Stuff You Should Know - What's the deal with ASMR?

Episode Date: March 5, 2019

ASMR is soothing to some, maddening to others. Learn all about these whisper tones in today's episode.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, ya 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 Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there eating God knows what for lunch.

And this is Stuff You Should Know, the Jerry's lunch edition about ASMR. That's the edition that everyone loves. It is. The best. Oh, yes. You're doing so good, Chuck. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

I'm sure zero people had an ASMR experience just now. Well, I mean, I need to know. Do you get the tingles? No. I don't either. I don't even think I can put myself in that position where I'd be like, stop touching the camera that's supposed to be my face.

I'm not comfortable. I watched a bunch of these just to see, you know, you have to dive in head first. Sure. And really get a sense. Right. And I had a hard time sitting there for too long even. I might have the opposite effect on me.

Yes, there's a very good question that I wrote at the end. Why not be freaked out by this? Why do the exact opposite and enter a euphoric meditative state? It's a very bizarre, really interesting thing. And not bizarre in any kind of weird, like look at these weirdos. I want to poke them in the net kind of thing.

It's more like it's a genuinely, legitimately bizarre. And if we can figure it out, it'll unlock a whole other corridor to the brain that we didn't really know existed. Yeah, so in true stuff, you should know fashion. A lot of you have no idea what we're talking about. ASMR stands for Autonomous, is that you say it? I went with Autonomous.

Autonomous? I think so. I think you're probably right. Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. Which sounds very clinical. Yeah, and we'll get to that in a sec. Okay, but I just said everybody. I think everyone needs to know what it is.

Yeah. And what it is is generally a video that you will watch online. Although it's really just sounds, but the way they present themselves these days are audio clips and video clips. And it's not just sounds, it's also closeness is a big part of it too.

Okay, but it's a sound, it's a response to sounds that some people get and some people don't. A tingling sensation in the head moves down the neck. Some people call it like a tickle, some people call it like a head orgasm or brain orgasm. Yeah, like a tickle in your skull. Yeah, and that is triggered by hearing certain sounds like whispering voices or...

Seeing repetitive motions is another one too. Yeah, but I get, for my research, I found that it was mostly sound and that the visual component is just by virtue of the fact that a lot of these are on YouTube. Is that, so I got that from that too, but I also saw that in one of these surveys that said that slow movements accounted for triggering

for 53% of the participants. So, men seem significant, but I get what you're saying. Like it does seem like the sounds are far and away like the crux of the whole thing. Yeah, and they're all different kinds of sounds. Like the best way to really, it's hard to describe, is to really just go listen to one real quick. Yeah.

It always includes whispering. And I think that's my biggest turn off. A lot of the other sounds are fine and pleasing to me. They don't give me the tingle, but they're relaxing, but I don't like someone whispering in my ear. I don't like that. Well, that is... I've determined that.

That is basically what you're going to get with ASMR videos is somebody whispering in what seems like your ear. Yeah, I have personal triggers for that, for my childhood, I think. Pleasant ones? No, unpleasant, which is why I'd have an aversion to it now. So, I might be an outlier.

Your parents going like, you're in so much trouble, right? No, I don't want to talk about it, but it's, I think I might be an outlier, I don't know. No, I mean... But I definitely don't get the tingles. I don't get the tingles either. No. And it's not, I don't want to say like it's a ingrained,

well, it's not a huge aversion to it, but I'm not like, I don't like it. I'm not big into it. How about that? When I was watching and that lady was whispering too much, I literally had to rip the earbuds out of my ears. Oh wow, that's a real aversion. Yeah.

Some of the sounds like the tinking of a glass or... That's another one. Stuff like that was okay. It's specifically the whispering that doesn't jive with my ears. Understood. Yeah. So, if you're still kind of sitting there going,

huh, put it another way, some sounds and possibly some sights actually trigger a really unusual sensation in people where they feel like as one woman described it, kind of like sparkles or fireworks going off in your head, on your scalp, the strongest one, and this is really, really significant too, the strongest version of an ASMR experience

will leave you feeling exhausted and pleasantly tired, satisfied, she said. Like you just had some sort of climax of sorts, right? But we want to point out and we'll get into it more later. This is not for the vast majority of people who experience this. This is not sexual in any way. It's sensual, but it's not sexual.

It's something entirely different. And it's also not what's called frisan, which is getting the chills when you hear like an amazing piece of music or something really incredible is happening on the move. It's called aesthetic chills. Any kind of like art that'll give you the chill bumps. So it's not that.

No. And it's not sexual. It's its own thing that we're just now starting to realize is its own thing. Yeah, and it's pretty new as far as people talking about it and trying to define it. Obviously, if this is a real thing that it has been around forever most likely,

but no one ever knew, maybe someone in the 17th century was like, whenever they got whispered to, they got a head tingle. Sure. And maybe back then their response might have been to turn around and like bludgeon somebody with a, you know. If it was you. If you have ASMR, you turn around and you like hug them

and say, thank you for that. Back then they may not have wanted to relax. Like this is making me feel relaxed. I must kill. I see. You guys stay on the edge like Al Pacino in heat. Sure. Why not?

But that grouping of words is very recent. A woman named Jennifer Allen, she coined the term. She is the person that made up those words. After about a decade of looking for other people who experienced ASMR, what would come to be called ASMR. I guess were it not for the internet, people would still be walking around. Absolutely.

Either assuming that everybody experiences this and not talking about it or thinking that they were the only one and not talking about it. And were it not for Jennifer Allen, we still might not be talking about it, but she sought out some other people who are experiencing this because she recognized it as unusual.

And she found a thread on a forum called Steady Health. And there were people talking about it. She said, hey, let's move this to Facebook. That's what people do these days. Because that's a non-judgmental place where everybody can get along. So let's just create a Facebook page. So she did in 2010.

And she, I think that year or the next year came up with this term, autonomous sensory meridian response. Sounds good. Totally made up. Yeah. Completely made up. But every scientific term is made up at one point by somebody.

Normally by scientists. She is a cybersecurity expert. Which is fine. She's an expert. She did it to basically give it credence enough so that people could start talking about it without it being just some weird, fringy thing. She was trying to start a legitimate conversation.

So it worked like a charm. It's a good name. I mean, that's what scientists call it now. Right, totally. They're like, all right, good enough. Yeah, she definitely secured her place in history as the person who coined the term autonomous sensory meridian response.

So all right, I guess let's talk about it. It's a very personal experience for people. No one or no two people will experience the same feeling or from the same triggers. I love this one guy from the BBC. They were talking about how, like, why is it? Why are we hearing about this now? And you're exactly right.

It's because of the internet. Even a very small percentage of the population that might experience something like this collected on a Facebook site or on YouTube seems all of a sudden like a lot of folks. And it is a lot of folks, but not compared to the population at large. Right. So proportionately speaking, it seems to be just a very small

proportion of people in general who experience ASMR. Like I don't, you experienced anti-ASMR apparently. Jerry? You? Jerry ASMR? No. No. She did the head cut off thing too.

But there are people, I guarantee there are people out there listening right now who are like, I've heard of this, but I've never tried it, who will go try it and find out that they actually do experience ASMR and will probably email us and be like, thank you so much for introducing me to that. Jerry's reaction though, does it seem more like don't bother me with this right now? Unless like, no, I have tried it and not experienced it.

Yes. It was a, please just keep podcasting. Right. Guys. It was a, I'm eating God knows what sign, continue. So the writer of this article got it a little bit wrong here and that they said, it's not something that just randomly happens in your daily life, these sounds.

That is not true at all. They absolutely happen in everyday life and that's how people know that they get this response. Right. And then the ASM artists, the people on YouTube that actually perform, is that what you would say? Oh yeah. They, they replicate these sounds that you do hear in

everyday life. Yeah. That give you these triggers. So you don't have to go to the barber and get a scalp massage every day. You can just go onto YouTube and get the same effect. Yeah. Like you may have just, you may be in your break room and you

hear someone tapping on a glass bottle. And all of a sudden your scalp just explodes and tingles, goes down your neck, into your shoulders, down your spine, and you are met with a feeling of euphoric meditation and relief. And then everyone in the break room is like, geez, Gary. You got a little drool coming out of your mouth. Where did you go? Right.

And then Gary can go home and just watch videos of Zoe Kravitz doing it in a Super Bowl commercial. So let's take a break and then we'll come back and talk about YouTube and how it's completely opened up the ASMR community. Okay. Let's do it. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and

Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends,

and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist. So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll

want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing could be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK. 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 will my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. We have a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander 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, ya 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 Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck. So like we said, without the internet, we might not have a name for this.

We might not be talking about it right now. And definitely without- Well, we wouldn't even have a podcast, so sure. That's true. We'd be out on the street corner being like, here, read this. Without YouTube, though, ASMR would not be anywhere like where it is right now because it allows anybody to make an ASMR video. And honestly, anybody with a decent type of mic and a mind to do it

can make ASMR videos. And they have, I saw somewhere that there's something like 17 million ASMR videos on YouTube right now. Yeah, but I mean, I would disagree, though. There is some skill involved. Right. Like if I went to go make one, it would be terrible and not elicit any tingles.

I didn't mean to diminish the skill involved. I meant to say like, because YouTube democratizing entry to performance to people you've never even met, that's open the door for ASMR. Yeah, anyone with a skill for doing so can do so. Or a desire to. Sure. Yeah, but it does take skill. I think so.

You can't just be like, you can't just shout all of a sudden or like lunge at people at the camera. What are you wearing? Right. You're like, no, that's not ASMR. Like maybe like sharpening a knife on a stone while you're staring into the camera. That'd probably not help.

No, that's a different YouTube channel. Right. It is. But I'll bet it's out there. And there is, it's not just YouTube. Obviously, if you go to any of the audio, they're probably ASMR podcasts. I'm sure there are a ton of them. But SoundCloud and all these other places to aggregate sound files.

There are tens of thousands of them. Yes. And they are extraordinarily varied in what they are. What you're going to see. What you're going to hear. I saw one that was, it's pretty great. It was a woman eating Taco Bell, no talking, just strictly eating Taco Bell. But it was cute.

She comes along and she's like, and like makes this face like, oh, a table full of Taco Bell. And it just starts proceeding to like unwrap it and eat it. And then the real kicker, and this is what made it ASMR-y as heck, her throat was miked. So not only did you hear the crunch of the taco, you heard the chewing like there was a mic in her mouth. And then you heard the gulping from the swallow every bite.

That's a weird ASMR video though. Usually they're not like that. This was ASMR. Because that's a, I mean, there is another, what's the disorder, not disorder, but what's the condition people can have. Misophonia? Yeah. Like that's a misophonia nightmare.

It would step off a misophonia. Yeah. That's strange. This is not for them. Because usually it's some sort of a soothing sound, not the gullet washing down cheap beef. But no, I've seen rainforest fed beef. I've seen other ones where it's like it was a girl drinking like from a half gallon bottle of water with a lav mic up against her throat and it was just gull, gull, gull.

Like that is a thing on ASMR. No, but just because on YouTube, does that mean like, would the real ASMR like, I guess you could call them experts? Would they say, yeah, that's ASMR or would they say, no, that's someone that just threw that tag up there, that has nothing to do with, you know. I think what they would say is, from what we understand about ASMR now, that is probably something that could trigger an ASMR experience in somebody, ergo, it's ASMR. It's that wide and varied, which we'll get to an explanation for that at the end, the

big reveal. But if you go onto YouTube, there's a bunch of different variety to it. There's also some through lines that you're going to see or hear in just about any ASMR video though. Yeah. Whispers, like we've talked about, binaural recording, which is, that's the one part of it I do like. I enjoy binaural recordings and being able to hear, you know, and they always recommend

headphones for ASMR. Oh yeah, good ones. Better, the best headphones you can afford. Yeah. But to hear, I mean, it's why I love the Beatles so much. Like to hear sound going from left to right is pleasing to me. Hearing a good slide whistle, go all the way through your skull. Fingers tapping, crisp sounds, that's a big one.

Yeah, like scissors. Yeah. That's one. There's a lot of barbershop stuff. This one lady I watched was doing this, and she would do it in the left and then the right. And I just wanted to throw my computer out the window. Yeah, because it's another thing too, like very frequently, it's just a person, typically a woman, also typically wearing like a low-cut shirt.

Yeah, we'll get into that too. Okay. And the mics, and they're not trying to hide that she, like she's playing with the mic, like maybe like tapping it or doing what you were just doing into it or rubbing it or something like that, creating sounds or talking into it, soothing, whispering, words of affirmation and calming words. That part makes a little more sense to me. But the point is that it's a binaural recording, so it's like 3D stereo, so it sounds like

you're right there, like it's being spoken right into your ear, and they'll very frequently be a mic for each ear, and she will go, or he, there are some guy ASMR channels, go from mic to mic and ear to ear, so it's pretty interesting to watch, because it's like you get to see how the sausage is made, you know? Yeah. Which is unusual. You'd think it would just be just podcasting, like just sounds, but I think from what I understand that's part of it, seeing like the fingers like move like that, like just

kind of tapping in a certain way is kind of meditative and relaxing. Well, like I mentioned before the break, Zoe Kravitz, it was a very big deal, a Superbowl commercial put it on the map more than ever before, because all of a sudden, you know, I don't know how many hundred or million people watch the Superbowl, but a lot of people that have no idea what this is, were exposed to it for the first time, with Zoe Kravitz at a desk on a mountaintop, tapping on a beer bottle and pouring a beer and speaking into the left and right mics. And I think the reaction by a lot of folks that know what the deal is, is like, oh, interesting,

they put ASMR on the Superbowl or the big game. And then 90% of the people were like, what in the heck is that girl doing? I wonder if anyone was triggered by it. Well, I assume so. There were probably a lot of dudes in their recliners that were like, I don't know what's happening. Right. It's kind of like finding out you get seizures by watching that one episode of Pokemon, you

know? It's a good time to realize that. There's a couple other things you'll find too, especially like role-playing. You'll see role-playing a lot in these videos. Yeah. Well, the one lady I saw looked like she was sort of performing as a nurse might. So I don't know if that counts as role-playing. Was that Maria from gentle whispering?

Maybe, they kind of all ran together for me. So she is the most popular ASMR artist around. I think she has like 1.6 million subscribers. That's great. Good for her. And she does a lot of role-playing where she will pretend, and it's not just her, there's others that do this too, but rather than just sitting there messing with a mic or something, she's got like a whole little set where it looks like you are getting an eye exam in

an optometrist's office. But the optometrist is whispering to you the whole time and is telling you how great you're doing at this eye exam. You're doing so good. It's so strange to me. Let's see how these fit. And here's another thing about role-playing too, is it's meant to be POV. So the camera is your eyes.

So the ASMRtist will be messing like around the camera, like putting the glasses, like they're putting them on you. So they're whispering and they're touching you lightly and they're speaking words of like encouragement and affirmation to you. And this supposedly is like the big one. This is the ones that make it feel like it's fireworks and make people feel like satisfied afterward from this wave of euphoria wash over them. See I see that and listen to it and I think I'm running out of that optometrist's office

as fast as my little legs can carry me. That's the hilarious thing. If you step back and imagine like an actual real world experience like this, you'd be like, is there something wrong with you? Yeah, it's like, why are you whispering dude? But that's yeah, but apparently if you experience ASMR, that would be your dream like, oh my god, a real ASMR, they whisper and tell me how good these glasses look on me while they're just kind of messing with my sideburns a little bit.

So interesting. It is very interesting. It is all generally intended to relax someone and introduce what's known as a state of flow, which is, you know, you've heard about artists and musicians and creative, yeah, sure, athletes getting in that state of flow where it's almost like. It's really just LeBron. Kind of like a runner's high, maybe, or if you're creative, things are just, you've opened yourself up and you're channeling creative energy.

The cross hatching is just coming right out of your pencil. And I'm not making fun of that. I've gotten into states of flow for sure, creatively. I know. Gosh, it'd be so neat to be able to just trigger that or bring it on like automatically without thinking. Well, I think that's why a lot of artists, like they try to get that through drugs and alcohol.

Yeah, but that's a blind alley friend. Yeah, it is. So I get you through for a little while, but it's a dead end street. And really, it's not going to bring on the flow. It's going to mislead you because you'll think you're in the zone playing amazingly and all anybody's hearing is like, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, and you're not supposed to be playing like that. So stay off the drugs.

I guess we should talk a little bit more about the, you know, when you said they might be wearing low cut shirts and the whole sex thing. Well, a lot of people see that, then see the whispering and the touching and they're like, oh, well, this is porn of some sort, obviously. Yeah, like it's, I've watched a few of the videos and again, it's not like anyone, like you said, anyone can put something up there. So I'm sure there are some ASM artists that maybe to get more views might try and be more sexually tantalizing.

But like, there are all kinds of videos out there and all kinds of people watching them. Some people may not feel anything sexual at all and it's only central. Most people. Some people may masturbate to an ASMR video. Apparently 5% of them do. Well, I guess so. But for the vast majority of them, the vast majority of people who experience ASMR, they say, no, it's not for sex, it has nothing to do with sex.

It's something totally different and it's just not sexual. So... It's intimate. There's no getting around that. Yeah, essential. I mean, that's a huge part of the whole experience is that it's super intimate and that may be what triggers the whole thing is that a threshold of intimacy is met and then crossed and then there goes your fireworks and your skull, right?

I wonder how this depicts a relationship though, like, I don't know. If someone came home and their husband had an ongoing everyday thing with this woman on YouTube where she was stroking the camera lens and whispering in his ear, I don't know. I could see people, I could see someone turning to their spouse or loved one and be like, hey, that's not too cool. Yeah. You want someone to whisper in your ear? I'll do it.

I'm supposed to do the whispering. Maybe. I mean, I could see it causing problems. Maybe it would have this, it'd fall along the same lines of like whatever problems pornography would cause. I mean, maybe even not because it is intimate. I could see somebody being like, I'm okay with the porn but not the POV intimacy of the ASMR.

I don't know what kind of things it would, I could see it causing problems here or there. I mean, I didn't even see that raised in any article I read. I was just kind of curious. Well, you just raised it. Yeah. But for the most part, I guess what we're trying to say is if you're an outsider looking in and you think this is just porn or some sort of weird sexual fetish thing, that's not the case for almost all people who are watching these videos.

It's not what it is. Yeah. Those are the same people who think like, you know, every massage is that kind of massage. Right. Like, well, no, massage is to relax your body and to heal your body. I think also one of the reasons why there is great misunderstanding is because of the use of terms like brain orgasm or some people call it whisper porn. And so people are just kind of, they're kind of misunderstanding the lingo a little bit.

That doesn't automatically mean sex. It's internet lingo. Well, yeah. And there are all kinds of either articles or YouTube collections where it's like top five hottest ASMR chicks. Right. That certainly doesn't help their case. Also, the other thing is a lot of the comments will be like, oh yeah, it's YouTube.

Super. Yeah, exactly. But it's possible and even likely that these aren't actually people experiencing ASMR. They're just going through YouTube, looking for videos of women with low cut shirts, looking into the camera. Yeah. And it's YouTube and they objectify women in every way possible because you can post a video of a talented young woman playing the violin and half the comments will be about

her appearance. Yeah. YouTube does have a reputation for that and rightly earned. Should we take another break? Let's take another break, man. All right. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. This episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. 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 bander 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, 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. All right, Chuck, so... Should we talk about science? Yeah, let's do a little science talk. There's not much on it. No, the first actual peer reviewed study of ASMR was published as recently as 2015 from

Swansea University or Swansea. Do you know how to say that? I don't know. I've always said Swansea, but I just realized I could be wrong. So let's say... Where is that? I believe it's in the UK. Yeah, okay.

So let's just say Dorchester, sure. Sure. They did a peer, well, a couple of researchers, Barat and Davis did a survey of ASMR experiencers and just tried to at least do the most basic foundational groundwork of describing it. That's where they're at. Yeah. And they did a pretty good job too. You see this referenced a lot, not a lot of criticisms of it, but they found, I think

like a few hundred, I can't find the number right now, but it was a decent population size of people who experience ASMR and they said, well, why do you do this? What do you get out of this is probably the question they asked first and then... What's your problem? What triggers this, right? Yeah. They found that 98% of people who watch ASMR videos seek out these experiences on YouTube, do it for relaxation.

That's almost everybody. Yeah, which says a lot because again, when you think of this from an outsider's view, you're like, oh, it's arousing, it's titillating, it puts you on edge like when you hear a music crescendo or something like that, apparently it doesn't do that. It gives you tingles, but it also is meditative and relaxing, which is... I've never experienced anything like that. Yeah. You know what I mean?

So it's really its own thing. So it's very relaxing afterwards. What do you like during massage? Do you relax? I don't get massages. I at all. I'm too high strung for that. Okay.

I don't get them much at all either and I find that I can generally kind of go there and just super relax, but there's always a bit of shame and embarrassment for me, which is just dumb. Yeah. You know? Yeah, there's no shame. I don't hold over stuff from my churchie upbringing. Sure.

You know? Yeah. But you can't even go there. Yeah. I don't even open that door. They're like, sir, the heavy wire cable running down your spine is... Pretty much. I can't seem to tweak it.

Yeah. But what was the point of that question? Well, I was just kind of curious because hearing how you feel about ASMR, I was just wondering if you have trouble with any kind of relaxing experience. I have trouble with all of the relaxing experiences. Okay. Yeah. All right.

Yeah, I'm a little high strung. You know that. Well, no, I know that. I was just... You just wanted me to admit it on, Mike? No, I wondered if there was anything, if you were like, yeah, but I do like a good foot massage. Those are nice.

Like, treat your feet. Oh, okay. There you go. I am in for those, but every once in a while, you'll get one and it's the real deal where they dig in to the arch of your foot and their thumb basically goes up to your knee. Yeah. It hurts. Oh, yeah.

And it's like a suffering kind of hurt, like your fingernail being bent back, like bad hurt. Yeah. And so I haven't been back since. Okay. So, yeah, no, I don't relax. I guess is what I'm trying to say. Hot tubs.

They're kind of germy, really, so no. What about just floating in a pool? Have you ever been in a relaxation tank? No, that's what I was wondering. I've done that a couple of times. I can see that being... It's really neat. Because it's dark and it's private.

There was one experience, I guess I've done it twice, both times you just completely lose track of time. Yeah. I want to do this. It's really neat, Chuck. And the first time I lost sensation in my body down to my central nervous system. So in the water, all I could feel floating was my brain, my spinal cord, and some of the major peripheral nerves coming off of my spinal cord, that was all of my body that

I could feel at that point. Everything else had just melted into the water and into the darkness, because the darkness is complete. There's no light, not even a chance for light to come in. It just doesn't exist there. And the sounds are just, you're just in your own world. It's amazing. Yeah.

See there? Yeah. All right. I guess I need to get one of those at my house. Yeah. Buy one. Sure. All right.

And throw down some money. Right. How much are those? Do you know? I would guess, yeah, a few thousand dollars probably. I was thinking over 10. A million dollars. They might as well be.

So let's get back to this study. That's a long sidetrack. So 98% for relaxation, 82% to help them sleep, 70% to deal with stress. So you see a through line here. And then they looked at the most common triggers, analysis of responses found, four prominent categories, experience each one by over 50%. Right. So whispering at 75%, personal attention at 69.

That's a big deal it seems like. Yeah. And we'll get to that in a second. Because there are a lot of people that think that has a lot to do with this. Those people that may not get the kind of intimacy and attention they need. Like there's a separate track of people. Yeah. Yeah.

What else? Crisp sounds. Have you ever had a coffee crisp candy bar? I don't think so. Oh man. Yeah. They have them in Canada. I think you can get them at like a world market.

Okay. Get one. Yeah. I'm going to get you one. You're going to love it. All right. Okay. I like coffee stuff.

You're going to love it, Chuck. And then slow movement. So that would be a visual cue, 53%. Like folding towels, repetitive stuff. That's so funny to me. Yeah. I like repetitive things because I love those. I've talked a lot about like how it's made shows to show like the repetitive industrial

processes. I think that's like a ASMR show. All right. Maybe, but I don't get the tingle. It just relaxes me. Right. And some people do. There's a lot of people who report feeling relaxed from ASMR videos even though they don't

have the full experience where they get like the brain orgasm or anything like that. Right. But it still is potentially relaxing. And part of it is because they're designed to be relaxing. The whispering, the gentle movements, like all of that stuff. It's designed to relax you. Yeah. I found another study from the University of Sheffield that...

That's the worst you're sure. Yeah. They got people that were verified ASMR experiencers and then people that were not. They did a bunch of studies mainly about their heart rate. And they found that people who did experience a ASMR, they did have a reduced heartbeat by about 3.2 beats per minute. But then they said it was no more than other stress reduction techniques like mindfulness or music.

I could see that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're still getting the experience of being relaxed out of it without listening to music or being mindful or anything like that. Right. So great. But it still doesn't explain the brain orgasm.

Right. Which if that's not cool to call it that anymore, I apologize everybody. Some people might have thought early on that it might be comorbid, I guess, with synesthesia, which we've talked about, but then they found that that's probably not the case. Well, I saw that they think it's because people in these surveys don't report synesthesia anywhere beyond the normal amount that you'd expect to find in a population that size. Right. But they think it's still possible it's a different type of synesthesia.

Oh, really? And the kind where you taste colors or hear numbers, they think this is sound emotion synesthesia possibly. So the sound makes you feel an emotion in this case. It's still a little weak. One guy named, he's a neurologist at Yale, Steven Novella. Back in 2012, he suggested that maybe it was little seizures or not little seizures, which by the way, they're pretzel crust pieces back everybody.

Or it's just quote, oh, just a way of activating the pleasure response. It seems to be more than that. And also the fact that it only works with some people also makes the whole thing pretty remarkable too. So of course, because this has clearly happened in the brain, they stuck people in the wonder machine, pressed start and look to see what happened. Yeah. And this one was interesting because one of the big findings, you know, you're starting

off with a new sort of scientific study when you're big first finding from an fMRI machine is, well, people can experience it while in this machine, like it's not so distracting. This machine isn't so distracting that they get that messes up their experience entirely. Well, what's funny, that's the second one, the first study, they didn't even try. They're like, well, you can experience ASMR. Let's just have a look at your brain without even yeah, because they're like, this will be too distracting. Well, that second study was kind of in a way, that's the level that they're at now is they're

like just, here's this finding, like you can find almost literally anything new and it's a contribution to the field at this point. The science on it is so incomplete now. Yeah. The other finding they found was that the brain region, similar to those, you know, we talked about, what is it? Frison? Frison.

Yeah. Frison. Is it French? I don't know. It's French. It looks made up French. I know. I wanted to say Frison.

So did I. I'm a dummy. No, I did too. But I went the extra mile, pressed the little microphone speaker thing on Google and it went Frison. So the brain region, similar to those activated during Frison, were also activated with ASMR, but ASMR triggered activity in the prefrontal cortex that during Frison is suppressed. I didn't see that was suppressed in Frison.

Really? Yeah. So is this bogus? I think the prefrontal cortex thing being suppressed is bogus, but they're not the same thing. I think that was the point of that study is they're like, this isn't the same thing. Gotcha. It's similar, but it's not the same thing. All right.

And the Frison explanation I saw, we know a lot more about Frison because we've known about it longer, but it activates a bunch of different parts of your reward pathways that are involved in assessing the rewards and stuff like that and releasing dopamine. It also activates the electrical conductivity in your skin, which accounts for the chills. But the explanation for Frison that I saw is that your brain's pattern recognition is interrupted. It's predicting what's coming next and then all of a sudden the music crescendos or it changes tempo or some big emotion happens and your brain wasn't expecting it.

That's the opposite of ASMR almost. Pretty much. And then the other part of it is that you are empathetically connecting with the musician or the filmmaker, whoever who encapsulated the emotion that you're interacting with through the movie or the music or whatever. Yeah. This seems really different because this seems to be almost unemotional in a lot of ways and super repetitive, not like there is no crescendo.

I think the whole point is that sort of low droney repetitive thing. Right. Like with Frison, it's like Jennifer Gray running up and being picked up by Patrick Swayze in that part in Dirty Dancing. That's Frison. Chills. Yeah. Whereas ASMR is just being knocked over with a feather.

I think that's the difference. One of the ASMR artists was, her name was Heather Feather. Oh, that's a great name. Yeah. I don't think it's her given name. Oh. That would be a good, maybe, maybe so. Yeah.

She was born to do it. Maybe her parents couldn't have cared less how she was going to turn up. So the final thing they did find out from the FMRI study though that was pretty interesting. I don't want to make it seem like I was making fun of it, but they did find a strong connection there from the study, similar brain regions being activated as during close personal bonding experiences with mammalian grooming behavior. This to me is the explanation. Yeah.

It all goes back to that childhood soothing, like soothing the baby. Right. That seems to be the explanation for it, that people are, have figured out a way to mimic affiliative behaviors that we are innately wired to respond to and that in some people, it can be triggered just by video and sound. Yeah. I mean, we have played brown noise in my daughter's room since she was born. And they say that because, you know, noises like that make them feel like they're in the

womb still. Oh, neat. And it can be comforting and relaxing. Yeah. And we've always done it. We use a sound machine in our room. Right. It's usually waves or brown noise.

Right. We do things. Right. I like a nice creek every now and then, or rainstorm. Or ka-ka, it's like 3 a.m. But these are called affiliative behaviors. Yeah. And that is very important when in infancy and young adulthood to...

Or any point. Well, yeah. It's how we bond with one. Yeah. It helps you form those bonds, which obviously, when you're a baby, are going to be happening all over the place. Yeah. And I get that somehow these videos through the calmness, the whisperingness, but also

the intimacy of it and the appearance that you're being touched lightly and you're being kind of cooed at and affirmative words and encouragement and all that stuff, that it's triggering that reaction, right, in the brain. And that is what ASMR is, that it's an extreme reaction to a mimicked affiliative behavior. Yeah. And when I read that, it sort of clicked. And then I wanted to see more studies on different, from the more varied types of people that are categorized.

I would like to see people take these tests that were not nurtured as children, maybe. And maybe that means they would have a really strong response to ASMR or maybe not at all. Right. That's the thing. It's like, so why just a segment of the population does this work in, right? That's a big arrow pointing at, we need further research here. Like it does exist. We've established that.

But why wouldn't it exist for everybody? And then why does it exist in the people who it does exist in? And then also, why are some people just completely turned off by it to the point where like you just want to pull your earbuds out and maybe also pull off your ears for good measure. And then why some people might be thinking, why even put a lot of work into studying this? It's because it could be like a good therapy for some people. It could therapy for anxiety, PTSD, anxiety, depression. Well that's the thing.

A lot of people self-report overcoming insomnia, chronic pain, depression, anxiety. Like you said, like it literally alters their mood. Not like, oh, that was kind of neat. Like, oh, I don't feel anywhere near as depressed any longer or I'm not anxious anymore. And so say what you will about it. If it's doing that for even one person, keep it up, you know? But if it's doing that for a whole segment of people, well, that's great. I mean, let's figure that out and then we can figure out a way to hijack it and use

to treat other people. Yeah. I think part of my aversion to besides the whispering was, I felt kind of silly sitting in the office and hearing the, yeah, I think you're supposed to, it's supposed to be more private than that. Probably so. Maybe I'll give it a shot later in a dark room. There you go.

If you want to know more about ASMR friends, go out on the internet, write in ASMR to the search bar of your favorite search engine and it will introduce you to a brand new world. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. All right, I'm going to call this Tahoe Tessie. Oh, yeah. Hey, guys. I was listening to Loch Ness Monster episode and was reminded a lot of Lake Tahoe. I thought you'd be interested in some of the similarities.

I grew up in the Carson Valley area in Nevada, right next to Tahoe. Tahoe actually has its own legend, Tahoe Tessie. Really original guys. There used to be a museum, but it closed now and Tessie isn't much more than a silly little local legend. Surprise, surprise. It brought in $13 in tourist income last year. I think the lake itself is more interesting, though.

Chuck shuttered at the thought of a 900-foot deep lake. The deepest parts of Tahoe, though, are over 1,600 feet deep. I've heard about this. You crazy? I can't wait to fill in the blanks that this guy leaves open. The lake in the Sierra Nevada sits at 6,225 feet in elevation, while the elevation of my hometown is 4,724. That means that the lake has spots that are 145 feet deeper than the valley next to it.

Thanks for all you guys do. I've seen you the past three years in a row in Seattle, and I always have a great time. Awesome. Yeah, that is from Evan Hughes. Thanks, Evan, for making that trip, my friend. Yeah, we'll see you next year. We love going to Seattle every January. We'll be there.

We'll keep it up. That's right. If this is the same lake that I'm thinking of, and I believe it is, it is also very, very cold, so if you die in this lake, it can preserve you for a long time. It's so much so that they found a diver who had been missing for 12 years, who drowned in that lake. 12 years later, they were still able to give him an autopsy and determine his cause of death because the lake had preserved him that much.

There's rumors that there's old gangsters from the 30s who are still wearing their clothes and cement shoes at the bottom of the lake, and railroad workers from China who had died in the lake are still preserved in there. This is the local legend, but that diver is documented. They definitely were able to give him an autopsy after 12 years underwater. That's how cold and oxygen depleted it is because of the depths. They said, it turns out he drowned. Right.

Yeah. That's it. Awesome. Tahoe, we should do a show on Lake Tahoe. Let's do it. Okay. At Lake Tahoe. Okay.

In Lake Tahoe. I don't know. I thought about doing random shows at like weird places. Okay. That'd be fun. Thanks a lot, Evan. If you want to get in touch with us, please do. Go on to the internet and search stuffyoushouldknow.com, check out our social links, and you can

also send us an email to stuffpodcastandhowstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.