Charles (Chuck) Bryant
👤 PersonPodcast Appearances
You might know me as that guy from Twin Peaks, Sex and the City, or just The Internet Stand.
I have a new podcast called What Are We Even Doing?
where I embark on a noble quest to understand the brilliant chaos of youth culture.
Each week, I invite someone fascinating to join me to talk about navigating this high-speed rollercoaster we call reality.
Join me and my delightful guests every Thursday and let's get weird together in a good way.
Listen to What Are We Even Doing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Yeah, we're talking about, Julia helped us out with this one, and I commissioned this one, and I don't remember what instigated it.
It definitely wasn't from hearing somebody scream.
I may have seen an article or something that piqued my interest, and I was like, wait a minute, what, like, screaming is interesting, that people scream.
And for all different kinds of reasons, people scream.
We should get some nuts and bolts out of the way as far as, like, everyone knows what a scream is.
It's obviously a very loud, high-pitched, harsh thing on the ears.
It's a sound that you make with, I was about to say with your mouth, but we'll get to the parts that make the scream.
But nuts and bolts wise, the scream is in about the 80 to 120 decibel range in volume.
Unless you're my wife, that's more like an A75, I would say.
She and her friend, Stacy, are two of the loudest humans on earth.
They're not wallflowers and they own it and I respect it.
They reach frequent, not Stacy and Emily, but humans, or I'm sorry, the human scream can reach a frequency in the range of 2,000 to 3,000 hertz, whereas a normal talker is about 80 to 300 hertz.
And just to clear up something for what's coming later, a sound, a tone can have two different frequencies.
Well, it is, it isn't intuitive.
Like you would think like a guitar string makes like, you know, one frequency range, but it's just, yeah, it's not true.
Yeah, and it's so non-goat sounding because it's not even like a loud bleat that you wonder, like, is somebody punking me?
And that's just like, you know, that's James Caan from Misery that they're looping in there.
Animals, well, let's just talk about why anything screams.
It's obviously a great fear response because everyone's going to sit up and take notice because it's so harsh and loud.
It can also distract predators.
Obviously, screaming, if you're lost, you know, a scream can travel a great distance in the woods or anywhere, and you can, you know, alert somebody from a great distance.
So it's a great communicative tool for humans and animals alike.
I'm getting older, so I'm getting more and more neck junk.
All right, so humans are born with this ability.
We know how to scream right away because we come out of the womb screaming.
In fact, that's a very comforting sound when a baby is born is that first scream.
They're going to clear that phlegm in their airway so they can breathe.
It lets everybody know, hey, I'm here.
I'm feeling good despite the fact that I'm screaming.
If a baby is born and there is no scream, that is a very scary, scary moment for parents and everybody in that room.
I remember when you met Ruby as a baby and she was screaming and you're like, what the hell's wrong with this kid?
And I said, oh, Josh, I'm in tune already.
And I said, that just means she's hungry.
This got really disturbing very fast.
Yeah, so, I mean, that's a benefit that can save a lot of time and discomfort for this kid in diagnosing this kind of condition.
It also is a sign, obviously, when a kid is screaming, saying, hey, parent, go into fight-or-flight mode because I need something.
And, you know, if it's one of distress, even more so, obviously, and not just like I'm hungry, like severe distress.
I don't know that we need to...
discuss fight or flight in detail because we did it 364 times over the first like five years of the show.
Everyone knows what that is, right?
You're like, but it's the amygdala.
I'm gonna abandon that line of thought.
So let's talk about sound for a minute because all sound comes from and is perceived by us through a series of processes in the brain.
And most of these are in the higher brain region, but screams are different.
They happen in the lower brain region.
And it's a very interesting thing.
It kind of lives in its own, as far as like humans making sound, lives in its own area.
It's very distinct from all the other sounds we make.
So for screams and some involuntary vocalizations, but really screams, the sound production takes a different and like you said, a much faster path.
The signal starts in the limbic system and it skips that higher brain processing.
It happens in the amygdala, basically.
The emotional stimulus that the amygdala is all about just sends a scream signal.
It's sort of like a direct path, like an express train through that brain stem to all the anatomy that you were talking about and the neck junk.
And that scream just comes out immediately.
And the craziest part is our body actually picks up on this immediately.
before our ears and brain can even process what we've just heard.
And I mean, that's why when somebody screams like a blood curdling scream out in public, you're you're instantly reacting.
You don't hear that and then decide like, well, maybe I should go see what's going on over there.
Like your body is instantly reacting because it is unconsciously picked up on that scream before it's even registered in your brain.
So it's it's really a pretty remarkable sort of evolutionary process.
uh, trait, I think, like to, to, to help rescue, uh, you know, probably back in Tuktuk's days, uh, the, the wife or baby that the, the husband who's out hunting and gathering has to protect from whatever dangers are around the fire.
And you shouldn't do that because you're going to damage those rims.
You need to pull over immediately.
All right, we're going to take a break and come back, and Josh is going to explain something called the roughness domain right after this.
Hey there, I'm Kyle McLaughlin.
You might know me as that guy from Twin Peaks, Sex and the City, or just the Internet's Dad.
I have a new podcast called What Are We Even Doing?
where I embark on a noble quest to understand the brilliant chaos of youth culture.
Each week I invite someone fascinating to join me.
Actors, musicians, creatives, highly evolved digital life forms.
And we talk about what they love.
Sometimes I'll drizzle a little honey in there, too, if I'm feeling sexy in the morning.
And how they're navigating this high-speed rollercoaster we call reality.
In Australia, you're looking out for snakes, spiders, and f***wits.
Hey, he's no Trey McDougal, chill.
Katie, you told me that ETFs are your favorite thing.
And unpack what it means for you.
They learned this because of a study.
They know this because in 2015, NYU, the neuroscientists there, published a study supporting this role of amplitude modulation.
And the crazy part is that the only other sound in that roughness domain is
Like that's the only sound a human can make that's like that.
The only other sounds are all artificial alarms.
So the human screen lives in the rough disc domain alongside sirens and car alarms and, you know, just other, like a klaxon maybe.
Yeah, I mean, because that's the sound that happens when a nuclear facility is melting down.
Yeah, so thanks NYU for that, right?
Yeah, so then they said, all right, we got all this collection of sounds.
Neutral sounds is what we'll call the ones that aren't screams.
And they brought in some other volunteers, other NYU students for sure, and said, all right, we want you to rate the scariness, like maybe on a 1 to 10, 1 to 5, who knows what they used.
And they said, rate the scariness of the sounds.
All the sounds in the roughness domain are,
this is pretty obvious, were rated as scarier than the neutral sounds.
And the sounds that were rated the scariest were the ones that were highest on the roughness scale.
So the upshot, to borrow a term from Josh, is that it seems like humans are specifically attuned and our amygdala is specifically activated by the sound of a scream to say like, hey, it's time to panic or it's time to kick into high gear.
They found that this works if you're awake or asleep.
The rough vocalizations in that rough domain that we were talking about penetrate human sleep cycles more than neutral vocalizations.
And that's not to say that like, yeah, of course, it's louder, dummy.
We're not talking about decibels here.
We're talking about a frequency range.
I think what they're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that a screen that might be the same decibel level as a really loud talk will penetrate that sleep cycle unlike that really loud talk.
Anger, of course, is going to be one.
You can scream at somebody in traffic.
That other Europe song I forgot about the other day on Hair Nation, on SiriusXM.
Which I'm still pounding, by the way.
I'm so back into the hair metal.
Keep on walking that road and I'll follow.
That was their big song besides Final Countdown.
You just made me think of Europe.
They're definitely not screamers.
Obviously, scream and fear, which is kind of one of the things we've been talking about.
That's something that I have never experienced.
I've felt great deals of physical pain, but I'm very internal.
But I've been to emergency rooms and a screamer in an emergency room is a very unsettling situation.
Yeah, yeah, he put his hand over his mouth.
I guess, you know, we're not going to dance around this.
Obviously, during intercourse, an orgasm can produce quite a scream, I'm told.
So, you know, that extreme joy and intense pleasure probably encapsulates both of those if you're doing it right.
And I guess this is just like wailing plus.
Well, that's what sadness is, right?
I am about to say something I thought I would never say.
I think I would like to see that movie again.
Oh, why did you not like it the first time?
I loved it, but it's a tough movie.
It was one of those where I was like, well, that was amazing, but I don't think I need to see that ever again.
But I think I might want to because it was really that great.
It's been a while, but yeah, sort of.
I've told you to watch it before.
Well, it's a British horror film.
All right, so back to screaming.
Obviously, rage, fear, pain, these are alarm screams.
The non-alarm screams, like we talked about, the joy, intense pleasure.
I don't think I'll throw sadness in there because that can be alarm.
But those aren't things that you will find in the animal kingdom.
It is a distinctly, uniquely human instinct to signal something positive with a scream.
Animals don't scream out in joy.
Hey there, I'm Kyle McLaughlin.
You might know me as that guy from Twin Peaks, Sex and the City, or just the Internet's Dad.
I have a new podcast called What Are We Even Doing?
Where I embark on a noble quest to understand the brilliant chaos of youth culture.
Each week I invite someone fascinating to join me.
Actors, musicians, creatives, highly evolved digital life forms.
And we talk about what they love.
Sometimes I'll drizzle a little honey in there too if I'm feeling sexy in the morning.
Like when a kid says brah to me.
And how they're navigating this high-speed rollercoaster we call reality.
Hey, he's no Trey McDougal, chill.
All right, so back to screaming.
I was afraid you were going to scream at one point.
Not something we're going to do.
I can't remember the last time I tried to scream.
Like as a, like, hey, what's your scream sound like at a party or something?
You know that old party trick.
Like I always think of like the best scream I've ever heard is probably from American movie, the documentary.
The American movie, it was about the guys in Wisconsin making the low budget horror movie.
That's why I would say Coven because he pronounced it Coven.
Oh, it's one of the great, great documentaries of all time.
But Mike Schenck, rest in peace.
Very sadly, there's one part in there where the main guy is trying to record screams for his low-budget horror film he's making in the studio.
And Mike Schenck was this very, very low-key friend of his.
out of nowhere, I'll send you the clip, produces the most blood-curdling scream I've ever heard in my life.
And one of the funnier parts of that, too, because nobody saw it coming, including his friend, and his reaction is great, and it's just one of the great parts of that movie.
I guess that is a little bit of a spoiler, but it's a 20-year-old documentary, so, you know.
Not nearly as chilling as Mike Shank's, but it was 1933.
You usually associate it with like a scream queen.
Like, you know, it's usually a woman screaming in a horror movie.
That's just sort of the trope.
But there have been some notable man screams.
James Caan, certainly I mentioned earlier, from Misery.
But another that was done in post-production was,
But it's so great, you should just check out this clip on YouTube.
It's the chilling ending of Invasion of the Body Snatchers from 1978 with Donald Sutherland.
And you know who was in charge of that scream, my friend?
You probably looked this up, but it's our old pal from Star Wars who was hitting that high-tension wire with a wrench, Ben Burtt.
Yeah, apparently this was layering pig squeals on top of each other.
And it's sort of a classic ending to that movie because that is the sound that the pod people make when they see a human.
And, well, I mean, I guess this is all spoiler stuff, but it's from 1978.
Donald Sutherland makes that sound at the end when he sees a human indicating chillingly that he is now a pod person.
The odd connection of Justin Long and Hodgman, of course, with the Mac Apple commercials.
When I was out in New York that time after hanging out with Hodgman, you and I, I think, went to a thing with him.
Then later that night, I saw Justin Long out.
and had to say something to him.
I was like, you know, John's a friend of mine.
I was just hanging out with him.
And he said, well, Mila, Josh's future niece, is right behind me.
And then, you know, we have to also give due to the couple more Scream queens, very famously Janet Leigh and Psycho.
And you got to talk about Neve Campbell in the movie Scream.
And speaking of Scream, and I'm only plugging an old movie crush because guest Nate Bargetze is now the biggest comedian on planet Earth.
But I had Nate on because I was a fan of Nate's very early on, and I just wanted to meet Nate.
So I drove to Nashville and had Nate on, and his movie crush pick was Scream.
I cornered him in a studio and he's like, who's this guy?
He's a great guy and super, super nice in person.
And I'm sure he is still that way even now that he's super famous.
He seems like he's still a great guy.
But Nate was a very charming guest.
So if you're a big fan of Nate's now and you want to hear him talk to me, you can check out that old movie crush.
Yeah, I definitely miss that show.
But, you know, some things just have to be retired eventually.
But that's obviously a place where screaming can be a profession in a way.
And, you know, it sounds like he has something special going on in his neck junk because screaming can can definitely like it's very hard on your on your throat.
Another reason to scream kind of here is we're finishing up is pain control.
They did a pretty interesting survey in 2020 of children that had been in the hospital and pain like screaming to relieve pain control.
It turns out is probably a thing.
I haven't seen like the most robust scientific study, but at least from the survey, children routinely described feeling a feeling of liberation when they screamed.
and then a feeling of calmness afterward that helped them experience pain in a more manageable way.
The problem is, is that adults and doctors and nurses can't take it.
Obviously, parents, it's going to be very disturbing because they're going to try and get their kid to not scream.
And the same goes for doctors and nurses trying to comfort them.
But this is the saddest quote of all.
Maybe it's good to scream, but they don't know that.
Before long, they're going to be like, you can't scream at people either.
Then I guess finally we should at least mention scream therapy or primal scream therapy.
I feel like we talked about this at a certain point, but this has been around since the 60s.
I felt like it was probably biggest maybe in the late 60s and 70s.
The original primal scream therapy psychologist was a...
And this is based on the idea that like we all have this repressed trauma from childhood.
And Arthur Janoff said, well, you know what?
A good old fashioned screaming session can release that stuff and get it out there.
The bad news is it turns out there's not a lot of evidence that supports it as being a credible form of therapy.
No, but very 60s, 70s, I could see that being a thing.
And I'm wrong, actually, because, of course, the Black Moses album cover was just that great picture of Isaac Hayes with the shades on and wearing that sort of striped colored hood.
I definitely have seen Isaac Hayes in a wicker throne.
Maybe it was Escape from New York.
All right, guys, this is Leslie.
All right, guys, I don't remember how I was turned on your podcast, but I've been a regular listener for several years now.
And finally, I'm getting around to writing.
I often wished I was in the studio during a recording so I could comment or applaud.
I was sad to learn that you weren't doing San Francisco Sketch Fest this year, but I'm hoping you come back next year and my friend Christine and I will be there.
I wanted to write when the topic was animal communication because the musical interlude was an homage to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, which was brilliant.
You can thank Jerry for that, by the way.
I work in animal care, you see, so I love your animal episodes.
I appreciate how you guys accept a correction showing it's okay to make a mistake as long as you learn from it.
And I appreciate how you present important yet sensitive topics in a respectful way or how you share multiple points of view on divisive issues.
I just want to thank you for keeping me company during my commute, explaining complex things, making seemingly unsavory topics palatable, entertaining me, educating me, and more.
In support of your efforts to grow your listenership still, I shared your Sesame Street episode on my Facebook page.
So, Leslie, really appreciate that.
I've often thought a good drinking game could be to drink every time Chuck says, that's right, roll off the tongue.
But I don't drink alcohol, so if I were to play, I'd probably just get really well hydrated.
It's very funny, Leslie S. in the San Francisco Bay Area.
And, yeah, Leslie, we'd love to see you at our show next year because hopefully we'll be there.
You might know me as that guy from Twin Peaks, Sex and the City, or just The Internet Stand.
I have a new podcast called What Are We Even Doing?
where I embark on a noble quest to understand the brilliant chaos of youth culture.
Each week, I invite someone fascinating to join me to talk about navigating this high-speed rollercoaster we call reality.
Join me and my delightful guests every Thursday, and let's get weird together in a good way.
Listen to What Are We Even Doing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Didn't we do a whole episode on mirrors and maybe talk about breaking mirrors?
Yeah, because we're talking about the idea that if you break a mirror, if you are superstitious, a lot of people would say that brings you seven years of bad luck.
And we're going to dig into why that might be.
People have been superstitious ever since there have been people about different things and way before the mirror.
And apparently the Greeks were the first people to sort of just start talking about a reflection because the story of Narcissus,
falls in love with his image in the stream and drowns and dies.
So because of that, the Greeks are like, maybe seeing yourself isn't such a great thing to do.
That's right.
Or I guess look at the reflection to see Medusa if you're a Clash of the Titans.
Wasn't that a shield?
How would you say the name of the person who looked at their reflection in the water?
I didn't think you were.
I think I might be getting that pronunciation from the song from Indigo Girls.
I look a lot like Narcissus.
Oh, maybe so.
And by the way, our good friend Lucy Wainwright just got off of tour with Indigo Girls.
Yeah, she had the road with them for a while.
And her beautiful little cute daughter was able to go on to a lot of these shows, which is always fun.
Yeah, little girl on tour.
What can be more fun than that?
Indigo girls aren't doing all those nasty drugs in front of that girl.
No, not one TV was thrown over a balcony.
Where were we?
That's right.
That led to the idea that gods might observe their souls through these shiny reflective devices.
So that means it has imports.
So to damage something like that, something like that to be broken,
Would at first they thought of it as like just disrespectful.
And then they said, but also maybe it would anger the gods and they would rain bad luck down upon their heads.
And the whole seven years thing came about apparently because the Romans believed that life changes happen in seven year cycles.
So that's where that idea comes from.
Or another explanation that I'm not sure about this one, but apparently mirrors, you know, they were pretty expensive early on.
And the cost of a mirror would equal seven years work from a servant.
Yeah, they could maybe both are accurate.
That's right.
And because it became a thing in print, it became a thing in British culture.
And yeah, so all of a sudden people all over the world are not wanting to break their mirrors anymore.
Before we broke, Josh laid down a series of puns about mirror breakage.
Apparently, there's some things you can do if you break your mirror.
Apparently, one of the things you can do is you got to get rid of those pieces.
You don't want to leave a broken mirror lying around.
Obviously, it's not a great thing just to have in your house with broken glass.
But I think it has more to do with like, let's just wash ourselves of this and get it out of here as quickly as possible.
That's right.
Good old-fashioned HowStuffWorks advice.
Yeah, agreed.
I'd just get rid of it unless you were pretty close with maybe two days within a full moon.
That's my rule.
I'm glad we agree on that in case we ever break a mirror together.
You can also grind that stuff into powder if you want to.
Yeah, take it to a party.
And then the old throw salt over your shoulder, over your left shoulder, is a great way to get rid of any bad luck if you believe in that kind of thing.
Yeah, you and Emily both.
Love the break glass.
I think the Greeks, though, you know, it can be a celebratory thing, obviously, at a Greek celebration to ward off evil spirits or anyone who's ever been to a Jewish wedding.
Stomping on that wine glass is one of the great traditions.
Or your poor grandma's mirror because apparently that will cause the mirror to tarnish and maybe even turn into an image of that person who is deceased.
And baggage, honestly.
You know, that's shrink territory.
Yeah, that's right.
Other people thought that demons could escape through the mirror, like go from the nonliving world into the living.
And so covering a mirror if someone passes like there's a lot of mirror covering happening in these situations.
Yeah, that's right.
But with marriage, it could also be a good thing because apparently this superstition, if you after you get married and you say I do, if you look into a mirror and the short time after that, you will be uniting your soul.
And it creates apparently an alternate universe where the two souls can live forever together.
What's sweeter?
That's right.
Or just cover that thing up if you don't want to take your chances.
Hot potato?
That's how Emily's family says potato.
Nor would you say a hot potato.
Like what a square.
Get the stick out of your butt, fella.
Yeah.
Jeez.
I mean, I think a lot of people would probably say WTF.
Yeah.
And a time, as we'll see, where the earth and its inhabitants and animals and nature was all going like, all right, thank God we can we can finally get down to business and start being an earth like a legit earth.
And then, you know, the YDs come along and say, not so fast.
Yeah, and, you know, it kind of made me wonder...
Had this not happened, because we were sort of headed toward, you know, legit Earth, like I said before, you know, I mean, it would obviously wouldn't change the year.
But let's say as far along this goes, we would be like the year 3000 something.
Right.
Like, would we be just that much further along as a planet or would we be nowhere?
Because in a thousand years, we will have already destroyed ourselves.
So it's a good thing this happened or we wouldn't be talking about it right now.
OK, I did not know about it.
You say that as if it was just on the tip of my tongue, which I appreciate.
Yeah, so it was very icy.
There were huge ice sheets covering a lot of Earth, like most of North America, northern Europe and Asia.
And as we'll see, a lot of the YD has affected the northern hemisphere much more than the southern, but also weird things happen in the southern hemisphere that don't quite jive.
That's why it's such a kind of a strange mystery.
But lots of ice everywhere.
We had barren plains, very harsh conditions.
We had things like, you know, woolly mammoths, like ice loving creatures dwelling the earth.
And, you know, human populations that were sparse and scattered and constantly kind of moving around trying to survive.
Yeah, and it became, you know, not terribly unlike what we're looking at now.
There was a jump in temperatures that was, you know, kind of close-ish to today.
And this was called the, I never know how to pronounce.
It's an umlaut.
Okay.
I mean, I guess.
We call it the null set because it looks like a zero with a slash through it.
So call it that.
I mean, we don't really call it that, but that's what it looks like.
Pronounce it like that.
What?
With the umlaut?
No, the null set.
Okay.
I wouldn't know how to do that.
With the umlaut, I guess my best stab would be the Burling Alarud Interstadio.
All right.
A lot more rain.
We achieved a sea level that's not what we have today, but about half of what we have today.
With that rain, obviously, you're going to get a lot of plants.
The woodlands are thriving.
Animals are now forest dwelling and walking alongside things like cave bears and woolly mammoths.
Mm-hmm.
And things are going pretty good.
We have homo sapiens at this point or are the only humans that are around at this point.
And they're like they're loving life, man.
They're saying, all right, we can travel a little bit more.
And as we'll see, you know, kind of dabble, stick their toe in settling here and there.
Like, what is farming?
They're like, you're doing it right now, buddy.
I see you over there picking weeds.
And tending to those wild plants.
And that's basically the, you know, kind of, I guess the argument for the beginning of agriculture, at least, right?
That's right.
So things are going along swimmingly.
People are not moving around as much.
They enjoy sitting for the first time and things like that.
And then all of a sudden...
The YD comes along and the glacial conditions return in the broad sense in a very quick way.
I mean, how long did it take?
Like, I mean, the whole thing was like a thousand years, but we reached kind of close to that last glacial maximum in about 500 years.
I wonder if they were like, hey, does anyone think it's getting colder?
Right, yeah, yeah.
Just keep planting those plants.
We'd be so much drunker today.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's super quick.
And again, you know, whenever you talk about this kind of stuff, you got to zoom out and look at it from a sort of macro point of view.
But yeah, that's super fast and got super hot and also super cold previously during the YDs, which was named, by the way, after a flower, the Dryas octopetala.
Yeah.
Nailed it.
And the odd thing about this flower and why they named the YDs after it is that it thrives in cold Arctic regions.
It's one of these flowers that loves the ice, kind of the mountains of Scandinavia.
And in the late 1800s, like the 1870s, Swedish scientists were studying clay deposits and they discovered this flower.
And they were like, this flower shouldn't be here between these layers of clay.
It was deposited by melting glaciers, but none of that makes any sense.
That's right.
So we got the OD.
We got the YD.
Mm-hmm.
Should we take a break?
Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good time for a break, yay?
All right.
We'll be right back.
Like when a kid says brah to me.
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A couple of tough guys.
Yeah, and those are big deals.
You can find out a lot from an ice core.
You can find out, like, basically what it accumulated there, like stuff that the wind blew in there from other places.
You know, they've got these little bubbles in that ice, and you can trace gases even that were present back then.
and compare to like other parts of the world at that time and like, oh, well, they have these gases here.
We have this sediment here.
We have a distinct lack of pollen for this period here, which means like probably a lot of plant life was killed off and stuff like that.
And then the lake stuff is super valuable too, right?
You know, a very niche, nerdy stuff you should know T-shirt could just be lake bottom greater than symbol tree ring.
I think so.
But just, you know, you walk around like Comic-Con and somebody will say, I know exactly what you're doing, buddy.
Right.
But it'll be a sort of a nerdy.
They'll miss the high five.
It won't be quite right.
They'll try and fist bump you when you put up your hand or something.
That's got to be the worst.
I thought the fist bump and the hand together was the worst.
But when you high five and someone holds on and locks fingers, not what you're after.
Oh, goodness.
I don't know why I think of Oprah Winfrey.
All right, so we're settling into the YD.
I mentioned earlier that the northern hemisphere was the one that was really affected the most, especially around the North Atlantic.
The southern hemisphere, we'll talk about some weird abnormalities there as well, but these ice sheets advanced across the Arctic Sea just like they did during the old LGM, the last glacial maximum.
Is it glacial or glacial?
I guess so.
The Rockies here and what would later be the United States expanded.
The Alps expanded.
They found very weird things like penguin like creatures in southern Italy.
Like things were getting really out of whack again.
And everyone back then was like WTF.
Yeah, for sure.
I mentioned the pollen retreating being evidence of like, you know, the tree cover going away.
And they found evidence of that in ice core once again.
This is in the Hulu cave in China.
And it showed, you know, a drastic reduction in tree pollen, which, you know, basically you can infer that like, yeah, a lot of a lot of trees died out during this icy period.
Yeah, it's so crazy.
When I was going through this stuff, that to me was like the big reveal.
I mean, I'm a big dummy when it comes to this stuff.
So I just figured that would have been even colder and even worse.
But temperatures actually rose in the southern hemisphere and a lot of the southern hemisphere became warmer and wetter.
And the sea surface temperatures increased in the Caribbean and the tropical Pacific and the mountains of New Zealand.
It's all warmer conditions.
So it was like everything was kind of upside down all of a sudden.
Yeah, for sure.
There were likely some animal extinctions happening.
You mentioned the amount of humans, which was probably at an all-time high at this point, started going back lower and lower.
Their available food was getting slimmer and slimmer.
We mentioned they were dabbing their toe in the pond of kind of settling down a little bit and not hunting and gathering and traveling everywhere.
And all of a sudden they had to pack it up and start moving around again to try and find food again.
Yeah.
Man, this feels like a thousand years ago.
Yeah, for sure.
Another interesting thing is, you know, sometimes in the times of trouble, there can be human advancement because you're struggling and need to think of better ideas on how to do what you're doing.
And it seems like that might have happened with the hunting because the animals are more scarce, hunting is harder, the game is just not around.
So this is where we saw at least one thing that we think might have been an advancement was the Harif point, H-A-R-I-F, which is a...
Basically, a new and improved arrowhead came about, and they think it's probably because they were struggling and they needed to kill better.
I know.
And those, you know what?
The animals loved them.
They did.
They were like, shoot me again.
Yeah.
And, you know, that became a challenge in a lot of ways, not just because the ice, but they found once again in those ice deposits or the ice cores, they found air bubbles with a noted decrease in concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
And so all of a sudden, these wild cereals that are growing, their yields are going to be way down.
And, you know, they had some, you know, for the time, some fairly advanced agriculture burgeoning there.
They were like pest control and like watering things, weeding things, transplanting things.
The basics.
Yeah, the very basics.
But that's, you know, the very beginnings.
And yeah, this put a big sort of stop sign in front of all of that.
Yeah.
You want this water to be beer one day, fella?
Exactly.
Let me pour it on this grain.
Oh, man.
Shall we take another break?
Like when a kid says brah to me.
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All right, we should talk a second about something called solar insolation, not insolation, insolation with an O. And this is how much solar warmth reaches the Earth's upper atmosphere.
And the basic pattern of, you know, warming the globe is driven by this.
And the Younger Dryas is definitely like this weird, exceptional pocket that stands out.
And
Because of this, everyone, you know, that nerds out on this kind of stuff was like, well, we got to figure this out.
I mean, why did this happen?
And they have emerged with four main hypotheses.
The one that has the most traction we're going to start with is the melt water interrupting thermohaline circulation hypothesis.
And that sounds very sort of like sciencey and nerdy and like, guys, I hope you explain this, but it's really very simple.
It is.
It's that a bunch of water disturbed the cycle of the warming cycle of the ocean very, very quickly.
That's right.
All right.
So park that in your in your brain and then understand that North America at the time had this huge 700 mile by 200 mile lake called Lake Agassiz, I guess.
Sure.
Agassiz, if you're an Andre Agassiz fan.
Yeah.
It developed as the Laurentide Ice Sheet and extended down to the Great Plains and blocked the Great Lakes.
And all the rivers that were flowing there backed up and it formed this big natural reservoir that was 700 by 200 miles big.
And this theory holds, the meltwater theory holds,
that as that last glacial maximum warmed things up, that ice sheet retreated, the blocked passage to those Great Lakes opened up, and all of a sudden, billions and billions of gallons of freshwater make its way down to the North Atlantic.
They think a similar sort of thing happened in the Nordic region.
But you're like, all right, so that makes sense.
But was this water like super cold or something?
It was cold, but the main thing it did was desalinate that upper ocean water, right?
Yeah, I mean, it makes sense to me.
But that's why I love science is people keep poking around and the fringe nut maybe one day is proven somewhat right.
And that, well, I still think that the melt water is probably the reason why.
But one of the other hypotheses is the impact hypothesis.
And that is, like you said, was pretty controversial until more recently.
It has gained a little bit of traction because some things do kind of add up.
But the idea here is that a meteorite or a comet or something impacted the Earth, maybe an airburst even.
And that released a thermal pulse that kind of set the world on fire almost like all these massive wildfires across all the continents.
The air is filled with soot.
It's blocking sunlight.
And in fact, there's so much soot, there's atmospheric dust such that you reduce solar radiation and all of a sudden you have what's called an impact winter or, you know, kind of like the idea of a nuclear winter.
Yeah.
And the other thing, there's a couple of more sort of smaller points that might support this.
One is there was a platinum spike in South Africa that preceded the YD and in some other places.
And platinum is, you know, a lot of time within meteorites.
So maybe some support there.
And also sometimes people kind of combine the first one and say maybe there was an impact combined with this meltwater thing.
So there was a low atmospheric explosion over North America, and that's what released all this meltwater all over the place.
Yeah, let's go get a drink and just settle it.
Oh, yeah.
I think so.
Yeah, nailed it.
The last one is another sort of example where the sun is blotted out, so there's a massive drop in temperature very quickly.
But this time it is because a volcano erupted, a massive volcano.
This is the Lacher C volcano, not C-E-A, or I'm sorry, S-E-A, but S-E-E, because we all know that Germany doesn't have any water, right?
Yeah.
But this is a German volcano.
Of course, we're kidding.
That's a reference to an older episode.
We know all about the Black Sea.
So hold your emails.
But this volcano, it was definitely a mega eruption.
It spewed 6.3.
I mean, what is that even?
Trillion?
What is that?
So three million cubic kilometers?
Yeah, I just outed myself in a mathematical way.
Well, comparatively speaking, Mount St.
Helens released one cubic kilometer.
Vesuvius was three and this was 6.3.
So the other interesting thing about this one is volcanoes can produce platinum.
Yeah.
Or at least, you know, part of like groups of platinum metals.
And that could account for that spike we talked about in South Africa.
Josh said you were dismissed.
All right.
So that was the YDs.
I guess we could talk a little bit about what happened afterward.
Afterward is where we are, the Holocene period.
And that was when the climate finally worked itself out.
That pendulum stopped swinging and things started warming up and stabilizing.
And, you know, people started thriving again.
The animals came out.
The birds started chirping.
The bees started pollinating.
And it led to, you know, not the modern, modern era, but just, you know, what we know now is planet Earth.
Yeah.
I mean, the current the current shape of our planet happened after the Younger Dryas, like the way the coastlines were shaped.
I mentioned the Rockies and the Alps, you know, those those mountain ranges all over the world.
Even they I was about to say took their final shape that, of course, that's not true, but took the shape that we know and love today.
Yeah, that's right.
And those wild cereals that we talked about that were having such a hard time, you know, became Captain Crunch.
I don't think so.
That's it for now.
I mean, who knows what's ahead?
This is called Birthmark episode because I think that might have been a selector.
Maybe Patrick just listened to it again.
I think so.
That's what happened.
Hey, guys, listen to that episode again recently because I have a birthmark that makes me perpetually look like I have a black eye.
On a regular basis, someone will ask me some variation of like who punched you, what happened to your face.
I used to enjoy giving a clever story as a way to mess with them, like getting kicked out of a nightclub or squaring off with a bear.
But I started to feel bad for lying even to my friends, even if only for a minute.
So now I usually just take the boring route and explain that it's a birthmark.
It's just subtle enough that friends can go years without noticing it even.
But once it's brought to their attention, they can't unsee it.
Many don't believe me when I tell them it's just a birthmark and they think I'm trying to cover something up.
My mom even told me that she was interrogated when I was a child by doctors and would get dirty looks from other parents when they noticed a mark on my face, and I feel bad that her experience of my birthmark has never been as fun as mine.
Anyway, ever since my wife Christine introduced me to your show about nine years ago, Stuff You Should Know has been a staple for us during house chores and road trips.
Your chemistry together is very comforting, and we especially like hearing Josh make Chuck laugh.
Do it right now.
That actually worked.
I was like, I'm going to have to fake a laugh here, but you got me.
Awesome.
Keep up the great work, guys.
Thanks for making the two of us smile again and again and again.
We've made them smile three times.
All the best from Troutdale, Oregon.
That is Patrick Burton.
That's right.
We're beginning our spookiest month of October.
I am too.
We love our Halloween-y content.
And we're going to talk to you a little bit today about a kind of one of those just fun urban legend stories that seems to be geographically specific in that it's around, you know, maybe Texas, New Mexico, border towns mainly of the La La Chuza, the Owl Witch.
Yeah, and this is one of those things where, you know, because it's lore and legend, it's going to differ from place to place depending on who's telling the story.
By the way, we should thank HowStuffWorks and all that's interesting, Austin Harvey from there.
And I found a fun article in Texas Standard from Sarah Ash and Raul Alonso that helped out with this.
But yeah, this is one of those sort of legends where, and there's a lot of different versions.
We're going to go over a few of those.
One is that La Luchusa will make like sounds like a baby is crying, hoping that someone will go like try and find this baby and all of a sudden be snatchable by the talons and they would be snatched up and returned to the owl's nest ostensibly.
No, it's pretty terrifying.
I think sometimes if you dream about La La Chuza, a family member will die soon.
And it seems like most of the tellings, it is a woman who was once, or an owl woman who was once a human woman, and something bad happened to her.
Some act of cruelty, usually something by a bad man, happened or maybe happened to her child and it turned her into a vengeful beast that
Sometimes Lila chooses more of a witch's familiar like Dracula's or a vampire's familiar.
And I think in that case, as a witch's familiar, they would abduct kids for the witch.
That's right.
If you want to kill a La La Chuza, good luck, buddy, because apparently you cannot hurt a La La Chuza with bullets.
I think if you try to kill one with a gun or something like that, you're going to get killed like pretty soon afterward for sure.
All right.
Shall we come back after this?
All right.
We'll be right back with more on La La Chuza.
If you're with me, you're golden.
I'll take care of you.
I'm going to be with you.
In Australia, you're looking out for snakes, spiders, and ****.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, as far as where these things come from, I remember many, many years ago we did one on urban legends.
And it's always pretty much impossible to trace back like the true origin.
With this one, there are people who think this might have come from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica when the indigenous peoples had very close relationships and bonds with animals.
But when the Spaniards came along to Mesoamerica, they brought, of course, Christian, you know, Catholic Christian beliefs with them and condemned the rest as paganism, of course.
Yeah, for sure.
It's also popped up over the years in like various pop culture ways.
I'm surprised there hasn't been like a pretty cool La La Chusa like movie or character in a movie or TV show.
You know, they'd be truly frightening.
All right.
Well, maybe I'll check it out.
You have good horror recommendations.
I mentioned pop culture.
I think Lollachuza was an enemy in an issue of a comic book called Relimpago, and that was created by Margarito Garza.
So that was one.
What else?
There was music too, right?
You know, I wish I knew somebody who was a good sort of model maker, creature maker, because we've been getting more into the Halloween front yard decorations and like to be a little outside the box and not just whatever you get at Party City or no, not Party City.
What is it?
We did a whole episode on it last year.
Although, I mean, their stuff is really good.
I'm not knocking it.
Oh, really?
Yeah, I would love a custom sort of, I think a Lalo shoes that would be truly scary and it has kind of a fun story behind it.
I like stuff that has like a legend behind it.
So, hey, if anyone out there wants to just, you know, make me one, I'll just say my address on the show and you can just drop it off in the front yard.
I like that version.
That's right.
We're good guys.
Don't come after us.