From the Vault: How does travel engage the senses?

fully engaged. Well, now I don't know about fully. I hope because he's traveling with Pats, So I hope it's it's like a comfortable level of sense engagement. That's what I'm wishing for him. Pleasure and pain indivisible. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're

gonna be talking about travel. This is an interesting subject to think about right now because of the context of the ongoing pandemic. You know, at least here in the United States in early July. Of course, the risk from coronavirus is still clear, it's very profound, and so this has put some obvious limitations on people's designs for summer travel, like whether it's actually worth the risk at all to travel right now, and if you do travel, how to

mitigate those risks. Of course, if you are traveling this summer, you should consult your local health guidelines. It'll probably include advice like avoiding crowds, all the stuff you're familiar with by now, keeping your distance from people outside your household, wearing a mask. If you're in public, you might need to quarantine before or afterwards, depending on where you are, and so forth. But in addition to these practical considerations, it's the time of year that a lot of people

would traditionally be thinking about summer vacation season. You know, they'd be thinking about how this is when they would be trying to get out of the house and go somewhere and see something new, and that underlying urge might still be there even as we grapple with all the risks and important precautions that you would need to take if you were actually going to travel right now. And this has gotten me thinking about what travel means to us and why it is that our brains keep trying

to compel us to visit far off places known and unknown. Yeah, and to your point, though, it is a weird time to think about travel. I was in a like a zoom call with some friends last week, and one of one of them said, well, you know, I don't know if I can do next week because I need to travel. Actually, no, I'm not traveling. I'm just going. I'm getting in the car and going from one place to another. And we're

all a little that's travel. That sounds a lot like travel, but but we mean different things by travel and um, and we're gonna we're gonna get into that a bit here in this episode, because Yeah, human travel is really fascinating when you think about it. The act of simply traversing distances, or say, traversing vast distances, is far from

a distinctly human thing. Uh. Consider like some of the more outstanding cases like the Eastern gray whale, for example, which regularly journeys close to fourteen thousand miles from Russian waters to Mexico and then back again. Yeah, great white sharks or another example that swim just these unimaginable distances.

I was just reading some reports from fourteen about a great white shark named Lydia that was tagged with a tracking device off the coast of Florida in March, and then about a year later she had traveled something like twenty thousand miles across the Atlantic, you know, crossing over the Mid Atlantic Ridge and was heading towards basically around the UK. Yeah. Another example that frequently comes up monarch butterflies. They take a five thousand, five hundred mile journey from

central Mexico and California up into North America. It kind of goes in different phases, but eventually they're you know, they're getting up as far north as the Great Lakes. And then in the the avian world, we have a number of amazing examples, but the most extreme aim is that of the Arctic Turn, which flies a record forty four thousand miles. So these are just a few examples

of some amazing journeys undertaken by individuals or groups. But then there's also the steady tide of migration that enables organisms to spread out across the planet. In humans are of course a prime example of this, with our earliest waves of archaic human migration beginning what an estimated two million years ago, and in waves, we proceeded over the course of our history to spread across the planet, finding a foothold in all but the most inhospitable of environments. Yeah.

And there's something interesting to think about when comparing human travel to other long traveling organisms, which is that humans travel mostly on land. Like obviously we travel by air and c. Two. But when you think about most of human history, a lot of the traveling is on land. And if you look at just a list of like the farthest traveling organisms, you will see a lot of magnificent beasts that travel either by water or by air.

And these are very different methods of travel, right. These are both methods that allow you to do unique things like drift along in currents of the fluid, whether that's air or water, that move naturally through the larger media. You can't really do the same thing on land, right, unless you're like riding a mud slide down a mountain, which is not safe and not recommended. Uh. And and so that makes that makes land travel kind of different than the other ones. Uh. And of course there are

other animals that do this. There are there are some epic walkers on earth, like the blue willed to beast in Africa, or the caribou in North America, the ladder which sometimes migrates something like forty kilometers annually. Yeah, it's incredible. I guess you could say that that flying and uh and traveling by boat for the passenger. Anyway, it is kind of like you're taking walking and via the use

of vehicles, applying it to the air the sea. That's right. Yeah, but but yeah, for the most part, we are we are walkers. We have to have these these fabulous vehicles that allow us to do anything more. I do enjoy those thought experiments of like running, how fast are you going? If you're running forward in a plane cabin that's already flying too fast because you should sit down. Um. Now.

Of so, human societies, of course, they've spread out across the world, but of course they continue to move around for the same reasons did animal species do. For resources,

for mating, for shelter. Hunter gatherer societies especially had to follow the natural abb and flow of available resources where food could be found growing, where the prey animals traveled, and therefore, you know, you'd have to follow them and hunt them and there were also associated sites that offered shelter, water, or say in some cases something like hot spring, something that was you know, a desirable resource to have on hand.

And it wasn't until the agricultural revolution that humans really were able to put themselves more in a position to set down roots. But still many groups remain nomadic by necessity Shepherd's you know, for sure, but also you know, think of fisher people who still have to get in their fantastic vehicles of old and travel to where the fish can be found, and with surplus stocks of agriculture.

With the rise of cities, we also see the traveling conqueror, the the occupation of cities and advances in sailing technology that enabled people to expand even further. But what about traveling for reasons not directly associated with food, shelter and reproduction. This leads us to a particularly human aspect of travel. Uh that that ultimately brings us to our modern idea of travel and especially things like vacation travel. But it

has its roots in religious travel, sacred travel, and pilgrimage. Interesting. I was reading um paper by Lett's uh kilber Um and this was a titled Paradigms of travel from medieval pilgrimage to the postmodern virtual tour polished in two thousand six Tours and Religion and Spiritual Journeys UH, and the author points out that religiously motivated or sacred travel to sacred sites might well be the oldest and most prevalent type of travel and human history, and may have factored

into the beginnings of the world's oldest religions. Religious travel is the oldest form of what is sometimes referred to as non economic travel, and we see evidence of this

going back even to Neolithic times. I was reading about this in UH Intercultural Pilgrimage Identity and the Actual Age in the Ancient Near East by Joy mccorriston, published in Excavating Pilgrimage from seventeen and the author points out that we see examples of temporary gathering UH sacrifice and feast that are quote commemorated in a memorial or monument with

subsequent revisits, and these day back to Neolithic times. Likewise, in Africa we see evidence from eight thousand years ago of cattle sacrifice in quote mortuary linked feasting that they commemorated with stone monuments. Religious pilgrimage is an interesting thing to consider, and there are multiple models for thinking about the cultural role of pilgrimage and how it first emerges in history or I guess in prehistory, given the examples

you just cited. One interesting idea that I came across was in the works of the influential anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner in their nineteen seventy eight book Image and Pilgrimage and Christian Culture that was from Columbia University Press. And in this book they observe a lot of things about Christian pilgrimage site so they do like observation of the behaviors of pilgrims, uh it sites from Mexico to Ireland to France, and they end up characterizing these religious

pilgrimages as what they call a lemonoid phenomenon. Now, this was interesting to me, but it also gets kind of complex and took me a while to understand, and I think I've got it figured out. So here are the basics. Uh So, First of all, the idea of limonoid phenomenon plays on the original idea of a liminal experience, which is a term that was coined by a folklorist named Arnold van gennep Uh And the word liminal here comes

from the word for threshold. So a liminal experience is part of an initiation or a right of passage, in which a person temporarily steps outside of normal social structures to undergo or signal a change, and then rejoins the social structure on the other side of the experience having changed. So there's who you are before the change that's preliminal, and then there's who you are after the change that's postliminal, and then in between there's this suspended middle state, the

liminal stage. And this might be in a practical example, say the time that a person physically separates themselves from the rest of their tribe to do rituals for some part of a right of passage. And in the con text that they studied, the Turners argue that this middle liminal status is reinforced by the fact that people join

in what they call a community toss. It's this sense of community with other pilgrims that comes with a freeing sense of equality and a shedding of previously existing social structures and differences. Though I have noted that several critics disagree with the Turner's characterization here citing examples of well you know that there are times when regular power structures are still expressed among in between pilgrims to religious sites.

It may be that if this equalizing community power of community toss during pilgrimage really exists, it might be more common in some types of pilgrimage than others. And just one example, there is a paper I found by a scholar named Darlene Yushka, which does an amazing job of making this critical point just in its title, which is

whose turn is it to cook? But to bring it back to the idea of so so there are doing that pilgrimage might be one of these liminal experiences, this like in in the middle state of this change process, except they call it not quite liminal. They say it's lemonoid.

And so lemonoid applies to experiences that are somewhat like liminal experiences in structure, but they're more optional and they're less explicitly transformative of your station in society, so they might be seen as simply an internally transformative experience rather than as a marker of an external change in status. And in a lot of religious traditions, pilgrimage is honored but not required, you know, so that would make it

more limonoid than liminal. And I was reading a review of the Turner's work by the anthropologist Daniel are Gross,

and so he has kind of a mixed opinion. He thinks the book is valuable, but that he also has some criticisms of the idea of communitas being a universal But he pulls an interesting quote from the Turner's book describing the role of of the of the Christian pilgrimage, which says, quote, in the paradigmatic Christian pilgrimage, the initiatory quality of the process is given priority, though it is

initiation to and not through a threshold. So, if I understand correctly, in their view, based on all of the observations they've made of Christian pilgrimages, the symbolic message of a Christian pilgrimage most often might be not you are now changed, but welcome to the process of change. That's interesting, and I think that's something we can we can continue to take with us in this discussion and apply to

uh to to travel itself. The idea of travel as as a process of change, which we probably don't think about it as such, but I think whenever we engage in meaningful travel, uh, it is a process of change. We should arrive in a different place and end in at least a slightly transformed state of mind. Like even if it's as simple as well, I have to drive up to uh, you know, um to my parents house, but I'm gonna listen to this audio book on the way, or I'm gonna catch up on my podcast, Like I'm

somehow going to arrive there in an enhanced state. Yeah, I think you're exactly right, And I think it makes a lot of sense to think about that enhanced state that travel triggers as essentially an openness to change or a potential for change. So I think it's pretty safe to say that, as far as non economic travel goes,

sacred journeys are ultimately that the predecessor to modern vacation travel. Now, a particular line is often drawn to the link between medieval pilgrimage and also some of the economics of medieval pilgrimage with modern travel. You know, you see advances in

banking and so forth to take place during that time. Uh. And of course it's also important to note that the pilgrimage is still you know, very much a part of modern travel traditions, not only in the overt case of you know, people going on an actual pill grimmage to holy side, say, you know, to to Mecca on the hodge, that sort of thing, but also holy sites are often of significance to the modern traveler, even if they themselves are not uh, you know, believers of that particular faith

or practitioners of that particular faith. Like if you you know, if you go to a particular vacation destination and there is an ancient temple, there's a good chance you're gonna want to check it out into whatever degree is appropriate. This actually triggers something for me that I want to come back to when we talk about Roman tourism. Yes, Roman tourism, because because this is also key we again we can we can look to examples of sacred travel, uh,

you know, far back in history. But in terms of looking for examples of travel that more closely resemble modern vacation travel, there are some interesting examples from the Greek and Roman periods. Uh. For instance, in our episode uh that we have this is from what a couple of years ago, I think we did an episode on the singing Colossi of Memnon. We mentioned how the then fourteen hundred year old pair of Egyptian statues were visited by

Roman travelers in the first century. See they you know, they'd come to experience them, to to hear this unique singing that they that that they produced. Uh. And then they inscribed their names on the statue as well to show that they had been there. So rude. I mean, I guess they just must have had a different attitude towards the preservation of historical artifacts and monuments. But man, yeah, graffiti on this like hundreds of years old monument. Yeah.

And it's worth noting that they did seem to equate these statues with the Greek figure mem Non. Uh. But the colossi were not really of any religious value to the Roman travelers as far as we can tell. Uh. And of course they were of Egyptian origin anyway. On

one hand, I think that is true. But also that had me thinking about another tangent about the significance of sites that we visit and how our orientation toward culture and religion kind of uh mitigates whatever that that relationship is uh, something that I think is possibly interesting about understanding the pagan Roman mindset is that, well, at least compared to us, at least here in the United States.

For a lot of US, our idea of religious significance is primarily through either kind of a secular lens of just sort of disinterested observation, or perhaps through an exclusive monotheistic lens, so that when we visit sites or monuments that were of religious significance to other cultures in history. I think it's possible that we're more likely to just think what that was somebody else's belief I don't believe that, but this is interesting. But the pagan Romans were I

think somewhat more religiously omnivorous. Their world was full of God's and I think too many of them it would have been perfectly plausible to go somewhere and find out about yet another God that you weren't aware of before.

Uh So I think it might have been possible for a pagan Roman to wonder, you know, to to see a statue made by the ancient Egyptians that had some religious significance to them and wonder if something is going on here that's worth investigating or knowing more about, at least more than than many of us would would feel that way. And if there's any truth to this, it would make traveling to a foreign land with a great history a different kind of experience I think like it

would be. You know, you might also discover things that are actively relevant in the world. I know that the Romans generally had a respect for antiquity when it came to religious traditions. Uh, though, I'd be interested to hear from listeners with expertise and ancient Roman culture and religion to find out what they think about this. Now, this is a great point, Yeah, that perhaps the Romans traveled more, um, with kind of a spiritual mindset, you know, as opposed

to a religious one. Um. I you know, as as a traveler who who does like to go to to religious sides. I mean, I always think it is kind of an a rewarding exercise to sort of engage in that kind of spiritual mindset, you know, to try to at least to the degree that is culturally appropriate, you know, to to experience it. Uh, almost as if you were

a believer, you know what I'm saying. Um, Though, it's gonna you know, obviously it's gonna vary depending on what is what is culturally appropriate, what feels appropriate given given the space. But but yeah, you go to some of these these places and you're engaging with such such history and like the and the level of belief is is tangible because a lot of times you go to a

religious side and there are practitioners of the religion. They're maintaining the grounds or the facilities in addition to visiting it, and it it creates this this sacred air that you can't help the breathe in. Yeah, I totally agree. Now, another issue just whether or not it's appropriate and all that, it's also just a question of what to what extent it's possible for you to like get into that alternate mindset. I know it's easier for some people than others, but yeah,

I think that's a wonderful exercise. All right, On that note, we're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, we will discuss um the work of a Greek author that's that is sometimes pointed to as the world's first travel guide. Than all right, we're back, so yeah, particular note here is a Greek geographer Bassanius, who lived U one Tin through one a d c. And some indeed point to to him as being the world's first

travel writer. He wrote a book in the second century titled Hello dos Peregias, or The Description of Greece, and

it is essentially a travel guide. Um. I was reading about this in an Atlas Obscura article titled the World's first travel writer was a guy from Ancient Greece by Lauren Young, and she she chats with Maria Pretzler, professor of Ancient History at Swansea University in Wales and the author um of a book about Passonias Passonias travel writing in ancient Greece and uh, the author says that you know, there were smaller guides at the time, but Passonia's book

is the largest and the most comprehensive that survives to this day. And also it still works. It's still functions as a travel guide. You know, obviously the world has changed, but a lot of the places and even the landmarks are still there. Interesting now though. The full text can be found online and I invite everyone to go check it out because it's it's very recognizable and travel literature.

This is not an example where you're looking at ancient writings and you're having to really, you know, squint a bit and you know, take a few leaps of faith to identify it as as travel writing. No, you read it and it reads more or less like modern travel guides.

In fact, I highly recommend when you read it, uh, and make sure that the voice that you hear in your head is tuned to your favorite TV travel guide, maybe Rick Steves or someone, because it's exactly the sort of thing Rick Steves would say, you know, would be like like Passonius is saying, Oh, well, you're gonna you're gonna around this next corner and then you're gonna see the city of such and such, and out here you're gonna see the sea, and well there's a there's a

particular legend about this, uh, about a military engagement that happened here. You know, this sort of thing. He's just telling you how you travel from one place to the other. What you're gonna see there, What the historical significance or cultural significance of the place is. I want to know the ancient Greco Roman world's equivalent of the person who like gives the one star Google reviews to all inspiring monuments from the ancient world, you know, like two stars

for the Leshan Buddha. Well, I mean maybe I don't even think the Romans were doing that on the Colossi were the uh like one star coloss I did not sing while I was here. That's sort of thing that was too hot. Bathrooms hard to find. Yeah, as far as I can tell, Passonius wasn't engaging in in any of that. But he has indeed often pointed to is as this example of like early travel literature and this

idea of modern travel uh in the ancient world. But there are also some some other examples that pop up. There's a quote attributed to the semi legendary Chinese philosopher Laozu, the Old Master and the founder of Daoism, who's often depicted as traveling on a water buffalo um in in in art and sculpture, and the quote is a good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. So he's said to be a sixth century BC figure,

that he might have been a fourth century BC historical figure. Again, he he takes on this air of semi legendary status like you see with a lot of figures from that period in Chinese history. Um though, Uh, what's interesting about this is this this this mantra of of traveling with

no fixed plans and not being intent upon arriving. It does certainly get to sort of this this heart of travel as the the transformative journey um and and it gets into this you know, sort of unmoored sounding notion of travel further removed from the idea of destination travel and perhaps more in common with some of the ideas of hunter gathering. Uh, though even in those traditions a

certain amount of strategic thinking was involved. This uh, this, this does feel like a almost a I feel like a more modern sense of, you know, just go out and see the world, just be that noble drifter from from that film you saw in the fifties, that sort of thing. This allowed to quote makes me think of a poem by ed to St. Vincent Malay, the Unexplorer. Do you know this poem? I don't think I do. It's great as a short little poem, I can read

the whole thing. So this was published in ninety two, and she writes, there was a road ran past our house, too lovely to explore. I asked my mother once. She said that if you followed where it led, it brought you to the Milkman store. That's why I have not traveled more. I think it's a grade encapsulation of the sort of the let down feeling of when you have when you're a child in the world is full of unknown possibility. You have that exploration mindset, and then the

adult lays on you the instrumental nature of travel. Well, that road goes to the place I go to get this. And the interesting thing too, is that allows you quote I think is going to get to the heart of what we're going to spend the rest of the podcast talking about. And that's how our senses engage with travel.

Because ultimately, if your if your senses are fully engaged, if all this sense data is streaming, you know, into your nervous system and into your your your brain, this is how we often enter this state of of you know, being in the moment, of living in the now, of just observing and being a part of the stream of things. And I think that ultimately, like that's one of the really rewarding aspects of travel, and it's we might not

even focus on it that much. I mean, and to a certain extent, especially today, like it helps to have a destination in mind, it helps to have a plan and you sort of plan everything out and have a destination so that you can perhaps feel even accidentally that unmoored uh nowness of travel. Yeah. Absolutely, Well, then do you want to shift over now? Talked about talk about

travel in the census. Yeah, let's do it. So, so we've went through some examples of what human travel is and how long we've been carrying it out and uh and we should also stress that travel is maybe not for everyone. You certainly encounter people who don't care for it or have intense personal or sort of scholarly objections to engaging in travel. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for instance, wrote traveling as a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discovered to

us the indifference of places. Um and I guess you also say that reflected in such adages as you know, wherever you go there you are that sort of thing. Um and and I think sometimes that's that's more about tramping on unreasonable expectations of travel. But but you you also see this this notion elsewhere as well of of travel as being a way of of avoiding in our local and spiritual endeavors. Um Gandhi said something to this

effect as well. Oh yeah, well, I mean I can certainly see for some people how travel might just be a way too busy the mind, you know, just like anything, Just like the same way TV could be a way too busy the mind. Um. And in that sense that, I don't know that that might be a less rewarding way to think about it than as opening yourself to

experiences of novelty and readying yourself for change. Yeah. But but then again, even if you're intent is one thing, if you're gonna end up getting it's kind of like sneaking the you know, the medicine into the jam or something, or or you know, grinding up some pulverizing some vegetables and sneaking them in, um, you know, to the President's spaghetti, that sort of thing. Um, It's it's like you're if you're gonna end up engaging in novelty and engaging the

senses than than than Ultimately the goal was there. How I do want to point out there there are environmental and sometimes health objections to travel, and we touched on some of those at the beginning, and we we should

you know, certainly these are not things to dismiss. H. No, absolutely not I mean, you can simultaneously acknowledge that there might be a lot of great, uh, great reasons to appreciate the role of travel and human life, while also understanding, you know, uh, maybe maybe we're driving more than we should be, maybe we're flying in planes more than we should be, and certainly understanding during like a time of pandemic, that there are a lot of inherent risks to travel

and if you're going to do it, you need to get really serious about finding ways to make it safe. Yeah. And of course there's also the point that the travel can be um dis Travel itself as an industry can be an uh, you know, an economically transformative force, but it can also be uh, you can also pose certain dangers to uh, to historical sites, to to local culture, to the local environment if if it's not carried out

in just the right way. Yeah. That's another thing I'm sure most people listening have probably experienced at some point where you you go to a place wanting to experience what that place is actually like, and instead, when you get there, you find that it has been altered to make itself amenable to tourists and visitors like you you know, yeah, this this has sadly been the case with for instance, to some cave environments where a part of the cave ecology is how it is is closed off and then

if you open it up, UM, you often just I mean you you take part of it's it's life away from it. But if you want to come back to the tourism industry, because there there's actually a lot of informative material that comes out of that industry, out of papers and conferences related to just figuring out, like how

do people engage UM in a tourist experience? And this is where I came across a really what I thought to be just a wonderful visual breakdown of how we engage with UH environmental stimuli during well, certainly in this case during travel, but perhaps to a certain degree just you know, in life itself. And this was from Designing Tourism Places Understanding the Tourism Experience through Our Senses by Kim at All, presented at the two thousand fifteen t

t r A International Conference. And apparently this particular graphic framework of tourism experience creation was adapted from some earlier work by by Krishna from and I'm gonna describe it here but basically the ideas you start with a very environmental stimuli and then that feeds into sensation, vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch,

appropriate reception, temperature, sense, and pain. And then that's gonna all those sensations and hopefully you're not feeling too much pain on your your vacation or on your travel, but all part of it. Pain makes an experience real, It's true. Yeah, I mean generally my in my experience, the first day of travel is going to have its share of pains,

and you just got to be prepared for it. But anyway, all those sensations then are going to go through your individual filter and then from there they're gonna go to perception. And then the perception of those senses is going to go through the individual filter again, and it's gonna go in a few couple of different directions. It's going to go to emotional response, your emotional response to your perception

of those different senses. It's also going to go to a cognitive response to those perceptions of those different senses. And then likewise you're going to have an emotional reaction to your cognitive responses, and you're also going to have a cognitive response to your emotional responses. Um, so you know, kind of going in a circle there, and then all of that is going to go through the individual filter

again and feed into attitude, memory, and behavior. Yeah. And I think one of the elements that's most relevant to us is how travel affects memory. I want to come back to that in a moment after we discuss novelty a bit. Yeah, novelty, I think is gonna be gonna be key year. So, as we've discussed in the show before, human didn't evolve for to live in like a solitary confinement situation. We evolved to thrive in an environment of change,

seeking resources, calculating risk, etcetera. And some of these qualities have led to our i think our species spirit of exploration. But one of the more studied aspects of all of this is certainly novelty, because travel, to a very large degree comes down to novel that you put yourself in a place, an environment, perhaps a culture, that differs from what you deal with every day. Uh And and this is where you can feel, you know, this enthralling, exhilarating, overpowering,

and at times even frightening sensation of novelty. It is it is. I don't think it's a stretch at all to say this is an altered mental state. Sure, and one doesn't achieve this, this particular altered state through the consumption of a potion or a mushroom or or the via the physical alteration of brain tissue. No, you achieve it by traveling from one environment to another, uh, and then continuing to be human along the way, and upon

arrival endearing this altered state. You might often find yourself functioning as a sponge, right, soaking up information about your travel destination or things along the way, perhaps pouring yourself into the local museum or historical site. And if this is is this is you? It might be due to

the role that novelty plays in associative learning. I imagine a lot of us have experienced or have been the this or in other people, or have been the person who comes back from a unique trip and it's just rattling off, you know, endless facts about the experience for everyone, about this site, they saw this museum, they they they

visited that sort of thing. Yeah, it becomes there's a risk when you travel somewhere that the place you most recently traveled becomes your point of comparison for everything, every every topic of conversation relates back to the most recent vacation you took. Uh, And I, I shamefully will admit I've been of that frame of mind before. And I think that happens because of because essentially the prominence of a travel experience in the memory enables the availability heuristic.

You know, the the availability heuristic is, uh, the the idea where um concepts and memories and ideas that are more accessible in memory are overrepresented in our view of the world. So if we're looking for comparisons to whatever we're talking about, whatever is just most prominent in your memory is going to be the thing that's most likely

to facilitate those comparisons. Now, speaking on memory here that there, of course are multiple different forms of memory at work in the brain, and different brain states can enhance certain forms of memory. Associated learning, which we're gonna be talking about here is the ability to learn and remember the relationship between unrelated items. And we've we've known about this is this particular relationship between novelty and associated learning since

the nineteen sixties. UH, the idea that novelty can enhance associated learning. One key finding it seems stems from from twelve though. The University of Toronto's Dr Katherine Duncan used f m RI I to identify how the brain triggers memory states, and she identified a brain ridge and region the detects novelty and demonstrated that novelty detection acts like a switch, impacting how the brain learns and remembers. Now, she's quick to remind everyone, this is not the only switch.

Memory is complex and there's a lot we still need to study and understand, but this is one example where it seems like we can we can draw a line between one type of of brain state and UH and a change in the way we we learn and with the way we form new memories. The process here involves

the dopamine system, which is involved in associative learning. While this has been previously suspected, it looks like there was some some additional evidence for this that came out in February of this year from the Flanders Institute of Biotechnology post in the journal Neuron that took a lot closer to look at how this work. So working with mice, they found that dopamine neurons were activated by new smells,

but not by familiar ones. So this enhanced learning, and they were able to stimulate or block dopamine activation in familiar settings, then to alter learning in the mice, slowing learning down or speeding it up. Now, part of the take home here is that we might be able to learn better by shaking up our routine. Um, I feel like I engage in this, or at least I would engage in this in a pretty pandemic world where if I, you know, I'd be working on something, and then I

would I need to change locations. I'd go to a different coffee shop or something, you know, somewhere else, some new environment where I could work while you know, sort of casually observing foot traffic or or actually I also really enjoy working on my front porch watching people and trains go by, that sort of thing. Uh, there's something about putting yourself in a novel environment that seems to

help with with forming these associations. But this particular study also sheds on some of what's happening when we engage in travel, how and why we record strong new memories, and why a vacation may seem in retrospect a fuller example of life than our day to day yeah, I mean,

so there are multiple things here. I think we've touched on the podcast before, at least the anecdotal evidence that people seem to find that on a vacation or during some kind of travel or major change to their day to day routine, it's easier to establish new habits or to change existing habits. It's kind of an interesting thing like people don't usually think of, like the vacation is a good time to start a diet, but it might

actually work. Oh yeah, yeah, if I've seen this pointed out before, like if you if you want to change up your your schedule, start doing it on vacation and in a new location. Yeah. And I think that so this relates to memory obviously, and and the idea of

associate of learning is very much based in memory. But another thing about memory that this makes me think of is we've talked previously on the show about I believe it was the neuroscientist David Eagleman who had pointed out this research about the different perception of time in the moment versus in retrospect and how that relates to novelty. And the idea was that in the moment experiences that our novel tend to go by really fast. They feel

like they're happening really fast, and then they're over. And you probably know this from experience. It seems like, you know, your your regular routine day might kind of drag on, especially if you're doing something kind of repetitive and boring, but your vacation where you're doing a lot of novel different stuff just kind of flies by. It feels like

it's over in an instant. But then once you get into the retrospective mindset and you're representing those time periods in your memory, suddenly the reverse is true, where the experience that's full of novelty feels like it lasted a long time and a lot of stuff happened in it. It's like it spreads out and expands in your memory, while the while the period of sameness where you didn't experience a lot of novelty contracts down to a point

and there's almost nothing to remember about it. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, there's nothing like going on vacation to fully engage in the weirdness of time. Um in terms of novelty. Uh. I think Eagleman might have been the one to refer to us as as novelty junkies. Uh. It could be misquoting him on that, but I have that that association

is in my head for some reason. Um. I also ran across a book titled Satisfaction, in which the author Gregory Burns uh points out that even if you don't personally like a novelty, if you're the type of person who you know, you feel very strongly that you like a strict routine, you don't want any novelty thrown in. You may not personally like it, but your brain does because when we engage in novelty, we kind of go

into probe mode and to explore mode. Our brains tune up to absorb and process the information we're hit with. And so I think that's really interesting. It's like, take that and think back to this, uh sort of flow chart of how we engage with environmental stimuli, you know, um, how you know it's going to be that that novel stimuli, those novel sensations that are gonna end up sort of supercharging this loop of emotional response and cognitive response and

then feeding into the formation of these associated memories. And I think that also helps us better understand two of the the the off sided benefits of travel, broadened horizons, and self exploration. Well, yeah, this brings us back to the anthropological framework that we're talking about earlier. Now that was specifically in the context of Christian pilgrimage and not travel more broadly, but I think it probably relates to things that are going on often, if not always, in

travel more broadly, which is the the idea that it is. Uh, it places you at the threshold. It doesn't necessarily put you through it, but it places you at the threshold of personal change and transformation. And I think that there's some relationship here between that cultural observation and the idea of what's going on in the brain when we experience a lot of novelty that we're sort of primed for associated learning that we can form new habits, and the

formation of new habits. While it doesn't sound all that sexy when phrase that way, is the basis of the change of the self. All right, Well, on that note, we're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to talk a little bit about the idea of travel overload. Than alright, we're back, So, Joe, I know you like um Italian horror films. Oh yeah, have you have you ever seen a little film titled

Stindall Syndrome. No, I have not seen the whole thing, but I have watched the scene that you linked me to in it, which involves which involves the character kissing a fish on the mouth. And while I've heard that the movie is not that great overall, even though I do love some Italian horror, uh, this fish kissing scene is extraordinary. Yeah. This was the film The Stendahl Syndrome by Dario Argento of Suspiria of Fame and countless other

films in which weird stuff stuff happens and people are stabbed. Uh. This is very much in the genre of of weird stuff happens and people were stabbed, excepted has this this weird hook with Stendahl syndrome and which in this In the film, you have this character played by Asia Argento who experiences this overwhelming sensory experience when she engages with fabulous works of art. Um. I believe that she's in

the movie. She's looking at landscape with the Fall of Icarus, and so has this There's this dream like sequence in which she falls into the painting and falls into the ocean, you know that that Icarus would have plunged into. And then yeah, I think it's brogo the elder and uh. And so she falls into the water and then inexplicitly,

she kisses a fish. So it's it's it's a it's a It's a noteworthy scene in uh in in in the film, for sure, but it also does a link into this idea of Stendahl syndrome, that is in an actual, at least alleged um uh phenomenon that occurs. It's named for the French author Stendahl, who wrote such works as The Scarlet and Black, and he he originally wrote about

a case of what we might call extreme travel overload. Uh. This was from his book Naples and Florence, a journey from Milan to Reggio, and he talks about emerging on a on a porch uh and and being seized with his fierce palpitation of his heart, feeling like his life had just dried up, and then and feeling like it was just gonna collapse, like it was just physically overcome

from having visited a particular site. And this kind of this idea that was really sort of drawn out and and certainly was given the name Standahl syndrome by an Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magarini, who who wrote about this in her nine book UH The Stendal Syndrome, which defined it is a complex process quote not intellectual, but sensitive and easily susceptible to emotions, so essentially a kind of sensory overload um and and it can apparently result in a

number of different symptoms breathlessness, panic attacks, faintness, temporary psychosis, even all of this brought on via exposure to great works of art, generally the sort of great works of art you would find in a museum in a destination UH city. Now, I would be shocked if um just because of the interesting and sort of romantic nature of this syndrome. If it's I don't know, legitimacy or or clinical characterization has not been somewhat controversial or questioned at

some point. Yeah, that that is my understanding of it. I think it's it's one of these ideas that's certainly Nazi and um and and appeals to sort of the storytelling sensibilities, uh that we have, though at the same time, I don't know, there seemed to be enough stories of it. I feel like there is a there, there is something going on here um which will perhaps unravel here. Now, there are other related, uh alleged syndromes as well. One

for instances Ruben syndrome. UM. This is the name given for an erotically charged activity that breaks out after or even daring viewings of works by old masters, such as Peter Paul Reuben's. So I don't know about that. I've never I don't think I've experienced or or witnessed that going on anytime I've seen people looking at art in

an art museum. But who knows, Maybe they're going around the corner is Rubens the painter where like just everybody is just majorly thick, just like awesome that like everybody's got huge butts and they look amazing. Uh. Yeah, I think that would be a fair description of of of Reuben's work. Um. Yeah, certainly there is a kind of

an erotic charge to it. Uh. Now, where I think we really get here into the travel aspects of this whole scenario is that there's a version of this and more travel centric version uh that is summed up in the idea of Jerusalem Centrome, in which tourists have been said to experience psychosis while visiting holy sites in the city of Jerusalem, and there have been similar accounts related

to travel to Mecca, holy sites in Spain, etcetera. So it's not I don't want to make it sound like it's just Jerusalem specific, but the people who came up with that term, we're largely looking at data regarding visitors to Jerusalem who were there for, you know, essentially out of a sense of religious pilgrimage. Again, I think one of the big we kind of have to come back to that chart and think again about travel and senses, you know, like imagine we can you don't even have

to imagine. A lot of us can think back on examples where we ourselves travel old somewhere and got to see a work of art or particular site something that that was indeed the destination, and and you you build it up in your mind, right, you have a lot of reasons to to want to experience it, cultural or maybe perhaps it has to do with with your political sensibilities or your overall worldview, like you really need to see this thing and connect with it and witness it.

On top of that, sometimes you encounter a work of art and you realize, oh, I had no idea it was that small or um or or perhaps the lighting is weird and it doesn't actually come off as well in person. I feel like I had that situation with Buckland's UM The Island of of of Death um, the you know where you have the weird trees and it's this uh, this very eihlivedad. I'm sorry, that's the name of the painting UM And I think there are a

few different versions of it as very evocative painting. But when I saw it, I think at the matter, I saw a version of it, and that there was something about the way it was lid and the way that the dark aspects of the painting came off like. I didn't find it displeasurable and an experience. On the other hand, there are plenty of other works that you just don't get the scale unless you were there in front. I've

had both of those experiences looking at art. I've I've seen things that I've seen before and like digitally represented. When I saw them in person, I found them disappointing, and I've and I've had it on the other end.

On the other end, one that really stuck with me where was in the louver The paintings of Eugene Delacroix, the French painter, who I had seen some of his works before, just like you know, images on the Internet, and they never really stood out to me, but for some reason when I saw them in person and I was like, wow, I couldn't stop looking at him. Oh yeah. I feel this way about the works of Dolly, for example.

I feel like his his work is his is oftentimes best experienced large scale, though he has of course some works that are actually smaller than you expect. Um. Likewise, one of my favorite painters is Irving Norman, and he often painted these very large pieces, and it's just something

about being there with it. And likewise, when we're dealing with with other aspects of travel, like you think of things like the Grand Canyon, like I've talked on the show before about like seeing the being there at the Grand Canyon is just uh, it's it's an experience that that cannot be um, you know, properly housed and just you know, looking at a picture of reading about it, Like there's the experience of being in a place of of of of taking it in and and just being

a part of that environment or in the case of historically significant locations temple cities, etcetera, like to actually be there for this place to suddenly be physically real. You know, I can I can see how that could be overpowering to the senses because it is engaging the senses and your UH in your your, your your, your cognitive and your emotional processes UH to such a high level you.

For me, that connects to a feeling that I've often had throughout my life, and I've tried to explain to other people, and I think I have just failed to adequately communicated. Maybe I'm about to fail again. But it's this peculiar emotion that I associate primarily with two different activities.

One of them is successfully following instructions to UH to accomplish a mechanical task such as like repairing an object that I have no previous knowledge about how to fix, and the other is arriving successfully at a location that I've read about before. Both times, I have this experience of of sudden, overwhelming kind of rectitude with the universe, Like I feel like, ah, the external world is real, if that makes any sense at all. It's it's a

powerful emotion in the moment. Uh. And I don't know if this is something that other people really experience, but it's something that's hugely operative in my end and in my life. No, I think I've I've I've experienced something like this as well. I mean, it's it's kind of like the on one level of the manifestation of the inner world, you know, research becomes real, and on the other hand, like this is what this is one of

the things that we have evolved to do. You know, it's like the finding of things the uh, you know, it's like we we you know, we can read about these all day and it's satisfying and it's fulfilling. But to actually you know, hit the ground and and actually you know, find a particular location or thing like that that engages us on another level and engages the full capabilities of our senses. Now, if you're if you're wondering, Okay Stindall syndrome, Jerusalem syndrome, should I be worried about

my senses being overloaded? Uh? The next time I'm I'm able to travel, I would say, based on the information we're looking at here. Uh, you know, I would not freak out about this basically, pre existing psychological conditions seem to be a major factor in most of these cases

of people being overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of travel. Again, if we think of travel as an altered mental state, and if we factor in potential travel stresses and travel anxiety, we can easily see how travel to a given location could trigger a slip into an overwhelming mental state. And the stress, you know, of course, would would certainly be capable of triggering a pre existing condition and causing it

to flare up. Yeah, I mean, going back to something we mentioned earlier, I mean, like stress is a big part of travel. It's not the part that we tend to focus on in our memories because we think about all the good things about it, but like, yeah, stress is almost always going to be there, and that's going to be a key factor for exacerbating underlying psychological issues. Yeah.

And I was looking at a two thou eighteen Columbia Universities Mailman School of Public Health study that showed that traveling a great deal for work, so like two weeks or more per month was capable of inducing enhanced depression and anxiety. Now, certainly that's business travel, that's not non economic travel like we're talking about here. But I think it's still underlines like you know, when we when we're traveling, uh, you know, we are uh, you know, we are engaging

in stress. It is a it is ultimately a stressful um endeavor, even if you feel like you really have a handle on it. There's also you know, interesting research along the lines of sleep, and of course sleep has an impact on our overall mental stability. I think we've talked about the first night effect on the show before and which one tends to experience worst sleep on a first night in a new location, and studies have shown that this seems to be related to enhanced activity in

the default mode network during these nights. So travel for those seeking the limits of human experience, pain and pleasure indivisible. Yeah, I mean, it's something to keep in mind. Um, I

think it ultimately like it just it. I know in the past when I've when I've traveled, you know, with with my family, I was trying to remind myself that that first day of travel is going to it's gonna be stressful, it's gonna have they're gonna be some flare ups, and you just gotta try and you know, maintain some

relative level of cool and uh and flow with it. Well, maybe it's the time that you're directly on route to your destination where it's most important to keep the spirit of Lautsu or of the child and the Saint Vincent Malay before having her her mother dash her dreams of exploration has have that mindset. Yeah, yeah, indeed, you know, to to sort of remind yourself that it is about the journey, not the arrival. I guess the thing is, it's hard to remind yourself of that when you say

stuck in airports somewhere, like, it's about the journey. Oh, I guess I'll have a cent a bun. It's it's not quite as rewarding. I guess that's about the journey of standing in line for coffee. Yeah, so travel again.

I think it's important to to remind ourselves that it is it is an altered state, and it is u and and our senses play so heavily into the journey and into our experience of the arrival, along with our various emotional expectations, you know, bringing it back to the present circumstances of the world and and all of the

stuff going on right now. One thing I think I would remind people of is that I think you can get, you know, if you if you're feeling this overwhelming desire to travel right now, but you're also trying to be realistic about all the risks and stuff. I think you can get a lot of the benefits of travel just with activities that actually do remain relatively close to home.

You know, even near your house. There were probably places you can figure out to go where you can experience something novel, but you don't have to travel long distances or be amongst crowds. You can stay with you know, your household and family members and that kind of thing. Oh yeah, absolutely, and and some households. And of course I'm speaking to uh, you know, sort of a neighborhood

environment here, not like a really dense urban environment. But uh, you know, there are cases where people have are doing what they can to sort of enhance uh, the you know, the travel sensations of just walking around the neighborhood, be it decorating for Halloween or Christmas several months early, um, doing of unique things with your yard or with signage.

You know. Uh so I do I do feel like the that that spirit you know, can be found even daring a what is ultimately a challenging time for those who seek novelty. Obviously, we'd love to hear from everyone out there, because we know we have some extensive travelers that listen to our show. We'd love to hear your take on all of this, how your senses are engaged during your travels, has it ever become overwhelming? Uh? That sort of thing, and how you're you're you're coping today.

In the meantime, if you would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you even find us wherever you get your podcasts, wherever that happens to be. We just asked that you help us out. Leave us a nice review, leave us some stars, um, subscribe to the show if you haven't already, and of course share the show with friends. Just tell people about the show. That helps us as well. Huge thanks as

always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest a topic for the future, we're just to say hi. You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, this is the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.