Short Stuff: Goosebumps

right after we left Childhood. Yeah, definitely. Um, But I have to say, if you've been on Netflix and you're looking for something scary, slashery to watch, but that's also really smart, that same dude came up with something called Fear Street. Um. It's like three part series, really really well done. Um, and it is not meant for kids at all, Like it is super gory, super graphic. Just it's like it's almost like carl Stein was like, I'm so super writing for kids, and it just went the

opposite direction. So it's definitely worth watching. Anyone on a murder spree. Yeah pretty much, man, it's really good. They shot some of those goose bumps and right around our neighborhoods. That's great man. Did you sell them? Um? Bloody Caesar's very funny, So let's start talking about goose bumps, the real goose bumps um, which is also known as pilo erection. Well, I guess somebody had to say it. Uh, nothing funny about that word, though, right, kind it's kind of funny, okay. Uh? Yeah.

Goose bumps are obviously an evolutionary holdover. And I can't believe we haven't talked about this before, but have we in just in some random yep? I think it's either that or we did like a video explainer on it or something. I know I did it. Don't be dumb, but that's not that's not it. You and I have talked about it before too. All right, Well should we just tell people to go watch you don't be dumb and sign off? No, no, no, because this is gonna

be way better than that. Don't be dumb? Okay? Uh? Well, goose bumps are evolutionary hold over. Uh and you know, sort of the and I think a lot of people know this, but one of the things that happens when you get goose bumps is ideally you have a little tiny hair standing on end um. You can also get goose bumps where there is no hair, but again, evolutionary holdover from when we were all much more furry individuals.

And you call that pilow direction, and that's because it is uh, the pilo erector muscles that are contracting and making Uh. If you do have hair, stand on in and took took when you had much more hair, stand on in. Yeah, or like you said, if you don't have hair, it's just like this kind of raised you look like a pluck goose in that that um area, which I just realizes why they call it goosebumps. You

didn't know that, are you kidding? It was one of those things like it just never stopped and thought about it. I've heard people say chicken skin too. Yeah, that makes total sense as well. But so the second function you mentioned, the first one is to keep us warm. The second one was that if we were scared back in the day when we had a lot more hair, or let's say other animals that get goose bumps um and it makes their hair stand on end. It makes them appear

bigger to a predator. So let's say fight or flight response, which is appropriate because it's part of the sympathetic nervous system. Goose bumps are but chuck. There's something really unique about goose bumps. As far as sympathetic nervous system stuff goes, it's, from what anyone can tell, the only sympathetic nervous response that can be consciously controlled. It's extremely rare, but they found that some people can give themselves goose bumps. It's

pretty awesome talent. As far as the you know, the evolutionary holdover, I don't think we said that it keeps us warm because it raises that hair up, and what happens is air gets trapped in that space between right is uh davemat Piece would say that, Dave Matthews, we would you do that to everybody? I don't even like Dave Matthews. I'm I'm not even sure how I know that song. Well, I mean he's he's got a few hits under his belt for sure, and I guess that's

one of them. Uh, So that'll help keep you warm. And as far as the puffing up to appear bigger like, you still see this all over the place in the animal kingdom. Um, whether or not you're a dog barges in on your cat and your cat puffs puffs up. It's always funny looking when a cat puffs that tail and body up. To try to appear you know, like half an inch bigger than they really are all over. But it's not just cats. You see all kinds of animals that'll that'll puff up there for or feathers, because

birds do kind of the same thing. Yeah, totally. And the whole thing is like, leave me alone. I'm way bigger than you thought, run away. Just don't even test me, right, but don't think about it, buddy. So that makes them totally useless in humans, like because we don't have enough hair to warm ourselves and we don't have enough hair to appear any bigger. So, like you said, kept calling

it an evolutionary holdover. But what's really interesting about goose bumps is somehow, some way along the way, as humans developed more and more consciousness and intelligence and our brains just kept evolving, something happened to where our goose bump

response got hijacked when we hear certain emotionally evocative things. Yeah, like if you've ever been at a live concert and gotten chills because something was so overwhelming emotionally, Yeah, like the dude from Boston like just really delivered an amazing drum solo. Uh wow, Okay, I didn't that's funny. Out of all the people in Boston, I didn't see going towards the drummer. Oh, he had the greatest afro of

all time. Of the original guy, Yeah, Barry I think, Yeah, I can't remember his name, but yeah, he had a fantastic affro. You know, all those guys went to M I T. I didn't know all of them, Did I know Tom Schultz did? I'm pretty sure all of them did, because Schultz was the guitar genius who kind of built a bunch of equipment along the way, and very technically minded guy and very kind of creepy and sad. What happened to the lead singer? Oh? I don't know about that.

You'll have to tell me um later on. Yeah, yeah, this is a shorty, so you can just google that if you're interested in people. So should we take a break? I guess yeah sure. I think we kind of buildup a cliffhanger, like why what happened? Like what how did our our goose bumps get hijacked? For when something emotional happened, specifically when we're at a live concert watching Boston. Yeah, and did they all go to M I T? And we'll find all this out right after this? All right,

so there's a guy. Uh, well, there's been a few studies about this before we get to the guy. There was a study in January in Biological psychology, and a big shout out to Jennifer Walker Journey of postal works dot com for the help with this. But uh, they did a test where they basically said, hey, let's see what kind of goose bumps, what they called subjective chills we could get out of people if we sit them down and introduce them or at least let them here

certain musics, and they chose a couple. I'm sure they chose a bunch, but the two highlighted here are Saline Dion's My Heart Will Go On and they called it a chill ratio of f and a pilo or p low erection ratio of fourteen percent. So four like goose bumps of fourteen percent. Not not bad. Four of the participants got goose bumps listening to that song, right, I think that's what that means. Yeah, but what's next. What's next is it's not even fair. They brought out the

big guns and they dropped purple rain on everybody. Not bad, and unsurprisingly Purple Rain scored a one chill ratio. Every single person in that study listening to Purple ring Head shivers up and down their spine, and half got goose bumps.

And I can tell you the exact moment in that song when everyone got chills and goose bumps, when Prince starts whaling at the end, Honey, I know, I know, I know, um vocally whaling or guitar whaling, vocally whaling when he comes in and joins like his guitar and it actually it just kind of comes out of nowhere,

but it fits so perfectly. And that actually really jibes with research that a lot of um, a lot of the things that give us goose bumps or chills down our spine are when some sort of solo vocal or instrument emerges from a more complex musical background. And that's about as good an example of that as you're gonna find. Yeah, And that to me is like a really cool thing. Is Uh. There's this guy named Mitchell Culver who I don't know I how stuff works. Got in touch with him.

They used to do interviews and stuff, but he was

an instructor. May still be at Utah State university, and he studied a lot of this stuff and basically said, you know, you have and and he put it very simplistically by saying like you have two brains essentially, but he he broke it down into thinking like you have your sort of emotional brain and then you're sort of rational thinking brain, and your emotional brain is still that sort of uh, you know, evolutionarily wired took took brain and it's it's still you know, even though we're walking

around in modern society, it's still sort of always aware and looking out for anything that might be a bad thing for you, whether it's a threat or a hole in the sidewalk, or like you when you were a kid, you'd walk into a room and identify the weapons like

you were Jason bod or something like that. Right, So the thing is, while you're constantly looking for those threats, um, eventually you mine one once in a while, or you think you do UM Because we're still wired to be worried about the the original threats that were a problem

for humans and then our animal ancestors. So very often when we see something, we're startled or we we perceive it as a threat with our emotional brain after a beat or so, when our thinking brain are more evolved, conscious brain comes in and analyzes situations like calm down, calm down, it's not even a threat, and that after that point there's attention that was built up that's now

released and it usually kind of feels pretty good. So Culvert has linked that to why we would get goose bumps or the chills with music, and I think it's a good theory. My problem with this, at least in this article is it's presented as if like this is done, We've done all the research and this is the answer we we know now, and that's absolutely not the case. Like this is a this is a theory. It's a hypothesis.

It is a good one, but it's not. It's not that's it, Like everyone just agrees that that's what's going on now. I completely agree. Um, And you know you mentioned the fact that like a uh, sort of harmonies coming out of nowhere, or when Prince's voice s melds with that guitar solo or something that is sort of the unexpected thing that can draw the or I guess build a bridge between the two brains as far as

Culver is concerned. Uh and The key of it all though, is in in modern humans, like getting those pleasurable goose bumps, and not because you're like afraid or something, is because you actually get a dopamine hit when you're getting that aesthetic uh set of goose bumps. Yes, But Culver and people who subscribed to this hypothesis I think are putting like the cart before the horse, because they're saying, when your brain resolves that it's not actually an issue, you

get a dump of dopamine. I think the dopamine comes from something else. I don't think that's necessarily what it is, because I think you can be surprised, startled, and then you know, realize you you were. You know that's that's actually not a deadly spider, it's a Fisher Price little person.

You don't get like some dump of dopamine over that. Um. So I think that there's something else too, and it seems to be specifically coming from again, an emotionally evocative song or seen in a movie or something like that, and it has to be a certain kind of emotion too.

Anger doesn't necessarily do it. It's usually something sad or something deeply like romantic, or something really hopeful just something something that's not like just like negative through and through interesting because I feel like I get chill bumps, like in a movie more when it's like sort of a chilling reveal of something and I'm like, oh my gosh,

that's what was going on that kind of thing. Okay, Well, that would definitely drive with Culver's hypothesis that it's that you anticipate one thing, or your brain thinks of one thing. When it changes your your emotional brain gets scared. It's a threat because, as he points out, like our our emotional brain there's no such thing as a pleasant surprise to it, and so when it gets startled, we're afraid. And then our thinking brain comes in it's like no, no,

it's beautiful music. Um. Again, it's a good hypothesis. I don't necessarily subscribe to the whole thing. But it doesn't seem like he's just you know, pulled this out of his hat and like that's it. Like he's definitely tested it and written papers on it and all of that. It's just not settled, I guess, is what I'm trying

to say. Like I saw another another hypothesis by guy Um named Jock J. A. K. Pond skip Um, which is a wonderful name, and they wrote a study in two thousand eleven and their hypothesis was that um that that solo voice like Prince wailing at the end of of Purple Rain or like a really great you know oboe solo emerging out of nowhere because he's expecting that right that that it mimics a separation call, and that

it riggers that sense of loss. That um that is just completely ingrained in us from the you know, millions of years of natural history that we're tuned to listen out for that, and that that's what's what's triggering that that chill or that response. I like that. I like that one too. I think I'm out. Oh yeah, are you on the Jack Pan Skip train? Yeah? I think so. I've got nothing more. Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay, great, all right, Well then that's it for short stuff. Okay,

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