July 6, 2019 • 27 mins
What is it that makes us suddenly draw in a deep breath through a wide-open mouth? The beautiful thing about yawning is that researchers really don't know. Whether the answer is physical, mental or even contagious there is pretty much no chance you won't yawn during this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's
s Y s K Selects, I've chosen what makes us yawn?
It's actually a really good question about something everyone does,
and yet we don't really fully understand. After all of
these eons of people yawning and all these centuries of
science studying things like people yawning, we still can't explain
(00:22):
what yawning is. So buckle in and enjoy this episode
of Stuff You Should Know. Selex, Welcome to Stuff You
Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(00:42):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. You're getting comfy. Yeah, okay, well you put
the two of us together, and this is Stuff you
Should Know the podcast. Frank was squeaking. I thought I
was in Frank. Was that Frank? Yeah? I was sorry,
I'm in Francine. Okay, sorry Francine squeaking, You are in Frank?
Who are you? Let's build a chair? Uh? People have
(01:07):
never heard this or like, what are they talking about?
They've already turned off. We name our chairs people then,
and everyone he named cars, boats, and chairs. Yeah, a
surprising amount of people named chairs. If you don't, you
should be paranoid because people are talking about you. It's right, um, chuck, Yes,
have you ever oscitated? I have, I've even uh pendiculated.
(01:30):
Do you pendiculated before? I pendiculate every morning? You know
what we we sound like? Um people running for the
Senate in nineteen fifties Florida. Yeah, there's like Florida has
a rich history of um like people running for political
office using technical terms for things that sound way worse
than they are to like smear their opponents. Really. Yeah,
(01:52):
there's this one guy who went and I can thank
Uncle John and his bathroom readers for um who went
after his opponent and said that his sister was a
thespian in New York and like all these people are
like boo boo. Yeah, and apparently like the smear campaign
was successful. That wasn't the only one, but this guy
used that a couple of couple of technical terms. We
(02:15):
should probably tell people what we're talking about, right, because
you said you pendiculate every morning, easily every morning, and
that is a what that is a yawn and a
stretch combined together. And as one of my favorite things
to do in the morning it is. Did you did
you see that painting of the It was a self portrait,
the artist's self portrait sounded like it was from like
(02:35):
the sixteenth or seventeenth century of him pendiculating. It's just
as awesome oil painting of this, you know, Renaissance man
stretching and yawning. Yeah. I love it because it feels
good and it uh, it ties me to my pets,
you know, because like I see them do it, they
see me do it, and I'm kind of like, hey,
(02:57):
we all eat, we all pee and poop, and we
all pendiculate. My little cattle stretching yawn. My dogs will
stretching yawn, and I will stretching you. So do you
guys make one another stretching ya on? You know, I'm
gonna start looking out for that because I have not
noticed that. But apparently yawning can be contagious to animals, right, Yeah,
there's a fun little game you can do jogs supposedly
(03:18):
chimps for sure, but probably not cats, I don't know. Yeah,
just because it's not in here doesn't mean it's not true. Um,
there's a fun little game. You complain the next time
you're hanging out with people if you feel like manipulating
them on a biological level, Um, just yawn and just
start paying attention to how many people yawn as a result,
(03:38):
and it should start some sort of chain reaction among
maybe of the people, because that's the that's the statistic
of how many human adults yawn in reaction to seeing
somebody on, seeing video of somebody on, hearing about somebody yawning,
reading about yawning, Like how many times did you yawn
(04:01):
while you read this article? A bunch? And people will
probably yawn while listening to this, Supposedly it's pretty much
impossible not to. Yeah, do you ever? This just really
shows how deeply disturbed I am. I will not I
will suppress or cover up a yawn if someone else
has made me on sometimes just so I don't give
them the satisfaction. Oh yeah, I've done that before. Sometimes
(04:22):
he was like, no, I'm not like just some stranger
on an elevator. They'll yawn and I'll just be like, Nope,
not me, buddy. One of those people who don't realize that,
like they're they're just your mortal enemy for no real
good reason, when in fact they really don't even know exists, right,
they're like some guys on the elevator, right, So yawning
is involuntary. Um, And I've seen a range of of
(04:44):
weeks that a fetus has been observed yawning from eleven
to twenty and uh, that sort of disproves one of
the well many things, disproves one of the theories, which
is that we yawned to oxygenate ourselves. Yeah, because a
lot of people think that fetus is um, breathe amniotic
fluid in the womb, and that is absolutely not true.
(05:05):
The oxygen to the umbilical cord. Yeah, so they're not
clearly not yawning to oxygenate themselves. Right, And we'll debunk
that with other things in a minute. Sure, Um, but
that's still it is a little bit of a mystery though, Like, yeah,
the other the other ideas for why we yawned don't
really hold up in the fetus either. It feels like
that's where the key to the mystery of yawning is
(05:25):
going to be found in. All right, should we go
there over some theories and well, hold on, first, you're
saying it's involuntary. I found this one thing, Chuck, that
there's a type of paralysis like a lesion on the
brain where you can still if you yawn, you still pendiculate,
So like you're paralyzed arm. If you yawn deep enough,
(05:47):
will will raise, will rise. Yeah, pretty weird. Huh. There's
only been a few cases of it over like the
last hundred and fifty years, but it's been documented in
a number of different places. Yeah, but that is such
a surprise. Yeah, seriously, they're like, can I be tired
more often? Um So when you yawn, just physiologically speaking,
(06:09):
you're gonna open your mouth. You're going to suck in
air into your lungs. I read one place that you
your eyes usually close. They did this big study and
found that most time your eyes closed. But I don't
think it's like all the time. You know that's sneezing
you're thinking of. No, they did a study on on
the eyes of the yawner. Well that's part of the
(06:30):
yawn too, as far as um queues go, Like, it's
not just the mouth opening your eyes quint. Yeah, and
I found like the really good deep yawn, um, my
eyes will generally close. So you're gonna flex your your abs.
It's good workout. It's gonna put your dye for RAM down.
You're gonna fill your lungs with air and then exhale
and that as a yawn stretch, you're pendiculating. UM. Also,
(06:55):
parts of your brain become active, right. UM. Basically what
happens when all of this, when you go through all
this process, a bunch of neurotransmitters and dopamine are activated.
And that is why a guy named Robert Provine thinks well.
He says that, UM, yawns are basically a part of
(07:17):
a change from one state of arousal to another. Yeah,
like I was asleep, now I'm awake, or I was
I was alert, now on board, or I was like
just ho hum, and now I'm like in the mood
because there you can yawn when you're sexually aroused. So
that mood, YEA, the mood, the mood, the Glenn Miller mood.
(07:38):
That's what they had to call it back then, and
that's what we have to call it today on this
family friendly podcast. UM. What's going on to is physiologically speaking,
as we are distributing UM, something called the surfactant, which
sounds gross and it kind of is. It's a wedding agent. Uh.
To cote al violi in the lungs. Um. But are
(08:02):
they saying that's what happens or that's why it happens,
that's what happens. Okay, they're not saying the reason is
to cope the alboli with surfact then, right, it could be.
I mean, for all we know. No, we still have
no idea what function yawning provides. Same with the the
yawning as a symbol of arousal or is a sign
of arousal. They think that it's really just a byproduct
(08:23):
of it, you know. Okay, but it explains why people
who are nervous or dogs. I'm sure you've seen dogs
who are nervous and they yawn and like that really
kind of weird, unsettling ways when they're super worked up. Yeah. Yeah,
and humans too, you know, like people will yawn when
they're nervous. It's it's it's it's a sign that you're
in a state of arousal. And what that state of
(08:45):
arousal is depends on the situation. Yeah. They point to
Olympians who yawned before like a race, and um, which
Poopoo's one theory that we're going to get to the theory.
So we just get to the theories. Let's get to
the theory. Poops. That theory though, that you have to
be bored or you have to be sleepy retired. Yeah
like that. There's the boredom theory, and it's kind of
(09:06):
been pretty fully shot down just by you know, just
casual observation. There's also the physiological theory, which is that
this is the one that I'd always heard when I
was younger, like, why are you yawned? Is because you
needed your oxygen deprived or you have an abundance of
carbon dioxide. So you're drawing in a bunch of oxygen
(09:27):
and like putting out a bunch of carbon dioxide. That's
why you're yawned. And provine or provine that you mentioned. Yeah,
he tested this one right, Yeah, pretty simply. He just said, okay, well, um,
let's just give some athletes a bunch of oxygen and
see if they um, if they breathe, if they yawn
any less than they didn't. He also um increased the
(09:49):
carbon dioxide in the ambient air and people still kept yawning. Okay,
so that one's gold, but they didn't yawn anymore. Yeah,
so we can put that to bed. Yeah. Plus also
there was a terrible um hy proof associated with that
hypothesis that that explains why people yawning groups, because when
(10:10):
you have a big group, more carbon dioxide and less oxygen,
and that's like you're all fighting over the oxygen. Right,
So you're there yawning. Yeah, whoever can yawn the deepest lives?
That doesn't sound right. Evolution UM could play a part.
Some people think that maybe we used to yawn took
took Wood yawn to bare his teeth to intimidate folks
(10:30):
around him UM, or that it developed as a signal.
Took Took would give a signal to his mates that hey,
we gotta we're hunting now and we need to go
now gather would so I will yawn to tell you
that like pre speech, right, Yeah, like a bird turning
if the whole flock. Yeah, that makes a little bit
(10:52):
of sense, But I still don't believe that one. I'm
with the brain cooling theory. That's like the most recent
one and it seems to be the one that people
are subscribing to. Ye. Scientists generally are leaning toward the
fact that UM, when our brains are warmer, yawning might
cool it down in A cool brain is a more whatever,
(11:13):
a better brain. I guess I should say I just
better for thinking I just yawned, did you I did? Okay,
I didn't see it. Well, I covered my mouth. You
might have thought I was purpening. I think I did. Um.
So the brain cooling theory, that's the one that most
people think is lately, that's the that's the explanation to
your yeah, um. And there's another piece of research that
(11:37):
people are going into that um is the idea that
contagious yawning is the result of empathy, right, that you
that you empathize, The more you empathize with other people,
the more susceptible you are contagious yawning. And we said
earlier that like I think of human adults, UM are
(11:59):
susceptible to contagious yawning, right, which the MythBusters confirmed by
the way. Okay, so there is some sort of link
between what we perceive his empathy and the susceptibility to yawning.
When you see somebody else yawning or reading about yawning
or whatever, I wonder if it's like a boy, that
guy's tired and just let me make him feel better. Well,
the pro vine again, he's like really into yawning research. Um.
(12:23):
He he has done m r I scans where he
shows I guess pictures of people yawning or talked about
yawning and you know they yawn um. And when they do,
he says that mere neurons go off friends, right, So
are our mere neurons are activated when you see somebody
else yawn? And apparently that triggers the yawn. But people
(12:45):
take it a step further in this quest to prove
that empathy and contagious yawning are you know, want work
hand in hand and saying, well, then people with autism
that that they shouldn't be able to to be susceptible
to contagious yawning, right, because they're known to have less empathy, right,
they had trouble connecting with others or um, they have
(13:06):
trouble developing what's called the theory of mind about other people. Um.
And there have been a lot of studies about whether
or not people who are people who have autism are contagious?
Is too susceptible the contagious yawning? Yeah, and it's it's
it's been proven, not proven, but at least. The data
(13:28):
says that the more, uh, the the stronger your autism,
the less you will yawn, even though uh they will
yawn when someone is pretending to yawn. Was that what
it was? Yeah? I think it said that, Um, when
they're watching video of people just moving their mouths, then
(13:50):
non autistic kids yawned more than kids with autism when
it was really yawning. Does that make sense? Yes, Well,
hold on before we get to that, um, because this
is like a whole thing to me, the idea that
if you have autism you're not susceptible and contagious yawning.
Let's let's first I have a message break from our sponsor. Okay, Josh,
(14:27):
So I believe we were talking about autism and yawning,
which is I just learned a thing for you. Well, yeah,
you said that there was. Um. They have found that
if you have been diagnosed with autism, you're less likely
to be susceptible and contagious yawning. And they found that
the higher on the autism spectrum you fall, the less
(14:48):
lucky would you would even be right? Yeah, which would
suggest that there is that link because they've tied there
there's a link between uh, empathy and an autism and
empathy and contagious yawning. So this autism and studying kids
with autism is kind of like the fulcrum. So yeah,
it just seems to me to be kind of Um,
(15:09):
I don't know, I don't I don't buy all the
studies that have been carried out. Another studies kind of contradicted,
like they other studies have shown that like kids with
autism focus on people's mouths rather than their eyes, So
maybe they're missing the cue. Member. We said that your
eyes scrunch, so like a yawn is not just people
opening their mouths. It has all these other facial characteristics
(15:32):
that might trigger a yawn and another person. So maybe
kids with autism are simply missing that. So you're saying,
maybe the data could be skewed by other factors. It
could be plus. I just remember when I wrote this
article like years back, I was kind of like, yeah,
it's just it seems just slightly off, like, yeah, you
got a good gut though, Well thanks man, I've been
(15:54):
working on it so bad. Um Well, we should also
mention too that this goes back a long way, like
I believe was it Hippocrates? Yeah, was the first person
to start sort of postulating ideas, and he was like, uh,
he thought it was fever related, like sickness. It could
help cure you. So I got a fever and the
(16:16):
only prescription is more yawning. That's why here's the father
of medicine. That's right, because he was the first guy
to just start saying stuff. But you know that was
pretty quickly disproven. Right. But um, the idea that yawning
has something to do with um increasing our alertness and awareness,
which is kind of one of the current views of yawning.
(16:39):
Um that dates back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Yeah,
well it increases your heart rate during inhalation only um,
not during uh the I think it it It increases
and then levels off and then just drops back down
to the more pretty quickly, I got you. Yeah, but
up to like thirty beats per minute increase. Right. Yeah.
(16:59):
I read a real heavy article on this study that
really just made my eyes cross. But that was a
long and short of it. Right, But that's one that
dealt with the eyes, Like they really measured all kinds
of stuff. Uh. And when we said that fetus is
from eleven to twenty weeks of development yawn in utero
and did you see any of like the four d
(17:19):
ultrasounds of fetus? Is yawning? Is it adorable? It's pretty cute,
but it's also weird at the same time because they're
not fully developed. It's it's like, oh you, it's like
a little baby platypus kind of um, but you have
to be around age four before you um can Uh,
you're susceptible the contagious yawning. Yeah, it's there, any way
(17:41):
to put it besides susceptible the contagious yawning, I don't
think so. Do you feel like you've said that like
a lot and I've had trouble with it every time. Uh.
There's another couple of researchers who a couple of years ago,
um Andrew Gallup and Omar Tansi Elda car H. They
found that outside temperature could affect the amount of yawning.
(18:01):
So if it's warmer than usual, then you're gonna yawn
less frequently because um. Their explanation is the outside air
is useless to the organism because it doesn't need to
suck in more oxygen. I don't get how the temperture
would affect that though. Well, if it's warmer temperature and
you're using the cooler air to cool your brain, if
(18:23):
it's warmer than the temperature of your brain, then okay,
that makes sense. Yeah all right. Well they had other
tests though, that's that showed that the amount of yawning
increase both when outside temperature and the temperature of the
brain increase. Yeah, it's all over the place. No, no
one knows anything about yawning except Robert Provine, the foremost
(18:46):
leading authority. Well, well he's proven that like seeing your
hearing about somebody yawning, it triggers your mirror neurons. So yeah,
I think somebody should do a documentary on these people
that become obsessed with yawns. No, just like a certain
small thing. So you're yawning right now? Um, And that
was unsatisfying because you made me laugh in the middle
(19:08):
of it. I think like fast, cheap and out of control.
I've talked about it before. Errol Morris's documentary sort of
did that, but that was about like studying naked mole
rats or lion taming or um what's it called when
you clip the hedges in diopiary gardening. But someone they
should do things that are even more like mundane, like
this dude that has dedicated as life to yawning. I
(19:32):
just think they'd be interesting, Like what drives provine? Figure
this out? When it really doesn't matter, you know what
I'm saying? Well, I don't know, because and it's not
just yawning. He he frequently is cited as a yawning expert.
He's an evolutionary biologist. Okay, so like, but yawning, since
it's involuntary, and since you find it in all vertebrates,
it kind of gives some peek into our evolutionary past. Plus,
(19:56):
he probably just loves a good mystery. Sure, he had
a great quote too. We were talking how arousal yawning
is a is a byproduct of a state of arousal.
He was saying that he believes that um, yawns and
orgasms share a neurobehavioral heritage. Yeah, so, like they're possibly
rooted in the same behavior. Like remember you said it yourself,
(20:17):
when you pendiculate feels good, same, you know with the orgasm. Yeah,
so I've heard those feel great, right, So possibly if
you trace the lineage of this behavior back far enough,
you'd see like, oh, they both came from when humans
juice to stub their toe. They thought it was awesome,
and then the things diverged into these two things interesting
(20:40):
into uh, yawning and what happens when you're in the
mood the Glenn Miller mood. Right, Ah, you got anything else? No, man,
that is yawning forever until somebody figures it out. It's
a mystery. Yeah, and I kind of like it like that,
But at the same time, I think it's it's so
amorphous that there's no no one has a clue. Like
(21:03):
sometimes we've talked about stuff that science couldn't fully explain,
but we almost always like pick a theory, like this
is the one. It just hasn't been proven yet, right,
this one. I don't feel like we did that, Like
we both like the brain cooling one, but it was
kind of discarded. Yeah, and I'm definitely gonna keep an
eye on my pets, um, But then I don't know
(21:23):
if like, can you induce that just by noticing more,
you know, you know what I'm saying, or maybe what
I'll do is I'll watch Emily around the pets so
no one's in on it. Just be careful, you don't
accidentally change their behavior just by observing it's Buckley farts
every time he stretches too. And see that's what I'm saying.
(21:44):
We'll see if Emily farts while she andiculates, right, that'll
be the death's nice. Um. So okay, I think if
you guys want to learn more about yawning, you can
type that word into the search bar at how stuff
works dot com. And since I said search part means
it's time for listener mail. Uh, not quite yet, my friend.
We have a quick word from our sponsor again, and
(22:05):
then we will we have a great listener mail though
about Rodriguez. So oh yeah, yeah, okay, all right, so
this is a time for message break, okay, and no,
(22:33):
it's time for listener mail. Huh yes, And I already
gave it away because I wanted people to stick around
for this and it is called I hang Out with Rodriguez.
So we mentioned Rodriguez, the singer songwriter from the sixties who,
unbeknownst to him, was a huge, huge hit in South America.
(22:54):
And no, South Africa, what did I say, South American?
It's such an idiot now South Africa. And then like
down there once on the left ones on the right
and then later in Australia and um so we covered
that in our Apartheide podcast and you can see the
documentary searching for Sugarman's Super Interesting. Which one best documentary
(23:16):
this year? Right? Yeah? Yeah? Have you seen How to
Survive a Plague? That was up for Best Picture too,
best Documentary? Yes, it was a good Yeah, it was
really good. Um it was. It's about the early gay
like AIDS awareness movement and like it's just what they
were up against. His mind boggling, you know, like that
(23:38):
society was just kind of like, no, God's punishing you.
Good luck with it, pal, jeez. Yeah, it was really something.
I saw our friends Steward of Superhuman Happiness. Who are
they're fans of the show. He scored the soundtrack. Oh nice,
he did a really good job with it too. You
want to check that out. Um. I saw another trailer
the other day for a documentary about this family of
(24:00):
Jews who hid in a underground for a year and
a half during World War Two and they never told
their story because they didn't think anyone believe it. In
this caving cave diver not cave diver, caving guy found
these human objects and traced them back to this family
and they came out like the surviving ones, like told
(24:20):
their story of his amazing it's called No Place on Earth,
and uh, it's coming out soon. It looks awesome. All right, Well,
there you go, everybody. We like to recommend documentaries around here. Okay, Rodriguez, guys.
It's so fun to hear you talk about Rodriguez because
I've known him a little bit here and there. I'm
glad he's getting recognition. And here's a story about the
(24:42):
first day I met him. September two thousand seven, I
moved into a one year old apartment building in the
Cast Corridor neighborhood of Detroit. It was a bar across
the street called the Bronx, and after getting moved in,
my boyfriend and I went over there, had a night
of celebrating and talking with some old and new friends.
Our friend Dale pointed out this dude wearing all black
(25:03):
with sunglasses on, said, you know, Rodriguez, that guy over
there is bigger than Elvis in South Africa and Australia.
I didn't understand the gravity of a statement at the time,
but being friendly people, we talked late into the night
with Dale and Rodriguez the bar clothes. We decided to
walk back across the street to our new apartment, and
Rodriguez followed us out with his guitar and toe. It's
(25:23):
very quiet out about three in the morning. The apartment
building was you shaped, with a big courtyard in the
middle and low lighting. It was really beautiful. There was
a single picnic table and we sat there on it,
talking more and more. Rodriguez pulled out a pint of brandy,
offered us some and then asked if we wanted to
hear his new song, saying he had just written it
the other day. He said sure because he seemed so
incredibly excited about it. He played the song for us
(25:46):
and played it again, which I thought was interesting. He
played it twice, So did you like that? You want
to hear it again? Wait before you answer, let me
play it a second time. Uh. And then we talked
some more about music and love and he played it
once again. No way, I guess he played it three times. Um.
I saw many many times over the next few years
and met his middle daughter as well. He'll played the
(26:07):
same song every time. But I'll never forget sitting under
the stag stars all alone with him in a majestic
old Detroit courtyard giving my boyfriend and me a private
concert of a single song. That's cool played Thrice in
passing the Cheap Brandy. He really is. It's kind and
happy of a soul, as the movie says, that's cool.
When you watch Churching for sugar Man, you can see
a couple of people talking to the Bronx bar and
(26:30):
even see my old apartment in the background. I hope
I see you guys soon, Love Julia. Well, thanks Julia.
Hat tipped to you for being aware of the word Thrice,
and for um, I guess waiting out the storm in Detroit. Yeah,
and for listening to that song three times like very
(26:50):
patient understanding with the smile plastered on your face the
last time, Like yeah, very cool memory, I imagine. Yeah. Um,
let's see if you have a story about any so
famous singer, songwriter, filmmaker. Anybody remember the guy who hung
out with Henry Hill and became like really disenchanted as
a result. Yeah, yeah, if you have a good story
(27:10):
like that, We're always in the move for a good yarn,
especially if it's true. You can tweet to us if
it's a really, really short story um to s y
s K podcast. That's our handle, the whole thing um.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you Should Know all one word. That's our Facebook page.
You can send us an email to stuff podcast at
how Stuffworks dot com and has always joined us at
(27:32):
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
How Stuff Works from More Podcasts for my heart Radio
because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows
M Hey everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's
s Y s K Selects, I've chosen what makes us yawn?
It's actually a really good question about something everyone does,
and yet we don't really fully understand. After all of
these eons of people yawning and all these centuries of
science studying things like people yawning, we still can't explain
(00:22):
what yawning is. So buckle in and enjoy this episode
of Stuff You Should Know. Selex, Welcome to Stuff You
Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(00:42):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. You're getting comfy. Yeah, okay, well you put
the two of us together, and this is Stuff you
Should Know the podcast. Frank was squeaking. I thought I
was in Frank. Was that Frank? Yeah? I was sorry,
I'm in Francine. Okay, sorry Francine squeaking, You are in Frank?
Who are you? Let's build a chair? Uh? People have
(01:07):
never heard this or like, what are they talking about?
They've already turned off. We name our chairs people then,
and everyone he named cars, boats, and chairs. Yeah, a
surprising amount of people named chairs. If you don't, you
should be paranoid because people are talking about you. It's right, um, chuck, Yes,
have you ever oscitated? I have, I've even uh pendiculated.
(01:30):
Do you pendiculated before? I pendiculate every morning? You know
what we we sound like? Um people running for the
Senate in nineteen fifties Florida. Yeah, there's like Florida has
a rich history of um like people running for political
office using technical terms for things that sound way worse
than they are to like smear their opponents. Really. Yeah,
(01:52):
there's this one guy who went and I can thank
Uncle John and his bathroom readers for um who went
after his opponent and said that his sister was a
thespian in New York and like all these people are
like boo boo. Yeah, and apparently like the smear campaign
was successful. That wasn't the only one, but this guy
used that a couple of couple of technical terms. We
(02:15):
should probably tell people what we're talking about, right, because
you said you pendiculate every morning, easily every morning, and
that is a what that is a yawn and a
stretch combined together. And as one of my favorite things
to do in the morning it is. Did you did
you see that painting of the It was a self portrait,
the artist's self portrait sounded like it was from like
(02:35):
the sixteenth or seventeenth century of him pendiculating. It's just
as awesome oil painting of this, you know, Renaissance man
stretching and yawning. Yeah. I love it because it feels
good and it uh, it ties me to my pets,
you know, because like I see them do it, they
see me do it, and I'm kind of like, hey,
(02:57):
we all eat, we all pee and poop, and we
all pendiculate. My little cattle stretching yawn. My dogs will
stretching yawn, and I will stretching you. So do you
guys make one another stretching ya on? You know, I'm
gonna start looking out for that because I have not
noticed that. But apparently yawning can be contagious to animals, right, Yeah,
there's a fun little game you can do jogs supposedly
(03:18):
chimps for sure, but probably not cats, I don't know. Yeah,
just because it's not in here doesn't mean it's not true. Um,
there's a fun little game. You complain the next time
you're hanging out with people if you feel like manipulating
them on a biological level, Um, just yawn and just
start paying attention to how many people yawn as a result,
(03:38):
and it should start some sort of chain reaction among
maybe of the people, because that's the that's the statistic
of how many human adults yawn in reaction to seeing
somebody on, seeing video of somebody on, hearing about somebody yawning,
reading about yawning, Like how many times did you yawn
(04:01):
while you read this article? A bunch? And people will
probably yawn while listening to this, Supposedly it's pretty much
impossible not to. Yeah, do you ever? This just really
shows how deeply disturbed I am. I will not I
will suppress or cover up a yawn if someone else
has made me on sometimes just so I don't give
them the satisfaction. Oh yeah, I've done that before. Sometimes
(04:22):
he was like, no, I'm not like just some stranger
on an elevator. They'll yawn and I'll just be like, Nope,
not me, buddy. One of those people who don't realize that,
like they're they're just your mortal enemy for no real
good reason, when in fact they really don't even know exists, right,
they're like some guys on the elevator, right, So yawning
is involuntary. Um, And I've seen a range of of
(04:44):
weeks that a fetus has been observed yawning from eleven
to twenty and uh, that sort of disproves one of
the well many things, disproves one of the theories, which
is that we yawned to oxygenate ourselves. Yeah, because a
lot of people think that fetus is um, breathe amniotic
fluid in the womb, and that is absolutely not true.
(05:05):
The oxygen to the umbilical cord. Yeah, so they're not
clearly not yawning to oxygenate themselves. Right, And we'll debunk
that with other things in a minute. Sure, Um, but
that's still it is a little bit of a mystery though, Like, yeah,
the other the other ideas for why we yawned don't
really hold up in the fetus either. It feels like
that's where the key to the mystery of yawning is
(05:25):
going to be found in. All right, should we go
there over some theories and well, hold on, first, you're
saying it's involuntary. I found this one thing, Chuck, that
there's a type of paralysis like a lesion on the
brain where you can still if you yawn, you still pendiculate,
So like you're paralyzed arm. If you yawn deep enough,
(05:47):
will will raise, will rise. Yeah, pretty weird. Huh. There's
only been a few cases of it over like the
last hundred and fifty years, but it's been documented in
a number of different places. Yeah, but that is such
a surprise. Yeah, seriously, they're like, can I be tired
more often? Um So when you yawn, just physiologically speaking,
(06:09):
you're gonna open your mouth. You're going to suck in
air into your lungs. I read one place that you
your eyes usually close. They did this big study and
found that most time your eyes closed. But I don't
think it's like all the time. You know that's sneezing
you're thinking of. No, they did a study on on
the eyes of the yawner. Well that's part of the
(06:30):
yawn too, as far as um queues go, Like, it's
not just the mouth opening your eyes quint. Yeah, and
I found like the really good deep yawn, um, my
eyes will generally close. So you're gonna flex your your abs.
It's good workout. It's gonna put your dye for RAM down.
You're gonna fill your lungs with air and then exhale
and that as a yawn stretch, you're pendiculating. UM. Also,
(06:55):
parts of your brain become active, right. UM. Basically what
happens when all of this, when you go through all
this process, a bunch of neurotransmitters and dopamine are activated.
And that is why a guy named Robert Provine thinks well.
He says that, UM, yawns are basically a part of
(07:17):
a change from one state of arousal to another. Yeah,
like I was asleep, now I'm awake, or I was
I was alert, now on board, or I was like
just ho hum, and now I'm like in the mood
because there you can yawn when you're sexually aroused. So
that mood, YEA, the mood, the mood, the Glenn Miller mood.
(07:38):
That's what they had to call it back then, and
that's what we have to call it today on this
family friendly podcast. UM. What's going on to is physiologically speaking,
as we are distributing UM, something called the surfactant, which
sounds gross and it kind of is. It's a wedding agent. Uh.
To cote al violi in the lungs. Um. But are
(08:02):
they saying that's what happens or that's why it happens,
that's what happens. Okay, they're not saying the reason is
to cope the alboli with surfact then, right, it could be.
I mean, for all we know. No, we still have
no idea what function yawning provides. Same with the the
yawning as a symbol of arousal or is a sign
of arousal. They think that it's really just a byproduct
(08:23):
of it, you know. Okay, but it explains why people
who are nervous or dogs. I'm sure you've seen dogs
who are nervous and they yawn and like that really
kind of weird, unsettling ways when they're super worked up. Yeah. Yeah,
and humans too, you know, like people will yawn when
they're nervous. It's it's it's it's a sign that you're
in a state of arousal. And what that state of
(08:45):
arousal is depends on the situation. Yeah. They point to
Olympians who yawned before like a race, and um, which
Poopoo's one theory that we're going to get to the theory.
So we just get to the theories. Let's get to
the theory. Poops. That theory though, that you have to
be bored or you have to be sleepy retired. Yeah
like that. There's the boredom theory, and it's kind of
(09:06):
been pretty fully shot down just by you know, just
casual observation. There's also the physiological theory, which is that
this is the one that I'd always heard when I
was younger, like, why are you yawned? Is because you
needed your oxygen deprived or you have an abundance of
carbon dioxide. So you're drawing in a bunch of oxygen
(09:27):
and like putting out a bunch of carbon dioxide. That's
why you're yawned. And provine or provine that you mentioned. Yeah,
he tested this one right, Yeah, pretty simply. He just said, okay, well, um,
let's just give some athletes a bunch of oxygen and
see if they um, if they breathe, if they yawn
any less than they didn't. He also um increased the
(09:49):
carbon dioxide in the ambient air and people still kept yawning. Okay,
so that one's gold, but they didn't yawn anymore. Yeah,
so we can put that to bed. Yeah. Plus also
there was a terrible um hy proof associated with that
hypothesis that that explains why people yawning groups, because when
(10:10):
you have a big group, more carbon dioxide and less oxygen,
and that's like you're all fighting over the oxygen. Right,
So you're there yawning. Yeah, whoever can yawn the deepest lives?
That doesn't sound right. Evolution UM could play a part.
Some people think that maybe we used to yawn took
took Wood yawn to bare his teeth to intimidate folks
(10:30):
around him UM, or that it developed as a signal.
Took Took would give a signal to his mates that hey,
we gotta we're hunting now and we need to go
now gather would so I will yawn to tell you
that like pre speech, right, Yeah, like a bird turning
if the whole flock. Yeah, that makes a little bit
(10:52):
of sense, But I still don't believe that one. I'm
with the brain cooling theory. That's like the most recent
one and it seems to be the one that people
are subscribing to. Ye. Scientists generally are leaning toward the
fact that UM, when our brains are warmer, yawning might
cool it down in A cool brain is a more whatever,
(11:13):
a better brain. I guess I should say I just
better for thinking I just yawned, did you I did? Okay,
I didn't see it. Well, I covered my mouth. You
might have thought I was purpening. I think I did. Um.
So the brain cooling theory, that's the one that most
people think is lately, that's the that's the explanation to
your yeah, um. And there's another piece of research that
(11:37):
people are going into that um is the idea that
contagious yawning is the result of empathy, right, that you
that you empathize, The more you empathize with other people,
the more susceptible you are contagious yawning. And we said
earlier that like I think of human adults, UM are
(11:59):
susceptible to contagious yawning, right, which the MythBusters confirmed by
the way. Okay, so there is some sort of link
between what we perceive his empathy and the susceptibility to yawning.
When you see somebody else yawning or reading about yawning
or whatever, I wonder if it's like a boy, that
guy's tired and just let me make him feel better. Well,
the pro vine again, he's like really into yawning research. Um.
(12:23):
He he has done m r I scans where he
shows I guess pictures of people yawning or talked about
yawning and you know they yawn um. And when they do,
he says that mere neurons go off friends, right, So
are our mere neurons are activated when you see somebody
else yawn? And apparently that triggers the yawn. But people
(12:45):
take it a step further in this quest to prove
that empathy and contagious yawning are you know, want work
hand in hand and saying, well, then people with autism
that that they shouldn't be able to to be susceptible
to contagious yawning, right, because they're known to have less empathy, right,
they had trouble connecting with others or um, they have
(13:06):
trouble developing what's called the theory of mind about other people. Um.
And there have been a lot of studies about whether
or not people who are people who have autism are contagious?
Is too susceptible the contagious yawning? Yeah, and it's it's
it's been proven, not proven, but at least. The data
(13:28):
says that the more, uh, the the stronger your autism,
the less you will yawn, even though uh they will
yawn when someone is pretending to yawn. Was that what
it was? Yeah? I think it said that, Um, when
they're watching video of people just moving their mouths, then
(13:50):
non autistic kids yawned more than kids with autism when
it was really yawning. Does that make sense? Yes, Well,
hold on before we get to that, um, because this
is like a whole thing to me, the idea that
if you have autism you're not susceptible and contagious yawning.
Let's let's first I have a message break from our sponsor. Okay, Josh,
(14:27):
So I believe we were talking about autism and yawning,
which is I just learned a thing for you. Well, yeah,
you said that there was. Um. They have found that
if you have been diagnosed with autism, you're less likely
to be susceptible and contagious yawning. And they found that
the higher on the autism spectrum you fall, the less
(14:48):
lucky would you would even be right? Yeah, which would
suggest that there is that link because they've tied there
there's a link between uh, empathy and an autism and
empathy and contagious yawning. So this autism and studying kids
with autism is kind of like the fulcrum. So yeah,
it just seems to me to be kind of Um,
(15:09):
I don't know, I don't I don't buy all the
studies that have been carried out. Another studies kind of contradicted,
like they other studies have shown that like kids with
autism focus on people's mouths rather than their eyes, So
maybe they're missing the cue. Member. We said that your
eyes scrunch, so like a yawn is not just people
opening their mouths. It has all these other facial characteristics
(15:32):
that might trigger a yawn and another person. So maybe
kids with autism are simply missing that. So you're saying,
maybe the data could be skewed by other factors. It
could be plus. I just remember when I wrote this
article like years back, I was kind of like, yeah,
it's just it seems just slightly off, like, yeah, you
got a good gut though, Well thanks man, I've been
(15:54):
working on it so bad. Um Well, we should also
mention too that this goes back a long way, like
I believe was it Hippocrates? Yeah, was the first person
to start sort of postulating ideas, and he was like, uh,
he thought it was fever related, like sickness. It could
help cure you. So I got a fever and the
(16:16):
only prescription is more yawning. That's why here's the father
of medicine. That's right, because he was the first guy
to just start saying stuff. But you know that was
pretty quickly disproven. Right. But um, the idea that yawning
has something to do with um increasing our alertness and awareness,
which is kind of one of the current views of yawning.
(16:39):
Um that dates back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Yeah,
well it increases your heart rate during inhalation only um,
not during uh the I think it it It increases
and then levels off and then just drops back down
to the more pretty quickly, I got you. Yeah, but
up to like thirty beats per minute increase. Right. Yeah.
(16:59):
I read a real heavy article on this study that
really just made my eyes cross. But that was a
long and short of it. Right, But that's one that
dealt with the eyes, Like they really measured all kinds
of stuff. Uh. And when we said that fetus is
from eleven to twenty weeks of development yawn in utero
and did you see any of like the four d
(17:19):
ultrasounds of fetus? Is yawning? Is it adorable? It's pretty cute,
but it's also weird at the same time because they're
not fully developed. It's it's like, oh you, it's like
a little baby platypus kind of um, but you have
to be around age four before you um can Uh,
you're susceptible the contagious yawning. Yeah, it's there, any way
(17:41):
to put it besides susceptible the contagious yawning, I don't
think so. Do you feel like you've said that like
a lot and I've had trouble with it every time. Uh.
There's another couple of researchers who a couple of years ago,
um Andrew Gallup and Omar Tansi Elda car H. They
found that outside temperature could affect the amount of yawning.
(18:01):
So if it's warmer than usual, then you're gonna yawn
less frequently because um. Their explanation is the outside air
is useless to the organism because it doesn't need to
suck in more oxygen. I don't get how the temperture
would affect that though. Well, if it's warmer temperature and
you're using the cooler air to cool your brain, if
(18:23):
it's warmer than the temperature of your brain, then okay,
that makes sense. Yeah all right. Well they had other
tests though, that's that showed that the amount of yawning
increase both when outside temperature and the temperature of the
brain increase. Yeah, it's all over the place. No, no
one knows anything about yawning except Robert Provine, the foremost
(18:46):
leading authority. Well, well he's proven that like seeing your
hearing about somebody yawning, it triggers your mirror neurons. So yeah,
I think somebody should do a documentary on these people
that become obsessed with yawns. No, just like a certain
small thing. So you're yawning right now? Um, And that
was unsatisfying because you made me laugh in the middle
(19:08):
of it. I think like fast, cheap and out of control.
I've talked about it before. Errol Morris's documentary sort of
did that, but that was about like studying naked mole
rats or lion taming or um what's it called when
you clip the hedges in diopiary gardening. But someone they
should do things that are even more like mundane, like
this dude that has dedicated as life to yawning. I
(19:32):
just think they'd be interesting, Like what drives provine? Figure
this out? When it really doesn't matter, you know what
I'm saying? Well, I don't know, because and it's not
just yawning. He he frequently is cited as a yawning expert.
He's an evolutionary biologist. Okay, so like, but yawning, since
it's involuntary, and since you find it in all vertebrates,
it kind of gives some peek into our evolutionary past. Plus,
(19:56):
he probably just loves a good mystery. Sure, he had
a great quote too. We were talking how arousal yawning
is a is a byproduct of a state of arousal.
He was saying that he believes that um, yawns and
orgasms share a neurobehavioral heritage. Yeah, so, like they're possibly
rooted in the same behavior. Like remember you said it yourself,
(20:17):
when you pendiculate feels good, same, you know with the orgasm. Yeah,
so I've heard those feel great, right, So possibly if
you trace the lineage of this behavior back far enough,
you'd see like, oh, they both came from when humans
juice to stub their toe. They thought it was awesome,
and then the things diverged into these two things interesting
(20:40):
into uh, yawning and what happens when you're in the
mood the Glenn Miller mood. Right, Ah, you got anything else? No, man,
that is yawning forever until somebody figures it out. It's
a mystery. Yeah, and I kind of like it like that,
But at the same time, I think it's it's so
amorphous that there's no no one has a clue. Like
(21:03):
sometimes we've talked about stuff that science couldn't fully explain,
but we almost always like pick a theory, like this
is the one. It just hasn't been proven yet, right,
this one. I don't feel like we did that, Like
we both like the brain cooling one, but it was
kind of discarded. Yeah, and I'm definitely gonna keep an
eye on my pets, um, But then I don't know
(21:23):
if like, can you induce that just by noticing more,
you know, you know what I'm saying, or maybe what
I'll do is I'll watch Emily around the pets so
no one's in on it. Just be careful, you don't
accidentally change their behavior just by observing it's Buckley farts
every time he stretches too. And see that's what I'm saying.
(21:44):
We'll see if Emily farts while she andiculates, right, that'll
be the death's nice. Um. So okay, I think if
you guys want to learn more about yawning, you can
type that word into the search bar at how stuff
works dot com. And since I said search part means
it's time for listener mail. Uh, not quite yet, my friend.
We have a quick word from our sponsor again, and
(22:05):
then we will we have a great listener mail though
about Rodriguez. So oh yeah, yeah, okay, all right, so
this is a time for message break, okay, and no,
(22:33):
it's time for listener mail. Huh yes, And I already
gave it away because I wanted people to stick around
for this and it is called I hang Out with Rodriguez.
So we mentioned Rodriguez, the singer songwriter from the sixties who,
unbeknownst to him, was a huge, huge hit in South America.
(22:54):
And no, South Africa, what did I say, South American?
It's such an idiot now South Africa. And then like
down there once on the left ones on the right
and then later in Australia and um so we covered
that in our Apartheide podcast and you can see the
documentary searching for Sugarman's Super Interesting. Which one best documentary
(23:16):
this year? Right? Yeah? Yeah? Have you seen How to
Survive a Plague? That was up for Best Picture too,
best Documentary? Yes, it was a good Yeah, it was
really good. Um it was. It's about the early gay
like AIDS awareness movement and like it's just what they
were up against. His mind boggling, you know, like that
(23:38):
society was just kind of like, no, God's punishing you.
Good luck with it, pal, jeez. Yeah, it was really something.
I saw our friends Steward of Superhuman Happiness. Who are
they're fans of the show. He scored the soundtrack. Oh nice,
he did a really good job with it too. You
want to check that out. Um. I saw another trailer
the other day for a documentary about this family of
(24:00):
Jews who hid in a underground for a year and
a half during World War Two and they never told
their story because they didn't think anyone believe it. In
this caving cave diver not cave diver, caving guy found
these human objects and traced them back to this family
and they came out like the surviving ones, like told
(24:20):
their story of his amazing it's called No Place on Earth,
and uh, it's coming out soon. It looks awesome. All right, Well,
there you go, everybody. We like to recommend documentaries around here. Okay, Rodriguez, guys.
It's so fun to hear you talk about Rodriguez because
I've known him a little bit here and there. I'm
glad he's getting recognition. And here's a story about the
(24:42):
first day I met him. September two thousand seven, I
moved into a one year old apartment building in the
Cast Corridor neighborhood of Detroit. It was a bar across
the street called the Bronx, and after getting moved in,
my boyfriend and I went over there, had a night
of celebrating and talking with some old and new friends.
Our friend Dale pointed out this dude wearing all black
(25:03):
with sunglasses on, said, you know, Rodriguez, that guy over
there is bigger than Elvis in South Africa and Australia.
I didn't understand the gravity of a statement at the time,
but being friendly people, we talked late into the night
with Dale and Rodriguez the bar clothes. We decided to
walk back across the street to our new apartment, and
Rodriguez followed us out with his guitar and toe. It's
(25:23):
very quiet out about three in the morning. The apartment
building was you shaped, with a big courtyard in the
middle and low lighting. It was really beautiful. There was
a single picnic table and we sat there on it,
talking more and more. Rodriguez pulled out a pint of brandy,
offered us some and then asked if we wanted to
hear his new song, saying he had just written it
the other day. He said sure because he seemed so
incredibly excited about it. He played the song for us
(25:46):
and played it again, which I thought was interesting. He
played it twice, So did you like that? You want
to hear it again? Wait before you answer, let me
play it a second time. Uh. And then we talked
some more about music and love and he played it
once again. No way, I guess he played it three times. Um.
I saw many many times over the next few years
and met his middle daughter as well. He'll played the
(26:07):
same song every time. But I'll never forget sitting under
the stag stars all alone with him in a majestic
old Detroit courtyard giving my boyfriend and me a private
concert of a single song. That's cool played Thrice in
passing the Cheap Brandy. He really is. It's kind and
happy of a soul, as the movie says, that's cool.
When you watch Churching for sugar Man, you can see
a couple of people talking to the Bronx bar and
(26:30):
even see my old apartment in the background. I hope
I see you guys soon, Love Julia. Well, thanks Julia.
Hat tipped to you for being aware of the word Thrice,
and for um, I guess waiting out the storm in Detroit. Yeah,
and for listening to that song three times like very
(26:50):
patient understanding with the smile plastered on your face the
last time, Like yeah, very cool memory, I imagine. Yeah. Um,
let's see if you have a story about any so
famous singer, songwriter, filmmaker. Anybody remember the guy who hung
out with Henry Hill and became like really disenchanted as
a result. Yeah, yeah, if you have a good story
(27:10):
like that, We're always in the move for a good yarn,
especially if it's true. You can tweet to us if
it's a really, really short story um to s y
s K podcast. That's our handle, the whole thing um.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you Should Know all one word. That's our Facebook page.
You can send us an email to stuff podcast at
how Stuffworks dot com and has always joined us at
(27:32):
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
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