Splendid Isolation

Do you ever want to live alone in the desert, or does an afternoon alone give you the chills? Either way, isolation can have a profound influence on our health. In this episode, Robert and Julie wade into their isolation chambers to sort it all out.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert lamp and I'm Julie Douglas, and
today we're talking about isolation, splendid isolation, which I don't
know if anyone out there catches the the title here
with itself of the title of a warrant Sevon song

(00:26):
that that I've always really done, because it has this
It starts off by going, uh, I want to live
alone in the desert. I want to be like Georgia O'Keefe.
I want to live on the Upper east Side and
never go down in the street like that. And it's
so it's kind of like it's it starts off with
this very very chipper kind of uh yeah, I wanna

(00:48):
I want to just get away from all these people.
I want to just you know, I want to move
away from all these two souful social constraints in my
life and just sort of do my own thing. You know,
I'm gonna I'm gonna be like George o'keef and move
out in the desert, or I'm gonna to isolate myself
and you know, focus on my art or my my
writing or my video games or whatever a person solitary
thing is. You know, I just want to point out,

(01:10):
ladies and gentlemen that Robert Lamb just just sing for you,
and no other circumstance would he ever sing. So that
was that was right. There are other circumstances where I sing.
You just don't really bust out songs much. So I
just wanted to to just say that was a really
special moment. Well, I think the thing is, we did
the Electronic Music podcast, and we we've used actual music
samples and that's all. I'm good, but it takes a

(01:31):
little more work. So it's it's not that I'm brave,
I'm just lazy because we could actually just sample the
Warren Yvon song, but or I could just sing it.
But anyway, that the song in question starts off with
this very idealized I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna get
to my isolation in my life. I'm gonna move away
from people and and social requirements and I'm going to
be better for it. Well, I mean it's the hermit fantasy, right,

(01:52):
I Mean, every once in a while, we just get
sick of our fellow humans and we say, oh, man,
I'm just done with all you guys. Yeah. Yeah, And
if I could just be free of all of you,
I would be free of what ails me. That that
is an illusion. But like a lot of warren Zy
Fund songs, the lyrics get progressively darker as the song progresses.
And uh, and so by the end, the lyrics like

(02:13):
it's talking about Michael Jackson and Disney World taking Goofy's
hand and vanishing into the world of self, and which
is I think the darkest part of that song for
a lot of reasons. Yeah, I mean, because it's at
that point it's still kind of beautiful, but weird. It's
like just departing into into personal fantasy. And then by
the end he's talking about putting tinfoil up in the

(02:35):
windows and lying down in the dark to dream. And um,
and I find that when you when you look at
the research and when you look at human experience, this
is kind of how it goes. Like on one level,
there is the hermit fantasy. But when people actually do
find isolation, if they actually if it's thrust upon them,
or they seek it out, or they just sort of

(02:56):
find themselves there at some point in their life. Uh,
the effects are only detrimental um. Like what one example
that I come back to is U has to do
with one of my favorite authors, a guy in the
name of Clark Ashton Smith, who was a horror, fantasy,
sci fi, weird fiction writer of the early mid twentieth century,

(03:18):
and he ended up living kind of a hermit's life
out in the middle of nowhere. And while he lived
longer than either HP Lovecraft or Roberty Howard's sort of
you know, famous contemporaries at the at that time, he
ended up spending the like the last like large portion
of his life just sort He would do some art
and stuff, he would do some weird sculpture, but he
didn't really write that much anymore. So I'll come back

(03:40):
to that. I'll think of, like, here's a guy who
moved out into the middle of nowhere and really didn't
get that much done, or didn't get that much done
that anybody would ultimately care about. Well, I think it's
interesting that he didn't write any movie because some of
that requires an understanding of relationships and and the way
that we interact with one another, right, and if you
don't would have that sort of feedback in your life,

(04:02):
than you could seriously lose touch with with that part
of yourself, part of your connition into the way that
our brains work, and our brains are quite simply not
meant to work in isolation. And so that's what we're
gonna discuss in this podcast. Before we do, though, let's
go ahead and hit on some loneliness stats. Uh. These
are some stats I got out of a Psychology Today

(04:25):
article called predict Predictors of Loneliness um And through not
only in this article, but throughout the literature, you often
find references to lonely people and non lonely people. I
find non lonely people to be a very clunky term.
I don't know if there's a better line to use,
but yeah, I think we just have to put up
with it. Um. So, lonely people were more likely in

(04:46):
studies to be younger, to have less sex, to get
less sleep, to make less money, and have more health issues,
with drug use being the number one health concern among
lonely people. Non lonely people were more likely to older,
to sleep eight to ten hours a night, to have
sex at least once a week or a few times
a month, describe themselves as a religious or spiritual U

(05:09):
have a spouse or partner who access as email or
the internet, daily volunteer, belonged to local community organization, have
five or more people with whom they discuss personal issues
and be married. So there you go. Well, and then
there's this idea of social isolation to right, um, And
this is from Molly Edmunds article on how Stuff Works
dot com. It's called what are the Effects of Isolation

(05:31):
in the Mind? And according to researcher John Cacabo. Sorry
for our Italian listeners, if we have any um at
the University of Chicago, of all people are unhappy because
of social social isolation at any given moment. Okay, So
social isolation could occur for a myriad of factors, right,
I mean it could be because, uh, you know, you're

(05:53):
you're part of the senior population and you just don't
get to see people as often. Or could be that
you have a disability that limits the amount of interaction
you have with people, right, Yeah, and uh, and definitely
there's social isolation, and then there there's isolation as far
as your physical setting goes. And sometimes a person is
encountering both of these or just one of these, um as,

(06:15):
we'll discuss, right, And that's not to say that that
the senior population, where people of disabilities all are socially isolated.
It's just certain circumstances sort of lend themselves more to
that um happening. So, and we also have social isolation
that we foisted upon ourselves, and then there's also social
isolation that we then coerced into. And we'll talk a

(06:37):
little bit about that, particularly with the prison population, but
let's talk about what actually happens in the brain when
you are socially isolated. One study that I was looking
at was from the University of Chicago, and this, like
a lot of these, involved like two groups. There's the
no non lonely group and the in the group the
lonelies and the non lonelies, which you know, I guess

(06:57):
you just put out the call for it. I wonder
if it's easier to get the lonelies or easier to
get the non lonelies, because the non lonelies maybe have
stuff going on. And then do you run the risk
of poisoning your lonely test group by bringing them in
and having them hang out together, or do you just
make sure they're isolated? And I think you isolate them. Also,
there's a question about extrovert and introvert too. Yeah, right,

(07:18):
so as being part of this, Like, if you're an introvert,
you're probably more lonely. I would say I don't know,
because I'm a part time introvert, but I wouldn't say
that I'm completely lonely. Okay. Anyway, this study University of
the University of Chicago. They showed the lonelies and the
non lonelies photographs of people in both pleasant settings and

(07:38):
unpleasant settings. So like one, uh, one photo will be
a person hanging out in a playground, and another one
will be a picture of somebody getting bit by a
poisonous snake in a playground. So okay, one's pleasant, one's
not pleasant, right so um. When viewing the pleasant pictures,
the non lonely subjects showed much more activity in the
section of the brain known as the event roll straight um,

(08:01):
more than the lonely subjects. Right and uh. This particular
part of the brain plays an important role in learning.
It's also the part of the brains the reward center
that's generally stimulated by things like food and love. So
the lonely subjects displayed far less activity in this region
while viewing pleasant pictures, and they also had less brain

(08:22):
activity when shown the unpleasant pictures. When non lonely subjects
view the unpleasant pictures, they demonstrated activity in the temporal
parietal junction, an area of the brain associated with empathy,
and the non lonely subjects had a had a much
lesser response. So this is an interesting view into how
loneliness affects our empathy. The non lonelies were able to

(08:46):
demonstrate more empathy for the person in the bad situation
in the unpleasant photo than the lonely people, which I
found found really interesting. Yeah. Well, and again that's because
you know, we've got the mirror neurons, right, We've talked
about mirror neurons and how we can't help but mimic
each other, and in mimicking each other, when we are
faced with each other and um communicating with with one another,

(09:09):
you know we are experienced an emotional jolt because we're mimicking.
You know, if you're smiling at me, then I'm going
to smile back, and I'm going to feel that emotion.
So that makes sense that if you're isolated, then you're
not as connected to those feelings of empathy. Well, we
can't help but think of the the stereotype of the
crazy hermit with a shotgun, right, Yes, I wasn't thinking

(09:29):
shotgun now really I think shotgun or maybe pitchfork or something.
But well, yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's different. You
grew up like in Michigan, right, but in the South,
which in theory actually shotgun should be you know, front
center in my mind. Okay, well, well, Michigan people know
what I'm talking about here. Okay, So the crazy hermit
with a shotgun, and the idea that he's going to

(09:50):
come up to you and he's going to be very
obtuse and belligerent and he's gonna be all, get off,
model daan Ander, I'll shoot you kind of a thing.
Um with that accent, with that accent, I guess that's
more of a that's my Michigan hermit accent. It would
be more Southern are No, I'll roll with that. But
that's interesting that you you look at it that way,
because people who undergo sensory deprivation, right, which is part

(10:13):
of isolation, they find that the central executive center of
their brains are affected, and those that part of the
brain controls language, memory, and vision. Yeah. Yeah, so you know,
we'll talk about that a little bit more too when
we talk about prisoners and hostages. Okay, but but yeah,
just on a on a very basic level, you can
imagine the hermit who is not able to empathize with

(10:35):
the person. He's he's he's he's getting onto. He's maybe
not able to communicate as well, and he's his brain
seems a little foggy too because he has no or
very limited interaction with people, and and and it's affecting
his brain. It's crazy hermit brains. Well. And now that
he's probably really stressed, because apparently lenliness actually leads to stress.

(10:56):
And researchers have had subjects estimate room temperature. This is
interesting room temperatures after recalling a time that they were
snubbed or socially excluded, and the subjects reported colder temperatures
than the participants who were asked to remember times with friends.
And this actually suggests that we can we can feel
social chills if we feel excluded or isolated. Um again,

(11:20):
this is you know, acting on our body or physiology,
and that you know, that's a type of stress that
you would feel. Now another interesting study that relates to
how loneliness affects just our basic mental process and um.
There have been various studies with mice where they look
at the effects of exercise on neurogenesis, which is u

(11:40):
creating a new brain cells, just basic brain upkeep I
guess you can think of it, uh in those terms.
And that's one of the rewards of exercise, right right,
right when you exercise, you get this big burst of
new neurons and neural connections, right yeah, and and another
great reason for exercise. So in these studies, they would
put the mice through the wheels and then then study,
you know, how much neurogenesis was going on. And then

(12:03):
another study came along and they decided, well, we're going
to test it with rats because rats are a much
closer neurological for humans. Yeah, And so they put these
rats in and the rats tanked across the board like
the ones that had exercise and the ones that didn't.
And they're like, what happened? So they studied it and
they found that the problem was that these rats had
been isolated beforehand. Okay, rats are are very um, they're

(12:27):
very social, secial creatures, right, Yeah, that's why they're always
hanging out together, you know, chatting coffee houses, coffee houses.
And incidentally, as we discussed in the past, that's why
they can be tickled and laugh. That's actually you're right,
that can be We're not making that up. We have
to go back to our humor podcast for details on
that tidbit. Yeah. So they were putting them in there
without without any socialization. They've been isolated, and it actually

(12:50):
prevented the exercise from having a positive effect on brain activity. Yeah.
And they think that is because when when you undergo exercise,
it's a type of stress, right, and so the stress
of isolation, the stress of exercise didn't allow this neurogenesis
to take place, these new neural connections to take place.

(13:11):
Whereas you know with with the the rats that were socialized, right,
they did have they went back and there they started
socializing these rats. Then they were benefiting from the exercise. Yeah,
but the solitary ones not at all. Yeah, which it
makes me think of the various sci fi films that
we've had where they'll be like a lone solitary person

(13:31):
in space, generally with some robots be it. You know,
Bruce Dearn and Silent Running, or Sam Rockwell in Moon
or or you know Joe Robinson on the Mystery Sentence
Theater to a lesser extent because they don't really get
into the science there. But you'll see somebody like running
on a treadmill, staying in shape, uh and uh and
going a little crazy and uh. And now that I

(13:51):
think about it, I'm like, well, Bruce Tern's character probably
isn't benefiting from any exercise that he's doing because he
doesn't have anybody to talk to except these two robots
that are very not very expressive at all. It's interest
thing that you say that, because they have noticed that
people who are in isolation and animals who are in
isolation begin to pace. And the reason they do this,
they pose it that because they don't they're not getting

(14:12):
this sort of stimulation that they would otherwise, they're creating
it for themselves. Like the brain needs constant input, it
turns out, and so being on a treadmill pacing back
and forth, we'll give you at least something with the
something that your brain can play with, some sort of input. Yeah,
it's like you you know how like some or maybe
a lot of I'm not really an engine person, guys.

(14:35):
But you'll have like an engine on a boat, right,
and it'll be designed to work in the water. It
will depend on the water. If you run it out
of the water too long, it's gonna overheat because it
doesn't have water interacting with the mechanisms. I kind of
think of that in terms of the brain, because our
brains have evolved to help us navigate. As we've discussed before,
a world of fixed and movable objects, multiple fixed and

(14:57):
movable objects, a world of symbols, a world of social interaction,
and just evolutionary we've survival has selected for those those
those properties. So if you take us out of that
environment and put us in a situation where things are
not changing, where things are not moving, where there are
no symbols, or there's the same symbols are are there
and they're staying the same, and there's no social um

(15:20):
strata to deal with, then what does the brain start doing? Right,
as you say, it starts having to create work for itself.
It starts having to Uh, this is where you end
up with with situations of paranoia where someone has to
sort of aspire some sort of movement or logic to
the world around them. It needs a story to glom onto. Really. UM,

(15:40):
this was interesting. There's a documentary called Alone. It's documentary
by the BBC, and what they did is they recreated
an experiment from the nineteen fifties in which um, some
some college students were put in isolation for forty eight hours.
And this documentary by a man with an axe, Yes
with this with the hockey mask on UM. But in

(16:04):
this documentary, what they did is they took six people
and isolating for forty eight hours in various ways. But
in the documentary, you see this woman becoming convinced that
the sheets on her bed that she's in complete darkness
by the way, are are sopping wet, and she becomes
very angry about it. And what's happening is that she
doesn't have that sensory input and so she's becoming confused

(16:26):
about the you know what she can pick up around her. Um,
And although the sheets were cold, they certainly weren't wet,
and so she couldn't accurately square her sensory perceptions with reality. Again,
that's that feedback that we really need. Yeah, and it's
a it's also important to note and this is something
that's definitely been observed in prison systems with people in
solitary confinement. Is that there if there are pre existing

(16:48):
mental conditions, if there's any kind of um, you know,
psychosis going on already, Um, solitary confinement is just going
to aggravate it and make it worse. And and and
so people with with previousing conditions are going to be
able to cope with it far less. Yeah, And we'll
talk a little bit about that in a second. But um,
i'll write up this break, we'll talk more about that

(17:09):
BBC documentary. We're gonna leave you alone for a minute.
This podcast is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors
of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe
curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join us at
curiosity dot com and explore the answers to life's questions.

(17:32):
And we're back. I thought you would be back. See
there's there's some feedback going on. Um, okay, So the
BBC documentary alone, they just more specifics on this. There
were six people. They're deprived of sensory input. Essentially, they're
put in solitary confinement for forty eight hours and observed
by researchers. UM. One of the findings is that around
thirty hours into the experiment they began to pace back

(17:54):
and forth, which we talked about and UM, it was
also noted that they began to hallucinate and they began
to get very aggressive. UM. And just so people know,
like there are two groups of three, one of them,
one of the groups were given UM these I think
they're called arm cuffs, and so they can't feel anything,
that just covers their entire arm. And then they are

(18:18):
also given goggles and so although the lights are on,
they can't see anything too clearly. It's just it's sort
of fuzzy. And then they they're given white noise or
sort of that's piped into their cell and a horror movie.
Because I'm sure, I'm sure, And part of me did wonder,
you know, because it's a documentary like where was the

(18:39):
anti upped? Psychologically, because when people know that they're being filmed,
obviously they behave in different ways. But then I thought
to myself, no, I think that anybody who is under
walk and key for forty eight hours by themselves, you know,
either with arm cuffs on and goggles and white noise
or in a cell that's completely dark for four hours
is going to start ago a little bit nuts and um. Again,

(19:02):
this was an experiment from the nineteen fifties that they
recreated for this documentary. There was a two thousand seven
study the ties in with this from the University of
Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, and they reported that
anxiety and aggression that results from social isolation trace to
altered levels of an enzyme that controls production of a
brain hormone. The two enzymes that are needed for the

(19:25):
production of alo pregnant aline, a brain hormone that acts
to reduce stress, to the regulation of gabba um and
which is a really important neurotransmitter UH. They found that
the level of one of these enzymes, called five alpha
reductase type one, was reduced nearly fifty in lonesome mice UH,

(19:46):
and levels of the other enzyme did not change. But
but this is an interesting insight into how um, you know,
aggressive behavior emerges in isolated individuals or mice. Right, the
hermit becomes super as for the gun and starts freaking out. Yea,
I you you're going to bring it back to the hermit.

(20:08):
So isolation can't be used as a weapon. Yes it can. Okay, okay,
back go to your room. Well yeah, right, and in
the corner. And if you're depriving your kid of social
interaction and here's grounded, yes, and they have to go
in the room, then I mean obviously they're bothered by
unless they have access to their PlayStation and without no

(20:28):
no computer, no internet, grounded from the internet for a week. Well,
I never thought about it before. I mean, you know,
I have a kid. I never thought about it. Was like,
solitary confinement might go to your room. Okay, you have
to think about that. So the roots of that go
to the box. Kid. I'm gonna start saying that the
roots of this actually go back to dr Well, actually,

(20:48):
the roots of this or you know, this has gone
back for a very long time, this idea of solitary confinement.
But the first time a cave man was not invited
to a party, yeah, felt chills, ye, and then painted
about it in the cave. Uh. Doctor Donald Hebb, he
was a prominent fixture in the nineteen fifties and sixties
psychology community. Um, and there's not a lot of definitive

(21:09):
information about his experiments with isolation. It's kind of you know,
the heaven. Some people who say that he was sort
of the feeder system for the CIA in terms of
how they conduct torture then and even now today. Um.
But we do know that he had student volunteers at
McGill University where he was the head of psychology. Uh,

(21:31):
put on UM goggles, gloves and ear muffs and then
he put them in air conditioning cubicles and low and
behold in twenty four hours hallucinations four to eight hours.
They suffered complete breakdowns. Uh. And he noticed he noticed
that they also suffered a disintegration of personality. And this
is very again similar to the torture techniques used at

(21:53):
Guantanamo Bay. His research was eventually tagged is too cruel
and shut down. UM, but we do know from this
research that this just could be very effective as a
means of torture or as a weapon of of trying
to get someone to um been to your will, so
to speak. UM. In the BBC documentary again, uh, you

(22:15):
know this was a recreation of of what heb had done.
And you see this comedian who's who's one of the
participants in this documentary, and he's the first to crack
and you think about it, and this is this really
extroverted guy who depends on feedback from his audience all
the time, needs it, craves it. So it's very interesting
to see that behavior began to show up very early on,

(22:40):
so we know they began to get agitated, they began
to hallucinate. But by the end of their stay in
the documentary, it turns out that their memory and their
information processing abilities were tested or retested, because they were
tested at the beginning and they were found to be
quite compromised, which would make sense because while they were
in the tank, they were basically in a reality to
the program. They were in a reality TV program. Their

(23:02):
their minds were sapped. Yes, their minds were sapped, um,
but also like the circadian rhythms, within within hours, they
began to to lose touch of what time it was,
and the circadian rhythms just sort of failed them and
they began to nap and um think that, oh, well,
it must be nighttime and while away the time in
that manner. Yeah, I mean, it just goes back to

(23:23):
we are beings that have evolved to live in a
certain environment, and if we're in an altered environment or
we're taken out of that environment entirely. Um. It's detrimental
to how we work so um, which is why it's
so effective. And in a place like Guantanamo, right right,
you don't have to to do anything physically cruel when

(23:45):
you can just say, well, I'm not going to you know,
I'm not going to break your fingers, I'm not going
to beat you. I'm just going to leave you alone
until that loneliness drive you nights. Yeah. And this is
from a Wired article and Solitary confinement um, in which
they talked to psychologist Greg Haney, and he says that
it's not just that psychological isolation is a painful experience,

(24:06):
but that when people's sense of themselves is placed in jeopardy,
they are more malleable and easily manipulated. In a certain sense.
Solitary confinement is thought to enhance the effectiveness of other
torture techniques, so it's used to break down the person. Yeah,
and in general, Yeah, we interact with people. It's kind
of like I was talking about it earlier. You have
that that temptation. No, this isn't another podcast. Sorry, we're

(24:28):
talking about something bothers you. And even if you're if
there's no one around the vent to you might be
attempted to go on the internet to vent about your
pet peeve. Well, part of that is is we're reaching out.
We have to have somebody else sort of tell us, Yeah,
that is So this is the way the world works,
doesn't it. Yes, this is the way the world works.
This is how I work, right, Yes, this is how
you work. Someone that will agree with you, like, yeah, um,

(24:50):
you know that reality shows totally are annoying, Like, you know,
I just did you verified you know what I just
said and validated my my belief system. Well, it's this
the story of I, right, And we've talked about this
before too, unconscious or consciousness, the story of I that
we continually are feeding data to. So once you write,
once you take away the feedback, then then who am I?

(25:13):
Without that we'll get more into space and a little bit.
But NASA, of course, is very interested in how isolation
affects us, you know, because they're very interested in sending
people into isolated environments far from the Earth and far
often from from most other people. So uh, they have
they have found that one of the things they have
to keep an eye on is that you'll say so

(25:34):
you have eight people living in close confines, annoying the
heck out of each other, and then who are they
going to vent to? They can't vent to each other
because you know, most of the time you're gonna have
a little more decorum than that. You know, if if
you if you're stuck in a in a tube with
John and Sally and John keeps smacking his gum um,
you know you're not gonna complain to to you know,

(25:55):
to the to this guy about it. You're man to
that person for five more months. Yeah, So they found
that it's it's very much an item of concern. They
found that journal keeping actually helps because it helps peo
put sort of a they're venting, but then they're also
they're forced to really think about how they're feeling about things.
Like they they did a study where they uh took

(26:16):
ten people on the International International Space Station and they
had to keep a journal and it just, you know,
generated like something like a thousand and something pages. It
was a lot of a lot of journal writing came
of this. But the people would generally they would start
off being like, oh man, this sucks, but then they
were forced to think, well, actually, the International Space station

(26:36):
is pretty cool, and it's you know, the situation is
not that bad really, and so they have to actually, um,
look at at how they're feeling about that they were
reframing it right so that they could survive, which is
really interesting because that's something that a lot of prisoners do,
specifically prisoners who are in solitary confinement. And it's estimated
that there's about twenty five thousand prisoners sitting in solitary

(26:58):
confinement right now in the us u UM. And when
we talk about solitary confinement, we're talking about a six
by eight foot sale right uh no windows, and prisoners
are held there anywhere from like ten to fifteen days
at a stretch. And they have been reports of people
saying that they really they went into themselves when they

(27:18):
had sensory deprivation. They were able to actually bring up
sights and smells from their past and get lost in
these four hours. And but but the downside of this,
of course, I mean, well there's no upside of this, right, um,
mayan because the ability to go into yourself and to
survive is certainly something we'll remember. I think maybe I

(27:40):
can't remember you brought it up or a listener brought
it up after we had talked about the memory palace.
They mentioned that in the book Silence of the Lambs,
Hannibal lecter Um cops with his confinement by using the
memory palace to construct this kind of place for him
to go, and then he paints like pictures on the
wall and stuff. But um, right, but then he also
had access to things to stimulate his mind. But when

(28:02):
you're in solitary confinement, I mean, it's it's a bed,
it's the fluorescent lights are on for twenty four hours,
and although you can hear things around you, you are alone.
You are not really interacting. Um. And so yeah, I
mean people they do go them into themselves, but what
happens is that they're actually having some very big problems

(28:24):
with their memory. I mean people who have been in
a solitary confinement. There's one guy who was in um,
I think, in and out for like eighteen years, and
then he was cleared of his crime, and ten years
later he still says that he has problems with memory,
problems with interacting with people, and also problems with navigating.
Which is interesting because you know, we've talked about the

(28:46):
visual cortex and how important it is for memory, and
you know, you walk into a room, you're you're actually
trying to blueprint that room in your mind. Uh. So
it would make sense that if you were stuck in
this one place for so very long and uh you know,
eighteen years and now you're out of it, then your
context for the world world greatly changes. Um, well, and

(29:10):
you end up. I mean, the list of symptoms that
people have experienced from solitary environment the prison situation. I mean,
it includes stuff like the depression to spare anxiety, rage, claustrophobia, hallucinations,
problems with impulse control of impaired vision and hearing, weaking
of the immune system, absence of menstrual periods and women
premature menopause, aggressive behavior, and prisoners. Um. I mean it

(29:33):
just that's that was interesting them. The menstruation too, because
you wouldn't think of that as something that was dependent
upon feedback. You know, that's something that just regularly happens. Right,
But when you're taking if you're taken out of the
rhythms of life, then it's greatly going to alter you
at a physical level too, right, Um. And Hany actually
talks about the fact that we don't know the long

(29:54):
term effects. And the reason is because we don't have
good data on follow ups of people who come out
of the environment. It's not something that's easy to study,
and it's not necessarily something that prison systems are eager
for people to have a look at. Right. UM. I
wanted to mention too that that documentary talked to a
university professor by the name of Brian Keenan and he

(30:16):
was taken hostage in Beirut and held in a windowless
cell for eight months. Um. And he can't up for
ten minutes at a time, and a walk the staircase constantly. Um.
And the reason I bring him up is because I
thought that his personal assessment of the situation was very
interesting and we can sit here and talk about you know,
here are the effects. It's you know, it's a cognitive impairments.

(30:37):
But he said the nothingness was extremely hard because it
was how am I going to get through these next
ten minutes or months later? How am I going to
get through the next day? The blackness was palpable. There
was nothing there to confirm to me that there was
human existence outside of me or even inside of me,
which is really chilling. Because I thought, well, that just

(30:58):
points back to this idea that your life becomes a
joy division song. It's that is that could be chilling,
you know if it's aun But again, this's this idea
that you yourself, your sense of self becomes completely fragmented,
you lose yourself. Now. One of the more newsworthy stories
of isolation to occur in the last few years was,

(31:20):
of course, the thirty three Chilian miners that spent sixty
nine days trapped deep underground until they were finally brought
to the surface on October two thousand ten, and just
getting them out it took about twenty four hours. But
but it was a really tense situation because you had
thirty three people down there and had to get them out,
had to figure out how to make sure that they're

(31:40):
staying healthy and sane down there. Um. And they eventually
brought in NASA for advice. But weirdly enough, this was
in a popular science article. Um, they had sent down
some music to help them pass the time. But also
they sit down on monopoly board, which I know we're
probably there's some probably some lest there's out there who
are fans of monopoly, but uh, we all know that

(32:04):
monopoly is an intensely irritating game. I mean, even if
you enjoy, you've got to admit that, even in the
best of situations, it can cause close friends and loved
ones to try and stab each other and I with
forks um or scald each other with pizza or just
I mean it's it's a brutal pizza. There's specific Yeah, well,
I'm just thinking of a party party atmosphere turning violent,

(32:26):
you know, or stabbing somebody with pizza who was sharp enough.
But I mean, there have been articles about how Monopoly
is a zero sum game like it and it brings
out the worst in people because it's it's not about
like working together as much. It's about brutally smacking down
your opponent. And it also takes forever. Monopoly games tend

(32:47):
to it to last until the wee hours or until
the first person bleeds, and so and so. So the
idea of sending this game down to people who are
trapped in an isolated environment, who are already stressed, it
just seems insane. Like were they trying to get them
to turn on each other? And uh and and like
just pummeling each other to death so nobody don't have

(33:09):
to worry about dragging them back to the surface. Again,
I'm just saying monopoly sounds like a very odd choice.
I think that you're going to have to talk to
to whoever manages these sort of crises and say, you
know what this is, this is my what were you
thinking of acceptable games to stand down the hall? Yeah?
Any anything that is well shoots and ladder, Yeah, I

(33:32):
don't know, there's not there's not a lot of engagement.
And well that's the problem. It's a game. I mean,
there's a foster's competition, not collaboration for the most part. Well,
there there are a lot of fine collaborative games there.
But anyway, I'm getting I'm getting off the point here.
But but yes, I mean they're gonna like Larpe down there.
I don't know. Well, there's not in the room for
Larkin's um or or any large scale board games or

(33:53):
tabletop cans. But at any rate, people working everyone was
rightfully concerned about the physical and mental being of these individuals,
and so NASA was actually brought in to advise in
the situation, since they've have done studies and have some
resident experts on the topic of isolation. Yeah, and in
fact it is from now so that we get this

(34:15):
term irrational antagonism, right, This is the term that describes
what happens to people who are isolated together, which you
talked about a little bit with people on missions roommates
in space. Basically, yeah, yeah, familiarity breeds contempt exactly. So,
as I mentioned earlier, one of the things that astronauts
have talked about is that you're in this close environment
and you you may feel anger at your your other astronauts,

(34:36):
but but in most of the most of the cases,
you don't want to vent it because you feel like
you'll make the situation worse. So you end up with
this kind of silent antagonism. Growing. Yeah, you're either journaling
or you're blaming it on other people other than your
fellow astronauts. Right, You're blaming it on mission control. Yeah, yeah.
Mission control apparently is often the scapegoat for a lot
of this anger because you're also up in a very

(34:58):
risky situation. You're basically kind of like mountain climbing, and
everybody's attached to the same wire. You don't want to
set off any fireworks. These guys are are you're in space,
You're depending on each other to get back home safely.
And and so you lay it cool and then you
just let ground control have it. Every little thing light
into them. Yeah, the punching bag of the astronaut. So

(35:18):
so I found I found that particularly interesting. And uh
Mary Wroach actually talks about this a lot in her
book on Mars, m Talking for Mars, which is filled
with all sorts of curious stuff about the space program.
But she had one particular quote that we were both
really amused about. It had to do with I believe
us submariners, right, I believe the submariners. And they were

(35:40):
at a research station, and so when they were finally
taken out of their confinement, um, and this is a
quote from her book there, this is what they had
to say about it. I once met a man who
told me that after landing in christ Church after a
winter at the South Pole Research Station, he and his
companions spent a couple of days just wandering around stare
ring in awe at flowers and trees. At one point,

(36:03):
one of them spotted a woman pushing a stroller a baby.
He shouted and they all rushed across the street to
see the woman turned the turn the stroller and ran
so isolation could potentially turn you into a baby chasing maniac. Yes,
and it would make sense because if you're if you're
isolated for six months, because even like a week, you know,

(36:23):
all of a sudden, you're you're out and you see
the sun and the leaves and you see the sun
just you know, dappling the leaves in a newborn baby smile.
And I mean, all of a sudden, you're This the
a cliche of a song, right yeah. Roach also credits
an interview with Norbert Craft's another individual NASA and Kraft
mentioned that there had been some research into the possibility

(36:45):
of sending married couples into space to limit to limit
some of the the negative vibes that might happen up
there and some of the feelings of isolation. I get
the isolation part, but I do not, I mean the whole,
like familiarity breeds contempt art. I mean, I just don't
see a lot of marriages actually surviving. Um. And I
say this just personally and made mabe this could happen.

(37:07):
But UM, I love my spouse, he's wonderful. I don't
necessarily want to work with him, and I don't want
to be stuck in a capsule with him for six months.
Well it's like, I mean, it's like that, I don't
want to be in a capsule for six months. So
there you go. Well, it's like the whole canoeing thing.
Canoeing as a test of relationship. Yeah, which my wife
and I survived canoeing twice so far, I think. But yeah,

(37:29):
this is like the ultimate, Like this is even more
than canoeing. And I don't know, I don't know if
there are many marriages out there that are up to
the test. Well, see now that you say that my
my husband and I loved a canoe and when we
lived in North Carolina we did it every weekend. But
it does require like you couldn't be mad at each
other in canoe, right, because you have to collaborate. Yeah,
you have to collaborate and if you get mad, you
have to work through it. Otherwise you're not going to

(37:51):
make it to your destination or you're just gonna float
around out there in the middle of the lake until
somebody comes and fetches you in a boat. Yeah again,
you're just sitting there in your arms crossed. Yeah. Yeah. Um,
I was thinking about this too in terms of relationships
that the isolation effect in families. Um, I think this
is one of the reasons why families stay in business,
because have you ever thought about this, Like when you've

(38:13):
been isolated or alone for a long period of time
and end and maybe there's a family member who's driving
you nuts, and yet you still pick up the phone
to call that person. I mean, this is really keeps
moms in business. I think, Well, it makes me think
of um, my wife sent and Judy, who has these
two she has these two horses, and these horses hate

(38:36):
each other, or one one in particular hates the other one,
and it will if it gets a chance, it will
bite it the horse and just just want to just
bite it and kick it and just just a real jerk.
But if they're separated, then the horse freaks out and
it's like, where is my friend? Where is that horse?
So that I might bite him? You know, and you

(38:57):
completely other horse? Yeah, I know, and I've again, I
think it's because it's pointing back at itself, right, because
the same thing if I'm calling let's say that you know,
my mom and I have been in a bit of
a tizzy, and yet if I'm not feeling great or
I'm feeling lonely, I will call her, even though I
know that she might say something to sort of drive
me nuts. I think simply because well because I love her,

(39:20):
but be because it's sort of validates like us, Yeah,
the story of you the I Yep, that's right, I'm
your mom and that's all true. You exist. There, you go.
That's that's all you need to know, right there, and
that is why we are all manacled to one another.
So yeah, human isolation, it's definitely something that, uh that
may seem more attractive on the outside than it actually is.

(39:41):
Especially you know, if we're really busy people, you may
end up fantasizing about like, oh if I had everything
to myself for like a weekend, if I was Georgia O'Keefe. Yeah,
if I was Georgia O'Keefe, everything would be knocked. But
it's not only the case, Like I, I actually have
this where I'll look at my own life specifically that
I'm thinking about, like writing, like finding time to right,
which takes up a lot of time, requires generally requires isolation,

(40:04):
and it's just hard to fit into the schedule of
a busy life. Um, you know, talking about outside of work,
right and I'll think back to times in my life
where I had lots of free time, where there was
probably a fair amount of loneliness in my life, but
I didn't get a lot of work done in those
times either. You know, it's it's because you're procrastinating. Well,
we've talked about well, I think there's a lot going on,

(40:26):
you know, and obviously if you're isolated and your lonely,
your your brains just not working as well, and your
your time management, at least for me, ends up going
out of whack too if I'm by myself. So I'll
look back at these times and I'll and I'll I
have to remind myself it's like, well, you had plenty
of free time, then you didn't get get anything done,
because it's only I feel like it's only when I'm
really busy, when I'm having to find the time to
fit things in, that I can actually maximize those times.

(40:48):
And when I have, you know, enough social activity in
my life and enough people in my life to give
it all some sort of meaning. Well, the truth of
the matter is that people are stimulating even though they
make you know, annoy us sometimes or I might annoy someone,
or someone might annoy me. But you know, we're always
after a new experience, and we need those new experiences
to you know, literally grow our brain cells. Um so,

(41:10):
and it would make sense that that would inform our
creativity and our ability to create. YEA. So like it
or not, you know, we're we're shared up with with
our fellow humans. So speaking of our fellow humans, I
have a couple of emails to read here for us
from some listeners and we listener by the name of
David and David says, I love your recent episodes where
you have delved into philosophical topics. I especially love the

(41:32):
podcast entitled His Free Will and Illusion, as well as
the one about the possibility of acute Earth. I do
hope that you keep doing some more philosophical topics, UM.
I would enjoy especially enjoy one on morality, ethics and
health science can or cannot inform morality. UM also an
an episode examining a Descartes famous axiom. I think, therefore

(41:54):
I am would be awesome. I think that everyone is
a philosopher, but not everyone knows it. People are often
driven away from philosophy due to the fact that philosophers
can be an intolerable lot. But behind all of the
sometimes pretentious philosophical jargon are the questions that we all
grapple with. You guys can put alienating concepts into everyday
language that both phil philosophers and non philosophers can both enjoy.

(42:16):
So keep up the good work here, mix of science
and philosophy the spot. Thank you that. That's good to
know that people are enjoying that. Yeah, I feel like
we try and inject a fair amount of philosophy into
whatever we're talking about, because ultimately, like that's the whole
like mind blowing areas where we have to fit ourselves
in our own experience, into this new knowledge and and
figure out how our view of everything relates to it.

(42:38):
So true, and certainly philosophers can be a little off
puting It's true it's the beards. The beards. Not all
philosophers have beards, and not all lady philosophers have beards either. Well,
in the case you're wondering, even though I know some philo,
I mean I have known philosophers, and I can definitely
identify rule people that are philosophers. I also I hear

(42:58):
philosophers and I can't help but think like marble statue
of some old dude. Well, yeah, well means that's that's
just the patriarchal society, and yeah it it does draw
back to the whole idea that, like philosophy, is often
viewed as this this thing that is no longer relevant.
But as we've discussed in previous episodes, new advances in neuroscience,

(43:20):
new advances in our understanding of the universe, these forces
to sometimes reevaluate old philosophical questions or or stir up
new philosophical debates, like the whole issue of consciousness and
free will, or the idea of are are we alone
in the universe or are we just one of other

(43:41):
of numerous species. It's the underpinnings of society, right. We
can't really operate without having a philosophical discussion about things exactly.
We also heard from a listener by the name of
Megan Megan Rights and says, I want to start off
by telling you what a big fan I am. I
really love the wide breath topics you cover. I always
feel like by the time of the podcast US is over,
I am just a little bit smarter about something. Uh.

(44:03):
In the listener mail section of a recent episode, what
if Earth was a cube? The idea of actors being
the biggest liars in the world was brought up as
a professional actor who was of conservatorially trained. I am
both amused and slightly put off. Actors do not lie.
We create alternate realities. I feel very strongly about this,
even though I know that not everyone will agree with me.

(44:23):
In my experience, it is obviously the audience when an
actor is lying because he she is not really living
in the circumstances that have been created by the play,
and the audience feels and quite honestly is jip uh.
If we want to twelve really deeply into it, it
goes back to creating a lie so detailed that you
can believe it is reality. And this is where some
actors get into trouble when they decide to really become

(44:46):
their character for something more than the purpose of telling
the story to the audience. I'm going to stop here
before my points become too confusing. Thank you for all
your hard work. That's really interesting. I was thinking about
fiction writing too. They always say, like, you know, even
though you're we being a tale, it should be as
truthful as possible. Yeah, it should mirror truth. So it's
great to hear from an actual actor about about about

(45:08):
that about the idea of acting as as lie, but
also in the in the podcast, I mean, the whole
thing we're discussing too, is the idea of lying as
an alteration of reality. I feel like there's a there's
a little gift a pike from both of those. Yeah,
they're not the same, but there are some definite links
between what they're doing. Yeah, that's an interesting perspective from Megan. Yeah, yeah, definitely,

(45:29):
Thanks Megan for your feedback on that. And if you
have feedback on something, if you have some sort of
cool story you want to share, if if you have
a particular area of expertise that aligns up with something
we've been talking about, hunt us down. We are on
Facebook and Twitter. We are Blow the Mind on both
of those and you can see all sorts of stuff
we're up to and what we're reading about, what we're researching,

(45:50):
what we're considering podcasting about as well, and you can
always drop us online at Below the Mind at how
stuff courts dot com. Be sure to check out our
new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how stafwork
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow,