Rites of Spring

summer person. Where I used to not be a summer person, I always did like springs because no matter how short your spring is depending on where you live, and it feels like we have very short springs at times here in the South. It's it's a time when things begin to come alive a little bit, but not everything I was alive yet, not all of the really annoying things have have have sprung up around you, such as the mosquitoes necessarily, or the poison ivy, all the things that

drive you indoors um. But it's just nice enough to to exist outside, to not have to turn on the air conditioning or the heat. You can set around, you can read you're comfortable out there in nature, as perhaps got into um for me, it's just emerging from winter's dark shadow, right because you have been inside, you've been, you know, you've had cabin fever, and all of a sudden you can step outside and the sun is a shining and the festivals are are all over the place,

especially in Atlanta. April is festival of Go Go Time. And for me, the best sign of spring in Atlanta is when you see people walking down the sidewalk with their pillows for International Pillow Fight Day. I did not know this existed April five. Huh yeah, because really, I mean, you've got that big blue sky. People are about to collabor each other with with soft weapons. Is this the thing? This sounds This is a little crazy like Shirley Jackson's

The Lottery, you know, like it. It sounds like something you would encounter in some isolated town and then you would yeah, Freedom Parkway. Well actually I think this year it's going to be in Grant Park. But every year in Freedom Parkway people gathered with their pillows and you see feathers just to fly and wow, well that that is strange. But indeed to your point, though, spring is a time where you you come out of your your hibernation, you come out of the darkness and to get down

to the very primal root. Stop it springtime means the winner didn't kill us, that that god or the gods did not abandon us to the darkness and the chill of night. Like springtime came and it saved our lives. Things are growing again, food is available again, and it's to be celebrated. And you see this in different cultures, you know, since time immemorial, right, because people are they're relieved, and they're going outside and they are celebrating this. You

see that this in the festival of Holly, right. Um, this is a celebration of the colors of unity and brotherhood. You see this in India where people go around they pelt each other in the face of all these beautiful different colored um sands. And this is a way of saying, as you say, hey, guess what we all made it. All of us are brothers and sisters, and this whole human thing we survived in another winter. Yeah, I mean.

In the Christian tradition, of course, you have the the death and Resurrection of Jesus as well, which which fits right in there and plays upon on older uh Easter traditions as well. Now, now it also brings up the question why must we have tax season right in the spring like that seems to really just sour the whole equation. It's like, we finally come out, we're free, we're alive. Now you have to pay taxes. It's kind of like having to worry with your car tax when your birthday

comes along. Oh, it's just like the I r s to be like ha ha ha spring. You think everything is renewing and emerging. Death to your money exactly. I mean, because it comes back. What are the two things you can't dodge in life? Right, death and Texas? And there you go, and they are interlaced with each other, death and taxes at a very basic level. But that's a

rant for another time. Yes, that is um. So let's talk about this idea of spring a little bit more in the context of how it might just not only symbolize this reemergence, but it may even change our behavior. But before we get to that, we should probably talk about how much time we spend indoors. Yes, And it's pretty pretty disturbing because because most of us we go through our lives and we don't necessarily think of it in those terms, like we're not keeping a precise diary

of how much time we spend outside dear Diary. I mean I feel a little more in touch with it these days, with the with the toddler, because taking the toddler outside the park is huge. And so when like suddenly not being able to go outside for a few days or a week is is very noticeable because it starts,

you know, clawing at eufanity. Yeah. Well, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans spent about eighty seven percent of their time indoors and another six percent in their vehicles.

And as you say, you probably you don't really unless you are, you know, putting it down in your die, or you don't realize because you think, well, I went outside to go to the grocery store, I went outside to do the other errand and you feel like you've had outside experiences when in fact you have been inside sort of cloistered, especially if you work in an office, right, and and you see, you know, different surveys make that percentage a little higher to like I've seen seen nine

for Americans on a two thousand nine e p A study. I've seen for people in industrialized countries on another study. So it's a talking percentage to to really think about. Yeah,

social you take that plus that six percent. You get that really inside a location, right, that's sealed in, right, And that's key because we we did a whole episode talking about how artificial indoor environments, how those are really alien environments that we've we've created like not only just structurally, but also the uh, the the micro biology of those structures,

the things that we're breathing in. We've created these strange realities that are separate from the natural environment with well we've evolved to thrive in. That's right. We did. We looked at that study with hospitals opening their windows to let fresh air and their fresh microbes, I guess you could say, and that being exceedingly beneficial to the patients. Um. Now, also consider that when you are inside, you are most

likely sitting down or lying down in the ladder. Of course is necessary for sleep, but the former, as we know, is associated with a smartgese board of physical ailments, including an increased risk of type two diabetes. So all of this sedentary inside stuff not so great force, and of course it would play out in many different ways. Yeah.

I also want to point out that according to the e p A, indoor levels of pollutants maybe two to five times higher and occasionally more than a hundred times higher than outdoor levels, which is important to think about, especially here in Atlantic where occasionally we received these alert saying that if you're very young, are very old, please don't go outside today because the air might destroy you. Um. But then you have to start stop and think, well,

what what kind of air am I fleeing to? You know? Yeah, but let's let's get toned to the more like rainbows and kitten farts here thinking about it. I know, I know, but let's take out the sun and look at it, because she'll shine upon us and take away all of our ailments. The power of the sun is immense. When you step out into the sun, those rays or about a hundred and forty nine million kilometers away, and when they hit your skin, they unleash a chemical chain reaction

that benefits us. For instance, vitamin D is produced yes, which most of us do not get enough of no, and that helps to absorb calcium and foods and which of course that helps to grow bone and and uh maintain bone health. And it also helps to bolster the immune system. So it makes sense that when you go out into the sun, wonderful thing has happened. You should wear some screen of course, yes, yeah, is that there's too much light makes the baby go blind, as they say.

Now a more quantitative look at this is a two thousand and eight study published in the journal Psychological Science which looked at the cognitive benefits of spending some time interacting with old nature. University of Michigan psychologist Mac Berman took a sample group of thirty six people, broke them into two groups, and then put them through a series of rigorous cognitive test He then let each group take breaks, one group walking around the city street and the other

through a secluded wooded park. Now, of course, who do you think performed better on the cognitive tests later on? And and of course memory being one of those things the nature group, Because the idea is that strolling in a city forces the brain to constantly remain vigilant as you navigate cars and people, and you sets out the relevant information from from irrelevant information. Um, so for instance, relevant, oh don't say up in that poop? Irrelevant there's a

sale on bras right, Um. The end result is that those those city walkers are having a less restorative scenario for their brains. In your prefrontal cortex is very occupied, so your cognitive functioning in terms of learning is not going to be as great. So it kind of takes our sort of everyday myopic view of the world that the flashlight view, and maybe opens it up a little bit a little more lamp like where're actually absorbing sense

data a little more openly. Yeah, because you're in a calm environment, Um, you don't have to worry about what's coming next so much. And of course it's fascinating too when you you start then asking the question, well, how much time do when you spend out of the day, I'm spending this enormous like like hovering near nine of my life is spent indoors, So how much of that do I have to give back? Like some impossible amount

do I have to give back? Well, studies show that just five minutes a day can give you that boost in mental health. Just five minutes, Like that's that's not even that's not even all of your lunch break, you know, that's just that's just a leaving work five minutes early or something. Yeah, that's from two thousand and ten research published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, and they

looked at self esteem and nature. And they found that just that the five minutes of people who were engaged in exercise, cycling, walking, running, gardening, farming. Um, if you had that amount of time, then your self esteem and your mood would be elevated. And of course they measured this using standard psychological tests before and after the activities. Now smoke breaks don't count though, right, uh, I don't recall that being covered. We depend, I guess on the

nature of your smoke break, but probably not so. Of course, the idea begins to emerge. We should frolic outdoors daily for at least five minutes more if possible. But is there something to spring itself? Are these day ease of sunshine really special in that sense of of re emergence? Is that well founded? Is that not just symbolic? Do you should we just take off spring some work. Well there's spring break, of course, which you know, to a

certain extent, just one week. Yeah, but the whole season? Yes? Okay, well yeah, this gets into the whole question. Is there not only link between spring and mood, but is there a link between weather and mood, between climate and modd Like, how much of what's going on in the environment is affecting my mental state to begin with. Right, all right, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we're gonna answer that very question. Alright, we're back, and

we're discussing this question. Does the weather, does the climate? Does this everything going on outside the window? Does it affect affect our mood? And we often fall into the trap of thinking that it just universally does. We've all seen the cartoon image of the depressed person with their own personal rain cloud hovering over their head, right, uh, and so, and it's easy to fall into that trap of say thinking that, well, everyone in Seattle must be

depressed because it's raining all the time. Or I really want to boost my mood. I want to move somewhere where the weather is nicer, and therefore my internal weather will be nicer as well. But when you actually analyze it, this doesn't really hold up. No. Matthew Keller, a lead researcher of the meta study at Warm Heart and a Clear Head the Contingent Effects of weather on mood and cognition, says, quote, everyone thinks weather effects mood, But the biggest test of

this theory in two thousand. In the year two thousand found no relationships. So we went back and found that there are two important variables, how much time you spend outside and what the season is. If you go from winter to spring and spend enough time outside, there is a noticeable change. So it's this change that's key. This this emergence from the dark into the light, from the cold into the warm, and actually getting out there and

experiencing it. That's what can actually make a difference on your cognitive state. Yeah, and it is a certain degree of temperature that will actually make the biggest impact on your state of mind. And we'll talk a little bit more about Keller's research, but I just wanted to mention that all of this has to do with spring, because a peak mood occurred at sixty seven point four degrees fahrenheiten.

This is kind of the goldilocks of temperature and not too cold, not too hot that you see in spring. So when we talk about some of these different aspects of the research, to keep in mind that that's the perfect spring day weather right where you've got the blue skies and um, you know, you're just as comfortable as you can be. It's almost like the metaphor of being in the womb and floating around and in your you know, the edges of your body just melting into everything else

around you. Maybe you don't have the exact feeling of that when you go out your front door in that weather, but there is a feeling of comfort. Well yeah, I think, but I think we often do have that that feeling. Again, it comes back to that whole realization, Hey, the weather is nice enough outside. I don't have to turn on the heat. I don't have to turn the air conditioning.

I can open a window. Or you walk outside in the spring day and you say, hey, it's nicer outside than it is indoors, which is such an insane thing to say, but but but it's true. And then you feel the edges of your body melting around you, and you think, ah, I felt this before somewhere. All right, let's talk about these studies. There was one in which nineties seven people reported their mood and how much time they spent outside. Then they were asked to remember a

series of numbers. They were also given a short favorable description of a fake employee, and then they were given additional unfavorable information about that same person and asked to assess the employee's competence in performance on the days with high pressure, that's the clear, sunny days when you have high barometric pressure. People who spent more than thirty minutes outside saw an increase in memory, mood, and flexible thinking styles.

Those who spent the time indoors, though, they saw a decrease. So when they talk about flexible thinking styles, we're talking about a sense of openness. So they were regarding that employee and some of the more unsavory details about that person in a more open minded way and kind of giving them a pass on those days that there was beautiful weather and they were spending a good chunk of

it outside. Interesting. Interesting, Now the second experiment that has a D twenty one people spend time outside, of course, or inside on a warm, clear, beautiful day. Have you ever had that experience where you you both have been outside just frolicking, or you've been inside chained to your

computer looking longingly outside. Yeah, kind of think. I had one of those days last week where it was inside here the office all day doing stuff, and then I went outside at the end of the day to go home and realize it was beautiful, and I felt this this deep sadness because I knew that one of the few uh nice days that we have in the city was lost to me. Well, that is exactly what happened in this experiment. Of course, people who went outside their

moves were lifted. Uh, they felt great, they had some pep in their step. But the people who were changed to their desks and made to stay inside were angry about it. Now, they weren't physically chained in the experiment, it's worth noting just just to be clear. No, there's a rope. There's a rope. Yeah, we don't want it

to rub too much, exactly. Yeah. And then the third study, the researchers collected data through a website from three eight seven respondents who lived in various climates, because what they wanted to do here is to try to get out of the northern climates that they are already in and make sure that they had some other representations of climates

throughout the world. And they correlated the submissions with the weather in each city for that day, and they found that participants who spent more time outside during the spring but not during any other season had better moods overall. So again, everyone is coming outside everythone is emerging. It's like that that the flower is opening to the warmth of a world, society is is coming alive again. Everyone's

creeping outside of the cave. But it turns out there's a dark side to this as well, and to understand it, we have to first back up a little bit to

Christmas time. Now. Now, Christmas, the holidays, whatever you want to call them, whatever they are to you, they are essentially the around the darkest times of the winter, when things are at their at their their their blackest, things are at their coldest, And a lot of what's going on there at a deeper level, is about the hope that spring will come again, that if we do right by nature, by the God, by God's by ourselves, whatever, we can survive the rest of this night and emerge

into springtime. And there's this myth that has just stayed with us, largely because it's repeated over and over again in the media that suicide rates are hired during the holidays. And it's an easy one to buy, because, yeah, people get down sometimes in the holidays. They can be a little sad. You know, suddenly you're having the holidays and someone that you've lost isn't there with you anymore, or you're you know, you're experiencing some degree of seasonal effective disorder.

The world's dark, everything's colder. Maybe that's getting you down as well. But according to the Anneburg Public Policy Center, it's the idea that to suicide rates peaked during the holidays is complete, complete bunk, and the media should stop repeating it and driving home this falsehood. Yeah, Brian Palmer, writing for Sleep magazine, says it's a convenient narrative that

would keep picking up lonely people becoming despondent around Christmas time. Um, the real information here is that suicide actually peaks in the spring and summer, and if you start to try to sess out all of the reasons why, it becomes very difficult. Now. Um, when Palmer was writing this article for Sleep magazine about suicide upticks in spring and summer,

he went through some various theories about it. But I just wanted to say that there's no one like unified theory here, and a lot of it has to do with that person's particular circumstances, not just because this person happened to work in this kind of job in Uruguay at the time, but we should probably run through it because it is really interesting. The one that seems to during the most with the most truth for me is the is the sociodemographic factor. And this is the idea

that during winter, what are you doing. You're surviving the winter. You're kind of hibernating in some way, shape or form. You know, you're you're buckling down, You're you're you're just about get through the holidays, get through the new year. You know, throw in you know, weird work schedules and trips and more time with the family. You know, it's gonna very case to case, obviously, but for the most part, you can say that throughout this this winter you are

you're keeping it close. You know, you're shutting off, you're not really dealing with as many people, uh in the outside world. But then when spring comes, everyone's getting out and about uh there, you know, suddenly everyone has new projects that you're launching at work. It's not about just let's get through all the weird works I all the holidays. It's suddenly like, let's have meetings and get things done. Let's start building things together. Oh and then oh and

then taxes are here. We have to pay the taxes as well. Uh, Suddenly the socio demographics of the world around you are erupting and coming together, and things that say that, you know, problems in your life that you might have been able to to dodge by hiding from them, Suddenly you're not able to hide from them as well, you know, or plans that you had made, Uh suddenly

have to come together in a different way. I mean it's you're suddenly exposed to more frustration, more conflict in your life, and if, if, and and that can spill

over into self destruction. Yeah. A good example of this is the paper is Occupation Relevant and Suicide and this studied suicides in Finland during the years of nine and what it found is that the spring suicide peak is more pronounced among people employed on farms or in factories, who experience greater seasonal variation in the intense of work

and social interactions. In addition, developing countries with a higher proportion of agriculture workers see more seasonal changes in the stuff in the suicide rate than you developed countries, and Palmer says that the magnitude of seasonal changes in suicide rate is more than ten times higher in Uruguay, for example, than in Belgium, because suddenly the pressure is on let's get it, let's grow things. We have to plant things. The cycle is is is heating up at the farm,

and therefore the pressure is on you. There's more frustration and and that can spill over. Now there are just there's a raft of controversial studies linking something like allergens or even temperature spikes to suicide rates. But there's really no one weather pattern or one variable that you can point to when it comes to those studies. So I'm not going to spend much time other than to just

mentioned that they are out there. Yeah, because you start breaking and they're like with a lot of things, especially things that involve human behavior and its interaction with other factors. You start looking for that unified theory and things start

breaking down. Uh, there's no there's no single argument for why people are going to you know, be more suicide prone in the spring or summer that matches up with one particular variable, right, Because there's another subset of people who have committed suicide and they happen to be cubical workers, and this their uptick is in September, So you can't just say across the board it's spring and summer and it's just agriculture workers. There's all sorts of factors going

on here. But I think the real point here is that the darkest days for humans is not you know, in December and the holidays. This it's just this myth that we perpetuate that this idea of moods and chemicals that create our moods are far more nuanced than just saying boom, this is what happens. Yeah. Spring is about the world coming to life again, the world that you live in, and that can be a really happy thing, that can also be a really depressing thing, are very

RESTful thing. Yeah, So it depends on your individual circumstance really in a number of ways. So Robert, now that you know about the International Pillow Fight that we've got a couple of days to prepare here, will you be participating? No, because I'd probably have to bring my son there and I don't really want him to see a bunch of grown people hitting each other with pillows and sleeping. No.

Pillows are for expressing your love and your angst. And um, the fact that he's as you said, that we we uh we survived it, We survived the wintertime. Let's get out there and just whack each other silly. Okay, Well maybe next year, maybe next year. All right, that's not gonna happen. You're just saying that, we'll see, we'll see. All right. Uh, we should do a little bit of mail. Yeah, let me call over the robot and let's see what we have, all right. This one comes to us from Adam.

Adam says, Hi, Robert and Julie just found your podcast on my long road trip from Texas, Illinois, and heard your show a musical time machine for the brain, and wanted to share my driving music with you. Pretty much any track by the techno band The Prodigy, but namely Breathe. Also. Another favorite for adournaline pumping, fist fighting, body moving, head bopping, vampire sucking nights in a Cede, Russian nightclub would be the track Confusion by New World, featured in the Wesley

Snipe vampire Hunter movie Blade. Thanks for asking, Adam of Texas. This one comes to us from Lena. Lena says, Dear Robert and Julie, I really enjoyed your podcast, The Illusion of Continuity because I'm in ap psychology and we just finished our unit on sensory and perception. It was incredibly interesting. I had never realized the extent to which my senses cannot be trusted. However, the brain is also extraordinary and its ability to fill in gaps, filter out on necessary stimuli,

and make sense of complex images. It seems like the more science figures out the human brain, the more questions one could ask about it. The dance and Spider Man gift really cracked me up by the way. I played K pop and some other songs and it worked, although I could see some discontinuity, but maybe that was my years of music lessons kicking in. I love your podcast.

Keep up the amazing work, Lena. All right, we've got one more here, and this is from Iona and in the subject line it says this one has a really cute cat gift. And indeed she did attach a gift of a cat on hind length hind legs a kittie. Was that a trick that she played on this to to try and make sure that we read this particular email and I didn't get lost. I don't know, but it worked. If it was, it worked, um, says Hi.

Robert and Julian needed to let you know that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is my favorite podcast and makes my daily commute on the Northern Line, known to Londoners as the most oppressing of all the two blinds, bearable. So thank you so much for all your hard work. Your podcast about the Night Janitor reminded me of the short story The Sweeper of Dreams by Neil Diamond, which runs with the same analogy. It's super short, so it doesn't take long to read, and you can see it

here or there's a video of Diamond reading it. Allowed I managed to listen to your musical time Machine for the Brain podcast. On the same day I read this essay on why we love repetition and music by the director of the Music Cognition Lab at Arkansas University, and yes, my mind was blown. This one isn't a super short read, but it is really interesting and even has audio clips where you can see how looping words make them seem as if they are being sung. That's about it again,

Please never stop. Thank you Iona. Awesome. It's always comforting to know that people are listening to us on the Tube Because I I have a thing for trains and underground trains especially so I fondly remember all the time I got to spend on the London too when I visited, so I I love the idea that we're reaching people in those underground spaces. I feel like you need to hook up with Robin Hitchcock someday. Yeah, the the the singer songwriter, because he has an obsession with trains and uh.

In fact, he has an album called I Often Dream of Trains. I will have to check that out, yes, but I do love that she was reading that essay at the same time that she was checking out the podcast about music and how it works on the brain. Very cool. One final bed here, I do want to point out we uh we We did the episode on on the Verry Wide Effect and why Barry White's voice resonated with us so much, and we asked the question,

who is the new Berry White? Are there any voices out there in the current world that are filling the same space you know, for us that are it's able to be you know, alluring but also safe. Uh. Some people pointed out Neil de grass Tyson, which is an interesting choice. I love Neil de grass Tyson. I think sometimes when he's an argumentative mode, which is awesome because there are things that Neil de grass and Tyson needs to argue about, and only he can argue about them.

Especially only he can. Yeah, only he can. He has the probaged position of doing it and has all the tools to win the argument. But you know, maybe I think maybe he's a little less Verry White in that particular mode. Wow, I was just thinking the opposite. I was thinking in Cosmos he's a little too soft, he's a little too reassuring, and that when he's fired up, you get a little bit more of the kind of breathiness. Well, I guess, yeah, I guess it comes down to what

do you want out of your Neil deGrasse. Tyson's kind of like two two flavors there. Other people mentioned Bennedict Cumberbatch, who, of course, uh this in addition to looking kind of like an honor, which we discussed in an upcoming video, also has a phenomenal voice that's nice and deep and British and uh, you can't help but to fall under its spell. So I think that's a decent suggestion as well, if you want to fall under our spell a little

bit more. I'm kidding, I'm winking. I'm nudging. Uh, there are a couple of places you can do that. You can go to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Yes, that's the mothership. That's where you'll find all our videos, our podcast, all our blog links out to our social media accounts including Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Google Plus, as well as our YouTube channel, which you'll find on YouTube as mind Stuff Show. UH be gonna keep an eye on that.

We have some some cool video products coming out, including a series that uh that I just shot titled Monster Science that's going to have a nice sort of daytime horror monstery vibe while also remaining very steeped in real world biology. Indeed, and in the meantime, if you would like to send us a note, please do so, and you can do that that Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Say isn't how stuff Works? Dot com