Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Hate Works

Episode Date: March 19, 2022

Hate is generally defined as an extreme hostility to something or someone, usually stemming from fear, anger or a sense of injury. But how does it work? Join Josh and Chuck in this classic episode as they dig into the nature of hate.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi friends, it's Charles W. Chuck Bryant here, your friendly neighborhood podcaster. Setting up this week's Saturday Selects episode. And this week, everybody, I picked an episode all about hate. Oh, I hate this. I hate it when people do that. I hate it when that happens.

You probably say that stuff a lot. But what does hate really mean? What is it the core of hate? And what does it mean for the world in our community? Well, we talk about all that stuff in this episode from 2011 and July 5th. How hate works. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always a chipper and cheerful Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Man, I'm going in 10 different directions, buddy. Yeah? I'm a little screwy. Are you? Yeah. Well, focus on this one. Okay. Okay, because we're going on one direction and that's hate. I hate to focus.

Okay. You hate broccoli. I do hate broccoli and you know that. I also hate peas. Like split peas? I remember declaring as a child that peas are some of my most hated enemies. I think a lot of kids don't like peas because they're mushy. Yeah. Well, that's a problem with all vegetables really. They're mushy. They're overcooked. If you undercook something, no, I've had pretty nasty broccoli. But broccoli's all, that's separate. It's just disgusting in every single way. But cream spinach? I love that. It's awesome. Yeah, that's good stuff. You and I shared a cream spinach at Morton's Steakhouse recently, like two ladies. Yeah, it was something. We couldn't even finish. It was so rich. It was really good. So Chuck, we don't hate cream spinach. No. I hate

broccoli and one of the things I hate more than anything else is not having an intro, which I don't because I was looking online and strangely, the online world is a repository for hate in a certain way as in like neo-Nazi punk bands. Yeah. Pop bands. This article calls it pop music. Yeah. Or Facebook groups dedicated to hate, like Holocaust denial and that kind of stuff. Sure. But this word is so ubiquitous in our culture that there is nothing there. I found a guy in Darien Mass who was accused of a hate crime. Everybody wants to know why Cleveland fans hate LeBron. I can answer that. But I mean, we throw this word around. Some reality TV series was the show you love to hate. We use this word a lot. But yeah, I found a study out of the

University of Texas that asked people how often they hated and nobody said every day. It's not an everyday thing. So like we hate things like broccoli, but we also realized there's a real distinction between hating something and experiencing actual hate. You hit it on the head. And this is a pretty old distinction, right? Philosophers have been aware of this before. I think Aristotle was pretty sure he hated peas, but he really hated hemlock. Yeah. He's not Webster, so I will read his definition because he's Aristotle. He said it was a dislike for someone based on our negative perception of that person's nature that is so intense that whoever feels it wants to cause real harm to another. Like I really want to harm you. Yeah, so that's the

difference. Like you said, people throw that word around, I hate broccoli, but you're not going to go out and try and burn down broccoli farms. No. I know that's silly. I'm not going to go burn down cubby broccoli's family's broccoli farm that was used to fund the James Bond movies. But Josh, I think, and this is me surmising in my own personal purview, I think there are kind of two types of hate. Well, three types really then. One type that you just throw the word around, like I hate that show, I hate broccoli. One that is real hate, which I think is fear-based when you don't know someone personally or a group personally where you hate a group of people. And then there's like the anger, retribution-based hate, like someone personally has wronged you

so badly that you hate them and either want to cause or wish ill upon them. Right. Well, you just brought up a huge can of worms by using the word anger. Like there is a real debate over whether hate and anger are the same thing. Right. They say they're not. It depends on who you talk to, but the people who say they're not say things like hate is brought on by humiliation or ill treatment or being devalued, where anger is brought on when you're treated in a way that you consider unfairly. Right. Right. Anger is the result of not having any recourse. Right. Frustration perhaps coupled with that. Right. And that kind of dances along the border because people who hate other groups often are frustrated. Like when we talked about the fascism

in the fascism podcast, getting groups all riled up against a scapegoat is one of the tenets of fascism. Right. And so these people are frustrated at their lot in life. Their unemployment's high because of the Jews or something like that. Right. But really, they're not, they're angry about their job while they hate the Jews. So the two are really intertwined, but there's a lot of people think if you look at them deeply enough, they're not one and the same. Right. Well, I think a lot of times that kind of hate is displaced anger and frustration at your own lot, like you were saying. Yeah. But there is also a very strong physiological basis to it as well. I mean, it's an emotion supposedly, although it's

not one of the basic emotions, anger is. Yeah, what are the basic emotions? Anger, joy, fear, disgust, and peckishness. I thought it was joy, pain, sunshine, and rain. No. No. Who's that? Rob Bass? No, I can't remember. I could sing it, but I can't remember. Sing it. No, no, no. I think it's Rob Bass. No, it was a duo. Oh, no, no, no. I'm thinking of I Want Money, Lots and Lots of Money. That was a duo. That's good to be rich. Remember that stupid song? Yeah, kind of. They wrote a song about being rich and how great it was. Yeah. And that was their only song. So unless they were already rich, then they never were from that song. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. I don't know. He just blew my mind, buddy.

So do you hate that song? I do now because it's in my head. Sure. So Chuck, what is this physiological basis of anger? Well, it's pointed out in the article within an Iron Maiden song, which I thought was an odd choice. There's a thin line between love and hate. Yeah, it's like there's a whole other song called There's a Thin Line Between Love and Hate. Well, there's a much more popular song, I think, The Persuaders, which was It's a Thin Line Between Love and Hate, the old Motown song. Right. Have you ever heard the Pretender's version of it? No. It's hands down the greatest version ever. Really? Is a thin line between love and hate. The Pretender's covered The Persuaders? Yep. All right. I'm telling you. All right. So apparently

Iron Maiden actually listened to that song on YouTube the other day, and it's an Iron Maiden song. Yeah. No, I looked it up to make sure that Iron Maiden hadn't covered The Persuaders, and no, Bruce Dickinson came up with his own lyrics. His own version. He's like, that one's fine. I'm doing this one. That's right. So the point of all this, Josh, is that there is a thin line between love and hate as far as the brain goes because in 2008, there was a study at the University College of London, and that's in the UK. And they got 17 people, not very wide ranging. I had a lot of problems with this study. But they got 17 people who said they hated someone else. Maybe that's why. They maybe have a hard time finding someone who hates someone else.

Maybe not. Because I don't hate anyone. I was about to ask you that. Well, we'll get to the personal stuff in a minute. Okay. So this study, what they did was they found 17 people who hated someone else, threw them under the old Wonder Machine, and showed them pictures of the people they hated to record the results. I guess they're like, you need to bring pictures of people you hate for this study. Yeah, they could have just said, think of the person you hate, I think, and it would achieve the same goal. I guess. So anyway, what they found out was that a couple of regions in the brain, there's like a hate circuit, they call it. They're the Putamen. Putamen. Putamen. Okay. And the Jerry laughed at that. And the insular cortex. Insular.

Both fired up with pictures of people that they hated. Right. And the significance of this is that both of those regions also fire up when you see a picture or think about someone you love. Which is the longest way to say it's a thin line between love and hate. Right. And I think everybody kind of senses that. It's like when passions flaring, it's virtually the same thing. They're two sides of one coin. In my opinion, if you truly hate somebody, the real hate to fear is not one where somebody's like, oh, I hate you so much, you know, because that can be turned. Sure. That means that they have some sort of emotional connection to you. The one to be afraid of is the detached, calm, cool kind of hatred. Because

that's the one where you end up dead somewhere. Like I'm the Green River killer and I hate prostitutes. Well, that brings up an interesting sidebar. Yeah. Right. Do serial killers hate their victims? No. End of sidebar. Well, they have long said that serial killers don't experience emotion on that scale, but they're starting to change their thinking in certain cases because a lot of serial killers suffer from antisocial personality disorder and people who suffer from that experience a range of emotions. So it's not always, I think it's both, you know. Yeah. That not you can't say every serial killer is the same. Well, they've been saying that for a long time. They've been trying to find the threads that

connect them. And I told you about the sociologist I talked to who's just really up in arms that psychology had spent four decades or so looking at serial killers and the best they could come up with is any social personality disorder. He's like, of course they have a personality disorder. They're serial killers. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. So back to that study though about the brain and the difference between love and hate. They did see a difference, a key difference because the areas of the frontal cortex associated with judgment and critical thinking become less active when you see someone you love on the fMRI machine. Right. But when you saw someone you hate, most of your frontal cortex, cortex. Cortex is active, remains active. Yeah. So that's a big

difference. But that makes sense as well, Chuck, because I mean, if you see, I know you don't hate anybody, so you wouldn't understand this. But when you see someone you hate, you're just like- You say that like it's a personality flaw. You just, you tend to criticize them in your head. Like, oh, you're wearing that sweater today. You look so fat and stupid in that sweater. I hope you somehow get, you strangle yourself on that sweater. Yeah. So the point is that it takes like hatred as an active thing. It's an active rumination on this. It's not a knee jerk thing like when you might see a picture of someone you love. Right. All right. So this is interesting, right? That's what that study came up with. The 17 people. Yeah. With this. Yeah.

It couldn't get 20. You know. And the other problem is I'm sure they were weird, Western, educated, did something rich and developed. I can't remember what the I stands for. And what would you dispel? Weird. It's basically like the idea that all of these studies that are cited, a lot of them are, they're just college kids. Right. So it's like this really narrow niche of the human population that they extrapolate on to. Yeah. Good point. And in this case, they just use 17 of them. Well, we're here to report it and then criticize it. And we're done. We did both. That's right. What's the deal with like old hate though? Like, don't they have some inclination of like early hate with cavemen and the like?

Well, yeah, because the parts of the, you know, the closer to the center or the brainstem that you get in the brain, the more ancient that part of the brain is. And if there's a region like the putamen that's associated with a certain thing, e.g. hate, then that means that hate's been around for a very long time because the, our part of the brain has been able to carry out that function for this long or should ostensibly. Gotcha. Right. But then it's also new with the prefrontal cortex, which is a fairly newer aspect. So maybe we just hated, but we didn't criticize. We just hated. And they think possibly that we developed hate as a species or a capacity to hate as a survival mechanism way back in hunter-gatherer days where we could feel justified

by, say, taking food from another group because we hated them, which I actually found pretty, that's a pretty inspiring idea. Oh yeah? Yeah. That you had to work up hate enough to go and pillage? Yes. Okay. I think that's kind of neat because it makes it seem like we aren't naturally hateful beings. And I don't think we are. I agree. I believe everybody has hate and everyone has a vast capacity to hate, but I don't, I wouldn't characterize this as generally hateful. That's good. Thanks. I'm kind of surprised to hear you say that. It's true though. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen.

So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on

this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So it's in the Bible, Josh. It's an ancient text all over the place. Hate's been around a long time. Right? Are we going to talk about Carthage? Yeah. Because I know you love this. The Carthaginian general, Hannibal? Carthaginian. You got to stop that. Hannibal pledged to his father,

dad, I hate Rome. I hate Romans. I don't like the Italians. I hate them forever. And I will swear retribution because they have seized our provinces. Yeah. He said, father, yes, son, I'm going to kill the Romans. And he did. He made good on that. Invaded Italy and did quite a bit of damage. Of course, the Romans fired back because they hated the Carthage. What can I say that word? They hated people from Carthage. The Carthaginians. And in 146 BC, they did some pretty bad things like burning them in their houses while they screamed. But is that hate? I don't know. And I think that's an issue that I have here or there

with this is that that's kind of a jump to conclusion. Is it hate? I don't know. It does hate form the basis for war or horrible acts in war? Well, I don't know because it's condemned pretty much in the New Testament in the Bible. It's condemned in the Quran. Let not hatred of a people incite you not to act equitably. And in medieval and Renaissance Europe, you came up in you. But in Italy, they came up with the vendetta, which is very much retribution for hatred. There you go. See, that's what I'm saying. I think let's say a Roman soldier comes to your town while you're away using the latrine pit that your village has dug.

Yeah. And they burn your family alive in your house while you're using the bathroom. And you come back and you see the Roman legions going away and your family's dead burned to crisps. Right? I don't think the Romans necessarily felt hatred to commit that act. But that act would incite hatred in the person that it befell. So I think a vendetta is an excellent example of hatred because somebody done you wrong and you're going to get back at them. Or they did something to your father or something. The vendetta is very long lasting from what I understand. Yeah. And it's not. I mean, this is obviously we're talking about mafia vendettas and war vendettas. But it can happen on a smaller level. You might not think of it as a vendetta though.

But if someone done you really wrong, you're like, I'm going to get that person back by doing this in six months when they least expect it. That's a vendetta. Yeah. But you don't call it a vendetta. No. It's just... Well, in Italy, they do. It's just comeuppance or... I'm going to get you sucka. Yeah. Bad people do that though. There was a word for it though in medieval and Renaissance Europe. In Mesitia, which is Latin for un-friendship. It was a legal term for hating somebody. It's okay. So what we've done is establish that hatred is definitely a thing that's been around a long time. Is that what we've done? Yeah. And Chuck, of course, it's still around. In recent modern history, there's other examples that we could go into. Like hate groups?

Yeah. Well, let's talk about the Nazis real quick. Because again, we talked about fascism and one of the tenets of it being, I guess, inciting a group to hate. Yeah. Group hate. That's where we are, for sure. And a lot of that gave a lot of a body of data for people to study and that they're still studying. But one guy in particular named Martin Oppenheimer, who's a sociologist from Rutgers University, was basically said, like, look, the Nazis are proof positive that you can, number one, get an entire group to hate another group. And that you do this by identifying and exploiting the group that you're with, their frustrations, say unemployment, joblessness, and then basically saying those are the people who are at fault. That's how you

stir the pot. Exactly. That's how you incite hatred, which has got to be one of the worst things you can do. One of the worst nonviolent acts of think a person commit is incite hatred. Oh, yeah. You know? Yeah. And also, I thought what came to mind to me when I was reading this was some of these same tactics, like a marginalized people, people who are insecure, who are seeking safety somewhere. It's also the kind of the same thing they do with the cults and the brainwashing. They're seeking out these same types of people and saying, hey, you feel marginalized. You feel like you're not loved. You need a safe haven. But they're not saying go hate someone else. They're saying just come and be with our group. Well, our association of like in group and out

group is like this emotional psychological razor blade that can be exploited in any number of ways. Exactly. But it's always a marginalized people, it seems like. Yeah. Or you mean the people who have hatred stirred up in them? Yeah. Or go join a cult or something like that. Yeah. You mean teenagers. Yes. Well, a Stanford study in 2010 basically said, hey, if you want to teach teenagers to hate, here's how you do it. You can't just overtly say, hey, go hate this group. Hate Muslims, hate black people, hate Jewish people, hate gays. You can't just say that. It's not good enough. But if you tell a story that basically implies this is, these are people you should hate and here's why. Yeah. Right? Like homosexuals or

pedorasts. And so you can't let them into certain groups. And by the way, you should hate them because of this story. Right. Then that works. I think that I had a problem with that one because it was like, that's true for everything. If you tell a story, it's going to hit home more personally to somebody. Yeah. You can't say, hey, go love Sea Biscuit because he ran a horse race that was pretty neat. But if you tell the story of Sea Biscuit, all of a sudden you're going to leave that thing going, man, I'm getting my butt to the Kentucky Derby next year because I love me some horse racing. I love Sea Biscuit. See, you saw the movie, right? No, I didn't. But the funny thing is, is that whole, that study made the careers of two Stanford researchers. Right. But they do

have a point because they point out in this article or they don't, but we do. DW Griffith's awful movie, awful in content, Birth of a Nation from 1915. It's no Sea Biscuit. It's no Sea Biscuit, but it did a really good job of getting people to hate black people in the United States. Yeah. Doesn't it feature like the, well, since it was 1915, it's like the first in everything, but it's like the first on-screen rape or implied rape or there was a rape of a white woman by like an escaped slave, I think. By a white actor in blackface. Yeah. Of course at the time. Yeah. And it was a big, huge movie. It grossed $10 million in 1915. That's like... That's $216 million today is what the movie would have grossed. Yeah. And it was based on a play.

Yeah, it is. It was based on a play in a book called The Klansman. And DW Griffith felt so bad about this afterward that he made a follow-up film that year called Intolerance, which was a three-hour silent film meditation on four parallel stories of man's intolerance throughout history. Oh, I didn't know he did that. That's good. Yeah. Well. Because I want to like DW Griffith. Yeah. I mean, he didn't write Birth of a Nation, so he directed it. Not like getting him off the hook or anything, but I think at the time he was just trying to make a movie that sold a lot of tickets. Gotcha. And that was a way to do it. Yeah, that's a way to do it. And then the Nazi, of course, anyone who saw Inglourious Bastards, knows that Gerbils, Joseph Gerbils, was in charge of,

you know, the propaganda department with feature films. Yeah. And they had one called Jud Suss. Is it Jud or Yud? Probably it'd be Yud Suss. So you're the one who speaks German. How did you say Jud Suss? I don't know. I was concentrating on the umlaut part in the Suss. Okay. So yeah, it'd be Yud Suss. Okay. But that featured a main character, a Jewish main character who was shunned by a Gentile woman, and so he raped her. Oh, yeah. Among other things. Yeah. And it was required viewing for the stormtroopers. Right, to get them riled up. Yeah, they loved it. And then they give them crystal meth. Really? Yeah, from what I understand. That'll do it. And that didn't just go out with the Nazis.

The media has been playing like more and more of a role among, I guess, hate groups, hatred as a concept and as a practice, right? Yeah. Because I think in the 90s, Bosnian Serb TV showed something that's kind of referred to now as basically hate-mongering series called Genocide that stirred up emotion against the Bosnian Muslims. Right? Yeah. And well, you know what happened with that in the Balkan War. Yeah, Al-Qaeda's done similar things on the web. Obviously, the web is a good place to go try and get this thing done these days. Yep. And they had chat rooms. They had chat rooms. Well, Facebook's becoming increasingly available for people who have

hate-based ideologies. Yeah. And Facebook is like, look, we can't do, I mean, we'll find them and shut them down when we can, but they're all over the place. Are they? Yeah, they are. Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation. If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikulur. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses,

Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And then also check pop music. Yeah, they called it pop music. And the reason I know I can't call it pop music is because I've seen some of those specials. And I saw really good one. I can't remember on neo-Nazis and they have musical groups that are neo-Nazi songs and they just sing about

hating other people. And it's aggressive music. It's not pop music. There's no synths. No, it's not Hanson. So Chuck, the article begs a pretty interesting question, I think. Is hate a mental illness? Because, you know, don't you have to be slightly mentally ill to burn down a house with an entire family trapped inside? Maybe. Or maybe you're just following orders. Okay, you know. Excellent. I think you just hit upon it. Our understanding of hate is incomplete because our understanding of the things that we do that we associate with hate is also incomplete. Right. Are you just following orders? Are you being whipped up into a mob mentality? Right. Do you actually hate this other group because you lost your job? Or is this emotion just being

exploited by someone else, a third party? And also, I think our understanding of mental illness isn't refined enough to say, yes, hates the product of a mental illness. Sure, because they reference Hitler and Osama bin Laden as two people they suspect might have been mentally ill. Or at least, antisocial. And they also reference the Columbine shooters as one of them suffered from depression and they had these hate-filled rants that they ended up finding. And was there a link between that depression and hatred? Right. And I guess that begs the question, like, was Osama bin Laden and Hitler and Dylan Kleebold so wrapped up in hatred that they were crazy or was hatred a byproduct of any mental illness they may or may not have had? These

are questions we don't know. But my whole idea that hatred is brought out when you are mistreated by someone else is backed up by a 2000 study of people from Kosovo and those who've gone through the most trauma and stress hated the Serbian troops who'd born that out on them more than other people who maybe had pleasant exchanges with Serbian troops. I guess that makes sense. We got to mention hate crimes and hate groups briefly. Hate crime is obviously a crime carried out against somebody based on their skin color, their ethnicity, their national origin, their gender, disability, sexual orientation is one you hear a lot about. Yeah, disability is a sad one because it took a while to get that into hate crime bills. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting. But the

Congress has passed legislation now that makes hate crimes more serious offenses than just like a regular assault. Well, yeah. Which is pretty awesome. Yeah. And how it should be. I remember when there was a child safety law that was being passed in 2006 and there was a hate crime language that was attached to it that made sexual orientation crimes, hate crimes, on a federal level. And there's a big outrage about it among religious groups. Do you remember that? I think so, yeah. They were like, wait, we have a First Amendment freedom to hate gay people. It's part of our religion. Right. So you're saying that that in and of itself is a hate crime by saying like, no, these people are wrong. Homosexuality is bad. It's wrong, that kind of thing. And they thought

that that kind of infringed on it, which I don't think it does, but that was their argument for a while. I don't think it worked. Interesting. Yeah. So I have a list here. First, Josh, and then we have a couple more little stats about hate groups. Since 2000, the Southern Poverty Law Center claims that the U.S. hate groups in the U.S. has grown by more than 50%. And since when? Since 2000. Oh, wow. Yeah. And they had the top five states with the biggest concentrations of hate groups. And this one was continued on the next page. And when I was reading it, I was like, please, Georgia, don't be on there. Please don't be on there. And it's not. And we will count them down from five to create suspense. Idaho is number five for hate groups,

evidently. Wyoming is number four. You got Arkansas is number three. Mississippi is number two. Two from the south. And then number one, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is Montana. Yep. That's, you know, Montana. Grab your guns, fellas. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of militias in Montana. Yeah, but there's also a lot of like super chill, cool, like fly fishing, microbrew drinking hippies out there. Yeah. It's an interesting mix. Yeah. I spent time there, and I saw both in this town, and it was, I could feel the friction even between those groups. Like with an Indian burn? Yeah, like I was like, I was out in a saloon and having a good time with some locals. And then a couple of like cowboys came in that didn't like the people from LA being

in there. And you could like definitely sense there's two different types of people in Montana. There's probably more than two, but I'm generalizing. No, there's two. There's just two. That's it. Okay. Hate groups and hippies. So, Chuck, you got some stats for us. Yeah, you dug this up right on who people hate. Yeah. Acquanates is 24%. Friends, 23%. Family members, 12%. That's sad. Ex-boyfriends and girlfriends, 12%. And within the family, its fathers are hated the most at 45%. Mothers at 23%. In-laws at 13%. And siblings at 3%. That's kind of sweet. That's surprising to me, though. I would think siblings would be the highest because they're the ones that beat tar out of you most frequently in most families. All right, so do you hate people?

Let's finish up with that. I have found that the best way to hate somebody is to just check them off. So you'll write someone off, but not have that act of hatred? I don't generally. Like, I will just be like, I can't believe you wore that sweater you fat pig idiot in my head, but it's usually because I'm in a bad mood about something else. I don't walk around just actively hating people. It's a waste of time. It's a total waste of time. I don't think I've ever hated anybody. I had a situation, an ex-girlfriend shacked up with one of my best friends after I moved, state, and we were broken up, quote unquote, but I also was like, I'm coming back for you. Like, you know, this isn't over. Were you going to find work in California or something?

I was going west in my wagon, and they shacked up pretty quick after I left, and I had like a few years of like bad dreams and periodic bad dreams. I wasn't like every day I woke up thinking about it, but it faded away, but it was never even hate. It was just like, oh man, why you got to do that? Really? Yeah, I was just like, that sucks. Don't do that, dear friends. That's one end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum is like people who go and like kill those people, those two people, like former famous football stars. Yep, and I think it's all in the wiring. You're wired a certain way, and I'm not wired to indulge those kinds of things. I suspect it all has to do with the amygdala. You think? Yep. All right. Well, if you want to learn more about the amygdala,

you can type that word into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. You can also type in the word hate to bring up the article that we worked off of today. I should point out too, Josh, that I made right with the dude years later and never made right with a girl. What does that say? I think it says that you hated the girl more. No, I just never felt the need to dredge that back up with her. Gotcha. But the dude, I was like, man, you can't have an old friend that you're not friends with anymore. At least I can't. I don't like that stuff. Oh, yeah? No, man. I don't like that hanging over my head. Okay. Try to make it right. That's what I say. You done now? I'm done. Sorry. Anyway, I think, did I even say handy search bar? You

totally threw me off. All right. Well, handysearchbar at HowStuffWorks.com. I said that, Chuck, so that means it's your turn for listener mail. Yes, Josh, this is on suicide bombing, and this Nick brings up a very good point that I think kind of fits in with this podcast. Okay. Hi, guys, and Jerry, I think y'all are very brave for taking on the issue of suicide bombing. I don't know about brave, but I appreciate it. I don't want to contribute too much to the deluge of emails, but I would like to say you could have more explicitly underscored something that I believe is key to understanding suicide bombing and terrorism in general. Both are weapons of the weak and the beleaguered, sort of like our hate thing. Okay. You agree? Yeah. Well, I mean, we even said

a suicide bomber cost about 150 bucks. Exactly. He points out if Palestinians, for instance, had access to predator drones and guided missile systems rather than rocks and slingshots, I don't think that Palestinians would resort to martyrdom. I would also point to suicide bombings carried out by the Viet Minh during the French occupation of Vietnam, or the example of Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, both of which movements were secular in nature. All I want to say is it seems like suicide bombings is a phenomenon often arising from situations in which there's a huge asymmetry of power between an occupying or apartheid regime, regime, or a native or oppressed population. You guys did mention this, but I think this dimension is at least as important to the

issue as religion or notions of martyrdom. And that is sincerely for Nick. And I kind of agree, Nick. And Nick is a sharp tack. It's like right on the money. Yeah. Thanks for that one. Wow. Okay. Well, if you think you're a sharp tack, we want to hear from you, right, Chuck? That's right. Send us an email about anything at all, anything at all. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never,

ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.