The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - The Science of ASMR (And People Who Hate It)

Episode Date: December 18, 2019

This week, we have a very special episode all about the science behind the autonomous sensory meridian response, a.k.a. ASMR. While people who experience ASMR feel extremely pleasant and satisfying tingles when hearing their trigger sounds—which often include hair brushing, nail tapping, chewing, and whispering—another group can hear the same sounds and become filled with anxiety and rage. Eleanor, Rachel, and Amy dig into Eleanor's feature package all about these phenomena, which appears in the winter issue of Popular Science.  The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our Facebook group or tweet at us! Click here to learn more about all of our stories!  If you want to see us in your town, click here to take our listener survey! Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Eleanor Cummins: www.twitter.com/elliepses Amy Schellenbaum: www.twitter.com/acsbaum Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden Edited by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And while most of the things we find end up in our articles, we also come across plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to The Weirdest Thing I Learn This Week, a podcast from the editors of Popular Science. I'm Rachel Feltman. I'm Amy Schellenbaum. And I'm Eleanor Cummins. And Eleanor is very upset already.

Yes. So, listeners, I'm slowly transitioning out of the whisper because I feel like I'm just going to scream accidentally. Usually on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we offer up little teases and share little facts and spin them into crazy stories, little science. yarns, if you will, and we vote on which one was the weirdest thing we learned this week. But this week, we're diving into a feature package that Eleanor wrote for our latest print issue. Yes, we make a print magazine four times a year. It's pretty excellent. And the topic, as you may have guessed, is ASMR.

That was so good. ASMR is this internet phenomenon where people seek out videos that have like sounds of hair brushing and whispering and chewing and things like cosplay, all because it gives them an unusual and by all account soothing physical sensation. And listeners, don't worry if you don't like ASMR, which we will get into discussing very shortly, you're not alone. This episode is not actually going to be full of intentional ASMR triggers. We're going to go through and take apart some of the really fascinating things we learned while Eleanor reported and wrote this package on ASMR. And our colleague Amy Schellenbondon, who is an longtime ASMR enthusiast.

That's true. Is going to jump in with questions as she has them. And so we're just going to really take you into this sonic exploration of this beautiful print piece that we're all really proud of. And hopefully you can pick up a copy on newsstands and check it out for yourself. It's beautiful to see an experience. But we thought it would be a shame to not talk about some noises with our mouth sounds. We will do some ASMR somewhere in the middle of the episode, but we will give you fair warning so you can skip ahead if you don't want to hear us chew on stuff. So, Eleanor.

Hello. Why don't you kick us off by telling us, like, what made you pitch this to me? Because I know that we talked about it for some time before it actually came to be. Yeah. So I have self-diagnosed with this thing called misophonia, which is a severe aversion to specific sound triggers like. mouth sounds that people make when they're whispering into a microphone or eating food. Sorry. Yeah.

And it's very painful and bad. But I talk about it all the time with people because I'm trying to be more like, yeah, this is just me. Like, sorry that I'm physically recoiling. And I was talking to one of my friends about it. And I knew that I had already wanted to write a story about it because we had this noise issue coming up. But she kept saying, like, you know, like, what is this misophonia thing? Like, everyone keeps talking about it. Like, I don't understand.

And I reflexively was just like, well, it's because we're persecuted by the ASMR people. And the more I thought about it, the more I was like, wait, is that kind of what's going on here? And so I started looking into it. And it turns out that misophonia and ASMR, which stands for autosensory meridian response, and is sort of the complete opposite of misophonia in that you love certain sound triggers like people whispering. They give you the shivers. Yeah, they give you this amazing as it's called brain orgasm. No.

Yeah. Yeah. I really hate that. Amy speaks for many members of the ASMR community who would really like them to stop being referred to as brain orgasms. Yeah, not a popular term. But anyway, it turns out that these things that seem very distinct and almost like polar opposites may be related. And that by kind of studying them together, we could better understand and what makes people love sound and potentially like all chill out the way that ASMR people get to when they're hearing their favorite videos. That's dope.

I was talking to a researcher named Nick Davis, who was sort of the advisor to Emma Barrett, who published the first peer-reviewed article on ASMR in 2015. And so they were at Swansea University. And he was like, yeah, I was so uncomfortable when Emma brought this to me. Quote, I literally pulled this out of our interview. She started bringing up all these videos of beautiful Russian women whispering, and I thought, this is really weird and I don't want this on my university computer. Right, right. Well, and that's a great intro to talk about, like, you know, one of the reasons this package is so fantastic is that the research is really in its infancy for both of these phenomena. And part of that prop, I mean, so it's something that didn't get a lot of attention for a long time and really, like, came to public attention during the age of the Internet.

But then there was a lag with the research because it had first come into the, public consciousness on the internet. So it was like, oh, this weird that on YouTube, you're certainly not doing your dissertation on that. And it took pioneers like Emma Barrett to say, yes, I am. Totally. Yeah. I mean, there were probably like a million other people like Nick Davis who just didn't get over it and start looking into it. And one of the researchers I talked to Agniewska Janik Mickelene, she was talking about how she really struggled to get her study published for two years because everyone was just like this really weird sex fetish. is not science.

And she was like, no, this is, one, it's not sexual. Also, sex can be studied scientifically. Yeah. I was like, first of all, the weird sex fetishes are science. Yes. And then also three, like, this is an objective phenomenon that we see, like, similar patterns in people across cultures. Like, when we look at this, it is real and demonstrable. And still, you know, publications were just like, this is like some weird YouTube thing.

And, like, we can't, this isn't science and we can't validate it. And, like, we don't care. Well, even the reason the name is, like, really pseudosciencey, and kind of a subject of debate is that it was named by like an enthusiast, not a researcher. Yeah, in 2010, this woman named Jennifer Young, who, as far as I can tell, is a cybersecurity professional in Canada, you know, not a neurologist or psychiatrist or anything. She started a Facebook group for other people who were experiencing this sensation. And so she just named it, ASMR, Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response Group.

And that's literally where the name comes from. Like, it is not from the scientific literature at all. It was just people trying to stop people from calling it brain orgasm. Yeah. What I loved was finding out that because during the course of edits, someone at some point it was like, we need to explain why the word meridian is in here. And it was because she was looking for something vague to replace the concept of an orgasm. And she chose Meridian in terms of, like, being at a great height, like a climax.

Oh, Lord. Yeah. Yeah, and that has kind of... I was hoping it was like energy meridians or something. No, I assume that as well, but it apparently referred to kind of like a vague take on the definition of the word meridian, using it to mean something that doesn't actually mean. Which, again, it's fine. Like, somebody needed to name it. ASMR is a great acronym.

But it's true that the ASMR just has like... It's kind of a meaningless string of words. Definitely. And to your point, like, it is so under-researched, misophonia. as well. Like, we don't even know how many people experience ASMR at this point. Also, we don't understand how much of it is kind of like a spectrum. Like, it is very unlikely that there are people who experience no positive sort of sensations from sounds or exclusively negative, you know, experiences from sounds. And so we're still trying to, like, map this. But what we do know is that

people probably do all experience ASMR to some degree. And the classic example of this is, like, if you've ever gotten a haircut and thought like, dang, that felt great. Like, that is sort of, that's like the very, you know, basic, minimal in-person introduction to what people can experience with these videos. So, Amy, since you experience it, I do not. I experience the opposite. I hate it. What is it like?

I've heard it described as, like, a tingling on your scalp? I guess, maybe, but it's mostly just very comforting. It's like your mom brushing your hair or, I don't know. It's like really, to me it feels like warmth and just really soothing, not necessarily tingly. I think like at some point that was, I mean, I don't know. I feel like I haven't experienced that in a while, but like, I don't know. But it's mostly just this universally sort of like pleasant, soft feeling. And to your point about it being like a spectrum, like there are certain sounds that I really do not like, including

sounds that are like ASMR sounds that are often considered an ASMR sounds like I don't really like mouth sounds either and I really do not like sounds of people eating the other thing I brought this pickle to eat yeah thanks Rachel but like there's a lot of like a serum dropper bottle

the way that it like clinks against the neck of the bottle like that just sounds so wow nice to me and it's not it's really not about necessarily sounds people make with their own bodies. I don't find that to be particularly soothing. Yeah. It's all stuff that I feel

like, to me at least, like it's connected to like somebody taking care of me. And I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that like if ASMR is more frequently experienced in women who don't have sort of like caretakers in the way that maybe men might grow up and have caretakers in their wives or spouses. Interesting. But it's kind of, I don't know if that's the same thing as like the tingle response or if that is just enjoying sounds. Yeah. So I was talking to GBA ASMR, right, who is like

the like undefeated champion of ASMR videos. Asm artist. Yes, the ultimate. And so she was saying that she has like a range of reactions to different sounds. And there are some things that will just give her that like pure tingling sensation that she thinks is what other people are talking about. But that like the videos that she likes the most and returns to often are. are the ones that just give her that warm feeling you're talking about. Right. And that like, yeah, even just for an individual person, like there is such a spectrum there in terms of what you respond to.

And it changes and it's kind of contextual. Like she was saying, you know, she was like, she was basically like, I consume ASMR content all day long and then I also make it. And, you know, like, during the day, like you'll want something different than at night when you're trying to go to sleep. Right. Then you, you know, pick a completely different set of sounds. And so it's very, yeah, it's very interesting how varied it can be.

Yeah. Well, and one thing that didn't fit in anywhere in the package, but that I've been thinking about ever since I read about it like three years ago is that there are ASMR videos of all genres. I mean, there's obviously porn, like, makes sense. But there's also ASMR porn. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and there's also relatedly, and I've seen this on the subway, there's relatedly like point of view personal attention videos. Yeah. So like, once I looked down on the subway and a guy was watching a video that,

was just like from the perspective of someone who was being like led around by a beautiful woman on a beach. Yeah. And she kept like leaning close. And I was like, so not even like people talking to a mic with ears on it. Like actually like moving around. Yeah.

And personal attention videos do come up in the package as like something that may be the same phenomenon as ASMR. But we know so little about ASMR that it's impossible to say right now. But ASMR enthusiasts and content creators do definitely. in some cases lump these together where like asmr videos aren't always about sound anymore sometimes it's like someone's making intense eye contact with you and talking to you really gently and it's just about that like intense personal focus and that people say that gives them like the same kind of warm fuzzies and yeah i have at least this one guy on the subway next to me one time is an

avid consumer of point of view personal attention videos and it was like it was not explicit it definitely felt porny though, it was a very sensuous little film. Yeah. I mean, but there's also like is a sensuous little film. I mean, we've had first person shooters for a long time. Yeah, oh, totally. And it's like, I didn't have a problem with him watching it on the subway. There were no, like, boobs out or whatever.

It was fine. But I was like. Watching men consume content on their phones on the subway. They're always like looking at like, porny, weird Instagram accounts or like catalogs. And I'm like, this is, sorry, this is a dress catalog. Like lands end Like Instagram influencers

But the thing that I read an article about a while back Was ASMR horror videos Yes They're huge Yeah there was one that I watched out of curiosity Yeah Amy doesn't like it That there was one I watched like To feed my curiosity that was like

It was like the horror take on like You're getting your haircut video Yeah Where you wake up and a mad scientist Is like performing an autopsy while you're still alive. Yeah. And like speaking gently to you with vocal fry as he like buzzes into your skull.

And he was like, I can think of one friend who probably would be really into it, but it is the sex thing. And like it just is fascinating how many different moods people like seek to have triggered by ASMR. One of the things I was talking about with Craig Richard, who is the founder of ASMR University, which is sort of this clearinghouse for like all things ASMR. Like this guy is on it. Like you go to this site and it's like every single thing that's ever been published or not yet published. And he was like, you know, what do all of these ASMR videos have in common besides some sort of allegedly triggering sound? And it's hands.

And it was just like, you know, like there are all of these unexplored visual connotations of ASMR as well that we like, we don't even have the sound part characterized. Right. We're so far away from getting to this, but like this will be the next stage of research is like, what does it mean, you know, to have these like the classic internet hands, right, that like kind of come in and out of the frame as part of the sense of like personal attention. Like people will put their hands up toward, you know, the camera like as they're whispering and like does that bring you more in? Like, you know, how are all of these sort of different senses of touch? Eleanor is making great hand gestures right now. Thank you. I wish everyone could enjoy. It's very calming.

But yeah, so that was one thing that he was just like, you know, like stage two of ASMR research in like 10 more years. We'll need to look at this kind of interplay. One of the things that didn't make it into the story that is a public service announcement is that when you Google Mycifonia, the first thing you pull up is a 23 and Me report that says that they've found like the genetic origin of mycifonia. I just wanted to say they haven't. The genetic testing company is claiming that they've identified a single variant.

called RS 2937573 that increases a person's risk of, quote, being filled with rage when others chew. But I talked to a psychiatrist at the academic medical center in Amsterdam named Damien Dennis, who literally called this a hoax, which is a great choice of word. I thought that was very funny. I tried not to laugh on the phone. But he was like, it's based on a genome-wide association study, which is a very common way of looking for trends in DNA of people who report certain characteristics. but it's not typically seen as like reliable on its own. It's like the first step in a research process, right? So basically he was like there's way too much statistical noise, you know, to ever say that we've found the thing. And then he was also like most conditions just generally in life are too complex to tie to a single snippet of your genome. And so I just think that, you know, every researcher I talked to about this was kind of like this seems misleading.

And while it may not, you know, be especially harmful to believe this, I think it's just good to remember that as these things come out about, about ASMR probably two in the future, our DNA is not just going to reveal ourselves to us. Like, things are always a little more mysterious than that. So why don't you talk a little bit about the kind of like the crux of the main essay in this package is like maybe ASMR and misophonia are two sides of the same coin? And so like what are some of the mechanisms that are being investigated for causing those like seemingly diametrically opposed triggers? Yeah. So I talked with, as I said, Nick Davis, and then he worked with Emma Barrett, and then Dr. Mickelene. They were all sort of researching ASMR at the same time, 2014, 2015.

They started looking at this question scientifically. And, you know, that early work was identifying key triggers. And so what came up in both of them is like whispering, this sort of broad concept of personal attention, crisp sounds. Those were all things that people seemed to really enjoy. And then they were finding this strange thing where a lot of the. people in their sample who self-reported ASMR and then were observed experiencing ASMR also reported hating a lot of sounds too. And so they kind of set this aside. And then Dr. Migrelin came back to it and she was like, you know, I really want to know what's going on here

because the numbers were just kind of crazy. So when Megarleen and I were on the phone, she was telling you how she discovered that 36% of people with self-reported ASMR had severe misophonia compared to 22% of people without ASMR in her study. And severe misophonia is like the kind that like you typically need some sort of help to cope with. There's no cure for misophonia. Like you can't cure sounds, but you can talk to people about, you know, using like stress balls instead of like screaming at people eating, which is something we've all considered. So Anna Hunt, having seen this in her population, you know, it's sort of like a normal correlation. It doesn't stand out too much.

But what she decided to do was separately tested group of college students. And she found that among those participants who experienced ASMMMM. but didn't seek out triggering videos, 70.8% had clinically significant misophonia. So almost twice as many as in the other population. And what that suggested to her was that for these people, the discomfort that they experienced because of their misophonia outweighed any of the benefits of the tingles that they were capable of feeling. And so they kind of had the capacity for both this calming sensation and this sort of like

misophonic rage. And the misophonia was just so intense that they were never going to try to listen to ASMR videos. And so then what scientists are trying to do now is see what kind of connections there are between the two. So we know, for example, that both are affecting the nervous system as far as we can tell. And they also appear to be altering brain function in some way. So we're, you know, trying to probe this deeper and understand how they might be related. In terms of, like, the nervous system, like what we find is that for people with misophonia, when they're experiencing their

triggers, like someone eating around them, their heart. rate will rise as well as their like skin conductivity. So that's like sort of the sweat on your fingertips, which is an indication of arousal, not necessarily in a sexual way, but like, you know, your body is like, is reacting to the world. And then on the flip side for ASMR, your heart rate lowers, but your skin conductivity also increases. And so there's this thinking that maybe what that indicates is that ASMR is actually like kind of working you up, but in this way that feels soothing. So you can be experiencing the same sort of biological phenomenon,

but the way your brain is interpreting that is like wildly different. Then we've also looked through fMRI studies of kind of and brain imaging studies of what's kind of going on in the brain. And we're finding that potentially for misophonia and maybe we may one day discover ASMR as well, there's this role of interoceptive awareness going on. So that's sort of like called your sixth sense. and it's your sense of your own body's internal state. And with misophonia, they think that maybe people who have it have very hyper-aware interoceptive capacity,

but they're kind of misinterpreting the data. So like even before you consciously register a sound, it may be activating your body and creating this kind of fight-or-flight response that people talk about. And so now the question is, like, is the same thing potentially happening with ASMR where you're so in tune with your body in a way that maybe other people or not, that you're kind of hyper aware of these things that maybe everybody is experiencing, but you just like zone in on them. And that related to McRleen's original study where she was trying to identify ASMR triggers. She was also looking at the personality traits of people with ASMR. And she found that on the Big Five index, right, which is this thing that's like neuroticism, openness to experience,

et cetera. Like I believe people with ASMR had really high openness to experience, which just sort of shows like this interesting interplay in their biological capacity for experiencing sounds and their like attitude and personality and the way that they approach the world. So the question now is like if we... Because it's strange. Yeah. And if you if you if you like accept that about yourself, it's a lot harder. Yeah. It can be. Yeah. Yeah. And that's I think why people are very frustrated by the question of like is it is it sex? It's because it's like well it is kind of weird but like like, Like, I'm, like, okay with it and it's great and I enjoy it. And, like, it doesn't have to be, like, problematized or, like, you know, made into a taboo.

But this is something that, yeah, the community has been overcoming. And I mean, like, in a big way, one of the stats we have in there is that as of 2018, I think there were 13 million ASMR videos on YouTube. Like, they're doing okay now. So maybe we'll take elite interlead now to share some. some ASMR noises with our listeners. Eleanor's going to die. She's not ready. I am not.

So let's see. We have some supplies here. We talk about the like subgenre of Mukbang, which is like a Korean video where people eat just like tons of food into a microphone. It's not a subgenre. It's actually a completely different thing. It's meant to be, it's not meant to be about the sounds at all. It's about sometimes they like combine them, but it's a, it developed, I believe,

completely separately. and it's more like you're having lunch with your friends and people are lonely. It's very contestant of whether muckbang is ASMR and like how they relate. Because a lot of people now are marketing their muckbang as ASMR. Correct. And saying that that is what they touch similar on similar sensations. And it loops into the whole personal attention video. Right, right.

Regardless, I was going to get some Korean food. I was going to get some chewy rice cakes to eat into this microphone. And I was told that it was too early for lunch, which was extremely. rude, but I do have some gummy candy, which is another one that got talked about as an ASMR trigger in the course of us researching and creating this package. And that one was surprising to me. I don't think of myself as being sensitive to sound, but I was like, surely no one likes the chewy mouth sounds. Yeah. I did also get a very crisp pickle because I can understand the crunchy mouth sounds. Even just the packaging is good. Yeah, we have some packages. And we have, of course, a magazine with pages. We also have a hairbrush. And then there are all the different noises you can make with your fingers. Oh, no, you were doing some lovely fluttering earlier.

Yeah, I liked it. I learned this from G.B. Oh, my gosh. She just, like, flutters her fingers into the microphone. My knuckles are too big. I can't, like, get your fingers to come together. That's messed up. Why are my hands like this?

And then another one that comes up as both a bad trigger and as good trigger is knuckle crack. which like I guess I can hear how that might be good or bad. I don't really like it, but it's not the worst. We have a hairbrush. Yeah. Oh, I'll do this one. I love the sound of my hair being brushed. Let me find my hair.

Also, it's like it's so great. It's her sound. It's so great seeing the different mic setups. People like will have mics covered in like dust covers and they brush the like fluffy dust cover like its hair. I love it. Okay, here's my hair being brushed. Yeah.

Oh my God. Yeah, I think that's nice. Yeah, it is really nice. Wow. Wow, that felt great. I feel good. You look nice, too. Thank you.

And then, you know, there's various, like, tapping. Tapping is a controversial one. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, that seems one of the more benign ones to me. I guess I can depend on, like, I could see if you're, like, tapping something with, like, big acrylic nails. I think it's more about the.

like the style of the tap. I think that's nice. Thanks, yeah. It's like a rain stick. And then, you know, you have various like packaging. You can have like crinkly. Ooh, there's a lot of sounds in here because these are sour patch kids. So, yeah, these are sour patch kids.

So there's like powder inside. Oh. Wow. This is a whole new. Rachel, you're innovating. What's inside? This makes me want to die. Yeah, I took my headphones off for this one.

All right. Yeah, that would, the food chewing stuff, like, that does put me into a bit of a rage. Although, I think, like, this sound is probably going to be good. I want to get a good. Amy's like, hell yeah. I like it. It's satisfying. It's not like a mushy sound. Right.

Which is not something like that. Even when I was the one. And it's the sound of the pickle. It's not the sound of your mouth. That is key. When I was chewing the sour patch of kids, I didn't like it. It may have made me like Sourapachas list to hear that in my headphones as I ate them.

This eater writer recently did a piece about like, why is everything in television so loud when people are eating? And they were like, I have misophonia. why are all of the Roy's on Succession, like chopping on chicken at like a billion decibels? And I was like, I've never related to reporting more than this. I'm going to stop eating this pickle. So now we will cease with the ASMR examples.

Yeah, in the book, the magazine. Honestly, the Tarapagut kid's powder was my favorite sound of all the sounds. Do I'm going to do the magazine? Yeah, please. Well, because it's also associated with things, you know, certainly we four really. really like. One of the things I thought was interesting about misophonia is that like it is very much like

it's personally felt in that like you won't typically react to like a baby crying. But like if an adult made that sound, you'd be like, what is wrong with you? Right. And so it's kind of moralistic in that way. Which is something I've been working on accepting since this therapist who works with misophonia patients was like, yeah, like it's kind of judgmental. Like it really is your triggers. are not as universal as you think.

And I wonder if the same is true for ASMR, right? Like, contextually, the same thing is not always going to make you feel great. Well, because a lot of it, it has to be really intentional. You can't like, it's like tickling, right? Like, it becomes very unpleasant when you do not want to be tickled. Yeah. You know, like, when you're an adult, you're like, don't tickle me. Totally.

And it also has to be done so gently to make it, to really highlight the sounds and minimize, like, the interference. Like, GV was telling me that she. is like a really loud person and I could tell this on the phone like she's a wonderful person to talk to but she was like yeah when I told my family I was going to do this they were all like what's wrong with you you can never make this work like you're like a crazy person

you're so loud and annoying and she was like it's been like a really intentional effort to slow myself down and to behave in this kind of controlled way that these videos actually come across as peaceful yeah so I thought that that was interesting that even ASMR artists are like fighting the good fight to be calm.

Yeah. That's key. It's peaceful. It's really. Yeah. Well, and the kind of the conclusion of the main article on the package is like, could we harness whatever is working about ASMR for people who love it and enjoy it, not just to help people with misophonia, but to actually make everybody calmer. Yeah. To help people cope with life.

Definitely. Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy that people with ASMR are just able to sort of like turn on a YouTube video. Like, that's amazing. And it would be great if that was available to everybody. And, you know, one of the therapists that I spoke to who were some misophonic patients was like, I know at least one of my patients is using ASMR to cope with their misophonia. Like, they find the sounds that make them happy.

And it would just be so cool if, like, we all could, like, chill out and just, like, listen to our, like, happy trigger sounds, you know? Yeah, that'd be great. We all just need to find our happy triggers. Yes. That is what we're trying to tell. Weirdest thing, listeners. Find your happy triggers.

Like hairbrushing, which I'm going to go back to immediately after this is over. Yeah, well, I remember when, like, the main reason I was upset when Chris Pratt and Anna Phares broke up, the reason I thought, like, I had them in my mind as a celebrity couple that I, like, they were my ride or die. Yeah. It's because he talked about French braiding her hair every night before bed because it's something her mom used to do. And I was like, that is the most romantic. sensual, intimate experience I've ever heard of in my life. And it's true that, like, you know, someone fixing your hair for you before bed is so intimate. And something that, like, you know, generally we don't do for one another as adults.

So go find somebody's hair to braid is what I'm saying. Yeah, it's like be childlike again in that way. Being, like, soft and sensitive to other people. Yeah. But I really love coloring books, too. Yes. Yeah, millennials are on that. We're like bringing back.

childhood. Yeah. Plato, slime is a huge ASMR. Yeah. Like what's that about if not trying to be four again? Really? The squishiness? No. Yeah. I like really clear, clean, crisp sounds that I associate with things I like. Yeah. The other thing was that when I talk to all these people, I always ask them, like, what question do you most want to answer since there's so little research at this point? Like, you know, what's the next big thing coming for you? And so they all had different.

things like you know one of the things was about cultural differences like muckbang like we've already talked about but you know they also said like the the hand movements thing is a big one one of the things is that people really want to mail down the mechanisms behind asmr right like we have some of these kind of early studies about showing an association with like your nervous system and your heart rate but like what's actually going on in that kind of cascade where you start to feel that pleasant experience other people want to come up with a formal classification system sort of the way that like synesthesia has been divided into several types and you can test for them really accurately. So we're, you know, that would require moving beyond this kind of binary of like yes, no,

misophonia and identifying subtypes. But then the one I thought was the coolest was Nick Davis, the guy who was very scared of ASMR on his university computer. He was like, I just want to know why the scalp is involved. He was like, the scalp has almost no sensory receptors. And he was like, it just doesn't make any sense that that is so often where the ASMRs Cascade begins from like an anatomical perspective. And that blew me away.

Yeah. That is fascinating. So many things left to look into. What I love so much about this package is that like there's so much information in it, but there's also so much that we don't know yet and so many questions left to answer and work to look forward to. So definitely pick up a copy of the pop sign noise issue. It's on newsstands.

Now it has a big balloon on it. Not just great stuff on ANSOMR in here. amazing stories about mysterious unsolved sounds throughout history and animals making impossible to hear, impossible to ignore noises. Why are baby cries impossible to ignore? That's a question we answer. If only. In this issue, also we talk about totally silent chambers, which are so creepy and weird. So scary. As scary as ASMR sounds for me. Also, I love that one of our cover lines is the rowdiest dang frog on earth. I edited that one and actually,

O'Nor wrote that one as well. Yes. Pick it up. Yeah. Simlish. Oh, Simlish. We also talked about how Simlish was developed. Very important to me.

That to every member in my family. They bought an issue and I just kept opening up and being like, did you read the Simlish one? So we should end in Simlish, right? Yeah. A d'ut. Goodbye. That was too much like a real word.

I know. I know. It's so hard. to do. They're geniuses. They talk about like, I got a badada. Badda. They, they talk about like a specific word that they use. Can I say soul soul, yeah. Oh yeah. There's soul soul soul. I love it so much. Yeah, and it became the equivalent of Aloha, a general happy greeting. But if it's Aloha, it can also mean goodbye. So soul soul. So soul. So soul. Thank you so much for listening. Let us know through the usual channels, what you thought of this episode. You can send us a voice message. You can talk to us on

our Facebook group. You can tweet us at Weirdest underscore Thing. And we'll be back next week with a usual episode. Thanks for listening, Weirdos. The Weirdest Thing I learned this week is a popular science podcast. We're available on all major podcast platforms. So subscribe wherever you're listening now. And if you like what you hear, please rate and review us on iTunes. It helps other weirdos find the show. You can buy our merch, including Weirdest Thing t-shirts, tote bags, and mugs at Hopside.threadlist.com. Our show is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Faltman, and our editors, Jess Bodey and Jason Letterman. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden.

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