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My name is Julie Douglas and I'm the host

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of the Stuff of Life, a podcast produced

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by How Stuff Works. We humans

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are storytelling machines. From

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the moment we're born. We organize our

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world through story, trying to figure

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out what all the data points mean,

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which is why The Stuff of Life aims to pull

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apart those stories and discuss them,

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looking at how they explain our existence

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on planet Earth. That nothing is

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too beautiful to happen in life. On

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the Stuff of Life, we do this with a little help from a

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few experts along with our friends

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here at How Stuff Works. Every

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week we'll drop an episode on your doorstep,

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some of them dealing with the biggias like

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fear. Fear has this double power

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over us. It has the power to to you

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know, of course, frighten us, to make us

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coward, to change our behavior, but also the

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power to make us ask all these questions

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about ourselves and the question who we are.

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A week later, we'll have a companion episode,

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like the Fear of public speaking.

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We get up in front of an audience the

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first time and see

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all those people out there

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looking at us. You start to think,

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am I ready? Can I do this?

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What? Was I thinking, maybe

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this was a really really bad

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idea along

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the way we look at making our memories

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immortal. Right now, the only

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way to donald our memories is

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by actually writing this stuff. We don't have to get

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a cable to blog into our

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head and don't of everything. We question

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our attachment to objects. Remember

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that movie with Tom Hanksby got attached to the

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ball and he named it Wilson. I think that was

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part of his survival mechanism,

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is to feel like he had a connection to

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something or someone. And so

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people often who have been hurt

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by individuals throughout their lives

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through by people, turned to objects

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and or even animals to feel

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like they have a sense of connection. We visit

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a conference on laughter

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and we take a stroll through a haunted house

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to find out why we'd want to scare

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the opinions off of ourselves Willingly.

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Most people come to a haunted house to be scared,

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to be entertained, to have a great time. But there

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are people who get the deeper meanings.

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They get the roots of things, the roots of Halloween. They

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can see the references many ways.

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It's a ride of passage. It's the heroes

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journey join us on Janu the

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very first episode. You can

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find the Stuff of Life anywhere you get your

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podcasts, including iTunes,