Transcript

Smile · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck
0:14
Speaker 2: Jersey too. This is stuff you should know. What in
0:20
Speaker 2: the world is that I'm smiling from a year grinning
0:25
Speaker 2: and when I grin, my teeth come together look a
0:29
Speaker 2: bear trap.
0:31
Speaker 3: Well, if you're smiling, I bet it's because we are
0:33
Speaker 3: headed out to see everybody hm on a five nights
0:37
Speaker 3: adults only rare voyage with Virgin Voyages. This is October
0:42
Speaker 3: second through seventh, from New York City to Bermuda. We
0:45
Speaker 3: will be doing our live show and we will be
0:47
Speaker 3: joined by our colleagues and our old pals. Stuff they
0:51
Speaker 3: don't want you to know and stuff Mom never told you.
0:54
Speaker 2: That's right. So we are going to be there from
0:57
Speaker 2: October second to seventh. I'm going to be on that
1:00
Speaker 2: boat to Bermuda from New York and back. And you
1:05
Speaker 2: can get more information where Chuck.
1:07
Speaker 3: At Virgin Voyages dot com slash stuff. Come on hang
1:11
Speaker 3: out with us on a boat.
1:12
Speaker 2: Very nice. Yeah, I think we should specify you shouldn't
1:16
Speaker 2: expect to be able to get runner with us because
1:19
Speaker 2: you know we're happily married.
1:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, And what happens at sea doesn't just
1:24
Speaker 3: stay at sea. That travels back home and you get divorced.
1:27
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, and you have to go to the
1:30
Speaker 2: doctor sometimes too.
1:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't want that.
1:33
Speaker 2: So we're talking today about smiling. I think it's appropriate
1:38
Speaker 2: that I said I'm happily married because you me actually
1:40
Speaker 2: requested this so long ago that when I went to
1:43
Speaker 2: her last week and was like, do you remember what
1:46
Speaker 2: prompted you to request smiling a long time ago? And
1:50
Speaker 2: she's like, I don't remember requesting smiling. So yeah, it'll
1:53
Speaker 2: forever be a mystery. But I'm glad that we're doing
1:56
Speaker 2: this one because we've done like all sorts of other
1:59
Speaker 2: stuff laughing discuss the scream forgiveness, Like there's just this
2:06
Speaker 2: whole like aspect of human personality. Sweet that is just
2:11
Speaker 2: kind of slowly assembling into one great person, you know.
2:15
Speaker 1: That's right.
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Speaker 3: And we did an episode in the early days, I
2:18
Speaker 3: think when we were but three years old, we were
2:20
Speaker 3: podcast toddlers, Yeah, on whether or not smiling makes you happy.
2:23
Speaker 3: So we're gonna recover a bit of that toward the end.
2:26
Speaker 3: Little but we should probably start out by letting everyone
2:30
Speaker 3: know that you use muscles when you smile.
2:33
Speaker 1: It is all muscle movement.
2:35
Speaker 3: And if you want to compare a smile to like
2:38
Speaker 3: other dumb, boring muscles, the reason you can smile and
2:43
Speaker 3: make like weird kind of faces just because you have
2:46
Speaker 3: a lot of fast twitch myosin fibers in your face. Yeah,
2:49
Speaker 3: and that's why you can. Like, that's why you can't
2:51
Speaker 3: make a face with your bicep.
2:54
Speaker 2: I kind of can. It looks like a messed up face,
2:58
Speaker 2: but it's still somebody. It would be like, I see
3:01
Speaker 2: the face in there. It looks a little like mister Bill.
3:03
Speaker 3: Now you can make a kick drum beat when you
3:05
Speaker 3: flex those babies.
3:07
Speaker 2: That's with my other one, So like I make mister
3:09
Speaker 2: Bill's mouth open and close to the kick drum beat
3:12
Speaker 2: from my other bicep.
3:15
Speaker 3: But how do we compare to our primate friends?
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Speaker 2: Oh? Well, actually, it turns out, Chuck, I thought this
3:21
Speaker 2: was quite interesting that our primates are actually our primate
3:25
Speaker 2: friends are actually more expressive facially because they don't speak.
3:30
Speaker 1: That's right, that's.
3:31
Speaker 2: The idea behind the whole thing. We do know that
3:34
Speaker 2: primates typically are more expressive through their faces than humans are,
3:38
Speaker 2: and that the idea behind it, or the explanation for
3:41
Speaker 2: it is that humans require more slow twitch muscles, the
3:45
Speaker 2: bigger muscles to talk, to move our faces in our
3:48
Speaker 2: mouths to talk, which primates don't have to do. So
3:52
Speaker 2: we essentially, basically our fast twitch muscles evolved into more
3:58
Speaker 2: slow twitch muscles. But we're still pretty expressive. So don't
4:02
Speaker 2: be too sad.
4:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
4:05
Speaker 3: If you've ever you know, heard people say it takes
4:07
Speaker 3: more muscles to frown than it does to smile, first
4:10
Speaker 3: of all, lightly slap that person in the face with
4:13
Speaker 3: a feather. Next, move along and say, you know what,
4:17
Speaker 3: prove it because I looked and I couldn't. You know,
4:22
Speaker 3: first of all, it's a very nuanced thing, like there
4:23
Speaker 3: are a lot of different smiles and a lot of
4:25
Speaker 3: different frowns. Yeah, that's a big point, and each of
4:27
Speaker 3: those different ones, like you know, takes different muscles to
4:31
Speaker 3: make those. So for someone just to sort of flatly say,
4:34
Speaker 3: you know, it takes twenty two muscles to smile and
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Speaker 3: a hundred to frown, right, that's I can't couldn't find
4:42
Speaker 3: anything that could verify that is true. Or like I
4:47
Speaker 3: guess the message that they're sending is don't use your muscles.
4:49
Speaker 3: It's better to not use your muscles.
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Speaker 2: Right, Why bother just smile? Yeah, it's funny. I looked
4:56
Speaker 2: all over too, and all I could find were dentists' websites,
4:59
Speaker 2: which were pretty pretty competent about that as.
5:02
Speaker 1: Right back, Well, four out of five work.
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Speaker 2: But you said that your you're that was great? Uh?
5:09
Speaker 2: You said that your your smiles all include muscles, and
5:13
Speaker 2: not just yours, chuck, but all people's. That's right, and
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Speaker 2: it includes a very particular muscle, I think one on
5:19
Speaker 2: each side, the zygomaticus major. These actually pull your your
5:26
Speaker 2: the sides of your mouth up. So I guess the
5:29
Speaker 2: joker when his face was slashed, it somehow made his
5:34
Speaker 2: zygomatic kiss major constantly contracted.
5:40
Speaker 1: That's right.
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Speaker 2: I just want to say, I'm not sure what's wrong
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Speaker 2: with me right now. I realize that I'm stammering and
5:45
Speaker 2: having a lot of trouble. Hopefully my brain will reset
5:49
Speaker 2: while you're talking next.
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Speaker 3: Now I have but noticing that I think you're doing great.
5:53
Speaker 3: So there are actual people who and boy, they've done
5:56
Speaker 3: a lot of research on smiling and stuff. As we go,
5:59
Speaker 3: like you'll probably be at how much time and money
6:02
Speaker 3: people have put into this kind of thing. But they
6:05
Speaker 3: have done research and actually sort of like coded the
6:09
Speaker 3: face and the system of muscles, so they know like
6:13
Speaker 3: what each group does, the facial action coding system what
6:17
Speaker 3: it's called the facts, just the facts.
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Speaker 2: I'm going with faces.
6:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, they couldn't come up with a knee.
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Speaker 2: I think it's implied.
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Speaker 3: Okay, I'm gonna go with just the faces then.
6:30
Speaker 2: Okay.
6:31
Speaker 3: So they, like I said, they made various codes for
6:33
Speaker 3: these muscle movements and assign like names to them. And
6:37
Speaker 3: they know that all smiles involve action unit twelve, which
6:41
Speaker 3: is both of those zygomaticus major muscles contracting, and you
6:45
Speaker 3: know you said, they raise them up or they also
6:47
Speaker 3: raise them out because you'll see, when you smile your smile,
6:50
Speaker 3: your mouth gets wider as well.
6:52
Speaker 2: And the whole world smiles with you.
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Speaker 1: That's right.
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Speaker 3: But if you're really happy and you're not, and we'll
6:59
Speaker 3: talk about the different kinds of smiles, like including fake smiles,
7:02
Speaker 3: but if you're really genuinely happy with something and smiling
7:05
Speaker 3: from joy or you know, being alive, that means your
7:09
Speaker 3: eyes are involved, and that is action unit six.
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Speaker 2: Yes, so a couple of things here. Action unit twelve
7:18
Speaker 2: I think is the pinnacle of band names that we've
7:21
Speaker 2: ever covered.
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Speaker 3: It's pretty darn good.
7:24
Speaker 2: Not only is a great name if you dig into
7:27
Speaker 2: what it means, you're talking about smiling. It's the name
7:30
Speaker 2: for smiling, so that's pretty awesome, but it also has
7:33
Speaker 2: a built in abbreviation that's great too, AU twelve, maybe
7:36
Speaker 2: even AU one two.
7:38
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so you've got on a logo or whatever.
7:41
Speaker 2: I really genuinely think that is the best band name
7:44
Speaker 2: we've ever stumbled upon.
7:46
Speaker 3: So did that just unseed Frozen Poop Knife?
7:50
Speaker 2: I think so they could go on tour together? But
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Speaker 2: does that mean we retire this bit I don't know
7:57
Speaker 2: chuck as possible.
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Speaker 3: Well, well, here's the deal, I think if we if
8:01
Speaker 3: we don't retire it, we will just have to mention
8:04
Speaker 3: almost every time from now unlike but it's no AU twelve.
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Speaker 2: Okay, okay, but yes, all apologies to Frozen Poop Knife.
8:11
Speaker 2: We will will never forget you and we'll bring you
8:13
Speaker 2: up still.
8:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, they just kicked over their kick drum.
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Speaker 2: So the no, that was my bicep. So if you
8:21
Speaker 2: take Action Unit twelve and Action Unit six together, that's
8:25
Speaker 2: what's known as the Duchen Smile and We definitely talked
8:29
Speaker 2: about Gillom Duschen in our Can Smiling Make You Happy? Episode?
8:35
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, And in fact I think we called them
8:37
Speaker 3: Dushane because the the translator spelled it whacky. How oh,
8:45
Speaker 3: I mean different things kine k A I n E,
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Speaker 3: Shane s h A n E. That's two different names. Yeah,
8:54
Speaker 3: it's you know, go aa translator, I guess.
8:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we're gonna go with g Duschen this time,
9:01
Speaker 2: who was a French neurologist. He also was dabbling with
9:05
Speaker 2: electricity and photography. I saw that he basically existed at
9:10
Speaker 2: this neat crossroad of three emergent sciences that were coming
9:16
Speaker 2: out at the same time. This guy put them all
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Speaker 2: the use and he stimulated people's facial muscles with electricity.
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Speaker 2: There's an extensive set of photographs of him doing this
9:26
Speaker 2: to this poor guy. And this guy's making all these
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Speaker 2: weird facial expressions and Dushen is coating all of them.
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Speaker 2: But it's kind of hysterical to think that, like, this
9:39
Speaker 2: guy's not purposely making these He's being zapped with electricity
9:43
Speaker 2: and that's what's making them because the correct muscle combination
9:47
Speaker 2: is being zapped. Right then by Duschen.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty funny stuff.
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Speaker 3: So he claimed, and this was sort of a and
9:54
Speaker 3: I think people thought this was true for a while.
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Speaker 3: Was you know this notion that you can you can
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Speaker 3: tell a fake smile by the eyes, and that's sort
10:02
Speaker 3: of the dead giveaway. And he may have not reinforced it,
10:06
Speaker 3: but he may have sort of planted that seed when
10:09
Speaker 3: he said that the orbicularis oculi, which is action unit
10:13
Speaker 3: six that we talked about the eyes that would only
10:15
Speaker 3: contract due to the sweet emotions of the soul, which
10:19
Speaker 3: is a very nice thing to say, but it turns
10:21
Speaker 3: out that's probably not true.
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Speaker 2: No people can, including Tyra Banks, can make yourself or
10:31
Speaker 2: make themselves up'm sorry, smile with their eyes. But there
10:35
Speaker 2: does seem to be some disagreement on whether that can
10:38
Speaker 2: fully be ever fully be reproduced voluntarily. And I like
10:43
Speaker 2: to think that it can't be that there's still some
10:45
Speaker 2: smile out there that's so genuine that it can't voluntarily
10:49
Speaker 2: be reproduced fully.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think what the deal is is there are
10:53
Speaker 3: some people who are probably so good at the fake
10:55
Speaker 3: smile that you just don't realize it.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, be aware of those people.
11:00
Speaker 3: Of those things can be true I think what you
11:01
Speaker 3: said is definitely true.
11:03
Speaker 2: Thanks. Man. I want to say one other thing about
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Speaker 2: AU six Action Unit six. If you go and look
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Speaker 2: at the faces, coatings or facts, it's just like strips
11:16
Speaker 2: of like the mouth or the eyes or something like that.
11:20
Speaker 2: And for Action Unit six, it is a strip of
11:23
Speaker 2: my eyes. It is very clearly somebody took my photo
11:27
Speaker 2: and just cut out the eyes. Wow, and it's just
11:30
Speaker 2: showing that it looks exactly like my eyes. Dude, you
11:33
Speaker 2: should go look.
11:34
Speaker 1: Send me a screenshot. I'm not going to look it up.
11:36
Speaker 2: Okay, I will eventually see.
11:38
Speaker 1: That's the agreement we came to.
11:40
Speaker 2: Okay, I think that's fair enough.
11:42
Speaker 3: Two guys who do research for a living. You can't
11:44
Speaker 3: make the other one look anything up.
11:46
Speaker 2: No, we just send screenshot.
11:49
Speaker 3: So if we're talking about evolution, like, it's a pretty
11:53
Speaker 3: human thing to just you know, be alive in the
11:57
Speaker 3: world and smile because you're feeling good and having a
12:00
Speaker 3: good day. If you look at something in the like
12:03
Speaker 3: a somebody from the primate kingdom and you see that
12:07
Speaker 3: teeth like you, man, I've seen those chimpanzees beare those
12:09
Speaker 3: teeth and everyone's like, oh, they're so happy and that's
12:14
Speaker 3: actually not what they're trying to say to you, And
12:16
Speaker 3: it doesn't mean they're trying to kill you right then either.
12:18
Speaker 3: But it's a sign of submission, apparently.
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Speaker 1: I don't know.
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Speaker 3: I always I didn't. Never took it as they always
12:26
Speaker 3: look stressed out to me, like when I see a
12:28
Speaker 3: chimpanzee bear their teeth like that.
12:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen them. It depends on I think it
12:34
Speaker 2: depends on the rest of the face, because I can
12:36
Speaker 2: bring to mind images of chimps doing that. The one
12:39
Speaker 2: I bring to mind more is Clyde from every which
12:42
Speaker 2: Way but Loose doing that orangutang.
12:44
Speaker 1: Yeah.
12:44
Speaker 2: Man, he definitely did that, and he didn't seem stressed out,
12:47
Speaker 2: but they definitely played it like he was laughing or
12:49
Speaker 2: something like that, and he surely wasn't.
12:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
12:52
Speaker 2: One of the things about that, though Chuck is smiling
12:55
Speaker 2: through submission, that is that still survived into humans for sure.
13:00
Speaker 2: Like that is something that we do not just to
13:03
Speaker 2: say like you're an alpha, I'm a beta, but also
13:07
Speaker 2: to say like, hey, I just want to get along,
13:10
Speaker 2: no stress over here, yeah, yeah, or you know, to
13:15
Speaker 2: to basically not be tense or if an awkward pause
13:19
Speaker 2: comes both people might kind of smile or something like that.
13:22
Speaker 2: All of that is essentially the same thing as a
13:24
Speaker 2: chimp smiling to signal submission.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
13:28
Speaker 3: There was a paper in nineteen seventy nine, a pretty
13:30
Speaker 3: classic smiling paper where these psychologists Robert Crouton, Robert Johnston,
13:35
Speaker 3: they were notating how people reacted when they went bowling
13:39
Speaker 3: together and found they were more likely to smile when
13:41
Speaker 3: just like hanging out and talking than after getting a strike, which,
13:46
Speaker 3: like that totally tracks because like when you get a strike, you're.
13:48
Speaker 1: Supposed to be that cool, like you meant to do that.
13:51
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to turn around and go right.
13:54
Speaker 2: For sure. I read a little more about that study.
13:57
Speaker 2: One participant, Hayesus, never smiled and another participant, inn Amish
14:02
Speaker 2: man named Ishmael smiled almost constantly.
14:05
Speaker 3: Well, I think we might want to talk about a
14:07
Speaker 3: little bit, and I know we've covered this before, was
14:10
Speaker 3: baby smiling, because it's about one of the cutest darned
14:13
Speaker 3: things in the world is when you see a little
14:15
Speaker 3: baby smile at you. That does happen very early. Very
14:19
Speaker 3: newborn infants can smile, but those are sort of just
14:23
Speaker 3: random smiles like they may have farted or something and
14:28
Speaker 3: are smiling because it's funny. They'll learn that a little
14:31
Speaker 3: bit later, and not because they lit it on fire.
14:34
Speaker 3: They'll learn that probably in their tween years.
14:36
Speaker 2: That's dangerous, is it?
14:38
Speaker 1: Really?
14:39
Speaker 2: I've always heard why not? You never let a part
14:43
Speaker 2: I have, but I escaped by the skin of my teeth.
14:48
Speaker 3: It's usually just sort of a random occurrence when a
14:51
Speaker 3: very newborn baby smiles about four to six weeks. They
14:55
Speaker 3: start smiling when they wake up and they see you
14:57
Speaker 3: or hear you, as we'll see, but it's still sort
15:00
Speaker 3: of indiscriminate. It seems like the social smiling that starts
15:04
Speaker 3: at about six to twelve weeks when they're like, hey,
15:07
Speaker 3: I see mom or dad or whoever I like to
15:10
Speaker 3: see or I hear their voice, and that makes me
15:12
Speaker 3: happy exactly.
15:13
Speaker 2: But apparently they're also master manipulators, because they've been found
15:18
Speaker 2: to time their smiles to maximize smiling from their caretaker,
15:23
Speaker 2: so like they'll give you a smile so that you'll
15:26
Speaker 2: smile at them for thirty seconds, and they'll flash you
15:28
Speaker 2: another one, and there you go, you're smiling again. They
15:30
Speaker 2: learn to do that like really early.
15:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder if twins are ever like, hey, watch this.
15:35
Speaker 2: Kind of I'm sure did you see that link I
15:39
Speaker 2: sent you to this about the study of baby smiling
15:43
Speaker 2: in you to row. Yeah, if you want your paper
15:47
Speaker 2: to make the national news, just make it on baby smiles.
15:51
Speaker 2: But this paper from twenty twenty two in the Journal
15:53
Speaker 2: of Psychological Science. They gave pregnant women carrot pills or
16:00
Speaker 2: kale pills, and when the women ate carrot pills, the
16:04
Speaker 2: babies smiled like fifteen twenty minutes later as it was
16:08
Speaker 2: digested and reached them. When they ate kale, the baby's grimaced.
16:12
Speaker 3: I wonder what they did when they gave them the
16:14
Speaker 3: Reese's peanut butter cup.
16:17
Speaker 2: They just started doing three sixties.
16:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, they started break dancing.
16:21
Speaker 2: But one other thing about the study, Chuck that one
16:23
Speaker 2: of the co authors was named Jacqueline Blissett.
16:27
Speaker 1: Uh, that's funny.
16:28
Speaker 2: I mean it's true though, I think it's great.
16:31
Speaker 3: No, I know, but it's still funny, right, Okay.
16:33
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I wonder though if they're her parents were like,
16:37
Speaker 2: we love Charlie's Angels that much.
16:41
Speaker 1: I don't get the Charlie's Angels ref.
16:43
Speaker 2: Oh, Jacqueline Bassett was the she was the best Charlie's
16:47
Speaker 2: Angel if you ask me one of the original three.
16:50
Speaker 1: She wasn't in Charlie's Angels.
16:52
Speaker 2: Jacqueline Bassett.
16:54
Speaker 1: I don't know who you're thinking of, buddy.
16:56
Speaker 2: All right now, we do need to look something up.
17:00
Speaker 3: You go ahead, Okay, I'll go ahead, all right. So
17:04
Speaker 3: I mentioned hearing and planning a little seed there that
17:07
Speaker 3: a little infant maybe hearing something could make them smile.
17:12
Speaker 3: And they know this stuff because you know, they've done
17:14
Speaker 3: studies on whether smiles are innate or imitative. And so
17:19
Speaker 3: if you're going to do a study like this, you
17:20
Speaker 3: might want to study babies who are congenually blind. And
17:24
Speaker 3: they have found that it really doesn't make a difference.
17:28
Speaker 3: Blind infants start to smile in response to that voice,
17:31
Speaker 3: just like cited babies too. And they did another study
17:35
Speaker 3: of congenitally blind athletes at the Paralympic Games, and this
17:38
Speaker 3: one had was from twenty three different cultures, because, as
17:41
Speaker 3: we'll see, different cultures like smiles might mean different things
17:44
Speaker 3: and had the same They had the same spontaneous expressions
17:49
Speaker 3: as sided counterparts, sort of across the board.
17:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is pretty awesome. They also found that the
17:58
Speaker 2: children who were studied. I don't remember what study this
18:02
Speaker 2: was in, but basically they observed children who were given
18:05
Speaker 2: reasons to basically mask disappointment with a smile. And apparently,
18:11
Speaker 2: and this is for real, like play schoolers or nursery schoolers.
18:15
Speaker 2: They had them make lists of toys they wanted, and
18:18
Speaker 2: then they gave them a toy that they hadn't asked for,
18:21
Speaker 2: and the kid would mask their disappointment with a little smile.
18:25
Speaker 2: And they found that sighted and non cited kids basically
18:27
Speaker 2: made the same facial expressions in that situation too.
18:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, amazing. Did you look up Charlie's Angels?
18:33
Speaker 2: Yeah? I did. I was hoping you.
18:35
Speaker 1: Would forget Jacqueline Smith.
18:38
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you got Jacqueline right.
18:41
Speaker 2: Well, we might just take out the whole thing.
18:44
Speaker 3: All you never know, all right, Uh, well, I guess
18:47
Speaker 3: we'll see.
18:48
Speaker 1: We'll let the listener decide.
18:51
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's possible.
18:53
Speaker 1: Well, not decide, but decide how they feel about it.
18:55
Speaker 2: Okay, but they won't know about it if we took
18:58
Speaker 2: it out.
18:59
Speaker 3: Well, but they wouldn't even hear what I just said
19:01
Speaker 3: then either.
19:02
Speaker 2: No, we should leave this part in and really confuse everybody.
19:07
Speaker 3: Oh man, I brought up cultural differences. Jacqueline Smith is
19:11
Speaker 3: eighty years old.
19:12
Speaker 2: Oh wow, how's she doing?
19:15
Speaker 3: She's doing great. Hey, listen, I'm not one to comment
19:18
Speaker 3: on people's appearance, because I know that's untoward. Sure, but
19:21
Speaker 3: Jacqueline Smith does not look like any other eighty year
19:23
Speaker 3: old that I've ever seen.
19:24
Speaker 2: She is the best angel? You agree, right?
19:29
Speaker 3: Yeah? She was my favorite. I think, good actor. I
19:32
Speaker 3: think I had a pretty big crush on her.
19:34
Speaker 2: Sure, I mean, for sure, I think everybody had a
19:37
Speaker 2: crush on all of the Charlie's Angels to some extent.
19:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I'm with you. I think Jacqueline Smith was
19:42
Speaker 3: definitely the top angel.
19:44
Speaker 2: Yeah. She was great in The Deep too.
19:47
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was a good movie.
19:49
Speaker 2: I was trying to make a joke. I thought that
19:50
Speaker 2: was Jacqueline Bessett, who's in the Deep?
19:52
Speaker 1: Oh wait, she was in the Deep?
19:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh boy, we're going to take that part out too.
19:59
Speaker 3: Oh Oka, Jerry's gonna have fun with this one. Excuse me, Like,
20:02
Speaker 3: I'm gonna pass this one on to Ben.
20:04
Speaker 1: I got stuff going on.
20:06
Speaker 2: Can't you hear people being like, get back to smiling?
20:10
Speaker 3: I know, all right, back to smiling. I mentioned different cultures,
20:13
Speaker 3: because you know, there's the idea of like what if
20:15
Speaker 3: I'm in a different culture and I like smile at
20:17
Speaker 3: someone and that actually means like I hate what you
20:20
Speaker 3: just fed me or something like that. So they've done
20:23
Speaker 3: a lot of studying over the years. There's in the sixties,
20:26
Speaker 3: it was a psychologist named Paul Ekman who did experiments
20:29
Speaker 3: where they just showed images of faces to different cultures
20:33
Speaker 3: and then like had them pick from a list on
20:35
Speaker 3: what emotion that was. And he was like, all right,
20:38
Speaker 3: here's what I came up with. There are six universal
20:41
Speaker 3: facial expressions. Only six anger, disgust, enjoyment, fear, sadness, and surprise.
20:48
Speaker 3: Later he said contempt. All right, there is a seventh.
20:51
Speaker 3: We'll add contempt. But a lot of people have picked
20:54
Speaker 3: that apart because he it was multiple choice, and they're like,
20:58
Speaker 3: it's probably a better study, and people have done it
21:00
Speaker 3: since if you just show them pictures and have them
21:03
Speaker 3: like write down what that is and not to pick
21:05
Speaker 3: from your list.
21:07
Speaker 2: Right, And he also was over their shoulder pointing to
21:10
Speaker 2: the correct answer whenever.
21:11
Speaker 1: They would exactly.
21:13
Speaker 2: But that's not to say that he was wrong. It
21:15
Speaker 2: does turn out that subsequent research and a lot of
21:19
Speaker 2: it has essentially found that, Yeah, there's pretty much universal
21:24
Speaker 2: agreement on what facial expressions mean. There's a lot of disagreement,
21:30
Speaker 2: but for the most part, you're going to find the
21:32
Speaker 2: vast majority look at someone smiling and associate that with happiness.
21:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's some nuance in there, depending on
21:40
Speaker 3: where you are. Interestingly, they did find that people smile
21:44
Speaker 3: more in countries that have a lot of immigration as
21:48
Speaker 3: a whole, Countries that are like the United States, that
21:50
Speaker 3: are formed from people from all over the world.
21:53
Speaker 1: Melting pot, yeah, like.
21:55
Speaker 3: Brazil is another one, And some researchers have put out
21:58
Speaker 3: and make sense to me that, like, Yeah, when you
22:01
Speaker 3: have a bunch of people living in a melting pot,
22:03
Speaker 3: people generally want to get along, so they're probably using
22:06
Speaker 3: a smile more than you might in a country where
22:10
Speaker 3: like most people are from there.
22:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a nonverbal way of saying like, hey friendly,
22:14
Speaker 2: I'm friendly too. Great.
22:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, it totally makes sense. I think.
22:18
Speaker 2: Also this one, I was unsure about countries with low
22:22
Speaker 2: population densities. They have more room to smile, I don't know,
22:27
Speaker 2: or they just have fewer other people to deal with.
22:30
Speaker 2: Those are my two interpretations.
22:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, But like you said.
22:33
Speaker 2: There are some nuance to the whole thing. In East Asia,
22:39
Speaker 2: specifically in Japan and China, they basically emphasize the eyes
22:45
Speaker 2: like that's where the smile lay in action unit six
22:49
Speaker 2: me essentially, and they don't even apparently use the curved
22:55
Speaker 2: line for a smile on their emoticons. It's just the
22:58
Speaker 2: eyes as triangles, basically simulating action unit six.
23:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's kind of fun. Another thing that smiling conveys,
23:07
Speaker 3: or at least I don't know if it conveys it,
23:08
Speaker 3: but people take it this way is they find people
23:11
Speaker 3: not only happier but more competent and attractive generally when
23:14
Speaker 3: they're smiling.
23:15
Speaker 2: Sure, give me a smile, baby.
23:16
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Oh no, no, don't say that.
23:20
Speaker 3: In twenty fifteen, there was a study that showed photographs
23:23
Speaker 3: of people with different expressions to forty four different cultures
23:26
Speaker 3: around the world, and they found that like in China
23:29
Speaker 3: and Germany and Egypt, they associated a smile with intelligence,
23:33
Speaker 3: but in Japan, France, and Iran, I guess I'm on
23:38
Speaker 3: that sort of a sound they thought it meant or
23:42
Speaker 3: at the least they correlated it with lower intelligence.
23:45
Speaker 2: Like they think you look dippy if you have a
23:47
Speaker 2: big smile in those countries.
23:49
Speaker 3: I guess it depends on the person in the smile, sure,
23:52
Speaker 3: Like kletis the slack jawed yokels big toothy smile, Like
23:55
Speaker 3: I could see that.
23:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's interesting too, is there's different different countries or
24:01
Speaker 2: cultures have agreed at different periods of time too, as
24:05
Speaker 2: we'll see.
24:07
Speaker 1: Should we take a break.
24:08
Speaker 2: Let's take a break, because I think that was one
24:10
Speaker 2: of the best cliffhangers we've ever come up with.
24:12
Speaker 1: For sure, we'll be right back, so Chuck.
24:38
Speaker 2: We're onto the history part. Shout out to Colin Jones,
24:42
Speaker 2: who wrote a really good article on aon. He was
24:46
Speaker 2: the author of the book Smile Revolution Colon in eighteenth
24:51
Speaker 2: century Paris. I've never seen a colon be more useless
24:55
Speaker 2: than the one Colin Jones put into his book title.
24:58
Speaker 2: But regardless, this Aon article was super helpful.
25:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, are you talking about, like portrait painting.
25:06
Speaker 2: The whole darn thing, buddy, Like, basically the progress of smile,
25:12
Speaker 2: the smile being acceptable in Western culture. It traces a
25:15
Speaker 2: pretty long heritage and it's had its ups and downs essentially.
25:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, I definitely I mean, it makes sense, but
25:24
Speaker 3: I never knew that like portraits being so serious, like
25:27
Speaker 3: painted portraits, was because it's you can't make a realistic
25:32
Speaker 3: looking smile, because smiling again is something ideally that's happening spontaneously,
25:37
Speaker 3: and you can't hold that while you're sitting for a portrait.
25:41
Speaker 3: So that's the reason why all those portraits for so many,
25:44
Speaker 3: you know, hundreds and thousands of years, we're just more
25:47
Speaker 3: serious looking.
25:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you can just be like, hurry up, I
25:52
Speaker 2: know it's no good. Yeah, that is pretty interesting too.
25:57
Speaker 2: I guess we talked about something like that and the
25:59
Speaker 2: orthodonics episode because I think also there was just like
26:02
Speaker 2: you just didn't show your teeth, like that was just etiquette.
26:06
Speaker 2: There was a manual for boys, an etiquette manual that
26:11
Speaker 2: said that decorum forbids you to allow your teeth to
26:14
Speaker 2: be uncovered, since nature gave us lips to conceal them.
26:18
Speaker 2: And I saw also that there was this general idea
26:21
Speaker 2: that if you were going to laugh, okay, we'd rather
26:24
Speaker 2: you don't, but if you're going to laugh silently and
26:27
Speaker 2: laugh with your mouth closed. And there's a painting from
26:31
Speaker 2: sixteen twenty four by Franz Hall's called the laughing Cavalier
26:35
Speaker 2: that if you want to see what that looks like,
26:37
Speaker 2: it's that, and it looks like essentially a smug half
26:40
Speaker 2: smile that's apparently laughing in the seventeenth century.
26:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, if you look at old yearbooks, you know,
26:47
Speaker 3: people didn't start smiling till later. You know, teeth were
26:51
Speaker 3: fairly janky for a while. And it's theorized that it's
26:54
Speaker 3: just a holdover from the portrait painting days, right where
26:58
Speaker 3: if you sat for a portrait, and then later in
27:00
Speaker 3: photography it's just a more formal sort of thing. It's
27:04
Speaker 3: not a candid and so you don't just sit there
27:06
Speaker 3: and flash a big smile. But people started doing that eventually,
27:11
Speaker 3: I did.
27:11
Speaker 2: Who helped us with this one, Livia did.
27:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, Libya saw some research that said that early photography too,
27:18
Speaker 3: like long exposures, people couldn't hold a smile, But I
27:21
Speaker 3: kind of called bunk on that.
27:22
Speaker 1: I've seen that online.
27:23
Speaker 3: But by the eighteen fifties and sixties, it was only
27:26
Speaker 3: a few seconds of exposure, like the cameras were good
27:29
Speaker 3: enough for that. So I think it had more to
27:31
Speaker 3: do with the holdover. It just wasn't something that people did,
27:35
Speaker 3: like smiling like a dope, and a painting or a
27:37
Speaker 3: picture was just untoward.
27:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you said, smiling like a dope. Basically, in Europe,
27:42
Speaker 2: for hundreds and hundreds of years, smiles were associated with
27:46
Speaker 2: you being immature, you being drunk, you being insane, and
27:51
Speaker 2: like that's just that was a way you depicted people,
27:55
Speaker 2: was showing them smiling and like a painting, and the
27:58
Speaker 2: viewer would know what you were showing was maybe like
28:01
Speaker 2: a patient in an asylum or somebody who was meant
28:03
Speaker 2: to be drunk or something like that. That was the
28:06
Speaker 2: only way you would show it. And in the United States,
28:08
Speaker 2: at least, it wasn't until the nineteen thirties when people
28:13
Speaker 2: started actually smiling for photographs, and it really took off
28:17
Speaker 2: after that because of advertising ads for cameras that basically said, hey,
28:22
Speaker 2: you should smile with a picture. What's your problem? Just
28:25
Speaker 2: go ahead and smile. Don't you know it takes more
28:26
Speaker 2: muscles to frown than to smile.
28:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they're like, buy the new codec so you
28:31
Speaker 3: can capture your dower grandmother and all her majesty exactly.
28:37
Speaker 2: But there was that. Did you mention the yearbook study?
28:42
Speaker 3: No, not a study just that in yearbooks, like it
28:45
Speaker 3: took a while for that to catch on.
28:46
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, some study basically tracked it, and then I guess,
28:50
Speaker 2: like I said, by the thirties it really started to
28:52
Speaker 2: take off. And then by the fifties. This is anecdotal,
28:55
Speaker 2: but just from watching Happy Days, yearbook photos essentially became
28:59
Speaker 2: big goof grints because just imagine like Ralph mauf or
29:02
Speaker 2: POTSI having like a solemn look in their yearbook photo.
29:06
Speaker 2: You can't do it.
29:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I don't have a ton of pictures
29:09
Speaker 3: of my parents growing up, but I think I do
29:13
Speaker 3: have like the college portraits of their yearbooks, and they're
29:17
Speaker 3: both smiling ish and those.
29:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's I have one picture of my parents, I think,
29:23
Speaker 2: right before I was born, and they're smiling, and he's
29:26
Speaker 2: like a portrait they're smiling at each other. My dad looks, goofy.
29:32
Speaker 3: Should we talk about types of smiles?
29:38
Speaker 2: Sure?
29:40
Speaker 1: Boy?
29:40
Speaker 3: You really had me on on an edge there. So Ekman,
29:45
Speaker 3: the guy the you know psychologists that I was talking
29:47
Speaker 3: about the study a lot about smiles. He talked about
29:50
Speaker 3: identifying a real, genuine enjoyment smile because of the eyes,
29:55
Speaker 3: those dushen markers and that's what we kind of said
29:58
Speaker 3: early on, is that a lot of research is found
30:01
Speaker 3: that like the real genuine smiles is in the eyes,
30:04
Speaker 3: but you can still fake.
30:05
Speaker 2: That, right, But he said that in a real smile,
30:10
Speaker 2: like this is why I'm like, I'm holding out hope
30:12
Speaker 2: that there is a smile that cannot be voluntarily replicated.
30:16
Speaker 2: Ekman said, in a true Duchen smile, the eye cover
30:20
Speaker 2: fold between your eyebrow and the eyelid or the top
30:24
Speaker 2: of your eyelid that actually goes downward a little bit
30:29
Speaker 2: and then the ends of your eyebrows dip down with
30:32
Speaker 2: it a little bit. You can't do that on your own.
30:35
Speaker 2: You can't do that. Like I'm having to pull my
30:36
Speaker 2: face right now to make myself do that.
30:39
Speaker 1: That's right.
30:39
Speaker 3: And so next time you're on a blind date, if
30:41
Speaker 3: you're trying to figure out if they are truly truly
30:43
Speaker 3: enjoying and smiling, just stare as hard as you can
30:48
Speaker 3: at the eye cover fold and see what it reveals.
30:52
Speaker 2: Bring a caliper with you so you can take accurate
30:55
Speaker 2: measurements of the width of the eye cover ful.
30:58
Speaker 3: That's right, full of categorized smiles over the years, because
31:03
Speaker 3: they you know, Some are just for joy, but a
31:05
Speaker 3: lot of smiles have purposes, like you were talking about earlier,
31:08
Speaker 3: like hey, it's cool here, like we just want to
31:09
Speaker 3: get out alive.
31:10
Speaker 2: Right.
31:12
Speaker 3: There is the reward smile, which is very I engaged
31:17
Speaker 3: and offers the feedback to your conversation partner of like
31:22
Speaker 3: like hey, I'm liking what you're laying down here.
31:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, hey my eyes are up here.
31:27
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right.
31:29
Speaker 2: There's affiliate of smiles that show friendliness. These are the
31:32
Speaker 2: ones you'll flash a stranger at the grocery store, you know.
31:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, like if you're from the second sneak.
31:37
Speaker 2: Up behind you and club you with a giant bottle
31:39
Speaker 2: of wine.
31:40
Speaker 1: That's right.
31:41
Speaker 2: There's dominant smiles too, which man essentially like the lip
31:47
Speaker 2: will be lifted a little bit. Usually it's asymmetrical. I
31:52
Speaker 2: think it's one of those ones where like you just
31:54
Speaker 2: know if you've been smiled at with the dominant smile,
31:57
Speaker 2: because you just have a bad taste in your mouth
31:59
Speaker 2: all of a sudden.
32:00
Speaker 1: For sure.
32:01
Speaker 3: Eckmun identified eighteen smiles. We're I'm gonna go through all those,
32:05
Speaker 3: but I think we should talk about did you want
32:07
Speaker 3: to No, I think we should talk about a couple
32:11
Speaker 3: of them. One of my favorites is the miserable smile.
32:14
Speaker 2: Yea.
32:14
Speaker 3: It is usually asymmetrical and layered on layered on top,
32:19
Speaker 3: and it usually follows a negative expression, so it's trying
32:22
Speaker 3: to convey like you're not trying to hide that you're
32:25
Speaker 3: unhappy and you're just accepting what's happening. So I would
32:28
Speaker 3: act that out as the smile, like, well, I guess
32:31
Speaker 3: this is happening now.
32:33
Speaker 2: Yes, I would chalk the current reigning champ of the
32:38
Speaker 2: Miserable smile. As far as Hollywood goes up to the actor.
32:41
Speaker 2: I don't know her name, but she was in I
32:45
Speaker 2: Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore. She was
32:47
Speaker 2: the star of that. She played Leonardo DiCaprio's wife, and
32:52
Speaker 2: don't look up. She's good at that. Okay, have you
32:56
Speaker 2: not seen I Don't Feel at Home in this World Anymore? Know?
33:00
Speaker 3: Was that a movie or a TV show?
33:02
Speaker 2: It was a movie. It was an indie movie. Toby Maguire, Frodo,
33:08
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, Frodo.
33:10
Speaker 3: He was in it with her, Olga would Oh, you're
33:13
Speaker 3: Melanie Lensky.
33:14
Speaker 1: She's the best.
33:14
Speaker 2: Okay, yes her, Thank you for coming up with that
33:17
Speaker 2: that movie is definitely worth seeing. It's a great indie movie.
33:20
Speaker 2: It's good.
33:21
Speaker 3: Oh, I'll check that out. I love both of them,
33:23
Speaker 3: especially like her. She's wonderful. She's married to Jason Ritter.
33:27
Speaker 3: No way, yeah, great, one of the great couples.
33:30
Speaker 2: Okay, good, I.
33:32
Speaker 1: Mean Hollywood couples. You know, they're usually phonies. They seem
33:34
Speaker 1: pretty real.
33:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, because there I always have that miserable smile.
33:39
Speaker 1: That's right. What other smiles, Josh, what's your favorite?
33:43
Speaker 2: Oh, miserable smiles My favorite too.
33:45
Speaker 1: Okay.
33:45
Speaker 2: The embarrassment smile I think is kind of funny. Oh, yeah,
33:49
Speaker 2: because it's just so involuntary. Yeah, like if you imagine
33:53
Speaker 2: somebody actually doing this, it's hard to do, and it
33:55
Speaker 2: kind of makes you appreciate what actors do, like just
33:59
Speaker 2: how hard it is to be a good actor, because
34:02
Speaker 2: you might be called upon to do an embarrassment smile
34:04
Speaker 2: where you're embarrassed and you smile. It's kind of usually
34:07
Speaker 2: like just barely tilted up, your lips are pressed together,
34:11
Speaker 2: and you're looking downward, maybe even to the side a
34:14
Speaker 2: little bit, and it's just so quick and just so
34:17
Speaker 2: you just can't stop yourself. You just do an embarrassment smile,
34:20
Speaker 2: and everybody's like, oh, it's okay, except for that one
34:24
Speaker 2: guy who's got the dominant smile because you just showed
34:26
Speaker 2: that you're embarrassed. Yeah, and now he knows that you're
34:29
Speaker 2: a mark.
34:31
Speaker 1: Yeah.
34:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how those embarrassment smile.
34:34
Speaker 3: All right, Well, you know what, let's take a break
34:35
Speaker 3: and I'm going to cover my favorite, last favorite smile
34:38
Speaker 3: right after this. I know our timing is just all
34:39
Speaker 3: wonky on this and this because we're having fun, so
34:42
Speaker 3: we'll be right back with my favorite smile. All right, everybody,
35:10
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna call this the William H. Macy in
35:14
Speaker 3: his office in Fargo smile when Fran McDermott meets him
35:19
Speaker 3: for the first time. It's that smile. It's the coordination smile,
35:24
Speaker 3: and a coordination smile indicates cooperation and acknowledgment. Slightly asymmetrical
35:30
Speaker 3: and it's sort of slight. But Bill Macy in that
35:33
Speaker 3: scene with the yeah, we'll just we'll do.
35:36
Speaker 1: A lot count.
35:36
Speaker 3: We'll just shoot those numbers right on over to you.
35:39
Speaker 3: So like he's coordinating, he's showing cooperation, but it's still
35:42
Speaker 3: kind of phony.
35:44
Speaker 1: Oh, it's sort of a business smile.
35:45
Speaker 2: Almost he's great at that though too. Yeah, and it
35:49
Speaker 2: also has like I'm just so pathetic, like don't you
35:52
Speaker 2: can't even question me, like like just overlook me?
35:56
Speaker 3: Kind of Yeah, do you know that movie is ninety
35:58
Speaker 3: minutes long?
36:00
Speaker 2: Man, we need to get back to that. Anything two
36:03
Speaker 2: hours are over means that the producers did not ring
36:07
Speaker 2: the director in. No.
36:08
Speaker 3: I agree movies are too bloated now. And if anyone
36:11
Speaker 3: ever makes it, like if a director would to make
36:12
Speaker 3: an argument that we really need that, I would just
36:14
Speaker 3: say Fargo and walk out of the room.
36:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's that's all you need to say. Yeah,
36:18
Speaker 2: I've been watching some nineties and eighties movies and they're
36:22
Speaker 2: definitely like ninety minutes. It's all it takes. That's all
36:24
Speaker 2: it should take. I saw fifty two pickup recently.
36:28
Speaker 1: Oh who was.
36:29
Speaker 2: That Roy Scheider and Ann Martinetz.
36:32
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, good movie.
36:33
Speaker 2: It was all right.
36:34
Speaker 1: I love Roy Schiter.
36:35
Speaker 2: It was much more hardcore than it makes you think
36:38
Speaker 2: it's going to be in the first like fifteen minutes.
36:40
Speaker 3: Because you thought it was about cards and just like
36:43
Speaker 3: throwing them on playing that game.
36:45
Speaker 2: Right, just an hour and a half of that, Uh, huh,
36:49
Speaker 2: I've got one more smile, Chuck.
36:51
Speaker 1: All right, let's hear it.
36:52
Speaker 2: The uncanny smile.
36:54
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so you're talking about they made a whole
36:56
Speaker 3: movie franchise around that.
36:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, smile right, that's exactly what I'm talking about. It
37:01
Speaker 2: was also the Ghost Family and Insidious the first one. Yeah,
37:06
Speaker 2: they all had that uncanny smile. Jack Nicholson might have
37:09
Speaker 2: been the progenitor of the whole thing. In the Shining
37:11
Speaker 2: when he's got that smile where he's like, look here,
37:14
Speaker 2: he's looking like over, he's looking at his chins down,
37:18
Speaker 2: but his eyes are up and he's got that crazy
37:20
Speaker 2: smile on his face.
37:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very unsettling.
37:23
Speaker 2: It is. That's the uncanny smile, and it will haunt
37:27
Speaker 2: your dreams.
37:28
Speaker 1: Okay. I didn't know if you had any science behind it.
37:30
Speaker 2: I looked and I couldn't find anything. The most I
37:32
Speaker 2: could find was that it was contextually wrong, right, and
37:38
Speaker 2: that it kind of set our brains on edge from that,
37:42
Speaker 2: and then also if you really now that you kind
37:44
Speaker 2: of know about the facial coding system, if you look
37:46
Speaker 2: at it, the AU six is definitely not an effect
37:49
Speaker 2: because the eyes are usually staring while there's this shage
37:53
Speaker 2: grin and that is not a normal combination.
37:57
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I think what's important there doesn't need
37:59
Speaker 3: to be science as long as everyone agrees that it's
38:02
Speaker 3: scary for movies.
38:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, what else, buddy, Oh, I think we've reached the
38:07
Speaker 2: best part.
38:09
Speaker 1: Does smiling make us happy?
38:10
Speaker 2: Yes?
38:11
Speaker 1: Yeah?
38:11
Speaker 3: So you know, like I said, we did a full
38:14
Speaker 3: episode on this, but that's that was three years in
38:16
Speaker 3: and I don't think we were very good at that point.
38:19
Speaker 3: So hopefully this will be better. I was approved by.
38:21
Speaker 2: This episode today. Right, This was a throwback, wasn't it. Yeah,
38:26
Speaker 2: we should have gone for the second ad break right
38:28
Speaker 2: before we went to a listener mail. Yeah. So the
38:32
Speaker 2: idea that smiling makes us feel happier apparently traces itself
38:38
Speaker 2: back to Darwin. Yeah, and Darwin was big into smiling.
38:42
Speaker 2: He saw facial expressions in general as a evidence of
38:45
Speaker 2: vestigial behavior that we had from like our primate ancestors. Right, Yeah,
38:51
Speaker 2: And there there have been tons of studies to find
38:54
Speaker 2: out if that's true, and they've come back with like
38:56
Speaker 2: mixed results. Some of them are like meaned of maybe,
39:01
Speaker 2: but others are like nah, I don't know about that.
39:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a tough thing to test, because what they
39:09
Speaker 3: do is like they have different methodologies. One of the
39:12
Speaker 3: early ones, I think was from nineteen eighty eight, and
39:16
Speaker 3: they said, you know, they put a pin in your
39:18
Speaker 3: mouth like sideways, which will you know, make sort of
39:22
Speaker 3: a fake assimilation of a smile.
39:25
Speaker 2: I guess, well, that's if you have the pen sticking
39:28
Speaker 2: out of your mouth straight between your teeth.
39:30
Speaker 1: Right.
39:31
Speaker 3: No, really, no, no, no, I thought it was. I
39:34
Speaker 3: thought they would put it sideways so it would make
39:36
Speaker 3: your lips out. You're saying, they just hold it in
39:38
Speaker 3: your teeth like a cigarette.
39:39
Speaker 2: Yes, in the middle of your mouth. That'll make you smile.
39:42
Speaker 2: And then if you put it like in between, like sideways,
39:45
Speaker 2: that makes you frown. Huh not anybody you got a penhandy, Well.
39:50
Speaker 1: I'll do it and I'll text it to you. No, now,
39:52
Speaker 1: I'll make your.
39:52
Speaker 2: Research it you send me a screen shot.
39:55
Speaker 3: Well, either way, if you hold that pin between their teeth,
39:58
Speaker 3: they will then ask you questions like you like are
40:02
Speaker 3: you happy? Are you not happy? Stuff like that, and
40:04
Speaker 3: like look at this thing, does this make you happy?
40:07
Speaker 1: And I guess that's.
40:08
Speaker 3: Supposed to indicate that, like if your mouth is forced
40:11
Speaker 3: into a smile, that you'll be happier. That just it
40:14
Speaker 3: didn't make sense to me.
40:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's the study. That's what they study is
40:17
Speaker 2: just like if you can if the facial feedback that
40:21
Speaker 2: you're getting showing that you're smiling, that it can happen
40:25
Speaker 2: in the reverse rather than smiling because you're happy, If
40:28
Speaker 2: you make yourself smile, can that make you happy? Right?
40:32
Speaker 2: And that one, that first nineteen eighty eight study. To
40:35
Speaker 2: keep people from knowing that they were being tested about smiling,
40:39
Speaker 2: they taught they told them that they were they were
40:42
Speaker 2: testing out new methods to help disabled people, right, who
40:46
Speaker 2: didn't who didn't have arms, So they were trying to
40:48
Speaker 2: figure out ways to help them write so that people.
40:51
Speaker 2: That's what they thought they were doing. And then they said, here,
40:54
Speaker 2: check out this cartoon. Is this funny or not? And
40:57
Speaker 2: I guess all of the cartoons were ziggy, so every
41:00
Speaker 2: one thought they were funny, but the people who were
41:02
Speaker 2: making the smiles thought they were funnier than everybody.
41:05
Speaker 3: Wow, all right, that got way more interesting once I
41:08
Speaker 3: knew how they lied.
41:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, they definitely lied for sure. Never trust a researcher.
41:15
Speaker 3: This one from twenty twenty four carries a little more
41:18
Speaker 3: weight for me, because it's not just sticking a pin
41:20
Speaker 3: in someone's mouth. A psychologist named Sebastian Korb of the
41:23
Speaker 3: University of Essexon did a thing where he ran a
41:27
Speaker 3: little electric current into those fast twitched muscles which forced
41:32
Speaker 3: like a smile to happen for just like a half
41:35
Speaker 3: a second, and then they assessed whether a like a
41:38
Speaker 3: digital image of a face looked happy. So apparently when
41:43
Speaker 3: they had douce those tiny little smiles, people were more
41:46
Speaker 3: likely to identify a neutral face as happy.
41:49
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the big failing of all of these studies
41:51
Speaker 2: is that they go social psychology at the end, like
41:55
Speaker 2: are you happy? Do you feel happy? Is this comic funny?
41:58
Speaker 2: Is this neutral face happy? And it just becomes so
42:01
Speaker 2: subjective and self reporting that it's the jury's still out.
42:05
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, there is my comedian?
42:08
Speaker 1: Am I making you laugh?
42:09
Speaker 2: What? Am I a clown? Do? I amuse you?
42:12
Speaker 1: I just watched that again the other night.
42:14
Speaker 2: What is that? Good Fellas?
42:16
Speaker 1: Yeah?
42:17
Speaker 3: I mean it's still great. You know it's not great?
42:21
Speaker 3: Is the aviator? Because I mentioned that in the Howard
42:24
Speaker 3: Hughes episode. I just watched the Howard Hughes in Vegas bit.
42:27
Speaker 3: But I had recently seen the Scorsese documentary series and
42:30
Speaker 3: I was like, you know, I should watch all of
42:31
Speaker 3: the Aviator.
42:32
Speaker 1: It's not one of his best.
42:34
Speaker 2: No, I know. It didn't get a lot of praise. Yeah,
42:37
Speaker 2: it was two and a half hours long, too, wasn't it?
42:39
Speaker 3: It was pretty long. It was not ninety minutes.
42:41
Speaker 1: I'll tell you.
42:43
Speaker 2: There is one more intervention about smiling make you happy.
42:47
Speaker 2: It's from Dialectical Behavior Therapy DBT okay, and it employs
42:52
Speaker 2: the half smile, and it essentially tells you to make
42:56
Speaker 2: a little smile so that you know you're smiling, but
42:59
Speaker 2: that you look like crazy to other people. Right, So
43:02
Speaker 2: other people can't really tell. They might see that you
43:05
Speaker 2: might look slightly different and maybe a little more approachable
43:07
Speaker 2: than you normally would with a BRF. But it has
43:11
Speaker 2: been shown again anecdotally that it actually does increase your
43:16
Speaker 2: your sense of positivity. I know that sounds hippy dippy,
43:20
Speaker 2: but I believe it actually works.
43:22
Speaker 1: What's BRF.
43:24
Speaker 2: Be resting face?
43:26
Speaker 1: Oh? Okay, I always heard I've never heard it in
43:29
Speaker 1: that order.
43:30
Speaker 2: Uh, what do you hear?
43:32
Speaker 1: It is?
43:33
Speaker 3: RBF?
43:34
Speaker 2: Man? I am off today we're going to edit that
43:37
Speaker 2: part out too.
43:39
Speaker 1: I think you're doing great. This is a capital episode.
43:43
Speaker 2: Let's see. Oh there's one other thing too. One more
43:46
Speaker 2: stuf's here and again. Social psychologists take it with a
43:50
Speaker 2: grain of salt, but they found that service employees who
43:52
Speaker 2: have to engage in surface acting, meaning like part of
43:55
Speaker 2: your job is smiling and seeming happy whether you are
43:59
Speaker 2: or not, tend to be heavier drinkers than people outside
44:03
Speaker 2: of the service industry. That's sad, it is, and that
44:07
Speaker 2: explains why hotel reception people are constantly blotto. If you've
44:11
Speaker 2: ever noticed, when you check in, they are wasted to
44:14
Speaker 2: a person. That's why, because they're forced to smile.
44:17
Speaker 3: That's right, makes sense. You got anything else, man, I
44:21
Speaker 3: got nothing else.
44:22
Speaker 2: This was great, new and improved smiling happiness episode.
44:27
Speaker 1: It was new.
44:28
Speaker 2: Okay. I guess that means it's time for listener mate.
44:33
Speaker 1: That's right.
44:34
Speaker 3: Might as well finish this one with a correction, you know.
44:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we should. Hey guys from twenty eleven, first.
44:41
Speaker 3: Time corrector here.
44:42
Speaker 1: No.
44:43
Speaker 3: I wanted to say we love the immense amount of
44:46
Speaker 3: work you put into educating so many people and so
44:48
Speaker 3: many topics for so long. My partner and I are
44:50
Speaker 3: so excited to see your live show in Ottawa, Ontario. Yeah,
44:54
Speaker 3: capital of the Great White and North. And yeah, it's
44:56
Speaker 3: probably a good time to mention we're going to six
44:59
Speaker 3: different places in Canada in June and July and we're
45:03
Speaker 3: super excited. We're trying to move some more tickets in
45:06
Speaker 3: a couple of these, specifically Montreal. So if you're in
45:09
Speaker 3: and around Montreal, I mean, this is it, this is
45:11
Speaker 3: your shot.
45:11
Speaker 1: We'd love to see you there.
45:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, all right, So quick email guys about the
45:18
Speaker 3: a minor historical mix up in the Hindenburg disaster episode.
45:23
Speaker 1: Josh.
45:24
Speaker 3: One of you stated, thank you check that the US
45:27
Speaker 3: ace Eddie Rickenbacker took out German ace the Red Baron,
45:31
Speaker 3: Manfred von Richtofen.
45:34
Speaker 1: But that's not the case. I'm sorry.
45:36
Speaker 3: The Red Baron was killed on April twenty first, nineteen eighteen,
45:38
Speaker 3: over the Soalmme. He was loaded the ground chasing an
45:42
Speaker 3: inexperienced Canadian pilot, Lieutenant Wilfrid May. Canadian Royal Air Force
45:45
Speaker 3: pilot Captain Arthur Roy Brown drove steeply to defend May
45:50
Speaker 3: and fired at the Baron's Spoker triplane. While Brown was
45:53
Speaker 3: officially credited with the kill. Modern ballistics, medical exams and
45:57
Speaker 3: historians favor the theory that the fatal bullet came from
46:00
Speaker 3: Australian ground troops who saw them coming. Specifically, it's widely
46:05
Speaker 3: believed to have been fired by Sergeant Cedric Popkin or
46:08
Speaker 3: gunners Robert Buey and William Snowy Evans, as Rick Doopin
46:13
Speaker 3: flew dangerously low over Allied lines. As for Eddie Rickenbacker,
46:18
Speaker 3: he didn't even see active aerial combat until April nineteen eighteen,
46:21
Speaker 3: the very month the Red Baron died.
46:24
Speaker 2: So, I mean, I'm not a crackpot, right, Like that's
46:28
Speaker 2: what we've been taught all these years that Eddie Rickenbacker
46:31
Speaker 2: took out the Red Baron.
46:33
Speaker 1: Right, I have no idea.
46:35
Speaker 2: This isn't like a Jacqueline Bessett Jacqueline Smith type thing.
46:39
Speaker 3: I have no idea because I don't I'm not steeped
46:41
Speaker 3: in that kind of stuff. Like if you say red Baron,
46:43
Speaker 3: I think of Snoopy.
46:45
Speaker 2: I do too, But I'm saying like, I've never done
46:48
Speaker 2: any World War One flying ace research. This was literally
46:51
Speaker 2: taught to me in school as far as I can recall.
46:53
Speaker 3: Well, hey, I believe that I'm just saying, I just
46:55
Speaker 3: don't recall.
46:56
Speaker 2: Well, that's funny, so I wonder who really, who really
46:58
Speaker 2: did it? Because Australia's got their people, Canada's got their people.
47:02
Speaker 2: We have our people. Who knows.
47:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, my money's on Snowy Evans.
47:11
Speaker 2: Okay, I think that's great. I'll put my money on
47:13
Speaker 2: Snowy too. Sorry, Rick and Bucker.
47:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's anonymous.
47:17
Speaker 3: By the way, that was a guy and his partner
47:20
Speaker 3: who were big history buffs.
47:22
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why it was anonymous. There's nothing.
47:24
Speaker 3: I guess they just don't what their name said. So
47:25
Speaker 3: that's I guess we'll see the anonymous people in Ottawa.
47:28
Speaker 3: They'll be out there with sacks over their heads.
47:31
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure, Thank you Anonymous. Yeah that wasn't so controversial,
47:36
Speaker 2: but well, okay, we'll definitely always respect your privacy. We'll
47:39
Speaker 2: respect your privacy too. If you write to us and
47:41
Speaker 2: you're like, do not read my name, we will never
47:44
Speaker 2: do that.
47:45
Speaker 3: You know what I bet it is is they don't
47:47
Speaker 3: want to be outed as going to that show because
47:49
Speaker 3: they told their friends, so they don't really like that
47:51
Speaker 3: wanted to go with them that they weren't going.
47:52
Speaker 2: Oh ouch, I'll bet you're right. Yeah, Or some friend
47:56
Speaker 2: asked them to move or drive them to the airport
47:58
Speaker 2: and they're like, we're going to out of town.
48:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're having a painting party.
48:04
Speaker 2: Let's see. Well, I guess that's it. And if you oh,
48:07
Speaker 2: like I was saying, if you want to be like anonymous,
48:09
Speaker 2: and even if you want to remain anonymous, send us
48:11
Speaker 2: an email. Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
48:14
Speaker 2: dot com.
48:18
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
48:21
Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
48:25
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.