Something You Should Know - How to Harness the Power of Your Brain & Where Halloween Monsters Come From

Episode Date: October 17, 2019

Most people agree that if you know how a book, movie or TV show ends that will ruin the experience of reading or watching it. Really? Maybe knowing the ending first could make the experience better. This episode begins with some research that looked at the whole idea of spoiler alerts. https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/soc/2011_08spoilers.asp Can you deliberately use your brain power to achieve what you want? Is there really brain science to support the idea that you can use your brain power very deliberately to create the life you want? Yes, according to Tara Swart, neuroscientist, psychiatrist and author of the book The Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain (https://amzn.to/33D6fPC). Listen as Tara explains the cutting-edge brain research that will empower you to really achieve the things you want. Every workplace seems to be too hot for some people, too cold for others. So how do you make sure you are comfortable no matter what the temperature? Listen for the simple secret to feeling just right no matter what the thermostat says. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/09/office-too-cold-shoes/502184/ Halloween is the time for monsters. So joining me for an explanation of why we have monsters and where they came from is Carlyn Beccia, author of the book Monstrous: The Lore, Gore, and Science behind Your Favorite Monsters (https://amzn.to/32jWHJ6). If you want to know why we have zombies or vampires or what kind of creature Godzilla actually is, you will want to hear this discussion. This Week’s Sponsors  -Beautycounter. To get 10% of your entire first order go to www.beautycounter.com and use promo code SOMETHING –Airbnb. To learn more about being an Airbnb host visit www.Airbnb.com/host -Babbel. Get 6 months for the price of 3 when you use the promo code SYSK at www.Babbel.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts today on something you should know does knowing the ending of a story or movie really spoil it or could it make it better then a fascinating look at the power of your brain and what it can do when you really want it to it's a little bit like when roger bannister first ran a mile in less than four minutes. We thought it was humanly impossible until he achieved it.

As soon as he achieved it, seven other people did it in the next two months. So there is a bit of mind over matter. Also, how to stay comfortable at work even if it feels too hot or too cold. And a look at classic Halloween monsters like Dracula, zombies, werewolves, and Godzilla. He feeds on radiation, but he occasionally snacks on people, but he doesn't seem to eat people. That's not his main food source. So is he a carnivore? So I looked at the skull of Godzilla and his skull points to being a carnivore. All this today on Something You Should Know. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast.

And I tell people, if you like Something You Should Know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal

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The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, and welcome to Something You Should Know. We start today with a spoiler alert alert. People seem to be very concerned and really don't want to know how a story or a movie or a book ends before they read it, because the theory is that if you know the ending first, that will somehow spoil the experience of reading the book or watching the movie or the TV show.

Well, researchers put this idea to the test. Two groups of people were asked to read a best-selling book. One group had to read the ending first. And it turned out that that group, the group that knew how the story ended, actually enjoyed reading the book more. The researchers say that's because when we know the ending, it allows us to focus more on things like deeper meanings,

plots, acting, and writing ability, and appreciate some of the nuances that we might have otherwise missed. And that is something you should know. There's been a lot of really interesting research in the last several years about the brain. And we've talked on this podcast to some of the people involved in that research. And what's become clear is that a lot of what we used to believe to be true about the brain isn't. And what seems to be true is that there is a lot you can do

to optimize your brain and to use your brain in ways that will enhance your life and success. And one of the scientists who's talking about this is Tara Swart. Tara is a neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and senior lecturer at MIT's Sloan School of Management. She's also author of a book called The Source, The Secrets of the Universe, The Science of the Brain. Hi, Tara. Hi, thank you so much for having me. Sure. So let's start by talking about some of the things that we used to believe about the brain, that science used to believe, that maybe some people still do believe,

things about the brain that we now know are no longer true. Well, I don't think you want to start me on the subject of neuromyths, that I feel like a sort of superhero that's here to try to bust some of these myths. Well, busting myths is good. I like busting myths if there are myths. Okay. So I really found out that there were things that people still think are true that in neuroscience research we've moved on from, which are about the left and right brain lateralization. So in the 50s and 60s, where, for example, if you had a brain tumor or a mental illness, there was a lot of surgery like frontal lobotomies or cutting the

bridge that connects the two halves of the brain, the corpus callosum. They led us to believe certain things about where our capabilities were stored or written down in the brain. Since we've been able to do things like functional MRI, magnetic resonance imaging, we've seen that information flows around the brain in networks and subnetworks. And this really blows away the idea that, you know, your ability to read and write on one side of the brain, your ability to do math or on another and it brings together this integrative power of the brain where we can layer logic over emotional mastery over access to our wisdom and intuition over creative thinking and just really get so much more out of the brain than those myths lead us to

believe another one is you only use 10 of your your brain. We do tend to default to the pathways in our brain that we are good at, that we are comfortable with. And this is about saying, you know, Michael, if you're super logical, but you do, you know, you do have good intuition, what if you also mastered your emotions? What if you also thought creatively? What if you also listened to your body? How much more could you get out of life? And how much more agency would you feel that you had over some of the things that might happen unexpectedly? You said something to me before we started recording this conversation that struck me. And you said, to paraphrase, you said that how you think and how you use your brain will determine the kind of life you have.

And I think what's so interesting about that is that people think it's the other way around. That the life you have, your circumstances in your life, the people in your life, that will determine how you think and how you use your brain. And you say, no, it's the other way around that is essentially my message you have put that so beautifully and you know i learned through my own professional and personal journey that that moment when you move from understanding that life isn't happening to you that you have much more power and control over what happens and how you deal with it cognitively than you ever thought before that is a game-changing moment for people and when when it happened for me and i'm you know a neuroscientist and i was a psychiatrist a medical doctor

and i understood that that's when i thought everybody needs to know about this okay so if that's true though if if how you think determines how your life goes, and it doesn't feel that way for a lot of people, it doesn't seem true. But if it is true, then how do you put that into practice? How do you make it work if, in fact, you don't really believe it? Well, it starts with an understanding of neuroplasticity, which is the ability of the brain to change itself. And both that with the fact that if you don't choose how your brain changes itself, then it's changing based on everything that you expose it to. Every person you meet or have relationships with, professional or personal, everything you eat, everything you smell, every memory you recall, all of those things are actively molding and shaping your brain without you realizing it.

So deciding to take back the harness, you know, put yourself in the driving seat of that rather than being the passenger is, you need to understand the science to really believe it. And so what we know is that from zero to two, you know, if you have young kids, you see that they go from being totally vulnerable and dependent to walking and talking. I mean, it's incredible when you see it. The next big, so the brain grows massively in those first two years. The next big change is around teenage where the brain prunes itself so it gets rid of pathways that aren't required to be successful in adult life it moves us much more towards being successful socially and sexually

and then we used to think that around the age of 18 that your brain was kind of fixed for the rest of your life but what we know now from these scanning studies is that the active molding and shaping of the brain continues till we're about 25. And that from 25 to 65, you have to do things to keep your brain as plastic and flexible as possible. And that if you start by your late 30s to early 40s, you can even do things to slow down the cognitive decline that tends to occur around the age of 70 onwards. Even that, though, in a way, is another sophistication of the brain. So we tend to see that sequential memory is affected. You find it harder to remember the order that things happened in or the order that your plans for the future are likely to happen in. But you get this really super highway to your wisdom and intuition.

So the brain changes a lot over our lives. The more we do, and the best things we can do in adult life to keep our brain really flexible are learn a new language or learn a musical instrument anything that's attention intense enough to physically change your brain if you do that then when life throws something at you which of course I agree it does you know there are some things around you that you can't control you are more resilient mentally and more adaptable and able to cope with those changes so it's both the fact that you keep your brain flexible, you learn new things, you expose your brain only to positive situations and people, and the fact that that then allows you to become more resilient.

So if I go and learn the saxophone, I'll be more resilient? Absolutely. And even if you do intermittent fasting, it improves your mental toughness. So that whole brain-body connection, it's not just about learning mental things. It's sometimes about changing the exercise that you do or dieting in a different way. When I say dieting, I mean adjusting your diet. So it's absolutely fascinating. Whether it's physical, whether it's emotional, whether it's mental, the sorts of things that you do that can lead to mental resilience

are more varied than you might think. But aren't people all different? And, you know, some people have a tendency to be more negative and depressed. Other people tend to be more optimistic and happy. And these are just personality traits. Or are they? Yeah, I love that question because it's kind of along the lines of what we were saying earlier, which is there is some truth to that statement.

But it's a belief that we can change now that we understand how neuroplasticity works. If we look, for example, at Professor Carol Dweck's work from Stanford on mindsets, at first, the research was very polarized. You either had a fixed mindset or a growth or learning mindset. In my research, which is backed up by neuroplasticity, which says that you can move along a spectrum of thinking, I do talk about lack and abundance thinking. But I have personally and with my coaching clients and my friends and family worked on moving myself along that spectrum to being somebody who thinks more positively, somebody who embraces more risk, who takes on more change. And, you know, it's hard work at first until that pathway in your brain becomes the default, i.e. that becomes the new you and how you do things. But also the act of choosing to think differently, of forcing your brain to go

down a different pathway until it becomes natural, actually makes you more resilient and more positive and more willing to take on change. I've talked with people before about how much of who you are and how you think is determined by the people you hang out with. And yes, it's nice to hang around with really positive people because that will help you be more positive. But unfortunately, that's not the way life always works. You end up in a workplace with negative people or complainers or other kinds of people that bring you down. I thought about this a lot when I was doing my research, because obviously, I don't want to be out here saying you should, you know, ditch your friends because they don't suit the sort of, you know, the way that you're thinking or what you're trying to do at the moment. So I think, again, there's a spectrum

of how you deal with that. I think that if there are people in your life who consistently make you feel negative, consistently criticize you, don't encourage you to do things that might be good for you, it might be worth thinking about whether you actually want to interact with those people or not on a more um you know balanced level I guess that when I have people that well you know okay so before I give a keynote presentation sometimes with the best will in the world somebody will come up to me and say, are you nervous? And I will lock down that conversation immediately. I will say no. If necessary, I'll walk away. If I feel that I need to do some mindfulness or a power pose, then that's what I'll do to get myself back into positive thinking. Of course, we all tolerate people in our lives sometimes because they're direct family. And we don't feel that we can change that who do tend to have quite a negative effect on us.

But just remember the research about social and emotional contagion, which shows that if you have a friend who gets divorced, then you're more likely to get divorced in the next year. So that doesn't mean that it's catching in the sense. It just means that if your relationship was already in trouble and your social norm becomes acceptable to see divorce around you it's more likely to push you down that path if you have friends who are obese you're more likely to be overweight so you know I just think that knowledge is power and knowing that and raising your awareness of it can help you to create the healthiest environment around you that you possibly can. I'm speaking with Tara Swart.

She is a neuroscientist, a psychiatrist, and her book is called The Source, The Secrets of the Universe, The Science of the Brain. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot.

Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool.

And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, Tara, so much of what you say seems very based in science, but then it seems to kind of drift into the law of attraction and stuff that a lot of science people have said is baloney. So, help me reconcile that. I was one of those people. I was one of those skeptics. And because of some things like doing a vision board or, you know, how the law of attraction and manifestation works, I was interested in those things on the side, but I didn't feel that they

sat right with being a neuroscientist or a medical doctor. And it really came to a crunch point in my life, I guess, a sort of midlife crisis where I thought, OK, let's just for fun see how much of this stuff I can explain with cognitive science. And the vision boards, for example, I'd been doing them for 10 years and with good results. But so can you explain what a vision board is? A vision board is a collage that you make by hand. I actually call them action boards though, because I say you can't just make the collage. It has these metaphorical representations of what you want your life to look like, but you can't just make it and sit on the sofa waiting for

the checks to roll in or your life to magically change. You have to be doing something every day to move yourself towards those goals. However, the science shows that because our brains are bombarded with so much information every single day, everything we see, everything we hear, every person we interact with, there's a natural filtering system that gets rid of unwanted information, focuses on the things that we need to survive, and tags them in order of importance. And these processes in the brain are called selective filtering, selective attention, and value tagging. Now, if you're busy holding down the day job, trying to keep your work-life balance, you know, look after your family, get a bit of exercise in, just the minimum with a few luxuries thrown in, then we don't always have the time to think about what do I want my life to look like in five years' time? What's my career plan?

What am I going to do about buying and paying off a house? So creating this board, which has images rather than a list of things that we want written down, primes our brain to notice and grasp opportunities that might otherwise have passed us by because we're busy with the day job and life. And also there's a phenomenon called the Tetris effect, which is because of kids who played Tetris in the 80s found that when they closed their eyes to go to sleep, they could see the little bricks falling down in front of their eyes. So we know that in the hypnagogic state, which is the state of going from wakefulness to falling asleep, the brain is particularly suggestible to visual imagery. So if you put all of those things together, if you actually take the time to step

back and think about what do I want my life to look like, if you use imagery to present this to your brain, if you actually make sure that you look at it every night before you fall asleep, it does increase the likelihood that you are going to notice something that can help you to reach one of those goals than if you are just trying to get everything done on a daily basis. And yet there seem to be people, I know people, who seemingly are really into this and they have the collages and the affirmations and all that but success still seems to elude them that that all this stuff doesn't seem to work so

if it's science it seems like it would work all the time it's funny you should say that because you know i haven't done a proper research study but given my own experience my friends and family my coaching clients or the journalists that I've spoken to, I mean, I was speaking to a journalist in the UK. And I said, you know, I've never met anybody that's done a vision board that hasn't found it incredible and astounding. And then there was a pause where I thought, Oh, no, she could say, well, I did one and it didn't work. And she said, actually, I did one. And it was amazing. So because of what I do, because of what I've written about, I get a lot of feedback from people sending me stories of how

their vision board has come true. Maybe I don't get the ones where it hasn't come true. So I'm not saying that this is, you know, this is more anecdotal than science, but the science of how it works is compelling. Even when I Googled the laws of attraction, which I would say I was even more skeptical about, there isn't even agreement over what the 12 laws are. But, you know, when I distilled it down to an agreeable 12 that most people agree on, 10 of them I could explain with cognitive science quite easily. I have to say that I have had feedback from people that the science is compelling about how these things work. And I also believe that that makes a difference in terms of how they work, how they pan out.

Because, for example, someone told me years ago that they never eat when they're on a plane and they don't get jet lag. Now, because I didn't understand how that worked, I didn't do it. Or even when I did it, I did it halfheartedly. And I didn't get a good effect. When I found out that because the basic drives of the brain are for hunger, thirst, sleep, wake, and sexual reproduction, that if you starve yourself, your brain will keep you awake until it finds food, even if it's gone into a different time zone. And it's the time zone where you would have been asleep in your hometown. Once I understood that, the impact of fasting on long flights was undeniable. It's a little bit like when Roger Bannister first ran a mile in less than four minutes. We thought it was

humanly impossible until he achieved it. As soon as he achieved it, seven other people did it in the next two months. So there is a bit of mind over matter. But like I said, it's not about creating a board and waiting for it to magically come true. It's about putting the action behind that that makes those things come true. So are you saying that fasting on an airplane, you said you did it halfheartedly and it didn't seem to work because you didn't believe it worked? It didn't work? In general terms, you put that right, that if you don't believe that something works or you're not sure how it works, then it may not have the same impact on you

as if you have a strong belief. One of the laws of attraction, for example, that I've written about in the book is called magnetic desire, which is the combination of a strong belief with action that brings towards you the things that you want in life. So your level of belief in something does actually have an impact on your brain.

For example, there's a study on rats doing exercise. There's a control group that doesn't do any exercise. They're kept in a confined space. There's a group that's forced to run on a treadmill for a certain number of minutes or hours per day. And There's a group that's forced to run on a treadmill for a certain number of minutes or hours per day. And there's a group that are allowed to roam around freely and do whatever form of exercise they like for however long they like. And the two groups that do exercise all get more oxygenation in their blood supply to their brain and their body. But the voluntary exercise group also release a growth factor called BDNF or brain derived neurotrophic factor. And this shows us that our intention or desire to

do a certain activity actually has a different physiological effect in the brain. So if you extrapolate that to, you know, other activities that you have a strong intention or desire for, we actually see that blood flow moves to the pathways in the brain that help us to achieve that activity. Well, it's interesting, and you don't often hear someone who is a doctor, an MD, and a neuroscientist talk about science and also the more, I guess, mystical parts of this, the laws of attraction and manifestation and all that. But you've done a pretty good job.

I believe if we can get that peaceful coexistence of brain, body and spirit in our lives, it actually really makes a big difference to how difficult life seems to be. And that's the perfect way to end this discussion. Dr. Tara Swart has been my guest. She's a neuroscientist, psychiatrist and senior lecturer at MIT's Sloan School of Management. And her book is called The Source, The Secrets of the Universe, The Science of the Brain. There is a link to her book in the show notes. Thank you, Tara. Thank you so much. Disney themed games and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong?

Each week we deliver four fun filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our our listeners dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have a but am I wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from but am I wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Halloween is just days away. And of course, Halloween would be nothing without ghosts and goblins and monsters. There's something wonderfully scary about monsters. We know they aren't real, but they fascinate us nevertheless. And if monsters are not real, where did they come from? Karlyn Betcha is a writer who has explored the dark world of monsters and written a frighteningly beautiful book called Monstrous, the lore, gore, and science behind your favorite monsters. Hi, Carlin.

Hi, Mike. Nice to meet you. So let's begin with the question of why we have monsters. I mean, monsters are fictitious, and yet there's a lot of them, and they seemingly came from all over the world. So where did they come from, and why do we have them? Well, that's actually a really interesting question, because if you look at the trends of monsters, I personally believe monsters are a reflection of the fears of the society at that time. For example, zombies, they're a fear of pandemics and epidemics. And we go through phases where like, take, for example, the influence of the 1918. That was a very real fear.

And shortly after that, in the 1940s, 1950s, you see zombie, the zombie quips being invented. And then vampires, that fear came out of the 18th century, where people didn't really understand decomposition and death. So they were confusing dead people with people who were rising from the grave feeding on the living, because they didn't understand, for example, that thing, I hope no one is eating while listening to this, but something like purge fluid appears at the corner of the mouth. It's sort of a brown-red liquid. And 18th century people would look at that and go, oh, they must be feeding on the dead.

How far back, if we know, how far back have monsters been a thing? What are the first recorded mentions of monsters? Yeah, so the word monster, it comes from monstrums, which is a Latin term, and it meant that it was a portent of evil. So people of the Renaissance and medieval courts, they were very superstitious. And even something like if they saw a comet, they wouldn't know what that meant because they didn't have science behind them to explain it. So they would think that that meant the end of the world. So the word monster comes from monstrums, which is a portent of evil. And they would look at things like deformities.

There's an interesting story about one of the first cases of werewolf syndrome. And it's very rare, but you basically grow hair all over your face and hands. The listeners can Google it. And there's been only about 50 cases, but there was a case in the Renaissance court and they considered that monstrous. Any sort of, any deformity or anything out of the norm was an object of fear. How did monsters get wrapped up in Halloween? Yeah, Halloween, you know, Halloween has gone through so many reiterations in our culture. I almost feel now it becomes a way for people to step into a role and to be something else. But I think monsters became, you know, just like confronting our fears on the page with monsters is a good contained way to confront anxiety,

because you can close the book. I think Halloween is a lot like that. I think you dress up as something scary or something weird or something k cookie. And then you get to pack the costume away. You get to be that person for just a day. And there's something fun about that. I think there's something interesting about that with monsters. When you read about them, you think about the what if possibilities. And it's sure zombies can be terrifying. And, you know, if you've ever watched the original Frankenstein movie, it's a horror. It's a harrowing movie because it's all gritty and black and white. But you get to turn the movie off.

And I think Halloween is a lot like that. Halloween allows us to be something different for just a day. Are there monsters in every culture? Do other cultures have monsters or is it a very Western thing or what? Yeah, that actually was one of the things that was fascinating to me when researching this, because monsters mean different things to different cultures. Take, for example, the story of Godzilla. To Japanese audiences, that came out of a very, very real and tragic and poignant story. And then you take a monster like Godzilla and you bring it to US markets and it becomes something,

I don't know, campy and fun. It doesn't have the history behind it that it does to Japanese audiences. So I think we tend to attach, each culture tends to attach their fears and anxieties to that monster. Do you know what I mean? Like it could mean something different to every culture, but the one unifying theme is all cultures have monsters. Now that's interesting. And are there similarities? Are the monsters in other cultures more or less the same kind of monsters we have? Yeah, well, take, for example, something like werewolves. So, you know, I studied a lot of Japanese history when researching Godzilla, and they didn't have werewolves.

They had werefoxes. So it's still, but it's still the same sort of fear. It's this fear of man becoming beast, but it's just a different beast. So it's all the same underlining fear, but how that fear is portrayed is different in every culture. I guess what I'm trying to say is I think fear is ubiquitous in every culture. It's just the way it's portrayed pertains. It's kind of like art, the way beauty is communicated and art is different in every culture. Which is your favorite monster? Who do you like the best? I've always loved vampires. I think because I'm one of those people you never want to sit next to in a dinner party.

I was fascinated by researching the study of decomposition and how that got confused with vampires. You know, the stages of decomposition are actually something that's kind of, we've only in this century really understood it. And I spoke to a lot of coroners about what exactly does a dead body go through? And some of the things I could, I understand how people got confused between vampires and the dead. For example, one of the, again, I dead bodies is they will let out groans. As a culture, we think, for example, the dead are not going to move, but the actually, the dead do move when they're buried underground. As methane gas, since it's lighter than air, it will actually push the body up. So there's all these weird things that happen to dead bodies. And if you don't understand science, if you don't

understand how the bacteria, how bacteria breaks down a body, I could completely see how that could get confused. I mean, take for example, something like dead bodies look like the hair and nails are continuing to grow. But really what's happening as the body loses water, the skin shrinks back. So the nail bed shrinks back and it looks like the nails are longer. And can you imagine, you know, you suspect grandma's a vampire. So you go dig her up and look, her nails are growing. So there's all this, that kind of interest me, where superstition and science intersect not all monsters are creepy and supernatural and from the dead and all that i mean um king kong is considered a monster i guess but he's he's just he's just a big ape king kong came out a lot out

of us not understanding how because because you have to remember, gorillas were believed to be mythical for the longest time. They were as mythical as Bigfoot. So when the first gorillas were discovered, they were brought to audiences. No one could believe there was this large ape that was kind of like humans. And that was fascinating to audiences because I mean, if you've have you ever gone to a zoo, and you have to admit the gorillas are interesting, their expressions are interesting. They're the way they interact with each other. It's very human like. And so I think the interest in a monster gorilla came out of understanding our

own bestiality, that here's this ape that is really big, and it can feel all these emotions, it falls in love. You know, gorillas actually really can fall in love with humans. They've been known to develop crushes on their caretakers. They're so much like us. And when that movie was first introduced, there was very little that we knew about gorillas. So it would be like today, discovering Bigfoot. Let's just say, for example, we discover that Bigfoot is real. And then someone does a movie about Bigfoot. That movie would be fascinating to audiences because it would be our first exposure to this new species that we've never seen before. So I think that's why King Kong did so well,

because it was a new species discovered and we knew so little about it. It does seem that movies have been great PR for monsters. And when you think about the monsters, when I think of monsters, I think of Frankenstein and King Kong, Godzilla, Dracula, the mummy, and they've all had movies about them, sometimes several major motion pictures about them. Yeah, that's actually a really good point because I think about something like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which was a huge literary success at the time, but it was the play and the subsequent movies that really took off. I mean, when you think about Frankenstein, you think of Boris's character. You don't think of, you know, the way Mary Shelley described Frankenstein is nothing like the movies. And I think there's something indelible about movies in people's minds that might be a little bit more prolific than books. And it's a way to reach a larger

audience, if you will. But yeah, that's actually, I never even thought about that. That's a really interesting question. Because as soon as a monster makes it to movies, that's when it really penetrates society. Do you think that maybe monsters have become, I don't know, that we've become too sophisticated? Like, you know, it's not as exciting because we've kind of solved the whole mystery, as you've just described. We have the science of why things happen to dead people and all that. Monsters aren't quite as captivating as they once were. I actually think monsters are very terrifying because there is a

real aspect of monsters. Take, for example, zombies. You know, The Walking Dead is another example of a TV show that has made zombies mainstream and this Romero's version of zombies too that really brought it to popular culture. But the fear of zombies in a series like The Walking Dead is really a fear about epidemics, you know, this virus infecting our society and then we can't control it and then everyone is just a free for all now that think about it that really could happen i mean there's a there was a funny thing that the the cdc put out a few years ago about how to survive a zombie apocalypse and of course they did it tongue-in-cheek and but the reason why they did it is they wanted the public prepared

for pandemics. And it was actually a clever way to get the public prepared for a very real fear. Fear. For example, I studied the influenza breakout 1918 for a long time. And it to me, it was terrifying that here was a pandemic that took down the healthiest individuals and we still don't know why. We still don't know why if you were 25 and healthier, you had a higher rate of mortality. And the zombie apocalypse coming,

we don't really fear zombies, but we fear some sort of viral outbreak. So I think there is a real fear in zombies. What about Godzilla? Where did he come from? What is he? Is he a dinosaur? What is Godzilla? So I had a lot of fun researching this because we don't really know what kind of dinosaur he is. So let's break down his features. He feeds on radiation, but he occasionally snacks on people, but he doesn't seem to eat people. That's not his main food source. So is he a carnivore? So I broke down his skull and I looked at the skull of Godzilla and his skull points to being a carnivore. So he most likely was a dinosaur,

like a T-Rex type of dinosaur. So that was really, because we actually, they never really, they drew inspiration from T-Rex, but it's, we know he's a dinosaur from the Cretaceous period. I'm talking about the original movie, by the way. We know he's a dinosaur from the Cretaceous period, but we don't really know what kind of dinosaur he is. And that's kind of clever to leave it open like that because then, you know, audiences can go, okay, so this is this fantastical creature. But what exactly is he? I've always liked Dracula, and he never seems to stray too far off the radar. His image is always in, you always in a commercial or something. And I like the lore

of Dracula that he can't see his reflection and you have to drive a stake through his heart. It's just interesting to me. Where did he come from? I think Dracula, Dracula is an interesting story because there's been a lot of reiteration of vampires we have you know bella lugosi basically you know is put his foot put his uh thumb you know he's dracula he is dracula but you know you ask younger audiences and they're probably don't know i mean maybe they do but they probably don't know who bella lugosi is but to meela Lugosi is a vampire. And it's interesting to me because you have to remember that vampires were originally called revenants, and they were disgusting and bloated, and they came out of the grave to feed on blood and flesh. They were not sexy at all.

And then you have Bela Lugosi with his swinging cape, and he was clearly, you know, he was Hungarian and good looking and kind of exotic. And he made vampires something forbidden, and sort of appealing. And we really haven't got out of that sense. But if you were to go back into the 18th century, vampires were ugly and horrible and scary and disgusting and smelly. They were, they did not have sparklies around them, for sure. One of the interesting things you talk about are real. They're not made-up monsters. They're real, and they're like microscopic monsters.

So talk about that. So it's a parasite that its objective is to get inside a cat, not humans. But the way it gets inside a cat is it will rewire the brain of a mouse to actually be attracted to the smell of cat urine. If anyone has a cat in their house, they probably know that just the smell of a cat will keep mice away. So when toxoplasmosis infects a mouse, the mouse will actually be drawn to the cat. The cat, of course, eats the mouse and then toxoplasmosis can reproduce inside the cat. The cat then will, it will obviously come out in their feces and humans who either are cleaning a cat litter box and don't wash their hands, or you can even

get it from gardening, they will get infected by toxoplasmosis. So it's one of those parasites that we still don't know a lot about. But we think it's interesting because it's believed to only infect men in this way, that men who've been infected by toxoplasmosis will actually not be turned off by the smell of cat urine. And it will change their personality to make them more aggressive. It's even been linked to schizophrenia. Again, a lot of this we don't completely know, but I was so intrigued by the thought of these parasites that can rewire your brain, you know, just like zombie mind control. Wow. So that's like a real life monster, but a microscopic monster. Yes. Yeah. And there's tons of examples.

I had to actually cut some of them because there was so many examples of parasites rewiring the brains of other creatures to make them do their bidding. Well, it's not often that we tackle a subject that is primarily made up of fictitious things like monsters, but it is so fascinating and what better time than October to do it. Karlyn Betcha has been my guest, her book, and it's really a beautiful book. It's called Monstrous, the Lore, Gore, and Science Behind Your Favorite Monsters. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Karlyn. Thank you so much for having me. A lot of offices and workplaces are either too cold or too hot,

and sometimes at the same time, depending on who you talk to. An office can be too hot for some and too cold for others depending on where they sit and their gender. Some interesting research shows that regardless of fluctuations in the air temperature, if your feet are comfortable, then you will be comfortable. So the key to comfort may be your footwear. For example, if a woman wears an open, strappy sandal in an air-conditioned office, she's more likely to say she feels cold.

And if a man wears heavy wool socks and leather shoes so his feet get hot, he's likely to say he feels warm all over. The answer, then, is to do whatever is necessary to regulate the temperature of your feet and pay attention to the footwear you wear to work. That'll have a lot to do with how hot or cold you feel overall. And that is something you should know. If you know someone who would like the kind of information we talk about here, please share this podcast with them. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro,

who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot,

and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator join me as i study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving god and we

are not its favored children the heresies of redolf bantwine wherever podcasts are available