Why do we cry?
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What is the opening story that leads into the discussion about crying?
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In the course of my travels, I've been recording nature soundscapes. With the aim of helping you, Australia, to relax. And in this particular overnight recording, there was this one duck that just kept screaming its guts out. Anyway, don't worry, I've selected only the best, most relaxing soundscapes that absolutely do not feature this duck. Find Nature Sounds by Ann Jones, wherever you get your podcasts and on the ABC Listen app.
So Tegan, when was the last time you had a good greet?
You get a greet sounds like something you say when you're saying hello to someone. Have I got that right?
No, no. Well that's you know, 'cause I grew up in Scotland. Having a good greet means you're having a good cry.
I actually went to a memorial on the weekend, so it's quite recent and it was a a very deep greet.
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
How about you? Are you uh are you a
regular crier? So I I can choke up. And sometimes I'll choke up on air. Um I've done it. So distant past you you you currently are a presenter of Life Matters. I used to co-present Life Matters with Geraldine. And you know, and often enough we would I would have somebody on with a really emotional story. I remember one in detail which was uh just very briefly. We had on a story about a psychiatrist, and this will get you crying. So he was really disabled. And blind from having stepped on a landmine in Vietnam during the Vietnam War when he was a medic and told the story about his had remarkable rehabilitation and he'd become a psychiatrist and so on. It's a really amazing story. And we got an email in from a listener who said and I can almost cry actually saying it.
saying I was helicoptered in in the Vietnam War to a platoon of Australian servicemen who'd got caught in a minefield and I came across this doctor who uh was very badly wounded and he said, I'm gonna die, go after the others. Oh my gosh. And I've often wondered what happened to him and now I find out. And we actually put on life matters we put them together. I mean just you know, if that doesn't really tear you up, nothing will. Um and I I find it very hard to control myself on air. I mean really um
beautiful and yeah, uh as you say, I now present life matters four days a week and I probably weekly will get misty at minimum on air. We're just always talking about such human stuff that gets me right in the fields.
Yeah. But crying is what we're gonna talk about today on What's That Rash.
It's the show where we answer the health questions everyone is asking. Well, today our question comes from Ian, and yes, it is about crying. Ian says, I've just had my good, usual, unmanly cry, quietly and in the dark, so as not to disturb others, at a Film Society screening of the corny but beautiful musical movie An American in Paris 1951, starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. In the case of this movie, I'm crying at the sheer loveliness of everything. Every The singing and dancing and music and depiction of true love. But after the movie, left happy and a little dehydrated by it, I got wondering why we cry over whatever we cry over. Loveliness and/or tragedy, heartbreak, life's miseries. What physiological purpose does crying serve?
Why have we evolved to do it? How does it come about? What pieces of the mind and body are employed? If we cry to excess, does this do us any medical harm? Or is crying only ever beneficial? Yours, Kleenex Lee, Ian of Canberra. Ian, I love this question so much because I am a pretty regular crier. I get emotional over all sorts of things, often wonderful things. So I'm really curious to dig into this one as well.
Yeah, really important. And then he's got a big you know Ian's got a big idea, which has probably just gone a little bit far, that you and I should act out the Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron singing dancing episode of um What's That Rash.
Cr or
Crying and Sympathy.
I'm down with it. So uh Ian has basically scripted our whole episode for us, Norman, just all of the different ways that crying benefits us as a species.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the opening story that leads into the discussion about crying?
0:00–4:57
2
Why does Ian ask about the purpose of crying after watching *An American in Paris*?
4:57–10:38
3
How do Norman and Tegan define the different types of tears (reflex, basal, psychic)?
10:38–15:25
4
What does the Australian Talk survey reveal about how often men and women cry?
15:25–19:14
5
How do the hosts wrap up the episode and invite listeners to share their own crying stories?
19:14–19:35