Stuff You Should Know - How Fear Works

Episode Date: June 2, 2011

Fear results from your brain's reaction to a stressful stimulus, and -- though it may be unpleasant -- it plays a crucial role in the life of every human being. But how does it work (and why)? Join Josh and Chuck as they explore the sensation of fear. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove 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. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Charles W. Chuck Bryan is looking deeply into the eyes of Nikola Tesla right now for some reason. I never noticed that he literally is

staring at me the whole time. You know, I once wrote an article for HowStuffWorks.com about why the eyes in some paintings follow you. Oh, really? Yeah. Dude, why didn't you tell me about that? I don't know. We've never podcasted on it because it would literally be like a five-minute podcast. Well, maybe we can bring it up, but yeah, your podcast. Maybe. It's worth reading though. I think if you typed in eyes in painting or something like that in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com, it would bring it up. I figured it was because the eyes were cut out and there was a psychopathic killer behind the painting. That's the second page. Okay, gotcha. Also, while we're just doing plugginess, why don't you follow us on Twitter? It's a party over there. Our handle, sometimes

not what you'd think right off the top of your head, but it makes sense when you hear it. S-Y-S-K podcast. There's no, we're not like Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga. We don't say stupid stuff about being backstage. We're actually a cool news aggregator. Okay. Then also, we're on Facebook. We have a stuff you should know, Facebook page, Chuck. Chuck, you kill it on that. Interacting with people, coming out, shaking hands in your robe with a little shrimp in your mouth from being in the green room. Hey, how's it going? Good to meet you. Thanks for coming out. I can't imagine anything more disgusting than me coming at someone with a robe and shrimp in my

mouth. Well, it happens every day on Facebook, right? Then I guess now, are you ready for the intro? Yes. Yeah. Chuck, I want you to go back with me to 1990. All right. Freshman in college, baby. I'm a freshman in high school. That's about right. And I am in my room in Kennesaw, Georgia. Okay. In my parents' house. And it's nighttime. And I'm reading. I don't remember what I'm reading, but I'm like sitting on my bed reading. I'm actually laying with my elbows up on my bed reading, right? And I look over and notice that my closet door is cracked slightly. This is abnormal. Usually my closet door is shut tightly. Still? Yeah, even still. Yeah. Even still to this day, I don't see any reason to leave it open. Yeah. It's funny how those little things

stick around. So I remember making this little comment to myself like, huh, you know, that's weird. It's probably somebody in there, right? But I go back to reading. And I get this annoying sensation that's like getting my attention out of the corner of my eye. And I look over and now the door is cracked by about three times more than it was before. Well, I have tremendous amounts of sense. So I throw my book down and start running toward the door of my room, right? As I get to my to the handle, my hands on the doorknob, I start to turn it. The closet door is thrown open and my dad goes, I'm not kidding. This is a true story. I went from a standing position with my hand on the doorknob to completely flat on my back in like maybe a half of a motion. It wasn't

even one full motion, right? I was on my back screaming, staring at my dad, screaming in terror, looking at him like you were looking at Nikola Tesla. I see that it's my dad, but I'm so afraid that I can't stop screaming. My mom has time to make it up the stairs into my room and start yelling at my dad asking, what did you do to Josh? And I'm sitting there looking at them having this argument, still screaming, going back and forth. Wow. Your dad's a character, man. He is a character. The herbal Elvis. He looked so sad and so remorseful when he realized my reaction. But I don't think I was wrong in noticing a little glimmer of disappointment in his eye. Like, what happened to you, kid? When did you get to be such a panty-waste? So there is my fear story, Chuck.

That's my great fear story. We used to antagonize Eddie. You know my friend Eddie. Yeah. In college, he was, I was roommates with Eddie for years and we used to scare him all the time. So awful. Like, coming home from the movie, what was the one with the author, the James Kahn? Oh, Misery. Misery. Came home from Misery and like, he never made boot and literally unscrewed light bulbs all over the apartment and like hid in closets. Eddie was smart enough to turn on the television for light that we didn't count on that. Yeah. Next time we unplugged the TV. Yeah, it's tough to get one past that. Yeah, it was always fun and he got a kick out of it too, you could tell. Yeah. Which we'll get to later. So yeah, we're going to get to a lot in this one,

right? This is how fear works. This is going to be a good one, I think. I think it already is. Well, okay. Thanks to your story. So, Chuck, I think we should start out by basically defining fear. Webster's dictionary defines fear as such. Remember in high school, and that was just the way to start your paper. You thought you were so smart. Yeah. It defines it. Oh, it doesn't, but we define it as a chain reaction in the brain. It starts with a stimuli, can be many different things. Oh, yeah. And it ends up with the fight or flight response in the end. Exactly, which we know that you know about the fire flight response, having listened to this podcast faithfully since 2008. Yes. Right. So we're not going to go into too much detail about the fire flight

response because you already know this. Yes. But suffice to say that fear is an autonomic response. Yes, it is. So the autonomic nervous system, we've never mentioned this before. It's really nervous. It is the nervous system that responds to stress, and it's made up of the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems. Yeah, I don't think we have talked about that. No, but it's like the umbrella nervous system that's like, whoa, okay, and then calm down, right? Right. And autonomic, I mean, almost means automatic in this case. Right. Because it's just triggered. We don't plan it. Your fear just happens. That pointer sister song could have been called autonomic. It's so interchangeable, you know? So yeah, there's not a lot we can do. And

we don't necessarily know what's going on. Like, analysis of the situation isn't necessarily a part of being afraid. It's more like get out of there. Right? Yeah, but we'll find that there's other ways that that can happen, right? Coming soon, as in a few minutes. Yeah. So let's let's just go over what parts of the brain are responsible for fear, right? Yeah. And this will come up in a minute here when we describe how the paths go. There's a lot of foreshadowing. So we just ended it. But the thalamus picks up on things that you hear and see and smell. And in the way of sensory data, sensory cortex interprets this. You got the hippocampus. It stores the seahorse. Yes, that's right. It stores and receives a conscious memories and starts to establish like a context

for what's going on. Right. In the this case, fear. Yeah. Amygdala plays a big part. It decodes the emotions and determines the threat and stores old fear memories, fear memories. Like, if something really bad happens to you, right, to create like a real fear memory, right? Amygdala is where that sits. Okay. And then finally, the hypothalamus is where it always ends up no matter which path it takes. Yeah, we'll talk about those paths. The hypothalamus is the on off switch for the fight or flight response. It makes its go time. And the only part of your brain that can tell the hypothalamus, whether it's go time or whether go time is past is the amygdala. Right. It's the gatekeeper to the autonomic nervous system. I'm still just as thrilled about the brain as I was

when we first started studying this stuff. I know. I think I'm more thrilled. This is me. Yeah. So Chuck, Josh, there is a guy named Joseph Ladoo. Have you heard of him? No, he is a neuroscientist at NYU and he came up with two categories for our fear response. He's the dude. Yeah. Okay. And they happen simultaneously. But there is what he's dubbed a low road and high road. Yeah. And like I said, both of them happen at the same time. But the low road is basically like the quick, nasty, dirty response to fear, right? Like, holy crap. Right. So let's say there's a pretty good example in this article by Julia Layton. Oh, this is Julia. Yeah, actually, both of the ones we're recording today are Julia Layton's. Yeah. Way to go Layton. She's good. So let's say that you're

sitting at home, right? And you're underwear with a beer perched on your stomach. And you're just watching some wrestling. Have you been watching me? Web cam set up in your house. You do a lot of stuff because I encourage you to without you knowing. Okay. So you're sitting at home, as such. And all of a sudden, your door just starts rattling, right? Yeah. Okay. There's something that's going to happen called the low road for your response. And that is the sound and the sight of your door rattling is the sensory data that suddenly goes into what the thalamus, which sorts it and says, Hey, amygdala. Yeah, I need your help. Yeah, it's like forwarding the email. Yeah, like there is a potential threat here. Yeah. And we need to respond. Sure. And the amygdala

says, You know what, you are 100% right thalamus. I'm going to contact the campus. Okay. No, the hypothalamus. Right. Right. And basically get the fear, fight or flight response going. Yeah, just like just in case, let's go ahead and turn it on. Right. So you are now your beer is spilled all over the floor because you'd leapt up out of your, your easy chair. Okay. At the same time, this is going on, the high road response is taking place. Thankfully. Yes. So the high road responses, it takes longer, but it gives you a much more thoughtful analysis of what's going on. There's a couple of extra stops along the way that lead to reason and context and that kind of thing. So this time it goes to the sensory cortex first. And the sensory cortex says, you know what,

this has happened before. Or no, it says like there's more than one interpretation of what's going on. That's true. Has it happened before? Right. And the hippocampus says, you know, yeah, remember that time in that big windstorm that the tree fell outside and you thought, the boogeyman was coming to get you. So remember that. Right. Like the hippocampus goes and gets your memories to, to analyze them for context compared to this. Yes. The sensory cortex is saying like, what else is going on here? Right. Yeah. Is there a windstorm? Exactly. Is there patio furniture moving? Are there trees scraping on the window? And all of a sudden you're like, okay, it is wind, right? That's right. But let's say that your, your, your, your brain,

your sensory cortex said, um, no, what I hear is a guy shouting like, I'm coming in. Right. Yeah. And your hippocampus is like, well, last time that happened, a guy came in and a ski mask and I was hogtied for three days before anybody found me. Right. Well, it was not the wind. So that leap up out of the easy chair is your low road response. Yeah. The, and standing there while your brain's interpreting the rest of the data and then coming to the conclusion that, yeah, there is somebody coming through the door and then running out your back door. That's the result of the high road response. Yeah. Or if you determine, uh, or inside the brain that, Hey, this is just a windstorm, then it sends the message to the amygdala saying, Hey, go tell the, uh, hypothalamus,

just shut down the whole system, not the whole system because you'd be dead, but shut down the fight or flight response. It's just trees. Yeah. And Emily is on the ceiling still at this point because her high road is probably longer than mine. Yeah. And the low road, very, very quick. Yeah. Yes. Well, we heard gunshots one time in LA and Emily literally was like on the floor. I turned around. I was like, did you hear that? And she was on the ground in prone position. That's awesome. Wow. But I, you know, I grew up rough and tumble, so I heard gunshots a lot more than she did. Did you have a hard scrapple youth? I did. I didn't know that. Not like the, uh, the streets of Akron where Emily grew up. Oh, okay.

The tender streets of Akron, Ohio. Yeah, they are very tender. All right, Josh. So you pointed out, which is very important that both of these things are happening at the same time. And that is why even if a, you realize very quickly that there is no, uh, imminent danger, you're still going to be coming down from that fight or flight response for a little bit because your low road is also already been triggered. Right. And it all ends in the hypothalamus either way. Yes. 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 a 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 saying 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. Ready, set, slay. Squirrel friends, the official RuPaul's Drag Race podcast is taking you behind

the scenes of RuPaul's Drag Race season 15 on MTV with me, Alec Moppa, and my co-host, Lonnie Love. Alec and I will recap the latest episode, the best and worst looks, and we'll even be joined by some of your favorite queens along the way. One thing's for sure, there is no shortage of queens this season because we are witnessing the biggest cast in RuPaul's Drag Race herstory and the stakes are higher than ever with the largest cast prize in Drag Race herstory. So make no mistake, the competition is going to rev up. Watch season 15 of RuPaul's Drag Race every Friday on MTV. Then join us on the podcast right after the show to recap the episode. Deep brief on all the looks and more. Listen to Squirrel Friends, the official RuPaul's Drag Race

podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Are we done? I guess so. That was really rapid, man. No, we're not done. Because we got to talk about emotions, right? And why we get scared. Well, yeah, there's very little argument about what emotions are for. And basically, they are motivators, right? Yep. They are survival based motivators specifically. The basic ones, there's, let's see, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, joy, and sadness. Those are the six basic emotions that an anthropologist named Paul Ekman identified in the 1970s, right? Yeah, you see that six. And, you know, we're talking about fear right now, but you could make the, this is the, this is the case for all of, at least those basic, if not all

the emotions that a human can experience. Right. Is that they're motivators. They're saying there's something in going on with you specifically right now in your environment or in your life in a kind of a meta sense. Right. Or both. Right. Yeah. With fear, it's normally some things in your environment. Yeah. And it's clearly a motivator to survive. Right. So, let's say that you're a caveman. Okay. So I'm back on the couch with my beer watching wrestling. Exactly. And you're sitting there, you see a snake. You just don't have a very good feeling about it. So you don't go up and touch it. Right. But your friend, Erg, sitting next to you, is like, well, what is this? And Erg gets bit and dies. A horrible, nasty death right in front of your eyes. What happened to

Tuk Tuk? No, you're Tuk Tuk. Oh, okay. Okay. So you, Tuk Tuk, have just formed possibly the first fear memory in response to snakes. You doing a very crude interpretation of natural selection and evolution. You are going to be able to go mate and mayhaps that fear memory will somehow epigenetically be passed on to your offspring. Yeah. And then it's a trait. Eventually. Yes. So fear is a survival based motivator. Right. Yeah. And caveman is an apt description because if you feared the right things back in the day, like snakes and tigers and lightning, then you had a good chance of surviving and procreating and all of a sudden you had a stronger, smarter, wiser population. Exactly. But all this was going on, you know,

long, long, long ago. And a lot of people argue long before we were humans. But, you know, back when we were still prey to snakes, like primates that still stuck around and that's probably where they first started. But we didn't have any idea that this was evolution at work. And it wasn't until like the late 19th century that Darwin really kind of got the attention of the world and said, hey, these are inherent traits that are passed down. Like fear is not something that's necessarily learned. It's something we have instinctively. And he conducted this pretty cool little experiment that he wrote about in his book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, which was published in 1872. Yeah. And he went to the zoo, right? Well, yeah.

He was, um, specifically there. The debate at the time was about the face of fear, the Edward Monk, like holy crap face that everyone gets when they're scared. You took it as being scared? I thought that was a scream of joy. The face of fear? Yeah. I barred Monk. Oh, oh. Really? I thought he was like, I just got the best deal on this muffler. It looked more to me like home alone. Oh, my gosh. Oh, no, that was joy, though, at the time. He was glad his parents were gone, right? No, no. He was, he couldn't believe it. That was, I think, surprise or anything. Okay, right. And then later joy and then later sadness. Yeah. When he learned, well, we all know eventually that family is important for happiness.

And don't fear the creepy old man in your neighborhood. Actually, you probably should. You probably should. I think Chris Columbus did a great disservice to children by, by making that such a moral. All right. So yeah, I always interpreted monks because it was called the scream as, as terror. Yeah. Regardless, that face we all make when we're scared, you know, out of our pants. He went and Darwin went and stood in front of a clear Plexi. I guess it was probably glass at the time. I would think it was. And had a puff at her, jump, you know, leap toward his face. Even though he knew he was protected, he still reacted with that fear face and jump back. And he said basically that my will and reason were powerless against the imagination

of danger, even though he's never experienced it. Right. So like, I've never been bitten by a snake, but actually they said that people that have never even been in a room. Yeah, been in a room with a snake or scared of snakes. Yeah. So he came to this conclusion that, that fear and, you know, likely all of our basic emotions are very much passed down through the generations, right? Yeah. And he came to that conclusion because he couldn't control himself when the snake, which he'd never been bitten by, lunged at the glass, which was safely in between them. He still couldn't control it. So he concluded, yeah, there's, there's a lot more going on to this than, you know, just something I've learned because why would I be afraid of a snake? Right.

And I know rationally that there's glass there so that this stuff is so ancient, our modern trappings of civilization, e.g. a glass and a zoo can't subdue it. Yeah. Yeah. The same at baseball games when they foul the ball back and they know it's terrifying. You know, there's a screen right in front of you and you will never get hit by a baseball, but people still jump back and that may be more, that may be less fear and more just an autonomic reaction to something coming at you. That was Darwin's point. Really? Yeah. It's the same thing. Yeah. Because if we didn't experience fear, like a baseball coming at us would be like, and then boom. Yeah. Same with anything that we moved to get away from. Yeah. You always feel like a goober too at the game

when that happens. Well, that's a higher emotion that's supposedly specific to humans and a couple of other higher primates, which is embarrassment. Yeah. That only exists in relation to other people. Right. Right. I don't think I've said the word goober in like a decade. It's a good one. Just flew out of my mouth. I love goobers. I've said, can I have another goober? Yeah. Was that the peanut and chocolate? Yeah. So, Chuck, Darwin basically said, I'm right. You're wrong. You idiots. And fear is now seen as a basic emotional response that's an inherited one. Yeah. And it's the same as it was in the cave main days, except it's not lines and tigers now. It's people breaking into your house, home invasion, terrorist attack. Well put. Thank you. And then there's another point

that Darwin made. I don't know if he hammered at home, but we can anticipate things, right? Yeah. Like we don't have to see a snake bite org to be afraid of a specific snake, right? Or have it experience yourself even. Right. And it doesn't go away with each snake. Like each new snake doesn't necessarily not represent a new threat. Right. Snakes in general do, right? Yes. That's because we can anticipate things, right? That's another survival mode that fear triggers or that I guess is centered around fear. We can anticipate being afraid and apparently studies have shown that we can become physiologically and psychologically just as afraid when we anticipate being afraid of something. Right. Then when we're actually confronted with that thing we're afraid of.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, which is like a fear of flying would be a perfect example of that. Yes, it would. You can be just as scared probably as if you have actually been in a plane crash, if you have a really, really intense phobia of flight. Dude, I can tell you that even if you've never been on even a remotely scary flight, you can very much be afraid anticipatorily of a plane crash. Yes. It's very scary. You got pretty good though, right? Dude, I am great. I slept through the last takeoff I was on. Really? I could not believe it. Yumi was like, who are you? Checking your pulse. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And nothing. I was on no scotch, no pills, no nothing. You weren't on scotch? No scotch. Well, that's called fear extinction. We'll get to that. More foreshadowing.

Another precursor. That was very anticipatory. So speaking of conditioning, which we were not, let's talk about a very cruel experiment in the 1920s by Mr. John Watson. Yeah. Little Albert. Little Albert was an 11 month old baby. I think they call Albert a toddler. He was 11 months. They call him an infant and that's a baby. Yeah. Starting the title. Just starting the title. So Little Albert, they wanted to teach Albert fear of white rats. The problem was, I guess it wasn't a problem. It was probably pretty good for the sake of the experiment, was that he'd loved white rats. And when the white rats would come around, Little Albert would even reach for them and guests try to pet them. And until they started playing this loud booming noise. No,

you know what they did. They took a claw hammer and a piece of metal and banged it right behind his head every time he went to go. That was the allowed booming noise. So it didn't take long before Albert was crying and moving away from the white rats as expected. And not just white rats, Chuck. Rabbits. Really? Fur coats. Cotton balls. They showed that fear isn't just an instinct that we inherit. It can be conditioned. And Little Albert became sick-reed fishbacher. Here's the worst part. You ready for it? That's not true. You ready? Well, no one knows who Little Albert is. Well, he wasn't sick-reed fishbacher. Well, you don't know. So John Watson was planning on reversing this fear conditioning. Yeah, sure. But was caught having

an affair with an assistant and was fired before he could. So he just grew up scared. Exactly. And Watson went on to get into the advertising game and was successful and actually married, I think, the lady he was having an affair with. But burned all of his notes in, I think, before he died in 1958. So no one to this day has any idea who Little Albert is. What? When was this the 1920s? So Little Albert would be old or dead. He'd be like 90. Yeah. Probably dead. Probably died of fright at a young age. Isn't that horrible? That is pretty horrible. But out of this horrible old-timey experiment, which if you're interested, I wrote like top five horrific psychological experiments for the blogs. Yeah. This is one of

them. I agree. What came out of it was an understanding that fear is conditioned, right? Yes. And if you can condition somebody, if you can teach somebody to fear, you can teach people to unfear, right? But before we get to that, Chuck, more precursors, I think we should talk about some of the most common fears. Yeah. I didn't realize that phobias, there are only three main types. And I guess it's sort of a loose, a lot of them fall under these umbrellas. So that must be the deal because agoraphobia, fear of places where escape might not be easy or help may not be available. Oh, that's like a fear of big open places. Yeah. But I think in a broader sense, it's just fear of, of, I may not be able to get help. Yeah. In case I need it. You know,

one of the characteristics of agoraphobia in some cases is like being afraid you're like, if you're out on the beach, being afraid you won't have anything to grab onto and just flying off the earth. Really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Like you can't go into big open spaces. It's like the opposite of claustrophobia. Joan Cusack on that show, that awesome showtime show has agoraphobia, she can't leave the house. And it's like really kind of heartbreaking, maybe because it's Joan Cusack, you know, and you have like, you want good things for her. Well, you want good things for the whole Cusack family. Yeah, that's true. Social phobias obviously have anything to do with people. And then specific phobias is the third category, which is a bit of a cop out,

because that's like everything else that you're afraid of. Including, you ready? Phobophobia. Fear phobias. Fear of fear. Fear of fear. Yeah. That's everybody. No, this is like debilitating phobia that you don't like. That you're afraid of becoming afraid at some point. So what do you just set your life up very safely? Like don't watch horror movies, don't? Oh, okay. Well, should we read this Gallup poll? Yeah. And I couldn't find a more recent one. No, this is probably fairly accurate still though. 2005 and sort of sad. They pulled teenagers in the United States and their top 10 things they were afraid of. Terrorist attacks was number one. I wonder if that's still the case. I'll bet it's not. Maybe. Spiders, death, failure, war,

heights, crime, being alone, the future and nuclear war. The future. And I made my own top five as a teenager as a Baptist teenager. Like back then you did? No, I did it today. But this is what Little Chuck was afraid of and this isn't a joke. In order, sex, Satan, alcohol and drugs, sex and Satan was my top five. And honestly, I even took notes and scribbled things out and that was about as accurate as I could get it. And you overcame the first one with the second one with the aid of the third one. But they popped back in at four and five. Yeah. Yeah. When you sobered up. So common fears, Josh, dentistry. What'd you say? Dentistry or not. I thought that's what you said. Not becoming a dentist, but going to the dentist. Right. Flying, speaking in public. Heights is

a huge one. Yeah, we've gotten better at the speaking in public thing, but we still get very bad. Oh, I still get terrified. Yeah. But I don't think I'll ever be okay with that. No, I'm not like super like Tony Robbins free and easy because I imagine he's a cool customer before he goes on stage. Sure. He's not throwing up. Although, you know, he might take beta blockers. Those are for stage fright now. Is that right? Yeah. It's one of the, you know, how every drug on the planet says, well, we've also discovered it helps with this. So beta blockers, evidently a lot of musicians use it. Well, we should start doing beta blockers. Yeah. Okay. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take 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 2200 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 applying the sample. 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 podcasts or wherever you get

your podcast. Ready, set, slay. Squirrel friends, the official RuPaul's Drag Race podcast is taking you behind the scenes of RuPaul's Drag Race season 15 on MTV with me, Alec Moppa and my co-host, Lonnie Love. Alec and I will recap the latest episode, the best and worst looks, and we'll even be joined by some of your favorite queens along the way. One thing's for sure, there is no shortage of queens this season because we are witnessing the biggest cast in RuPaul's Drag Race Herstory and the stakes are higher than ever with the largest cast prize in Drag Race Herstory. So make no mistake, the competition is going to rev up. Watch season 15 of RuPaul's Drag Race every Friday on MTV. Then join us on the podcast right after the show to recap the episode,

deep brief on all the looks and more. Listen to Squirrel Friends, the official RuPaul's Drag Race podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Chuck, we were just talking about universal fears or what a lot of people think are universal fears and there's some behind, there's some ideas behind universal fears like snakes, spiders, that they are incredibly ancient, that our fear of them is probably pre-human back when we were chimps who were getting eaten by snakes or who interacted with spiders on a regular basis and that's why we can fear them without ever having had a bad experience with one. Yeah, or humans in the case of rats because rats carry disease that killed large populations of

people. They think that's why we're scared of rats today. That one is a little hinky to me because we've only been aware of germ theory since like the 19th century and I don't really buy that one. Yeah, I think it's long enough. No, I think maybe rats like we watch too many rats like chew the eyeballs out of like a sleeping friend. That's why I think we're afraid of rats, not disease. I've never seen that happen in a movie. Really? Chew the eyeballs out of a sleeping friend? No, I'm saying like in real life. You've seen that in real life. No, I'm saying years and years ago. Do you understand really? No, I think I get it now. I think way back in the day, back when we were living in caves or terrible shelters, Tuck Tuck would see the rat chew the

eyeballs out of a bird. Well, out of a bird while he was sleeping and Tuck Tuck was like, oh, I need to steer clear of those rats. Okay, but there are some that are not necessarily universal that are actually culturally bound, right? Or at least regionally bound. Like a good example in this article is if you live on the coast, you're probably going to have a greater fear of hurricanes than somebody who lives in the Midwest who's probably going to have a greater fear of tornadoes, especially lately for goodness sake. Yes. God, what is going on? Tornadoes, man. And then there's some that are like, you literally have to live in this particular society to experience this fear kind of not necessarily because I sometimes experience this fear. There's

one in Japan called Taijin Kyofusho. Kyofusho, right? Which is basically a culturally bound Japanese fear of inadvertently irritating, offending or offending somebody by being overly respectful or polite. Yeah. So not only are you afraid of, you know, offending somebody by being disrespectful or not polite enough, there's a threshold where you could be overly polite and offend someone and there's a fear of reaching that point. Right. Or if you're the president, you might now have a fear of giving a toast in England incorrectly. I have a fear of seeing that again. That was mortifying. It was so uncomfortable to watch. If you don't know that President Obama recently went to England for a state visit and apparently had a gaffer to in

his toast in front of a lot of people, like he raised his glass first and the queen is supposed to do that first. And she kept, he had his glass and did you see she just kept looking down at his glass? Well, he was giving a toast during the National Anthem. To her. Right. Not realizing that everybody wasn't being quiet, not because they were listening to his toast, but because they were respectfully being quiet during the National Anthem, which he was trying to talk over. The aftermath was so awful because he looked around, he realized that no one else's glass was raised and he just quietly put his glass down. It was awful. He also signed the queen's guest book and dated it like May 11th, 2008. Yeah. So apparently Obama's living in 2008. I think he

was nervous as all get out. He was great in Ireland. He drank a pint of Guinness at everybody. Well, that's because that's the only rule Ireland has. You go to England and they probably give him a dossier of like, don't do this, do that. He's probably shaking in his boots. Well put, Chuck. That's why we don't go on state visits to England much. So Chuck. Yes. We have talked about fear, right? Yes. We also talked about, well, we foreshadowed, I think, fear extinction, right? John Watson was planning on basically making Lil Albert's fears go away through a process called fear extinction, which is a type of conditioning. Yeah. But it's like the reversal of it. Yeah. We should point out the reason this is important

is because fear is okay in doses because it is a survival tool, but it's not good to live in constant fear. It's not good for your body because it just wreaks havoc on your internal systems because of fight or flight. It's so intense. Exactly. It lowers your immune system. It raises the heart, blood pressure, all that stuff. I think we talked about that. And can you scare someone to death? Yes. Yeah. So fear extinction, well, any kind of fear conditioning is, say, hitting a claw hammer on a piece of metal behind a baby's head whenever he touches a little white rat, right? Yeah. The opposite of that is having the baby touch a little white rat and not making that horrible sound. You can also say condition rats to fear a sound, like just the tone like a ding,

by giving them an electric shock in their cage every time that ding sounds, they're going to come to fear that sound. If you make that ding without delivering the shock, eventually this fear memory, this conditioned fear is going to be unlearned. Yes. And one thing that they learned out of that that was pretty interesting is that they theorized that the extinction memories form in the amygdala, but instead of staying there, they're transferred to the medial prefrontal cortex to be stored. So it's still triggered in the amygdala, but that's where the new learned non-fear resides. Right. They think. That's what they think now. Because it's the brain. It's all a bunch of theory. The deal with extinction too is exposure. So one of the things that they'll do is,

let's say if you're afraid of heights, they'll inch you closer and closer to the edge of the building until you realize like, all right, nothing's happening here. It's cool. I'm not falling off. And then eventually, if you're exposed to this enough, supposedly you can reverse some of these fears. Right. That's general behavioral psychology, just little by little, because you're making smaller, you're making memories every time. Yeah. I didn't get bitten this time. That's weird. So maybe I'll go a little further. I didn't get bitten again. And then ultimately you're like, I'm probably not going to get bitten. So I don't need to be afraid. And that's when you get bitten. Have you ever, did you used to watch the Bob Newhart show? Oh yeah. Which one? The old old one?

Old old one. Yeah. Yeah. Not the old one, the old old one. The one from the 70s. Yeah. Sure. There was one. Susan Plachette. Yes. There's a great one called flying the unfriendly skies where he took like a group, one of his groups that was afraid of flying onto a plane. And it's hilarious. I was watching it today. Penny Marshall is the stewardess. Really? Young, just starting out, Penny Marshall. Bob Newhart equals national treasure. Agreed. I said it. Yeah. So Chuck, if the cognitive behavioral treatment is not working, how about some drugs, man? Yeah, what's the deal with this? Well, there's a protein in our brains called NMDA, N-methyldeasprate, right? And it's in the amygdala. And if you inhibit it, so this is a double negative, if you inhibit it,

you also inhibit fear extinction. Okay. So science is reason. If you promote NMDA, right? Then you will also promote fear extinction. And they're finding that that's actually the case. There's a tuberculosis drug, an antibiotic, that promotes the production of the protein NMDA, and they give it to people and then give them exposure therapy as well. Right, because the whole deal is they don't want to try and replace it with a drug, but it just speeds up the classic conditioning experiment. Yeah. And I guess a trial with rats has proven this is possible. They conditioned them to fear a sound or a light or something with electric shocks, classical conditioning, and then said, well, here, we're going to inject you with this tuberculosis antibiotic

and the rats that were on the drug learned fear extinction faster than the ones that were doing it without the drug. Right? Can we talk about one more experiment that we didn't cover? Yeah. And this is neat, but it's just sort of hinky to me because we talked earlier about the thrill of being afraid. That's why people go to horror movies. That's why they get on roller coasters. Oh, yeah, yeah. And people say that it can be akin to sexual arousal. And this dude named Arthur Aaron did an experiment, which I thought was a little odd. He had men walk across a suspension bridge, two different bridges, one, and these were 450 feet long over a 230 foot gully. One bridge was very stable. One bridge was not and very shaky. And he had the men walk

across this and the other end of the bridge. He had his very attractive female assistant waiting, asked him some, some red herring questions that didn't have anything to do with the experiment and then said, oh, and here's my number if you have any questions. Apparently three of the men who of the 33 men, only two, sorry, called the woman afterward who walked across the stable bridge, the guys that walked on the shaky bridge, nine of the 33 called her bam proven. I guess they just were like, I can do anything. What's your number? Or they're like, Hey, I'm very turned on because I almost just died. What's your number? What's your number? Or I'm going to call you. So Chuck, what do you do if you have like, if you don't

really want the drugs, you're not debilitated. And I should also say the National Institutes of Health say about 19 million people in the United States alone suffer from mental illnesses that involve irrational fear responses. So everything from like a phobia, panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, 19 million people in the US alone. I would have thought more than that. Really? Yeah. But let's say you're not one of these people where you're not clinically afraid, but you still don't like heights or, you know, you can get on a plane, but you are not happy. What are the eight tips? Well, one, Josh, is that it doesn't matter why you're scared. So it's not like to develop a big understanding

of your fear helps you overcome it actually delays that progress is what they say. Yeah, as what prevention magazine says, because number two says, learn about the thing you fear. Right. I guess not why you're scared, but to learn more about it like maybe injecting rationality. Like this is how often the plane actually goes down or something like that. Yes. Take baby steps. Train yourself to not be afraid. Yeah. Hang around someone who's not afraid of that. Yeah. Like if you're afraid of heights, hang around with me because I'm not afraid of heights. Right. Talk about it because sharing out loud makes things better. Play mind games with yourself like that. And they use the classic example of picturing

a crowd naked if you're speaking in front of them. I've heard that you're that does not help and it may actually make things worse. I could see that. And don't look at the big picture. Just look at each little one step at a time and seek help. If you have like really irrational fear, go talk to someone seek help indeed and seek this article. You got anything else? No, sir. So seek this article by typing fear, F-E-A-R, not F-E-R-E into the search part, howstuffworks.com is going to bring up this article and some other cool stuff. Right. Yes. And since I said that, Chuck, you know what time it is. That's right. You know what the real is. It's time for Listener Mate.

Josh, we're going to call this, Hello's from Kazakhstan. Yeah. I just read an article in the New Yorker about Kazakhstan and its new capital. I believe it's called Astana. Yeah, Astana. The president of Kazakhstan has sunk billions into creating a new capital in the middle of the steps of the country. And Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world by landmass. Really? It also shares the longest border in the world. It shares it with the country. Wow. Go ahead. You're just recalling all this, too. Very impressive. And I told this guy that I would make fun of his accent and read it as Borat. And he said, I love it. Nice. Wait, that was Yaakov Smirnov. Yeah, you're right. Clearly. And he literally

titled it, Hello's from Kazakhstan. Your podcast is being played in Astana, Kazakhstan. That's the capital. All right. Sorry, Liz. I discovered your podcast when I once bought an iPod Gizmo. I started my discovery of American culture when I won scholarship to study my 12th grade in American high school. That was an awesome year for a guy who has never been to McDonald's in his life. And has never sat in nice single seat student desks. I guess they sit on benches. I guess so. Also include the traditional yellow school buses. I live with great host family who further show me culture. After graduating high school, I won another scholarship to study at Canadian college. As you have guests in four years in Canada, my mentality got synced

with Northern American culture. Now I'm back in Kazakhstan and got job in IT field. I'm going to stop that. No, you got to keep going. Oh, no. You got to finish. I'm writing all this because every day on my way to work, I listen to podcasts and you guys always bring back good memories of USA and Canada. Awesome. For 50 minutes, I feel as if I'm in USA and Canada. Hope this feeling never goes away. You also make me smile and laugh in buses. And I look like idiot to other gray faces in bus. Other what? Gray faces. I guess that just means stinky commuters in Kazakhstan. But the last I wish everyone here understood English to listen to you guys. So they should start their day with smile. Thanks for great

work and share of American culture. And that is from Gizat. Gizat. He was thrilled that I would be making fun of his accent. That is awesome. Thank you Gizat. We are glad to keep you entertained. Say hello to Borat for us. Yeah, who is actually British. He's playing Freddie Mercury. Is he really? That will be great. Heck yeah. Wait, our guy? No, no, not the Gizat. Gizat. Thanks a lot Gizat. We appreciate that. If you are afraid of something weird, we want to hear about it. That includes you too Gizat. We want to know. Send us an email at stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, live from the future. Join HowstuffWorks staff as we explore them as 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 will 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. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're

going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.