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Short Stuff: Goosebumps · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's pretending that she's Dave c right now,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: and that makes this a short stuff about Chuck. Goose Bumps.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: All those R. L. Stein fans out there are going
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: to be very disappointed. In a second. Those were below
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: my age range. Same here. Those came along after we left,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: right after we left Childhood. Yeah, definitely. Um, But I
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: have to say, if you've been on Netflix and you're
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: looking for something scary, slashery to watch, but that's also
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: really smart, that same dude came up with something called
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Fear Street. Um. It's like three part series, really really
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: well done. Um, and it is not meant for kids
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: at all, Like it is super gory, super graphic. Just
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: it's like it's almost like carl Stein was like, I'm
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: so super writing for kids, and it just went the
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: opposite direction. So it's definitely worth watching. Anyone on a
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: murder spree. Yeah pretty much, man, it's really good. They
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: shot some of those goose bumps and right around our neighborhoods.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: That's great man. Did you sell them? Um? Bloody Caesar's
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: very funny, So let's start talking about goose bumps, the
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: real goose bumps um, which is also known as pilo erection. Well,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: I guess somebody had to say it. Uh, nothing funny
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: about that word, though, right, kind it's kind of funny, okay. Uh? Yeah.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Goose bumps are obviously an evolutionary holdover. And I can't
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: believe we haven't talked about this before, but have we
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: in just in some random yep? I think it's either
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: that or we did like a video explainer on it
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: or something. I know I did it. Don't be dumb,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: but that's not that's not it. You and I have
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: talked about it before too. All right, Well should we
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: just tell people to go watch you don't be dumb
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: and sign off? No, no, no, because this is gonna
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: be way better than that. Don't be dumb? Okay? Uh? Well,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: goose bumps are evolutionary hold over. Uh and you know,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: sort of the and I think a lot of people
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: know this, but one of the things that happens when
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: you get goose bumps is ideally you have a little
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: tiny hair standing on end um. You can also get
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: goose bumps where there is no hair, but again, evolutionary
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: holdover from when we were all much more furry individuals.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: And you call that pilow direction, and that's because it
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: is uh, the pilo erector muscles that are contracting and
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: making Uh. If you do have hair, stand on in
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: and took took when you had much more hair, stand
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: on in. Yeah, or like you said, if you don't
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: have hair, it's just like this kind of raised you
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: look like a pluck goose in that that um area,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: which I just realizes why they call it goosebumps. You
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: didn't know that, are you kidding? It was one of
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: those things like it just never stopped and thought about it.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: I've heard people say chicken skin too. Yeah, that makes
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: total sense as well. But so the second function you mentioned,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: the first one is to keep us warm. The second
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: one was that if we were scared back in the
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: day when we had a lot more hair, or let's
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: say other animals that get goose bumps um and it
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: makes their hair stand on end. It makes them appear
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: bigger to a predator. So let's say fight or flight response,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: which is appropriate because it's part of the sympathetic nervous system.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Goose bumps are but chuck. There's something really unique about
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: goose bumps. As far as sympathetic nervous system stuff goes, it's,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: from what anyone can tell, the only sympathetic nervous response
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: that can be consciously controlled. It's extremely rare, but they
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: found that some people can give themselves goose bumps. It's
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: pretty awesome talent. As far as the you know, the
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: evolutionary holdover, I don't think we said that it keeps
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: us warm because it raises that hair up, and what
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: happens is air gets trapped in that space between right
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: is uh davemat Piece would say that, Dave Matthews, we
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: would you do that to everybody? I don't even like
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Dave Matthews. I'm I'm not even sure how I know
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: that song. Well, I mean he's he's got a few
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: hits under his belt for sure, and I guess that's
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: one of them. Uh, So that'll help keep you warm.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: And as far as the puffing up to appear bigger like,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: you still see this all over the place in the
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: animal kingdom. Um, whether or not you're a dog barges
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: in on your cat and your cat puffs puffs up.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: It's always funny looking when a cat puffs that tail
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  Speaker 1: and body up. To try to appear you know, like
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  Speaker 1: half an inch bigger than they really are all over.
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  Speaker 1: But it's not just cats. You see all kinds of
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: animals that'll that'll puff up there for or feathers, because
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: birds do kind of the same thing. Yeah, totally. And
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: the whole thing is like, leave me alone. I'm way
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: bigger than you thought, run away. Just don't even test me, right,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: but don't think about it, buddy. So that makes them
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: totally useless in humans, like because we don't have enough
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: hair to warm ourselves and we don't have enough hair
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  Speaker 1: to appear any bigger. So, like you said, kept calling
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: it an evolutionary holdover. But what's really interesting about goose
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: bumps is somehow, some way along the way, as humans
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: developed more and more consciousness and intelligence and our brains
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: just kept evolving, something happened to where our goose bump
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: response got hijacked when we hear certain emotionally evocative things. Yeah,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: like if you've ever been at a live concert and
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: gotten chills because something was so overwhelming emotionally, Yeah, like
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: the dude from Boston like just really delivered an amazing
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: drum solo. Uh wow, Okay, I didn't that's funny. Out
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: of all the people in Boston, I didn't see going
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: towards the drummer. Oh, he had the greatest afro of
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: all time. Of the original guy, Yeah, Barry I think, Yeah,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: I can't remember his name, but yeah, he had a
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: fantastic affro. You know, all those guys went to M
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: I T. I didn't know all of them, Did I
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: know Tom Schultz did? I'm pretty sure all of them did,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: because Schultz was the guitar genius who kind of built
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: a bunch of equipment along the way, and very technically
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: minded guy and very kind of creepy and sad. What
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: happened to the lead singer? Oh? I don't know about that.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: You'll have to tell me um later on. Yeah, yeah,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: this is a shorty, so you can just google that
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: if you're interested in people. So should we take a break?
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: I guess yeah sure. I think we kind of buildup
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: a cliffhanger, like why what happened? Like what how did
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: our our goose bumps get hijacked? For when something emotional happened,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: specifically when we're at a live concert watching Boston. Yeah,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: and did they all go to M I T? And
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: we'll find all this out right after this? All right,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: so there's a guy. Uh, well, there's been a few
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: studies about this before we get to the guy. There
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: was a study in January in Biological psychology, and a
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: big shout out to Jennifer Walker Journey of postal works
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: dot com for the help with this. But uh, they
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: did a test where they basically said, hey, let's see
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: what kind of goose bumps, what they called subjective chills
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: we could get out of people if we sit them
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: down and introduce them or at least let them here
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: certain musics, and they chose a couple. I'm sure they
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: chose a bunch, but the two highlighted here are Saline
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Dion's My Heart Will Go On and they called it
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: a chill ratio of f and a pilo or p
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  Speaker 1: low erection ratio of fourteen percent. So four like goose
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: bumps of fourteen percent. Not not bad. Four of the
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: participants got goose bumps listening to that song, right, I
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: think that's what that means. Yeah, but what's next. What's
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: next is it's not even fair. They brought out the
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: big guns and they dropped purple rain on everybody. Not bad,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: and unsurprisingly Purple Rain scored a one chill ratio. Every
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: single person in that study listening to Purple ring Head
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: shivers up and down their spine, and half got goose bumps.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: And I can tell you the exact moment in that
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: song when everyone got chills and goose bumps, when Prince
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: starts whaling at the end, Honey, I know, I know,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: I know, um vocally whaling or guitar whaling, vocally whaling
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: when he comes in and joins like his guitar and
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: it actually it just kind of comes out of nowhere,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: but it fits so perfectly. And that actually really jibes
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: with research that a lot of um, a lot of
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  Speaker 1: the things that give us goose bumps or chills down
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  Speaker 1: our spine are when some sort of solo vocal or
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: instrument emerges from a more complex musical background. And that's
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: about as good an example of that as you're gonna find. Yeah,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: And that to me is like a really cool thing.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Is Uh. There's this guy named Mitchell Culver who I
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: don't know I how stuff works. Got in touch with him.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: They used to do interviews and stuff, but he was
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: an instructor. May still be at Utah State university, and
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: he studied a lot of this stuff and basically said,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: you know, you have and and he put it very
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: simplistically by saying like you have two brains essentially, but
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: he he broke it down into thinking like you have
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  Speaker 1: your sort of emotional brain and then you're sort of
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  Speaker 1: rational thinking brain, and your emotional brain is still that
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  Speaker 1: sort of uh, you know, evolutionarily wired took took brain
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  Speaker 1: and it's it's still you know, even though we're walking
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  Speaker 1: around in modern society, it's still sort of always aware
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: and looking out for anything that might be a bad
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  Speaker 1: thing for you, whether it's a threat or a hole
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  Speaker 1: in the sidewalk, or like you when you were a kid,
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  Speaker 1: you'd walk into a room and identify the weapons like
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: you were Jason bod or something like that. Right, So
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: the thing is, while you're constantly looking for those threats, um,
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  Speaker 1: eventually you mine one once in a while, or you
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: think you do UM Because we're still wired to be
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  Speaker 1: worried about the the original threats that were a problem
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  Speaker 1: for humans and then our animal ancestors. So very often
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: when we see something, we're startled or we we perceive
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: it as a threat with our emotional brain after a
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  Speaker 1: beat or so, when our thinking brain are more evolved,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: conscious brain comes in and analyzes situations like calm down,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: calm down, it's not even a threat, and that after
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: that point there's attention that was built up that's now
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: released and it usually kind of feels pretty good. So
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Culvert has linked that to why we would get goose
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: bumps or the chills with music, and I think it's
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: a good theory. My problem with this, at least in
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: this article is it's presented as if like this is done,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: We've done all the research and this is the answer
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: we we know now, and that's absolutely not the case.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Like this is a this is a theory. It's a hypothesis.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: It is a good one, but it's not. It's not
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: that's it, Like everyone just agrees that that's what's going
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: on now. I completely agree. Um, And you know you
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: mentioned the fact that like a uh, sort of harmonies
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: coming out of nowhere, or when Prince's voice s melds
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: with that guitar solo or something that is sort of
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: the unexpected thing that can draw the or I guess
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: build a bridge between the two brains as far as
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Culver is concerned. Uh and The key of it all though,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: is in in modern humans, like getting those pleasurable goose bumps,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: and not because you're like afraid or something, is because
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: you actually get a dopamine hit when you're getting that
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: aesthetic uh set of goose bumps. Yes, But Culver and
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: people who subscribed to this hypothesis I think are putting
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: like the cart before the horse, because they're saying, when
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: your brain resolves that it's not actually an issue, you
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: get a dump of dopamine. I think the dopamine comes
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: from something else. I don't think that's necessarily what it is,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: because I think you can be surprised, startled, and then
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: you know, realize you you were. You know that's that's
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: actually not a deadly spider, it's a Fisher Price little person.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: You don't get like some dump of dopamine over that. Um.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: So I think that there's something else too, and it
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: seems to be specifically coming from again, an emotionally evocative
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: song or seen in a movie or something like that,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: and it has to be a certain kind of emotion too.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Anger doesn't necessarily do it. It's usually something sad or
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: something deeply like romantic, or something really hopeful just something
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: something that's not like just like negative through and through
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: interesting because I feel like I get chill bumps, like
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: in a movie more when it's like sort of a
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: chilling reveal of something and I'm like, oh my gosh,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: that's what was going on that kind of thing. Okay, Well,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: that would definitely drive with Culver's hypothesis that it's that
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: you anticipate one thing, or your brain thinks of one thing.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: When it changes your your emotional brain gets scared. It's
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: a threat because, as he points out, like our our
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: emotional brain there's no such thing as a pleasant surprise
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: to it, and so when it gets startled, we're afraid.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: And then our thinking brain comes in it's like no, no,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: it's beautiful music. Um. Again, it's a good hypothesis. I
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: don't necessarily subscribe to the whole thing. But it doesn't
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: seem like he's just you know, pulled this out of
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: his hat and like that's it. Like he's definitely tested
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: it and written papers on it and all of that.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: It's just not settled, I guess, is what I'm trying
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: to say. Like I saw another another hypothesis by guy
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Um named Jock J. A. K. Pond skip Um, which
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: is a wonderful name, and they wrote a study in
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: two thousand eleven and their hypothesis was that um that
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: that solo voice like Prince wailing at the end of
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: of Purple Rain or like a really great you know
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: oboe solo emerging out of nowhere because he's expecting that
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: right that that it mimics a separation call, and that
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: it riggers that sense of loss. That um that is
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: just completely ingrained in us from the you know, millions
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: of years of natural history that we're tuned to listen
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: out for that, and that that's what's what's triggering that
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: that chill or that response. I like that. I like
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: that one too. I think I'm out. Oh yeah, are
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: you on the Jack Pan Skip train? Yeah? I think so.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: I've got nothing more. Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay, great,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: all right, Well then that's it for short stuff. Okay,
• 14:30
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• 14:35
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