0:00

Hey, it's Salim

0:02

Rishamwala. This is more

0:04

than a feeling from ten percent happier.

0:08

Today, we're talking about tears. It's

0:11

inevitable working on a show about emotions

0:14

that big feelings come up

0:16

in the creative process. On our

0:18

team, we've tried to create a judgment free

0:20

zone where tiers are welcome.

0:22

And that's good thing. Because

0:25

it turns out that we have some

0:27

real criers. Definitely. This

0:30

is our executive producer, Jen

0:32

Poyant, crying. She's

0:35

watching a movie that a literal tears expert

0:37

recommended for its likelihood to induce

0:40

crag. This film is called

0:42

the story of the weeping camel.

0:45

Wow. I really didn't think I would, but it's an

0:47

hour and seventeen minutes in my

0:49

legs. Definitely. Right.

0:57

But while Jen was surprised by her tears,

0:59

We know her, and honestly,

1:02

we weren't surprised. She's what

1:04

some people would call a low

1:07

threshold cryer. I know

1:09

for a fact she cries at least once a week.

1:11

No judgments Jen. It's all love.

1:14

Palace show is another producer in our show and

1:17

she and I also watched the weeping

1:19

cannibal with slightly

1:21

different results. Hey, Palace.

1:24

Hey, Selie. So I

1:27

like, you just watched

1:29

the weeping camel, and

1:32

I wanted to did you cry?

1:34

I I didn't.

1:37

I didn't cry. I also did not

1:39

cry. Are

1:42

we brokered robots?

1:45

Is there something wrong with us? Is there a

1:47

hope for us? Should we be working on a

1:49

show about emotions? I

1:51

I really I really hope we're not broken.

1:55

A quick recap, if you haven't seen the

1:57

story of weeping camel, it's

1:59

a documentary that follows the Mongolian

2:01

family in a very rural setting

2:04

And I'm not gonna totally spoil it for you,

2:06

but there's emotional music. A

2:08

camel baby is struggling to survive.

2:10

There's a human family with

2:12

their own hopes and dreams. It's

2:15

all very emotional and

2:17

seems to make a lot of people cry. People

2:20

who aren't palace and be and what

2:22

thing I've always wondered is,

2:25

is that a bad thing? If you don't cry in

2:27

situations like this, what

2:30

does it say about us? What

2:32

2 it say about me? Palace,

2:36

what do you think is the difference between

2:38

someone who cries of this movie and someone

2:41

who doesn't? Is there a difference? Honestly,

2:44

I have no clue. Yeah.

2:47

I I don't know. I don't

2:49

want it to be true, obviously. Like,

2:51

I don't have this like picture of me as a

2:53

broken but also what

2:55

I'm thinking about too is just Is

2:57

there a right emotional expression? Is there

2:59

a right version of emotional expression? Should

3:02

I be concerned if I don't feel what other people

3:04

feel? I do think there's something to

3:06

feeling out of sync with these, like,

3:08

emotional moments. Fair.

3:11

You know, For the record, I've never

3:13

thought of you as a broken person. But I do feel

3:15

like society could kind of make us

3:17

feel that way, maybe. I don't

3:20

know I don't know what's actually true here.

3:22

One thing I do know is that

3:24

I 2 understand it better. I wanna understand

3:26

tears in general better.

3:29

But I am curious what's going on

3:31

here. Should we learn how to

3:33

cry here? Or should we be changing the way we're

3:35

thinking about the weeping Campbell? Wanna

3:38

know about all of it. So today

3:40

on the show, we're gonna dive into the science,

3:43

mystery, and meeting of

3:45

our tears. We're gonna talk

3:47

to two very different experts on

3:49

crying and tears as a whole. One of them

3:51

is a self proclaimed cry baby

3:53

who years suppressing

3:55

his tears until one day. He decided

3:57

to go to some extremes to get them

3:59

back. And then we're

4:01

gonna meet the scientists who recommended

4:04

this movie to us. He has got some

4:06

pretty intriguing answers to our big

4:08

questions about 2. Like, whether me

4:10

and Palace are fundamentally broken because we're

4:12

not moved to tiers by the place of

4:14

adorable camels. There is

4:16

a lot more to come on tiers

4:18

from inside the lab and out there

4:20

in real life. Stick around.

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5:56

Welcome back. Reverend

5:59

Benjamin Perry started out

6:01

thinking his crying was

6:03

a big

6:04

problem. A minister at middle

6:06

church in New York City. And for the purposes of

6:08

this interview, I'm a cried baby. When Ben

6:10

was growing up, they got a lot of mixed

6:12

messages about their tears. I cried

6:14

very easily. I was a sensitive kid,

6:16

pretty bookish, was bullied a fair

6:18

amount, and I had a lot

6:20

of internalized homophobia, behavioral,

6:23

10 issues, all sorts of things going on

6:25

as a child. So I was very

6:27

emotional, very quick to cry.

6:29

I was very fortunate to grow up in

6:32

a house where that was never

6:34

demonized. I had parents who were pretty open and

6:36

expressive about their own emotions. Who

6:38

certainly never criticized me for having

6:40

my own. That being said,

6:42

I also grew up in a country

6:44

where I absolutely received those messages. And so I

6:46

have lots of memories being

6:48

very young, seeing other

6:51

particularly boys in my class crying

6:53

and being mocked by our other

6:55

classmates. And so I remember

6:58

seeing those things happen and

7:00

making a mental note to myself like,

7:02

oh, if you're gonna cry, you need

7:04

to not cry in front of other people. So

7:06

I started crying behind closed doors.

7:09

My middle school man had stopped

7:11

crying altogether. But

7:14

that actually didn't stop the bullying.

7:16

So when they got to college, they

7:18

decided to try a different tactic.

7:20

So I joined a fraternity. I

7:22

was, like, a a very very

7:24

different human being and I was, like, always 2

7:26

the gym and I was, you know, like, really

7:29

putting on a a kind of drag,

7:31

you know, this this like very masculine macho.

7:33

Like, I'm one of the boys thing that, like,

7:36

never ever for a second felt.

7:39

Healthy or genuine, but

7:41

all of a sudden I was accepted

7:44

in a way socially that I had never

7:46

been to that point. But

7:48

Ben started to feel more and more

7:50

disconnected from his emotions and

7:53

from himself. And

7:55

after college, when he went to Seminary

7:57

school? Well, right away,

7:59

he realized he needed some of those

8:01

emotions back. I remember

8:03

my first year of Seminary having professor

8:06

asking us to just think back to like a moment of

8:08

10 intense grief. It was the last time you wept.

8:10

And I realized that I couldn't remember.

8:12

And all these other class inmates were going around and

8:14

sharing these stories of deep grief for weeping

8:17

or in and they were beautiful

8:19

and powerful and touching, and I

8:21

realized I had nothing. Like I had

8:23

maybe some memories as a kid,

8:25

but I did not have anything that was even

8:27

closely remotely recent. And

8:30

so I went home that day

8:32

and was really seized with this

8:34

conviction that, like, especially if I was gonna be a minister,

8:36

especially if I was gonna try to provide care to other

8:38

people 2 being so clearly and

8:40

obviously divorced from my own emotions to the

8:42

degree that I had not cried in a

8:44

decade was probably not gonna

8:46

not help me in that work. And so I

8:49

started this experiment where I just forced

8:51

myself to cry every day. But what's

8:53

so cool about your story to be is you

8:55

were like, Oh, I'm

8:57

gonna do a very direct exploration

8:59

of this and cry

9:01

every day. It's never

9:03

occurred to me to try to cry

9:05

in a really regular way. It it's

9:07

almost in the way that someone might approach

9:10

exercise or something like that.

9:13

Yeah. Oh, and that's that's a hundred

9:15

percent how I was thinking about it in my mind at

9:17

the time. I should also say the seminary,

9:19

particularly the first year of seminary. Is

9:21

like a really radically intense time. It's

9:23

a time of where you're like really digging into

9:25

a lot of what you believe about the world, what believe

9:27

about your self down to your

9:29

basic philosophical assumptions about the

9:31

world and having them really radically shaken

9:33

and changed. You know, first year,

9:35

seminarians are sort of want to acts

9:37

of emotional and, you know, personal extremity.

9:39

But, yeah, I I really approached it with that kind

9:41

of discipline in the same way that, you know, I I used

9:43

to lift weights I was like, I'm gonna really

9:45

be intentional about it and I'm gonna be

9:47

regimented about it in the same way that I would approach anything

9:49

else. What does

9:50

that literally look like? What's it look like when

9:52

you sit down And

9:54

what's that day one

9:55

like? I went back literally

9:58

afternoon after this class and I was

10:00

like, okay, I'm gonna make myself cry. And I

10:02

remember being surprised by

10:04

how hard it was. I think I

10:06

thought, oh, crying.

10:09

Like, It's a thing that, like, everybody

10:11

does. So, like, yeah. Like, I'll just go back to

10:13

my little studio apartment, and I

10:15

will just make myself cry how hard

10:17

can it be. And I remember sitting

10:19

down and just sort of

10:21

being like, okay. Like,

10:23

cry. Like, go for it, buddy.

10:25

Like, here's the time. Like, I've told you no

10:27

for for a decade with them. Here's the

10:29

moment. Like, here my dear ducks.

10:31

And nothing happened. And so then I

10:33

said, oh, okay. I'll I'll,

10:35

like, watch some things that make other people

10:37

cry, so that I started, like, looking at

10:39

those videos of soldiers coming back from

10:41

war and their dogs run up to create them or any

10:43

of the kinds of things that you'll see on, like, now this

10:45

or whatever where they're like, oh, this heartwarming

10:48

moment, like, the mother has accepted her gaze

10:50

on there. You know, like, I need these these kinds

10:52

of sort of cultural tropes. I love that it's

10:54

2, let's just Google some stuff and see if I could do

10:56

that. Literally, I was like, yeah. Let me just, like, bring up

10:58

some some things that like might make me cry.

11:00

Come on. And again, you know, it's not that I

11:02

didn't feel the emotion. I

11:04

could name my emotions, I would

11:06

say, oh, that sad. It's just

11:08

I had no depth anymore.

11:10

I could sort of feel

11:12

the shape of an emotion or I could

11:14

say, oh, yes. That's happy. That's sad. But

11:17

all of my emotions were closer

11:19

to that you know, baseline state of

11:21

just existing than they were to

11:23

any kind of heightened sensation. And

11:25

so then I started really

11:27

digging into my own relationships in my

11:29

life. I started really thinking

11:31

back on things that

11:33

happened to me as a kid that were really

11:35

painful or thinking

11:37

back to moments

11:40

that I experience loneliness or

11:42

loss, those kinds of things. And again,

11:44

still the eyes were not doing

11:46

it. I remember the

11:48

thing that finally did it was I was

11:50

thinking about I'm very very close with

11:52

my parents and so I was thinking about

11:54

what would I say to them if they were dying?

11:56

And if they died, like, right now at that

11:59

time, like, what would go on-site? At that point, I hadn't

12:01

come out to them yet. There were just lots of

12:03

things that I would have loved to have told them if

12:05

the road ended there. And all of a sudden,

12:07

I noticed feeling

12:09

some of those physiological

12:12

yeah, huge for crying, your breath

12:14

getting a little bit more ragged,

12:17

your throat 2 to catch, and

12:19

I and I was attuned enough

12:21

to those physical responses that I was

12:23

like, okay, we're we're on the right track.

12:25

Like, we're not there yet. And so then I just kept, like,

12:27

hitting that emotional hammer again

12:29

and again and again just thinking about the

12:31

same moment, just focusing

12:33

on like what would I tell

12:35

them, how deeply I love them, how grateful

12:37

I was for the way that they raised me, for

12:39

how much they meant to me. And I just just

12:41

going over and over and over and over again. And eventually,

12:44

I got myself to the point where

12:46

I started crying. And

12:48

then in that moment, it

12:51

was like something broke. I

12:53

I had kept everything so

12:55

suppressed for so long. That

12:58

when all of a sudden I started crying,

13:00

it was like this switch

13:02

flipped and I just was a

13:04

mess. Afterwards,

13:07

that evening, I was like, whoa.

13:09

Oh my god. Like, I I

13:11

felt alive in a different kind of way that I

13:13

had not felt in a very long time. And

13:15

so that was the affirmation

13:17

for me that I needed to keep doing

13:19

this. I would go back

13:21

at the end of my classes before

13:23

I would go out, I would go and do my

13:25

homework, and I would read my books and write my

13:27

papers, and I would make myself

13:29

cry. It's still was

13:31

very hard for quite some time. I

13:33

still had to, like, really

13:35

devote a lot of care and 10 and energy

13:37

to to make myself cry. As this

13:39

sort of months wore on,

13:42

it became easier and easier.

13:44

And then I started noticing the the most

13:46

interesting thing, which was that I

13:48

all of a sudden I was just crying normally.

13:50

Mhmm. Or I would be in a a chapel service and

13:52

I would hear a gorgeous piece of music

13:54

and the light would strike in the right way and I

13:56

would just feel that awe, that sensation of

13:58

being overwhelmed by the beauty and wonder of

14:00

-- Mhmm. -- of the world, and then I would start

14:02

to 2 up I was

14:05

struck again by how

14:07

similar it sounds to

14:10

exercise. The same weight might

14:12

seem lighter. Six

14:14

months in -- Mhmm. -- and

14:16

might not even feel like much of a weight,

14:18

that very first day weight

14:20

that you were lifting, and

14:22

It sounds like you kinda cross the threshold.

14:26

I stopped actually because I was just so

14:28

regularly crying in the rest of

14:30

my life. That I was like,

14:32

well, I don't need to do this anymore. If I if I

14:34

missed a day crying, I have

14:36

clearly I have so dramatically shifted

14:38

my emotional baseline to the point that I

14:40

am now just somebody who cries pretty regularly.

14:44

Becoming a quote unquote

14:46

cry baby was a

14:48

big change for Ben. But

14:50

he didn't tell anyone about it first.

14:53

I definitely didn't tell

14:55

my friends I I think

14:57

I was a little ashamed actually at

14:59

not being able to cry. I

15:01

did tell my partner my

15:03

my now wife Aaron. That was the

15:05

beginning of our relationship too, which is really

15:07

interesting. Your partner was there.

15:09

Sometimes. Yeah. Mostly, I would do it

15:11

myself. But

15:11

Yeah. She was there for the whole a fair

15:14

match. Yeah. So someone you were in a relationship with

15:17

pretty early on. Yeah. To see

15:19

you go from a non cryer

15:21

to a

15:21

cryer. Yeah. I think she would say

15:23

that I changed a ton in

15:25

those first year that we

15:27

were together. So I think over the course of that

15:30

year, combination of this very

15:32

intense crying experiment that I had

15:34

undertaken and

15:36

just the beginning of a seminary

15:38

career that also really

15:40

forced me to be in

15:42

situations that were very intense and

15:44

made sure that I was aware of

15:46

my own emotional life. I

15:48

became a very very different emotionally

15:50

attuned person and I think a better partner,

15:52

a better friend, a better human

15:54

being than I was when we

15:56

first met. What's changed about the way

15:58

you interact with the world since

16:00

you became someone of

16:02

Christ? Yeah.

16:05

That's that's an incredible question. And

16:07

it's it's the thing that I I care

16:09

most deeply about. The thing that

16:11

I I value and cherish most

16:13

about having learned to cry

16:15

again is the way that has connected

16:17

me in so many

16:19

incredible, wonderful ways with the world,

16:21

with my friends, with

16:23

my relatives, with all these these

16:25

folks who I love. Being a a

16:27

minister is an interesting job.

16:29

I oftentimes in situations

16:32

that are very intimate with people's marriages,

16:34

people's funerals, visiting

16:36

people who are sick in the hospital. Also

16:38

a lot of the public theology kind of stuff that

16:40

I've done, knowing the places like standing rock or

16:42

the border, talking with folks who are experiencing

16:46

unimaginable political oppression, and

16:48

being able to just be there

16:50

as another human being connecting them in that

16:52

moment. Being in tune with

16:54

my own emotions helps me fully show up in

16:56

those situations. It lets

16:58

me really listen

17:01

carefully to what people are saying. It

17:03

really makes me more attuned to some of what

17:05

is left unsaid. Well, hearing you talk

17:07

about that shift that got

17:10

you personally in

17:12

touch. It makes me

17:14

wonder a little bit

17:17

Because what you did

17:17

2, I think, the common listener and

17:21

myself, it's it's just speaking the most

17:23

statistical sense, it's extreme. Right? Like,

17:25

honestly, very few people have it gaged on an

17:27

intentional crying project like

17:29

this. One thing I wanna I wanna I wanna try to get

17:31

straight in my own head. So, like, you could imagine

17:34

somebody who as a

17:36

frequent hiker being like,

17:38

hey, everyone should try hiking at least once.

17:40

And that seems really reasonable. Right?

17:42

You could imagine someone who has

17:44

climbed Mount Everest It would be

17:47

unreasonable for them to be like, oh,

17:49

anyone should climb out ever. Right?

17:51

Where does this experiment fall

17:53

in how advise other

17:55

people to try

17:57

experimenting with

17:57

Craig. Yeah. I've never told

18:00

anybody. Oh, you know what you should do? crying

18:02

every day. Am I ever happy you? Yeah.

18:04

That'd be a weird thing to tell

18:06

anybody to do. You certainly don't

18:08

need to go out and and go home

18:10

and they cry every day in order

18:12

to reclaim a fuller emotional life to have

18:14

a better relationship with tears, to

18:17

unlearned some of the ways that we're taught to suppress what we're experiencing.

18:19

Like, that is not requisite.

18:22

It's a thing that I did, and I think part of

18:24

the reason why I kept doing it was because

18:26

it felt really good. I wanna just sort of name

18:28

that that was a big part of it was that when I

18:30

would cry, I would feel really

18:32

really great. But what I would say is

18:34

that I think being

18:36

able to have a more intentional

18:38

relationship with our tears is something that

18:40

everybody can do. You don't have to go

18:42

and abuse yourself into crying

18:44

every day. But I think with some intentionality, you can

18:46

explore why you

18:48

don't cry because all of us

18:50

cried at some point. It's

18:52

a it is a universal experience. Like, we all started

18:54

out crying. Like, that's a thing that that's like the primary

18:56

way the babies communicate with the world. And at

18:58

some point, a number of us lost

19:01

that ability. And I think digging

19:03

into sort of sort of the why

19:05

of why crying is

19:07

suppressed is really important

19:09

in recovering that

19:11

ability. truly feel again. Every

19:13

person can explore their relationship

19:15

with tears. All of us can try

19:17

to spend some time cultivating

19:19

a fuller emotional life. And I think that if

19:21

we do and when we do, we benefit

19:23

the people around us benefit. I

19:26

think you know, culturally as as a society

19:28

we would benefit. Ben

19:31

says that to cry or not

19:34

to cry is not really the question. The

19:36

bigger issue is how our shame

19:38

about crying can keep us from

19:40

exploring our inner worlds.

19:42

There's so much shame that we

19:45

grow up with about when and if we do

19:47

cry. And then 10 we get

19:49

older, there's so much shame that

19:51

people have, particularly as like this is

19:53

now more of a cultural conversation. And that

19:55

shame is not helpful. It's not helpful when

19:57

we experience it in ways that make a

19:59

stop crying in the first place. Whether we cry

20:01

every day or we cry once a

20:03

month, what the goal should be is having a

20:05

rich emotional life and

20:07

full access to what we're feeling and

20:09

experiencing. That's a great distinction.

20:11

The distinction between this

20:14

binary of crying or not crying. That

20:18

as a distinct thing from whether or not

20:20

you feel shame about crying

20:22

or not crying. I really really like

20:24

that distinction. The symbol

20:27

I keep coming back to is

20:29

I feel like in the same way that like gets

20:31

refracted through a drop

20:33

of water into the

20:35

rainbow spectrum that we see. I

20:38

think the crying is this incredible prism that

20:40

refracts a myriad

20:42

of human experiences. And when we

20:44

start talking about crying, all

20:46

of a sudden, we're not just talking about crying. We're actually talking about

20:49

racism. We're actually talking about patriarchy. We're

20:51

actually talking about internalized

20:54

shame. We're actually talking about fear. We're actually

20:56

talking about climate anxiety. We're actually

20:58

talking about our hope,

21:01

our urinating. Our desire to be

21:03

different or desire to accept ourselves

21:05

fully, like by opening that

21:07

door, talking about crying, we open

21:09

the door to a thousand other kinds of

21:11

transformation. A couple

21:14

of the emotional

21:16

doors Ben was able to open

21:18

after they got their tears back, led to

21:21

some pretty awesome stuff. In

21:24

your bio, The

21:26

last line is amazing. It

21:28

says his two proudest achievements

21:30

are skydiving with his

21:32

grandmother and winning first prize in his

21:34

Seminary Drag Show. Yes. Can I ask you what the

21:36

drag persona was that won your

21:38

Seminary Drag Show? Yes. It was

21:40

Princess Split Timber, and I

21:42

did a whole big

21:44

choreographed number that ended with

21:46

me in an inverted cross in

21:48

the shadow of this actual massive cross that

21:50

we had at the seminary. In

21:53

a gorgeous black

21:56

number. Ben says we

21:58

don't really need to do what he did to

22:00

have a rich emotional life. But

22:02

for him getting his tears back

22:04

was so pivotal to having

22:06

the life he wanted.

22:09

Thanks to Ben Perry, Reverend and

22:12

Author of Crybaby coming out this

22:14

spring. Ben's

22:16

personal story Kind of with me wondering

22:18

what science has to say about our

22:20

tears and what they do for our emotional

22:22

lives. So when we

22:24

come back, we pose question to the

22:26

2 guy. A scientist

22:28

who has literally collected

22:30

tears in little tardy test tubes

22:33

held to people's eyes while they watch

22:35

super sad things. I'm

22:37

not kidding. It's really that.

22:39

That's how he does it. After the

22:42

break. Hey, I'm

22:45

Dan Harris,

22:46

and my podcast ten percent

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slash

24:23

listening. For Advingerowicz,

24:26

a scientific interest

24:28

in tears started where so

24:30

many good things do at a

24:32

dinner

24:32

party. I was at a party and one

24:34

of the other guests approached me.

24:37

And she said, I often read

24:39

that crying is healthy. But

24:41

is that really true? What's

24:43

the scientific status of that statement?

24:45

And I found that a very intriguing question

24:48

and I promised, I don't know. I don't know

24:50

the answer, but I will try to look

24:52

it up in the scientific literature.

24:54

But I couldn't find any relevant

24:58

literature. Advingerowicz is a former

25:00

professor of emotions and

25:02

well-being. At Tilleberg University in the Netherlands.

25:04

He was already an expert in

25:06

stress and emotion when he got asked this

25:08

intriguing question about the purpose

25:11

of tears. And whether we

25:13

benefit from shedding them. So

25:15

he started looking into it and checking out the

25:17

theories on what tears were for in

25:19

the first place. There are

25:21

theories going back as far as Charles

25:23

Darwin about the purpose, tears,

25:25

and crying might serve for our

25:27

survival. Like flushing out

25:29

irritants, for example, when you're cutting onions or

25:32

babies making noise to get attention.

25:34

But even after we learn new ways

25:36

to communicate our needs, The

25:38

tears still fall, Ed says,

25:41

we still need the love and

25:43

protection and advice of

25:45

our parents and other adults.

25:48

And so tears and crying

25:50

are effectively developed

25:52

to elicit the

25:55

necessary support. As

25:57

we get older, we cry less

25:59

out of hunger or to signal dirty

26:01

diapers, and more about the

26:03

emotional hurdles we face. And

26:05

our tears connect us to people

26:07

who might help. But what exactly

26:09

are we crying about? Ad

26:11

says there's a few major triggers.

26:14

So the first is loss as separation

26:16

and that stays important all

26:18

over the lifespan from the cradle to

26:20

the grave that's important.

26:23

Powerlessness being overwhelmed.

26:25

That's also important all over the

26:27

lifespan. And some of those

26:29

triggers change over

26:31

time. But then tears in reaction to

26:33

physical pain and physical

26:36

discomfort that's very important for

26:38

babies and children until

26:41

puberty, but adults and the

26:43

elderly. We hardly if

26:45

ever cry because of

26:47

physical pain. That's very

26:49

unusual, that we see when we grow older,

26:51

that we start to cry more

26:54

for empathic reasons. So

26:56

we do not just cry because of the

26:58

suffering and and pain of

27:01

ourselves, but also of the

27:03

suffering and pain of others.

27:05

So we develop our empathic skills

27:07

and even if it's fiction, the

27:09

hat characters are a movie or a

27:11

book can make us cry. And also,

27:15

when we become older is that

27:17

we see an increase in our

27:19

produce to cry because of

27:21

positive and sentimental reasons.

27:23

I've noticed that changing myself.

27:26

I've basically never cried as a

27:28

teenager or in my twenties, but

27:31

getting older becoming a dad, I

27:33

definitely cry a bit more.

27:35

Ad talked about this as a shift in

27:37

what he calls our crying

27:40

threshold. Some people have low

27:42

thresholds and cry often,

27:44

like Jen looking at a sad

27:46

camel, while others don't

27:48

cry unless under significant emotional

27:50

pressure. And a number of things

27:52

can affect our thresholds. Crying

27:54

runs in families, but

27:56

lack of sleep, hormone levels,

27:59

substance abuse, near death experiences

28:01

and trauma can all affect

28:03

our relationship to our tears. Do

28:05

you have people who

28:07

have experienced near death

28:10

experience or who have

28:12

survived a heart attack or

28:14

cancer, they often become

28:16

more emotional. I had a colleague who

28:18

once told me that one of

28:20

these patients, they were enjoying a

28:22

meal in the restaurant, and then

28:24

suddenly he bursts out in

28:26

tears. And the other family

28:28

members who were attending that

28:30

dinner, they were surprised

28:32

and asked what's happening. And

28:34

he said, Oh, just I like soul so

28:36

much. Wow. We gotta

28:38

find out the name of that restaurant.

28:40

I'm curious, what would you

28:42

say to somebody who's listening and is like, oh,

28:45

I cry all the

28:47

time. Am I okay? Or,

28:50

you know, some people who maybe

28:52

don't cry at all and are wondering,

28:54

oh, is there something

28:57

necessarily wrong with me? Here, well, the

28:59

association between crying

29:01

and whether you are okay or

29:03

not is not that strong. There's an

29:05

interesting example of

29:07

a British comedian who

29:09

kept track of the crying of

29:11

his wife. And it's really

29:13

bizarre. He cries for really

29:16

everything. When she heard that

29:18

swans could also be gay,

29:20

she cried. It

29:22

was just she she had a

29:24

slow crying threshold. This might

29:26

be not often

29:28

easy to have in daily life,

29:30

of course, and you might not always

29:32

feel comfortable with it. But but it's

29:34

okay. Ad says that some people

29:36

who struggle with depression, cry

29:38

more, but some people who are

29:40

depressed, lose the capacity to

29:42

cry. So at the end of the day, it's hard

29:44

to establish what amount of crying is

29:46

quote unquote normal.

29:49

But the question that sparked adds

29:51

curiosity in the first place wasn't

29:53

about how much crime was

29:55

normal. Those were their good cry

29:57

is actually good for us or

29:59

not. So when he dove into his

30:01

own research, That's the big question he took

30:03

on. Here's when we get to those tidy test

30:05

tubes of tears that we

30:07

bedged. His experiments worked

30:09

like this. Collecting

30:12

tears, I mean, it sounds like something that you

30:14

do when you're in like a

30:16

fantasy novel to prepare

30:18

ingredients forecasting a spell

30:20

or something. What does it look like?

30:23

How do you collect

30:26

tears? We had a kind of test tube and

30:28

a small mirror that people

30:30

could could collect the tears that

30:32

they see where they run and drive.

30:34

So I love this surreal sci

30:37

fi vibe of this image. He

30:40

literally gets people to hold little

30:43

mirrors up in front of their eyes and sticks the test

30:45

tube there and collects the

30:47

drops. And he does this by

30:49

having them sit in front of

30:51

very sad movies. I

30:53

don't think I've ever tried to

30:56

make someone cry

30:58

on purpose. How do you

31:00

choose the movie that will make people

31:03

cry? Well, yeah,

31:05

that's based on trial and

31:07

error. We worked mainly with

31:09

two movies. The first

31:11

was once were a Warriors. Hatchy

31:13

about the dog. You know it.

31:15

It's Oh, yeah. But another very

31:18

interesting movie is the weeping

31:21

camel. So that's the sweet spot, sad animal

31:23

movies. But the results of

31:25

his research yielded more

31:27

than some good movie recommendations

31:30

He told me about one study where he and his colleagues

31:32

tried to find evidence that crying brings

31:34

emotional relief and has a positive effect

31:36

on a person's mood. Add

31:38

also studied who actually benefits from

31:40

crying and what conditions need to be present to

31:42

allow for that benefit. You need

31:45

to be in a good mental

31:47

shape to benefit from your

31:50

cry. Whereas for example, people

31:52

who are depressed or who

31:54

suffer from a burnout, So,

31:56

actually, those who need it

31:58

mood improvement, they do not

32:00

benefit from crying. Wow.

32:03

That seems so unfair. We learned

32:05

earlier that tears function to get

32:07

us the emotional support we need.

32:11

But if your tears aren't received

32:13

well, they start to lose their

32:15

power, like our

32:15

friend, reverend Ben Perry, he got

32:18

the message that his tears weren't

32:20

welcome and slowly but

32:22

surely they disappeared for a

32:24

long time. I had actually found that

32:26

how others react to our tears is a huge

32:28

part of whether they benefit us or

32:30

not. He decided to study a group

32:32

of people who are so relevant to the story of

32:34

bed's youth. People who

32:36

hadn't cried for over a decade,

32:38

and we compare them to

32:41

normal cries.

32:42

And we didn't find any

32:44

difference in their well-being.

32:47

But what we found was that those

32:49

who normally cry they

32:51

felt more connected to others

32:53

and they received more social

32:56

support from others. And that's

32:58

of course very important. We know of

33:00

the literature. There's a strong

33:02

literature that receiving

33:05

adequate social support from

33:07

others, especially when you are in

33:09

stressful conditions, that that's

33:11

very important, that that

33:13

can buffer the possibility that

33:15

you develop all kind of stress related

33:17

health problems. And we also

33:19

have some data suggest that people

33:21

who feel very lonely that

33:24

although they might have more reason to

33:26

cry, they cry less. So

33:28

it's again assigned that

33:31

crying especially is also about

33:33

communication and that you do

33:35

need someone that you cry

33:37

to in order to receive support

33:39

from the other. And if there is

33:41

no one available to provide

33:43

that support, then it's less likely

33:45

that you still have. If if there's no one to

33:47

receive that signal, you're less likely make that

33:49

signal. So that's again another

33:52

indication that function

33:54

of crying, it must be searched

33:57

for in the interpersonal domain. It's

33:59

about communication. Tiers

34:02

Connect. Tiers provide support

34:04

to us when we needed it.

34:06

That's a great takeaway. Thank you so much.

34:08

Well, I would like to thank you

34:10

for your interest in my work and

34:14

it was a real pleasure to chat with you about

34:16

this. So

34:18

now we know tears may

34:20

help us connect to others. But

34:23

ask for what our tears actually mean

34:25

or don't mean? Well, it's

34:28

so dependent on the context and

34:30

one's own life story. That there isn't really

34:32

an answer as to how

34:34

much if Eddie is the right

34:36

amount to cry, which is kind of

34:38

amazing and

34:40

freeing I've had times in my life where I feel like society was maybe telling

34:42

me to cry more. Definitely times as a

34:44

kid when it was telling me not to cry.

34:48

And society was kind

34:50

of random through all

34:52

that, which brings us to the big

34:54

question of the episode. So

34:56

palace. What'd you think of all

34:58

that? And very

35:01

importantly, are

35:03

we broken? I I feel like we're not broken and I

35:06

think we got our answer. Being

35:08

curious about our tears can lead to so

35:10

much more.

35:12

It doesn't really matter how much or how little we cry, actually,

35:14

but we all have to take a

35:16

look at ourselves sometimes and just try

35:19

to understand how we relate to

35:21

ourselves in the world around us. I loved when Ben said

35:24

that thing about understanding

35:26

more than just

35:28

the sheep of our

35:30

emotions. All that said,

35:32

are you thinking about crying

35:34

more? I don't know. Are

35:37

you? I'm thinking about trying

35:40

it. This is

35:43

I'm sorry to say

35:45

for the foreseeable future, the final

35:48

episode of more than a

35:50

feeling, which whether or not

35:52

you're crying is

35:54

very sad. But it does feel kind

35:56

of fitting to end the show on an

35:58

episode exploring tears. This

36:00

really visible emotional indicator that doesn't

36:02

always mean we think it does.

36:04

But is very worth thinking deeply about and

36:07

experimenting with. And hopefully,

36:09

the experiments we've done

36:11

on the show have

36:13

helped you come away with some greater understandings

36:16

of why we feel we feel

36:18

and what we might be able to do about

36:20

all that. It's been helpful

36:22

for me. I've been super

36:24

grateful to get to do this

36:26

exploring alongside

36:28

Olliello. Thank you so

36:30

much for listening. Oh, and

36:32

more than a feeling as a finalist for

36:34

a twenty twenty two signal award

36:37

for best original score music

36:39

in a podcast. Thanks to our pagan theme

36:41

song, Covey by El Michael's Fair

36:43

and Pia Malek. That

36:46

means we're eligible for a listener's choice award too, so

36:48

fans of the show and song could vote

36:50

for us if you're so inclined before

36:52

the December twenty second deadline. We'll

36:55

put a link at our show notes. More than a

36:58

feeling is produced by Paula

37:00

Shaw, Yasmeen Khan,

37:02

Riva Goldberg, Kim Baikama

37:04

and Stacia Brown.

37:06

Our executive producer is Jen Pollock.

37:08

Back checking for this episode

37:11

by Jeanette Bibby, Scoring and mixing my bat, blowing

37:13

up ultraviolet audio. Connor Donahue was our

37:16

manager of technical

37:18

operations, and very special

37:20

thanks to Patricia 2 for

37:22

her help on

37:24

this episode.

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