Latest / Why We Do What We Do / The Good Old Days

Transcript

The Good Old Days · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we do what we do. Welcome
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: to Why we do what we do? I am yours
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Stuck in the Past host Abraham, and.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: I'm your Longing for Better Days host Shane.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: We are a psychology podcast. We talk about all of
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the things that humans and animals do, and sometimes we
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: talk about the ways that we like to reflect and
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: engage mentally in some exercises that can maybe be helpful
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and maybe be hurtful.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so today on our four hundredth episode, we
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: are talking about nostalgia. It took us this long to
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: get to nostalgia, of all things.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: But it felt appropriate for having reached that mile marker
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: of four hundred episodes, that we were thinking back on
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: what it's been like to be a podcast and what
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: it means to do four hundred up. And in our
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: reflections we sort of thought, hey, let's talk about nostalgia since,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: as you pointed out, we haven't even done that yet
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: as a psychology podcast. Somehow. So, although this is not
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: a nostalgia as in a rerun of a previous episode,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: this is a nostalgia as a concept. This is like
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: unpacking what is this idea of nostalgia? So we're not
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: actually even reflecting on our past episodes. I mean would
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: probably reference them, but we're instead going to talk about
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: the concept of reflecting on back on something at least.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to talk about how we end up
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: getting so melancholy and so reflective about our past. And
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: there was something interesting that came up and I'll share
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: it now versus the episode I've seen this time and
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: time again where they have said that nineties kids, our generation,
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: sure tends to be the most nostalgic group compared to
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: other like generational groups.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I'm somewhat skeptical.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm skeptical, but also I think a lot of
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: nineties kids and if you look at the marketing now
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: and the fact that Jinkos are back, I would make
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: the argument that maybe maybe they're not entirely wrong.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Maybe we're in like the top five, so top.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Three, top five of all five generations.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: But you all want to know here, I think you
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: came to this with a question wondering what do Australia,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Mario Karr and Grandma all have in common? And if
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: you didn't have that question, then I've at least planted
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: the seat, and now you do. We're going to find
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: that out. But it is also January first, and when
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: it's January first, we need to wish you all a
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: happy New Year's Day. So happy New Year everyone.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to twenty twenty five. We could not have
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: planned our episode timing better for four hundred on New Year's.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Day, right, four hundred episode total accident. We did not
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: know in twenty seventeen that are four hundredth episode on
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: January first, twenty twenty five. I mean we could have
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: done the math maybe, but we didn't, so here we are.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that'd have been very specific. It's also Apple Gifting Day.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: I like Apple, so you can gift me an apple
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: if you like.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed, I accept. It's Bonza Bodler Day. I was
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: gonna say Bonanza, but that's not what that says. Bonza
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Boddler Day. Okay, yeah.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's also a commitment day.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: I commit mhm same. It is Ellis Island's Day. I
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: think that one may be closed. I mean you can
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: go visit it, but the semantic idea of Ellis Island
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: seems to be closed.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yeah, the idea, the value of it.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: It's first foot day, first foot okay, it is Haitian
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Independence Day. That seems appropriate.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, It's National Hangover Day, which makes sense the movies. Yes,
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: I hope so oh no actual hangovers, okay, actual hangovers.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: It is New Year's Day, after all. It is New
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Year's dishonor list day. I'm not sure what that means,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: but go for I guess.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: I look this up. New Year's dishonorless day offered a
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: perfect opportunity to discredit annoying words and ask friends to
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: say something else. So it's a day to correct people's language.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: I guess.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: No more houndo peas.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: It's a polar bear plunge or swim day. So would
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: you like to go do that? That's cool?
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: I do? I think I do. I would like to.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I would like to try it. I don't know. I
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: don't know where I'm at on this. I would like
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: to try it. Public Domain day all those copyrights that
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: have expired. That's why we get the poop bear, blood
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: and honey or whatever it.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Is, yes, or steamboat Willie.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what a wild but what a wild time. It's
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: ring a bell day.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: It is, I guess. Maybe don't try to annoy people,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: but you know, World Day of peace, lovely. Let's do that,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: all of you warring nations. Let's just have peace and
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: like everyone else too.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Please please. It's also Diet Resolution Week.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds about right. It's January first, so that
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: is what it is.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, here we go.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: It is the end of Kwanza, not permanently, just the
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: current season of that.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, today is the last day of it. It's also
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: National Time Consciousness Week. I don't know that.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I like that, right. It is Copyright Law Day for
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: those of you who want that to be a thing.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: Interesting. It's Silent Record Week.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Okay. National Bath Safety Month. Yeah, definitely, don't drown in
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: your bathtubs.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Yep, don't slip, don't fall. It's National Black Diamond Month,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: which I am almost certain has to do with skiing.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or blood diamonds. Maybe it is National Blood donor Month. Oh,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: that one's very important. I'm a huge supporter of that cause.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Yes, I like that. It's National Mentoring Month, which I
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: also really enjoy. I think that's really important.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: It's National oatmeal Month.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Ooh, I like that. And it's National Slavery and Human
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Trafficking Prevention Month, also very important.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Matt Gates got it.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: All.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Right now. Talking about the holidays is fun and now
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: you have you have things to think about maybe or
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: maybe or share with your coworkers when they're talking about
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: something going on in the holidays and you're like, oh, yeah, well,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: how is your ring a bell day going or something?
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know. But we're actually talking about the past today.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: We're talking about the past while in the present, although
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: for us it's also the past, and then for you
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: kind of the future as it relates to us. This
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: is getting confusing. Thank you so much for joining us.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: If you're here for the very Consciousness Week, if you
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: are here for the very first time, then welcome. We
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: are happy to have you. We hope that you enjoy
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: what you hear today and if you are, if you
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: do and you feel like the outcome of that is
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: you like to support us in one way or another,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: you can leave us a rating and review, subscribe, tell
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: a friend, join us over on Patreon, where you'll get
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: all kinds of extra stuff. You can pick up some
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: merchant or merch store or any other thing that might
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: support us, and we'll talk more about some of those
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: at the end of today's discussion. But as I said,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: we are talking about nostalgia. So let's go ahead and
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: define our terms.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: I think, yes, So nostalgia is defined as a sentimental
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: period or a place with happy personal associations. Now that
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: also includes specific experiences that might include things like items
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: or objects that you might be nostalgic about. But ultimately,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: what we're looking at is an emotional response that is
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past related
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: or anchored to some personal association.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: And we're going to distinguish this from reminiscing. But let's
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: continue on this word nostalgia for a moment before we
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: do that, because a lot of people, I think, are
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: interested in the etymology of words, and a lot more
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: people are not. But we're going to tell you anyway.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Nostalgia comes from the Greek words nostos meaning return or homecoming,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: and algos meaning pain. And this is often interpreted as
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: suffering of vogue by a desire to return to one's
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: place of origin. And the term is taken on a
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: broader meaning with sort of less emphasis on the suffering part.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: And we'll get to more of why that is and
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: what's going on there. And it also seems to I
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: think not necessarily refer to home as much like less
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: of a place and more of a time and more
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: modern uses of the term.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Yes. So the term was originally coined by physician Johannes
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Hoffer in sixteen eighty eight. This term is very old.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: It was coined in his dissertation which was called nostalgia
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: or homesickness. It was so like basically he was equating
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: it to being homesick, and he actually introduced the term
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: along with the term mil du pays, which refers to homesickness.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: So the idea originally was that soldiers, Swiss mercenaries specifically,
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: were away from home and he notices phenomenon from these
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: soldiers off at war, these mercenaries off doing the things
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: they were doing, and he noticed like specific anxiety reported
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: by those folks about missing home, being homesick and wanting
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: to return home, so having a fondness for being home
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: as opposed to where they were at.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And these soldiers often seeming like depressed and
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: not wanting to be soldiers anymore and feeling fatigue, and
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: they're withdrawn and potentially even suicidal here and so this
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: seemed like it was a physical malady. He was concerned
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: there was something wrong with their brains. Yes, and we'll
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: get back to that. But there was an early recording
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: of the word used in a journal during the first
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: sojourn of Captain Cook. A name familiar to maybe some,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: maybe more Hawaiians than anyone. Yeah, but for those who
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: were unaware, Captain James Cook was a British explorer, explorer,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: a person who went around peen on things and calling
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: them his own. Yes, he was a naval officer responsible
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: for exploring the Pacific Ocean, and he was specifically tasked
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: with and responsible for the first recorded European contact with
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, which are quite a distance
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: from Australia, but yeah, distance from everything as it were.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: How did his life turn out? Well, he was killed
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: while attempting to take the colony Apuuh hostage, the colony
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: apu ul chief of the island of Hawaii in seventeen
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: seventy nine. My understanding, because where this is not a
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: history episode about Captain Cook, but my understanding about this
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: is that at first, when he came he was very
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: generous kind and sharing with the indigenous peoples of Hawaii.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: I think there was like good trade, general hospitality, some
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: general good feelings, and it was sort of a Trojan
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Horse idea where then he sort of came back and
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: started trying to do the British thing that British do
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: in places where they are Indigenous people are already well
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: established and doing their own thing, and as such he
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: was killed, so you know, it happens.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Now. Back to Johannas Hofer, he originally considered nostalgia from
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: a disease model, which is actually kind of fascinating given
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: it was three hundred years ago. He was looking at
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: this from a disease model, which is really interesting, and
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: he considered the experience of nostalgia as a quote psychological
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: burden on those experiencing it. He originally proposed that the
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: cause of nostalgia was caused by was specifically a quote
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: continuous vibration of animal spirits, which doesn't feel like a
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: disease model but anyway, and that there was quote no
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: remedy other than a return to the homeland end quote.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: So he looked at basically the idea that nostalgia was
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: something to be cured, and that the only way to
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: cure it was to go home.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: The reason that it's kind of interesting that this was
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: looked at as a disease model back in the sixteen
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: hundreds is because back at that time it was very
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: likely that things were treated more at mystically. Anything that
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: was a problem was something that was that was wrong
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: with you, or that was like it was satan causing
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: it was demonic possession, it was the influence of the gods.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: It was bad luck, it was bad air, it was something,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: you know, as opposed to this idea of a being
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: something physiological and biological, although in this case it is
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: kind of a mix because as you said, it's this
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: animal spirits that apparently are causing it. But the whole
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: point of it being like there's something causing this and
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: there is like a way to cure it is sort
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: of what's kind of unique for even back then. Now
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: nostalgia has since evolved into less sort of drastic depression
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: and this homesickness, though emotional responding may be part of
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: the experience, I mean that it kind of is mostly
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: you can even call maybe nostalgia just an emotion, So
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: it is an emotional experience. In most cases, the experience
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: of nostalgia is related to times in our life just earlier,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: and often that means in childhood. Not always, but for
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of people it means when they were younger.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: So for those of us who are nineties kids, and
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: by nineties kids, we mean we were kids in the nineties,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: not that we were born in the nineties. It's a
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: time and a lot of our formative sort of experiences
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: and memories were forming. That was a silly way to
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: say that, but that's what I said.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: That's fine. It's early.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So for as nineties kids, it might be a
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: nostalgia might be for like a time when our internet
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: was bad and everything was neon and we wore gigantic genes.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: I think I have a lot of I feel like
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: I'm not a particular nostalgic person. I don't think I
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: do a lot of nostalgizing. But the things that I
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: reflect on a lot were some of the video games
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: back then. Yeah, and like time spent playing video games,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: playing with my friends. This is way before video games
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: would be like an online experience where you would play
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: with other people across the world. Largely if you were
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: playing you were playing by yourself, or you were playing
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: with two or like one or maybe three other people
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: at most in a small group setting, and other people
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: might even watch.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: I think of times in the nineties where you know,
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: I think about like cable television and the shows I
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: would watch on Nickelodeon, Like I remember, you know, growing
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: up and watching like Wild and Crazy Kids and Legends
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: of the Hidden Temple and always rooting for the Silver Snakes.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: A real Monsters was great. Yeah, And like in those
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: types of moments, but like specifically video games. I remember
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: the first time we got a sega and how awesome
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: that was, and playing Sonic the Hedgehog front to back
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: and discovering that you could get all the Chaos emeralds
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: and become super Sonic. And I remember like specifically, like
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: you know, this is not just reminiscing, like it was
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: really Like I get melancholic because I don't spend as
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: much time with my brother as I used to then
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: when we were playing So the Hedgehog together, sitting in
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: my room, you know, listening to three eleven records and
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: and like having my black light on, like you know,
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: it's like a very specific, like you know, moment in
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: time that I tend to be pretty nostalgic about, but
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: I tend not to, Like I'm like you, I'm not
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: very nostalgic in general, but like, there are things that
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: do show up where I do feel a sense of
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: nostalgia about, like playing in bands and playing like and
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: being able to play music with my friends and going
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: on tour and stuff like that, which is, you know,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: just such a time to be like, just such a
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: unique period of time.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the I completely agree. Another one that occurred
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: to me was was playing in bands, was going on tour,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: was playing shows recording which was very difficult but also
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: like a very interesting and fun experience. And yeah, like
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of fond memories of my relationships with family
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: and friends and stuff, you know, camping, hiking, just spending
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: time with them. I do feel the sense of like, oh,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: you know, thinking back on those times right well.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: And I was gonna say too, one of the things
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: that came up for me a lot, especially back then,
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: was how great the commercials were, like all the toy
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: commercials and how awesome they were as opposed to today
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: where we've got ads and they're just kind of boring.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: All Right, we're back we've been reminiscing ourselves. But let's
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: keep talking about what nostalgia is and not just our
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: own nostalgia, because although as Spotify tells us, most of
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: you listening are from a similar time and as us,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: you're maybe even here to listen to content that's more
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: about a thing you learning new things or refreshing things
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: you know a little bit, and right now we're talking
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: about nostalgia. So, as we mentioned, this is really categorized
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: as an emotion and it is described as a social
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: emotion from maybe Hule Jewel and Biscus twenty twenty three,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: And they go on to illustrate that nostalgia play is
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: an important role in social connectedness, which of course makes
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: a lot of sense because a lot of arma nostalgic
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: memories are with other people, and people share experiences for
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: a different time can bond to those experiences. Mario Kart
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: for example.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: And wrecking your friends in winning the Blueshell creates such
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: a unique social bond.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, the lightning bolt. They also know benefits related
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: to social connectedness, which can include and strengthened relationships, increased
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: help seeking, empathy, and other improved sort of pro social behaviors.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: So there's this whole idea here of this people who
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: are nostalgizing have these other sort of ancillary positive outcomes. Yeah,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: they just they sort of feel better, and like I
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: even saw some that said that they might feel more creative,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: they might have higher self esteem, and so there's like
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: there are some other emotional benefits that are sort of
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: come alongside the experience of nostalgia. And there are caveats
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: to that that we'll get to.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. Doctor Christine Batcho in an interview a podcast interview,
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: had made the argument that there are two types of nostalgia.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: There's personal and historical. Personal nostalgia typically refers to personal
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: experiences that bring about longing or feeling good about specific
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: life experiences or events kind of like what we just
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: did talking about like, oh, we had the specific experience
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: about recording or about you know, about hanging out with
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: our friends or hanging out with our siblings and stuff
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: like that. But then there's also historical nostalgia, which is
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: when we are referring to longing for a period of time,
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: like for us, maybe nineties, if we are going to
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: be nostalgic or a lot of our generation does that
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: but it might be about childhood, it might be about
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: your experience in a specific maybe state or city that
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: you lived in. Like those might be unique to your
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: personal experiences, but there might be historical kind of things
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: that go along inside of those places too. So personal
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: is about those specific life experiences. Historical is all about
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: some historical context or time period or something like that.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: That makes me think of on the TV show Parks
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: and Recreation that I've referenced on here, just so many
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: times when Patton Alswald's character comes on as this like
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: historical society person, yes, and he challenges the character played
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: by Amy Poehler Leslie, challenges her to essentially live as
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: in the olden times, and he constantly asserts times word
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: better back in like the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: I don't remember if he had a specific time period,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: but back before there was like technology in the modern
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: conveniences that people are used to, and he very much
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: romanticized this period of time. And I think certain people
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: do that. I think they look back at time and say, like, oh, well,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: even though I was born in the eighties, man, the
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: fifties would have been a great time to have been alive,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: I guess, and so they they sort of might romanticize
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: this idea of certain periods in history, even if they
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: didn't belong to those periods.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if that isn't the central plot to
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: eleven twenty two sixty three, I do not know what is.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: I mean that book is heavy with like romanticizing a
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: period of time, and like the nostalgia four of the fifties,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: and they in like the late fifties, early sixties.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, But going back to the person on nostalgia
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: thing that actually reminds me of because I talked recently
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: about reading a Christmas Carol for the first time, and
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: the Ghost of Christmas Past is essentially just torturing Scrooge
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: with nostalgia. It's like taking him back to show him, like,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: this is how good your life used to be. Now,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: let's watch it all crumble and fall apart and so right, right,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: even things that were like hard to watch, he sort
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: of has this longing for like being back at that
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: time and place and just watch, you know, how much
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: better his life used to be. So I think a
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: huge chunk of the effect of the moral of the
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Christmas Carol as this ghost of Christmas Past is specifically
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: trying to use nostalgia to show like, look how life,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: how good life used to be. You could have that again,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: Jacob Marley weaponized nostalgia exactly what a mean what a
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: mean thing? You know, And it's funny. On the last episode,
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: I had had a point that I was going to
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: make about at Christmas Carol and Charles Dickens, and I
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: forgot what it was until we stopped recording and we
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: signed off, and I was like, Ah, that was it.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Charles Dickens invented the word creepy.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, we talked about that, I think in
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: our Idioms episode. Yes, yeah, yes, so fun words are fun.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Doctor Alan R. Hirsch, researcher at the Smell and Taste
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Treatment and Research Foundation, argues that nostalgia is less about
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: being attached to a specific memory, but rather the related
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: to the person's emotional state. And it just so happens
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: that emotional state is bound to personal and historical or
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: historical eras, and so that's sort of the idea there.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: And I think it's relevant too because a lot of
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: what we'll get into when we're thinking about how nostalgia
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: works is that is the kind of cues that trigger
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: some nostalgic episode, and smell and taste can be some
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: of those, yeah, some of those cues. But I do
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: want to point out before we move on to talking
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: about how it works, just the difference between like reminiscing
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: in nostalgia and the homesickness in nostalgia, because homesickness is
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: more like suffering. It's like this is unpleasant, I want
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: to go home. And a lot of times anymore, people
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: who are nostalgizing are actually experiencing, as we mentioned, a
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: positive emotion that feels good, right, They're like, ah, I
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: remember that time in life where I remember that time
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: when this happened or whatever, and there's this fondness for it,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: which is definitely different from the feeling of homesickness of
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: just like I hate this. The other was this idea
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: of reminiscing and reminiscing really is just remembering. You can
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: reminisce without being nostalgic and just sort of recall a
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: thing that happened. Reminiscing can lead to a feeling of nostalgia,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: but reminiscing itself is just sort of recalling, remembering, reflecting
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: on things that happened, and then the nostalgia might come
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: in as you start to think about them in a
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: sanitized version where the bad stuff is gone and the
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: good stuff is what you're remembering.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: Right, Absolutely, I think that's that's and thank you for
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: discriminating between those, because I do think it's important. I
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: think a lot of people do recall and share stories
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: and maybe and have like some discussions around stuff. But
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: nostalgia is like there's like a specific emotional response or
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: like collection of emotional respondents that occur when we do
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: have that, Like we do have, like you know, there's
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: a certain like melancholy that goes along with it. So
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: like you might start reminiscing and then get nostalgic, but
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: like there is like a separate like it is important
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: to understand they are separate.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I remember some very specific things that happened
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: when I was in like elementary school, and I might
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: think about those and sort of trying to remember the
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: sequence of events as they played out. But I don't
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: want to go back there. I'm not thinking about this
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: as like a particular level of fondness. I'm just kind
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: of reflecting on what happened, and I think that that's
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: it's just important in thinking about like how we behave
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: with respect to those things, and that when we're again
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: there's this sort of romanticization of the past that can
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: happen sometimes when we're doing nostalgia things, and I think
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: it's important to point out like, nostalgia is not bad.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: It's just a thing that we experience, a thing that
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: we do. And there are some caveats that again we'll
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: need to unpack as we move along through this, but
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: we should first understand how it works.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so how does this work neurologically? I think that
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: we understand that, you know, there's memories tied to this
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: and emotions tied to this, but what actually happens Well,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Nostalgic experiences can stimulate metabolic processes and blood flow into
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: multiple reasons of the brain, including the frontal limbic paralymic
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: in mid brain areas. So the example of music specifically,
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: there tends to be greater activity in the inferior frontal
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: gyris or gyrius or giris, the substantia negra, the cerebellum,
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: and the insula. So different parts of the brain start
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: lightening up what music starts to play, especially in the
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: music that triggers nostalgic feelings.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, very importantly. Music is something that is frequently used
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, in commercials. I think a
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: lot of times they'll specifically try and use music from
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: a particular area to conjure a feeling of nostalgia in
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the audience. Which is not a setup for another ad segue,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: although unfortunately one is coming. But as you can imagine,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of what's going on neurologically has to do
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: with the amygdala totally some point, because that is the
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: part of our brain that helps process memories. And then
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: or sorry, the hippocampus as the part that has the
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: process memories or amgdala that has more to do with
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: our e motions. So like, those are going to be
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: other parts that are really important in what's going on neurologically,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: And it may come as a surprise to some of you,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: but maybe not that because it is a thing that
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: we are doing. It involves our brain. Yeah, and some
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: parts of our brain handle certain operations better or more
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: efficiently than others, and so it involves certain parts of
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: our brain more than others, but involves a lot of
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: our brain. And that's the thing that our brain does so,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: moving on, Yeah, people who tend to have an increased
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: risk of sadness tend to have a stronger nostalgic experiences. However,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: it's not actually the fact that nostalgia is like linked
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: to clinical depression or some other effective disorder. It's David S. Pumpkins,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: as we say, it's its own thing.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the depression it's part of it. Yeah, No,
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: it's actually not part of it. Yeah, a lot of
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: folks have like melancholy like that comes up a lot
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: when it comes to nostalgia, but not like actual clinical depression.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, But what they've essentially found is that in
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: some of the studies they've done, when people read sad stories,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: when they're presented with like existential essays about human life
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: is so utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of the cosmos.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: When they do all that, then people tend to significantly
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: more They sort of are more nostalgic. They wax nostalgic,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: if you will. Yeah, And so it does. When things
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: are unpleasant that are going on, the nostalgia tends to
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: be more likely for many people. And we'll get to
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: again a bit why here in a moment.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: Right now, whenever a nostalgic event happens, like you have
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: that experience, the reward centers of the brain start to
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: light up, for lack of a better term, the hippocampus,
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: the substantial negra, the ventral tegmental area, the ventral stratum
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: are all activated during an episode, as well as the amygdala,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: as well as all these things that are going I mean,
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: your entire brain is working at the same time, like
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: small parts of it, but like your entire brain is
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: working in through this experience because there's so many things
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: that are happening, right, There's emotional states, there are hormonal changes.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: You know, you've got memory recall, you got all these
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: things that are happening at the same time in your
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: brain that are different processes coming together to create this
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: unique experience in this emotion.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, so again just sort of speaking neurologically through the process. Here.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Here's generally how it works. First, a person has to
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: have had some history or experience that included some kind
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: of positive feeling or emotion, or at least that can
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: be superimposed on top of that experience. But usually it's
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: good and involve some reward, and everyone has something like this,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: but it can include things like people, like activities, certain smells,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: certain foods. As we said, music can be a really
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: big one for many people, but they first have to
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: have had an experience with that that has some positive association,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: or at least they can superimpose a positive association on it.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: And then they they contact that cue whatever.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: It might be, right, and then that same individual will
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: many years later contact them some queue in their current environment,
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: like a smell or some visual stimulus, a song, something
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: like that. Smells always get me, even though, and that's
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: and partly because I always say my smeller is broken.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: My sense of smell is pretty terrible. But when I do, yeah,
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: but when I do smell something specific, I'm like, ah,
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: I remember that smell from the tattoo shop, like that
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: very specific smell, or like like the smell of like
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: you know, like I don't want to say mildewy, but
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: like like dirty sweaty clothes Like that always reminds me
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: of like being stuck in a van for several days
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: at a time with like really stinky dudes on tour
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: like that. That always is like, oh, like it's a
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: gross smell, but it also makes me go, oh, yeah,
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: I remember how terrible. That was.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that again just for the sake of pop culture references,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: maybe pop culture. The show's been off the air for
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: a couple of years now, but the TV show The
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Good Place when Kristen Bell's character eleanor they, I think
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: it's when they actually get into the good Place and
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: like that it smells like whatever your favorite emotion is,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: and hers was like the smell of sunscreen and band
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: aids at the wave pool, and it was all about
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: like her growing up at this in this particular place.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: So it was very much a nostalgic scent of like
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the smell of her some part of her childhood that
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: she really enjoyed. Right, But yeah, very very similar thing.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, the contact with whatever the stimulus is, be
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: it the smell or some visual thing or the song whatever,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: that essentially triggers the memory. It sets up the Q
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: and the qques the memory, if you will, and that
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: reminds you of some experience that you might have had.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: And so again it just you start thinking about these things,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: spending time with friends, cooking with a family member, and
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: they often are these social things, not always, but a
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: lot of the times has to do with experiences you
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: had with other people, and in doing so, you experience
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: a complex set of additional emotions. You get to probably
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: get some happiness, there might be a little melancholy and sadness.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: There might be some joy, some fondsness. So there's a
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: lot of different ways that you might go through that
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: experiences there. But essentially, as you have that cue and
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: then you sort of just start behaving with respect to
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: an event as if it were happening when it isn't
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: because you have had an experience with it in the past.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. Speaking of events that will evoke emotions like
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: spending time with your friends, cooking with family members and
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: all that stuff, one thing that always kind of gets
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: me melancholy and a little bit of sad is ads,
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: sad ads.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, Shane, what's the point of talking about
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: nostalgia of nostalgia? I guess yeah. This.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: So, as I was putting together the notes on this,
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: the one thing, the one question I had was like,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: what do we stand to gain from having this particular thing, right, Like,
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: what's the evolutionary benefit of having this? And so is
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: there a point of nostalgia other than feeling sad about
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: not being able to play Pokemon? Red or Blue for
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: the first time. Well, yeah, there are actually some important
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: things that happen here. One argument is that nostalgia is
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: important for social connectedness. By experiencing nostalgia, it offers humans
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: an opportunity to connect with positive past experiences and share,
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: and specifically this point is important share set experiences with
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: other members of their community that might have a similar experience.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: That's why people that belong to specific generations have similar
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: cultural experiences if they've grown up in the same region
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: or maybe the same country, and they can share around
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: and have nostalgia around similar experiences like playing Pokemon Red
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: and Blue for the first time and then selecting your Pokemon,
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: which is always going to be Squirtle. I don't know
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: who else what else you would select, but Squirtle is
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: the one that you would pick.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Fair enough, fair enough.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Another potential function is that it offers some type of
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: reflection about our identified self who we would like to
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: be potentially, and it orients us to how we develop
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: specific skills over time. Basically, it reminds us of sort
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: of how we have become the people that we have become,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: and we might reflect then on some of those watershed
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: experiences the moments in our life that really helped shape us.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: You might think back and say, like, could I have
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: ever turned out to be this thing? Like could I
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: have instead turned out to have been a medical doctor
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: or an astronaut, or a homeless person and an house person,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: a politician, a lawyer, someone who unloads shipping containers or
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: delivers packages or massages or whatever. I'm like, honestly, yeah,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: I could imagine that my life could have been on
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: any one of those paths if intervention had happened at
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: some place along the trajectory of where I ended up.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: So I kind of reflect then on the things that
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: had me end up where I did end up, and
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: just just thinking I reminisced more than anything. But I
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: think some people would see that as with a lot
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: of fondness for like, I'm so happy that this was
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: how this turned out for me.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Absolutely Now, one study found that people who were generally
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: more nostalgic were less susceptible to pain, specifically related to
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: extreme cold. So in this study they found that people
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: who were less nostalgic were more likely to terminate the
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: like these types of cold water bath activities, which are
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: basically just putting your hands in freezing cold water thirty
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: five degrees fahrenheit four degrees celsius, and those people who
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: are less nostalgic would terminate that activity sooner than people
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: who are more nostalgic.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: I think you said forty degrees celsius and you have
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: four degrees celica.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: I meant to say four degrees celsius. Very cold, very cool.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And actually this is something potentially worth doing at
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: least a mini on because this whole like cold ice
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: bath test has used in so so many different pechological studies.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: It's essentially it's like a low stakes pain tolerance test
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: because they can't like physically maim you. Burning you is
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: very destructive and like irreversible, but making you uncomfortably cold
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: that they can do without causing serious lasting damage. And
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: so that tends to be this and I'm jumping ahead
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: to when we do that episode. But anyway, it's just
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: an interesting test that gets used in a crazy number
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: of different places. And again in this one, people who
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: were more nostalgic were more likely to tolerate that extreme cold.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: So I guess colds equals nostalgia.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: Maybe, Yeah, it's.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Nostalgia for warmth and So those are some of the
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: ideas that we've talked about for like why nostalgia might
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: be important, what the point is here. The primary benefits
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: of experiencing nostalgia includes, essentially, as we described before, improvements
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: in your current mood states. As we said, like people
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: tend to be sad are more likely to be a nostalgic,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: and they actually feel better a lot of the time.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: It can improve social connectedness, pro social behavior, preserving cultural
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: identity and heritage, increase your positive self regard and self esteem,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: and just overall general comfort. I actually think that more
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: likely than not in my skeptical worldview, I think nostalgia
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: is a byproduct of our language and our ability to
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: preserve our memories very long term with like a lot
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: of detail. I think that it's not like a specific skill.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: I think it is an inevitable side effect of those
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: processes that are core to sort of who we are.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Like our language as a species is one of our
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: most defining characteristics, and all of us are nostalgia And
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: I think that, like, we couldn't have nostalgia without language,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: and I'm not sure that we could have language and
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: not necessarily get to nostalgia. So I think they're inherently
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: linked to a language I think is the foundation upon
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: which it's built. And I think that more than anything.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: As I said, it's probably like a side effect of that,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: but there are some other positive benefits that come from
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: doing it. So I don't know worth considering there.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, absolutely. Now, I think something that's important,
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: something that we like to do, as we've done for
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: four hundred episodes at this point in time, is that
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: we like to impact the behavioral piece of this. And
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: so now we have an idea of kind of like
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: how the general process is going, but what's actually happening
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: from that behavioral of view, Well, what ends up happening.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: There's this kind of unique thing that happens when we
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: have this triggered event, this this nostalgic episode. It does,
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: in a lot of cases create kind of a unique
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: motivation for us to engage in certain behaviors, maybe to
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: go back in contact whatever that experience is, maybe to
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: start a pioneer art settlement type of situation and have
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: leslie nope, do go ahead and churn butter and all
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: the things that happen in that, you know, like it
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: could be any of those things but it combines motivation
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: with these cues, and these cues signal powerful rewards, and
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: so sometimes like thinking about like, oh I'm in this space,
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: I see somebody playing. As a matter of fact, I
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: just had this experience yesterday. I went to go see
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Sonic the Hedgehog three and the opening crawl shows a
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: bunch of clips from old Sega games and it made
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: me go. It made me go back and go wow, like,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: now I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna turn on
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: my switch because the switch which does have like the
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: Sega app that you can go and play, and I'm
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: gonna go play some Sega games because like it was
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: just like that was such a powerful reward series for me,
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: or like a circumstance for me.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so cool, interesting, what a good idea on their part.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, it was super effective.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So essentially what happens here is that there's some
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: que in your environments, as we've discussed, and that Q
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: is one that it functions as a queue because for you,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: it has historically been linked with a powerful, consistent reward.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Or again, you can sort of superimpose the whatever reward
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: you want onto the meaning of that queue, right, and
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: so that que signals that in a specific context, you
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: will then sort of access that that good feeling that
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: reward there. And this is paired oftentimes with long periods
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: of being deprived of whatever that reward is, meaning that
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: essentially you haven't thought about it or hasn't occurred to you,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: or hasn't shown up in your in your sort of
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: sphere for a while. So it's just been absent. It's
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: not there. But it's not like you forgot about it entirely.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: It's just that there have that que has not been
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: relevant for a while, and that lack of relevance means
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: that the value of the outcome of that queue is
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: now better, yeah, or it's improved, it's more significant, it's
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: more impactful. And so now you've got this perfect cocktail
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: for motivation that will influence you in some way.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I think of specifically when I was a kid,
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: I played baseball and one thing that we do at
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: the end of every one of our baseball seasons as
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: we would go and have like a team party at
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: this place called Extra Pizza in town. And Extra Pizza
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: was really cool because first of all, the pizza was
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: really cheap, like really really cheap for everyone. Yeah, and
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: also it had like a small arcade, and it wasn't
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: like a Chuck E Cheese type of arcade whereas like
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: you get tickets and prizes. It was just like a
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: fun arcade where it had like tech In and Street
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: Fighter and NFL blitz in all these games, right, So
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: like it was like a pizza bar arcade and it
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: was so much fun. And every time I drive by
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: where it used to be, I get that feeling of
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: like melancholy to go, oh, I really wish that I
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: could go. Like I think about talking to my friends
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: and I might text, you know, one of my friends
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: from the baseball team at the time when we were
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: like five or six and just see how they're doing.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Or I might go home and play some of the
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: video games that I can still access that were in
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: the arcades that were there and stuff, or I'll just
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: go get pizza that day. You know, it might be
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: some thing, but like it does do that where I
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: go like, oh, that was a really great time, like
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: and then I go, Okay, you know, here's what I'm
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: gonna do as a result of that, Like now I've
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: got this, Like it might not be the same exact experience,
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: but I am going to connect with some element of
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: that particular memory.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: For me, music is one of the most powerful triggers
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: for like some nostalgic event. And I've probably shared on
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: this podcast before, but there was an album that came
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: out that I got at the same time that I
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: got Halo. I think it was Halo three when that
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: came out an Xbox and I listened to them the
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: album while playing Halo. And so now when I hear
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: songs from that album, I have an almost visceral response
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: to this feeling of like hanging out with my friends
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: playing Halo. So again, I guess it comes back to
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: video games too, But I mean there's others as well.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: There's like songs that remind me of my dad. There
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: are or other music and songs that I hear that
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: just they make me think of a time or place
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: where I was. For me, smell has actually always been
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: one of the weakest because, as you said, I have
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: this very poor sense of smell, and I've also have
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: very few memory cues that are triggered by smells. But
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: there are some. There are some, and when they happen,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: they're usually powerful. But for me, music is a big one,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: and they remind me of people. They remind me of
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: activities a lot of the time, of things that we
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: were doing in some relationships that I've had and stuff. So,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: yeah's an example of that.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: What was your Halo album?
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: It is for This Seems Forever their third album, which
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: I believe was called Light Up Ahead maybe something like
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: that that song on there.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: What disparate experience is? I feel like Halo and Further
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: Seams Forever do not go together. But I get what
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: you're saying, because like I have the same experience with
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: three eleven's Transistor and Mortal Kombat.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Fair fair fair Yeah, oh heiden thing is what it
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: was called. Yeah, that makes sense sense, Yeah, which a
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: lot of people who are big fans for these teas
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: whoever did not care for that album or that singer
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: as much. I thought it was great, But I mean
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: I love all their albums, so yeah, but yeah, that
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: was nothing was the album?
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Oh man? I haven't listened that one a long time?
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it is. They have nothing in common
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: except my experience. That's it. Like nobody else is going
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: to hear that. Ye ever think Hello, it's just because
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: I listened to them while playing like hours and hours
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: on end and listening to it on rape.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely, well, thankfully we don't have to listen
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: to ads hours and hours and hours on ends on
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: an endless loop. We can only get a quick moment
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: with them.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: That's right, thankfully. All right, we're back. We're talking about
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: how the science of nostalgia sort of works when we're
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: thinking about our own sort of behavioral experiences. And what
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: I would think of as a very skeptical point of
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: view here, which is not just say that we don't
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: think nostalgia is a thing. Of course, it's the thing
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: we experience. It's a as I said, I think, a
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: byproduct of our language. But there are so many things
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: that can trigger our nostalgia. There's books, music, movies, TV shows,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: video games, locations, smells, even tactal experiences. These can all
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: sort of trigger our nostalgic episodes, and we might think, why,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: what's my brain doing a lot of stuff, But what's
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: important here is that these contexts have very specific cues
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: that you have learned. Your brain is doing that because
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: you have that history. Someone else's brain is not going
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: to have the same history, so it will not necessarily
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: trigger a nostalgic episode for them, and if it does,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: it'll be different than yours. And that's okay. The important
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: thing here is that what we can predict is if
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: you have an experience with it, it's likely to trigger
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: a nostalgic experience for you. So certain smells might remind
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: us of Grandma's cooking or a specific Thanksgiving that we had,
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: or Christmas or something. The first time that you got
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: tattooed and you smell that smell of like cleaning agent
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: blood and yeah, yeah, soap and blood and rags and
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: the sound of the machine, et cetera. So many that
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: does make tattoos sound really unpleasant.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah it does, it does. But there is like a
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: specific like antiseptic smell when you walk into tattoo shops.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: I feel like it is, yeah, and you.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: Don't really get it in a lot of other places,
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: like in many other places.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so, but there's other's lots of things. You know,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: other locations might trigger memories if you can. For those
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: people who like, moved away from the house that they
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: grew up in as a child, and you've ever gone
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: back to that place, you might be flooded with memories
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: and experiences some of them fond. Some of them maybe not,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: but I bet a lot of them are fairly fond.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: And it's a lot of just like, oh, I remember
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: when this thing happened. I remember doing this, and that's
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: where this thing took place. And there's you also are
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: seeing it through like new older eyes, where you then
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: are are appraising it somewhat differently, like wow, I thought
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: that thing was bigger than it used to be, or
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: even smaller than it actually is, or I remember that
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: looking a little different, but I guess that's how it
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: actually looks. Or this thing that I used to love
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: is not there, but this other thing still is. And
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: so there's like all these different ways that you might
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: you might react to seeing like a childhood home or
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: a park youplate at, or something actually not that long ago.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Visited my childhood home. I guess it was actually a
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: long time ago out that I think about it in
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: many many years, but when I had been so long
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: since i'd been there, and I just had those very
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: again I'm using the word visceral, but it was a
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: very powerful reaction to seeing this place that I'd grown
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: up and had so many memories there, So it triggered
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of those, which was really interesting and even
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: like pictures of a place that you haven't been. Actually,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: probably the better realization I had was I went through
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Zillow and found the house I grew up, and I
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: was looking through pictures of how they've updated the house
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: and was sort of having these nostalgic feelings about what
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: it was, and my memory is there.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: The one thing I think of is like, we always
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: used to go to this park called the All Children's
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: Park here in Daytona, and it was one of those
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: like during that time period where every park was like
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: a wooden castle yea, and like it was like a
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: bunch of wooden structures that were together, like bridges and
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: tunnels and all that. Yeah, And that was the park
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: that we always went to. And like now the like
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: I'll drive by there and there's an ice cream shop
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: across the street, which is like my favorite ice cream shop,
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: but like the park itself has been dismantled and rebuilt
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: into something different. But like I'll see pictures of these
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: old wooden parks and I'm like, man, like that playground
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: was the coolest. I remember the rubber tires and how
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: they smelled, and like the mulch and how they was
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: uncomfortable and like all the stuff that like it like
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: that all comes back and you're like wow, like have
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: a very powerful reaction to it, you know.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: And the signs of Saint Matt Gates keep at least
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: one hundred feet away.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: That's two.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: That's two. You mentioned a playground in Florida. I'm gonna take.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Yea yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's yeah. That's not a
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: dating site for him.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: Nice moving on, all right, De Oliviera Santini or something
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: of that nature in twenty twenty three. So this is
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: an article they suggest that it might not always produce
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: a specific future motivation. Here objects may not have much
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: of an effect, but specific events may actually produce greater
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: sort of incentive and motivation to a nostalgize and therefore
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: change in behavioral intentions. And so they're sort of talking
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: like less about it being these consistent I think outcomes
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: as there are going to be these and unfolding of
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: a context that then creates the motivations not just like
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: a very specific isolated thing, but the development of like
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: a sort of robust cue is how I read that.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: Basically, what they're saying is like a singular object, Like
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: if somebody handed you with teddy ruxpin, you might not
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: have like a specific reacted to it. You might be
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: think like it's very cool, but like that might be it.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: But like if you have, like if you had a
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: specific experience with that, like you and a sibling thought
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: over it, or that you held on to it during
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: a vacation and you had this whole experience around that,
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: then that's more likely what's going to happen. It's going
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: to be that object plus whatever significant context that occurred
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: in or whatever event it occurred with, not just the
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: object itself. And that's kind of what they were getting
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: out with that. And it doesn't always produce a motivation
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: to do something. It might produce an emotional response, but
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: not a motivation to change your behavior in particular ways.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: It's like if you find the IV bag you had
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: while you were in the hospital with smallpox that almost
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: killed you because Andrew Wakefield convinced your parents that giving
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: you a vaccinestism, and so as you laid dying on
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: the hospital, you sat there gazing at this IV bag
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: that was helping to keep you alive, and then you
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: took that home with you and then when you reflect
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: on it, you think, thank god I didn't die, and
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: hopefully no one else has to from a preventable disease
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: like smallpox, yes exactly, beazels or mumps or yes, covid.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the general experience that everybody has had, yes, yeh, or.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: The flu or singles. Not that all of those are
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: fatal for a lot of people, but you know, being
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: sick sucks and we can avoid it. Yep, exactly, I
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: managed to shoehorn in vaccines. Good job me, Yeah, that
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: was good.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look at us, Like, we didn't even include that
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: in the intro. Now Winingarten and Why and twenty twenty three,
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: they found that nostalgia plays a significant role in consumer behavior,
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: specifically and marketing. The use of nostalgia can move consumer
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: behavior toward certain products by evoking emotional responses in those
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: which with the means to purchase. So basically, this is
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: why we're starting to see movie reboots and sequels and
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: shows returning to air and reruns. We start seeing collector
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: items for the things that we are nostalgic for. I
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: mean they like truly Ninja Turtles exists on almost purely
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: on nostalgia, Like in what has happened is like every
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: few years, a new Ninja Turtles thing will come out
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: and our generations like yes, and then we expose our
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: kids to it, and then they get it, and then
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: it becomes nostalgia over and over, creating new nostalgic moments
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: as a result of that. But that's a lot of
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: why we're seeing kind of like these legacy sequels and
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: seeing like these like returns to properties from when we
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: were kids that people really want to see.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Speaking of which, did you see the trailer for the
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: reboot of Superman?
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: Uh? Yeah, it looks great.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: It does look so, it looks so good.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: I am fully in.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I was like, oh, another Superman reboot. I'm like,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: I'm not that old, and we've been through like five
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: of these, and then I saw the trender was like, oh,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: never mind, this looks amazing.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, never mind, I'm fully in.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent. Two of the things I want
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: to say about nostalgia really quick before we sort of
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: move on to our interesting tid points, if you will,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: I've taken a.
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: Still very funny. I love it.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it still still tickles me. One is that I
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: think one of the things that we've talked about in
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: here that makes a lot of sense, and understanding how
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: and why this works is that in a lot of
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: these circumstances, when people are nostalgic, it tends to be
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: that something sucks going on in their lives at that moment,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: or it's like the culmination of things building to that,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: and they're much more likely to engage in nostalgia when
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: things are sucking for them. And so to me, that
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: indicates that essentially nostalgia is an escape for at least
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: in those contexts, because like a lot of these, there's
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: just a queor an event that takes place, and people
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: then are sort of reminiscing, like if you visit your
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: child at home. You don't necessarily do so because you're sad,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: but you get there and you are flooded with this
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: wave of like experiences and thoughts and emotions from growing
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: up and whatnot. But there are also times when things
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: are going on that are unpleasant, and those people are
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: more likely to be nostalgic in those spaces, And so
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense that in that particular situation,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: you have an aversive context and you are making yourself
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: feel better getting out of that aversive situation by reflecting
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: on something that is one familiar to you because you
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: have that experience, and two is better than your current experience.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: So it's not like you're reflecting on things that were terrible.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: And it seems a little counterintuitive because you might be
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: thinking like, ugh, I wish things were as good as
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: they were back then. But weirdly, the effect seems to
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: be that people mostly feel better. They mostly they feel okay,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: and they it lightens the sort of experience a bit
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: for them, and I think it's because they get to
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: step away from something distressing and sanitize some version of
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: history that feels good. And so it doesn't matter that
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: it would could potentially create that longing. What matters is
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: that it alleviates the unpleasantness of their current situation and
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: replaces it with something more positive for them. And so
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: I think that a lot of the time when people
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: are nostalgizing, which apparently is a real word, I've been
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: using it a lot, but I thought i'd point that
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: out because people would think I'm just making it up
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: to sound funny, and it sounds funny, and that's why
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: I like to use it does sound funny, and that's
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: why I like to use it, but it is a
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: real word, I believe, as far as I could find.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: But anyway, the whole point being that I think that
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: there is a lot of inherent reinforcement and reward built
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: into this idea that if you can escape something that sucks,
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: then if you're in a situation that sucks, what are
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: you going to do? And like escape is often going
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: to be the thing. And if you can't change what
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: that queue is doing or what that situation is doing
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: for you, and like how the what the queue is,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: then where are you going to go? Like going out
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: into like a fantasy alternate reality where you've never been before.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: It could look psychopathic and could potentially be pathological if
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: you can't tell the difference between reality and the present.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: My escape was always books. I loved to dig into
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: some world created by an author, even if it was
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: slightly different from my own, or if it was something
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: completely fantastical and way outside of where I was. That
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: was my escape. But I can imagine for other people
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: they just want to go to a place that's familiar
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: and that's their escape, right and so they wanted to
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: go back and look and reflect on periods of times
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: that they felt better. And that makes a lot of sense,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: I think, and thinking about how and why people would
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: engage this and the way that they do, because most
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: people do look at it fondly, and I think that
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: when you're getting out of situations that are pleasant, feeling
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: better is what people are going to seek out. Very naturally,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: it makes sense that they would do that.
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: The other thing I wanted to add, though, is that
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: there is a point at which, because I keep saying
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: those caveats here and there is a point at which
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: this becomes problematic. We talked about this idea of like
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: personal nostalgia and then historical nostalgia, and I saw another
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: term that was thrown out there, which was pathological nostalgia.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: It was essentially this idea where people become so obsessed
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: with reminiscent, well not just reminiscing, but like so obsessed
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: with the pursuit of the feeling and the ideas that
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: they have around this idealized past that it's this It
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: creates this irreconcilable contrast between that past, that idealized past,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: in their current situation, where it's just I'm desperate to
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: get back there and I'm actually now more miserable by
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: the fact that it's so out of reach I can't
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: get it back. And I think there is there has
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: long been a campaign that more recently has I think
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: ever since twenty sixteen, really has been a central focus
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: for a lot of people of like get back to
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: this idealized past. Things were so much better then, And
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: it is I think toxic. It is problematic, and it
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: is pathological. It is this obsession with a time that
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: will never get back again ever, and not that it
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: was really that good to begin with, you like remembering
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: the good parts and throwing out the bad, and so
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: there is. While there are some benefits to nostalgia, it
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: can cross the line into problematic when you do it
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: when you are not engaging in appropriate coping strategies and
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: are just fantasizing about this past that never really existed,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: but like you have these really really fond feelings for
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: and it becomes like like seeking, like drug seeking, like
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: a heroin addict, you know.
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: Why, Chasing the dragon.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: Chasing the dragon. Yeah, that is like the past, these
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: nostalgic episodes. So those are just a couple of things
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: I wanted to sort of throw out there as these
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: ideas of like, I think that the idea of escape
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: is a really powerful reward for people in situations where
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: things are unpleasant, and that the place that it's easy
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: to escape to is is nostalgia, some fantasized or remote
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: romanticized version of the past. And the other is that
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: it can become pathological to the point where it's no
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: longer feeling good, it's actually feeling worse.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: Speaking of the pathological piece, I think one of the
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: things that we do that is pretty pathological is that
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: we keep coming up with ad segment breaks because we
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: are having fun with them. But it might actually be harmful.
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: I don't know, but here's another id break regardless.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: All right, well, let's get to some of the interesting
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: tidbits things that we found that are worth talking about.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: Perhaps you might have noticed that politicians will often use
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: nostalgia as a political tool, and they do they use
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: political and kind of what Abraham was just saying about,
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: like kind of idealizing a time that you know was
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: not actually how it was. So how do they do this? Well,
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: when someone's running for office, they might leverage the idea
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: of an idealized past or a time where things work
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: better quote unquote and they'll use this and link those
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: experiences with specific figureheads at the time, like, oh, during
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: this time, during this administration, during this blank, it was
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: better because of blank. And they'll start kind of trying
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: to pull up people's emotional like it's an appeal to
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: emotion effectively. Yeah, and then today you have make America
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: great again or whatever it is that they're using these days.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, some people have started using the term forstalgia, which
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: refers to longing or similar motions to nostalgia, but as
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: it relates to future events. But I think we might
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: argue that this is just an emotional response to potential
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: expectations or anticipation. It's like high level optimism.
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: Maybe.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there are some folks who are looking at this
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: as a related phenomenon. But I mean, I think you
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: can romanticize any period of time that is not now,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: but it's really difficult to actually latch onto memory of
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: a thing that hasn't happened yet, right, So I think
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: you can be zealously optimistic about the future, and to me,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: that's pretty different than living into or behaving with respect
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: to a queue that reminds you of your past. I
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: think they have different functions. I think they have different
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: mechanisms of like how they work. So I'm not sure
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: that I buy the forstalgia as being really a thing,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: at least not a thing related to that directly to nostalgia.
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm there with you. I didn't really find any
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: research that said that it was an actual thing. So,
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: but people are starting to use that term because I
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: think people like to make new terms.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna call it zealous optimism.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna call it excitement, right, even better simple?
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, nostalgia tends have written high during major transitional
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: periods like moving out on your own, from dependence to independence,
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: starting a family, moving from productive middle aged to seniority.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: There's lots of different experience is nostalgia has happened in
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: those spaces, So it is just something to kind of
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: look out for that it does pop up and just
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: be mindful of.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think those of you who are in
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: this age group might know, and those are you who
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: are close to this age group might remember. But apparently
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: it kind of surprised me, and I think looking back,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: I actually did have this, like as you are moving
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: out of the house for the first time, and you're
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: like going out into the world to be an adult
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: on your own. Thinking back, it's fairly common for people
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: to think back on their childhoods and be like, this
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: wonderful time when when life was so easy and I
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: didn't actually have responsibilities and whatnot, when at the time
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: it felt like it was chaos and misery. Right, But
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: then you're out on your own thinking back, going, oh,
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: what a great time that was. And it apparently very
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: similar when you sort of retire, when you were moving
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: out of the workforce and into your golden years to
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: do whatever of looking back on your youth, maybe your childhood,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: maybe your middle years. I don't know, but like, apparently
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: it's fairly common for nostalgia to take place during those
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: big transitional periods as well. Absolutely well, I think we
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: I hope we have quenched the thirst of interest in
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: nostalgia that maybe people have. And yeah, four hundred episodes. Congratulations, Thanks,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: thanks for being with me on this journey, Shane.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for having me. This has been great. Hopefully
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: people are still digging it. And here's to four hundred
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: more at least.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, maybe six hundred more. We'll get to one thousand.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: Happy to have made it as far as we've made it,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: regardless of what happens, and happy to have been able
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: to do so much as this journey with my friend
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: Shane and with all of you.
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: Listeners likewise, Oh, it's been such a good time.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: Well, we like to recommend some things. They're often unrelated
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: to our topic at hand, and so we're going to
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: give some recommendations. But before we do that, I should
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: first tell you that if you would like to support
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: the show, you could pick up some merchant a merch store,
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: We've got all kinds of goodies over there. You can
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: join us on Patreon where you become sort of a
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: monthly subscriber of the Cool Kids Club, and when you
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: do that that you get extra But depending on what
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: level at what you sign up, you can get all
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: these benefits like ad free episodes, early episodes, notes, videos,
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff that's behind the scenes content. And
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: also if for our full length episodes, I will call
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: out your name as an homage or not homage, but
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: like a recognition of your generosity and your support and
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: the people who deserve to have that read every single
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: week because of their awesomeness is Mike m Megan, Mike
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: t Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian Ashley, and Kiara.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: Thank you all for your continued support. You are really
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: wonderful and we appreciate.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: You truly the best of the best, and you too.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: If I did not read your name, well then you
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: can head over there and sign up and I will
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: read your name, and that's the thing that could happen.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: But also the team of people that help make this
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: podcast a podcast includes writing fact checking from Shane, Katie
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: and myself. Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: our audio engineer who does all of the good sounds
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: is Justin. So thank you to my team. Thank you
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: for recording with me today.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: Shane, Hey, anytime, Happy to be here.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: Of course I really appreciate and need all of our audience,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: So thank you all so much for listen, for being here.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: And now if you don't mind, I'd like to recommend
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: some things recommendations.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to recommend a website and it's more
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: of a distributor than it is a like a single product,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: and that is Heatonist dot com h E A T
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: O N I S T dot com.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: Not to be confused with hedonist.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, very different experience. But this is for all
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: of your hot sauce needs. Now why am I bringing
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: this up? Well, I've ordered a couple times from this website,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: and every time I've ordered from this website it has
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: been truly wonderful. They have a great assortment of hot
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: sauces if you like that sort of thing. They're often
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: promoted on Hot Ones and I do enjoy that show.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: But right now I'm looking at like they have a
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: Dill Pickle Serrano hot sauce, which is probably really interesting.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: The band Corn has their own hot sauce on here,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: which is straight.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: Does it have corn in it? I don't think so
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: missed opportunity.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: Missed opportunity, That's what I'm saying. And there is an
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: Everything Bagel hot sauce from a secret handshake food company.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: So the thing that I would say that's really cool
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: about this is it's not a single brand. It's it's
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: like a distributor. So they have so many different companies
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: that have created hot sauce and are selling it through
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: this website, and it's really cool to see. So I
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: personally recommend I just got one from there called road
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: Dog which is really good, and the hot Ones Hot Sauce.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: The Los Caliente Severe Day is very good as well.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: But you know, it's fun, it's fun to play around
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: with and so there's some cool stuff there and I
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: definitely recommend grabbing something from there and just enjoying it.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: You know, fantastic love that. Yeah, all right, I mentioned
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: this so many times. I'm going to mention it again.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: And this is pretty uncharacteristic for me because I do
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: not do social media, but I'm recommending the new so
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: well new Ish. I've been around for a little bit,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: but it's it is gaining in popularity, and that is
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: the blue Sky social media are a blue Ski is
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: how if you were to write it out the websites
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: likebsky dot app but blue Ski or blue Sky is
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: this this gaining and popularity social platform. I feel like
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: it is simple, it's efficient, it is streamlined. It feels
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: like a positive place to be where like it just
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: is a well curated has really good tools for sort
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: of optimizing your feed, for allowing you to explore and
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: also get the kind of content that you're looking for.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: Although I'm not a big social media user in general,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: I have found this to be a pretty good platform.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: And I'm and the podcast is on it, were happy
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: to be on it, happy to be interacting with people there.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: So if you haven't checked it out yet, then I
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: recommend that you go over and check it out and
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: let that be the thing that replaces Twitter, slash x
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: for you and maybe even Facebook and threads and I
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: don't know, Instagram has got a lot of pictures on
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: there that people enjoy but like. But some of those
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: others I think people are have cooled on quite a bit,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: and so I think there's some there's some good stuff
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: going on over at Blue Sky. If you're looking for
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: something new, you could do worse than that.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: Yep, one PC agree.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: Cool All right, Well, speaking of go check us out
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: over on Blue Sky. You can join us over there.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Our handle is at wwdwwdpodcast dot, bsky dot social and
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: I've so far been posting our episodes and I'm thinking
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: of posting some other sort of trivia type content or
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: questions or something. I don't know. I think I'll figure
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: something else out. But that's that's what's going on over there,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: and then lots of people doing stuff. But you can
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: also reach us to talk to us. About your experiences
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: with nostalgia. We love to hear those, and if you
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: write us something interesting, we might also read it to
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: other listeners of this podcast and read it on air
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: if you will, and so you can email us directly
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com. We're on other social media
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: platforms too, so you can find us there. And then again,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: thank you to my team, Thank you everyone for listening.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: Is there anything that you would like to add or
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: anything that I forgot before we close this one out?
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: Shane, Uh nope, I am good.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: All right, Cheers to four hundred episodes. Thanks for being
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: with us on this journey, happy to have done it.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: Thank you to Justin and the team for all that
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: they do. And I think that's it. So this is Abraham,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: this is Shane. We're out.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: Siya.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: Here's the four hundred more you've been listening to Why
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: we do what we do.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: we hope you have an awesome day,