Naked Terror

that will will change the haunted attraction offering? And U a Pennsylvania haunted house has discovered just the means of doing this. That's right. It's called sh october Fest Screen Park. And I like to think of it as splicing my nightmare about public nudity with a haunted house, because this is what they initially offered. The park owner, Patrick kind of Polski. He created this naked and scared challenge to give his guests just another level of heightened fear. It's

an add on, it's an add on. In fact, they had I believe the options were nude or prude, and prude is like underwear prude is underwear? Do you get through your underwear? You can go through completely nude. And of course this caught many people's eyes. The story went national,

and city officials really frowned upon it. You know, presumably there'd be a lot of liability here with your with your junk hanging out, don't you think, Well, potential, I mean, that's kind of what we're gonna talk about here, is like to what extent? I mean, are you actually more vulnerable, more prone to injury if you're running through hund a

house naked? Maybe? But but is it really that different, say from like a summer aware that somebody's wearing, Like, are you really if you're just wearing like swim trunks and a tube top or something, then are you really that that that much more protected? Well, I don't know, when you are wearing a tubetop, how do you feel? Well, not not a tube I guess something of like a what do you call it, like a sleeveless kind of shirt. Yeah, well,

you know that is the question. So unfortunately, the owners of the screen park, we're not able to actually pull this off because again city officials were not liking this. So they do have the prude option. So so the prude option is still around. You can run through your underwear, yeah, which I do think there's still a nice level of

venerability there and we'll definitely talk more about this. Yeah, it depends on the underwear though, because like boxers, I feel like boxers that's more protection, you know, because they boxers look a little more like shorts. And then if you throw in like an underwear shirt as well, I mean you're basically clothed at that point. If you count

socks is underwear even more so. Yeah, but tidy Whitey's are keeping it closer to the boxy t whities I think would would need to be the rule, because tidy whities are both a little more skimpy and also ridiculous looking, so there would be no It's not like you're wearing like wrestling tights in there and you're ready to go. If you're wearing tidy Whitey's, you're wearing this ridiculous dingy white underwear with a penis flap in the front, which

I've never understood that I think is for another episode. Yeah, m but we should probably also discuss the television show which is called Naked and Afraid yes, and you were telling me about this and I thought you were making this up. I thought this was a Julie pitch for a for a reality show. But as it turns out, someone beat you to it on this one. Yes, someone did, and actually our our mother company, Discovery Really Communications, actually

produces this show. But it does seem like something that would be on thirty Rock. That's like, you know, Milk Island, but no naked and Fred takes to survivalists a man and a woman and they dropped them in the middle of an isolated area naked for twenty one days with no food or water, like rural Georgia or uh no, I think Costa Rica, Panama. Some were fabulous, some were

fabulous and isolated and um. But you know, again, here's this fascination with this idea that we strip ourselves down to the essence, you know, bear as babies, and we go out into the world and try to fend off all the actual real threats as well as the imagined threats. Yeah. I mean it's the thing itself, right, I mean, it's the the the the bare human without any of the

clothing and armor that we've built up over the ages. Well, and that kind of takes us to this this other place where we have to say, as organisms, why in the world are we naked anyway? I mean, we are obviously doing pretty well as a species. Homo sapiens are killing it out there literally. Um, but you know, we don't have hard shells, we don't have claws to attack people with, because we do have these big, beautiful brains.

That's right. We've you know, we we talked about beards, and we talked about to some degree, there are arguments that the beard gives a certain amount of protection against bites or scratches or strangulation or what have you. But yeah, for the most part, like the naked human is a pretty unremarkable creature. It doesn't have horns, it doesn't have any of these crazy additions except those that we've invented

over the years with that tremendous brain. And I want to point out I think the beard, although it could blunt a blow to the jaw, I would think that

someone can actually like drag you around with it be hindrance. Yeah, yeah, I think we got into that a little bit too, Like the the subject of beards in fighting sports, to what degree, you know, you can grab onto a beard, and that was one of the reasons that Alexander the Great supposedly told all of the soldiers they had to shave the beard because someone could grab it and then

stab you in the eye a few times. Whereas they're also those in the M M A world who say, well, if you grew out just enough stubble, then you can rub that into people's face and you have an offensive weapon. Uh, just as a female. And the beards that are in that stage, yes, are quite awful, sort of like to archer devices. I can't help but that one. Um. All right, So we're gonna look at a creature here, the octopus, and we're going to try to get down to this

idea of a nudity and brain power. Yes, the octopus, of course is an amazing creature. Recently, we were talking about the way that the podcast has changed the way that we approach our lives, and I mentioned that I don't eat octopy anymore because I in our research, I've discovered how brilliant they are in their own way. And I say in their own way, because take, for instance, the mirror test for self awareness, one of the hallmarks of of of of of intelligence and uh, you can.

There are a number of organisms that can pass this test, including including humans, including uh, some some primates, etcetera. Uh. An octopus will fail the test because the octopus does not have this mammalion brain. It has a very advanced brain, but it is it is evolved in the state from from a far distant starting point than any of these other examples that we have, these vertebrate examples. So they incredibly brilliant creatures, but in a very different sense, in

a very alien sense. Yeah. And for for a long time, scientists have been saying, we don't understand how it could have such extreme intelligence and be so very different from our own nervous systems. And here's why. Octopuses have five hundred million neurons to our one hundred billion. So you'd

think that they would come up short in the smarts department. Um, but about two thirds of its brains are distributed in its arms, and it's dedicated to the fine operation of these limbs and and doing really nuanced and complex things camouflage, changing its shape, changing its color, um and all of these problems solving powers that they notoriously have that anytime you read about them, you'll be hear aquarium owners or

researchers talk about what great escape artists they are. Yeah, it's because they've got hundreds of suckers, you know, lining these limbs, and all the neurons to go with it. Now, the rest of the neurons are split between a central brain that is surrounding the esophagus and large optic lobes behind the eyes. So you think about this, and then you think about different accounts of things that octopuses have done.

I'm thinking about the researcher who had something like five different octopuses and separate tanks, and she had some old food and she knew that they wouldn't be crazy about it, like like rancid and not rancid, but like old frozen squid, yeah yeah, not nothing fresh um. And she she fed

all of them. And then as she was walking back up, she came up to the first tank and she saw the octopus was staring at her, and it seemed to her that the octopus actually waited until they made eye contact, and the octopus stuffed the food down the drain, as if to say, not only do I reject this, but I'm going to show you to what degree I rejected, and I want to make sure that you're paying attention here, not mere rejection, that rejection with spite. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

So there are so many different accounts of these sorts of great things, you know, stuffing themselves into empty coconut shells that have fallen on the ocean for in order to escape predators. Hot wiring cars, yeah, hot credit cards yeah. Um. So from the article how the freaky octopus help us to helps us to understand the human brain and wired, I just wanted to read this quote says the octopus got smart because the octopus got soft, or vice versa.

It has no bones, no shell, no scary spikes. So if the octopus wanted to go hunting in an ocean full of fish, they're also hunting. Sometimes for octopus, it had to become fiendishly clever, not unlike a certain shell less, clawless, fur less primate. We could mention. Yeah, because when we've discussed before, when it comes to evolution, like the ocean is an incredibly dangerous place, like far more so than

than the surface world, just teeming with dangers. And so there's just the the the arms race there is just elevated to a degree you don't. You tend not to see on the surface world, you know, I guess in the jungle can say it's it's close. But but for the most part the ocean is just this deadly race. And so you look at the octopus and when it's when it's alive and moving, you you are seeing all the shifting of shapes and colors. It can make its

texture look hard and rough and rugged. But if you have a dead octopus and it just you know, washes up on the beach, it just looks like a sack of flesh. There's nothing there's nothing hard, there's nothing rugged about it. In a sense, it's all bluff, it's all it's it's a it's it's neurons powering up and creating this display. And you can maybe easily make the argument that humans have done the same thing, though, instead of making our skin crawl with crazy textures and change colors

and all, we have invested in clothing. We've invested in in garments and and in some cases actual armor that makes us physically tougher, but in other cases stuff that changes the the the the visual proposition of what we are as an individual in the species, well as landlovers to um. You know, we we got our neo cortex as mammalian have, and that really up the game too, because now we have theory of mind. I can try to figure out what you're thinking and trying to strategize

around that. UM. So you're normally just taking in all that data, but you are analyzing it to such a degree. So it is interesting how you put it that way. You've got the ocean, which is an entirely different game, and so you would have organisms developing different intelligence systems as opposed to you know, what we're doing here on the land. But of course the one thread that runs

through all of this is this vulnerability, this nakedness. Now, one area where this this idea of heightened vulnerability want while nude, really comes into play, uh is in our promotion pictures because for the most part, most of us have not had the experience of running through a hounted house naked or fighting for our lives naked, but are

our heroes and heroin's sometimes do encounter the situation. A few examples that instantly come to mind, of course, Eastern promises yes with Viga Morton sence that scene of him in the shower digging it out with a Russian mafia members, like a pack of clothed Russian mafia members with knives. That he's just naked and like like just very you know, covered in tattoos, very loupine looking, you know, I'm gonna say, very animal like looking, and he's just fighting for his

life and he's being stabbed and beaten. I can't think of a scene that made me WinCE more honestly than that scene. When I saw it, I was covering it like it was just a horror, you know, film, and that there was like blood. Of course there was no blood, but yes, very effective use of nakedness. So that's that's easily the one that came to mind mind the most. Some other films that have included some some similar scenes.

I've forgotten about this, but Memento has a scene where Guy Pierce is assaulted one naked and he's like fighting him off, but it's nowhere near as as as intense as Eastern promises. There's a scene in American Psycho where Christian Bale's running around naked with a chainsaw, but that's different because he's the one with the chainsaw. You know, if you're carring a chainsaw. Then you're kind of not really naked. Uh. There's a scene in The Hangover where

an individual is naked and attack somebody. There's a scene in Beowulf School Ties there's like a shower fight. Um Fargo, I've forgotten about this with the scene where is um is making love to a prostitute and uh and an individual comes in and starts roughing them up and just throwing them all over the place. There's of course a scene in Borat where uh where bora At wrestles an individual and they're both naked and uh and it's it's awful, it's awful. Um. There's a there's of course, the the

old Kin Russell film Women in Love. It is kind of famous for a nude wrestling scene with Oliver read uh, you know, very you know, in a very manly sense. Uh and uh and then uh. When it comes to uh to literature, I'm instantly reminded of C. S. Lewis's Perlandra, which which has a lot of new like the they could probably never film it because there's a lot of nudity in it. The character Ransom lands on this uh, this fictional version of Planet Venus it's also kind of

like Eten a biblical Eden. So he lands there and he's walking around naked. And then a scientist by the name of Professor Western lands as well in a little spaceship,

Western is clothed. That Western is also possessed by uh, the devil, And it eventually gets to a situation where they have this this fight and it's like the devil is biting at him and all, and he's fighting him naked, and it's and I remember it as being very very nail biding ye yeah, um, which I think is interesting because it brings in that element when you talk about eating and talk about devil, uh, this element of shame.

And because what happened to Adam and e if they they screwed up and so suddenly they can't walk around naked anymore. They have to wear those leaves, and that wrought all sorts of psychoanalysis for them. Yeah, especially when fall fashions hit, because they just crumble at the slightest movement and then they have to grab more leaves. It's a problem. Let's take a break and when we get back we will talk about this shame associated with nudgedness. All right, We're back and we are going to dive

into nudity and shame. Yeah, And you know, it's it's interesting to to think about nudity and shame because I often feel like in Eastern promises, it never crossed my mind. Oh, poor Vigo, it's so shameful that he's having to fight naked, you know, like I don't like chain doesn't really factor into my fear for him. But obviously shame is a huge part of nudity in our version of nudity, particularly

in UH in Western culture. Well, what's interesting to you about a lot of the clips that we saw that we're sort of the top ten list of naked vibes is that not one woman showed up in those Oh excuse me, one did she was having with the nude guy who was shooting Oh yeah, Clive Owen and Monica well belus the one who is uh in the matrix, Okay, yes her. So what's interesting about that is that those nude scenes with women that you know, that's the violence.

Normally in a nude scene with a woman is voisted upon them. It's not usually a fight scene in which you know, they're toting guns around our knives. Um, so it's kind of interesting to see shame and nudity rendered in that way. But we have to we have to think about what is shame and also we have to differentiate shame from guilt. So how would you how would you describe guilt? Like, if you're guilty about something, it's

a it's a rather different animal than shame. Okay, Well, according to a collaboration between scientists at the University of Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions and George Mason University in Fairfax, shame is definitely not the same as guilt, and shame actually has implications regarding misuse of alcohol and drugs. So all that shame that we think about in terms of our body, it's more of a thought construct, right, It's

not associated with an act. Usually, So if I have a dream about being naked in public, and this is more of a nightmare, it's more of an impending feeling that I have, um, you know, I have done something. It's little dread anxiety associated with a shame as opposed to like, you know, I did something sexual or bad.

You know this one act. Yeah, guilt tends to imply to that you you really did something wrong, that you're responsible for you know that you're culpable in whereas shame not necessarily like, if you're ashamed of your body, you're not gonna be persecuted because your body doesn't match your own personal expectations of it and uh and and likewise, it's this study looked into uh when when they were dealing with shame, like individuals who had like the bodily

uh signs of shame, like the sunken shoulders, and those were the ones that were more likely to relapse into their addictive behaviors. Yeah, we should mention that these studies were all surrounding addictions and behavior. And the first study that they had, it was three groups of participants with different levels of alcohol or drug problems. There were two groups that were primarily female college students about twenty years old.

The third group was comprised of predominantly male inmates from a jail who were on average about thirty one years old. And what they found is that shame is the tendency to feel really bad about yourself following a specific event, and people who are prone to shame when dealing with a variety of life problems may also have a tendency to turn towards alcohol and other drugs to cope with this feeling. So that's what the deal is with guilt

and shame. It turns out that guilt um which is again something that you're feeling bad about, which is a specific behavior action that is unrelated to substance use problems. And as you had mentioned, there was a follow up study that looked at the body language of people who felt shame about their addiction and could accurately predict whether

or not that person would have a relapse. Yeah, and you know, the more I think about, shame seems to really make more sense in terms of something that is an ongoing issue, you know, something that could be seen as a if not a character flaw, then a then a deep flaw in that person, either physically or spiritually mentally, what have you. Yeah, and I think that's with the interesting part of the body language what it's telling the observers here in this study. I said that was a

follow up and it's actually not. It's University of British Columbia study. So there's forty six participants who were videotaped several sessions throughout the year that they found those greater levels of shame behaviors, and that first session showed that they were more likely to relapse by the second session. And by the way, any sort of written or verbal expressions of shame did not predict the likelihood of relapse.

It was that again, the physical manifestation of what shame looks like, which leads into the research conducted by Burnet Brown, who's a professor of University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, and she studies shame for six years and she found a lot of a lot of correlation between shame and not only addiction, which we've been discussing, but

also depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, and eating disorders. So she makes the argument that that guilt is more useful, uncomfortable,

but but adaptive, you know. It's it's something that can actually be spun off into positive growth, where a shame is more And we get into, you know, discussing shame spirals and this idea that that that shame is not only feeling feeling responsible for what you did and realizing that what you did is wrong on some level, but but feeling this this low level of self worth about it that you almost don't have the the energy to to to fight the temptation or the or the need

to do it again. You know what's interesting about that is when you talk about the human body, you talk about nudity, some people will have very strong reactions to their image and they might have, you know, eating disorders or other disorders that sort of warped their sense of um self esteem. And what Brown says is that perfectionism, which you often see with eating disorders, is a form of shame. And she said, where we struggle with perfectionism,

we struggle with shame. Research shows that perfections perfectionism hampers achievement. Perfectionism is correlated with depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis or missed opportunities. The fear of failing, making mistakes, not meeting people's expectations, of being criticized, keeps us outside of

the arena were healthy competition and striving unfolds. It reminds me of that episode of Community where where they're all taking this pottery class and uh and uh and Jeff Wingers failing miserably added and it's just really frustrated with his miserable pottery because he was hoping it would be an easy class and to pick up women. And then

there's this there's this doctor in the class. Uh, you know, so he's already an overachiever in some respects and then he's also creating this beautiful pottery even though it's like a pottery one on one class and uh, and so the characters are arguing over whether this guy is you know, an expert who's come in to just pretend that he's just starting and he's a natural or you know, or

or he just is a natural. And at the end of the episode, you you get insight into this, uh, this doctor's uh like dark inner monologue where he's he's really striving after this perfectionism met out of this deep sense of shame. Isn't that funny? And that that that even the results will never be good enough. Right, so even if he produces this piece of pottery that's museum grade, yeah, because he's because he's coming in it from the sense of shame, the sense that you'll never achieve what is

expected up. Yeah, and we'll talk a little bit more about some of burn A. Brown's insights into shame and vulnerability. But I did want to mention um that bowling in nudity, in in virtual reality is a thing. Um. The point of this two thousand and seventh study of the game Second Life was actually just tried to figure out how bowling would work with new residents of Second Life. I'm

sure everybody is familiar with Second Life. Uh, this virtual representation of yourself and this virtual world that you can insert yourself into, and it's a highly social world. Yeah, it's not just creatures running around killing monsters or you know, or fighting each other. There's like, for instance, I attended

a church service in one once. I'm not really a Second Life user, but I was attending a church service and one of the organizers they're put on uh like on the screen a church service that was going on in Second life, and so there were all these characters they were worshiping and as their avatars in this virtual environment. So if you're not familiar with Second Life, just be aware of at any and everything seems to go on there, right, I mean, you basically can conduct a version of your

life in Second Life your avatar. You can do things obviously that you never could do in your life. Right, And for many people creates, it's a tremendous social outlet that they might not have, especially if you know, if they're uh, you know, they're they're in an area or in a place in their life where they don't have you know, physical access to to you know, some sort

of supporting community. Well. Researchers from Nottingham University Business School with the permission of Lindon Lamb, who who developed Second Life, they set up a cyber based focus group to discuss the problem of bullying directly with residents of Second Life.

Um and the new residents they found were often the target of bullying, which included destroying a newbie's house, right, so, a newbie avatar's house, shooting him or her swearing at them and then displays a public nudity from the bully, or like making the other person naked from the bully. Now, in some ways, this is this is trying to shame the residents by showing them how how highly they have mastered their their abilities of their avatar, you know, to

say like this is how you get naked. Well, I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna get naked in front of you right now, because that's that's the level of my abilities. But um, and you knew you don't even know how to put your clothes on. But on on another level too, it's sort of an aggressive act in the sense that nudity itself is offensive or just sort of breaking social norms. I think it's breaking social norms, taking on the power of nudity to to expose oneself in this virtual realm.

It's got a lot of layers to it. Actually, yeah, well, I mean yeah. Like, for instance, um, one of the stories you've told before is when you were in New York World Science Festival and like a new order the few topless stopless. I think right, she was topless. She just had like cut off geane shore shoes on, but no top and she was just walking down the street and she had crossed in front of a church. Now at the same time, there was a bride emerging from a car and about to to go up the steps.

So at the same time this was happening, and I was absolutely amazed because I felt like I was the only person who noticed, you know, bare breasted woman coming at me, but everybody else was looking at the bride. M So to I wonder what extent she was weaponizing nudity, or you know, using it as a blunt instrument. I did not get the sense that she was just had

forgotten to put her shirt on that day. I did get the sense that she was doing in a very intentional way, and I kept looking around for cameras and I did not see any. Well, we've spoken about performance artists before, and there are many, many examples of performance artists using nudity as a way to in some cases you knows, as an alluring method, but often it's kind of like a shock. Uh. Some for instance, and I

forget the name of the artist here. It's referenced in our how hula hoops article works on how stuff works, but there was I want to say it was an Israeli or Palestinian artist who did this video series where it's like a woman naked hula hooping with a hula hoop made out of barbed wire. So it's not alluring

at all. I mean some maybe, but um, but there's this you know, you're hit with the sense of she's naked, she's vulnerable, and then for some reason, the whula hoop is made out of barbed wire and you see it like cutting into her flesh, and uh, it's it's very disturbing. It reminds me of some of the work that we've talked about with Maria Abramovitch, who, um, she had one performance art installation in which she was naked and then

she laid down next to a variety of objects. I think there was a gun, there, there was a rose, a couple of other objects, and people could interact with her using those objects, and she found that people got progressively uh more violent or just even threatening with her. So what we're seeing here is that nudity is both the seat of vulnerability but can also be the seat

of courage. Because on one hand, we can think of of the Emperor's new Clothing, where here's this uh, here's this buffoon who thinks he's wearing clothing and everyone's mocking him because he's just walking around naked through the streets. Or you think of any example from uh, you know, in any kind of historical or biblical account where individuals are stripped naked and reduced, you know, any any kind

of slavery or imprisonment situation. Uh, you know, examples of Babu Grabe come to mind as well, where individuals are are stripped of their clothing and and and in doing so the strip of their dignity, and it's and it's used,

you know, as a as a weapon against them. But then there are other examples where the nudity is very much a symbol of cur I mean, think of all the Greek statues we have of of these nude individuals, you know, wrestling with each other, or a nude man wrestling a centaur um in any any example like this where the nudy is is their their seat of strength.

And I think a lot of those examples, not the Steve b. Simione, but some of those examples that we talked about in movies, that's what they're really going for there too. It's like the man himself is, you know, without clothing, is bravely fighting like like some Greek statue who are some classical painting. Yeah, I mean there is this idea that um in the flesh, completely stripped down, you are actually taking the shackles of whatever it is

that we settle ourselves with and casting them away. And I think of our friends, the Germans, who did this really well. In fact, there's something called frank culture which I listened to fourvo about fifty times to try to say that. And I still will apologize to her German friends out there, but this translates to free body culture and naturism is really big for for Germans. This is so, this is nudism, this is uh, this is being free with your body, walking around nude in in a not

necessarily sexual just saying I am a nature boy. But it's more than what we think of here in the United States when we think about nudity and public nudity and we think about these different areas where basically like recreation parks where you can go and be nude. I mean, this has its roots pretty strongly in Germany. In fact, that movement that nature is a movement got its foothold in the late nineteenth century during the Victorian area era.

So that's pretty amazing, right, And the first nudist camp opened near Hamburg in nineteen o three. Now one in ten Germans take a naked vacation at least once a year. Oh that's awesome, But I know that's just according to Kirk Fisher, a president of German Association for Free Body Culture. By the way, so again there's this idea that there's more of an exceptence of one's body. Yeah, I mean

I get it. I definitely get a sense of that when I go to the Korean sauna that we have locally, and granted it's it's segregated by by gender, but in the the in the men's side, decide that I go

to um you see all different body types. So they will be, you know, there'll be some like young dude who's like super cut, There'll be some just old wretched looking individually everything in between, and and what you know, your first exposure to it may be a little you know, like whoa, everyone's naked and I'm naked, what's going on here? But then I do feel like it quickly settles and

you suddenly really don't care. My experience there was that, and I was on the female side, was that I could not believe the variety of body types because as a female, taking in all the various bits of media, you know, you tend to see the same bodies over and over again. And I don't go around seeing a lot of naked women around me. So to be in a room with women who were not representative of media

but representative of the greater culture was amazing. And that was what my brain was trying to square as all this different shapes and then, as you say, it just sort of became like these are bodies. Yeah, so I can see where that would be really liberating for people,

and it can I think I can see where. It's also difficult to understand if you haven't you know, gone to a sauna environment like that, if you haven't skinny dip you know, it's some hippie get together or something where on the outside it seems like it might be something kind of sleazy, like people are going to be naked in the same area. There's something wrong going on here. But no, it's uh, I mean, has its roots with with ancient bath cultures that outside of you know, Scandinavia

really dried up over the past several centuries. I will be honest though and say that I hoped um that I wouldn't see anybody that I knew. Uh. Yeah, I've never encountered someone that I know. But my wife has like encountered people where they she either knew them or they knew somebody she knew, And I guess that could be a little weird. But on the men's side, there's not a lot of like I understand that the lady

said is more chit chat. But on the min's side, it's a lot of dudes sly sort of staring at the floor. Yeah, there's a lot going on the on the female side. I'm not even going to get into it.

I'm sure you've heard um all right. So I wanted to bring up Burnet Brown again because she has a really nice ted talk on vulnerability, emotional nakedness what we're talking about here, and um, she has said that as a culture, that we are doing harm to ourselves and not allowing ourselves to be vulnerable or show that, um, show our weaknesses and that trying to covering them up again, just like perfectionism closes us down and closes us down

to opportunity. Yeah, it reminds me a lot of our recent episode on clothes Cognition about how clothing that we wear changes that the the idea of who we are, the feeling, the internal feeling of who we are, but also the version of ourselves that we're putting out there. And uh, and when you you strip it all down and you're just dealing with the creature itself, then I mean that the speed with which we actually understand another

person increases. So have all these levels of clothing that change the proposition of who we are both to ourselves and to outsiders what happens in the mind, in the brain itself when we strip away all that clothing, when we consider each other, well, your brain actually gets a boost and power. It turns out, because if someone were to look at a bunch of images of nude people as opposed to clothe people, signists have seen that their brains, which of course our scan by m R I, are

able to process those images much faster. So on one hand, you could say, no, that's because they don't have to deal with all of the detail that in clothes. Cognition, for instance, might put forth all those symbols inherent in the clothing, bird symbols and then clothing symbols, color theory, um reshaping of the body, and camouflaging of our he faults through clothing. Thanks thanks that that takes up a

lot of time in cognition there does um. You could say though, that just seeing the naked human form, get that you get a boost in your brain because that's something that is so easily recognized to us, and it's something that I guess on a reproductive level, we would have a response to which someone could argue that that's one of the reasons we enjoy looking at nudity and art, not merely from a you know, a sort of you know, alluring subside, though obviously, uh, you know, figures of the

naked female or male form are pleasing to the eye. But but then they also may just sort of refresh

us in a way. It's kind of like, imagine a workplace where you just have it like an anatomical almost you know, voyager plaque esque image of the nude male and a nude female on the wall, and just so every now and then, like things start getting complicated and and and uh and and worrisome, you can look up and be like, oh, well, that's what we are right there that creates that creature, and that creature well, and there's something that's um that that's equalizing about that. Right.

So everybody is naked, right, and they always say that when you go and you give a talk, right, yeah, And and it it makes more sense when you think of it that way. It's like, look at the they're just people just like you and me, and if you were to take their clothes off, they all look varying degrees of ridiculous. Now, that's what burn A Brown says. That is the courage of doing that emotionally and to show people that at the bottom of everything, we are

all human. We all have, you know, the same emotions, the same sort of um hurts and and and the same sort of joys and rewards in life. So she says that we should be able to show that, to show our our emotional nudity to people. And she says that that actually is what makes something accessible, because otherwise it's very hard to relate to other people if they

seem perfect, right, if they don't seem emotionally available vulnerable. Yeah, And I've also found that like like real nudity, Like there's emotional nudity where it's coming from a place of honesty and you're like, oh, well this is this is a real person. And then there's kind of aggressive emotional nudity. It's like narcissistic nudity. Yeah, like stop waving your emotions

in my face kind of kind of thing. Well, I wanted to to read this bit that Berne Brown actually brought up in her book Daring Greatly, because she said she got this idea of shame and vulnerability from rereading a passage in Theodore Roosevelt speech Citizenship in a republic. The passage is it's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who at best knows the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails well daring greatly. And he gave that speech naked. Most people don't realize that, and mar with dust and sweat and blood. He was referring to a naked fight in that passage. Yeah, so there you go a little insight into the links between nudity and shame,

nudity and strength, nudity and pair. Uh. Certainly think about that as you watch some of the films we mentioned here, or any of the other films out there that have scenes that feature male and or female nudity and scenes of ror or suspense. What role is the nudity playing, How are they how are they tweaking the message of the film by using that nudity, or are they just using it gratuitously? Yeah, let us know. And I have to say, us doing the podcast nude, it's not as

weird as I thought it was. Me No, what do you know? Yeah, our producer he's fine with it too. So yeah, well there, Yeah it worked out. Now would you do would you go through a haunted house naked? Though? I would not? Yeah? You. I mean, first of all, it takes a lot to get me into a haunted house, So to ask me to to drop trout that would

be sort of problematic. Yeah, I guess I would. I would be up for it if it were if it were a good haunted house and not just like some sort of a gimmicky thing, because there were there have been. There have been some haunted houses that have come through or popped up in the Atlanta area that have featured nudity on the part of the performers. And it just sounds a little yeah, like I don't really want anything again.

I just I'm so pragmatically towards the liability thing. You know, stuff hanging out, you know, you don't have much light going through, Something's going to happen to someone's parts. Well, I feel the same way when my son is running around naked, like my thought is he's going to fall and skin his winger on the concrete, and I and I just like, let's let's get some pants on him just so when he falls that he's not gonna hurt his wir You're good dad. Alright, guys, let us know,

would you go through Haunted House naked? Yes? And scenes from films, comics, literature that have featured nude fights that were really that it actually worked and actually had had some sort of effect on you as a viewer a reader. Let us know about those as well. You can find us in all the normal places, of course. Our mothership is Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where everything floats to the surface. But you can also find

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