How Fear Works

why didn't you tell me about that? I don't know. We've never a podcast about it because it would literally be like a five minute podcast. Well, maybe we can bring it up, but yeah, your podcast. Maybe it's worth reading, though. I think if you typed in eyes and painting or something like that in the search bar how stuff works dot Com, it would bring it up. I figured it was because the eyes were cut out and there was a psychopathic killer behind. It's a painting, that's to the

second paget. Also, while we're just doing pluggyness, right, why don't you follow us on Twitter? It's a it's a party over there, right. Our handle sometimes not what you think right off the top of your head. But it makes sense when you hear it s Y s K podcast, right, And there's no like We're not like um Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga. We don't say stupid stuff about being backstage. We're actually a cool news aggregator, right, okay? Uh? And then also we're on Facebook. We have a stuff you

should know Facebook page, Chuck and Chuck. You kill it on that interacting with people coming out, shaking hands in your robe and you know, with a little shrimp in your mouth from being in the green room. You know, Hey, how's it going, good to meet you? Thanks for coming out. I can't imagine any were disgusting any coming at someone with a robe and shrimp in my well. It happens every day on Facebook, right, Um. And then I guess

now are you ready for the intro? Yes? Yeah, I want I want you to go back with me to uh alright, freshman in college. Baby, I'm a freshman in high school. And um, I am in my room in uh Kennesaw, Georgia, in my parents house, and it's nighttime and I'm reading I don't remember what I'm reading, but I'm like sitting on my bed reading. I'm actually laying with my elbows up on my bed reading right. Um, And I look over and notice that my closet door

is cracked slightly. This is abnormal. Usually my closet door is shut tightly. Still. Uh yeah, even still, even still to this day, I don't see any reason to leave it open. It's funny how this little thing stick around. So I remember making this little comment to myself, like, oh, you know, that's that's weird. It's probably somebody in there, right, But I go back to reading, and uh, I get this, this annoying sensation. That's like getting my attention out of

the corner of my eye. And I look over and now the door is correct by about three times more than it was before. Well, I have tremendous amounts of sense. So I throw my book down and start running towards the door of my room. Right as I get to my to the handle, my hands on the door knob and starting to turn it, the closet door is thrown open. And my dad, because I'm going I'm not kidding, this

is a true story. I went from a standing position with my hand on the door knob to completely flat on my back and like maybe a half of a motion. It wasn't even one full motion, right, I was on my back, screaming, staring at my dad, screaming in terror, looking at him like you were looking at Nikola Tesla. I see that it's my dad, but I'm so afraid that I can't stop screaming. My mom has time to make it up the stairs into my room and start yelling at my dad, asking what did you do to Josh?

And I'm sitting there looking at them having this argument, still screaming, going back and forth. Character. He is a character. He looked so sad and so remorseful, realized. But I I don't think I was wrong in in in noticing a little glimmer of disappointment in his eye, like what happened to you? Kid? Did you get to be such a panny waist? So there is my fear story, Chuck, that's my great fear story. We used to antagonize Eddie,

my friend Eddie in college. He was his roommates to Eddy for years and we scare him all the time, so awful, like coming home from the movie what was the one with the author the James con Oh Misery misery, came home from misery and like mate Bouten, literally unsto screwed lightbulbs all over the apartment like hid in closets. Eddie was smart enough to turn on the television for light that we didn't count on that next time we

unplug the TV. It's tough to give him past that. Yeah, it was always fun and he got to kick out of it too, you could tell, which we'll get too later. So yeah, we're gonna get to a lot in this one. Right, This is how fear works. This is gonna be a good one. I think. I think it already is. Well, okay, thanks to your story. So, Chuck, I think we should start out by basically defining fear. Webster's Dictionary defines fear as such river in high school, and that was just

the way to start your You thought you were so smart. Yeah, uh, it defines it. It doesn't, but we define it as a chain reaction in the brain starts with a stimuli can be many different things, and it ends up with the fight or flight response in the end, exactly which we know that you know about the fireflight response. Having

listened to this podcast faithfully since two thousand eight, yes, right. Um, So we're not gonna go into too much detail about the fireflight response because you already know this, but suffice to say that fear is an autonomic response, which so the autonomic nervous system. We've never mentioned this before. It's really nervous. It is the nervous system that responds to stress, and it's made up of the sympathetic and the parasympathetic

nervous systems. I don't think we have talked about that happened, no, but it's like the umbrella nervous system that's like whoa, okay and then calm down right right, And autonomic I mean it almost means automatic in this case because it's just triggered. We don't plan it. That just happens. That pointer Sister's song could have been called autonomic. It's so interchangeable, you know. Um so, yeah, well, there's not a lot we can do, and we don't necessarily know what's going on.

Like um, analysis of the situation isn't necessarily a part of being afraid. It's more like get out of there, right. Yeah, we'll find yeah, we'll find that there's other ways that that can happen right, coming soon as in a few minutes. Yeah, So let's let's just go over what parts of the brain are responsible for fear, right, Yeah, and this will come up in in a in a minute here when we describe how the paths go, there's just ended it.

But the thalamus um picks up on things that you hear and see and smell um and in the way of sensory data. Uh, sensory cortex interprets this. You got. The hippocampus its stores the sea horse. Yes, that's right. It's stores and receives conscious memories and starts to establish like a context for what's going on. In this case,

fear amygdala plays a big part. It decodes the emotions and determines the threat and stores old fear memories, fear memories like if if something really bad happens to you and you have to create like a real fear memory. The amygdalas where that sits, okay, And then finally the hypothalamus is where it always ends up no matter which path it takes. People talk about those paths. The hypothalamus is the on off switch for the fight or flight response.

It makes it's go time, and the only part of your brain that can tell the hypothalamus whether it's go time or whether go time is past. Is the right It's the gate keeper to the autonomic nervous system. I'm still just as thrilled about the brain as I was when we first started studying this stuff. I know, I think I'm more thrills. Yeah, so, Chuck, Josh. There is a guy named Joseph Ledo. Have you heard of him? He is a nervoscientist at n y U. And he

came up with two categories for our fear response. Yeah, and they happened simultaneously. But there is what he's dubbed a low road and a high road. And like I said, both of them happened at the same time. Um. But the low road is basically like the quick, nasty, dirty response to fear, right, like, holy crap. Right, So um, let's say there's a pretty good example in this article by Julia Layton. Yeah, actually, both of the ones who are recording today or Julia Layne's Yeah, way to go Layton,

She's good. Um. So, uh, let's say that you're sitting at home, right and your underwear with a beer perched on your stomach, and you're just watching some wrestling have you been watching me have webcams set up in your house? You do a lot of stuff because I encourage you

too without you know it. Okay, um uh, So you're sitting at home as such, and um, all of a sudden, your door just starts rattling, right, yeah, Okay, there's something that's going to happen called the low road for your response, and that is the sound and the sight of your door rattling is the century data that suddenly goes into what the thalamus, which sorts it and says, hey, um, amygdala, I need your help. It's like forwarding the email. Yeah, like there is a potential threat here and we need

to respond. And the amigellas says, you know what, you're right, thalamus, I'm going to contact the hypocampus now, the hypothalamus right and and basically get the fear fight or flight response going. Yeah, just like just in case, let's go ahead and turn it on. Right. So you are now your beer is spilled all over the floor because you left up out of your your easy chair. Okay. At the same time this is going on, um, the high road response is

taking place, thankfully. Yes, So the high road responses, uh it takes longer, but it gives you a much more thoughtful analysis of what's going on. There's a couple of extra stops along the way. Uh, that leads to reason and context and that kind of thing. So this time it goes to the century cortex first, and the century cortex says, you know, what, this has happened before or no, it's it says like there's more than one interpretation. Has

it happened before? And the hippocampus says, you know, and remember that time in that big windstorm the tree fell outside and he thought of the boogeman was coming to get you, So remember that, right, Like, the hippocampus goes and gets your memories to to analyze them for context. Compared to this, the sensory cortex is saying, like, what else is going on here right there? At exactly? Is their patio furniture moving? Are their trees scraping on the window?

And all of a sudden you're like, okay, it is wind right, that's right. But let's say that your um, your your your brain, your sensory cortex said, um, no, what I hear is a guy shouting like I'm coming in right and your hippocampus is like, well, last time that happened, like guy came in a ski mask and I was hog type for three days before anybody around me. Right,

it was not the wind. So that leap up out of the easy chair is your low road response and standing there while your brain is interpreting the rest of the data and then coming to the conclusion that yeah, there's somebody coming through the door and then running out your back door. That's the result of the high road response. Yeah. Or if you determine or inside the brain that hey, this is just a windstorm, then it sends the message to the amygdala saying, hey, go tell the hypothalamus just

shut down the whole system. Not the whole system, because you'd be dead, but shut down the fight or flight response. It's just trees. And Emily is on the ceiling still at this point because her high road is probably longer than mine and the low road very very quick. Yes, we heard gun shots one time in l A and Emily literally it was like on the floor. I turned around, like did you hear that? And she was on the

ground like in prone position. Wow. But you know I grew up rough tumble, so I heard gun shots a lot more than she did. Did you have a hard scrapple youth, I did. I don't even know that, not like the the streets of acron Rare, Emily grew the tender streets of acron Ohio. Yeah, they were very tender, all right, Josh. So you pointed out, which is very important, that both of these things are happening at the same time.

And that is why, even if you realize very quickly that there is no imminent danger, you're still going me coming down from that fight or flight response for a little bit, because your low road has also already been triggered, right, and it all ends on hypothal in the hypothalmus either way. Yes, are we done? I guess? So that was really rapid, man. Now we're not done, because we gotta talk about emotions,

right and why we get scared. Well, yeah, there's very little um argument about what emotions are for, and basically they are motivators, right, yep, they are survival based motivators. Specifically, um, the basic ones there's uh, let's see, anger, fear, surprised discussed, joy, and sadness. Those are the six basic emotions that an anthropologist named Paul Ekman identified in the nineteen seventies. Right, yeah,

you see that's sick. Um, and uh, you know we're talking about fear right now, but you could make the this is the this is the case for all of at least those basic, if not all, the emotions that a human can experience. Is that their motivators. They're saying there's something in going on with you, specifically right now in your environment or in your life, and a kind of a medicine or both. Right yeah, Um, with fear, it's normally something's in your environment. Yeah, and it's clearly

a motivator to survive. Right. So um, let's say that, Um, you're you're a caveman. Okay, So I'm back on the couch with my bigger and um, you're sitting there, Uh you see a snake. You just don't don't have a very good feeling about it, so you don't go up and touch it. But your friend Erg sitting next to you, is like, well what is this? And Erg gets bit and dies a horrible nasty death right in front of

your eyes. What happened to tuktok? Know you're tuktok Okay, so um, you tuktok have just formed possibly the fear memory, uh, in response to snakes. You are doing a very crude interpretation of natural selection and evolution. You are going to be able to go mate, and mayhaps that fear memory will somehow epigenetically be passed on to your offspring and

then it's a trait eventually. Yes, So, um, fear is a survival based motivator, right, Yeah, And Caveman is an apt description because if you feared the right things back in the day, like snakes and tigers and lightning, then you had a good chance of surviving and procreating, and all of a sudden you had a stronger, uh, smarter,

wiser population exactly. But all those is going on, you know, long long, long ago, and a lot of people argue long before we were humans, but you know, back when we were still prey to snakes like primates, that's still stuck around and that's probably where they first started. But um, we didn't have any idea that this was evolution at work.

And it wasn't until like the late nineteenth century that Darwin really kind of got the attention of the world and said, hey, these are inherent traits that are passed down like fear is not something that's necessarily learned. It's

something we have instinctively. And he conducted this pretty cool little experiment that he wrote about in um his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, which is published in eighteen seventy two, And he went to the zoo right well, yeah, he was um specifically there. The debate at the time was about the face of fear the Edward monk, like, holy crap, face that everyone gets when they're scared. You took it as being scared. I thought that was a scream of joy, the face

of fear, Yeah, our monk. Oh really, I thought he was like I just got the best deal on this muffler. It looked more to me like home alone. Oh my gosh. Oh no, that was joy. Though at the time he was glad his parents were gone. Right, No, no no, he was. He couldn't believe it. That was I think surprised, and then later joy and then later sadness. Yeah, when he learned what we all know eventually, the family is important, and don't fear the creepy old man in your neighborhood.

Actually you probably should, probably should. I think Chris Colemus did a great disservice to children by by making that a moral Alright, So yeah, I always interpreted monks because it was called the scream as as terror, regardless that face we all make when we're scared, you know, out of our pants. Uh. He went and Darwin went and stood in front of a clear uh PLEXI I guess it was quite glass at the time, I would think it was, and had a puff adder jump, you know,

leaped towards his face. Even though he knew he was protected, he still reacted with that fear face and jumped back. And he said basically that, uh, my will and reason were powerless against the imagination of danger, even though he's

never experienced it. So like I've never been bitten by a snake, but or actually they said that people that have never even Yeah, So he came to this conclusion that that fear and you know, likely all of our basic emotions are very much passed down through the generations, right, And uh, he came to that conclusion because he couldn't control himself when the snake, which you'd never been bitten by, um lunged at the glass which was safely in between them.

He still couldn't control it. So he concluded, Yeah, there's there's a lot more going onto this than you know. This is something I've learned because why would I be afraid of a snake? And I know rationally that there's glass there, So that this stuff is so ancient. Are modern trappings of civilization e g. A glass and a

zoo can't subdue it? Yeah? Yeah, the same at baseball games when Pete they fouled the ball back and they know, you know, there's a screen right in front of you, and you will never get hit by a baseball, but people still jump back and that bay maybe more that may be less fear and more just an autonomic reaction to something coming at you. That was Darwin's point. Really, Yeah, it's the same thing. Yeah, because if we didn't experience fear,

like a baseball coming out would be like and then boom. Yeah, same same with anything that we we moved to get away from. You always feel like a goober too at the game when that happens. Well, that's a that's a higher um emotion that supposedly are specific to humans and a couple of other higher primates, which is embarrassment that only exists in relation to other people. Right, I don't think I said the word goober in like a decade. It's a good one, just flew out of my mouth.

I love goober's. I've said, can I have another goober? But what was that? The peanut and chopped Yeah? Um, so Chuck Darwin basically said, I'm right, you're wrong, you're idiots. Um and uh. Fear is now seen as a a basic emotional response, that's an inherited one. Yeah. And it's the same as it was in the caveman days, except it's not lines and tigers now it's people breaking into your house, home invasion, terrorist attack. Well put um. And

then there's another point that Darwin made. I don't know if he hammered at home, but um, we can anticipate things, right, Like we don't have to see a snake by erg to be afraid of a specific snake, right or have it experienced right or um? And it doesn't go away with each snake, like each new snake doesn't necessarily not represent a new threat. Snakes in general do right. Um. And that's because we can anticipate things right. That's another survival mode that um, that fear triggers or that I

guess the centered around fear. We can anticipate being afraid, and apparently studies have shown that we can become physiologically and psychologically just does afraid when we anticipate being afraid of something, then when we're actually confronted with that thing we're afraid of. Yeah, well, which is like a fear of flying would be a perfect example of that, Yes,

it would. You can be just as scared, probably as if you have actually been in a plane crash, if you have a really really intense phobia flying, dude, I can tell you that even if you've ever been on a even a remotely scary flight, you can very much be afraid anticipatoryally of a plane crash. It's very scary. You've gotten pretty good though, right, dude. I am great. I slept through the last takeoff I was on. Really I could not believe it. You mean, was like, who

are you checking your bolts? Yeah? Yeah, and nothing. I was on no scotch, no pills, no nothing. You weren't on scotch, no scotch. Well that's called fear extinction, and we'll get to that. Yeah, more foreshadowing other precursor. That was very anticipatory. So speaking of conditioning, which we were not. Let's talk about a very cruel experiment in the night twenties by Mr John Watson Little Albert. Little Albert was an eleven month old baby. I think they call Albert

a toddler. They call him an infant, and that's a baby starting to toddle, just starting the title, So a little Albert. They wanted to teach Albert fear of white rats. The problem was, I guess it wouldn't have problem is probably pretty good for the sake of the experiment, was that he loved white rats, and when the white rats would come around, little Albert would even reach for them, and guests try to pet them, and until they started playing this loud booming noise. No you know what they did.

They took a claw hammer and a piece of metal and burned it right behind his head every time he went to go. That was the loud booming noise. So uh, it didn't take long before Albert was crying and moving away from the white rats as expected. And not just white rats, chuck rabbits, really for coats, cotton balls. They showed that fear isn't just think that we in hear it. It can be conditioned, and little Albert became sick fried Fishbocker. Here's the worst part. You ready for it. That's not true,

you're ready. Well, no one knows who little Albert is. Well,

he wasn't sick freed Fishbocker. Well you so, John Watson UM was planning on reversing this fear conditioning, but was caught having an affair with an assistant and was fired before he could so exactly, and Um Watson went on to UM get into the advertising game, and uh it was successful and actually married I think the lady he was having an affair with UM, but burned all of his notes and I think before he died in so no one to this day has any idea who what

when was this the nineteen twenties, so little Albert would be old or dead, would be like probably dead, probably died of fright at a young age. And that horrible. That was pretty horrible. But out of this horrible old time experiment, which if you're interested, I like top five horrific psychological experiments for the blogs, this is one of them. Um. The what came out of it was an understanding that fear is conditioned, right, and if you can condition somebody.

If you can teach somebody to fear, you can teach people to unfear. Yeah. Right, But before we get to that, chuck more precursors. I think we should, um, I think we should talk about some of the most common fears. Yeah, I didn't realize that phobia is there are only three main types, and I guess it's sort of a loose A lot of them fall under these umbrellas, So that must be the deal. Because a gooraphobia fear of places where escape might not be be easy or help may

not be available. Oh, that's like a fear of big open places. Yeah, but I think in a broader sense it's just fear of of I may not be able to get help in case I need it. You know. One of the characteristics of agoraphobia in some cases is like being afraid. You're like if you're out on the beach, being afraid you won't have anything to grab onto and just flying off the earth. Really yeah, yeah, like you can't go into big open spaces. It's like the opposite

of claustrophobia. Joan Cusack on that show that awesome Showtime show has a goora phobia. You can't lead the house. And it's like really kind of heartbreaking, maybe because it's Joan Cusack, you know, and you have like you want good things for her, you want good things for the whole Cusack family. Yeah, that's true. Uh. Social phobias obviously

have anything to do with people. And then specific phobias is the third category, which is a bit of a cop out because that's like everything else that you're afraid of, including you're ready, phobophobia, fear a phobias, fear of fear, fear of fear, that's everybody. No, this is like debilitating phobia that you don't like that you're afraid of becoming afraid at some point. So what do you just set your life up very safely, like don't watch horror movies,

don't Okay, well should we read this gallop pole? Yeah, and I couldn't find a more recent one. No, this is probably fairly accurate. Still though with two thousand five and sort of sad they pulled teenagers in the United States and their top ten things they were afraid of terrorist attacks was number one. I wonder if that's still the case. I bet it's not. Maybe Spider's death failure, war heights, crime, being alone in the future, and nuclear war.

And I made my own top five as a teenager, as a Baptist teenager, like back then, you did, No, I did it, but this is what little Chuck was afraid of. And this isn't a joke. In order, sex Satan, alcohol and drugs. Sex in Satan was my top five And honestly, I even took notes and scribbled things out, and that was about as accurate as I could get it. Huh. And you overcame the first one with the second one with the aid of the third one, but they popped

back in at four and five. Yeah, when you sobered up, Um, so common fears, Josh industry, What did you say, dentistry being or not? I thought that's what it's not becoming a dentist, but going to the dentist flying Speaking in public heights is a huge one. Yeah, we've gotten better at the speaking in public thing, but we still get very I still get terrified. Yeah, but we'll ever be okay with that. No, not like super like Tony Robbins, free and easy, because I imagine he's a cool customer

before he goes on stage. He's not throwing up. Although you know, he might take beta blockers. Those are for stage right now, Is that right? Yeah, it's one of the you know how every drug on the planet says, well, we've also discovered it helps with this. So beta blockers evidently a lot of musicians use it. Well, we should

start doing beta blockers. Okay, Chuck. We were just talking about universal fears, or what what a lot of people think are universal fears, and there's some behind um, there's some ideas behind universal fears, like snakes, spiders, that that they are incredibly ancient, that are our fear of them is probably pre human back when we were chimps who were getting eaten by snakes, right, or who interacted with spiders on a regular basis, and that's why we can

fear them without ever having had a bad experience with one, or humans in the case of rats, because rats carried disease that killed large populations of people. They think that's why we're scared of rats today. That one is a little hinky to me, because we've only been aware of germ theory since like the nineteenth century. You know, I don't really buy that. No. I think maybe rats, like too many rats, like chew the eyeballs out of like a sleeping friend. That's why I think we're afraid of rats,

not disease. I've never seen that happen in a movie. Um, really, the balls out of a sleeping friend. No, I'm saying like in real life and like life. You know, I'm saying years and years ago. Okay, do you understand? Really? No, I think I get it now. I think like way back in the day, back when we were living in caves or terrible shelter, would see the rats of the eyeballs out of well, out of erg while he was sleeping, and Tuck Tuck was like, whoa, I need to steer

clear of those rats. Okay. But there are some that are not necessarily universal, that are actually culturally bound, right or at least regionally bound, like um. A good example in this article is, if you live on the coast, you're probably going to have a greater fear of hurricanes than somebody who lives in the Midwest, who's probably gonna have a greater fear of tornadoes, especially lately, for goodness sake, Yes, God,

what is going on? It's tornadoes, man. Um. And then there's some that are like you literally have to live in this particular society to experience this fear kind of not necessarily because I sometimes experienced this fear. Um, there's one in Japan called taijien kiofusho kyofusio, right, which is basically a cult cultural bound Japanese fear of inadvertently um irritating,

offending or offending somebody by being overly respectful or polite. Yeah, so not only are you afraid of, you know, offending somebody by being disrespectful or not polite enough, there's a threshold where you could be overly polite and an offensive one, and there's there's a fear of reaching that point. Right, Or if you're the president, you might now have a fear of giving a toast in England incorrectly, I have a fear of seeing that again. That was mortifying, It

was it was so uncomfortable to watch. If you don't know that. The President Obama recently went to England for a state visit and apparently had a gaff or two in his toast in front of a lot of people, Like he raised his glass first, and the queen is supposed to do that first, and she kept he had his glass and did you see, she just kept looking

down a well. He was giving a toast during the national anthem to her right, not realizing that everybody wasn't being quiet, not because they were listening to his tasted, because they were respectfully being quiet during the national anthem, which he was trying to talk over that. The aftermath was so awful because he looked around, he realized that no one else's glasses raised, and he just quietly put

his glass. It was awful. So he also signed the Queen's guest Book and dated it like May eleven, two eight, So apparently Obahamas living in two thousand and eight. I think he was nervous. Does all get out in Ireland? He drank a pine of guinness at everybody. Well, that's because that's the only rule Ireland has. You go to England and they probably give him a dossier of like, don't do this. He was probably chicken in his boots. Well put, chuck, That's why we don't go in state

visits to England much so chuck. Yes um. We have talked about fear, right, yes um. And we also talked about, well we foreshadowed I think fear extinction, right um. John Watson was planning on basically making a little all Albert's fears go away through a process called fear extinction, which is a type of conditioning. But it's like the reversal of it. Yeah, we should point out the reason this is important is because fear is okay in doses because it is a survival tool. But it's not good to

live in constant fear. It's not good for your body because it just reeks havoc on your internal systems because of fight or flight is so intense exactly, it lowers your immune system, you know, it raises the heart, blood pressure, all that stuff. I think we talked about that. And can you scare someone to death? Yes? Yeah, um, so fear extinction. Well, any kind of fear conditioning is say, hitting a claw hammer on a um on a piece of metal behind a baby's head whenever he touches a

little white rat. Right. The opposite of that is having the baby touch a little white rat and not making that horrible sound. You can also say, um, condition rats to fear a sound like just the tone like a ding by giving them an electric shock in their change. Every time that thing sounds, they're gonna come to fear. That sound if you make that ding without delivering the shock. Eventually,

this fear memory, this conditioned fear, is going to be unlearned. Yes, And uh, one thing that they learned out of that that was pretty interesting is that they theorize that the extinction memories form in the amygdala, but instead of staying there, they're transferred to the medial prefinal cortex to be stored. So, uh, it's still triggered in the amygdala, but that's where the new learned non fear resides, right, they think that's what they think that because it's the brain, it's all of

them to theory. The deal with the extinction too is exposure. So one of the things that they'll do is, um, let's say, if you're afraid of heights, they'll ench you closer and closer to the edge of the building until you realize, like, all right, nothing's happening in here. It's cool, I'm not falling off. And then eventually, if you're exposed

to this enough, supposedly you can reverse some of these fears. Um. That's that's general like behavioral psychology, just little by little, because you're making smaller you're making memories every time I didn't get bitten this time. That's weird, So maybe I'll go a little further. I didn't get bitten again, and then ultimately you're like, I'm probably not gonna get bitten, so I don't need to be afraid. And that's when you get bitten, you're done. Have you ever did you

used to watch the Bob Newhart show? Which old Yeah, the not the old one, that the old old one, the one from the seven Yes, um there was, Yes, there's a great one called um flying the Unfriendly Skies where he took like a group, one of his groups that was afraid of flying a plane. And it's hilarious. I was watching it today. Penny Marshall's the stewardess, said young young just starting out. Penny Marshall, Bob Newhart equals national treasure, agreed, I said it, So, Chuck, if the

cognitive behavioral treatment is not working, how got some drugs? Man? Yeah, what's the deal with this? Well, there's a protein in our brains called n M D A and methyl d spirate, right, and it's in the a magdala and if you inhibit it, so this is a double negative. If you inhibit it, you also inhibit fear extinction. So science is reason if you promote UM an m d A, right, then you will also promote fear extinction. And they're finding that that's

actually the case. There's a tuberculosis drug and antibiotic that promotes the production of the protein and m d A, and they give it to people um and then give them exposure therapy as well, right, because the whole deal is they don't want to try and replace it with a drug, but it just speeds up the classic conditioning experiment and the the I guess a trial with rats

has proven this is possible. They condition them to to fear a sound or a light or something with electric shocks classical conditioning, and then said, well, here we're gonna inject you with this tuberculous of antibiotic and the rats that um uh, we're on the drug learned fear extinction faster than the ones that we're doing it without the drug. Right.

Can we talk about one more experiment that we didn't cover, And this is neat but itself this just sort of hinky to me because you and we talked earlier about the thrill of being afraid. That's why people go to horror movies. That's why they get on roller coasters, and people say that it's it can be akin to uh sexual arousal. And this dude name Arthur Aaron did an

experiment which I thought was a little odd. He had men walked across uh a suspension bridge, two different bridges, one and these were four fifty ft long over a two d and thirty ft gully. One bridge was very stable, one bridge was not and very shaky, and he had the men walk across this. At the other end of the bridge, he had his very attractive female assistant waiting, asked him some some red herring questions that didn't have anything to do with the experiment, and then said, oh,

and here's my number if you have any questions. Apparently three of the men, who of the thirty three men, only two sorry called the woman afterward who walked across the stable bridge. The guys that walked on the shaky bridge, nine of the thirty three called her bam proven No. I guess they just were like I can do anything. What's your number? Or they're like, hey, I'm really turned on because I almost just died. What's your number? What's your number? Or I'm going to call you so choke?

What do you do if you have like if you don't really want the drugs, you're you're not um debilitated. And I should also say, the National Institutes of Health say about nineteen million people in the United States alone, so for from mental illnesses that involve irrational fear responses, so everything from like a phobia, panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, nineteen million people in the US alone. I

wan't I thought more than that, really. Yeah, but let's say you're not one of these people where you're not clinically afraid, but you still don't like heights or you know, you can get on a plane, but you are not happy. What are the eight tips? Well, one, Josh, is that

it doesn't matter why you're scared. So it's not like to develop a big understanding of your fear helps you overcome it actually delays that progress is what they say as what prevention magazines, because number two says learn about the thing you fear, right, I guess, not why you're scared, but to learn more about it, like maybe injecting rationality like this is how often plane actually goes down or something like that. Yes, take baby steps, train yourself to

not be afraid hanging around someone who's not afraid of that. Like, if you're afraid of heights, hanging around with me, because I'm not afraid of heights. Talk about it, because sharing out loud makes things better. Uh, play mind games with yourself like that. And they used the classic example of picturing a crowd naked. If you're speaking in front of him. I've heard that you're that. That does not help, and

it may actually make things worse. I could see that, and uh, don't look at the big picture, just look at each little one step at a time, and uh, seek help. If you have like really irrational fear, go talk to someone. Seek help. Indeed, and seek this article. You got anything else, So seek this article by typing fear f e A R, not f E r E

into the search part. How stuff works dot com is gonna bring up this article and some other cool stuff, right, yes, um, And since I said that, Chuck, you know what time it is. That's right, you know what the real is. It's time for listener, mate, Josh, I'm gonna call this Hellos from Kazakhstan. Yeah, I just read an article in the New Yorker about Kazakhstan and it's new capital. Um.

I believe it's called like Astana. Um. Yeah, Astana, the the president of kazakh Stein like just has sunk billions into creating a new capital in the middle of the steps of the country. Good for him. And Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world by land mass. It also shares the longest border in the world. Uh. It shares it with the Sobviet. Wow, you're just recalling

all this too. It's very impressive. Uh. And I told this guy that I would make fun of his accent and read it as Borat and he said, I love it. Nice and he literally titled it Hellos from Kazakhstan. Uh. Your podcast is being played in Astana, Kazakhstan. That's the capital, all right, so he lives. I discovered your podcast when I once bought an iPod gizmo. I start did my discovery of American culture when I won scholarship to study

my twelfth grade in American high school. That was an awesome year for a guy who has never been to McDonald's in his life and has never sat in nice single seat student desks. I guess they said on benches also include the traditional yellow school buses. I live with great host family who further showed me culture. After graduating high school, I want another scholarship to study at Canadian college. As you have guessed. In four years in Canada, my

mentality got syncd with Northern American culture. Now I am back in Kazakhstan and got job in I T Field. I get stop that. Stop that, No, you gotta keep going, you gotta finish. I am writing all of this because every day on my way to work I listened to podcast, and you guys always bring back good memories of USA and Canada. For fifty minutes, I feel as if I am in USA in Canada. I hope this feeling never

goes away. You also make me smile and laugh in uses, and I look like idiot to other gray faces and bus other what gray faces? I guess it just means stinky commuters in kindict time. But the last I wish everyone here understood English to listen to you guys, so they should start their day with smile. Thanks for great work and share of American culture is get and he had been, which means regards and that is from Gaza atte Gizatt he was thrilled that I would be making

fun of his exit. That is awesome. Thank you, Zat. We are glad to keep you entertained and say hello to boor At for us. Yeah who is actually British? You know? Kay? Alright, just play and Freddie Mercury is he really? That'll be great? Yeah wait our guy? No, no, no, not not he's at Giza. We appreciate that. Um, if you are afraid of something weird, we want to hear about it. That includes you to Gazatte. We want to know. Um. Send us an email at Stuff Podcast at how stuff

works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you