0:00

Chuck, let's go over the Stuff you Should Know concert

0:02

calendar. My

0:05

friend, we are hitting the road for the Spring Had Sprung

0:07

Tour. We are going to be at the Neptune Theater and

0:09

Lovely Seattle, Washington on April eighth, my

0:11

friend. The next day, we're gonna head south

0:13

to Portland, Oregon, Revolution Hall

0:15

April night, We're going to Houston, Texas,

0:18

my friend and Warehouse

0:20

Live on Memorial

0:22

Day weekend, and finally finishing

0:24

up Denver, Colorado

0:27

at the Gothic Theater on May twenty night. Two

0:29

more dates coming. Yeah, keep your

0:31

ears out and in the meantime, if you want to get

0:33

tickets, you can go to s y s K live dot

0:35

com, power by squarespace and

0:37

we'll see you guys on the road. Welcome

0:40

to Stuff you Should Know from

0:43

House Stuff Works dot com.

0:50

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh

0:52

Clark, There's Child's w W Chuck Bryant, There's

0:54

Jerry, and this is Stuff you Should

0:56

Know. There's so many things

0:58

I could do right now. I could my Buddy theme

1:01

song, could sing the theme

1:03

song the Thunder of the Barbarian. Okay.

1:06

I could talk about tops baseball cards,

1:10

yeah, and that that rock card stick

1:12

dumb that came. Yeah,

1:15

um, I don't think they have gum in baseball

1:18

cards any more, do they? And maybe they just gave

1:20

up the ghosts. They were like one wants that, nobody

1:22

wants it. It took out some kid's

1:24

eye and that was that. Uh

1:26

yeah, nostalgia. So

1:29

I think we should dedicate this show

1:31

too, John

1:33

Hodgeman. Let's I thought

1:35

we kind of implicitly dedicated

1:38

every show to Hodgeman, but we do why

1:41

explicitly this time? Hodgeman

1:44

is uh, he

1:46

is on record time and time

1:48

again with the following quote,

1:52

Nostalgia is the most toxic impulse.

1:56

Oh yeah, that's he doesn't like a Christmas

1:58

story? Does he now think he's seen a Christmas

2:00

story? But he uh, he is very

2:03

adamant and has

2:05

been on record many many times on his own

2:07

podcast, Judge John Hodgeman and

2:09

to me in person when he

2:11

wants to go on about how much he hates nostalgia,

2:15

about how bad it is and in his deal

2:17

and I'm gonna mention him quite a bit in here. So

2:20

he's either gonna listen to this and be like, oh my god, it's about

2:22

nostalgia and these are my friends, or he's

2:25

gonna skip it all together. I could see

2:27

him skipping it all together because he didn't want to hear about it.

2:29

We maybe should clue him in and be like Hodgeman,

2:31

you're in this. He'll listen to it a million

2:33

times if you tell him that. So

2:35

his notion is that, uh, it's

2:38

a longing for a better time that

2:40

does not exist, that we

2:42

look back with rose colored glasses and it was

2:44

not in fact better, and that it's toxic

2:47

to do so, right, And that's absolutely

2:49

a correct definition

2:51

of nostalgia. But no

2:54

idea falls apart at the end when he says that

2:56

it's toxic, because quite the contrary,

2:58

nostalgia has been proven again and again to

3:00

be quite helpful. Um, I don't even agree

3:03

that that's the definition of nostalgia. I don't.

3:05

I don't think it has to be longing

3:07

for a time in your past, because for

3:09

me, nostalgia is not longing

3:12

for that. It is just very

3:14

warm remembrances and

3:16

wrapping myself up in that. God, man,

3:18

I wish I could be fourteen again. You

3:21

don't wish you could be fourteen, No,

3:24

not at all. I wish I could

3:26

be twenty six again. Nostalgia.

3:29

It's a pretty dope time in one's life, nostalgia.

3:33

But I don't I don't look back and say man,

3:36

And I also take issue with you know, sometimes

3:39

things were better back then. Yeah. But Hodgeman

3:41

makes a pretty good point, and so do the social

3:44

scientists that so support his point.

3:46

Um, when basically,

3:49

by definition, when you are experiencing

3:52

the emotion, this very complex,

3:54

weird, understudied emotion of

3:56

nostalgia, you're

3:59

thinking about something in

4:01

a way that it really kind of didn't

4:04

actually happen. Like the

4:06

negative stuff gets cut out. Um,

4:08

you know, like stepping on a rusty

4:11

nail right after that

4:13

great memory from camp

4:15

or whatever. Uh, that part gets cut

4:17

out, And I disagree with that, just the good stuff.

4:20

So I'm talking

4:22

about like the studies that support

4:24

it. Yeah, but they they don't think these studies

4:26

are right because the subjective it's very personal.

4:28

Like I can remember that social

4:31

science for you. I can remember the smell of

4:33

my grandparents house, their first house, and

4:35

how much I loved it in that one summer I went on my first

4:37

plane trip. And I also remember biting

4:39

my tongue off playing soccer and how

4:41

awful that was. Like I don't edit

4:44

that out and be like, no, everything about it was great,

4:46

Like no, I bet my tongue off and it was terrible. Um.

4:50

So okay, I think

4:52

then what you're talking about is the difference between

4:54

reminiscing, which is more of an

4:56

episodic memory, and nostalgia,

5:00

which is almost purely just an emotional

5:02

memory. No, that's an emotional

5:04

memory. All right. Well then you you'll just have to

5:06

say I believe you, Chuck, I

5:12

Burns, I

5:14

believe you Chuck. All right, So let's go back in

5:16

time a little bit. Um. There's a

5:18

Swiss doctor named uh

5:20

Johannes Hofer, and

5:25

he was studying some Swiss soldiers that

5:27

were stationed abroad, and he said, you

5:29

know what, there's something going on here. They

5:31

are depressed, they're anxious, they can't

5:33

sleep, they're tired, they're

5:36

even having heart palpitations

5:38

and fever. Um. They're angry,

5:41

really easily um, and they

5:43

just can't stop thinking about

5:45

their home. It is almost as if they

5:47

are home sick. Right, And

5:50

he coined the term. He coined the term

5:52

um the nostalgia from Greek

5:55

nostos, which means to return home and

5:59

I'll go or al jos

6:01

pain so the pain of yearning

6:03

to return home. Yeah, it is what

6:05

he described. He literally said, it's a cerebral

6:07

disease of essentially demonic cause ideas

6:11

of the fatherland, making them sick and longing

6:13

for home. It's a

6:15

no brainer. It's like these guys are fighting a war and they'd

6:17

rather be back home. Yeah. It sounds like he

6:19

was describing PTSD though as well, maybe

6:22

because when these attendant symptoms

6:25

that he talked about, like not being able to

6:27

sleep or eat and having fever and heart

6:29

palpitations, that's not nostalgia.

6:32

But Johannes Hoffer did um

6:34

set the tone for nostalgia for centuries,

6:37

so either it was viewed as a physical

6:39

malady or disorder or disease

6:42

or a psychological one up

6:44

until basically the nineteen eighties. To tell

6:46

you the truth, UM. And at

6:49

first, because the Hawfer's study of the Swiss

6:51

soldiers UM, they actually thought

6:53

that possibly it was just the

6:56

Swiss who were afflicted by nostalgia. And

6:58

one of the other alternative explanations

7:01

for it was that the constant

7:03

clanging of cow bells had done

7:05

something to the

7:07

nerves connecting the ear drum to the brain

7:10

and was basically driving these people crazy,

7:13

wanting them to making them want to

7:15

go home, or at least steal

7:18

the cow bell, right, get it off the neck.

7:21

You want to hear something weird. So Hawfer

7:23

also said that, um, the ideas

7:26

of the fatherland that were vibrating in the

7:29

soldier's brains. Um,

7:31

he said that that was brought on by animal spirits.

7:35

And I read this yesterday.

7:38

The same night I was

7:40

reading an article by Dr Jack

7:43

Cavorkian about human experimentation

7:45

among the condemned and executed, because

7:48

that's what I do, right, He mentions

7:50

animal spirits in

7:52

the exact same way. So apparently there was a time

7:54

when they thought that the they called

7:56

but what we would now call the electricity

7:59

and the central nervousist them animal spirits,

8:01

right, one of those old terms. Right. And

8:04

I ran across it twice in one day, which

8:06

is basically the bottom line haff

8:08

phenomenon. I just

8:10

thought that was so weird. I mean, like, yeah, and

8:12

that's pretty obscure, you know, very It's

8:14

not like, oh I saw eleven eleven on the clock

8:17

again today, you know, right, those

8:19

people animal spirits? Alright,

8:23

So uh, fast forward a

8:25

little bit. Uh, and we like you said,

8:27

for many, many years it was looked at as a mental

8:29

illness called melancholia or

8:32

immigrant psychosis. Yeah,

8:34

that was another thing. They thought that just immigrants,

8:36

semen, soldiers and kids

8:39

who went off to school were the ones who suffered

8:41

from it. Yeah. Basically, you get shipped off somewhere

8:43

and you yearn for the place that you liked

8:45

better, which is called just

8:48

homesickness. Homesickness, right, but then different

8:50

things. But but not until the

8:53

the eighties even, um, did

8:55

it begin to get separated. Yeah, and this

8:57

article points out very astutely, I thought

8:59

this was pretty good. Um, that homes

9:02

Julia Layton joint. Yeah, she's been around

9:04

house stiff works for a while. She's a vet. Uh,

9:07

not a veterinarian or

9:10

a veteran soldier. Um,

9:13

although I don't know, Julie, she might be both. Yes,

9:16

you could have you never know, served the

9:19

mp dogs as a vet

9:21

in the army. In the army. Um,

9:25

homesickness, Julie points out, is distressing,

9:27

which makes a lot of sense. And that's different from

9:29

nostalgia because nostalgia generally is

9:32

even though it is complex.

9:35

Uh, and we'll get to all that, it is generally looked

9:37

at as a feeling of like pleasant feelings

9:40

watch over you when you think of the

9:42

good old days, in direct contraditioniction

9:45

to Hodgeman's ideas.

9:49

Um, all right, so let's

9:51

talk about it, okay, So um,

9:55

Since it was up until

9:57

again the late nineteen eighties viewed

9:59

as basically an attendant

10:01

symptom or somehow tied into

10:04

depression or some other psychological

10:06

malady. UM, it wasn't

10:09

until very recently that the social science has

10:11

started to say, I don't know if that's necessarily

10:13

true, let's look into it. So the

10:15

actual study of nostalgia itself

10:18

is extremely new, and

10:21

um it's still very much understudy,

10:23

which is to say that the social sciences has

10:26

not yielded any kind of definitive

10:28

answers to what nostalgia is,

10:30

where it comes from. The There seems

10:33

to be a general consensus that it is an emotion,

10:35

but the complex secondary emotion,

10:37

meaning it's not anger, it's not fear, it's

10:40

not joy. But it seems to be secondary

10:42

and it seems to spring from um

10:45

society in the same way that a secondary

10:47

emotion like embarrassment or self consciousness

10:50

UM has arisen from our experience

10:52

in society. The nostalgist seems

10:55

to have come in the same way. Yeah,

10:57

and they've noticed some trends, which is

10:59

about as good as you can do when you're studying something

11:01

like nostalgia. And when we talk about some

11:03

of these real studies, it's they're

11:07

frustrating for me to read, but we'll

11:09

we'll get to those. But some of the trends.

11:11

If you are a worry wart, you

11:13

might be a little more prone to nostalgize

11:17

because you know, you're you're trying to escape

11:19

your worries and think about like a happier time

11:21

when you're on the beach, toes in the sand

11:23

maybe, uh. And they experts

11:26

think that if you are in transitional

11:28

periods of your life, you're

11:30

going to be more prone, Like if you're a kid

11:33

growing into an adult, or if you are in

11:36

your forties and fifties and you're transitioning

11:38

into uh, let's say fifties or sixties.

11:40

Well from in my forties, from middle age

11:42

in two senior adulthood. Yeah,

11:44

these transitional, big transitions in your

11:46

life, you might might be a little more prone

11:48

to sort of look at your life and think, because

11:52

what have I done with my life? Is also tied to

11:54

nostalgia. And that makes sense utterly

11:57

and completely because what they found with nostalgia

12:00

is that it's a it's like you said, it's a means

12:02

of escapism. And during these

12:04

times where you're going from adolescence into

12:06

young adulthood UM or middle

12:09

aged into old adulthood, that's

12:12

a that's a place of fear. You

12:14

know what's coming next, and you start

12:16

thinking about the good times that you've had. UM.

12:19

Almost involuntarily, it seems like nostalgia

12:22

happens. You think, yeah,

12:25

let me, uh, I'm a little nervous

12:27

right now, let me nostalgize. It's

12:30

almost like an involuntary mental trigger

12:32

that takes place. Although that is a thing. Uh.

12:36

Julia points out that, UM,

12:38

people can use it

12:40

almost like a bag of tricks if they are prone

12:42

to depression to call

12:44

upon these things. And it's like nostalgia

12:48

can be a tool. I mean, you'd have

12:50

to kind of conjure it up. Sure,

12:52

no, no, I know you can, you know, but you

12:54

don't necessarily, that's not necessarily

12:56

how it happens. And and they found that there are

12:58

plenty of things that trigger like

13:00

music, UM, like smells,

13:04

uh, different things that you that basically

13:07

serve as mnemonic devices in the

13:09

formation of emotional memories. Um.

13:11

And the thing that's come

13:14

up from the study that has been done on nostalgia

13:16

is that it seems to be universal. That's

13:19

it's not culturally bound, and the

13:21

triggers that trigger nostalgia are

13:24

also universal. So it'll

13:26

be like a social memory of a social

13:28

experience with friends and family,

13:31

you know, and like that might be culturally bound,

13:33

like Thanksgiving in America or

13:35

Canada where they have fake Thanksgiving a month

13:38

early, um, but

13:40

then it might be Carnival

13:42

down in Buenos Aireas or something like that,

13:44

so that the actual experience might be culturally

13:47

bound, but the trigger itself, having a good

13:49

time at like a holiday

13:51

is universal. Yeah. So

13:53

let's take a break. Uh, we'll come back

13:55

and talk about triggers more after this, and

13:57

we'll let Hodgeman take a deep then

14:00

maybe run around the block because I since

14:02

he's getting angry.

14:19

So we're back, Yeah,

14:22

we are. We had to establish that because

14:24

I got confused. You mentioned music being

14:27

a trigger that is very powerful.

14:29

Um. And again it's

14:32

it's variant among people's

14:34

individual experience, but music, for me still

14:37

I thinking about this is huge nostalgia

14:40

trigger. But I think I realized

14:42

that almost add

14:44

percent of the time, it's a song that

14:47

I haven't heard for a long long time. So

14:50

if I hear Jay

14:52

Giles Fands Centerfold, great

14:55

song reminds me of elementary school

14:57

in a very powerful way and

15:00

even specific things. But I've

15:02

heard that song a gazillion times. I hear

15:04

it once a week on classic rock

15:06

radio, So it doesn't flood you with nostalgia.

15:09

No, no no more. You've heard it too much. It's over

15:11

you. But if I hear a song from

15:14

like all of my CDs are packed up in

15:16

the attic, and most of those are from like a

15:18

certain period of my life where I bought CDs, So

15:20

if you hear true Blue, you just start weeping.

15:22

With true Blue more recent than that. But if

15:24

I hear a song from like one of my CDs

15:26

from the mid nineties that

15:29

I just may not have heard in a long time, that

15:31

is like super super powerful. Well, like

15:33

what song I don't know, just like a song

15:35

from my l a days maybe um

15:39

or or just something I don't listen like, uh, something

15:41

from college that I don't listen to anymore, and

15:43

it's like never played on the radio. Like I'll hear

15:47

Urban Dance squad deeper Shade

15:49

of Soul, uh,

15:52

deep shade of Soul. Right,

15:56

remember now it sounds

15:58

like a pretty nineties song though it was very nineties,

16:00

and like, you never hear that song anymore.

16:03

So if I hear that song like

16:05

just now, I just sang a little bit of it. How how are

16:07

you feeling, I'm feeling great, I'm

16:09

not. I'm not feeling toxic. Hodgman

16:12

is mad at you right now. I know it feels wonderful.

16:14

Stop stop so

16:16

And I don't want to go back in time too then either,

16:19

I'm just remembering, like, man, what a great song

16:21

that takes me back to college. Yeah,

16:23

And and the reason why songs tend

16:25

to be so powerful and potent um,

16:28

especially from a certain age, typically

16:31

adolescents, right, supposedly

16:33

has to do with the way that the brain is

16:35

working right then. You know everyone says teenagers

16:38

have like raging hormones going on. Well,

16:40

there is a lot more brain chemistry

16:43

floating around than happens

16:45

throughout the rest of your life, so

16:47

it's easier to form very powerful emotional

16:50

memories. Um, and when

16:53

when you're listening to music at that

16:55

age, So that when you go back and listen to it,

16:57

it's basically going back and you're

17:00

a card catalog of a brain and

17:02

unlocking that emotional memory so you

17:04

get to experience it a little bit again. And

17:06

then that's nostalgia brought on from by music.

17:09

Yeah, that makes sense for me. The

17:11

one that gets me the most is sent Yes,

17:14

Senten tastes for me are really powerful too,

17:16

so like um, the smell of

17:19

um Pillsberry cinnamon rolls

17:21

and orange rolls. It's like Christmas

17:24

age eight, like every

17:27

time. Now do you ever eat that stuff? Now?

17:29

I just did yesterday as a little

17:31

trip down memory lane. Yes, well not

17:34

as it you know, but it

17:36

inevitably brought it on. Okay, so you

17:38

didn't say, like I'm doing a nostalgia podcast,

17:41

I'm gonna go get some of those sweet rolls. No, it was

17:43

totally coincidental. Actually, like the animal

17:45

spirits. Yeah, what I've been doing lately is

17:47

seeking out things that I haven't

17:49

had and forever, just to see

17:52

what happens. Oh yeah, So so basically

17:54

you're the other day, you're like

17:57

strange Days. Remember

17:59

that movie with Refines. Yeah,

18:01

boy, that takes me back, but with but

18:03

with nostalgia. How what what flavor

18:05

s? I did the same, always did a

18:07

mixed cherry and coke. And

18:10

I haven't had a slurpie since probably like

18:12

high school. And it was it.

18:14

You know, that taste was so familiar and

18:17

exactly how I remember. But it wasn't

18:19

like, oh, this takes me back to those days.

18:22

I'm just like, oh, this is interesting. I ate a circus

18:24

peanut the other days. Now they're

18:26

awful, but I haven't had one since I was probably

18:28

ten. I've avoided those of my whole life. Yeah,

18:31

and um those you know those

18:33

uh, the other one that gets me of those, remember

18:36

when you were a kid trick or treating and

18:38

you would get those kind a chewy peanut

18:40

butter treats and the wax the waxy rappers.

18:42

Yeah, I don't remember what they're called that, there

18:44

were no name, like but email

18:48

that really Yeah, it's got to be that orange

18:50

or like those

18:53

man instant of nostalgia. Nice

18:56

not toxic. Yeah, it's wonderful.

18:59

Um, peanut butter twicks can do that for

19:01

me. It was one of my first favorite candy

19:03

bars. I'll thought you about say like it takes me back to

19:05

two eight, No, they

19:07

had peanut butter twicks in the eighties, they tried it

19:10

for a little while they were all stopped. Yeah,

19:12

they don't have those anymore, do they.

19:15

Okay, is that one in your pocket?

19:18

It's been tucked into my cheek right now. So

19:20

a taste, they think, and induces

19:23

nostalgia pretty heavily because the

19:26

pathways carrying information from

19:28

taste buds are in the limbic

19:30

system and where scent is as well.

19:32

Yeah, and your old factory bulb is super

19:35

duper in the limbic system, and it's actually got

19:37

a direct connection to the amygdala, which

19:39

helps experience emotions. And

19:43

um, what's the other component of the olympics

19:45

system, the hippocampus.

19:47

Yeah, the hippocampus which sorts in stores

19:49

memories. So your old factory bulb

19:52

itself is almost

19:55

literally plugged in to the two

19:57

components of your brain

19:59

that form emotional memories,

20:01

which is one reason why I scent can

20:04

trigger nostalgist so powerfully too. Yeah.

20:06

Does that I wondered if that means that

20:09

if it's more immediate, then it's stronger, like

20:11

if it's just a quicker link, maybe

20:13

like literally the pathway is shorter. It

20:16

could be interesting that I mean

20:18

that's that's what Layton um

20:21

supposed. Yeah, I don't think she'd uh

20:25

pull that out of her head. I think that's the

20:27

common belief, right for something that they don't

20:29

understand that much. Yeah, And I that I

20:31

think that's probably got to be coming through

20:33

to dear listeners, right, that this

20:37

is like this is there's

20:39

a lot of grasping at threads going on, in

20:41

part because it is just very um,

20:44

it's very early on in the study

20:46

of nostalgia. There's not a lot of people studying

20:49

it, and so the number

20:51

of theories is kind of narrow,

20:53

but a lot of it does make sense. Yeah,

20:55

And when you look at these studies, which we'll talk about

20:58

so many of them hinge on. All

21:00

right, you're feeling nostalgic, All right, let's do something

21:03

to you, right, Or you're not feeling nostalgic,

21:05

Let's do the same thing to you, which

21:07

I mean, this is a very tough study

21:09

to pull off. It totally is. And that's a big problem

21:12

that the social sciences run up against, Like

21:14

they are studying subjective

21:17

reports. Well, the average person

21:19

can't tell you how they're feeling, even when they sit

21:21

there and think about how they're feeling. So

21:24

there are standardized, standardized questionnaires

21:26

that have become accepted in the field that

21:28

that say this scores

21:31

of persons like UM like

21:33

feeling of nostalgia. There's actually a questionnaire

21:36

that that is designed to rate

21:38

how nostalgic you are at the time you

21:40

take it. Um and and there's

21:43

there are ways to study. It's not just totally

21:46

willy nilly, but when you compare it to something

21:48

say like um biology

21:50

or something like that, it's it's a little it's

21:53

it's slightly whispier. Agreed,

21:56

Um, Should we take a whispy break

21:58

and talk about some of these studies to this? Yes, all

22:17

right, buddy, we teased on some

22:19

studies. Uh and I

22:22

don't want to say I made fun of them, but they're they're just I

22:25

think you pointed out some of their inherent

22:27

flaw. So let's talk about them.

22:29

Um. Here

22:31

is one where they had subjects read

22:35

about different things. One

22:37

was a tsunami disaster, one was

22:40

like one bad thing, two good things. One was

22:42

a disaster, one was the successful landing

22:45

of a space pro another one was the birth

22:47

of a polar bear in a zoo, which I mean

22:49

depending on like that right there, you might hate

22:51

polar bears, you might hate zoos. You

22:53

know, it's a good point. Uh

22:56

yeah, it's a real good point. They probably shouldn't

22:58

use that. And it's a problem with any kind

23:00

of standardized questionnaire,

23:02

whether it's the S A T or the

23:05

Standardized Questionnaire for nostalgia totally.

23:08

Uh So, after reading these they

23:10

answered questions assessing their current levels

23:12

of nostalgia. What they found was the

23:14

people who read about the tsunami, we're

23:16

the most nostalgic, which

23:19

led them to believe that people

23:22

call upon nostalgia when they're

23:24

not feeling good about something right, and that use

23:26

it. That is the prevailing predominant

23:29

theory of nostalgia

23:31

these days, that it is a um

23:34

It is you can do it voluntarily,

23:37

but it's basically an involuntary

23:39

defense mechanism when we

23:41

experience what's called discontinuity,

23:43

and discontinuity comes in many forms,

23:45

but all of it amounts to a

23:48

reminder that we are going to eventually

23:50

die one day, and that

23:53

thought can come in all sorts of different forms.

23:55

It can come when we have a

23:57

relationship that's breaking down, when we're

24:00

far away from our social network. We

24:03

there are any number of ways that were reminded

24:05

of our own mortality, right, and

24:07

one of our big defense mechanisms is growing

24:10

nostalgic. And uh, it's basically

24:14

built in suicide prevention because

24:16

it makes you wonder, like, if we didn't have a way to

24:18

get back on track, like

24:21

through nostalgia, and you

24:23

just like entered

24:26

a period of discontinuity and never

24:29

got back to you know, life's good

24:31

again, where would we be as a species?

24:33

Who knows? So nostalgia seems to be

24:35

some sort of evolutionary trick where um,

24:38

when we look into the void and think, oh

24:40

God, I'm gonna die or my life is meaningless

24:42

or whatever, we experienced nostalgia

24:44

and it has this incredible

24:46

flood of beneficial um

24:49

effects on the person who's feeling

24:52

nostalgic. I thought this one article

24:54

was pretty great. When they were talking about discontinuity,

24:57

they referenced Sweet

24:59

Jude de Blue Eyes by Crosby

25:01

Stills Nash and I think young

25:03

right, Like, I know, you

25:05

know the song very popular? Can

25:08

you sing it like an urban dance squad song?

25:10

Come on, you know, sweet? I

25:13

don't If you have heard any Crosby

25:15

Steals in Nash song, you've heard this one.

25:18

It's very very famous. I'm

25:21

thinking Bob Seeger right now? Is

25:24

it? Is it? The Bob Seger song is what

25:26

you mean? But here's a line

25:28

by Steven Stills, don't let the past

25:30

remind us of what we are not now

25:34

right. That's again Hodgman's criticis Hodgman

25:36

is not alone in his criticism that that

25:39

it seems like, uh,

25:42

nostalgia could lead you down this road

25:44

where you're You're just like, oh, the

25:46

past is so much better than the present. But

25:49

apparently from study of nostalgia,

25:51

it does the exact opposite. It affirms

25:53

the meaning of your life. It reminds you

25:55

that you are loved um, now

25:58

here and now, and it get you

26:00

back on track after um an

26:02

experience of discontinuity, which

26:04

is bizarre. I'm gonna sing a little bit of it, Okay,

26:07

you know, Uh I am

26:10

yours, you are mine, We

26:12

are what we are? What

26:15

have we got to lose? That's

26:17

that song I got you? That's so

26:20

yeah. See, it's a great song. That's better than the Bob

26:22

Seekers song. I think there is no good

26:24

Bob Seeker song that's not true. Name

26:27

one uh

26:29

all time rock and roll, no terrible, worst

26:31

song ever turned the page awful like a

26:33

rock awful catman, Do kill

26:36

Me. There's one though, that's

26:38

not bad. I think we've had this conversation before.

26:40

I think I've been on record as being a big Bob

26:42

Seeker hater. I'm not big on him either,

26:45

but there's there's at least one or two. Oh

26:47

you'd love him. You want to get you want to get married

26:49

to him? All right, it's

26:51

enough about me and Bob Seger. Yeah, see

26:54

he got uncomfortable. Um,

26:57

so I'm having a moment

26:59

of dis kind nuity. Yeah. We were talking

27:01

about the studies, right,

27:04

Well. I think what we were saying was that if

27:06

you look at nostalgia from the way

27:08

that Hodgeman looks at it, which makes

27:10

sense, um, you would think, well, nostalgia

27:12

is a bad thing, when in fact, studies have

27:15

shown that nostalgia actually

27:17

gets you back on track when you're feeling like, oh

27:19

God, I'm gonna die one day, or oh I'm

27:21

not loved or whatever. Rather than

27:24

getting stuck in reminiscing about how

27:26

great the past was compared to the present, it

27:28

reaffirms that the present is pretty great.

27:31

Yeah, they said, uh, and we always

27:33

say they like it's sort of an

27:35

ambiguous body of sometimes we get

27:37

called up by people who are paying attention.

27:40

The researchers of

27:42

nostalgia say they that UM

27:45

positive mental states include UM higher

27:47

self esteem, more socially connected,

27:49

more generous, more altruistic or

27:52

optimistic, worry

27:54

less about the future and death and

27:57

good and that makes it a part of terror management

27:59

theory, which we actually did a really

28:01

cool episode one. It was one of

28:03

those sleepers you know that probably not a lot

28:05

of people listened to, but it was awesome. Yeah.

28:08

And they did some other studies

28:10

and this to me is really interesting.

28:13

UM in China, uh

28:15

was one study and elsewhere they

28:18

have determined that nostalgic

28:21

feelings might literally make you warmer,

28:25

right, like physically warmer.

28:28

And when I said, the warm thing watches over you.

28:31

They think it might have played a role in evolution, like

28:33

when you're colder and you think of these thoughts,

28:36

you get warmer. Yeah. From

28:38

the study in China, UM they

28:40

found that the study participants

28:44

were when they were

28:46

cold and they were nostalgizing,

28:49

they were imagining themselves or they were remembering

28:52

an experience in a warm place, and

28:55

apparently it had the effect of making them

28:58

feel physically warmer and

29:00

less susceptible to the pain of extreme

29:02

cold. And another study to head nostalgic

29:05

and non nostalgic subjects hold

29:07

their hands in thirty nine degree fahrenheit water

29:10

until they couldn't take it anymore, and

29:12

if you were feeling nostalgic, you could hold

29:14

your hand in there longer. So that proves

29:17

that it warms you up right right, not really,

29:20

but it's interesting, it is interesting. All of

29:22

this is pretty interesting, and there

29:24

is there is supposedly a point where

29:26

nostalgia can become harmful too. It's called

29:29

pathological nostalgia, um

29:31

where you basically do get locked into the idea

29:33

that everything used to be better back in the

29:35

day or whenever at some other point. But

29:38

it's um rare

29:41

compared to regular what's

29:43

called personal nostalgia, which is all

29:46

the nostalgia we've been talking about. And

29:48

then there's the social nostalgia

29:50

too, right like when you didn't even

29:52

live through it. Yeah, where um,

29:55

you know, like seventeen

29:57

year old today wearing like a Nirvana T shirt

29:59

or a Fits T shirt or something like that,

30:01

or being into that music or thinking like how

30:04

great the nineties were, and it's like dude,

30:06

we lived through the nineties. They were not great. But

30:09

it's the same thing, like I love eighties stuff.

30:11

I lived through the eighties, but um, I

30:13

remember thinking the eighties sucked, and

30:15

then you know, as an older person, when the eighties

30:18

came back, I'm like, yeah, the eighties were pretty fun.

30:20

Yeah. I think that's kind of a company sometimes too,

30:22

by this feeling of like I was born in the wrong

30:24

time, Like, man, I would have been

30:26

a great hippie in the sixties, and I

30:28

just don't fit in here in the nineties. Sure, Like,

30:31

personally, I think the seventies were probably

30:33

the greatest decade of all time. But

30:36

that's ignoring the fact that like Richard Nixon

30:38

was president, there was an oil embargo, There's

30:40

all this bad stuff, whereas I'm

30:43

just thinking like days and confused type seventies

30:45

where everything was just great and happy and you

30:48

know, and laid back, and that's

30:50

nostalgia. It washes out

30:52

the negative for everyone. But

30:54

you Yeah, I would say Richard Lincoln

30:56

Better is one of the more nostalgic filmmakers

30:59

out there. He plays on that. Yeah, supposedly,

31:01

his new movie that's coming out is be

31:04

Awesome. Everybody wants some is

31:06

that what it is? So it's like Days and Confused,

31:08

like four or five years later, right, Yeah, he

31:10

said, it's sort of like a spiritual sequel,

31:13

like not the same characters, but um,

31:16

just sort of nineteen eighty that advent

31:18

of when things were transferring to

31:20

disco from Yeah, it's gonna be awesome.

31:22

He's the best. That was a great movie. Dased

31:24

and Confused agreed. Um.

31:27

So the other thing that they found is

31:29

that they

31:32

did a study. Clay Routledge of North Dakota

31:34

State did a study there there. Specifically

31:36

they with a name. Yeah, a real guy, so

31:39

complained to him. Uh. He

31:41

did a series of experiments with English, Dutch,

31:43

and American adults, so he kind of had some different

31:45

nationalities going on. It's not exclusively

31:47

American, of course. He let

31:49

them listen to hit songs from their youth

31:52

and read lyrics, and afterwards people

31:54

said, uh, they were more than likely

31:57

to feel loved and that life was worth

31:59

living. Some more affirmation

32:02

when they remember these good old days. Question

32:06

do you feel life is worth living? Check yes

32:08

or no? Uh? And finally

32:10

I got one more thing. Um, they say,

32:13

well, they do recommend that you not fall into that

32:15

trap of pathological and yeah,

32:17

of comparing the present to the past

32:20

so much. Uh. And they also

32:22

found that certain kinds of people aren't

32:24

as great with nostalgia, So maybe

32:26

you should not indulge in nostalgia if

32:29

your leery of intimate relationships, they

32:31

found, or you're an avoidant person,

32:34

says they have reap smaller benefits

32:36

from nostalgia compared with people who

32:38

crave closeness. So

32:41

I don't know what that says about hand, but let's

32:44

throw that out there. So, uh, what's

32:46

your number one nostalgia thing? What gets it for

32:48

you more than anything else? Probably

32:51

music? I got two things are tied

32:53

for first. The smell of

32:56

a used bookstore or comic

32:58

book shop. That's mel of

33:00

like that, I guess rotting paper.

33:04

It reminds me of Mad magazines from

33:07

back in the day. And they love them.

33:09

The fat Christmas lights. Oh

33:11

yeah, the big I could just faint

33:14

from the nostalgia. Yeah, they're like they were

33:16

the big Tachi ones that are coming back

33:18

now. That's all my family ever used was the big

33:20

fat ones. It was like more Christmas light.

33:22

You know, you call those tree burners. Yeah,

33:26

yeah, we never caught a tree on fire, but yeah,

33:28

they get pretty hot. You know what my dad did

33:30

for a few years as we were opening

33:32

our gifts. Towards the end, he

33:34

would start dismantling the

33:37

tree and pruning the limbs

33:39

and putting him in the fireplace. He would literally

33:41

burn the Christmas tree on Christmas Morning's

33:44

here he Uh wow, that's

33:46

very efficient, was he Germans?

33:48

Why do we look at it? Uh No?

33:52

Uh, I should say is he? He is not?

33:54

And I wish I would have given you a specific nostalgic

33:57

thing, but um, you did urban

33:59

dance. Uh No, just music

34:01

in general taste, smell music

34:04

got you nice. Put those

34:06

three together and look out. Chuck's

34:08

eyes roll back into his head

34:10

and Hodgeman claps over him and says, get

34:13

up. Uh. If you want

34:15

to know more about nostalgy, you can type that word

34:17

into search bar how stuff works dot com, And

34:19

I said, search bars, it's time for listener

34:21

mail. This

34:24

is from Christina about the makeup episode.

34:27

He points out some good things. I think, Hey,

34:29

guys have to weigh in on how makeup works. I think

34:32

you failed to adequately acknowledge

34:34

something. Uh. We are not, in

34:36

fact at a stage where makeup is truly

34:38

optional for women and

34:41

I think we said that

34:44

basically, did we Yeah, at the

34:46

end, well, I think we

34:48

said, like it should be your option, but I

34:50

think she doesn't feel like it truly is an option,

34:53

right, No, we said that. We said, like the

34:54

the very fact that there was, like, you

34:56

know, taking a

34:58

picture of yourself and posting on Twitter without

35:01

makeup was rebellious. Says that it's

35:03

still not really an option. We

35:06

said that, all right, So forget

35:08

it, Christina, We're not reading now,

35:10

We're gonna read it. While many love wearing makeup,

35:12

many women simply feel obliged to wear it and

35:14

are in fact penalized if they choose not to, comes

35:17

in the form of failing to be promoted maybe

35:19

or taking seriously getting raises, even being hired.

35:22

It is a hugely expensive habit too, especially

35:25

if you like to buy the prestige makeup brands.

35:28

Yeah, so she recommended

35:30

to people read an article from The Atlantic, which

35:32

is always a good recommendation, called

35:34

the makeup Tax, and it kind of sums

35:36

up the problem like this, women invest time

35:38

and money into doing the makeup because it impacts their relationships

35:41

and their paychecks. While both genders tend

35:43

to buy haircut shaving cream and moisturizer. The

35:46

price of makeup is something men never

35:48

have to worry about. And then she

35:50

goes on to point on point out just

35:52

how expensive the

35:55

gap is between like a man's haircut,

35:57

no woman's hair cut even you know,

36:00

yeah, oh it's huge. It depends

36:02

on where you go. Yeah, but I mean if you're a

36:04

woman that goes to a like

36:06

a you know, not super cuts,

36:09

right, it depends on where the man goes though too. If

36:11

you go to a salon and you get like a cut in color

36:13

as a woman, you're paying like several hundred dollars.

36:16

But that's the color jack both.

36:19

I don't mean to be contrary. That's yes, I

36:21

agree that they pay a lot more money. Christina.

36:24

Yeah, I go to Great Clips. Big

36:26

shout out to Great Clips. There's

36:29

a free cut in your future. So

36:31

Christina says, yeah, after my tenth cut,

36:34

if you have the card, no, not a card,

36:36

but they give you your receipt every now and then it

36:38

says off

36:41

your fat collar cut, which

36:43

amounts to eight dollars. It's actually one than it's like

36:45

fourteen or fifteen. But remember

36:47

in tipping it's fourteen. I give them twenty and you

36:49

were like what Oh, yeah, that's

36:51

right, that's right. Uh so

36:53

Christine me all over again. She finishes

36:56

up with I look forward to a day when wearing makeup is

36:58

really truly a choice anyone

37:00

of any gender in both individuals and institutions

37:03

respect those choices. In the meantime, I

37:06

choose to save my pennies and stick it to the man

37:08

by not buying makeup and normalizing

37:11

my own bear face. Good

37:13

for you. Uh. And Christina is a California

37:15

native listening in Dublin, Ireland. Ahoy,

37:19

as they say in Ireland,

37:22

is yeah, all right, we'll

37:24

find out. I think, I hope. Uh,

37:27

thanks a lot, Christina, all points agreed.

37:30

Uh. If you want to get in touch with us

37:32

like Christina did, whether you're in Dublin

37:34

or Los Angeles or wherever,

37:37

you can tweet to us at s y ESK podcast.

37:40

You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash

37:42

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37:44

to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot

37:46

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37:48

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37:50

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37:56

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