March 21, 2019 • 54 mins
Disgust is an odd thing. It makes sense that we would feel a sense of revulsion at the thought of putting rotten meat in our mouths – that’s pure evolution. But why would we feel the same emotion at the thought of weird sex or from hearing a racist rant?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. You and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck, Brian over there, and um,
there's Jerry and this is discussed and stuff you should
(00:23):
know about. Disgusted. You gotta say it like that. I'm
excited about this one, Chuck, And I don't know why.
I have no idea. I think you do. If you
stopped and really thought about that's fine, that's fine. But
if you stopped and thought about it, you would say, yes,
I know exactly why, Josh. And it is as follows
colon quotes, because this is one of those things that
(00:46):
science hasn't fully explained, which means there's a lot of
interesting theories, which means we just get to like talk
smack the whole time. It's interesting. This is one of
those where I was reading it and I was I mean,
it was sort of interesting, But then I was like,
why wouldn't wouldn't even study this? I I that's I mean,
that's a good question. That's a good question. I think
(01:07):
one of the reasons that I'm fascinated by it, and
that I'm sure one of the reasons these I mean
to to dedicate your career to studying disgust. It is
kind of a bizarre idea. But one of the main
researchers in the study of discussing a guy named Paul Rosen.
He's kind of like the godfather, maybe even the father
of the field. Yeah here, but he's been doing it
(01:31):
longer than anybody, so he's the He's the pappy um
as they say in the Hills. Uh. He has said
that to him, discussed is the thing, the emotion, the
experience that makes humans human, that that it is discussed
that separates us from the other animals that were sure
(01:51):
the animal kingdom with so much so that we actually
may use discussed to separate ourselves from the rest of
the animals. Okay, that's pretty fascinating and it's worth exploring too,
because I think it says a lot about us as
as humans and as animals. So that's why that's the
answer your question. How about that? All? Right? Now, I
(02:14):
get why somebody would want to study I guess I'm
talking about allocating funds to study it. Oh, gotcha. It
just seems like a strange thing to sink money into. Well,
I mean, if the humanities are going to sink money
into anything. What makes us the most human would be
that make it? It makes sense according to one guy, Right,
I love it. Let's talk about gross things. Okay, so
(02:36):
we're going to so so this, this whole idea of
studying it, of studying disgust is actually pretty new. Um.
Rosen didn't really start until like the seventies, and it
wasn't until the nineties that it really got it really
picked up, um, which will kind of get into. But
prior to that, it was basically just philosophers who who
were talking about disgust. Right, Yes, I think, uh, I'm
(03:00):
not sure about studying, but at least as far as
I think, it seems to me like it was more
of a like where's the boundary as far as what
can we write about? What can we talk about, and
what can we perform and still sell books and tickets?
Right Like we want we want people to to be
tantalized at the thought of being grossed out or disgusted,
but not actually be disgusted. And it's a fine line
(03:23):
that's walked, you know, no, of course, and it's subjective,
it is. But the other thing about discussed that's pretty
interesting is it also appears to be universal. It's like
it's a universal reaction. But what discuss people is not universal.
It's culturally bound, I guess right, maybe personal too, sure,
I think totally personal. So the the overtime, like as
(03:45):
you know, discussed kind of moved out of the realm
of philosophers and into science. Um. There were a couple
of people who kind of made contributions early on in
the field. One was Charles Darwin. He wrote a treatise
on it, and his big thing was that disc gust
was related to taste, which is true to an extent,
but that was Darwin's big thing. And then later on
(04:07):
there was a guy, a psychoanalyst named andrews ang y'all.
And ANDREWS. Sangiel basically said that, um, no, no, no,
discussed is not really related to taste. It's the it
comes from the idea or the thought of putting something
horrific into the mouth, which again kind of makes sense
(04:28):
to a certain extent. But then when Rosen and friends
came along, it really started to take off and they
actually managed to kind of categorize disgust into a few categories,
which is what you do when you categorize things. Yeah,
there's uh, the first one is core discussed, and that's
what you think of if you like, you know, if
(04:48):
poop er, I mean, everyone has their own triggers, but
if like vomit or feces or like a like in
trails or something like, that's cord discussed. That's an encounter
with some sort of like physical contaminant that makes you,
you know, make that face right, and that face specifically.
(05:09):
That's another universal thing too, apparently the faces. It's called
the gape, which is your mouth is open, your tongue
may or may not be sticking out, your nose is wrinkled,
and your upper lip is is raised. And just like
I don't do that with my mouth open, though, so
you just kind of do the the nose wrinkle in
the upper lip. I guess like this, but I don't
(05:31):
open my mouth. So that's why I sort of like,
I don't know when it comes to stuff like this,
I'm a little when they make these sweeping statements like
everyone makes this face. Well, everyone may make a variation
of a face of like kind of there's like a
universal set of of characteristics to the face that you
(05:52):
could choose from that would fall into disgust like that.
I don't know if you choose anything but maybe your
natural reaction. But like I don't open my mouth, and
when I read that, like everyone opens their mouth like, no,
that's not true. So um that I think one of
the reasons why there is like this idea of it
being universal is because evolutionary psychology is we'll see has
(06:12):
said like, yes, this is our realm, We've got this,
We're gonna explain this one, and to fully explain it,
it basically has to be universal. So I think that's
another thing about the point where the study of disgust
is right now, Like there's a lot of good ideas,
some of which have kind of been shown to be
probably true thanks to the Wonder Machine, but it's still
(06:33):
it's not fully explained, and so there are some ideas
and descriptions that make it seem kind of wacky too, right, Yeah,
for sure. Um. That second kind of discussed getting back
to that was animal nature discussed, which is apparently these
are things that in anything that reminds us that we're
really animals, and that that could there could be a
(06:54):
wide range of things they're from, Like some people think
people eating with the hands is disgusting, and I think
that would qualify under animal nature because like you're eating
like an animal. Let's say, um, sex uh, and we'll
get into that more later. But apparently there's a baseline
discussed for sex, which I'm not so sure about that
(07:17):
one either. And then hygiene, uh is another one. Poor
hygiene is the animal nature discussed. Yeah, And another one
is the like, like you said, entrails something that's called
the um, the body envelope, the ideal body envelope being violated,
whether it's like there's a deformity or there is like
(07:37):
some sort of um, like an open wound or something
like that. They think that this whole animal nature thing,
that all these things remind us that we are animals,
and that discussed can be triggered by um, that reminder
that we are that we are in fact animals, which
is kind of weird, but we'll get into explanations for
that later. I can't wait. That's right. And the final
(08:01):
one is moral discussed, which uh. And this is one
where you know, you can be disgusted with someone's behavior
or uh, you know, disgusted with like something a politician does,
or disgusted with racism or bigotry something like that. Right,
And that one makes like the least amount of sense
if you think about it like that. Okay, the first
(08:22):
two were just kind of like, all right, we're like,
it's animal related. We might have issues with being animals,
so we're we're kind of disgusted by ourselves at the
thought that we're animals. Maybe it's a bit more of
a stretch than that Core discussed, Like Core discussed makes
the most sense out of all of them. Agreed. Uh, yeah,
And I don't even think that the moral discussed. I
(08:43):
think that's a different type of thing altogether. So that
that other people have proposed that that like they're like
some people have said, well English speakers are just misusing
the word discussed. They're talking right. Well, they've done they've
done studies of people in the Wonder Machine that shows
that the region of the brain, the anterior insula that's
(09:05):
usually um, that usually lights up when you're shown a
picture of like dog poop and said you're gonna eat this,
you know, your your anterior insula lights up. That same
region lights up when people are disgusted with um other
people morally, Like remember the ultimatum game. I don't remember
it used to come up all the time back in
the day in our episodes. But so if somebody was
(09:28):
given a really really low offer to take it or
leave it, offer that was so low and so unfair
that the person said, I'm just leaving it. I actually
don't want this free money because I find it insulting.
That same part of the brain that that is triggered
by um, like fecal disgust, is also triggered UM, which
(09:49):
supports the idea that there actually is a moral dimension
to disgust and that we experience it in the same way.
That's interesting. It is interesting, but it is like the
it's the most tenuous of those three, I think. So
the way this all started out there there are a
bunch of theories, but it makes sense that it might
have ah been sort of an offshoot of distaste, which is,
(10:13):
you know, your body is conditioned thanks to you know,
evolution too. If you eat something that's bitter or rotten,
like your instinct, your taste instinct is to throw it
out and get rid of it. Uh, And it's a
defense mechanism to save your life. And so the idea
is that discuss developed out of that and that it's
(10:35):
just simply an evolutionary trait. Uh that could have you know,
saved took Tok's life, you know, however many years ago. Yeah,
and there's there's evidence apparently that this this distaste, which
is basically is in an involuntary reaction, is like dropping
something that's hot, like you don't stop and think like wow,
this cooking pan is about five on the five fifty
(10:58):
degrees fair at height, and then you'd drop it. I
should probably drop it like you just dropped the pant.
Distaste is the same exact thing, and they've actually seen
it elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Um, So we've probably
experienced distaste since before we were humans, and it's just
spitting something out that doesn't seem right in a in
a um an effort to I guess, keep the body
(11:20):
from becoming polluted with disease, right, And they think that
distaste somehow became a behavior that was laid over this
I'm sorry discussed has was a behavior that became laid
over this existing structure of distaste. Yeah, And that's interesting
to me because that means that it becomes all of
(11:41):
a sudden, It's not like you have to eat poop
to be disgusted, like the mere sight of poop now
can discuss somebody, uh, and that just happened over time,
I think. So that is why Rosen says this is,
like discussed, is the defining characteristic of human entity, because
(12:01):
they suspect that other animals, at the very least almost
all other animals don't have the cognitive capacity to use
their imagination to imagine themselves eating poop and see in
and being disgusted by it as a result. Right, So
that's why they say discussed separates humans from from animals,
(12:22):
because it requires imagination to go from an involuntary reaction
of spitting out food to not even getting to the
point where the food is in your mouth. You can
imagine that you would have that reaction and experience the
emotion of disgust. So you don't have to go through
that process, that actually very dangerous process of eating something
rotten to figure out that you shouldn't be eating it.
(12:44):
You can imagine it beforehand. And that's the function that
discussed at least core discussed provides humanity. It advances us.
We don't have to learn through trial and error over
and over again not to eat rotting meat. We just
know on some very basic level that that is a
disgusting thing to do when we have a reaction to it.
Are you want to take a break? Yeah, all right, everyone,
(13:04):
we're gonna be right back right after this with more disgust.
So I think we should go back to Took took
um and just like how this actually may have worked
(13:26):
back in the day. Uh, let's say Took Took and
his buddy mock Mock are strolling along the tundra. You know, Chuck,
after eleven years, I am surprised that we have a
new character, and I'm very pleased. Yeah, well, don't get
used to him, because mack Mok is he's about to
die for mock mom. So it Took Took and mack
(13:48):
mak are walking along the tundra. Um they find a
an old dead antelope, and mock Mock is like, well,
this doesn't smell great, but I'll tell you what, I'm
gonna eat this thing because I don't have this genetic
trait because my mom eat this stuff. Uh, and it's fine,
(14:09):
and Took Tooks like, I don't know, my friend, it
looks and smells gross. Um, I do have this genetic trait,
So I'm gonna pass on that, So mock Mak's like,
you're a sucker. I'm gonna chow down on this rotten antelope.
And then mock Mock gets sick and dies before mack
Mak can have any babies. And then if this happens
(14:29):
thousands and tens of thousands of times over a huge population,
you can see how over time it would be like
any physical evolutionary trait that might evolve over time, and
all of a sudden, Tuk Tuk's family is thriving today
in the United States, all healthy descendants of Took Took
and mock Mok is long gone, right, And because Tuk
(14:51):
Tuk was able to pass along his genes of being
disgusted by rotten meat, and mock Mock died before he
could pass his genes of not being discussed along, So
nature or natural selection or revolution selected for for Tuk
Tuk's right right, And Tuk Tuk was a prolific lover,
as we all know. And I imagine mock Mock in
(15:14):
his dying words gasping, I regret never having seen the ocean. Probably,
so it's a good Mock Mock. Everyone doesn't know, but
it's true that was so chuck um. That's the that's
the evolutionary psychology basis for explaining how disgust came along
(15:36):
and was passed along, right, And it makes sense on
a very basic level, but it starts to get less
and less sensible, as you've already pointed out, as we
start to add more and more inputs of disgust. Right, like, yes,
it makes sense that either uh, somehow the idea of
not eating meat was passed along, either genetically or even
(15:57):
you could say tuk Tuk went back to the hunter
gather tribe and said, hey, let me tell you what
happened to mock Mark. It was crazy. He ate some
rancid antelope, which I guess we all kind of thought
was okay up to this point. But let me tell
you steer clear of the ransid antelope. You don't want
to have anything to do that because it just killed
moch Mock and everyone trusting took took and not just
(16:18):
assuming that he hit mock Mock with a rock or
something out in the wilderness and left him to die,
that he actually did die from eating antelope. This became
passed along. This is another way it could have happened,
and that this like ancient knowledge. We just lost, um
where the ancient knowledge came from that was actually took
took seeing mock mak die, and instead it just became
something that, um, we came to think of as like
(16:41):
instinct over time you just don't eat rancid meat. But
really what it is, rather than being passed along genetically,
it was am I guess a meme uh an idea
that was passed along generation to generation and it became
so ingrained that we just confuse it for genes or
instinct as well, which is another ex nation of it.
But both of them have like an evolutionary component to
(17:03):
it for sure. Yeah, and then over time that even
changes to where, um, like it's not like humans, Like
let's talk about a human body, then like a dead
a dead human body, a corpse. Let me get my
poking stick. Well, you probably wouldn't poke it because your
evolutionary instinct is to probably just stay away from that body. Well,
(17:23):
that's so the stick is for. And it's not just
because like well it maybe partially because a dead body
just might creep someone out, but there's also an evolutionary
basis to avoid that body, get it out of the house.
And bury it because it's may have been diseased. Uh
And they've even done studies. There was a study in
two thousand four in Biology Letters, just the greatest teen
(17:48):
science mag out there, Tiger Beat in Biological Scientists. Uh So,
Biology Letters said that they didn't study where they found
the images of objects that held what was called a
potential disease threat. We're rated as more disgusting. So this
is just the idea that um again, because of evolution,
we are have trained ourselves to avoid somebody who looks sick. Okay,
(18:15):
now we get to another big chink in the armor.
If you ask me, where did we get the idea
that a body caused disease and that you could become
polluted by some weird magical transference of this disease by
handling or coming in close contact with the body like
pre germ theory. Pre germ theory. Germ theory is very new.
(18:36):
It's about a hundred and fifty years old. Almost on
the nose. We're talking about people's aversion to dead bodies
and corpses for eons before that, hundreds of years, if
not thousands and thousands of years, right, maybe even more
like what if like, I mean, what if someone just
going to like back in the day where people like,
(18:58):
oh that's great, come here and give me, give me
some sugar, right, or were people always sort of repulse
by that? Yeah, I I don't know, and we we
don't We don't know. We can't say. We can only
go as far back as any like historical reference as
we can find. But you can make a pretty good
case that an aversion to to something like that or
a dead body goes back much further than germ theory.
(19:20):
So you you come to that question, where do we
get this idea? Where do we get this understanding on
a very basic fundamental level that corpses are to be
avoided so much so that we are disgusted by them.
And even if you're not disgusted, like I want to
wretch if I see a dead body in person, which
may be surprised. I think a lot of people would
be very surprised that if they actually did see a
(19:42):
dead body, they would be they would probably wretch. That
depends on you know, what's going on the state it's in. Yeah,
if it's viscerated or something like that, or the smell
I think also to um, but the the the idea
that that there's something that is keeping you from avoiding it,
whether the creeps, whether it's discussed, whether it's some form
(20:03):
of a version that is that is acting to put
distance between you and the polluting entity. This dead body. Um,
where did that come from before germ theory? That's my
big question that I haven't seen answered anywhere. It's where
did we get that? Again? Was it somebody handled the
dead body and like became directly sick from it, so
(20:26):
obviously that even like Took Took could say, yes, the
dead body caused this, so we should steer clear of
hanging out around dead bodies. Or um, was there some
sort of awareness on on a very basic level that
that we haven't figured out how to explain yet that
that kept generations and generations of humans relatively healthy before
(20:50):
the advent of germ theory and our understanding of it.
It is a bit of a mind experiment. It is like, uh,
that this perhaps the very sound of someone very ill
and hawking up, you know, phlim. It sounds gross, but
like like you say, though, before germ theory, before they
knew that that would make that was sickness, or that
(21:12):
made someone sick. Maybe people were like, come in here
and do that in my face that I love that sound, right,
but it just doesn't seem likely. It's like a s
MR to me. I don't know, man, It's very hard
to wrap your head around. And also, if you remember,
in our Great Stink episode prior, right prior to germ theory,
there was miasma theory, which was the smell of something
(21:33):
directly polluted you and made you sick that associated with it.
But even that, it's like, so, okay, what what made
you think that the smell? What makes you think that
a dead body, which in and of itself isn't giving
off any actual signals that it will make you sick
if if it's decayed enough and you like interact with it.
What about that made us associate sickness a transference of
(21:56):
sickness that transferences. It's an invisible magic transference of pollution
from the dead body to you, the person who's handling
the dead body. That is that is significant and remarkable
that we came up with that. That's what I think
is is just so fascinating about all this. Yeah, and
I think this thing about the contingencies plays into because uh,
(22:17):
and it's funny. I have to admit when I read
this the word contingencies in my head, I was adding
a letter or something, and I kept saying in my
head as content genesis, and I was like, what is
that content genesis? And finally that's all contingencies Correctly, I
(22:38):
was like, man, am I drunk? Like what's going on?
So anyway, there are content genesies. That's like facetious. I
had that same uh facetious when yeah, what do you
think it's said? Or sounded like fastidious or something like that,
and I kept sounding it out and then finally I
was like, oh, that's facetious. Yeah, but you were probably
(23:01):
like twelve and not a professional broadcaster. I think you
had in your eye that was all. So these contingencies
um in humans at any time, there there are many
contingencies at work within us, competing against each other. So
(23:22):
if you go back to Tuk tuk and mock mock
um mock mock uh died, Let's say he did feel
some disgust, but it wasn't like but he was also hungry,
So that's the competing content genesis and his desire to
eat or and not desire his need to eat overcame
(23:44):
his low level disgust of like, well it's not doesn't
taste great, But I have this other contingency that says
I have to eat, so I'm going to eat the
thing and he doesn't die. Right, then it's a little
more complicated. It is more complicated, and if you step
back and think about it evolutionarily, it would make way
more sense for us to not maintain a sense of
(24:05):
disgust and be able to eat like rancid meat and
then instead learn like like basically develop a gut biome
that will will kill any any bacteria decay that could
make us sick, so that we we could have like
that many more things that are available for us to
eat when we're hard up. That makes way more sense
(24:26):
through natural selection and evolution than learning to not eat something.
And I think that's sort of the thing too, though,
Like the the winning contingency is ultimately going to be
the one that it makes you more fit for you know, replication,
right right, so you would for you yea for cloning
self self cloning, so the the but yes, so if
(24:49):
you have more available food that you can gain energy
from in the environment, that would make more sense to
adapt to that rather than to adapt an aversion to
stential food source. Right, So that's one question. And then
you can also kind of um lay that right over
sex as well too. Right. So this this explanation of
(25:11):
why we might be a verse, why we have competing
contingencies for sex. Right, Like, you want to be attracted
to your mate because you're a person you you find
attractive is probably going to be um a good match
for you reproductive wise, epecially right, And then yes, and
(25:35):
then if if you if you are trying to reproduce
with somebody you're disgusted by, they might not be a
good match. Reproductive wive was evolutionarily it makes sense, that's
a that's a that's a mental gymnastics right there. To me,
it makes more sense to just say, here's an example
of evolution screwing us up, of natural selection screwing us up.
(25:57):
We developed an ability to feel this gusted by sex
because it reminds us that we're animals, and so we're
missing out on sex or at least deriving pleasure from
sex because we are possibly disgusted by the act of sex.
If we step back and think about it in the
right way, right, you see what I'm saying, So there's
a lot of holes here, which is why I mean,
(26:20):
I've got both of my six shooters. I'm about to
start shoot them in the air out of Glee because
it's been a while since we had an episode like this. Yeah.
Another thing that I found interesting too from this was
the the just the mer reaction. Apparently most people open
their mouths I keep mind shut, but regardless, we all
have a discussed reaction. I guess if you don't, then
(26:40):
you're probably a serial killer. Like if you saw someone
like open up and smell like rotten meat and literally
just kept this stone face, We're like, that smells really bad,
Like they they're clearly sociopaths, right, And that's what Rosen
was saying. That's why I discussed is the it's it's
the defining human care acteristic because that person would seem
(27:02):
non human in that sense, they be a robot kind of. Yeah.
But so if people make this face like that is
the cue, Like you don't even need to smell the milk.
If I walk in the kitchen and Emily pours some
milk and it, uh, well, I was gonna say, I
see it clump out of the thing, But that wouldn't count.
(27:23):
Like if I see Emily just smell the milk, she
makes her disgust face. I don't need to smell it. No,
But why is it that there is a chance that
Emily or anyone, yes, who will say smell this? Never? No,
that's okay, thanks for the warning with the wrinkled nose
and raised up her lip. I know, but when you're married,
it's like, no, it's usually I smelled it, like you
(27:44):
have to smell it, right, No, I don't want to
smell it. I've suffered um. So that becomes like, all
of a sudden, a something that like bonds communities together
and cultures together even, right, But which which is another? Okay?
So this then we get to the explanation or the
moral explanation of disgust of how seeing somebody involving cheating
(28:09):
or some sort of unfairness or racism or just something
some really anti social um violating behavior that you you
experienced disgusted at the very at least people say use
the word disgusted. I'm disgusted. I mean maybe it is
the same thing. So that's that's I mean, that's what
(28:30):
that one Wonder Machine study said. And the other the
other way that they backed it up. There's a really
interesting article by Rosen Johnathan Hight, who actually was a
contributor in our super Stuff Guide to Happiness if you remember,
and then um a guy named um Oh McAuley. What
is Clark mcaulay. They're kind of like this big three
(28:51):
triad and in the study of disgust as the only three,
there's a couple others, but yeah, kind of. But they
in the paper they basically say, okay, so you get
the wonder machine evidence suggesting that our actual brain, the
part of our brain responsible for experiencing disgust, is lighting
up when somebody gives us an unfair offer of money.
(29:13):
That's one thing. But also they go around the world
and say that in Japan, in Spain and Portugal, um,
all over the world. Whatever that society or or languages
culture's word is for disgust, they routinely use it to
describe things like the experience of seeing somebody hold poop
(29:33):
up to their mouth, and the experience of being treated
unfairly or seeing somebody racist. So it's not just people
in English misusing an English word discuss, which means actually
bad taste. In older Middle English, Um, it's it is
there is some sort of moral component to discuss. It
seems like well, even the word distasteful, like is rooted
(29:55):
in the word taste. That's that's a similar thing to
like behavior can be distasteful and uh rotten, analoge can
be distaste, especially if he's a real jerk. Right. Um.
The other interesting thing about the work that Jonathan Hate
did was this tying it to political ideological ideal ideology. Jeez,
(30:18):
what is wrong with me today? Uh? I thought that
was super interesting because they did research and they found
that people who are more sensitive to discussed and tend
to be more socially conservative, and that can be exploited.
So when you go to a major news outlet that
may be conservative, that is why you were more likely
(30:40):
to see photos of h unwashed or sick immigrants approaching
the border and not like pictures of like the handsomest,
most fit immigrant approaching the border, because that will, at
least according to this study, they they have higher powerful,
(31:01):
more powerful emotion of disgust. Right. It's it's hijacking your
ability to experience moral disgust because apparently it's really really
easy to come up and poke, to push a person's
disgust buttons and from from what the study says is
that this happens a lot way more than we're cognizant
of and that if we can make ourselves cognizant of it,
(31:23):
we could actually defend against it a little more. Yeah.
I mean, they're not gonna Fox News isn't gonna put
the guy you said it. You said, they're not gonna
put the guy that looks like Antonio banderis in the
immigrant caravan as they're from out you okay as their
front page lead photo. You know, it's gonna be the
(31:44):
person that's on in the on the stretcher that's sick
and dying, and that's going to cause this reaction of
disgust like g I they c g I flies like
flying around the person. Can't you see Antonio banderis walking
up in a video and going this wall is too sexy? Um.
(32:06):
And then the other interesting thing about that that whole
study that he was doing, the hate was doing was
they also found that people make harsher judgments when they
are exposed to a disgusting simulus. So uh, and it
usually was a smell like the smell of of a
of a tooty booty, a shot duck. Um, and if
(32:27):
you smell this flatulence, you would react more harshly towards
like a photo of something right now that might discuss
you just a little bit. I want to know the
methodology of this study pretty badly, Like did they was?
It was just one of those things where they just
kind of suddenly the area between you and the researcher
filled with the fart smell? Well, where do you get
(32:49):
the fart smell? Is there a synthetic or I think
there is? You probably like it's a novel the joke shop.
They picked up like a spinning bow tie. While they
got there, they canned fart too. Right, They're like, thank you,
here's your ten dollars and have a good day, and
they shake their hand. There's a buzzer, right exactly. So um,
But I mean, like is this so? Were they were
talking about something like you know how, what kind of
(33:09):
a prison sentence would you excuse me, what kind of
a prison sentence would you give to somebody? And like
this this fart smells this kind of comes up, but
like they're just not talking about it. I would guess
that's how you would have to do it right, dude.
I had a stranger asked me the other night if
I farted? Oh yeah, had you know? I was at
the Fleetwood Mac concert standing in the beer line, and
(33:31):
this guy in front of me turned around with his
wife and fully just said did you fart? And I
went nope, And I was like, I would tell you
if I did. Did He looked at his wife and go,
did you fart? But then we got to talking and
I was like, guys, I hate to tell you. I said,
I don't even smell anything, so I think you're looking
in the wrong direction. And then he felt like I
was a little drunk, so I didn't care. I was
(33:51):
playing along. But then he felt like really bad and
was overapologetic. I was like, dude, you're gonna ask someone
if they farted, don't then turn around and be weirdly
ashamed of that, right, get all weepy, just own it?
So um, yeah, does the guy not know the whole
he who smelled it? Delta? Idiom it was the first
date and that was the deal. Maybe he did. Yeah,
(34:14):
he really played it off well at Southside. All right,
should we take a break? I think we should? All right,
I'm gonna go fart in the hallway. We'll be right back.
Thank you for that, Chuck. We'll be right back. All right,
(34:36):
it's back, Chuck is back. Now everything's fine in here.
And um, we are still talking about disgust. Let me
let's let's let's um just kind of go over this
real quick one more time. Okay. So we started out
with this this mechanim miss of distaste um where we like,
(34:57):
involuntarily spit something out that's gross that occurs elsewhere in
the animal kingdom. And then over time we figured out
how to create a new um adaptation, a new behavior
that is overlaid over that same brain circuitry where we
spent something out, and we call that disgust. And it
was it originally started out as an aversion to things
(35:20):
like poop and vomit and and that kind of stuff.
And then that evolved even further because at some point
we said we're better than animals, and I don't like
to be reminded of an animal. And I guess that
desire to not be reminded of an animal developed so
much that it became overlaid over that disgusted emotion that
had been that had hijacked the distaste emotion, and then
(35:43):
at some point finally it reached moral um, the moral structure,
and that hijacked the animal and the core and the
distaste to where now just the idea of somebody behaving
in a certain way can disgust us. And the whole
thing that really kind of changed to make it human
(36:03):
was the the addition of um imagination and symbolism to
these ideas, so that we didn't even have to taste
or smell or see anything anymore. Just thinking about this
kind of stuff could disgust us. And that's where we're
at and discussed research, and that's where we're at in
the podcast too. Frankly, Wow, that's a nice recap. Thank you,
(36:27):
all right. So, uh, culturally, you know, it depends on
where you are in the world and what you might
be disgusted by. So while while it is universal, it's
not like every single thing is universal. Um. People uh
eat things in some parts of the world that other
parts of the world might think are disgusting. Um. And
that again is a thing that basically says, I'm a
(36:48):
part of this family, I'm a part of this culture,
I'm a part of this group. Um. The fact that
like all eat eyeballs right out right out of a fish,
right up a fish said to scoop it out and
eat it. Right. Um, I might think that's disgusting, but
that's not like necessary, Like taboos are not the same. Uh,
(37:09):
And cultures all over the world. Yeah, whether it's food,
apparently they think maybe even you know, well, cannibal cannibalism. Obviously,
some cultures don't view incest as um as taboo as
as other cultures do. So some of the things that
we would think would be universally disgusting aren't universally disgusting.
And the whole idea of food too shows that you can,
(37:30):
um learn to not find something disgusting or never find
it disgusting at all because you were just raised in
a culture that eats this food and values it. But
to somebody else from outside of the culture, when they
see that food, they are disgusted by it. So yeah,
there's a lot of lack of universality in disgust that
we might assume would be there that actually isn't. Yeah.
I mean vegetarianism and veganism is a perfect example. Uh.
(37:53):
Someone can eat meat until until they're in their mid
twenties and then all of a sudden switch to veganism,
and a year later, the mere sight of meat might
discuss them, whereas the year before they were challenged down
on it. Which I would guess that's just like you
were structuring your brain circuitry basically, right, Yeah, I think
so probably, I mean that would make sense. But so
(38:15):
something that never disgusted you before can become genuinely disgusted
or the other way around, huh, I imagine. Well, yeah,
I mean you can learn to eat other cultures foods
that you were disgusted by previously and eat meat now
right right, Yeah, yeah, you can also learn to eat
broccoli over time. BROCCOLI's good, it's it's not though it
(38:38):
really is roast in the oven the lish Okay, I
will give you that. Roasted BROCCOLI's okay. But if it's
steamed or just like floppy in any way ship or form,
I've had bad experiences with it over over the years.
It sounds like someone's overcooking your broccoli. Not anymore, but yes,
I think Dad used to used to overcook it quite
(38:58):
a bit. Yeah. I go for al dente when it
comes to most vegetables. Yeah, but roasted roasted is good
mushy is a is a food quality that kind of
discussed me. So, uh, food preparation is important. Like I know,
we're just kind of kidding about the broccoli, but like,
let's say, um, an eggplant or a squash. If you
(39:20):
cook that thing until it's really mushy, it's it's really
gross to me. But I will totally eat an eggplant
if it's nice and firm. Yeah yeah, I mean yeah,
texture is enormous with it. It also affects taste too,
which doesn't make any sense except for like it's part
of the experience of it, right, Yeah, but true disgust
happens for me. I think it's not just like I
(39:41):
don't prefer that, like mushy food really really grosses me out. Well,
there's something that that um that it actually hit a
pond early on, and this is that like disgust is
it goes around our conscious thought, right, Like you're not
like this this broccoli is is not to my preference.
It is way too floppy and mushy, and i'd be
(40:03):
I prefer to not have it in my mouth anymore so,
and you spit it out and it just falls back
onto your plate instead you put it in your mouth,
especially if you're not expecting it to be mushy and
you start chewing it like you expected to be good.
Your reaction without even thinking it's going to be spit
it out probably, and you might you might not actually
spit it out, but that will be your first reaction,
(40:25):
and you might have to stop yourself, like bring your
napkin up to your mouth or whatever. And that's one
of the things that like really kind of is a
hallmark characteristic of disgust. When it is experienced, it goes
around our intellect and our our um conscious thought. It's
a basic reaction. Yeah, and it can also get out
of hand as far as the uh if the idea
(40:47):
is that at its root, we're trying to avoid disease
and dying. Um. We've all heard of of cases phobia
is really that developed um and pathologies out of fear
of germs or dirt or cleanliness. UM. Anyone who's ever
seen the great movie Safe by Todd Haynes, Um. That
(41:07):
was a movie about that where this woman sort of
slowly unwinds and eventually ends up in a in a
like a a community where everyone is obsessed with this
kind of compulsive cleanliness. Who's the woman, It's Julian Moore.
I haven't seen that yet. Is it pretty good? It was?
It was great, I mean it was. It's a long
time ago. So it's like in the early nineties, I think,
(41:30):
like some of her earlier work. But that's just an
example of how, um, how that can happen and how
it can get out of hand until basically you have
a compulsive disorder that may have started out of a
legit environmental like discuss reaction to disease, right, Yeah, that well,
that's what they think is the basis of possibly all
(41:52):
of it that has to do with disgust or like
a drive to to feel clean or to get rid
of germs or to be afraid of germs, that kind
of thing. That it's it's your um, your being indoctrinated
into disgust when a little too far in your brain,
your brains disgusted reaction just became too powerful, and now
(42:12):
it has this kind of crippling effect on your life. Yeah,
but it can also like it's oddly there are things
that have nothing to do with disease and dying that
have been kind of labeled as disgusting and ed points
out acne as one of them that might trigger a
disgust reaction in some people. And it's really completely harmless.
It is, but it's playing upon in an inadvertent way,
(42:36):
our predisposition to be grossed out by things like disease. Yeah, sore,
a pox, a pustule. It has nothing to do with that.
It just kind of resembles it in the exact same way.
People find slugs and snails disgusting, uh, And they suggest
that it's because they look like they're covered in mucus.
Even though it's not actually mucus. It reminds us of mucus.
(42:57):
So we're disgusted at the thought of touching one of
those things. Same thing. They're not disease carriers, but they
remind us of it. That's the key, because disgusted works
hand in hand with human imagination. I got Emily one
of those poppet pals. Have you seen those? No? What
is it? You know how she's pretty obsessed with with
zip popping and she doesn't watch she's not one of
those people who watches the stuff on YouTube. But it's
(43:19):
just like a personal thing. But they saw it on
Shark Tank. There's this thing. Now it looks It's about
the size of a bar soap, but it's made out
of silicon. It's kind of a squishy, rubber rectangular bar
and you squirt to this like, uh, I don't know
what it's made of. It's it's almost like Chrisco or something.
Um I think it's plant based and you fill it
up with that and the top of it is covered
(43:41):
with all these little dimple holes and you pop them
and it comes, it comes sneaking out just like like
the best pimple you've ever seen. That's amazed. So I
kept like trying to imagine that, like this was going
on the person's face, and it's like just to basically like, here,
keep busy with this and leave my face alone. Yeah,
you just whatever, You set it in your lap and
(44:01):
just pop away. That's really awesome, man, it's it's it
was really satisfying for it too. I thought she might
be like, no, this is not the same, but she
was obsessed with it first. That's awesome. Couple of days
that's Is there any great human thing that Shark Tank
hasn't give given us? I don't know, I can't. I
can't think of one. Um Umi has a thing for
cauliflower ear, and she'll sometimes watch videos of cauliflower ear
(44:25):
being drained and it's like, I can't hang man wrestler. No,
not not that I know of, but Mr Chance I
guess right, she better have Mr Chance fining. She comes
in and she finds you like on the carpet, rolling
your ear on the floor. Didn't that how wrestlers get it?
I think they get it from like a trauma to
the ear, like a punch of the ear, like a
(44:46):
an impact of the ear, and then like it swells
up and then it turns into like scar tissue or
like just pussy infected edema. Well, which is why they
wear the ear covers. Yes, well, that and to look cool,
to look kind of cool somehow. Um so that offsets
the singlet, which is the least school thing you can wear.
(45:07):
It's pretty uncool. I have to say, sorry wrestlers, but
the entire rest of the world thinks that the singlets
look uncool. It's not just us. Oh boy, So let's
talk about the disgust scale real quick? Do you have that? Yeah?
You know, I didn't even look at this because I
thought it might be fun if you just went through
a few of those with me. Okay, well, this is
a great idea, Chuck, get into a game still innovating
(45:29):
after eleven years. I'm so proud of us. So John
Paul Rosen and John Hight and a couple of other
people came up with the sorry Clark McAuley and Clark McAuley.
I'm just going to say the third person. They came
up with a disgust scale. Okay, So, Chuck, between zero
and four, zero being strongly disagree and four being strongly agree,
(45:54):
meaning it's very untrue or very true about you. Please
indicate how much you agree with each of the following
statements or how true it is. Between zero and wet
three four zero strongly disagree it's very untrue about you,
and four is strongly agree very true about you. You
might be willing, sorry, I might be willing to try
eating monkey meat under some circumstances. Strongly disagree. Four. That's zero, okay, zero.
(46:21):
It would bother me to be in a science class
and to see a human hand preserved in a jar. Obviously,
that would not bother me, because when I saw the
human head in a bucket, very famously, my reaction was, Huh,
there's a human head whereas a person with me was
really disgusted, right, yeah, and I think understandably. So, um,
(46:44):
I love that story. Okay, here's another one. I never
let any part of my body touch the toilet seat
in public restrooms. Agree or disagree, untrue or true. I'm
just gonna ditch the numbers because it's confusing me. Okay,
I don't That doesn't really bother me that much. I
know that probably really disgusted you. Uh no, well yeah,
I just have to go to another place. Oh when
(47:07):
I do that, I don't mind. Man, I know that's
gross probably, but whatever. Okay, here's one more um from
this one. Then we're gonna do another set. You're ready. Um,
I would rather eat a piece of fruit than a
piece of paper. Well, yeah, I'd rather eat a piece
of fruit. Okay, Okay, I think that's just like a
baseline one that they use. Okay, so then between zero
(47:30):
and four rate these not disgusting at all? Are extremely disgusting.
Just say one of those two. Okay, you see maggots
on a piece of meat in an outdoor garbage pail,
very disgusting, you, I agree. Your friend's pet cat dies
and you have to pick up the dead body with
your bare hands. Um, not disgusted, just sad. Okay. I
(47:51):
mean I've done that with all of my animals that
have passed. I took care of the bodies, right. I
think this leaves out that it was hit by a
car and it's now part of the road. Basically, Yeah,
that's a medium disgusting and sad. Okay. Yeah, well yeah,
it said you're about to drink a glass of milk
when you smell it is spoiled, And then in parentheses,
weirdly enough, it says because Emily just changed it under
(48:11):
your nose and said, smell this, that's weird. Um. Yeah,
the smell of turned food grosses me out a lot. Okay, Uh,
while you're walking through a tunnel under a railroad track,
you smell urine. I've been in New York enough times,
it's not that big of a deal. It still gets me. Man,
I think smelling urine is worse than smelling poop for
(48:33):
some reason. Really Yeah, interesting? Okay. Two more, you see
a man with his intestines exposed after an accident. Yeah,
that's pretty high up there. Yeah yeah, I think so too.
And then last chuck, you see someone put ketchup on
vanilla ice cream and eat it. Yeah, that's gross, Okay,
(48:54):
although it's interesting though when I thought about the bodies
and trails, like, I don't love it, but I can
watch like a surgery. It's not my favorite thing, but
I'm not like fully disgusted. But if it's an accident,
I think that so it might be a contextual thing
as well. So one of the things that I experience
(49:14):
when I see like some something in surgery, and I think, yeah,
context definitely has a lot to do with it in
that case too. But if I see like a surgery,
like remember there used to be that TV network that
was nothing but surgery. You remember it was in like
the late eighties, early nineties, I think, um, but uh,
to see that, I'll get like faint right like, And
it's not necessarily the side of blood. It's like the
(49:36):
site of viscera. I get a little faint, and it
never made sense to me. I think definitely as part
of it too. But I think also part of the
disgust reaction is that your heart rate and blood pressure lower,
which would explain why you start to feel faint. Like
I don't feel queasy or nauseated or like I'm gonna wretch.
I feel like I need to sit down for a second,
(49:57):
which is I guess it is still part of the
disgust reaction. It just isn't the the the nausea version
of it's but it's still revulsion, but a weird, fainty version.
So in the med school sitcom that we star in,
when they pull the sheet back, you start saying, how
don't feel two good guys, and we're like, yeah, you're
so funny, and then all of a sudden you hit
the deck. I think the way I would play it
(50:19):
is even more straightforward, where my eyes just go up
in the back of my head and I fall backward
in response to the sheep being pulled. It's a good move.
I can't wait for that movie to come out. Ah,
you got anything else? I don't think so. I'd be
surprised if you did. We've gone on for a good
six seven minutes beyond when we should have stopped. I
(50:40):
think I like that game aspect of that one that
was one. Oh. Your score, by the way, indicates that
you do experience disgust from time to time. I'm not
a serial killer, no, no, uh, And I don't know
if you guys heard her not, but Jerry also gave
her answers as well. That's right. Uh. If you want
(51:00):
to know more about disgust, you can just go look
at some weird stuff on the internet. It's out there
for you. Uh. And since I said that it's time
for listener mail, I'm gonna call this one of the
many dyslexia emails we got. Those were really rolling in
from people who have overcome dyslexia and adults living with dyslexia. UM.
(51:24):
So this one is from from a fellow Atlanta named
Audrey Short, and she says this, Hey guys, I have dyslexia,
and I was so happy to hear you talking about
my learning disability. I was diagnosed when I was about
ten uh and went to the Shanks School in Atlanta,
which is specifically for children with dyslexia. In fact, she
sent in a following follow up email just to clarify that, um,
(51:48):
we learned how to read and write using a technique
called Orton Gillingham. When I left after the fourth grade,
I could actually read. More importantly, I love to read
and devoured every book I could get my hands on.
While I graduated top of my class. I had to
work twice as hard as my classmates to keep up
with the required readings and homework. Uh. My peers seemed
(52:09):
to think that my extra time I received for exams
was the reason I did so well, not the countless
hours on late nights I spent um learning the material.
While this bullying did affect me, did not discourage me
from pursuing my education at college. I attended Miami University
and Ohio, graduating this May with a three point nine
(52:29):
nine g p A Biochemistry and Physics. I planned to
tend a PhD program at Harvard or you see, Berkeley.
I'm not saying this to brag, but to tell other
children with dyslexia to keep trying. I know so many
students are afraid to ask for extra time or accommodations
because they don't want to be bullied or stand out.
I'm proud of my dyslexia because, uh, it has forced
(52:51):
me to learn how to stand up for my student rights.
I've made it to where I am today by utilizing
the tools given to me, like extra time. And I
want to encourage people with learning disabilities to seek help
because you are intelligent and your unique perspective just might
change your field entirely. Nice Audrey, Audrey Short great and
Audrey that is great emails, so that kind of replaces
(53:14):
that whole like, look, this famous person made it. You
can just tell people, let me tell you about Audrey Short.
I agreed. Okay, way to go, Audrey, that's fantastic. Congratulations
early on um graduating with a three point nine nine man,
that's impressive, and good luck in grad school too. If
you want to get in touch with us, like Audrey did,
you can go onto stuff you Should Know dot com
(53:36):
and check out the social links there. You can also
send us an email. Send it off to Stuff podcast
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. You and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck, Brian over there, and um,
there's Jerry and this is discussed and stuff you should
(00:23):
know about. Disgusted. You gotta say it like that. I'm
excited about this one, Chuck, And I don't know why.
I have no idea. I think you do. If you
stopped and really thought about that's fine, that's fine. But
if you stopped and thought about it, you would say, yes,
I know exactly why, Josh. And it is as follows
colon quotes, because this is one of those things that
(00:46):
science hasn't fully explained, which means there's a lot of
interesting theories, which means we just get to like talk
smack the whole time. It's interesting. This is one of
those where I was reading it and I was I mean,
it was sort of interesting, But then I was like,
why wouldn't wouldn't even study this? I I that's I mean,
that's a good question. That's a good question. I think
(01:07):
one of the reasons that I'm fascinated by it, and
that I'm sure one of the reasons these I mean
to to dedicate your career to studying disgust. It is
kind of a bizarre idea. But one of the main
researchers in the study of discussing a guy named Paul Rosen.
He's kind of like the godfather, maybe even the father
of the field. Yeah here, but he's been doing it
(01:31):
longer than anybody, so he's the He's the pappy um
as they say in the Hills. Uh. He has said
that to him, discussed is the thing, the emotion, the
experience that makes humans human, that that it is discussed
that separates us from the other animals that were sure
(01:51):
the animal kingdom with so much so that we actually
may use discussed to separate ourselves from the rest of
the animals. Okay, that's pretty fascinating and it's worth exploring too,
because I think it says a lot about us as
as humans and as animals. So that's why that's the
answer your question. How about that? All? Right? Now, I
(02:14):
get why somebody would want to study I guess I'm
talking about allocating funds to study it. Oh, gotcha. It
just seems like a strange thing to sink money into. Well,
I mean, if the humanities are going to sink money
into anything. What makes us the most human would be
that make it? It makes sense according to one guy, Right,
I love it. Let's talk about gross things. Okay, so
(02:36):
we're going to so so this, this whole idea of
studying it, of studying disgust is actually pretty new. Um.
Rosen didn't really start until like the seventies, and it
wasn't until the nineties that it really got it really
picked up, um, which will kind of get into. But
prior to that, it was basically just philosophers who who
were talking about disgust. Right, Yes, I think, uh, I'm
(03:00):
not sure about studying, but at least as far as
I think, it seems to me like it was more
of a like where's the boundary as far as what
can we write about? What can we talk about, and
what can we perform and still sell books and tickets?
Right Like we want we want people to to be
tantalized at the thought of being grossed out or disgusted,
but not actually be disgusted. And it's a fine line
(03:23):
that's walked, you know, no, of course, and it's subjective,
it is. But the other thing about discussed that's pretty
interesting is it also appears to be universal. It's like
it's a universal reaction. But what discuss people is not universal.
It's culturally bound, I guess right, maybe personal too, sure,
I think totally personal. So the the overtime, like as
(03:45):
you know, discussed kind of moved out of the realm
of philosophers and into science. Um. There were a couple
of people who kind of made contributions early on in
the field. One was Charles Darwin. He wrote a treatise
on it, and his big thing was that disc gust
was related to taste, which is true to an extent,
but that was Darwin's big thing. And then later on
(04:07):
there was a guy, a psychoanalyst named andrews ang y'all.
And ANDREWS. Sangiel basically said that, um, no, no, no,
discussed is not really related to taste. It's the it
comes from the idea or the thought of putting something
horrific into the mouth, which again kind of makes sense
(04:28):
to a certain extent. But then when Rosen and friends
came along, it really started to take off and they
actually managed to kind of categorize disgust into a few categories,
which is what you do when you categorize things. Yeah,
there's uh, the first one is core discussed, and that's
what you think of if you like, you know, if
(04:48):
poop er, I mean, everyone has their own triggers, but
if like vomit or feces or like a like in
trails or something like, that's cord discussed. That's an encounter
with some sort of like physical contaminant that makes you,
you know, make that face right, and that face specifically.
(05:09):
That's another universal thing too, apparently the faces. It's called
the gape, which is your mouth is open, your tongue
may or may not be sticking out, your nose is wrinkled,
and your upper lip is is raised. And just like
I don't do that with my mouth open, though, so
you just kind of do the the nose wrinkle in
the upper lip. I guess like this, but I don't
(05:31):
open my mouth. So that's why I sort of like,
I don't know when it comes to stuff like this,
I'm a little when they make these sweeping statements like
everyone makes this face. Well, everyone may make a variation
of a face of like kind of there's like a
universal set of of characteristics to the face that you
(05:52):
could choose from that would fall into disgust like that.
I don't know if you choose anything but maybe your
natural reaction. But like I don't open my mouth, and
when I read that, like everyone opens their mouth like, no,
that's not true. So um that I think one of
the reasons why there is like this idea of it
being universal is because evolutionary psychology is we'll see has
(06:12):
said like, yes, this is our realm, We've got this,
We're gonna explain this one, and to fully explain it,
it basically has to be universal. So I think that's
another thing about the point where the study of disgust
is right now, Like there's a lot of good ideas,
some of which have kind of been shown to be
probably true thanks to the Wonder Machine, but it's still
(06:33):
it's not fully explained, and so there are some ideas
and descriptions that make it seem kind of wacky too, right, Yeah,
for sure. Um. That second kind of discussed getting back
to that was animal nature discussed, which is apparently these
are things that in anything that reminds us that we're
really animals, and that that could there could be a
(06:54):
wide range of things they're from, Like some people think
people eating with the hands is disgusting, and I think
that would qualify under animal nature because like you're eating
like an animal. Let's say, um, sex uh, and we'll
get into that more later. But apparently there's a baseline
discussed for sex, which I'm not so sure about that
(07:17):
one either. And then hygiene, uh is another one. Poor
hygiene is the animal nature discussed. Yeah, And another one
is the like, like you said, entrails something that's called
the um, the body envelope, the ideal body envelope being violated,
whether it's like there's a deformity or there is like
(07:37):
some sort of um, like an open wound or something
like that. They think that this whole animal nature thing,
that all these things remind us that we are animals,
and that discussed can be triggered by um, that reminder
that we are that we are in fact animals, which
is kind of weird, but we'll get into explanations for
that later. I can't wait. That's right. And the final
(08:01):
one is moral discussed, which uh. And this is one
where you know, you can be disgusted with someone's behavior
or uh, you know, disgusted with like something a politician does,
or disgusted with racism or bigotry something like that. Right,
And that one makes like the least amount of sense
if you think about it like that. Okay, the first
(08:22):
two were just kind of like, all right, we're like,
it's animal related. We might have issues with being animals,
so we're we're kind of disgusted by ourselves at the
thought that we're animals. Maybe it's a bit more of
a stretch than that Core discussed, Like Core discussed makes
the most sense out of all of them. Agreed. Uh, yeah,
And I don't even think that the moral discussed. I
(08:43):
think that's a different type of thing altogether. So that
that other people have proposed that that like they're like
some people have said, well English speakers are just misusing
the word discussed. They're talking right. Well, they've done they've
done studies of people in the Wonder Machine that shows
that the region of the brain, the anterior insula that's
(09:05):
usually um, that usually lights up when you're shown a
picture of like dog poop and said you're gonna eat this,
you know, your your anterior insula lights up. That same
region lights up when people are disgusted with um other
people morally, Like remember the ultimatum game. I don't remember
it used to come up all the time back in
the day in our episodes. But so if somebody was
(09:28):
given a really really low offer to take it or
leave it, offer that was so low and so unfair
that the person said, I'm just leaving it. I actually
don't want this free money because I find it insulting.
That same part of the brain that that is triggered
by um, like fecal disgust, is also triggered UM, which
(09:49):
supports the idea that there actually is a moral dimension
to disgust and that we experience it in the same way.
That's interesting. It is interesting, but it is like the
it's the most tenuous of those three, I think. So
the way this all started out there there are a
bunch of theories, but it makes sense that it might
have ah been sort of an offshoot of distaste, which is,
(10:13):
you know, your body is conditioned thanks to you know,
evolution too. If you eat something that's bitter or rotten,
like your instinct, your taste instinct is to throw it
out and get rid of it. Uh, And it's a
defense mechanism to save your life. And so the idea
is that discuss developed out of that and that it's
(10:35):
just simply an evolutionary trait. Uh that could have you know,
saved took Tok's life, you know, however many years ago. Yeah,
and there's there's evidence apparently that this this distaste, which
is basically is in an involuntary reaction, is like dropping
something that's hot, like you don't stop and think like wow,
this cooking pan is about five on the five fifty
(10:58):
degrees fair at height, and then you'd drop it. I
should probably drop it like you just dropped the pant.
Distaste is the same exact thing, and they've actually seen
it elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Um, So we've probably
experienced distaste since before we were humans, and it's just
spitting something out that doesn't seem right in a in
a um an effort to I guess, keep the body
(11:20):
from becoming polluted with disease, right, And they think that
distaste somehow became a behavior that was laid over this
I'm sorry discussed has was a behavior that became laid
over this existing structure of distaste. Yeah, And that's interesting
to me because that means that it becomes all of
(11:41):
a sudden, It's not like you have to eat poop
to be disgusted, like the mere sight of poop now
can discuss somebody, uh, and that just happened over time,
I think. So that is why Rosen says this is,
like discussed, is the defining characteristic of human entity, because
(12:01):
they suspect that other animals, at the very least almost
all other animals don't have the cognitive capacity to use
their imagination to imagine themselves eating poop and see in
and being disgusted by it as a result. Right, So
that's why they say discussed separates humans from from animals,
(12:22):
because it requires imagination to go from an involuntary reaction
of spitting out food to not even getting to the
point where the food is in your mouth. You can
imagine that you would have that reaction and experience the
emotion of disgust. So you don't have to go through
that process, that actually very dangerous process of eating something
rotten to figure out that you shouldn't be eating it.
(12:44):
You can imagine it beforehand. And that's the function that
discussed at least core discussed provides humanity. It advances us.
We don't have to learn through trial and error over
and over again not to eat rotting meat. We just
know on some very basic level that that is a
disgusting thing to do when we have a reaction to it.
Are you want to take a break? Yeah, all right, everyone,
(13:04):
we're gonna be right back right after this with more disgust.
So I think we should go back to Took took
um and just like how this actually may have worked
(13:26):
back in the day. Uh, let's say Took Took and
his buddy mock Mock are strolling along the tundra. You know, Chuck,
after eleven years, I am surprised that we have a
new character, and I'm very pleased. Yeah, well, don't get
used to him, because mack Mok is he's about to
die for mock mom. So it Took Took and mack
(13:48):
mak are walking along the tundra. Um they find a
an old dead antelope, and mock Mock is like, well,
this doesn't smell great, but I'll tell you what, I'm
gonna eat this thing because I don't have this genetic
trait because my mom eat this stuff. Uh, and it's fine,
(14:09):
and Took Tooks like, I don't know, my friend, it
looks and smells gross. Um, I do have this genetic trait,
So I'm gonna pass on that, So mock Mak's like,
you're a sucker. I'm gonna chow down on this rotten antelope.
And then mock Mock gets sick and dies before mack
Mak can have any babies. And then if this happens
(14:29):
thousands and tens of thousands of times over a huge population,
you can see how over time it would be like
any physical evolutionary trait that might evolve over time, and
all of a sudden, Tuk Tuk's family is thriving today
in the United States, all healthy descendants of Took Took
and mock Mok is long gone, right, And because Tuk
(14:51):
Tuk was able to pass along his genes of being
disgusted by rotten meat, and mock Mock died before he
could pass his genes of not being discussed along, So
nature or natural selection or revolution selected for for Tuk
Tuk's right right, And Tuk Tuk was a prolific lover,
as we all know. And I imagine mock Mock in
(15:14):
his dying words gasping, I regret never having seen the ocean. Probably,
so it's a good Mock Mock. Everyone doesn't know, but
it's true that was so chuck um. That's the that's
the evolutionary psychology basis for explaining how disgust came along
(15:36):
and was passed along, right, And it makes sense on
a very basic level, but it starts to get less
and less sensible, as you've already pointed out, as we
start to add more and more inputs of disgust. Right, like, yes,
it makes sense that either uh, somehow the idea of
not eating meat was passed along, either genetically or even
(15:57):
you could say tuk Tuk went back to the hunter
gather tribe and said, hey, let me tell you what
happened to mock Mark. It was crazy. He ate some
rancid antelope, which I guess we all kind of thought
was okay up to this point. But let me tell
you steer clear of the ransid antelope. You don't want
to have anything to do that because it just killed
moch Mock and everyone trusting took took and not just
(16:18):
assuming that he hit mock Mock with a rock or
something out in the wilderness and left him to die,
that he actually did die from eating antelope. This became
passed along. This is another way it could have happened,
and that this like ancient knowledge. We just lost, um
where the ancient knowledge came from that was actually took
took seeing mock mak die, and instead it just became
something that, um, we came to think of as like
(16:41):
instinct over time you just don't eat rancid meat. But
really what it is, rather than being passed along genetically,
it was am I guess a meme uh an idea
that was passed along generation to generation and it became
so ingrained that we just confuse it for genes or
instinct as well, which is another ex nation of it.
But both of them have like an evolutionary component to
(17:03):
it for sure. Yeah, and then over time that even
changes to where, um, like it's not like humans, Like
let's talk about a human body, then like a dead
a dead human body, a corpse. Let me get my
poking stick. Well, you probably wouldn't poke it because your
evolutionary instinct is to probably just stay away from that body. Well,
(17:23):
that's so the stick is for. And it's not just
because like well it maybe partially because a dead body
just might creep someone out, but there's also an evolutionary
basis to avoid that body, get it out of the house.
And bury it because it's may have been diseased. Uh
And they've even done studies. There was a study in
two thousand four in Biology Letters, just the greatest teen
(17:48):
science mag out there, Tiger Beat in Biological Scientists. Uh So,
Biology Letters said that they didn't study where they found
the images of objects that held what was called a
potential disease threat. We're rated as more disgusting. So this
is just the idea that um again, because of evolution,
we are have trained ourselves to avoid somebody who looks sick. Okay,
(18:15):
now we get to another big chink in the armor.
If you ask me, where did we get the idea
that a body caused disease and that you could become
polluted by some weird magical transference of this disease by
handling or coming in close contact with the body like
pre germ theory. Pre germ theory. Germ theory is very new.
(18:36):
It's about a hundred and fifty years old. Almost on
the nose. We're talking about people's aversion to dead bodies
and corpses for eons before that, hundreds of years, if
not thousands and thousands of years, right, maybe even more
like what if like, I mean, what if someone just
going to like back in the day where people like,
(18:58):
oh that's great, come here and give me, give me
some sugar, right, or were people always sort of repulse
by that? Yeah, I I don't know, and we we
don't We don't know. We can't say. We can only
go as far back as any like historical reference as
we can find. But you can make a pretty good
case that an aversion to to something like that or
a dead body goes back much further than germ theory.
(19:20):
So you you come to that question, where do we
get this idea? Where do we get this understanding on
a very basic fundamental level that corpses are to be
avoided so much so that we are disgusted by them.
And even if you're not disgusted, like I want to
wretch if I see a dead body in person, which
may be surprised. I think a lot of people would
be very surprised that if they actually did see a
(19:42):
dead body, they would be they would probably wretch. That
depends on you know, what's going on the state it's in. Yeah,
if it's viscerated or something like that, or the smell
I think also to um, but the the the idea
that that there's something that is keeping you from avoiding it,
whether the creeps, whether it's discussed, whether it's some form
(20:03):
of a version that is that is acting to put
distance between you and the polluting entity. This dead body. Um,
where did that come from before germ theory? That's my
big question that I haven't seen answered anywhere. It's where
did we get that? Again? Was it somebody handled the
dead body and like became directly sick from it, so
(20:26):
obviously that even like Took Took could say, yes, the
dead body caused this, so we should steer clear of
hanging out around dead bodies. Or um, was there some
sort of awareness on on a very basic level that
that we haven't figured out how to explain yet that
that kept generations and generations of humans relatively healthy before
(20:50):
the advent of germ theory and our understanding of it.
It is a bit of a mind experiment. It is like, uh,
that this perhaps the very sound of someone very ill
and hawking up, you know, phlim. It sounds gross, but
like like you say, though, before germ theory, before they
knew that that would make that was sickness, or that
(21:12):
made someone sick. Maybe people were like, come in here
and do that in my face that I love that sound, right,
but it just doesn't seem likely. It's like a s
MR to me. I don't know, man, It's very hard
to wrap your head around. And also, if you remember,
in our Great Stink episode prior, right prior to germ theory,
there was miasma theory, which was the smell of something
(21:33):
directly polluted you and made you sick that associated with it.
But even that, it's like, so, okay, what what made
you think that the smell? What makes you think that
a dead body, which in and of itself isn't giving
off any actual signals that it will make you sick
if if it's decayed enough and you like interact with it.
What about that made us associate sickness a transference of
(21:56):
sickness that transferences. It's an invisible magic transference of pollution
from the dead body to you, the person who's handling
the dead body. That is that is significant and remarkable
that we came up with that. That's what I think
is is just so fascinating about all this. Yeah, and
I think this thing about the contingencies plays into because uh,
(22:17):
and it's funny. I have to admit when I read
this the word contingencies in my head, I was adding
a letter or something, and I kept saying in my
head as content genesis, and I was like, what is
that content genesis? And finally that's all contingencies Correctly, I
(22:38):
was like, man, am I drunk? Like what's going on?
So anyway, there are content genesies. That's like facetious. I
had that same uh facetious when yeah, what do you
think it's said? Or sounded like fastidious or something like that,
and I kept sounding it out and then finally I
was like, oh, that's facetious. Yeah, but you were probably
(23:01):
like twelve and not a professional broadcaster. I think you
had in your eye that was all. So these contingencies
um in humans at any time, there there are many
contingencies at work within us, competing against each other. So
(23:22):
if you go back to Tuk tuk and mock mock
um mock mock uh died, Let's say he did feel
some disgust, but it wasn't like but he was also hungry,
So that's the competing content genesis and his desire to
eat or and not desire his need to eat overcame
(23:44):
his low level disgust of like, well it's not doesn't
taste great, But I have this other contingency that says
I have to eat, so I'm going to eat the
thing and he doesn't die. Right, then it's a little
more complicated. It is more complicated, and if you step
back and think about it evolutionarily, it would make way
more sense for us to not maintain a sense of
(24:05):
disgust and be able to eat like rancid meat and
then instead learn like like basically develop a gut biome
that will will kill any any bacteria decay that could
make us sick, so that we we could have like
that many more things that are available for us to
eat when we're hard up. That makes way more sense
(24:26):
through natural selection and evolution than learning to not eat something.
And I think that's sort of the thing too, though,
Like the the winning contingency is ultimately going to be
the one that it makes you more fit for you know, replication,
right right, so you would for you yea for cloning
self self cloning, so the the but yes, so if
(24:49):
you have more available food that you can gain energy
from in the environment, that would make more sense to
adapt to that rather than to adapt an aversion to
stential food source. Right, So that's one question. And then
you can also kind of um lay that right over
sex as well too. Right. So this this explanation of
(25:11):
why we might be a verse, why we have competing
contingencies for sex. Right, Like, you want to be attracted
to your mate because you're a person you you find
attractive is probably going to be um a good match
for you reproductive wise, epecially right, And then yes, and
(25:35):
then if if you if you are trying to reproduce
with somebody you're disgusted by, they might not be a
good match. Reproductive wive was evolutionarily it makes sense, that's
a that's a that's a mental gymnastics right there. To me,
it makes more sense to just say, here's an example
of evolution screwing us up, of natural selection screwing us up.
(25:57):
We developed an ability to feel this gusted by sex
because it reminds us that we're animals, and so we're
missing out on sex or at least deriving pleasure from
sex because we are possibly disgusted by the act of sex.
If we step back and think about it in the
right way, right, you see what I'm saying, So there's
a lot of holes here, which is why I mean,
(26:20):
I've got both of my six shooters. I'm about to
start shoot them in the air out of Glee because
it's been a while since we had an episode like this. Yeah.
Another thing that I found interesting too from this was
the the just the mer reaction. Apparently most people open
their mouths I keep mind shut, but regardless, we all
have a discussed reaction. I guess if you don't, then
(26:40):
you're probably a serial killer. Like if you saw someone
like open up and smell like rotten meat and literally
just kept this stone face, We're like, that smells really bad,
Like they they're clearly sociopaths, right, And that's what Rosen
was saying. That's why I discussed is the it's it's
the defining human care acteristic because that person would seem
(27:02):
non human in that sense, they be a robot kind of. Yeah.
But so if people make this face like that is
the cue, Like you don't even need to smell the milk.
If I walk in the kitchen and Emily pours some
milk and it, uh, well, I was gonna say, I
see it clump out of the thing, But that wouldn't count.
(27:23):
Like if I see Emily just smell the milk, she
makes her disgust face. I don't need to smell it. No,
But why is it that there is a chance that
Emily or anyone, yes, who will say smell this? Never? No,
that's okay, thanks for the warning with the wrinkled nose
and raised up her lip. I know, but when you're married,
it's like, no, it's usually I smelled it, like you
(27:44):
have to smell it, right, No, I don't want to
smell it. I've suffered um. So that becomes like, all
of a sudden, a something that like bonds communities together
and cultures together even, right, But which which is another? Okay?
So this then we get to the explanation or the
moral explanation of disgust of how seeing somebody involving cheating
(28:09):
or some sort of unfairness or racism or just something
some really anti social um violating behavior that you you
experienced disgusted at the very at least people say use
the word disgusted. I'm disgusted. I mean maybe it is
the same thing. So that's that's I mean, that's what
(28:30):
that one Wonder Machine study said. And the other the
other way that they backed it up. There's a really
interesting article by Rosen Johnathan Hight, who actually was a
contributor in our super Stuff Guide to Happiness if you remember,
and then um a guy named um Oh McAuley. What
is Clark mcaulay. They're kind of like this big three
(28:51):
triad and in the study of disgust as the only three,
there's a couple others, but yeah, kind of. But they
in the paper they basically say, okay, so you get
the wonder machine evidence suggesting that our actual brain, the
part of our brain responsible for experiencing disgust, is lighting
up when somebody gives us an unfair offer of money.
(29:13):
That's one thing. But also they go around the world
and say that in Japan, in Spain and Portugal, um,
all over the world. Whatever that society or or languages
culture's word is for disgust, they routinely use it to
describe things like the experience of seeing somebody hold poop
(29:33):
up to their mouth, and the experience of being treated
unfairly or seeing somebody racist. So it's not just people
in English misusing an English word discuss, which means actually
bad taste. In older Middle English, Um, it's it is
there is some sort of moral component to discuss. It
seems like well, even the word distasteful, like is rooted
(29:55):
in the word taste. That's that's a similar thing to
like behavior can be distasteful and uh rotten, analoge can
be distaste, especially if he's a real jerk. Right. Um.
The other interesting thing about the work that Jonathan Hate
did was this tying it to political ideological ideal ideology. Jeez,
(30:18):
what is wrong with me today? Uh? I thought that
was super interesting because they did research and they found
that people who are more sensitive to discussed and tend
to be more socially conservative, and that can be exploited.
So when you go to a major news outlet that
may be conservative, that is why you were more likely
(30:40):
to see photos of h unwashed or sick immigrants approaching
the border and not like pictures of like the handsomest,
most fit immigrant approaching the border, because that will, at
least according to this study, they they have higher powerful,
(31:01):
more powerful emotion of disgust. Right. It's it's hijacking your
ability to experience moral disgust because apparently it's really really
easy to come up and poke, to push a person's
disgust buttons and from from what the study says is
that this happens a lot way more than we're cognizant
of and that if we can make ourselves cognizant of it,
(31:23):
we could actually defend against it a little more. Yeah.
I mean, they're not gonna Fox News isn't gonna put
the guy you said it. You said, they're not gonna
put the guy that looks like Antonio banderis in the
immigrant caravan as they're from out you okay as their
front page lead photo. You know, it's gonna be the
(31:44):
person that's on in the on the stretcher that's sick
and dying, and that's going to cause this reaction of
disgust like g I they c g I flies like
flying around the person. Can't you see Antonio banderis walking
up in a video and going this wall is too sexy? Um.
(32:06):
And then the other interesting thing about that that whole
study that he was doing, the hate was doing was
they also found that people make harsher judgments when they
are exposed to a disgusting simulus. So uh, and it
usually was a smell like the smell of of a
of a tooty booty, a shot duck. Um, and if
(32:27):
you smell this flatulence, you would react more harshly towards
like a photo of something right now that might discuss
you just a little bit. I want to know the
methodology of this study pretty badly, Like did they was?
It was just one of those things where they just
kind of suddenly the area between you and the researcher
filled with the fart smell? Well, where do you get
(32:49):
the fart smell? Is there a synthetic or I think
there is? You probably like it's a novel the joke shop.
They picked up like a spinning bow tie. While they
got there, they canned fart too. Right, They're like, thank you,
here's your ten dollars and have a good day, and
they shake their hand. There's a buzzer, right exactly. So um,
But I mean, like is this so? Were they were
talking about something like you know how, what kind of
(33:09):
a prison sentence would you excuse me, what kind of
a prison sentence would you give to somebody? And like
this this fart smells this kind of comes up, but
like they're just not talking about it. I would guess
that's how you would have to do it right, dude.
I had a stranger asked me the other night if
I farted? Oh yeah, had you know? I was at
the Fleetwood Mac concert standing in the beer line, and
(33:31):
this guy in front of me turned around with his
wife and fully just said did you fart? And I
went nope, And I was like, I would tell you
if I did. Did He looked at his wife and go,
did you fart? But then we got to talking and
I was like, guys, I hate to tell you. I said,
I don't even smell anything, so I think you're looking
in the wrong direction. And then he felt like I
was a little drunk, so I didn't care. I was
(33:51):
playing along. But then he felt like really bad and
was overapologetic. I was like, dude, you're gonna ask someone
if they farted, don't then turn around and be weirdly
ashamed of that, right, get all weepy, just own it?
So um, yeah, does the guy not know the whole
he who smelled it? Delta? Idiom it was the first
date and that was the deal. Maybe he did. Yeah,
(34:14):
he really played it off well at Southside. All right,
should we take a break? I think we should? All right,
I'm gonna go fart in the hallway. We'll be right back.
Thank you for that, Chuck. We'll be right back. All right,
(34:36):
it's back, Chuck is back. Now everything's fine in here.
And um, we are still talking about disgust. Let me
let's let's let's um just kind of go over this
real quick one more time. Okay. So we started out
with this this mechanim miss of distaste um where we like,
(34:57):
involuntarily spit something out that's gross that occurs elsewhere in
the animal kingdom. And then over time we figured out
how to create a new um adaptation, a new behavior
that is overlaid over that same brain circuitry where we
spent something out, and we call that disgust. And it
was it originally started out as an aversion to things
(35:20):
like poop and vomit and and that kind of stuff.
And then that evolved even further because at some point
we said we're better than animals, and I don't like
to be reminded of an animal. And I guess that
desire to not be reminded of an animal developed so
much that it became overlaid over that disgusted emotion that
had been that had hijacked the distaste emotion, and then
(35:43):
at some point finally it reached moral um, the moral structure,
and that hijacked the animal and the core and the
distaste to where now just the idea of somebody behaving
in a certain way can disgust us. And the whole
thing that really kind of changed to make it human
(36:03):
was the the addition of um imagination and symbolism to
these ideas, so that we didn't even have to taste
or smell or see anything anymore. Just thinking about this
kind of stuff could disgust us. And that's where we're
at and discussed research, and that's where we're at in
the podcast too. Frankly, Wow, that's a nice recap. Thank you,
(36:27):
all right. So, uh, culturally, you know, it depends on
where you are in the world and what you might
be disgusted by. So while while it is universal, it's
not like every single thing is universal. Um. People uh
eat things in some parts of the world that other
parts of the world might think are disgusting. Um. And
that again is a thing that basically says, I'm a
(36:48):
part of this family, I'm a part of this culture,
I'm a part of this group. Um. The fact that
like all eat eyeballs right out right out of a fish,
right up a fish said to scoop it out and
eat it. Right. Um, I might think that's disgusting, but
that's not like necessary, Like taboos are not the same. Uh,
(37:09):
And cultures all over the world. Yeah, whether it's food,
apparently they think maybe even you know, well, cannibal cannibalism. Obviously,
some cultures don't view incest as um as taboo as
as other cultures do. So some of the things that
we would think would be universally disgusting aren't universally disgusting.
And the whole idea of food too shows that you can,
(37:30):
um learn to not find something disgusting or never find
it disgusting at all because you were just raised in
a culture that eats this food and values it. But
to somebody else from outside of the culture, when they
see that food, they are disgusted by it. So yeah,
there's a lot of lack of universality in disgust that
we might assume would be there that actually isn't. Yeah.
I mean vegetarianism and veganism is a perfect example. Uh.
(37:53):
Someone can eat meat until until they're in their mid
twenties and then all of a sudden switch to veganism,
and a year later, the mere sight of meat might
discuss them, whereas the year before they were challenged down
on it. Which I would guess that's just like you
were structuring your brain circuitry basically, right, Yeah, I think
so probably, I mean that would make sense. But so
(38:15):
something that never disgusted you before can become genuinely disgusted
or the other way around, huh, I imagine. Well, yeah,
I mean you can learn to eat other cultures foods
that you were disgusted by previously and eat meat now
right right, Yeah, yeah, you can also learn to eat
broccoli over time. BROCCOLI's good, it's it's not though it
(38:38):
really is roast in the oven the lish Okay, I
will give you that. Roasted BROCCOLI's okay. But if it's
steamed or just like floppy in any way ship or form,
I've had bad experiences with it over over the years.
It sounds like someone's overcooking your broccoli. Not anymore, but yes,
I think Dad used to used to overcook it quite
(38:58):
a bit. Yeah. I go for al dente when it
comes to most vegetables. Yeah, but roasted roasted is good
mushy is a is a food quality that kind of
discussed me. So, uh, food preparation is important. Like I know,
we're just kind of kidding about the broccoli, but like,
let's say, um, an eggplant or a squash. If you
(39:20):
cook that thing until it's really mushy, it's it's really
gross to me. But I will totally eat an eggplant
if it's nice and firm. Yeah yeah, I mean yeah,
texture is enormous with it. It also affects taste too,
which doesn't make any sense except for like it's part
of the experience of it, right, Yeah, but true disgust
happens for me. I think it's not just like I
(39:41):
don't prefer that, like mushy food really really grosses me out. Well,
there's something that that um that it actually hit a
pond early on, and this is that like disgust is
it goes around our conscious thought, right, Like you're not
like this this broccoli is is not to my preference.
It is way too floppy and mushy, and i'd be
(40:03):
I prefer to not have it in my mouth anymore so,
and you spit it out and it just falls back
onto your plate instead you put it in your mouth,
especially if you're not expecting it to be mushy and
you start chewing it like you expected to be good.
Your reaction without even thinking it's going to be spit
it out probably, and you might you might not actually
spit it out, but that will be your first reaction,
(40:25):
and you might have to stop yourself, like bring your
napkin up to your mouth or whatever. And that's one
of the things that like really kind of is a
hallmark characteristic of disgust. When it is experienced, it goes
around our intellect and our our um conscious thought. It's
a basic reaction. Yeah, and it can also get out
of hand as far as the uh if the idea
(40:47):
is that at its root, we're trying to avoid disease
and dying. Um. We've all heard of of cases phobia
is really that developed um and pathologies out of fear
of germs or dirt or cleanliness. UM. Anyone who's ever
seen the great movie Safe by Todd Haynes, Um. That
(41:07):
was a movie about that where this woman sort of
slowly unwinds and eventually ends up in a in a
like a a community where everyone is obsessed with this
kind of compulsive cleanliness. Who's the woman, It's Julian Moore.
I haven't seen that yet. Is it pretty good? It was?
It was great, I mean it was. It's a long
time ago. So it's like in the early nineties, I think,
(41:30):
like some of her earlier work. But that's just an
example of how, um, how that can happen and how
it can get out of hand until basically you have
a compulsive disorder that may have started out of a
legit environmental like discuss reaction to disease, right, Yeah, that well,
that's what they think is the basis of possibly all
(41:52):
of it that has to do with disgust or like
a drive to to feel clean or to get rid
of germs or to be afraid of germs, that kind
of thing. That it's it's your um, your being indoctrinated
into disgust when a little too far in your brain,
your brains disgusted reaction just became too powerful, and now
(42:12):
it has this kind of crippling effect on your life. Yeah,
but it can also like it's oddly there are things
that have nothing to do with disease and dying that
have been kind of labeled as disgusting and ed points
out acne as one of them that might trigger a
disgust reaction in some people. And it's really completely harmless.
It is, but it's playing upon in an inadvertent way,
(42:36):
our predisposition to be grossed out by things like disease. Yeah, sore,
a pox, a pustule. It has nothing to do with that.
It just kind of resembles it in the exact same way.
People find slugs and snails disgusting, uh, And they suggest
that it's because they look like they're covered in mucus.
Even though it's not actually mucus. It reminds us of mucus.
(42:57):
So we're disgusted at the thought of touching one of
those things. Same thing. They're not disease carriers, but they
remind us of it. That's the key, because disgusted works
hand in hand with human imagination. I got Emily one
of those poppet pals. Have you seen those? No? What
is it? You know how she's pretty obsessed with with
zip popping and she doesn't watch she's not one of
those people who watches the stuff on YouTube. But it's
(43:19):
just like a personal thing. But they saw it on
Shark Tank. There's this thing. Now it looks It's about
the size of a bar soap, but it's made out
of silicon. It's kind of a squishy, rubber rectangular bar
and you squirt to this like, uh, I don't know
what it's made of. It's it's almost like Chrisco or something.
Um I think it's plant based and you fill it
up with that and the top of it is covered
(43:41):
with all these little dimple holes and you pop them
and it comes, it comes sneaking out just like like
the best pimple you've ever seen. That's amazed. So I
kept like trying to imagine that, like this was going
on the person's face, and it's like just to basically like, here,
keep busy with this and leave my face alone. Yeah,
you just whatever, You set it in your lap and
(44:01):
just pop away. That's really awesome, man, it's it's it
was really satisfying for it too. I thought she might
be like, no, this is not the same, but she
was obsessed with it first. That's awesome. Couple of days
that's Is there any great human thing that Shark Tank
hasn't give given us? I don't know, I can't. I
can't think of one. Um Umi has a thing for
cauliflower ear, and she'll sometimes watch videos of cauliflower ear
(44:25):
being drained and it's like, I can't hang man wrestler. No,
not not that I know of, but Mr Chance I
guess right, she better have Mr Chance fining. She comes
in and she finds you like on the carpet, rolling
your ear on the floor. Didn't that how wrestlers get it?
I think they get it from like a trauma to
the ear, like a punch of the ear, like a
(44:46):
an impact of the ear, and then like it swells
up and then it turns into like scar tissue or
like just pussy infected edema. Well, which is why they
wear the ear covers. Yes, well, that and to look cool,
to look kind of cool somehow. Um so that offsets
the singlet, which is the least school thing you can wear.
(45:07):
It's pretty uncool. I have to say, sorry wrestlers, but
the entire rest of the world thinks that the singlets
look uncool. It's not just us. Oh boy, So let's
talk about the disgust scale real quick? Do you have that? Yeah?
You know, I didn't even look at this because I
thought it might be fun if you just went through
a few of those with me. Okay, well, this is
a great idea, Chuck, get into a game still innovating
(45:29):
after eleven years. I'm so proud of us. So John
Paul Rosen and John Hight and a couple of other
people came up with the sorry Clark McAuley and Clark McAuley.
I'm just going to say the third person. They came
up with a disgust scale. Okay, So, Chuck, between zero
and four, zero being strongly disagree and four being strongly agree,
(45:54):
meaning it's very untrue or very true about you. Please
indicate how much you agree with each of the following
statements or how true it is. Between zero and wet
three four zero strongly disagree it's very untrue about you,
and four is strongly agree very true about you. You
might be willing, sorry, I might be willing to try
eating monkey meat under some circumstances. Strongly disagree. Four. That's zero, okay, zero.
(46:21):
It would bother me to be in a science class
and to see a human hand preserved in a jar. Obviously,
that would not bother me, because when I saw the
human head in a bucket, very famously, my reaction was, Huh,
there's a human head whereas a person with me was
really disgusted, right, yeah, and I think understandably. So, um,
(46:44):
I love that story. Okay, here's another one. I never
let any part of my body touch the toilet seat
in public restrooms. Agree or disagree, untrue or true. I'm
just gonna ditch the numbers because it's confusing me. Okay,
I don't That doesn't really bother me that much. I
know that probably really disgusted you. Uh no, well yeah,
I just have to go to another place. Oh when
(47:07):
I do that, I don't mind. Man, I know that's
gross probably, but whatever. Okay, here's one more um from
this one. Then we're gonna do another set. You're ready. Um,
I would rather eat a piece of fruit than a
piece of paper. Well, yeah, I'd rather eat a piece
of fruit. Okay, Okay, I think that's just like a
baseline one that they use. Okay, so then between zero
(47:30):
and four rate these not disgusting at all? Are extremely disgusting.
Just say one of those two. Okay, you see maggots
on a piece of meat in an outdoor garbage pail,
very disgusting, you, I agree. Your friend's pet cat dies
and you have to pick up the dead body with
your bare hands. Um, not disgusted, just sad. Okay. I
(47:51):
mean I've done that with all of my animals that
have passed. I took care of the bodies, right. I
think this leaves out that it was hit by a
car and it's now part of the road. Basically, Yeah,
that's a medium disgusting and sad. Okay. Yeah, well yeah,
it said you're about to drink a glass of milk
when you smell it is spoiled, And then in parentheses,
weirdly enough, it says because Emily just changed it under
(48:11):
your nose and said, smell this, that's weird. Um. Yeah,
the smell of turned food grosses me out a lot. Okay, Uh,
while you're walking through a tunnel under a railroad track,
you smell urine. I've been in New York enough times,
it's not that big of a deal. It still gets me. Man,
I think smelling urine is worse than smelling poop for
(48:33):
some reason. Really Yeah, interesting? Okay. Two more, you see
a man with his intestines exposed after an accident. Yeah,
that's pretty high up there. Yeah yeah, I think so too.
And then last chuck, you see someone put ketchup on
vanilla ice cream and eat it. Yeah, that's gross, Okay,
(48:54):
although it's interesting though when I thought about the bodies
and trails, like, I don't love it, but I can
watch like a surgery. It's not my favorite thing, but
I'm not like fully disgusted. But if it's an accident,
I think that so it might be a contextual thing
as well. So one of the things that I experience
(49:14):
when I see like some something in surgery, and I think, yeah,
context definitely has a lot to do with it in
that case too. But if I see like a surgery,
like remember there used to be that TV network that
was nothing but surgery. You remember it was in like
the late eighties, early nineties, I think, um, but uh,
to see that, I'll get like faint right like, And
it's not necessarily the side of blood. It's like the
(49:36):
site of viscera. I get a little faint, and it
never made sense to me. I think definitely as part
of it too. But I think also part of the
disgust reaction is that your heart rate and blood pressure lower,
which would explain why you start to feel faint. Like
I don't feel queasy or nauseated or like I'm gonna wretch.
I feel like I need to sit down for a second,
(49:57):
which is I guess it is still part of the
disgust reaction. It just isn't the the the nausea version
of it's but it's still revulsion, but a weird, fainty version.
So in the med school sitcom that we star in,
when they pull the sheet back, you start saying, how
don't feel two good guys, and we're like, yeah, you're
so funny, and then all of a sudden you hit
the deck. I think the way I would play it
(50:19):
is even more straightforward, where my eyes just go up
in the back of my head and I fall backward
in response to the sheep being pulled. It's a good move.
I can't wait for that movie to come out. Ah,
you got anything else? I don't think so. I'd be
surprised if you did. We've gone on for a good
six seven minutes beyond when we should have stopped. I
(50:40):
think I like that game aspect of that one that
was one. Oh. Your score, by the way, indicates that
you do experience disgust from time to time. I'm not
a serial killer, no, no, uh, And I don't know
if you guys heard her not, but Jerry also gave
her answers as well. That's right. Uh. If you want
(51:00):
to know more about disgust, you can just go look
at some weird stuff on the internet. It's out there
for you. Uh. And since I said that it's time
for listener mail, I'm gonna call this one of the
many dyslexia emails we got. Those were really rolling in
from people who have overcome dyslexia and adults living with dyslexia. UM.
(51:24):
So this one is from from a fellow Atlanta named
Audrey Short, and she says this, Hey guys, I have dyslexia,
and I was so happy to hear you talking about
my learning disability. I was diagnosed when I was about
ten uh and went to the Shanks School in Atlanta,
which is specifically for children with dyslexia. In fact, she
sent in a following follow up email just to clarify that, um,
(51:48):
we learned how to read and write using a technique
called Orton Gillingham. When I left after the fourth grade,
I could actually read. More importantly, I love to read
and devoured every book I could get my hands on.
While I graduated top of my class. I had to
work twice as hard as my classmates to keep up
with the required readings and homework. Uh. My peers seemed
(52:09):
to think that my extra time I received for exams
was the reason I did so well, not the countless
hours on late nights I spent um learning the material.
While this bullying did affect me, did not discourage me
from pursuing my education at college. I attended Miami University
and Ohio, graduating this May with a three point nine
(52:29):
nine g p A Biochemistry and Physics. I planned to
tend a PhD program at Harvard or you see, Berkeley.
I'm not saying this to brag, but to tell other
children with dyslexia to keep trying. I know so many
students are afraid to ask for extra time or accommodations
because they don't want to be bullied or stand out.
I'm proud of my dyslexia because, uh, it has forced
(52:51):
me to learn how to stand up for my student rights.
I've made it to where I am today by utilizing
the tools given to me, like extra time. And I
want to encourage people with learning disabilities to seek help
because you are intelligent and your unique perspective just might
change your field entirely. Nice Audrey, Audrey Short great and
Audrey that is great emails, so that kind of replaces
(53:14):
that whole like, look, this famous person made it. You
can just tell people, let me tell you about Audrey Short.
I agreed. Okay, way to go, Audrey, that's fantastic. Congratulations
early on um graduating with a three point nine nine man,
that's impressive, and good luck in grad school too. If
you want to get in touch with us, like Audrey did,
you can go onto stuff you Should Know dot com
(53:36):
and check out the social links there. You can also
send us an email. Send it off to Stuff podcast
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot com
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