. You are amazing. Thank you so, so much for me. You're so, so welcome. So, for more about Mary Poffenroth, if you haven't already gingerly begun stalking her, her website is marypoffenroth.com. She's Mary Poffenroth on Twitter and Facebook and on Instagram. She's fear forward. Now to follow oligies, we're at oligies on Twitter and on Instagram. We're on patreon.com. If you'd like some perks there,

like submitting your questions to oligists and seeing photos and videos. You can also fund the podcast and cover your body at oligiesmerch.com, which was just updated by Bonnie Dutch. We have some new pin designs up by Shannon Feltas. Thank you both for that. You can join up on Facebook on the oligies podcast group. Thank you, Hannah Lipo Esquire. She just passed the bar. And Aaron Talbert for adminning for your old pop. And thank you to Stephen Ray Morris for editing and cutting this all up and putting it back together for me every week. You're the best. The music was written and performed by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands. You should check them out. And you know what? Okay, I have an idea. What if you ask smart people dumb questions? Because thinking the

questions are dumb is actually a fictional fear. No questions are dumb. I just say that so that you don't judge yourself. Okay, so if you hang through the credits, you know I tell a secret at the end of every episode. And this one, I thought I'd stay on brand. I wrote this on an airplane somewhere over Tennessee, just tippity tapping away. So I thought I'd make a list of my fears and tell you what they are. One, getting divorced, which is probably why I've never gotten married. Two, mismanaging money. So I'm so afraid of overspending my money like an idiot or like MC Hammer did in the 1990s, God bless him, that I just never buy myself shoes or clothes. So I could probably change that and live a little. Another fear, teeth falling out. You know those dreams

where your teeth fall out? I do not want that IRL, which also reminds me, I'm out of dental floss. So okay, everyone, let's read up on, I don't know, retirement accounts and maybe treat yourself to some shoes on sale and let's practice good oral hygiene. I hope you end up making a list of things that have been nagging at you. I mean, there are some things we can't change, like the death of people we love or just the inevitable, our butts are going to get droopy. But we can say to ourselves that I'll live that sorrow when it comes. You can't pre-greave anything. You can only enjoy what you have right now and deal with the fears that you have and you can do something about. So I hope that helps. I hope you go out and do the things you want to do. Okay,

farewell. This is the song that... Holy horse!