Stuff You Should Know - The Science of Cute

Episode Date: January 14, 2021

If you took our advice and looked up baby beavers a few episodes back, you probably found them sooooo cute you couldn’t stand it. Or you just wanted to eat them up, which is weird if you think about it. Friend, prepare for the science on that! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee 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. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Cued as a button Bryant. And there's Jerry Squee Rowland. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast,

the Cued edition. That's right, the science of Cued. Yeah, I'm excited about this one. Been wanting to do it for a while. I know. I remember like, that was one of the first things you ever said to me when we met in the office. How cute you are. Well, no, we were in the break room and I saw a picture of a baby panda. Sure. And I just started to melt. Yeah. And you went, hey, jerk. You ever wonder why you think things are cute? Yeah. I bet there's science behind that. Maybe we should talk about it one day. And look, here we are. What was that? 12, 13 years ago almost? Something like that. Man, you really responded to that aggression, didn't you? I did.

So, Chuck. Yes. Have you ever heard of Mickey Mouse? Oh, I know several mice, but I've never heard of Mickey Mouse. You've only heard of Model Muck? Yes. And Ricky Rouse? Well, let me tell you about Mickey Mouse. He's actually the mascot of a very large entertainment corporation called Disney. Don't know. They own Walt Disney World, Walt Disney Land. I think ABC owns them. They're affiliated with ESPN. They're very big, but they have this mascot. It's a mouse and his name's Mickey. That's weird. He's kind of big, especially abroad. But if you look at Mickey today, you think, wow, that's a really cute mouse. Doesn't really look like a mouse. He's black and white, basically, or brownish and black,

but also his features are very much not mouse-like. But if you were to go back and look at the beginning of Mickey, I think he's from the 1920s, late 1920s. In his earliest cartoons, he looked a lot more mousy, a cartoon mouse, but he had pointed features, not nearly as cute. But then if you fast forward about 10 years later, by the time 1938 rolls around, he's in something called the Brave Taylor. That was one of his shorts, where I think he defeats a giant or something like that. He looks full-blown Mickey mouse, but he looks way cuter. They had done a few things to him. They had made his eyes bigger. They'd made his features rounder, less pointed. He had big gloves and big shoes now. He's kind

of plump and oversized features. He had gotten cute. The scientist, Stephen J. Gold, who really deserves his own episode like Carl Sagan does, just a really interesting dude, he said that Disney and his animators had stumbled upon something that the zoologist and ethologist Conrad Lawrence termed kin-kin schema. I think I got that right, right? Yeah, kin-kin schema. Very nice. But like years before Conrad Lawrence ever did, that they had just kind of naturally figured out like, oh, this can be way more appealing if we exaggerate these particular features. It turns out what they had done is make him literally cuter by the very scientific definition of cuteness. Yeah, so Lawrence was an Austrian scientist and in the 40s came up with

this, and this made me feel quite good about myself actually looking over this list, about physical qualities that, and it's not just a person, came in animal as we'll see. A lot of this is animal-based, but these things, these traits that would evoke a positive response, a very strong positive response, and they are large head, that's me, high protruding forehead. I've always said you have a five head if anything. It's average. Large eyes, sort of average. Chubby cheeks, bingo. Oh, you should make the cheeks make a sonic appearance. Very nice. It's been years. Still as moist as ever. Sorry, everyone. Chubby cheeks, small nose, I'm an average nose. Small mouth and chin, I'd say average. Short, thick extremities. I actually have sort of

skinny legs. I'll carry my weight between my chin and my belt. Okay. Plump body shape, bingo. So I am scientifically half cute. You are very cute. I mean, that's definitely, that's not even up for debate, really. I used to get called cute by the ladies, not handsome, but cute. There's a difference. Apparently, I saw that Paul McCartney hated being known as the cute beetle, probably for the same, you know, the same differences that you just mentioned. Probably. But the, like what you just said, this list you just, you just, you rattled off, that is Lawrence's king conch schema or baby schema or baby-ness, which is basically like if you put all these things together, you have what amounts to what we humans

consider cute. And you can extrapolate, like you were saying, not just onto babies, but onto other animals and even onto like cartoon characters. Like all animals, really. Yeah. You either have these things and you're regarded as cute or you don't and you're not. Exactly. Yeah. That's a really good point that you can, you can not only have this, you can also lack it and that that has, that modulates our response to whatever that thing is. Yeah. And it's also important to point out that this is, these are guidelines, scientific sort of guidelines and truisms, but not across the board. Like some people, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and cuteness is. Sure. So some people might look at a baby,

I don't know, just some sort of weird reptilian thing that has none of these traits and think it's super cute as well. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It is kind of subjective, but there does seem to be a, if not universal, a widely tapped into sense of what's cute and what's not. You know what I mean? Yeah. So let me rephrase that. The person that thinks the baby lizard that has none of these traits is cute, they probably also think the panda is cute. Right. You know what I'm saying? Right. Yeah. They're probably not disgusted or just totally turned off by the panda. Look at that dirty, ugly baby kitten. Yeah. And so, so Lorenz was, he compiled this list based on his observations. And I guess from what I read, like this whole study of cuteness is

pretty young as far as scientific investigation goes. So, you know, we're still figuring it out. It's still developing as it goes along and some of the studies involved are fairly suspect, but there seems to be this, this kind of general acceptance of Lorenz's kinkenschema, which is that it was just, it's so, it's so obviously correct that from what I read, some people just haven't even investigated, which is good and bad. Lorenz was a behaviorist and he actually, we met him first in our animal imprinting episode, which was a really good one. That's right. But he studied that. But he put this all together to study behaviors. And what he was studying is exactly how babies get adult humans who may not even be their parents to respond to them in a way

that, that adult wants to take care of that baby. And what he, what he came up with was this kinkenschema, the cuteness, what he said unlocks innate instincts in humans that basically triggers like automatic behaviors like, oh, I want to make sure that you stay alive. So I'm going to go find you some food, that kind of stuff. Yeah. And it corresponds to helplessness at birth. There's a direct correlation between how cute you look and how little you can get by in your own in the animal kingdom. Most mammals are born very small, very helpless, many months, sometimes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes years of care before they can go off and kind of do their own thing. That's called altricial. What to take? To being born helpless, you're altricial.

Yeah. So if you're altricial, you're probably almost 100% more cute than an animal that is born that can kind of run right out and do things on their own, probably not as cute. That's precocial. You got altricial and precocial, right? And the thing is, is like, if you step back, like, it's just so easy to just overlook this. And if you really start to think about this, cuteness has been this adaptive, I guess, evolutionary trait that's just been hiding in plain sight until Lorenz really put his finger on it. But if you step back and think about it, there's no innate or there's no reason that a baby has in and of itself to evoke a response in a human, even its parents, to want to take care of it. But it needs that because it is

an altricial species. Humans are an altricial species. They'll just die out if you don't take care of a baby. And if enough babies die out, eventually humanity dies out. The species dies out. So it's an adaptation to make somebody want to take care of you. And that is what Lorenz figured out that cuteness is that trigger that we find babies cute, and it makes us want to take care of them. And that is one of the most mind blowing things I know. Yeah. I mean, if you look at human babies, human babies are born pretty early in their development. Like if all things being equal, human babies should probably be born six months later than they are. Yeah. But they're not. Human babies come out very early. They come out before their little fontanelles are even formed.

It's disgusting. They need a lot of care. And they're born that like human babies are small so they can fit out of the birth canal. Their little noses are cartilage so they don't get broken on the way out. Like, you know, babies should have larger heads and should have like, not should, but you know what I'm saying, fully formed like strong noses, but they wouldn't be able to come out of a lady if that was the case. Yeah. Because our brains have developed to be so big and our craniums have developed in response to that, that like we're evolutionarily speaking or developmentally speaking, we're underdeveloped when we're born, even though we would have been born at like a normal gestation period for a human compared to other species. It's like,

this kid's out a little, this kid hasn't baked fully, you know what I'm saying? And so that really makes human babies, even among, you know, other mammals that are altricial, super dependent on caregivers to make sure that it survives. Yeah. So like a human baby's head is really large compared to their body. And these are, you know, these are some of the cuteness traits that we mentioned early on. Their eyes, you know, your eyes don't really grow. Your eyes are about the same size. I didn't know that, did you? Yeah. That's why when you look at some babies, you're like, look how huge their eyes are. Yeah. It's just because they're on a little tiny face. It makes sense, but I just had never known that you're, you're born with your eyes, basically the size

that they're going to be when you grow up. I think if you really work them out, they can beef up a little bit though. Okay. What's it blinking? We mentioned those tiny little noses, super cute and very bendy. They're little baby cheeks and everything's soft. So you can get out of that birth canal and, you know, formula and mother's milk keep you kind of chunky and full. Yeah. Nobody's going to put a baby on a diet. No, good Lord, no. The skin is very loose and soft. So, you know, if you go through a big gross spurt, it doesn't, you know, split open. Sounds gross. It does. And then, you know, the way babies move, it's just very cute. They're babies are awkward and they're clumsy and they don't like have the definition to

like manipulate these, these muscle groups very well yet. Yeah. And it's awkward and gawky and super cute. All of this stuff together is cute to us. And it raises the question like, did babies evolve? Human babies evolved to fit our definition of cute? No. Or did our definition? Actually, I've seen both. Oh, really? I've seen both. So it makes sense that like our definition of what's cute and what we respond to is cute will be based on the average human baby. But you can also take an average human baby and tweak like digitally a picture of a baby and tweak it to maximum cuteness. And so there's this other idea that, okay, maybe originally our idea of cuteness was based on baby features, but the cutest babies would logically get the most

response and would be the most likely, yeah, and would be the most likely to survive and thrive and go on to reproduce. So it is entirely possible that we as a species have gotten cuter over the eons because of selection for the cutest babies. Well, and that's been critical to our survival. When you see something like that, when you see a baby chick, your instinct is to pick it up and cradle it and make sure that a tree branch doesn't fall on it. Right. And it's same goes for babies. Yeah, because they share a lot of the same similarities, the same kin, kin, kin schema. I wish that kin wasn't in there. I wish it was just kin dense schema. Call it that then. I don't want to get things wrong all the time. We do, we do. It's usually not purposefully, you know. Okay.

But that same set of traits can apply to other animals. It was like you were saying, you know, animals that fall into that set of traits appear cute to us and we want to save them. We want to take care of them. Like a little baby giraffe has huge eyes. Yeah. Its features are kind of small compared to a larger adult giraffe, which even adult giraffes are awfully cute. But one of the things that a baby giraffe is going to get you with is hobbling around trying to stand up that first time. Yeah, they hit you with those little shaky legs. Look out. Yeah, and that reminds us or it reminds some very ancient part of our brain of a human infant, you know, like developing its motor skills. So it seems like it's not like our brains are confused. Like you're not looking at a

baby giraffe. Like look at that baby human. I love it. It's just, it triggers the same part of the brain that seeing a human infant does because of that same set of characteristics. Yeah. Like there was a study I found on mental floss from 2009 where scientists reported that people in this study that viewed really cute images of puppies and kittens perform better in the game of operation, you know, the kids game than people who saw less like that saw pictures of grown up dogs and cats. So it just innately triggers this care response. It's really, really interesting. Yeah. And so what Loren's called that innate releasers that, that you see a cute baby and the cuteness acts as an innate releaser, which triggers a set of inborn instincts in every human

to take care of that baby. And that will apparently hasn't necessarily borne out, but there is a lot of, or there's an increasing amount of documentation about how seeing something cute affects the brain. And I propose that we take a commercial break and then come back and talk about that afterward. Agreed. We'll be right back. 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. Yeah, 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. Uh-huh. 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 Mange Shatikler 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 second-hand 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. I think I said commercial break. Sure. Geez. Nine out of ten, dinner surveyed. It's like an after-school special all of a sudden. So I think before we dive into what you're talking about, I do want to mention the wolf puppy thing. I thought it was pretty interesting is that there is an example of a co-evolved trait with the human brain that triggers that cuteness response. When you look at wolves, wild wolves, apparently, and these were pre-dogs basically, they don't have this muscle called the – here we go with some Latin, I guess – levator, anguli, oculi, medialis.

You just made a demon up here. I did. Oh my god. This muscle, they don't have in their eyebrows. And apparently that is the muscle that can make what we think of as puppy dog eyes. Dogs that came later did evolve that muscle and then were bred for it because it made people melt inside. So that's why wolves – which is interesting, like wolves have that sort of scowl and they can't help it. But then I looked at wolf puppy pictures and it's pretty cute. But maybe it's not in the eyes. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what it is either. But I think that raises a really good question. That also kind of points out like this research is still very young and there's

contradictory information coming in and a lot of it is just based on intuition and that kind of thing. But there are – like you said, there's that – there are people walking around who think like that baby lizard is super cute. You know what I'm saying? It's not entirely universal. And maybe those wolf puppies have some other traits that have nothing to do with the eyes that are hijacking your brain. The point that stands out to me is that that caregiving instinct that Lorenz pointed out or whatever weird brain pathway we have that's triggered by seeing something cute is that it extends beyond humans. And I think that that kind of – that makes humanity as a species like that much greater in my opinion. That caregiving impulse can extend

beyond humans. And I mean, that explains pets right there. Like I don't think we would have pets if that wasn't true. You know, I mean, we'd have like gar dogs or something still, but you know, not a pet. There would be German shepherds. There would be nothing but. And they'd all be mean as snakes. And we probably have snakes, too, that rode the German shepherds. They still wouldn't be pets. Yeah, baby snakes, not so cute. There's also that weird thing where something is so ugly, it's cute as a young thing. Okay, so that's a Japanese term. We'll talk about kawaii later, but there's something called kimokawaii, which is called gross cute.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. They've got it. That's something – they're like the Germans, but further east. They have like a name and a term and idea for everything, you know? All right. We'll put a pin in that because we did promise the science of cute. So we're going to have to look at – we're going to have to look at the brain and actually what's going on there. And they've done that, of course. They've put people in the wonder machine and they have shown people pictures of baby faces to see what lights up. And when that happens, you get a really strong, immediate response in what's called the orbital frontal cortex, which is where we regulate our emotions and our pleasure.

And it's a really, really fast response. One seventh of a second. It doesn't take long when you see that baby or that puppy or whatever. It doesn't take you long to immediately think, I need to care for that thing and hold that thing. Yeah, because so that orbital frontal cortex apparently has something to do with the reward system. So your attention is captured very quickly and you get a little burst of pleasure from seeing that cute baby. And then there's another thing too that came out of that 2009 study using operation that all of a sudden your attention is very much focused and you can complete tasks much better or at least remarkably better than you could without seeing something cute.

So it really does suggest we have this inborn pathway to respond to something cute in a pleasurable way with warm feelings that trigger an ability, a greater, more focused ability to do something like, for example, care for or feed a baby or that kind of thing that seems to be born out. Like Lawrence's innate releaser seems to be being discovered by neurology right now. Which is interesting though because caring for a baby is not, in my experience, something you need that kind of focus for. It's not like putting together a little model house with tiny pieces of furniture. It's just like keep this thing alive. Right, but maybe that's like, rather than being like, oh, you know, I think I'd rather rake the

lawn instead and you just stop feeding the baby and go rake leaves. You know what I'm saying? Like your your attention to the task at hand is a little more focused so you're less distracted. Yeah, that's a different kind of focus. Sure. Yeah, luckily it doesn't take much brains because there's a lot of non-smart parents out there. That is true. So in that response, that speedy response in the orbital frontal cortex when you see that baby, men and women both have that same spike. But I think women report stronger caregiving, which they chalk up to just gender roles, basically, and not necessarily anything to do with the brain itself. Yeah, because the same areas light up for men and women, I guess to the same degree, it's just self-reported is different,

right? Right. And then apparently also like this, this is not just parents who experience this, like a human being will or a typical human being will experience this. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing where like as an adoptive parent, you know, this is my daughter is not my seed, but I can't, like I have nothing to base it on, but I can't imagine a stronger connection or a stronger instinct to care give. And so it's an important trait clearly because like you've seen movies where people find like a baby like abandoned by the dumpster and that, you know, if you run out and you know, I suppose some people might just say, call it in and say, hey, there's a baby over here. I'm not going near it. But a human's inclination is to run over

and pick that baby up and wrap it up in something warm and then maybe call the cops or whatever. Right. And like you said, like run over there, like an urgent thing that your brain would just be like, get over there right now. To help us thing out there by a dumpster, let's go get it. Yeah, that apparently would come probably more from the baby's cry, which I guess also ignites like the same kind of pathway as cuteness does, but it's a different, it's slightly different. There's not necessarily a reward. It's more like urgency. And they call that a biological siren, which would, you know, get you over there really quickly, but it's not necessarily because you saw, you know, you thought about how cute the baby is

in those swaddling clothes. Right. Sound is definitely important. Like that same study, if you hear baby's laughter or even the smell of a baby, your brain lights up in the same way. Yeah. So like we're presented with the entire cute package of everything that's great about babies. Sight, sound, smell. They are really deeply manipulative, I think, is what you're meant to take away from this episode. They are. They're just tiny little monsters saying like, take care of me for 18 years. That's right. And possibly beyond if I'm Gen X. Exactly. It was a Gen X or millennials? I don't know. I feel like there were plenty of Gen Xers that lived in the basement. You're right. You're totally right. Or maybe that's

every generation, but we weren't coddled as much. Oh boy. You're going to get us canceled. Oh boy. Yeah. So let's move on from that. Oh wait, here's another thing. And this is the satisfying ever. When they did this study, that brain activity was diminished when they were shown baby faces that had some sort of facial disruption, like a cleft palate. And that is really one of the saddest things you can imagine hearing. Yeah. Because I mean, that would account for, you know, what I was talking about earlier about how cuteness is selected for, that there's this, like by no one's fault of their own, but just through, you know, the evolutionary process of these neural connections that were born that are ready to make, like

wanting to respond to something cute. If you're presented with something that doesn't quite line up with that kink and schema, that baby's going to have a much harder time getting that same response from somebody than just a traditionally cute baby. Well, it's extraordinarily sad. I think we need to do an episode on cleft palates too that stood out to me. We haven't done that yet. Yeah. Or even worse, and you know, in ancient times, those babies would be walked out to the woods and left, you know. Yeah, for sure. You know, Carl Lawrence apparently said that the Cupid doll, you know, or Cupid mayonnaise. So the doll that that's based on, if you take a look at its face, that in Lawrence's opinion, that was the maximum exaggeration that you could reach

of kink and schema before violating it. And that afterward, what was beyond it was, that wasn't coined at the time, but what he was talking about was basically an uncanny valley. Like there's your brain would start to be like, wait, there's something, something is somewhat out of order here. So it's weird. There's like a really, apparently, there's a set, a package of traits that make up what is considered cute and straying outside of that just kind of violates it in some weird way. It violates like this pathway that we're, we seem to be pre-programmed to have. I didn't know mayonnaise was going to make an appearance. I did because I saw the Cupid thing, but before that I had no idea either.

So cuteness is going to activate other parts of the brain. It's just not that super speedy response that you get in the orbital frontal cortex. So if you're a parent and you have a brain, you're going to undergo a really kind of slow change as you parent and as you take care of that baby and bond with that baby as they go into infancy, you're going to still have that trigger of cuteness, but it's just going to be a slower response and more complex as far as your actual brain activity goes. Yeah. And supposedly that co-evolves with the cuteness of a baby. Like a newborn baby is just, but like you look at a baby at six months, that same baby. Yeah, you have to admit it's pretty infrequent for a baby to be cute right out of the womb.

Um, yeah. I mean, generally they're little alien lizard type creatures. Sure. But wait six months and that same baby is going to look awfully cute. Yeah, usually. So, and within, right, and within that six months, um, you're going to have developed more sophisticated responses, caretaking responses to that baby's cuteness. Um, it's pretty interesting that like they, they both start to gel around the same time. The babies start to hit peak cuteness and the caregiving stuff becomes more and more sophisticated. It goes from, I need to keep this baby alive to, um, you know, what college is this baby? I'm going to get this baby through college kind of stuff. You start thinking about that. Right. And that sort of brings back what we talked about earlier as, um, like that, that

empathetic, compassionate response when it's not even your child. Yes. Or when it's not even from the same species. Right. And, and like you were saying, you know, people tend to rate, um, the species that are most altricial as the cutest because they need the most help. So that pathway can be hijacked by humans, uh, human babies and other species as well, and by people who are trying to sell you stuff as we'll see. That's very true. Do you want to take another break? Yes, James. Look at that. All right. We're going to take a break and talk about cute aggression, something that, uh, we're pretty familiar with right after this. 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. Ah, 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 Mangeh Shtikler 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 second hand 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 I've talked to before in the past about my wife, Emily. And when she sees puppies and babies and other cute little things, she says stuff like, I want to punch that baby in the face.

I want to squeeze the life out of it. I want to eat that puppy. Like some things that sound genuinely horrific. Maybe not I want to punch that baby in the face. That's a different thing. I've seen that somewhere. But it's a thing and it's not just her. It's an actual thing. It's called cute aggression. When you see something and you say, you know, I want to put that puppy on a plate and eat it. Which is, like you said, it's very weird when you step back and think about it. And it actually it's a very recent investigation. Like I think 2013 is the earliest I saw. And one of the people who are leading the charge into studying cute aggression is a Clemson psychologist named Orianna Aragon. And she and some of her colleagues have really kind of are establishing

this field of cute aggression. And the reason why Aragon is a pretty good social psychologist to be investigating this is because her specialty is dimorphous expressions, which is contradictory emotional indicators that don't really seem to go together, but do because it's just so common. Like tears of joy or nervous laughter, that kind of stuff. And it seems that cute aggression kind of falls under that same umbrella. Yeah. And it's interesting because you say, sure, great, cute aggression. We've got a name for it. That doesn't really explain it though. And it's explained kind of like nervous laughter or tears of joy. It may be a way of regulating something that's just too overwhelming emotionally. So when they study cute aggression, they show people the cutest pictures

of the cutest things, see how the brain responds, and people who have the really biggest cute aggressive response, their brains are lighting up, but your reward system is also lighting up at the same time. Right. But it's like an overwhelming reward response. Like you're just it's intolerable. Yeah. And so the idea is that your brain brings you down from that by implementing like a not complimentary, what's the opposite of complimentary? You're a big jerk. That kind of that kind of emotion, like anger or aggression or hostility or something like that. To balance it out and to bring you back down because it makes sense that if you were just

sitting there experiencing overwhelming, cute overload, like you would, you might not ever get around to feeding that baby. You might just be sitting there like with your tongue hanging out the side of your mouth drooling. Yeah. It's interesting because like a lot of times, and I've heard a lot of other people say this, but like Emily will say like, I just want to squeeze that baby. And that's followed up with, I can't even take it. Like I just can't even take it with this cuteness. Like that's literally true. Like your brain can't even take it. It's too much. I thought it was cute. Aragon came up with a way to measure cute aggression by using bubble wrap. Yeah. I didn't quite understand this. She would give bubble wrap to people and show them different

pictures. And the pictures that rated the highest in cuteness evoked or led to the largest number of bubbles pop. So the idea is like, if you see something cute pop bubbles or just like here, hold this and you just find yourself popping them. I don't know. I don't know that. I don't know actually to tell you the truth. I think, yeah, I think it's more, it's meant to be like an unconscious thing. Okay. Like you're not supposed to be like, well, this is an 80 bubble kitty, you know? Sure. Nothing like that. Or it's just like, you look down, you're like, oh my god, there's no more bubbles left. That cat was so cute kind of thing. Okay. Makes sense. I saw another explanation for cute aggression in that it's a response to a frustrated desire for caregiving.

So where you want to go punch that baby in the face, but you know, you'll spend a significant amount of time in jail if you actually do that. Yeah, sure. Right? Like that's where that would come out. Like that you can't do that. It's not your baby to go snuggle and cuddle and take care of. You can't eat that puppy. You have to do it from afar. Exactly. So you have to do it from afar. So it comes out in this mixture of cute response and aggression or aggressive words or, you know, that kind of thing. Well, and that also kind of dovetails with the cute sadness, which is, I guess, Aragon coined that term as well, is where you see a puppy in a window and you go, oh no, or make a frowny face. That's when you see a lot, when you see something really cute.

And her theory is that kind of like what you're just saying, like that puppy is in the crate at the adoption place and you can't get to it. Or it's just walking down the street with somebody and you're driving your car and you can't get to it. So you're expressing a kind of frustration that you can't get out of the car and squeeze the puppy. Right. So you have to squeeze your sphincter instead. But I guess it comes out as disappointment though. Yeah. Yeah. And it would seem to be a response to frustrated attempts at caregiving or frustrated desire to care give because you see something cute and your caregiving instinct is triggered or whatever you want to call it and you don't agree with instinct. But there's nothing you can do about it

because you're driving and that thing's going the other way. So you can't do anything to take care of it. So you have to get that out somehow and it seems like anger and aggression is a good way for it to make it subside quickly. Yeah. But again, I really want to point out here, this is intuitive stuff. This is not stuff where it's like, and this study backs the sub and this study backs the sub. From what I've seen, every single study in cuteness and cute aggression involves about 150 college undergrads as your study population and their popping bubble wrap and stuff like that. Like it's still very early in its research, but it does make a lot of sense. But that doesn't necessarily mean that's accurate. Just take that with a grain of salt,

whatever that means. And it's also, I'm not knocking the study, but it's also, you know, let's be honest, it's not the most important thing in the world. No, no. It's like interesting to understand. It makes for good reading on an internet article. Yeah. But it's not driving like, it's not solving a problem. You know what I'm saying? I suddenly feel like we're standing in the middle of a vast glass house and we have rocks in our hands right now. Oh boy. I think it's fun to talk about. I mean, that's what makes, I mean, this is perfect podcast fodder. For sure. But like, I'm curious if this could be applied at all. I don't know. I think maybe it's just one of those things where it's like, now we understand this, it's documented, it's understood, so we

understand humans a little more and then maybe it'll open some door to some other thing that we didn't even realize was connected. No, there's value. Yeah. But I totally agree with what you're saying. Yeah. But I think you've pulled me in the other direction. Nobel Prize. Oh, good, good. Just send it their way. Good. So you mentioned earlier about using the stuff to sell things, and that is for sure true. You can't, I mean, you look at any Pixar or Disney cartoon or anime, certainly, you're going to see round babies and you're going to see huge eyes when you see pamphlets that are trying to sell stuff or try to get you to donate to an animal cause or a children's foundation. They're probably going to put a baby or a puppy on that cover

that has the biggest roundest face and eyes. Yeah. It's manipulative, but used for good, generally. Yeah, totally. It's almost like using music in the background of an ad. It's purposefully hijacking a very ancient neural pathway that basically all humans have to get an emotional response out of you, a positive emotional response. And it might have nothing to do with what they're trying to sell, but you're now associating a pleasurable warm feeling with Mr. Sparkle dishwashing detergent. Yeah. When really it's just a joint venture of Matsumura Fishworks and Tamarabuchi Heavy Manufacturing Concern. Like when they've done studies and like anti-smoking campaigns for teenagers and they respond more to cartoon characters that are

cute. Which sounds a lot like Joe Camel, if you ask me. It's like the opposite of that. That's true, but it does make sense. Like a teen might respond to a list here is like a penguin in a jacket or a polar bear than some adult human pointing their finger at you. Yeah, like John Hausman. Can you imagine? To the teens. Don't smoke. Right. So yeah, it also makes you think like since so many cute toys or so many toys are cute, when you're buying like a plush animal, are you responding almost in like an insane way to your cute caregiving response just being manipulated? And like you're going to take that stuffed animal home and give it care because it's just been activated in you? Is that real? That seems to be what's going on when you

buy like a toy like that. I think so. That's interesting because then if you know, if you see people walking around like that, you're like, oh well, you've just been manipulated. Congratulations kind of thing. Yeah. But also you can make the case too. And I read a guy, something by a guy named Gary Janosco, who is the Canada Research Chair in Techno Culture at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Wow. And he argues that same thing that commodification of cute, say like by Disney, he also argues that National Geographic magazine was big into getting people involved in caring about animals and nature. They really use cuteness, especially in like the 50s and 60s, I guess, that it forms our understanding of things in a very specific way, which is this

thing is cute. It's like a toy to me. I want to pick it up and carry it around and love it and hug on it. But in doing that, you really miss out on a lot of the individual personality of whatever that animal is. Like you trade respect for infanalism, right? Yeah. And that really stood out to me because I have to remind myself that Momo is like this sentient individual entity who deserves respect and to be treated with respect, not just picked up any time she looks at me a certain way and it sets off my cuteness response. Like I've really had to grapple with that. And luckily, Yumi's really aware of that because she's always been a very small person and she used to get picked up all the time. So she identifies with Momo on that level. And it's been like really an exercise

and restraint sometimes. It'd just be like, nope, I've just got to treat Momo like she doesn't want to be picked up right now kind of thing. But I thought Janoska really made a good point that we miss a lot of what makes an animal an animal in favor of just seeing it as something cute and kind of a play thing in a way. Yeah. And there is no clear reminder that I've always had dogs and multiple dogs and love dogs. But when you see a dog go after a squirrel and catch it and eat it or something, these are the reminders that these are animals. Like the same cute dog will also eat poop out of its butt if it could. Right. Or eat your face if you died on the couch and it was locked in the house.

In a second. Sure. So we probably shouldn't finish until we talk about koei culture. Yeah. This is the Japanese culture that is, well, this says it best, maybe the greatest pop culture expression of cute. You think Pikachu, think like pop singers dressed as little sort of pigtailed schoolgirls. It's a very, very big trend in Japan. It's huge. Like everybody has a cute mascot. Hello, kitties everywhere. It's just enormous. And apparently it kind of like grew and evolved and morphed over time starting with this student protest movement in the 60s where like the Japanese kids like just decided they didn't want to go to class anymore. They sat around and read manga comic books

instead and kind of regressed back to childhood. And then that kind of developed in the 70s into a trend for cutesy bubbly handwriting. And that led to Hello Kitty. And then weirdly, it also made an appearance as what is it, buriko women, which is very childlike women who adopted this kind of demeanor to number one cut off any sense of threat that they presented when they entered the workforce, but also to kind of keep unwanted advances from their male colleagues at Bay 2. They entered the workforce as if they were young kids, little girls, giggly and all that kind of stuff. And this is like a persona that they adopted that eventually became this trend, this cuteness trend that's like everywhere in Japan. I never thought about the bubble letters.

That's so interesting. Yeah. Because I've always sort of wondered like why elementary school girls, it seems like, would write in those big juicy round letters. Yeah. It makes sense. It does. But that was apparently where Kauai culture came from originally. It was a handwriting thing. Interesting. Yeah. I was curious here at the end. I was like, has science proven what the cutest animals are? Oh, yeah. And I did find something from Listverse and Jonathan Cantor, the top 10 cutest animals in the world, according to science. But I see nothing in the article about how science proved this, literally nothing. But I figured I'd read it just for funsies. Number 10 is most baby mammals. Okay. Number nine is the slow Loris. You ever see those things?

No. You should look at some of these. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and text you number one right now because, and I guess I'll just send it to you and Jerry since she's on our most recent thread. She'll be like, what the heck is this? All right, coming your way. So number eight is the meerkat, which I think meerkats look a little sinister personally. Yeah, I could see that because of that. Like they're, they got the bandit masks on. Yeah. Number seven is the koala. Yeah. Did you just get that picture? That's what this Loris looks like. No, that's not a Loris that I sent you. Are you looking at a Loris? Well, what is this? What I sent you? Yeah. We'll just put a pen in it. It's number one. Okay. Yeah, I can see that.

Number six is the flapjack and dumbo octopode. Oh, okay. Piglets. Number five. Natch. The fennec fox. Number four, that's the fox with those huge ears. Okay. Yeah. Make those great sounds. Sure. The red pandas. Number three, the panda bear, the white panda, black and white pandas nowhere on this list. Weird. This guy's way off. This must have been a list from Jimmy Science, his roommate. According to Jimmy Science. Yeah. I think you mean James B. Science. Okay, thank you. Number two is sea otters. And then number one, I don't know how I've lived my whole life without knowing that this thing existed, but the Cuoka, Q-U-O-K-K-A from Australia. It's a small marsupial, same family as a kangaroo, apparently, in southwestern Australia. And

that picture I sent you, my friend, just Google smiling Cuoka. Yeah. And you'll see this one picture of this Cuoka literally jumping, hands out, smiling at the camera lens. Like, give me a hug. Like, give me a hug. This is, and I think, I mean, you know, they said it's because they look like they're smiling, obviously. Right. Is one of the big reasons, but almost every picture you look at a Cuoka, it's got this little smile. Yeah. It's unbelievable. Hey, I have to say, based on the screenshot, you need to charge your phone soon. Yeah. And that was even earlier. So I get that same stress because I'm generally at least 50% guy. Yeah. And so when I see people do screenshots, as with that red. Yeah. Oh boy. I know. I can't even take it. So to finish up,

Chuck, the converse of what you're talking about, the cutest animals, the fact that they exist also kind of implies that there are non-cute animals that exist. Do you have that list? That they're less likely to get our attention. And as a result, there is a kind of tongue-in-cheek. But I also get the impression kind of serious group called the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, whose mascot is the blobfish, which makes a lot of sense. And their slogan is, we can't all be pandas. I love that. Yeah. So they're looking out for the ugly animals that we're going to wipe out because they're not cute. Well, I know that is a big deal when it comes to conservation, is that people, conservationists have a much harder time getting money and stuff. And when

we talked about it in our Zeus episode, that's why they lead with giraffes and elephants and stuff like that. Was that the episode? I know we talked about it before and they were like, look, man, just leave us alone. This is the important stuff because it saves the other stuff. Yeah, exactly. Boy, look at that blobfish. That looks like a man. Ugly cute, maybe? Yeah, Kimo Kawaii. If Kawaii sounds familiar, that's probably because you heard it at the very beginning of the Gwen Stefani song, Hollaback Girl, where she sees a bunch of Harajuku girls in Japan and goes, Kawaii. Nice. Yeah. That blobfish look like it's constantly saying, okay. I know. They should have called it the Eeyore fish. The blobfish definitely works too. Oh, man.

Well, since we have wrapped it up with the old blobfish, if you want to know more about the science of cute, just start looking at cute pictures of the Kuoka. Sure. That's a great place to start. And since Chuck said sure, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this, I'm getting called out here and it's something I haven't thought about. I got called out by a couple of people for different reasons for saying this phrase, you know, unless you live under a rock that you know blank. One person said, hey, that just makes me feel dumb because I didn't know about one of these things. Sure. I think that's the point, right? That's your intent. No, I don't want to make anyone feel bad. Oh, but this is a different

kind of response and well worth reading. Hey guys, making my way through a backlog of episodes. And I noticed the thing that seems to pop up from time to time in your descriptions, the popular culture and products like hang gliding, etch a sketch and Rubik's cube, you make comments like, and if you don't know what one of these is or looks like, get out from under your rock and go look up a picture. Someone who has been blind since birth, though my problem isn't that I've been living under a rock, but rather that pictures to me are worth zero words. Yeah, I really got me good. I grew up in the 80s, so everyone had a Rubik's cube and I played with my fair share of them, even though I couldn't solve them. For many things

in life, though, if I haven't physically touched it or had it described to me, I only have the faintest idea of what it looks like. In fact, I was a music education major in college and it wasn't until my sophomore year at age 19 that I touched a brass instrument for the very first time. The French horn still fascinates me. I've enjoyed listening to your show for years and I've learned lots of visual information from you from what giraffes look like to fashion choices of punk rockers. I wanted to make you aware of this, though. You can help people who can't look at pictures, whether we're blind or whether we're on the road driving in a truck and we don't want to pull out our phones to look at pictures. Thanks for years of learning and laughter.

Appreciate the work. Warmly, Ryan from Minneapolis. Ryan, I have nothing to say, but great point and I'll do better. Very nice, Chuck. I don't think there's anything else you could say. You know why? Because you're a good person and not a jerk. That's right. Now I will try and describe things to the best of my ability, which might not be great. I think you did a good job with the coaca in the description. Smiling wrote it. Yeah, it looks like it's smiling. That's all you need to know. Yeah, that's great. Well, if you want to take Chuck or me to task, that's, there's not a lot of sport in that, but if you want to do it anyway, that's fine. You can send it to us via email. Wrap it up and send it off to stuffpodcastatihartradio.com.

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart 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 iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.