Nostalgia is not the most toxic impulse

Nostalgia is a funny thing. It's not home sickness, it's more connected to emotions and a time in your life. But is nostalgia worthwhile? Nascent science says it just might be.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chuck, let's go over the Stuff you Should Know concert calendar.
My friend, we are hitting the road for the Spring
Had Sprung Tour. We are going to be at the
Neptune Theater and Lovely Seattle, Washington on April eighth, my friend.
The next day, we're gonna head south to Portland, Oregon,
Revolution Hall April night, We're going to Houston, Texas, my
friend and Warehouse Live on Memorial Day weekend, and finally

(00:24):
finishing up Denver, Colorado at the Gothic Theater on May
twenty night. Two more dates coming. Yeah, keep your ears
out and in the meantime, if you want to get tickets,
you can go to s y s K live dot com,
power by squarespace and we'll see you guys on the road.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,

(00:53):
There's Child's w W Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry, and this
is Stuff you Should Know. There's so many things I
could do right now. I could my Buddy theme song,
could sing the theme song the Thunder of the Barbarian. Okay.
I could talk about tops baseball cards, yeah, and that
that rock card stick dumb that came. Yeah, um, I

(01:16):
don't think they have gum in baseball cards any more,
do they? And maybe they just gave up the ghosts.
They were like one wants that, nobody wants it. It
took out some kid's eye and that was that. Uh yeah, nostalgia.
So I think we should dedicate this show too, John Hodgeman.
Let's I thought we kind of implicitly dedicated every show

(01:38):
to Hodgeman, but we do why explicitly this time? Hodgeman
is uh, he is on record time and time again
with the following quote, Nostalgia is the most toxic impulse.
Oh yeah, that's he doesn't like a Christmas story? Does

(01:59):
he now think he's seen a Christmas story? But he uh,
he is very adamant and has been on record many
many times on his own podcast, Judge John Hodgeman and
to me in person when he wants to go on
about how much he hates nostalgia, about how bad it
is and in his deal and I'm gonna mention him
quite a bit in here. So he's either gonna listen

(02:21):
to this and be like, oh my god, it's about
nostalgia and these are my friends, or he's gonna skip
it all together. I could see him skipping it all
together because he didn't want to hear about it. We
maybe should clue him in and be like Hodgeman, you're
in this. He'll listen to it a million times if
you tell him that. So his notion is that, uh,
it's a longing for a better time that does not exist,

(02:42):
that we look back with rose colored glasses and it
was not in fact better, and that it's toxic to
do so, right, And that's absolutely a correct definition of nostalgia.
But no idea falls apart at the end when he
says that it's toxic, because quite the contrary, nostalgia has
been proven again and again to be quite helpful. Um,
I don't even agree that that's the definition of nostalgia.

(03:04):
I don't. I don't think it has to be longing
for a time in your past, because for me, nostalgia
is not longing for that. It is just very warm
remembrances and wrapping myself up in that. God, man, I
wish I could be fourteen again. You don't wish you
could be fourteen, No, not at all. I wish I

(03:26):
could be twenty six again. Nostalgia. It's a pretty dope
time in one's life, nostalgia. But I don't I don't
look back and say man, And I also take issue
with you know, sometimes things were better back then. Yeah.
But Hodgeman makes a pretty good point, and so do
the social scientists that so support his point. Um, when basically,

(03:49):
by definition, when you are experiencing the emotion, this very complex, weird,
understudied emotion of nostalgia, you're thinking about something in a
way that it really kind of didn't actually happen. Like
the negative stuff gets cut out. Um, you know, like

(04:09):
stepping on a rusty nail right after that great memory
from camp or whatever. Uh, that part gets cut out,
And I disagree with that, just the good stuff. So
I'm talking about like the studies that support it. Yeah,
but they they don't think these studies are right because
the subjective it's very personal. Like I can remember that

(04:30):
social science for you. I can remember the smell of
my grandparents house, their first house, and how much I
loved it in that one summer I went on my
first plane trip. And I also remember biting my tongue
off playing soccer and how awful that was. Like I
don't edit that out and be like, no, everything about
it was great, Like no, I bet my tongue off
and it was terrible. Um. So okay, I think then

(04:52):
what you're talking about is the difference between reminiscing, which
is more of an episodic memory, and nostalgia, which is
almost purely just an emotional memory. No, that's an emotional memory.
All right. Well then you you'll just have to say
I believe you, Chuck, I Burns, I believe you Chuck.

(05:15):
All right, So let's go back in time a little bit. Um.
There's a Swiss doctor named uh Johannes Hofer, and he
was studying some Swiss soldiers that were stationed abroad, and
he said, you know what, there's something going on here.
They are depressed, they're anxious, they can't sleep, they're tired,

(05:36):
they're even having heart palpitations and fever. Um. They're angry,
really easily um, and they just can't stop thinking about
their home. It is almost as if they are home sick. Right,
And he coined the term. He coined the term um
the nostalgia from Greek nostos, which means to return home

(05:58):
and I'll go or al jos pain so the pain
of yearning to return home. Yeah, it is what he described.
He literally said, it's a cerebral disease of essentially demonic
cause ideas of the fatherland, making them sick and longing
for home. It's a no brainer. It's like these guys
are fighting a war and they'd rather be back home. Yeah.

(06:19):
It sounds like he was describing PTSD though as well,
maybe because when these attendant symptoms that he talked about,
like not being able to sleep or eat and having
fever and heart palpitations, that's not nostalgia. But Johannes Hoffer
did um set the tone for nostalgia for centuries, so
either it was viewed as a physical malady or disorder

(06:41):
or disease or a psychological one up until basically the
nineteen eighties. To tell you the truth, UM. And at first,
because the Hawfer's study of the Swiss soldiers UM, they
actually thought that possibly it was just the Swiss who
were afflicted by nostalgia. And one of the other alternative
explanations for it was that the constant clanging of cow

(07:04):
bells had done something to the nerves connecting the ear
drum to the brain and was basically driving these people crazy,
wanting them to making them want to go home, or
at least steal the cow bell, right, get it off
the neck. You want to hear something weird. So Hawfer
also said that, um, the ideas of the fatherland that

(07:27):
were vibrating in the soldier's brains. Um, he said that
that was brought on by animal spirits. And I read
this yesterday. The same night I was reading an article
by Dr Jack Cavorkian about human experimentation among the condemned
and executed, because that's what I do, right, He mentions

(07:50):
animal spirits in the exact same way. So apparently there
was a time when they thought that the they called
but what we would now call the electricity and the
central nervousist them animal spirits, right, one of those old terms. Right.
And I ran across it twice in one day, which
is basically the bottom line haff phenomenon. I just thought

(08:10):
that was so weird. I mean, like, yeah, and that's
pretty obscure, you know, very It's not like, oh I
saw eleven eleven on the clock again today, you know, right,
those people animal spirits? Alright, So uh, fast forward a
little bit. Uh, and we like you said, for many,
many years it was looked at as a mental illness
called melancholia or immigrant psychosis. Yeah, that was another thing.

(08:35):
They thought that just immigrants, semen, soldiers and kids who
went off to school were the ones who suffered from it. Yeah. Basically,
you get shipped off somewhere and you yearn for the
place that you liked better, which is called just homesickness. Homesickness, right,
but then different things. But but not until the the
eighties even, um, did it begin to get separated. Yeah,

(08:57):
and this article points out very astutely, I thought this
was pretty good. Um, that homes Julia Layton joint. Yeah,
she's been around house stiff works for a while. She's
a vet. Uh, not a veterinarian or a veteran soldier. Um,
although I don't know, Julie, she might be both. Yes,
you could have you never know, served the mp dogs

(09:21):
as a vet in the army. In the army. Um, homesickness,
Julie points out, is distressing, which makes a lot of sense.
And that's different from nostalgia because nostalgia generally is even
though it is complex. Uh, and we'll get to all that,
it is generally looked at as a feeling of like
pleasant feelings watch over you when you think of the

(09:42):
good old days, in direct contraditioniction to Hodgeman's ideas. Um,
all right, so let's talk about it, okay, So um,
Since it was up until again the late nineteen eighties
viewed as basically an attendant symptom or somehow tied into

(10:04):
depression or some other psychological malady. UM, it wasn't until
very recently that the social science has started to say,
I don't know if that's necessarily true, let's look into it.
So the actual study of nostalgia itself is extremely new,
and um it's still very much understudy, which is to

(10:24):
say that the social sciences has not yielded any kind
of definitive answers to what nostalgia is, where it comes from.
The There seems to be a general consensus that it
is an emotion, but the complex secondary emotion, meaning it's
not anger, it's not fear, it's not joy. But it
seems to be secondary and it seems to spring from
um society in the same way that a secondary emotion

(10:47):
like embarrassment or self consciousness UM has arisen from our
experience in society. The nostalgist seems to have come in
the same way. Yeah, and they've noticed some trends, which
is about as good as you can do when you're
studying something like nostalgia. And when we talk about some
of these real studies, it's they're frustrating for me to read,

(11:08):
but we'll we'll get to those. But some of the trends.
If you are a worry wart, you might be a
little more prone to nostalgize because you know, you're you're
trying to escape your worries and think about like a
happier time when you're on the beach, toes in the
sand maybe, uh. And they experts think that if you
are in transitional periods of your life, you're going to

(11:31):
be more prone, Like if you're a kid growing into
an adult, or if you are in your forties and
fifties and you're transitioning into uh, let's say fifties or sixties.
Well from in my forties, from middle age in two
senior adulthood. Yeah, these transitional, big transitions in your life,
you might might be a little more prone to sort
of look at your life and think, because what have

(11:52):
I done with my life? Is also tied to nostalgia.
And that makes sense utterly and completely because what they
found with nostalgia is that it's a it's like you said,
it's a means of escapism. And during these times where
you're going from adolescence into young adulthood UM or middle
aged into old adulthood, that's a that's a place of fear.

(12:14):
You know what's coming next, and you start thinking about
the good times that you've had. UM. Almost involuntarily, it
seems like nostalgia happens. You think, yeah, let me, uh,
I'm a little nervous right now, let me nostalgize. It's
almost like an involuntary mental trigger that takes place. Although
that is a thing. Uh. Julia points out that, UM,

(12:38):
people can use it almost like a bag of tricks
if they are prone to depression to call upon these things.
And it's like nostalgia can be a tool. I mean,
you'd have to kind of conjure it up. Sure, no, no,
I know you can, you know, but you don't necessarily,
that's not necessarily how it happens. And and they found
that there are plenty of things that trigger like music, UM,

(13:02):
like smells, uh, different things that you that basically serve
as mnemonic devices in the formation of emotional memories. Um.
And the thing that's come up from the study that
has been done on nostalgia is that it seems to
be universal. That's it's not culturally bound, and the triggers
that trigger nostalgia are also universal. So it'll be like

(13:26):
a social memory of a social experience with friends and family,
you know, and like that might be culturally bound, like
Thanksgiving in America or Canada where they have fake Thanksgiving
a month early, um, but then it might be Carnival
down in Buenos Aireas or something like that, so that
the actual experience might be culturally bound, but the trigger itself,

(13:48):
having a good time at like a holiday is universal. Yeah.
So let's take a break. Uh, we'll come back and
talk about triggers more after this, and we'll let Hodgeman
take a deep then maybe run around the block because
I since he's getting angry. So we're back, Yeah, we are.

(14:23):
We had to establish that because I got confused. You
mentioned music being a trigger that is very powerful. Um.
And again it's it's variant among people's individual experience, but music,
for me still I thinking about this is huge nostalgia trigger.
But I think I realized that almost add percent of

(14:45):
the time, it's a song that I haven't heard for
a long long time. So if I hear Jay Giles
Fands Centerfold, great song reminds me of elementary school in
a very powerful way and even specific things. But I've
heard that song a gazillion times. I hear it once
a week on classic rock radio, So it doesn't flood

(15:08):
you with nostalgia. No, no no more. You've heard it too much.
It's over you. But if I hear a song from
like all of my CDs are packed up in the attic,
and most of those are from like a certain period
of my life where I bought CDs, So if you
hear true Blue, you just start weeping. With true Blue
more recent than that. But if I hear a song
from like one of my CDs from the mid nineties

(15:28):
that I just may not have heard in a long time,
that is like super super powerful. Well, like what song
I don't know, just like a song from my l
a days maybe um or or just something I don't
listen like, uh, something from college that I don't listen
to anymore, and it's like never played on the radio.
Like I'll hear Urban Dance squad deeper Shade of Soul, uh,

(15:52):
deep shade of Soul. Right, remember now it sounds like
a pretty nineties song though it was very nineties, and like,
you never hear that song anymore. So if I hear
that song like just now, I just sang a little
bit of it. How how are you feeling, I'm feeling great,
I'm not. I'm not feeling toxic. Hodgman is mad at
you right now. I know it feels wonderful. Stop stop

(16:15):
so And I don't want to go back in time
too then either, I'm just remembering, like, man, what a
great song that takes me back to college. Yeah, And
and the reason why songs tend to be so powerful
and potent um, especially from a certain age, typically adolescents, right,
supposedly has to do with the way that the brain
is working right then. You know everyone says teenagers have

(16:38):
like raging hormones going on. Well, there is a lot
more brain chemistry floating around than happens throughout the rest
of your life, so it's easier to form very powerful
emotional memories. Um, and when when you're listening to music
at that age, So that when you go back and
listen to it, it's basically going back and you're a

(17:00):
card catalog of a brain and unlocking that emotional memory
so you get to experience it a little bit again.
And then that's nostalgia brought on from by music. Yeah,
that makes sense for me. The one that gets me
the most is sent Yes, Senten tastes for me are
really powerful too, so like um, the smell of um
Pillsberry cinnamon rolls and orange rolls. It's like Christmas age eight,

(17:26):
like every time. Now do you ever eat that stuff? Now?
I just did yesterday as a little trip down memory lane. Yes,
well not as it you know, but it inevitably brought
it on. Okay, so you didn't say, like I'm doing
a nostalgia podcast, I'm gonna go get some of those
sweet rolls. No, it was totally coincidental. Actually, like the
animal spirits. Yeah, what I've been doing lately is seeking

(17:48):
out things that I haven't had and forever, just to
see what happens. Oh yeah, So so basically you're the
other day, you're like strange Days. Remember that movie with Refines. Yeah, boy,
that takes me back, but with but with nostalgia. How
what what flavor s? I did the same, always did
a mixed cherry and coke. And I haven't had a

(18:10):
slurpie since probably like high school. And it was it.
You know, that taste was so familiar and exactly how
I remember. But it wasn't like, oh, this takes me
back to those days. I'm just like, oh, this is interesting.
I ate a circus peanut the other days. Now they're awful,
but I haven't had one since I was probably ten.
I've avoided those of my whole life. Yeah, and um

(18:32):
those you know those uh, the other one that gets
me of those, remember when you were a kid trick
or treating and you would get those kind a chewy
peanut butter treats and the wax the waxy rappers. Yeah,
I don't remember what they're called that, there were no name,
like but email that really Yeah, it's got to be
that orange or like those man instant of nostalgia. Nice

(18:56):
not toxic. Yeah, it's wonderful. Um, peanut butter twicks can
do that for me. It was one of my first
favorite candy bars. I'll thought you about say like it
takes me back to two eight, No, they had peanut
butter twicks in the eighties, they tried it for a
little while they were all stopped. Yeah, they don't have
those anymore, do they. Okay, is that one in your pocket?

(19:18):
It's been tucked into my cheek right now. So a taste,
they think, and induces nostalgia pretty heavily because the pathways
carrying information from taste buds are in the limbic system
and where scent is as well. Yeah, and your old
factory bulb is super duper in the limbic system, and
it's actually got a direct connection to the amygdala, which

(19:39):
helps experience emotions. And um, what's the other component of
the olympics system, the hippocampus. Yeah, the hippocampus which sorts
in stores memories. So your old factory bulb itself is
almost literally plugged in to the two components of your
brain that form emotional memories, which is one reason why

(20:02):
I scent can trigger nostalgist so powerfully too. Yeah. Does
that I wondered if that means that if it's more immediate,
then it's stronger, like if it's just a quicker link,
maybe like literally the pathway is shorter. It could be
interesting that I mean that's that's what Layton um supposed. Yeah,
I don't think she'd uh pull that out of her head.

(20:26):
I think that's the common belief, right for something that
they don't understand that much. Yeah, And I that I
think that's probably got to be coming through to dear listeners, right,
that this is like this is there's a lot of
grasping at threads going on, in part because it is
just very um, it's very early on in the study

(20:46):
of nostalgia. There's not a lot of people studying it,
and so the number of theories is kind of narrow,
but a lot of it does make sense. Yeah, And
when you look at these studies, which we'll talk about
so many of them hinge on. All right, you're feeling nostalgic,
All right, let's do something to you, right, Or you're
not feeling nostalgic, Let's do the same thing to you,

(21:07):
which I mean, this is a very tough study to
pull off. It totally is. And that's a big problem
that the social sciences run up against, Like they are
studying subjective reports. Well, the average person can't tell you
how they're feeling, even when they sit there and think
about how they're feeling. So there are standardized, standardized questionnaires
that have become accepted in the field that that say

(21:29):
this scores of persons like UM like feeling of nostalgia.
There's actually a questionnaire that that is designed to rate
how nostalgic you are at the time you take it.
Um and and there's there are ways to study. It's
not just totally willy nilly, but when you compare it
to something say like um biology or something like that,

(21:51):
it's it's a little it's it's slightly whispier. Agreed, Um,
Should we take a whispy break and talk about some
of these studies to this? Yes, all right, buddy, we

(22:18):
teased on some studies. Uh and I don't want to
say I made fun of them, but they're they're just
I think you pointed out some of their inherent flaw.
So let's talk about them. Um. Here is one where
they had subjects read about different things. One was a
tsunami disaster, one was like one bad thing, two good things.

(22:42):
One was a disaster, one was the successful landing of
a space pro another one was the birth of a
polar bear in a zoo, which I mean depending on
like that right there, you might hate polar bears, you
might hate zoos. You know, it's a good point. Uh yeah,
it's a real good point. They probably shouldn't use that.
And it's a problem with any kind of standardized questionnaire,

(23:02):
whether it's the S A T or the Standardized Questionnaire
for nostalgia totally. Uh So, after reading these they answered
questions assessing their current levels of nostalgia. What they found
was the people who read about the tsunami, we're the
most nostalgic, which led them to believe that people call
upon nostalgia when they're not feeling good about something right,

(23:26):
and that use it. That is the prevailing predominant theory
of nostalgia these days, that it is a um It
is you can do it voluntarily, but it's basically an
involuntary defense mechanism when we experience what's called discontinuity, and
discontinuity comes in many forms, but all of it amounts

(23:46):
to a reminder that we are going to eventually die
one day, and that thought can come in all sorts
of different forms. It can come when we have a
relationship that's breaking down, when we're far away from our
social network. We there are any number of ways that
were reminded of our own mortality, right, and one of

(24:08):
our big defense mechanisms is growing nostalgic. And uh, it's
basically built in suicide prevention because it makes you wonder, like,
if we didn't have a way to get back on track,
like through nostalgia, and you just like entered a period
of discontinuity and never got back to you know, life's

(24:31):
good again, where would we be as a species? Who knows?
So nostalgia seems to be some sort of evolutionary trick
where um, when we look into the void and think,
oh God, I'm gonna die or my life is meaningless
or whatever, we experienced nostalgia and it has this incredible
flood of beneficial um effects on the person who's feeling nostalgic.

(24:53):
I thought this one article was pretty great. When they
were talking about discontinuity, they referenced Sweet Jude de Blue
Eyes by Crosby Stills Nash and I think young right, Like,
I know, you know the song very popular? Can you
sing it like an urban dance squad song? Come on,
you know, sweet? I don't If you have heard any

(25:15):
Crosby Steals in Nash song, you've heard this one. It's
very very famous. I'm thinking Bob Seeger right now? Is it?
Is it? The Bob Seger song is what you mean?
But here's a line by Steven Stills, don't let the
past remind us of what we are not now right.
That's again Hodgman's criticis Hodgman is not alone in his

(25:37):
criticism that that it seems like, uh, nostalgia could lead
you down this road where you're You're just like, oh,
the past is so much better than the present. But
apparently from study of nostalgia, it does the exact opposite.
It affirms the meaning of your life. It reminds you
that you are loved um, now here and now, and

(25:59):
it get you back on track after um an experience
of discontinuity, which is bizarre. I'm gonna sing a little
bit of it, Okay, you know, Uh I am yours,
you are mine, We are what we are? What have
we got to lose? That's that song I got you?
That's so yeah. See, it's a great song. That's better

(26:21):
than the Bob Seekers song. I think there is no
good Bob Seeker song that's not true. Name one uh
all time rock and roll, no terrible, worst song ever
turned the page awful like a rock awful catman, Do
kill Me. There's one though, that's not bad. I think
we've had this conversation before. I think I've been on
record as being a big Bob Seeker hater. I'm not

(26:44):
big on him either, but there's there's at least one
or two. Oh you'd love him. You want to get
you want to get married to him? All right, it's
enough about me and Bob Seger. Yeah, see he got uncomfortable. Um,
so I'm having a moment of dis kind nuity. Yeah.
We were talking about the studies, right, Well. I think

(27:04):
what we were saying was that if you look at
nostalgia from the way that Hodgeman looks at it, which
makes sense, um, you would think, well, nostalgia is a
bad thing, when in fact, studies have shown that nostalgia
actually gets you back on track when you're feeling like,
oh God, I'm gonna die one day, or oh I'm
not loved or whatever. Rather than getting stuck in reminiscing

(27:25):
about how great the past was compared to the present,
it reaffirms that the present is pretty great. Yeah, they said, uh,
and we always say they like it's sort of an
ambiguous body of sometimes we get called up by people
who are paying attention. The researchers of nostalgia say they
that UM positive mental states include UM higher self esteem,

(27:48):
more socially connected, more generous, more altruistic or optimistic, worry
less about the future and death and good and that
makes it a part of terror management theory, which we
actually did a really cool episode one. It was one
of those sleepers you know that probably not a lot
of people listened to, but it was awesome. Yeah. And

(28:08):
they did some other studies and this to me is
really interesting. UM in China, uh was one study and
elsewhere they have determined that nostalgic feelings might literally make
you warmer, right, like physically warmer. And when I said,

(28:29):
the warm thing watches over you. They think it might
have played a role in evolution, like when you're colder
and you think of these thoughts, you get warmer. Yeah.
From the study in China, UM they found that the
study participants were when they were cold and they were nostalgizing,

(28:49):
they were imagining themselves or they were remembering an experience
in a warm place, and apparently it had the effect
of making them feel physically warmer and less susceptible to
the pain of extreme cold. And another study to head
nostalgic and non nostalgic subjects hold their hands in thirty
nine degree fahrenheit water until they couldn't take it anymore,

(29:11):
and if you were feeling nostalgic, you could hold your
hand in there longer. So that proves that it warms
you up right right, not really, but it's interesting, it
is interesting. All of this is pretty interesting, and there
is there is supposedly a point where nostalgia can become
harmful too. It's called pathological nostalgia, um where you basically

(29:32):
do get locked into the idea that everything used to
be better back in the day or whenever at some
other point. But it's um rare compared to regular what's
called personal nostalgia, which is all the nostalgia we've been
talking about. And then there's the social nostalgia too, right
like when you didn't even live through it. Yeah, where um,

(29:55):
you know, like seventeen year old today wearing like a
Nirvana T shirt or a Fits T shirt or something
like that, or being into that music or thinking like
how great the nineties were, and it's like dude, we
lived through the nineties. They were not great. But it's
the same thing, like I love eighties stuff. I lived
through the eighties, but um, I remember thinking the eighties sucked,

(30:15):
and then you know, as an older person, when the
eighties came back, I'm like, yeah, the eighties were pretty fun. Yeah.
I think that's kind of a company sometimes too, by
this feeling of like I was born in the wrong time, Like, man,
I would have been a great hippie in the sixties,
and I just don't fit in here in the nineties. Sure, Like, personally,
I think the seventies were probably the greatest decade of
all time. But that's ignoring the fact that like Richard

(30:38):
Nixon was president, there was an oil embargo, There's all
this bad stuff, whereas I'm just thinking like days and
confused type seventies where everything was just great and happy
and you know, and laid back, and that's nostalgia. It
washes out the negative for everyone. But you Yeah, I
would say Richard Lincoln Better is one of the more
nostalgic filmmakers out there. He plays on that. Yeah, supposedly,

(31:01):
his new movie that's coming out is be Awesome. Everybody
wants some is that what it is? So it's like
Days and Confused, like four or five years later, right, Yeah,
he said, it's sort of like a spiritual sequel, like
not the same characters, but um, just sort of nineteen
eighty that advent of when things were transferring to disco
from Yeah, it's gonna be awesome. He's the best. That

(31:23):
was a great movie. Dased and Confused agreed. Um. So
the other thing that they found is that they did
a study. Clay Routledge of North Dakota State did a
study there there. Specifically they with a name. Yeah, a
real guy, so complained to him. Uh. He did a
series of experiments with English, Dutch, and American adults, so

(31:44):
he kind of had some different nationalities going on. It's
not exclusively American, of course. He let them listen to
hit songs from their youth and read lyrics, and afterwards
people said, uh, they were more than likely to feel
loved and that life was worth living. Some more affirmation
when they remember these good old days. Question do you

(32:06):
feel life is worth living? Check yes or no? Uh?
And finally I got one more thing. Um, they say, well,
they do recommend that you not fall into that trap
of pathological and yeah, of comparing the present to the
past so much. Uh. And they also found that certain
kinds of people aren't as great with nostalgia, So maybe

(32:26):
you should not indulge in nostalgia if your leery of
intimate relationships, they found, or you're an avoidant person, says
they have reap smaller benefits from nostalgia compared with people
who crave closeness. So I don't know what that says
about hand, but let's throw that out there. So, uh,
what's your number one nostalgia thing? What gets it for

(32:48):
you more than anything else? Probably music? I got two
things are tied for first. The smell of a used
bookstore or comic book shop. That's mel of like that,
I guess rotting paper. It reminds me of Mad magazines
from back in the day. And they love them. The

(33:09):
fat Christmas lights. Oh yeah, the big I could just
faint from the nostalgia. Yeah, they're like they were the
big Tachi ones that are coming back now. That's all
my family ever used was the big fat ones. It
was like more Christmas light. You know, you call those
tree burners. Yeah, yeah, we never caught a tree on fire,
but yeah, they get pretty hot. You know what my

(33:29):
dad did for a few years as we were opening
our gifts. Towards the end, he would start dismantling the
tree and pruning the limbs and putting him in the fireplace.
He would literally burn the Christmas tree on Christmas Morning's
here he Uh wow, that's very efficient, was he Germans?
Why do we look at it? Uh No? Uh, I

(33:52):
should say is he? He is not? And I wish
I would have given you a specific nostalgic thing, but um,
you did urban dance. Uh No, just music in general taste,
smell music got you nice. Put those three together and
look out. Chuck's eyes roll back into his head and
Hodgeman claps over him and says, get up. Uh. If

(34:15):
you want to know more about nostalgy, you can type
that word into search bar how stuff works dot com,
And I said, search bars, it's time for listener mail.
This is from Christina about the makeup episode. He points
out some good things. I think, Hey, guys have to
weigh in on how makeup works. I think you failed
to adequately acknowledge something. Uh. We are not, in fact

(34:36):
at a stage where makeup is truly optional for women
and I think we said that basically, did we Yeah,
at the end, well, I think we said, like it
should be your option, but I think she doesn't feel
like it truly is an option, right, No, we said that.
We said, like the the very fact that there was, like,
you know, taking a picture of yourself and posting on

(35:00):
Twitter without makeup was rebellious. Says that it's still not
really an option. We said that, all right, So forget it, Christina,
We're not reading now, We're gonna read it. While many
love wearing makeup, many women simply feel obliged to wear
it and are in fact penalized if they choose not to,
comes in the form of failing to be promoted maybe
or taking seriously getting raises, even being hired. It is

(35:22):
a hugely expensive habit too, especially if you like to
buy the prestige makeup brands. Yeah, so she recommended to
people read an article from The Atlantic, which is always
a good recommendation, called the makeup Tax, and it kind
of sums up the problem like this, women invest time
and money into doing the makeup because it impacts their
relationships and their paychecks. While both genders tend to buy

(35:44):
haircut shaving cream and moisturizer. The price of makeup is
something men never have to worry about. And then she
goes on to point on point out just how expensive
the gap is between like a man's haircut, no woman's
hair cut even you know, yeah, oh it's huge. It
depends on where you go. Yeah, but I mean if
you're a woman that goes to a like a you know,

(36:07):
not super cuts, right, it depends on where the man
goes though too. If you go to a salon and
you get like a cut in color as a woman,
you're paying like several hundred dollars. But that's the color
jack both. I don't mean to be contrary. That's yes,
I agree that they pay a lot more money. Christina. Yeah,
I go to Great Clips. Big shout out to Great Clips.

(36:29):
There's a free cut in your future. So Christina says, yeah,
after my tenth cut, if you have the card, no,
not a card, but they give you your receipt every
now and then it says off your fat collar cut,
which amounts to eight dollars. It's actually one than it's
like fourteen or fifteen. But remember in tipping it's fourteen.
I give them twenty and you were like what Oh, yeah,

(36:51):
that's right, that's right. Uh so Christine me all over again.
She finishes up with I look forward to a day
when wearing makeup is really truly a choice anyone of
any gender in both individuals and institutions respect those choices.
In the meantime, I choose to save my pennies and
stick it to the man by not buying makeup and
normalizing my own bear face. Good for you. Uh. And

(37:14):
Christina is a California native listening in Dublin, Ireland. Ahoy,
as they say in Ireland, is yeah, all right, we'll
find out. I think, I hope. Uh, thanks a lot, Christina,
all points agreed. Uh. If you want to get in
touch with us like Christina did, whether you're in Dublin
or Los Angeles or wherever, you can tweet to us

(37:38):
at s y ESK podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can
send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff
Works dot com, and as always, join us at our
home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Does

(37:59):
it how stuff Works Com