Stuff You Should Know - How Crying Works

Episode Date: February 28, 2012

You probably did it around 70 times last year, yet you probably don't understand the psychological and physiological processes at work when you cried. Don't feel bad - no one does. Join Chuck and Josh as they poke around your tear ducts in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. How are you doing? Good, sir. Are you doing good? Yeah. Okay, good. We put the two of us together and you've got a little podcast called Stuff You Should Know. That's what this is. You get more than that. Even though this was an abnormal start, semi-abnormal. Yeah. We've had

Devo kick us off before. Yeah, but hey, Devo's got nothing on Rosie Greer. No, you want to talk a little bit about what we've heard? Well, yeah, obviously, children of the 70s might recognize that song, might be very fond to some of you, like it is to me, from the awesome album Free to Be You and Me, which Marlo Thomas headed up this record in the 70s to basically build kids up, make them feel better about, you know, if you're a boy and you're a little effeminate, you like to play with dolls. There was one called William wants a doll. Yeah. If you're a boy and, you know, you wanted to cry, Rosie Greer's there to tell you it's okay. Yeah. Might make you feel better. Yeah. And that was, you know, it was one about like treating your grandparents with respect and it's okay for girls

to like do boy things and boys to do girl things and, you know, it's very 70s. It's okay for girls to punch in the arm. Yeah. Pretty hard. I think there was a song about that. I love the 70s for that reason. It was great though, man. I listened to this one like a lot. Did you? Yeah. Mel Brooks was on it and Anne Bancroft and I mean, it was a litany of awesome 70s guests. So thank you, Marlo Thomas. Yeah. And now thank you to Uncle Chuck for bringing it back. Yeah. Josh, before we go any further, what are you doing? We have a very special announcement that I'd like you to make right now. You want me to make it? And we're doing it at the beginning of the show because not everyone listens all the way through, even though they're missing out.

Yeah. So yeah, please announce. This is a very high honor. Yes. As everyone knows, we're doing a live podcast that's out by Southwest on Sunday, March 11th from 3.30 to 4.30 in the Maximilian Room at the Driscoll Hotel, right? For Badged Holders. It's been pretty clear the whole time. I hope so. We've been kind of dancing around what we're doing at this special event, this Stuff You Should Know Variety show the next day, which is Monday, March 12th from 5 to 9 at Fado Irish Pub on 4th Street in Austin. Dance no more, sir. No. I hand the dance card over to you, Chuck. Do it. Dudes and dudettes, we have been lucky enough to get a chance at television with a TV pilot for Science Channel. Yeah. The awesome,

awesome people at Science Channel have given us a chance for a half hour TV pilot. We made it. Yeah. It's in the can. Yeah, like we've gone over where in the second round of editing. Yep, put it all together. It's happening. This pilot is coming together. It is coming together. And that will be the basis of the Variety show featuring an appearance by Mr. John Hodgman. How can we not include Hodgy? He's always here. Eugene Merman, who I'm looking forward to meeting. Very funny comedian. Yes. Big fan of his. Yeah. Music by Lucy Wayne Wright, Roach. Who is in the pilot. She plays Jerry. She plays Jerry. It's crazy. And Jerry will be there too. And we're going to put him right next to another, remember? Yeah. It's been the plan all along. Our buddies,

Henry Clay people who have been friends for a few years now. It's crazy. And who you manage on the side? I manage and the side sometimes. They did the score. Joey from the band did the score and the theme song. Did a lot of composing. Did some good stuff. Yeah. And they will be playing this party. And local Austin band Crooks, who it turns out are also fans of the show. Yeah. And that just happened. Yeah. I like it when Serendip happens. So Crooks are going to be playing as well. And they are awesome sort of old school countries with a little new school rock thrown in. And we will be showing clips from the show throughout the night. Which I mean, we've seen the show how many times Chuck and I still like it. I feel like this is a pretty neat pilot. So if

you want to be in the know and get a sneak peek at this thing and whatever I said on Facebook today, whatever you think the show was like, you're wrong. Oh, wow. You've been, you've been taunting people. I just, I don't think anyone is going to expect what we're going to give them. Okay. Well, it's going to air at some point, right? Yeah. So time to spring. But this is the debut, the premiere of the sneak peek clips of the stuff you should know TV pilot. That's right. Monday, March 12th from five to nine, Fado Irish pub, 214 West 4th Street, Austin, Texas, free drink ticket to the first 100 guests. Yes. I mean, that's reason enough to come. You don't have to like leg wrestle to find out who uses it. No. So wow. Yeah, that isn't,

that is reason enough to come. Sure. And this is not for badge holders. Nope. This is for the public at large. And it's free. Anybody can come free. It's totally totes free. Well, we're not buying drinks or anything, but it's, it's still like there's no admission. No admission whatsoever. I don't even think there's an age requirement. I believe they serve food. It's like a just a restaurant as well. So you don't have to get all drinky. You can just come and sip on some iced tea. Excellent. So is that it? Can we get back to the show now? Yeah. All right. Back to the show we recorded several weeks back. Okay. Wow. The focus obviously on this one is crying. If you notice the title, that shouldn't come as much of a surprise. No. I have a little story for

you. Let's hear it. Have you heard of the movie Water for Elephants? Yeah. It's like Reese Witherspoon and the Dude from Twilight. Yeah, Emily saw that. Is it any good? She enjoyed it. Well, I was researching whether or not elephants can cry. And apparently at one of the premieres, I think the premier in Australia for this movie, the elephant co-star was there and it started crying. Really? And apparently everybody was really affected by this elephant just crying in the middle of public. They didn't think the Australians were going to eat them. I don't know what the elephant was thinking and we're not even certain whether the elephant was crying because as far as we can tell, humans are the only species that cry emotionally as the result of an emotion. Yes. But it is possible that elephants

and gorillas are the two likeliest candidates as it stands now do as well. But we're so far from understanding whether elephants do that we don't even know how often humans cry, right? Let alone whether elephants can cry for an emotion. Yeah, there's been a lot more studies done on laughter and its benefits than crying. I found out. Yeah, I've noticed Chuck, we've been doing this for coming up on 20 years, four years. Yeah. We're coming up onto our fourth year eventually this year. And I found like when we encounter stuff like this, fields, topics that haven't fully been sussed out. Yeah. There's two ways it can go. It's either loaded with total BS hypotheses, conjecture, sure, that like maybe make sense in a really eight year old common sense way. Yeah. Or

are just filled with awesome ideas of just basically our demonstrations of how great humanity can use its mind, right? This is the former. And I'm sorry for tapping on the table. I know that that's a new habit of mine and that it screws things up, but it's for emphasis. Yeah. Yeah. As far as the gorilla thing, I can direct people, if you want to cry to the video of Coco, the gorilla, the sign language gorilla. Yeah. She had a pet kitten at one point and it's very cute and you see this kitten and Coco bonding and it's those videos are the best anyway. And she accidentally breaks its neck and Gary Sinise has to shoot her in the back of the head. No, no. Gary Sinise actually, I think it was a chokehold. But the cat of course gets out and

gets hit by a car and killed and they have on tape the woman going and telling Coco that the kitten is dead and Coco, dude, I might start crying right now. Wow. Coco starts making the signs for bad and sad and frown and then cry and like, dude, you got to see it. I mean, I'm a weepy guy anyway, but I was at my desk earlier just like fighting it back. But then I really encourage you to go look at the video right after that. Coco gets a new kitten. Oh yeah. That'll just make you feel better all over again. Okay. I'm glad. Is it in like the replay screen? It's one of the ones that pops up as the next day. It actually has a pop up while you're watching this like click on here to see Coco get a new kitten. Gotcha. But yeah, I mean, it looks like Coco is very much emotional,

whether or not Coco is actually crying and whether or not animals get emotional is under debate. And that's a whole other topic in itself. But I guess the point is, is we're only kind of beginning to get a loose grasp on why we cry and how we cry. And so the research is kind of insufficient, I guess, but we're just going to go through some of the ideas of what's behind crying. We have something of a good grasp on the physiology of it. Yeah. And this whole thing, this guy that surmised about our ancestors, I thought that was so weak. This is BS hypothesis number one. Do you want to take it, Chuck? Yeah. Dr. Paul D. McLean theorized that our cave ancestors would cremate the deceased, overcome by emotions, and then the smoke would get in their eyes,

which would trigger reflex tears, which we'll talk about. And then all of a sudden they were just linked forever. Right. Emotion and crying. Exactly. Or death and mourning and crying, which I think that's kind of. And that was the birth of emotional tears. I don't buy that one either. I don't either. But it does lead us pretty segue-y into what emotional tears are, right? They're one of three types of tears that we've sussed out. The first being basal tears, which with or without cocoa you've got right now. Yes. We cry every day. Yeah. Tend to what? Five to ten ounces? Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah. Were you aware of that? Well, I didn't know it was that much. It's almost a bottle of beer. Yeah. It's a good point. Yeah. That makes me want to cry.

What a waste. I don't know why. Yeah. I mean, obviously your eyes would dry out, so that's just your body's taking care of itself by working up these tears. And most of that, well, I guess just about all of the five to ten ounces of basal tears that you produce every day drain through your sinuses, your sinus cavity. Yeah. Instead of streaming down your cheeks. Sure. Which you might get stopped up. They said in here a runny nose when you cry, but I get stopped up personally. Do you? Yeah. It stops up my sinuses. My nose runs generally. Really? Yeah. Well, what are tears? I don't think we even said that. Oh, tears are liquidy secretions of fats, proteins, mucus, oil, but for the most part, water.

And depending on the type of tears, this is very significant, though. Agreed. Depending on the type of tear, the composition is going to be different. Yeah. So if you look at, say, reflex tears, which are designed to rid your eye of some sort of irritant, right? Yeah. Smoke. Onions. Onions. Do you want to tell everybody how onions work? Yeah. I feel like it's time that we finally explain that one and notch that off the list. There's an enzyme called lacrimatory factor synthase, and that is released when you cut into the onion, and then that converts amino acids to sulfenic acid. And then that sulfenic acid turns into synropanthethylsoxide, and that is what irritates your lacrimal glands to cry when you cut an onion. Right. And mine really, I think I've

mentioned this before, mine really go haywire burns. It's pretty bad. So I got Emily got me those little goggles. Can you post a picture of you coating onions wearing goggles? I can actually. Sure. Well, not cutting onions, but I tried them on Christmas Day when she got them. Okay. Same effect. But I'm saying the next time that you cut onions wearing these goggles, I'd like to see that. Okay. So yeah, you also mentioned another important point, the lacrimal gland. It's in the upper outer region of your eye, and this is where tears are produced. That's right. So you've got basal tears, you've got reflex tears, and then you have the emotional tears, the great grand mystery of humanity and why we cry, right? Right. So with emotional tears,

from what we can, it is a great picture of you wearing goggles. That's really great. Yeah, they work too. You look like, wow, that's a great, I got to stop right there. Yep. But so with emotional tears, what we suspect is going on is that the cerebrum, which registers sadness, says, hey, eyes, or no, says, hey, endocrine system, you're feeling a little blue. Yeah. Why don't you go activate the lacrimal glands and let's get the crying commenced. Yeah. Release the hormones. Yeah. And I don't think it's any coincidence that you express tears at the same time you're expressing emotion. Right. I would agree with that. And that's what you were kind of talking about earlier, the whole theory of whether or not having a good cry makes you feel

better. Right. And you mentioned earlier that the composition of the tears differs and they collected, let's just call them onion tears. For lack of a better, well, we have reflex tears. They collected onion tears and they collected sad movie tears and found that the reflex onion tears were what like 98% water. Yeah. Whereas the other ones were chock full of sad proteins. Like prolactin, which is very much involved in the process of producing breast milk, hence the name. It's for lactating prolactin. What else are you going to say that other one? Yes, I am, Chuck. It's adrenocorticotropic hormones. Very nice. Adrenocorticotropic hormones, which indicate high levels of stress. So that makes sense. Which is a commonly experienced

thing while you're crying. Sure. And then there's leucine encephalin. That's right. Leucine encephalin. These episodes just turned into like this parade of me humiliating myself. No, you did well. Leucine encephalin, which is an endorphin that reduces pain and improves mood. Yeah. So it makes sense that you would find these in tears when you might not, in emotional tears instead of reflex tears. The problem is, is that not all studies who've looked into this, that have looked into this have found that crying does make you feel better. There's been plenty of studies that have found the opposite. Most studies, I shouldn't say most, but some studies have found that there's no change whatsoever. People won't feel any better or worse. And one study

that required, I think like 1200, no, there were like 1200 accounts of crying over like 70 days among like X number of female college students. It found that crying was preceded by two days of low mood and proceeded by two days of low mood. So on either side of a crying incident, there was two bad days before and after. So there wasn't necessarily an improved mood. Well, and one of the studies that you sent me earlier kind of gave some reasoning behind this, which makes sense to me. One reason might be because laboratory crying, you may not be getting consolation, which might be what makes you feel better when someone sees you crying. They come over to patch on the back and, you know, buck up camper. Right. And the other was,

that it's not a realistic setting. Oh, well, the helplessness factor, which made a lot of sense to me. Like you're watching the Sarah McLaughlin animals dying thing and a good cry when that doesn't make you feeling better because animals are still dying. So there's this helplessness like when you're watching this sad movie that like, I can't help these characters. So a good cry isn't going to make me feel any better. No, but it may in a real world setting where you're crying and it's cathartic and somebody's making you feel better and then also explaining to you how things actually are better and you're like, I guess. Right. So it's kind of a tough nut to crack because when you study something like this, they sit you down in a lab and make you watch Brian's song and

you know, I've never seen it. It's a little clinical. Brian's song is? Oh, no. Okay. Brian's looks very sad. Isn't that John Voight? No, it was Jimmy Khan and I can't remember who played Gale Sayers, but yeah, it was the famous story of the football player dying of cancer. Yeah. Gale Sayers teammate, very sad. You know, speaking of sad and dying, there's a whole, I wish I would have looked it up ahead of time. I read an article about people who love these books, but you know, like Sweet Valley High. Yeah. Imagine if each book was about a different Sweet Valley High girl and they were all dying young, but they were like these brave, like captain of the cheerleading squads, a student class president, don't ever feel bad for me kind of gals, but they always died

at the end. And there's like this series of like 50 books of like young adult fiction that's by this one author and that's all like dying young. Huh. I wonder if the purpose of those was to, you know, prepare kids for losing friends young, because that does happen. Or I wonder, I guess, but I mean, in the slaves where they're dying all over the place. Yeah. Was it a female author? Do you know? Yes. I don't remember the name. I'm sure somebody will write and please do. Yeah. Yeah. So Japan, you want to mention that? Yeah, I even look this up to verify because it sounds a little wacky, but you know, the Japanese are always setting the standard for things like this. Totally. They have crying clubs over there where they do believe that

it makes you feel better. So they'll get together as a group and watch these sad movies or having read these books and talk about them just to have a group cry. Well, you also, you just hit something on the head and infertently is that they believe that crying makes you feel better. Apparently it's culturally bound. Oh yeah. So yeah, if you're in a, if you live in a society that doesn't think crying makes you feel better, maybe you're kind of a wuss for crying. Sure. You're less likely to report feeling better after crying than somebody who lives in a society like Japan where it's supported. Yes. That makes sense. Or where people think that crying does make you feel better. Right. It's like zombies. I cry a lot. I'm a very weepy guy. I know you are.

And I think it said one reason, we'll go ahead and give away a secret. One reason they think men might cry less is because they sweat more. And if crying is a way to release some of these build up of toxins, then sweat would do that. But I sweat. BS hypothesis. I cry. I've got an overactive bladder. I know. I've seen you cry, sweat, and pee all at the same time. Dude, I'm just constantly leaking fluids. I know. I know. And it doesn't help. Believe me. Because there's always some kind of fluid right behind it. And there's always another cocoa video coming up. I'm very eye-rolly as a result. Oh, yeah. Thank you for that. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the

truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you crave a good mystery? Tune in to the great detectives of old time radio podcasts featuring

episodes of different detective dramas from the golden age of radio every day, Monday through Saturday. The lineup of radio detectives currently includes Sam Spade, Dr. Tim Detective, Dangerous Assignment, Follow Vance, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, and Tales of the Texas Rangers. I'm your host Adam Graham and I offer commentary and humor after each episode and also respond to your questions and feedback. Enjoy a good mystery before bed while driving or whenever you crave old school radio goodness. Listen to the great detectives of old time radio on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Um, so what else do we have? Well, let's talk about babies when we start crying, obviously,

is when we're little crying newborns. Yeah, which makes sense. I mean, you cry, you need help, you want to be changed, you're totally, you're helpless, useless, there's nothing you can do, so you cry. I'm hungry. Let everybody know. I'm sleepy. I'm not sleepy. I was looking into this Chuck like that still doesn't quite make sense why babies cry. I mean, we take it for, for, you know, granted, it's just babies cry is what they do. But when did the first human baby cry and why did the first human baby cry? And I looked into it and there was actually this cool study that put up a few hypotheses that aren't necessarily BS. They're the very least very interesting of why humans started to cry. And it's like based on natural selection,

like the first few babies that cried were selected. One, because it reduces infanticide, okay, which is apparently very common in early, early cultures. It reduces. Yes. And here's why. It emotionally manipulates the parent into not just abandoning the baby or leaving the baby, elicit sympathy. Yes. But it also basically says, Hey, I'm a very healthy fit baby. You don't want to leave me behind. I'm going to be great at picking berries one day. Hear these lungs. Yes, exactly. Now, if I were the type of baby to just abandon and leave for dead, I may just not even be able to get a good cry going. So it makes sense. A little whimpering cry might not be as strong. Exactly. So it was that led to natural selection of crying in babies.

And that's why we cry today. At least that's it. That makes sense. That's one of the better hypotheses I've run across. I was just thinking my own hypothesis might be that, you know, back then it's not like the mother was always right over the baby like they are today. No, that's not true. The opposite is true. Oh, really? They were more present. They carried them everywhere. Oh, well, then there goes my hypothesis. That's okay. We thought they had to cry louder. It's part of science. Yeah. Okay. No, no, I know what you're saying. And actually, that kind of coincides with the reason why you would cry because a baby that cries is being abandoned and knows it. Right. When you're away from the mother for a very long time,

that means mom's gone. She's like 20 clicks that way and not coming back. Right. That's very sad. Reduces infanticide. So babies cry differently as they grow to communicate different things. And an in-tune parent will tell you that like from the other room of that cry probably means she needs to be changed. That cry means he's hungry or has fallen out of his crib and is playing with power tools. Maybe. No. And then at 10 months, they think that's when babies start to cry to manipulate their parents for attention. And this, by the way, I thought was a very sexist article. Did you notice some of the lines? Oh man. Like, yeah, and that's when your mascara runs. If a guy had written this, could you imagine the backlash? No, I totally can. I picked up on that

as well. I know what you're about to say. I couldn't even bring myself to underline it. I just ignored it completely. Well, I highlighted it in green because I wanted to read it. Here's what the line is. Some studies have reported that women in particular continue this manipulate of crying throughout their life in order to manipulate others into giving them what they want. For example, forgiveness, pity, or a diamond bracelet. Tisk. Tisk. I mean, really? Yeah. Wow. I know. It is very, I'm even offended. I was too. I read that to Emily. She's like, are you kidding me? The author is in trouble. Maybe. With us she is. So you've got manipulative crying at about the age of 10 months, right? But there is manipulative crying as adults. I'm not trying to say there's

not because there definitely is. I think I've even done it as a man. No. Sure. For what? What did you want? Oh, like, you know, when you're young and emotional and your girlfriend breaks up with you and you just want, you just want her back, man, you just want her back. Maybe if you seem sad enough, she'll feel sorry for you and take you back. So you weren't sad? Yeah. If you weren't sad enough to cry, naturally. But I'm still working up the crocodile tears just to. The crocodiles only cry to excrete excess salt water. Well, that's why they call them crocodile tears, because there's nothing emotive behind it. I got you. All right. Moving on to adolescence. Well, not quite yet to adolescence. We should say that up to adolescence from the

time that we're infants to adolescence, boys and girls supposedly cry at about the same frequency in a mouth. Yeah. At least the same frequency. Sure. There's not a lot of change or difference between the gender. But when we do hit adolescence, and this one makes a lot of sense, boys testosterone shoots up and there's a negative correlation with crying. It decreases. Yeah, they could just get angry with girls. They're crying actually increases and there's a positive correlation with estrogen production, right? Which that sounds kind of sexist, but it's true. Physiologically speaking, it's true. Right. And in conjunction with estrogen production, you've also got prolactin, which don't forget is found in emotional tears. Right. And a crying researcher named,

is it William Frye? William Frye and Muriel Langseth crying the mystery of tears. Oh, okay. He, Frye, I believe, is actually an Alzheimer's researcher and he just did like crying as an amusement. Yeah. He's one of those guys. Just a light in the mood after his Alzheimer's research. But he suggests that girls have about 60% more prolactin in their bodies at any given time than men. Right. And as a result, they tend to cry more, more frequently. Four times as much as what he says. Yeah. Which is a lot. But again, no one's really done a great big, huge survey on how often people cry. Yeah. This one, I don't know how large it was, but it was a study that had people record how many times they cried over the period of one year. This one found women cried roughly

64 times compared to 17 in men and everyone underestimated men and women, how much they would have cried. Right. But that seems low to me. Or maybe I'm just speaking personally, as a weepy guy, you know, it's like 17. I was like, I think 64 is low. Oh, yeah. Oh, I mean, I'll cry. And something I didn't see in here was crying over some, over beauty. That happens to me a lot too. Or something that's just so beautiful, like at a concert or a sunrise or something. Like, look at that guy's lighter. That's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It is. What do you mean at a concert? Well, like the music or something like, I saw the the Ode to Joy at Carnegie Hall one time when that kicked in. I was so like overwrought. I

started crying. I thought, um, I just, I thought Bonnie Prince Billy concert, not no, I would cry to Bonnie Prince Billy concert. The music moved me enough. Sure. Um, I, I want to say on behalf of everybody, thank you for sharing so much of yourself in this one. It's making the whole thing way better. I don't mind. I mean, who cares? I'm with you. I was, you know, it certainly doesn't. Yeah. Rosie Greer says so. Exactly. Um, so let's see. Men also here we arrive at BS hypothesis three. Okay. Uh, men cry less Chuck because they supposedly have smaller tear ducts or lacrimal glands cry fewer tears. No, less volume volume because women have larger. Sure. Okay. Well, you think that's BS? Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe women are equipped

with larger ones because they cry more. You think maybe most of the hypotheses and research on crying is done back a cocktail napkins for some reason. According to women's health magazine, though, Josh, men typically only cry when they suffer a major loss. And I find this to be true for a lot of guys is usually it's anger and frustration. Uh, or anger is how they express frustration and stress. Whereas a woman might be more prone to cry if they're frustrated or stressed. Yes. Yeah, that's probably even true for me. And I'm a weepy guy. I think though that it's, um, a difference in threshold. Sure, possibly because I think frustration and anger can lead to tears pretty, pretty frequently when you reach that point. Yeah. I think it's just a difference

in threshold. There's a lower threshold perhaps in women. Maybe not. I don't know. But I'm saying like that would be my take on that. Or maybe men, maybe the, the, the stereotypical history of men not being allowed to cry or it's a sign of weakness. Maybe that leads to even more frustration. So it's expressed as anger, which is funny because there is a study that's mentioned in this article that, um, they did a survey of people saying, you know, does men crying bother you? And do you think it bothers other people? And most people were like, it doesn't really bother me, but yeah, I'm sure it bothers everybody else. And like virtually everybody responded that way. So in other words, people don't mind. They're just not talking about it. Well, it's just like this, this

social ideal or societal ideal that men shouldn't cry and other people are bothered by it, even though no one's really bothered by it. Thanks to Rosie Greer. It's called the Greer Effect. He was a football player too. I don't know if I mentioned that. Oh yeah. He was a cool dude. He was also in the thing with two heads. The thing with two heads. The man with two brains? No. He and, oh man, it wasn't like, I don't think it was, it may have been William Holden. It was a, a rich, um, scientist who had his head attached to a convict named, played by Rosie Greer's body. Wow. And they were like this odd couple. It was like a creature feature Saturday Shocker type horror movie in the 70s.

The thing with two heads is, I think is what it's called. Great movie. I'm gonna get that immediately. That and the Incredible Melting Man. I never heard of that one either. Oh, that was a good one. Was that because of the Ice Age? No. Remember that was my hypothesis. You have a good memory. All right. Well, there's our tangent for this episode. Getting back to men crying though, they have done some research and some people think that a note noted man crying in public is actually good for your career and good for your PR. Like John Boehner? Sure. Tim Tebow? No. Do you remember when I think Florida lost to Tennessee and Tebow cried? It was awesome to go on like Twitter. There was some guy who was like, Oh, Tebow, your tears taste so sweet. It was beautiful

to see. Yeah. I don't, I don't dislike him as much now though, because of, uh, I'm not like some big fan, but I found that once a player leaves or coach leaves the University of Florida, like I love coach Spurrier now. You've discussed me for even saying that. No, once I leave Florida, I don't have that time anymore. You keep that to yourself. I've found that that's not the case with me. Like I hate Spurrier still. I can't stand Tebow. Urban Meyer, like everybody. I can't stand anybody who has Florida stank on them. Rex Grossman. I don't care who you're talking about. Sure. I can't stand any of them. You know, I like that kind of consistency. I just got so angry, accidentally licked the mic cover. That's gross.

What else have we got here? Oh, well, why, why we cry? There's again, the fields wide open for any quack to come up with an idea and get it published in an article on how stuff works. Keeps us healthier. Yeah. By removing toxins, stress related hormones, but, but you poo poo, but do you remember when we did how sauna's work? And we're talking about how, yes, you have kidneys and your bladder and your urethra, urethra to get rid of all these toxins. You don't really need to sweat, but sweating does get rid of some of it and every little bit helps conceivably. Well, these stress related hormones do exit your body through your tears. I'm not poo pooing. It is possible. And I think it's beyond just the toxins. I think that I believe that holding on to these

negative emotions is not good ultimately for, for your heart and your body. I think, you know, I think a good cry could help. I've seen it. And you've experienced it. You've seen it. Don't back off now. Yeah, you're right. People from colitis and ulcers tend to have a poor view of crying than people who don't have that, which apparently suggests that if you don't cry, you're going to end up with ulcers and colitis. I don't know about that one. That's true. You gave me something interesting on depression. They studied 44 people with mood disorders. I guess the 45th person just, they couldn't show up, you know, and they said that they were in fact more prone to crying than, than people who they were comparing them to who didn't have the mood disorder. But

if you had severe depression, a lot of times you had an inability to cry all together, which is really sad to me. Yes, that's very sad. I guess it's just that dead inside feeling. Yeah, that's awful. Yeah. There's also symptoms of crying excessively. Apparently some people with PTSD. Right. One of the symptoms is excessive crying. Postpartum. Yeah, postpartum depression, which I didn't know this nine to 16% of women suffer from postpartum depression following birth. Would you think it was lower? Yeah. Oh, really? I didn't realize it was that prevalent. Yeah, I did. And I guess it would have to follow birth to be postpartum depression. Yes. That was redundant. In this interesting study in Israel, they had men sniff

a saline solution compared to real human tears and that they found that when they smelled the real tears or testosterone dipped in brain scan showed less activity in areas associated with sexual arousal. So that made good sense to me because if someone, if someone's really upset and crying, it's not sexually stimulating to you unless you're a real sick person. So I would say it elits its sympathy and lowers your sexy time feelings, which kind of gives it a, which kind of supports the idea that like a social bonding theory of crying. Yeah. You know, you're signaling to somebody else that you're not aggressive. You're, you're, you're submitting, you're, you're allowing yourself to be vulnerable. So just lay off for you. Hold me. Don't hit me.

Yeah. Put the rock down. Did you ever see the Dr. Katz about the, the man hugs? I've seen all of them, but I don't remember that. There was one bit where he was talking about the man hugs when the man hug and they'd slap. He was like, men have to do that because I'm holding you, but I'm hitting you. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I do remember that. I think that was Donna Rare, right? I think so. Yeah. Dr. Katz. That's so good. You got anything else? Um, no. And you know, I'll post that photo of me with the goggles. It's awesome. I always forget, but, um, someone will, Cooper will remind me, then he'll turn it into something sick and twisted. Right. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy.

Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you crave a good mystery? Tune into the great detectives of old time radio podcasts featuring episodes of different detective dramas from the golden age of radio every day Monday through Saturday. The lineup of radio detectives currently includes Sam Spade, Dr. Tim Detective, Dangerous Assignment, Follow Vance, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, and Tales of the Texas Rangers. I'm your host Adam Graham and I offer commentary and humor after each episode and also respond to your questions and feedback. Enjoy a good mystery before bed,

while driving, or whenever you crave old school radio goodness. Listen to the great detectives of old time radio on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Well, I was crying. We did pretty good with that one. Did a little poo pooing? Did a lot of explaining? You did a lot of sharing? No crying. No, there's no crying and podcasting. There is crying on HowStuffWorks.com. You want to go to your favorite search engine and you want to type in How Crying Works into the search bar and that will bring up the How Crying Works article on our sister site, TLC.com. It was definitely TLC. You want to do that if you want to learn more about crying. And if you can't remember what we said about the onion

and why it makes you cry and you want to impress your friends, it's in that article. You'll be very happy to see it. That is on your favorite search engine, but it's on HowStuffWorks.com. I think I said search bar in there somewhere, which means it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this from Laurie in Germany. Oh, I like this one too. Guys, you recently saved my butt and I thought it would write in to tell you about it. I'm an Atlanta girl originally who is currently teaching English at a kindergarten in Germany. Does that mean garden of children? I think so. In the last week before Christmas, I showed my kids a Muppet Christmas Carol, one of the best Christmas movies ever,

if you ask me. And as I'm sure you know, there are several ghosts in the story, but since it's a kids movie, I assumed it would not be too scary for my wee laws. Well, I showed the first half on Monday and then I was out sick for a couple of days. When I came back on Thursday, I learned that one of my little girls, six-year-old Annika, had barely slept since she had seen the movie. Apparently the ghosts were too scary for her and her mother was apparently stinkzawa, which is an excellent German word meaning stink and angry. So she was stinkzawa. In an effort to run damage control, I showed Annika and a couple of other kids the pictures from the Muppets article on howstuffworks.com. The diagrams, and this was a really great article

as far as that stuff goes, the visuals. The diagrams showing how the Muppeteers control the various types of Muppets were A, really interesting to both me and the kids, and B, a miracle cure for Annika's fears. That cool little behind-the-scenes tour helped meet my wee was. It's a little disconcerting, isn't it? No? No, I think something's cute. Helped my wee was, appreciate the cool design of the ghosts instead of being afraid of them, and Annika's mom was no longer stinkzawa. Huzzah. Huzzah to that. Thank you for helping me teach my wee was, something new, and for helping me get out of hot water as well. That was the first time I've looked up an article after listening to one of your episodes, but I'm really glad I did it. And thank you for what

y'all do, and for the upbeat and open-minded attitudes in which you do it. Eidzeit der Hama. Figurative translation, y'all are awesome. Literal, y'all are the hammer. You are the hammer. That is Laurie in Germany who was definitely no stinkzawa. Yeah, I love you, German. It's great stuff. Fun. Thanks a lot for that Laurie in Germany. We're glad we could help you out, and I urge everybody and anybody to go check out our beloved site, HowStuffWorks.com, in Mothership Connection, HowStuffWorks.com, right? Indeed. If you want to let us know how our podcast has gotten you out of hot water, how HowStuffWorks has gotten you out of hot water, if you want to go on the site and find an article and say, hey, podcast on this,

we're happy to get links like that, you can tweet to us at SYSKpodcast. You can go on Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know, and you can send us a plain old-fashioned email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join HowStuffWorks staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move, or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I always say you can either use it or lose it, but I can't make you choose it. Subscribe now and listen to Straight Shot No Chaser with Tesla and Figaro on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.