Stuff You Should Know - Peripersonal Space: Humans’ Got Talent

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

The space around you that you can reach with your arms is a very special place. It’s where we interact with reality. And although we are so good at using it we don’t give it a second thought, our ability to use it is one our most amazing abilities.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too and that's the podcast that they call Stuff You Should Know. Do I sound any different?

Yeah, no. You sound exactly the same. Do I really? That's good because I just got the stints out from having my deviated septum fixed once and for all. Dude, what's it like? What's the reveal? Well, the big reveal is that my voice didn't change, which is something I was actually really worried about. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, because I mean like that's what I use as my job when I was like, well, you know, if I've got like my septum pressed all the way up against one side of my face, how does that make my voice sound? And what will it sound like without that happening? But I can breathe through both nostrils for the first time in memory. I literally can't remember the last time. I'm probably with sixth grade. Again, my friend saw me punch me in the face and I'm almost

positive that's the only thing I can come up with that would have deviated my septum. But I've been in such a good mood since those stints got pulled out, man. I'm just on air. Dude, I love it. So happy to hear that. Thank you. I bet those stints being in there was not fun. No, it wasn't. My doctor, a guy named Kapil Segel, was really, really good as was Alicia, the PA too. And he said that I don't think he said it was the most deviated septum ever, but I'm just going to go ahead and say that's essentially what he was saying, that it was a really, really deviated septum. And so he got it straight and everything's going bully right now. Did you shave any off anywhere here and there? No, he said, you know, that bump's still going to be there, right? We're not doing

a rhinoplasty. I was like, yeah, I've made peace with my nose. This fine nose. So he was like, great. Okay. I love it. I can't wait. Can't wait to breathe my breath into your nostrils and have you accept it for the first time. Here, do it now and we'll see if I can smell it over the microphone. Yeah, that's nice, Chuck. It smells like seagulls. It's funny, people listening to this might be thinking, why did Chuck almost shout the word big at the beginning of this episode? Oh, yeah. Because I was going to say big props and thanks to you for picking this subject. Oh, okay, great. Because I thought it was endlessly fascinating and had so many potential little tendrils that weren't even in the great thing that Livia put together for us.

It just, it really got my brain kind of thinking about a lot of different ways that pair of personal space and how our brains are wired and how many things that has impacted and will impact and can impact. I loved it. Yeah, it is. I mean, that's why I was like, we got to do one on this. I don't remember how I stumbled across. I think I actually was like, I remember hearing that every human needs like 1.7 meters square meters of personal space or something or actual physical space. And I was like, is that true? And I went and looked it up and I stumbled upon pair of personal space, which is different. There's personal space, there's pair of personal space. And the science, even though we've been like kind of picking at the edges of

it since the 70s, it's still so new that we're not quite sure if we're talking about the same thing or these overlapping systems. But the upshot of it, pair of personal space, what we're talking about is the area around you that you can reach like as far as your arm extends and that if you stop and think about it, this is the way that we physically interact with the world. This is the space and it changes because we move around the world. We sit down, we stand up, we shake hands, we just, we do stuff. So it moves with us. It's locked into our body, but it is, it's the space where, where we interface with reality essentially in any physical way. Yeah. And it's, and by the way, teaser, there are two other kinds of spaces that you didn't even mention that we're going to talk

about. Okay. So just, you know, put that under your lid. Let's smoke it. Listening audience. It's sort of related to what's called body schema. And we'll talk about sort of the history and all this and all these cool studies, but body schema is just the understanding that we have of how we're built. Like, you know, it's like if you put on one of those big sumo wrestling suits, you're going to be knocking stuff over like a Nathan for you episode in a China, in a China shop. Because your, your, your brain is wired to be used to how big you are. Like when we squeeze through a sideways thing, like we know, like, I've got to turn sideways when I get to this thing, because I know how big I am and I know how wide I am. And like, you can't overstate the massive

importance this had evolutionarily speaking, I think, because that relates to everything from, along with PPS, parapersonal space, everything from like, can I reach from this limb out to get that piece of fruit without falling and killing myself to, right, can I use this club and we'll get to some really interesting stuff about extensions of your own space. Can I use this club to hit that guy before he gets to me? All of this stuff mattered. Like even fruit flies have a version of body schema, which is, can I make it from here to there, essentially, with my little fruit fly body? Can I get through that gap? Is it too small? Same as that? Yeah. And that reveals that body schema is a really, really ancient mechanism. It's a really ancient system

among life, right? That if you stop and think about it, anything that moves through the world probably has some form of body schema, because otherwise they'd be running into stuff. They would be, they wouldn't be able to feed themselves. They would miss the prey that they were running after. It's really basically impossible to overstate how constantly we use this process and how constant it's updated. And the most remarkable thing about it is we do all this without even giving it a thought. It just happens. And it's not just body schema we're talking about. And this is where we kind of get into what I was talking about earlier that we're still not quite sure is body schema part of it. Are we talking about body schema? We're just accidentally using a

different term. That's where the field is right now. But neurology has definitely taken up peripersonal space and is investigating it with full gusto. So it probably won't be too terribly long before we understand it much more and have a much more precise definition that all of the scientific community agrees on. Yeah. And that's basically what we're studying here and talking about today is neurology because it's very easy to say, well, of course, you know, you can't squeeze through a certain area if it's too small for your body, but it's not instinct. It is neurons firing on an unconscious level that is telling you to do or to not attempt this thing, basically. It's very cool. Yeah. And again, it's how we do just about everything with our bodies,

like from dancing, playing sports, making a screwdriver, making love, what some people call doing it, how if somebody shoots an arrow at your face and you catch the arrow right before it hits your face without even thinking about it, it's how we catch flies out of the air with chopsticks. Anything that we do physically moving has to do with this. And again, it has to do with how incredibly advanced our brains are. That's what we're finding out. That's what this whole thing reveals, is this thing that we've just taken for granted, we finally reached the point in our understanding of the universe and us and how things work, sorry, how stuff works, that we're now investigating things that we've just totally taken for granted. And what we're

finding is like, oh my God, our brains are so ridiculously powerful that this is just fun to even talk about. And that's why we're talking about it today. A couple of the first neurologists to sort of start poking around this parapersonal space was in 1911, a dude named Henry Head, good name as Libya points out, and Gordon Holmes put out a paper that talked about body schema. And they were looking at it in terms of like people that had brain damage, they noticed that certain kinds of brain damage would render odd ways that they might position a limb, or that they might have a sensation in a limb or something like that. So that's how they kind of started, kind of launched the field of studying this body schema thing, neurologically speaking.

And they also, and this is super cool, this is just one of like a million cool things. They're the first ones that came up with this idea that if something is attached to your body in a way that it's moving with your body, then your brain accepts that neurologically and factors that in. So if you're wearing a 10 gallon hat, you're going to duck a little more readily because you know you're wearing that hat unless, you know, unless you're just really dense, and you just keep knocking that hat off. But eventually, you're not going to be a cartoon character and you're going to realize this large hat or this whatever I'm wearing. Like, and I remember I think I've talked about it before in college, one of the greatest Halloween costumes

I ever saw in downtown Athens was I kind of knew him. His name was Blake, but he was surface area man one year. And he just had these huge foam discs that he made a suit out of around his arms and legs and his body that he took up like, you know, maybe 15 square feet. And he would just walk around Athens bumping into things saying, I'm surface area, man. But it's it sort of ties in with this and that he went against the idea, like neurologically speaking, he would have known he can't go into the bar and not knock people over. And I'm sure he did know this, it was part of the gag. But right, if it's attached to you and moves with you, your brain factors that in. Yeah, like if you stop and think about that for a second, your body schema, if you put a hat on,

your body schema enlarges and changes shape to include that hat now. Yeah, that's astounding. That's an amazing thing that we just, again, don't even think about. So head and homes were the ones who were really first kind of bringing this up, like, Hey, guys, we're taking some stuff for granted, we need to investigate this. And it was followed up in 1941 by WR brain, another neurologist. And he said, Hey, you know what, we kind of think of space around us is like, you know, this, the door is just three feet in front of me, or the ceiling is a six foot ceiling. And we think of it in Cartesian terms, like things can be mapped out as if on a graph. And he said, that's not actually how our brain encodes things. It encodes things much more simply, basically,

what's in grasping distance, and what's in walking distance. And he kind of prefigured all the way back in 1941, this idea of para personal space, grasping distance, and then other types of space. And it seems to be the case that that is kind of how our brain divides things. And it's not binary like that. It's not like a straight line, like either it's in walking distance, or it's in grasping distance, there's gradients of it. But he, he was pretty smart for having come up with this, kind of seeing things differently. Yeah. And there were a couple of philosophers. I'm sure many people have put this forward, but common client and Frederick de Venement kind of threw out that, Hey, I think this evolved originally out of self-defense.

And that makes a lot of sense. I think even though we're so far removed from Tuk Tuk, and, and our ancestors like that, I think many people still in a place where they maybe even not feel threatened, maybe even when they're sitting in their own living room, know like, all right, the firepokers, you know, within grasping distance. Sure. Just in case someone busted in that door. Yeah. Like I remember being a kid and like, and I wasn't a paranoid worried kid at all, but I used to go into places and all right, where's, where's the defense weapon? Like in this room, what would I grab if some, maybe I was a paranoid worried kid.

Yeah. I was gonna say, I, I'd walk into a room and be like, where's the cookies? I would think I could throw the cookie jar at someone's head. But I think that's the evolutionary sort of remnant still sticking around, which is like, what can I grasp to defend myself? And your brain is sort of wired that way. Not only with us, but you know, animals, they found out kind of do the same thing, right? Yeah. And like that we, that we would have taken this initial thing that it's self defense, that there's a bubble of, of like, protection around us that when something starts to come into it, we're like, okay, alarms are going off. And that over time, our brain was like,

we can do a lot more with this. Let's figure out unique and novel ways in that that eventually evolved into being able to grasp the hot poker. And they point out the two philosophers you mentioned that it's not an adaptation that's called an exaptation. And we talked about it in the human intelligence episode, where the ability to remember where you set your baby down on that rock, eventually evolved into wayfinding, like our ability to create mental maps and find our way around or find our way back from something. But yeah, you said something about the animals. And there was a Swiss zoo director. I'm just going to take his name. Okay. I'm usually pretty generous, but I want to take this one. Okay. Please do. Heine Heidegger. That's pretty straight

forward. It's a great name. Heine Heidegger, a Swiss zoo director, started studying animals because he wanted to figure out at what, like, how can you put animals into the same enclosure, but they're from different species without scaring one another to death. And so he started studying how close you could get to animals and came up with this whole kind of contribution to the eventual peripersonal understanding of space. That's right. So what happened was Heine Heidegger, you got to say both names. Sure. It's really hard not to, said, I want to figure out a few different things. I want to figure out how far like a predator species can be from a prey before, or we'll call it the flight distance before one of the prey runs away, or maybe fights back,

we'll call that the defense distance, or plays dead. That's critical distance. And found out that there was just a lot of consistency among different individuals within a species, which A was interesting, but also created the definition of what a tame animal is, which is kind of cool, which is a flight distance of zero when it comes to humans. So you can go up and pet that thing, basically, give it a scratch. Yeah. And Heine Heidegger, you could kind of take him and set him to the side for a little bit, because his findings really kind of come to pass in proxemics, which is the personal spaces, most people understand it, which eventually, you know, we'll talk about overlaps with peripersonal space. But peripersonal spaces,

we understand today was termed, I think, around 1981. And there's going to be a lot of Chuck's Italian imitations, because the Italians really, they did a lot of studying of peripersonal space. I don't know. I don't know. But they just, they just are into that kind of thing. But from the 70s to the 90s, there was a lot of sad monkey experiments. So I said, I'm like, when are we going to stop doing that? We have to figure out a different way, because it's just so ghastly if you stop and think about what they're doing to these poor monkeys. But essentially, what they figured out is, yeah, W.R. Brain was right. Our brains basically say that's near, that's far. And yes, there's, you know, variations on the themes. But essentially, that's how we see the

world. And the stuff that's near is the really hot action stuff, because that's the stuff we can interact with. Right. But also, there was an Italian neurophysiologist name. Do you say Giacomo or Giacomo? Oh, I don't know. I'm going to say Giacomo. Okay. Giacomo Resolati basically found out that as far as the neurons of this macaque monkey goes, and ostensibly humans, obviously, is why they're studying these monkeys to begin with, their neurons would fire if the monkey was touched, like literally touched on the skin, or the same thing would happen if a flash of light went off near its body. So it, you know, we're talking about parapersonal space versus extrapersonal space. That was one of the two types that we didn't mention. Extrapersonal is

out of your reach grasp, right? Yes. So basically found out that certain neurons react to that extrapersonal space exclusively, visually. But when it came to these parapersonal neurons, they were responding to both tactile or visual stimulus in the same way. Right. So as long as something was happening in this, in this parapersonal space, that neuron could be stimulated by different kinds of input, right? That's right. That's gonna, that's gonna become big in a second. There's another researcher named Michael Graziano. Chuck? Graziano? Actually, he's American. So I'll bet it's just Michael Graziano. And he studied macaques too with electrical currents. And this one, this is the one that gets me. He implanted electrodes

into these neurons that Rizalotti had discovered and said, what happens if I like stimulate this? And when he stimulated the neurons that were activated within the parapersonal space, the monkeys would like flinch. They would like throw their hands up defensively in front of their faces. They would, they would respond like there was a predator that was about to attack them. Like it had just invaded their parapersonal space, or as Henny Heidegger would say, their defense distance, right? Yeah, which I mean, that leads to the, you know, that really backs up the whole original defense mechanism thing, right? Exactly. That, that, that's probably what it evolved from. And then when he did the opposite, if he, if he prevented those neurons from firing,

you could get as close as you wanted in the monkey wouldn't flinch, essentially. All right. And then 97 Rizalotti, I believe this is where the first sort of big book around this came out. He and his colleagues put out a book called The Space Around Us, where they basically gathered up a, you know, a couple of decades worth of research and said, here's what we've got so far. Right. One of the big things that they said in that was that, hey, what we thought before is that there's all this different sensory information coming in, tactile information, audio, visual, all that stuff. And the brain is kind of bringing it all together and analyzing it. And then telling the, the motor nerves what to do to respond.

That's not right. It turns out that there are neurons that can be stimulated by, by visual input, by tactile input, by audio input, the same neuron, it'll respond. The point isn't what kind of stimulus it is. It's where it's happening. So like if something's happening in the parapersonal space, a neuron that's responsible for the parapersonal space around your right elbow, if you see something around your right elbow coming at it, like an arrow, or if an arrow is actually touching now your elbow, that same neuron is going to fire in just the same way. That, that was a big thing. It's not stimulus specific. It's location specific. And so that kind of changed our entire understanding of how the brain kind of processes all this stuff. It's,

it's rather than redundancy, having all these different regions taking in stuff and then putting it together. It's, you know, specific neurons are, are dedicated to specific regions, no matter how that, that sensory input is coming in. Well, and even in the cool little cherry on this Sunday was they also found out that it's not just where something is located, but their neurons start firing on, you know, if it's a bow and arrow or a rake or a club or a baseball bat or a coffee cup, your brain fires on like how you're going to physically engage with that thing because of its locate, you know, and coordination with its physical location. So that comes up a little bit later at the end with the mirror neurons experiment and maybe we'll just save that.

That'll be a nice little teaser. Okay, cool. Another thing that they figured out too, I'm not sure what the year was, but Andrea Serino at the MySpace lab, pretty great name, she found out that the size of your PPS varies depending on what part of the body is being studied. So it's different sizes around that your torso or your face or your hands. And what I found just monumentally astounding Chuck is that the size of your PPS altars, size and shape, I believe, as you bring one PPS area into another PPS area. So like your face comes up or your hand comes to touch your face and they think that this is to prevent your hand from getting captured by your PPS, your face's parapersonal space. And then who knows what sort of crazy

cognitive sensation that would create. So you actually, there's a mechanism to prevent that from happening, to prevent your hands PPS from merging accidentally with your face's PPS. Right. But one thing that they kind of got wrong that they realized later on, and I think this paper came out just a few years ago in 2018, was that, and I believe, let's shout out who it was, researchers Rory Buffachi, man, what is going on here? I love it. That Rory doesn't make you, you're not expecting Buffachi after Rory, you know? Rory J. Buffachi and Gian Domenico Iannetti, they put forth the argument that it's like, it's not like a switch though, it's a sort of like a gradient range basically, based on the distance something is from you. So it's not like,

is it within my grasping distance, or is it not? Neurons can fire if it like, might be, like if they move something a little bit closer, the way your neurons fire change. Yeah, they've also found that it depends on if the thing is moving, or if it's stationary, and if it's moving, is it moving toward you, is it moving away? So like, there's a lot of nuance to it, rather than it's either in my extra personal space, or it's in my parapersonal space, which was kind of like the general model for years, they're finding like, no, it's much more nuanced than that. So Chuck, we just realized off camera, off mic, that we haven't taken a break yet. No, see, this is so fascinating, it's like we're having a good old fashioned conversation.

Okay, well, let's take that break now then and come back, okay? Yeah, like people do in good old fashioned conversations. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush

boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop

running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So we're back. I know everyone else takes ad breaks when they have great conversations

with people. So that's what we did. Sure. Where are we now? Are we at tools? Can we talk about tools? Yeah. This is where it really starts to get mind blowing. Yeah. This is super cool. Because not only does your parapersonal space change automatically if you wear a 10-gallon hat, but your parapersonal space will change according to what kind of tool you're using. And this is sort of what I was talking about with Tuk Tuk all of a sudden has a as a four foot club in his hand. And he now knows that that animal he wants to kill or that person coming at him, the neurons are firing basically as if his arm is three and a half feet longer. Yes. It includes that. And this I think is just like, if you just think about the development

of weapons over the years. You and weapons. I think, well, I mean, some of this stuff was actually in our book on the chapter on the first gun. But it really, I don't know. It never occurred to me that all weapons development since the beginning of time has just been to get further and further away from your enemy. Oh, yeah. That's a good point for sure. You have a club that you can hit some with or a sword. And then you're backing up a little bit more and your parapersonal space is automatically reading this in. But I'm curious about like, when you start shooting arrows and then guns and then eventually long range missiles like neurologically speaking what that does, you know. Right. But also with tools, not just weapons, but any like the fact

that you can use a screwdriver or hit a baseball with a bat. It's not about violence. Sometimes you sort of fix a toaster. I'm like, come on, let's chill out, Chuck. Let's get it more Richard scary than actually scary. Yeah. So the fact that you can use a screwdriver is not because your hand is precisely guiding that screwdriver. It seems to be because the parapersonal space of your hand is now being extended to the tip of that screwdriver. So it's almost like if you could turn screws with your finger, you're doing something very similar as far as your neurons are concerned because they've now adopted the screwdriver as part of your hand and extended your parapersonal space around it. So your body schema has now adjusted and you look like you have an extra

finger that's really thin and really long. There's a really cool study again in Italy. In 2000, Anna Berti and Francesca Fressonetti looked at a woman who had a stroke on the right hemisphere of her brain and they did these experiments to, you know, these near and far space experiments to see how her neurons fired when like reaching for something with a hand or reaching for something, not really reaching, but using a laser pointer to, you know, extend your extra personal space really far out there. And I believe when she was asked to find the midpoint of a line within her parapersonal space, like with her finger, maybe, she put the mark really far to the right because the right hemisphere of her brain had been damaged through the stroke.

She was asked to do the same thing with this laser and she did a really much better job. And then they gave her a stick. And I believe that she used the stick and did worse than the laser, right, but better than her finger. Yeah, because her brain didn't adopt the laser dot as part of her body schema, but it did adopt the stick. So it's just constantly remapping basically. Yeah, but it also showed that the brain treats these two places very much differently, that they're not the same as far as the brain is concerned. And it also showed that when you use a stick over a laser pointer, your brain is treating that stick like a tool. It was just really good early evidence that, yeah, we definitely change our body schema to adopt tools when we use them.

Yeah. And it sort of made me think about, along with this next study, this was not in Italy, actually, this is in Japan, around 2000, where they took monkeys again and they gave them rakes to see if they would treat a rake like an extension of their body, neurologically speaking. And they did, they could get food that was, you know, further away just using that rake, but they also were able to use a video monitor, these monkeys would, to see an area where there would be food that they couldn't see without looking at the video monitor. And they looked at this monitor, basically, to see where this food was hidden. And they still use this rake as an extension. Like it made me think of sort of like a surgeon using robotics, basically,

the same thing must be happening in their brain when they're looking at a video screen and operating an extension of their, you know, scalpel. Yeah. I think more recent tests using virtual reality headsets have found like, yeah, that's exactly what's going on. You're, you can adopt something on a video screen, your brain can, and be like, this is what, this is part of my body schema for the moment. And what I thought was even more interesting, or at least as interesting, is that the same researchers found that when the monkeys were just holding the rake, their peripersonal space just shrunk back down to normal. Right. But when they were, yes, and if they were using it as a tool,

then the peripersonal space extended around it. So it has to do with like, I can't remember, one of the researchers was saying like, we interact with the world in objects and we treat objects based on what we can or can't or plan to do with those things when we interact with them in peripersonal space. So cool. And all of that, by the way, was in Japanese researchers at Sushi Iriki's lab. With an Italian flair. It's got to be for this episode. The same thing happens like when you're in a car, if you're driving a small car, as opposed to driving like a big box truck, your neurons are going to fire differently because you know, you know, you're constantly trying to figure out if you can squeeze in

through a space with a larger vehicle. Dude, the very fact that we can drive a car is because of peripersonal space. Can you imagine, like we could conceivably still drive, just knowing like if I turn the wheel this way or turn the wheel that way, but it would be the most harrowing experience no one would drive. It would be so scary to drive because the reason why it's not as scary is we have extended our peripersonal space to our car now. It's nuts what our brains are willing to do when we throw technology at them. Well, and you know, I've mentioned before when I drove in Australia, opposite side steering wheel, opposite side of the road, I had to really concentrate very, very hard because you were so wired

to just being in a car and driving and making turns in a certain way. It really shook me up. And I think stimulated, I say stimulated me. It sounds dirty. All of a sudden I'm driving around Australia in an excited state, but that was the case. But it stimulated my brain. I just felt more, I felt so alive. Yeah, I'm with you. Yeah, because you zone out so easily when you drive sometimes when you're just taking off or granted. That's dangerous. Yeah, it is dangerous. There was one other thing I saw that I thought was just astounding about this. It seems that your peripersonal space can basically merge with another person's under certain conditions to where you're doing synchronized motions and movements that require

coming into contact with one another. Like synchronized swimming, let's say. No, no, because you're not actually touching. This would be more like a bucket brigade. Or if you're doing a baton run and you're handing off a baton at that moment when the baton is being passed, that it's being manipulated, it's a part of two different people's peripersonal space at the same time. So you are connected to that person via peripersonal space through the baton. Are you, do people touch in synchronized swimming? I don't think, I think you get disqualified for that. It's frowned on. Oh no, no, I thought you were saying they did touch. No, no, I'm saying not synchronized swimming because they don't touch. Okay. Oh man.

I'm confused now. Do they touch or not? They do not touch. They just swim around near each other in the same pattern, right? Although I have a great story. It's not synchronized swimming, but I was on a swimming team when I was a younger kid and I was terrible, terrible. I now realize that the coaches put me in just for fun, just to get their kicks watching me swim terribly. And one of the reasons why I know this, because they put me in a backstroke, and I was the worst backstroke swimmer ever, because I would cross at least one lane, if not two, and bump into another swimmer. And we'd both be so surprised. We'd stop and stand up, and I would accidentally disqualify both of us because if you stand up in the pool, if your

feet touch the bottom, you're disqualified. So that was, in that case, it wasn't synchronized swimming, but we were touching accidentally. I can picture young Josh being like, why would anyone swim backwards? This is so dumb. You can't see anything. Just let me do the breaststroke. I can do that. Or you develop the first backstroke rearview mirror that just sits on your chest. So maybe we should talk a little bit about some of the other cool findings. They have found that it's not just tools, but anxiety, and your mood can change your parapersonal space, whether or not you're interacting with someone from a different culture can.

They have found that if you're interacting with someone from a different culture, generally, you might not feel as comfortable with them being close to you as you would someone from your own culture, which explains a lot. It definitely does. They also found that spinal injuries can reduce the size of the PPS if the person has lost the ability to control their limb. And you can actually simulate this if you have 10 hours to kill. You can just keep your leg immobilized for 10 hours, and it will temporarily shrink your parapersonal space around your leg because your brain's basically like, oh, I guess that leg's not in use any longer. Yeah. Well, if you're pregnant,

you're going to grow that PPS because all of a sudden you have a basketball under your shirt. So people think that was obviously probably an evolutionary protection measure to protect that baby in the belly. Makes a lot of sense. People take a wider birth around people they deem important or high status or celebrity or famous or whatever. And it's not them saying, hey, I need space. It's you regarding their status and instinctively not going as close to them. Yeah, you're increasing your space. Some people are not good at that either. No, it's true. But you're increasing your space because you're, I guess, kind of anxious around them. Yeah. It's very interesting. One that I saw that explains a lot. I hadn't really thought about

it. It's claustrophobia. People who have claustrophobia have bigger parapersonal spaces. So it's like if you're stuffed into like a, I don't know, drainage culvert or something that's narrower than your parapersonal spaces by a lot, you could have claustrophobia. I think that's fascinating. Or I'll give you a different example. If you're kidnapped and put into a coffin and buried alive, you may feel claustrophobic because your parapersonal space is being violated. We got pivoted away from Florida because of the hurricane for fall break. And so we went to last minute trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Oh, cool. And this sort of stuff is all in play if you're doing Rock City and Ruby Falls because in Ruby Falls, you're either ducking or avoiding things.

Or in Rock City, there are quite a few places where you're squeezing through tight areas and also ducking. So I wish I'd, I mean, it's not like I was running into things because I have, my neurons are working fine. But if you have claustrophobia, I imagine you have a hard time with places like that or any sort of neurological condition that affects your PPS, then those places are not going to be great for you. Yep. You had a good time. Man, yeah, I was going to say there aren't that many roadside attractions from the 30s that still hold up today, but those two definitely do. Yeah, both very cool. Chuck, I say that we take a break and come back and talk about personal space as most people understand it. How about that? Let's do it.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids,

relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. So like I was saying, personal space, as most people think of it, is like you're making me a little nervous. You're a little close talking to

me or whatever. It was Judge Reinhold, the close talker on time call. That's called Proxemics. And that got its name from an anthropologist actually, a guy named Edward Hall back in 1966. And I don't know if he adapted Heine Heidegger's distances that he came up with for animals, or if it was just like he made the same observations and came up with different labels, but he basically replicated Heidegger's thing for the swing in 60s instead. Yeah. And when it comes to Proxemics and personal space, obviously, all of this depends on who it is. They don't do studies on if your boyfriend or girlfriend walks into the room. All those rules are kind of thrown out the window. They're talking about strangers who don't know each other

generally. And a way they might research this is having a participant stand there and have a control, walk into the room and say, hey, you just tell me when to stop. Right when you start feeling uncomfortable to how close I am. Tell me when to stop. Shout, stop, stop. Which this is going to vary wildly among people, I think, in general. But I think they did find some commonalities among cultures when it comes to comfort distances. Like I said, some people are going to have their own really good reasons, personal hangups. Some people have neurological conditions that are going to kind of factor in. But if you're

just generally talking about a person in a culture, they have found that weirdly, I was surprised that Americans are about average with what do they call it? Like average physical proximity? Yeah, yeah. We're a little more than averagely comfortable with that kind of thing. It feels like Americans are more prone than other cultures to be like, hey, do you mind backing off a little bit? Yeah, but it makes sense. And there was a guy who suggested, I think it actually might have been Edward Hall, who suggested that different cities and different countries are laid out differently based on the personal space that that culture has. And it would make sense

in America, we're all about wide open spaces and don't fence me in and all that stuff. So I could totally see that being American compared to like a European city where buildings are just built on top of buildings. There's little narrow alleyways that lead to charming bookshops and stuff like that. I could see that totally based on personal space that that culture values without anyone having any idea that's what's doing it. Yeah. And I had to, you know, I value my personal space and I had when I lived in LA, I had to reckon with realizing that like, hey, in a town like Los Angeles, a melting pot like that, people are coming from all over the world and you're going to be shopping in close proximity

to them and rubbing elbows and their lived experience wherever they came from is different than yours, Bob. And so like you can, you know, if someone grew up in India and like, I'm trying to picture like a really crowded bazaar or something where people are like packed in and trying to order things like that's a whole different experience than growing up in the southeast in a big huge grocery store. And so if someone creeps up on you a little bit, you got to keep that in mind as an American. And I could see you laying there thinking that with your elbows out to the side, your hands behind your head and then your brain says, okay, now get up and go squeeze some orange juice because it's going to be a beautiful day. I did have a little

bit of, I try to be understanding, but I got a little salty a couple of times in Chattanooga, personal space. Really? Well, with the little statue elves. My personal philosophy is, is if I can't like reach behind myself and get like my wallet out of my pocket without elbowing someone. Sure, that's way too close. Then you're too close, especially these days. I think that person is using an RFID skimmer on you if they're that close to your wallet. I also had a kid behind me that was doing the like, let's, let's kick the guy's feet when he walks and laugh about it with his brother. And I was like, all right, be cool. They were kicking your feet? Yeah, yeah. One of the kids was kicking his feet and I heard him

laughing to his brother. And I was like, all right, just stay cool, Chuck. This is a kid. Your kid annoys people too. And then the mom, I didn't even have to like give a dirty look. The mom was on it and was like, you need to back off of that guy. I was like, oh, it's fine. But yes. Oh, I hadn't even noticed. Anyway, a long way of saying that people come from different cultures where they have different levels of comfort with what Edward Hall called intimate distance, which is hugging, which is great, or whispering in someone's ear, which is the worst possible thing. Putting your tongue in someone's ear. That could be nice. Personal distance, which is comfortable with close friends, but not acquaintances, social distance,

just like the water cooler chat. Six feet. Yeah, six feet, or what they call public distance, what he called public distance. And that's, I guess, when you're like on a stage projecting and gesturing largely and stuff like that. Yes. And it really does remarkably resemble Heine Heidegger's separation of zones for animal species. And that makes sense because we're still animals too. And so it seems like what the difference is between personal space and parapersonal space and physically they overlap a lot is that, and this is just me editorializing, but I think personal space is that original defensive zone that evolved, that animals have, that Heine Heidegger turned up, that we still have, again, because we're animals, and that

parapersonal space is that expectation that came out of that personal space defensive zone and that allows us to interact with the environment in all sorts of new and amazing and interesting ways. Yeah, I like that. That physically they occupy the same space, but mentally, neurologically, they're distinct. Yeah, super fascinating. I guess we can finish up on the return of mirror neurons. Yeah, totally. Very excited. I feel like we used to talk about mirror neurons a lot, but we had, I believe, a complete episode on them, right? And then talked about them a lot, but it's sort of the idea, and this is a reductive way of looking at it, but like seeing a football player break their leg on the TV screen might send a weird pain sensation

through your own leg or, but it's the opposite side, isn't that what they figured out? The opposite leg. I don't know. I'm not sure, but who was it? Willis McGahy? The Miami hurricane guy whose knee went all the way backwards? Oh, I don't know. I was thinking Thysman. There's been so many bad sort of incidences over the year, but it's the idea that these are mirror neurons and they're picking up what has happened to someone else and like literally physically affecting you in your body. Right, yeah. And one of the reasons that this would relate to peripersonal spaces is they think that mirror neurons help us basically create a mental construct of what we're going to do with our body, say with our hands, by watching someone else doing it.

And they say, well, this is obviously how like stone toolmaking was passed down from generation to generation because we had the ability to watch someone else do something and then do it ourselves because of this body schema and mirror neurons, which are probably very much interrelated to the point where the mirror neurons and the peripersonal space or body schema neurons are one in the same in some cases. Yeah, and they did a study again with the monkeys. And this had to do with kind of what I mentioned at the beginning about whether or not you're going to interact with something where they watched monkeys watching a human grab an object. So the monkeys just watching a person like let's say grab an apple and about a quarter of the mirror neurons and these monkeys fired

more rapidly if the person grabbing the apple was just simply closer to the monkey. So in other words, all of a sudden the monkey says, all right, I might have be interacting with this thing. So different neurons are lighting up. And when they put up a barrier and it was a clear barrier, this is what confused me a little bit. They put up a clear barrier between the person and the monkey and it actually did reduce those neurons lighting up just because there was a barrier there. But it was the monkey, I guess, aware of the barrier it had to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it could still see what the human was doing. All right, that makes sense. But it had shut down the possibility to the monkey's brain that it would be interacting with the apple. So a different experience happened

in the monkey's brain because it wasn't trying to interact with it. It wasn't going to interact with the apple. Super cool. I love this stuff. Very cool. Me too, man. Peripersonal space. I'm glad we did one on it. You got anything else right now? No, just if you see me out, give me a little room. Yeah, for sure. Don't kick Chuck's feet. It's weird though, because I do like a good hug, but like someone whispering to me and I think I have childhood triggers for that for certain reasons I won't get into. Okay. But like anybody whispering, my daughter whispering in my ear, I just can't handle. I cannot handle a whisper in my ear. I'm not sure I knew that, man. Well, I don't mind your whisper. You're kind of the only one. Okay, how's it gonna say? I feel like...

The sweet nothings. All right. You really do it for me. Yeah, that Harvey's bombing episode was so good, Chuck. See, I don't mind hearing a whisper. It's got to be in my ear. Yeah, I understand that. It's probably because it's not just audio, it's tactile too. The air pushing on your eardrum. Who knows? Because I don't think we mentioned the final fourth type of space. What was it called? That's just something close to your skin? Paracutaneous. Paracutaneous space. Yes. Where that sets off a whole different set of neurons they think too. That's kind of like the new leading edge of this. And that reminds me, Chuck, I cannot find this essay to save my life, but it was by a philosopher and he was basically saying like, where do you end and the rest of

the world begin? And obviously most people say your skin, but then he pointed out that there's molecular exchange. There's gas exchange through your skin. So a point where like a air molecule is moving into your body through your skin, like is there really any true barrier between you and the outside world? It just jogged my memory when they were talking about paracutaneous space and I was like, I wish I could find the essay. It was one of the cooler things I've ever read. Or that cool thing you can do, like when you close your eyes and you can feel when someone's hand gets close to your face. Yeah. You know? Yeah, because they said it's not, you don't have to be touching. It can be up to like five centimeters

away and that paracutaneous space is still going to give your brain information. It's our energy, bro. It is, man. Chakra. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I wish we could just talk about this stuff all day. It's good stuff. I agree. And I think everybody listening agrees and since Chuck said good stuff, that means it's time for listener mail. But if you're like, you know, after we record, we can just keep chatting about it. Oh, that's okay. I'm not doing anything else. I gotta take a nap, too. All right. I'm going to call this a license plate. Funny. Boy, you never know with this show what people are going to respond to. Yeah, I know. That one got so much. License plates,

just people loved it. It was a really, we got a lot of email about it. I think the ubiquity of some of these lend itself to that. But here we go. Love the episode on license plate guys, despite what Josh predicted at the beginning, because I think he said it was going to be boring or something. How wrong? I did. Sorry. I was surprised that you hadn't come across the lists of rejected vanity plates that you can find for different states. I'm 17. And when I got my license, about a year ago, these state kept lists of vanity license plates were almost legend in our driver's ed. I don't know if Georgia keeps track, but Utah sure does. It's still very fun to delight in your inner six year old when you're reading these. My personal favorites are

Lil Toot, Poops with a Z, and I can't believe this one. Oh no, I guess these are rejected, huh? I'm Farton. Someone actually wanted a license plate that said I'm Farton. I like that. I would love to see that in real life. I would too. Highly recommend you try and find the list for Georgia guys. The ones that aren't like super racist are pretty fun to read through. Much love from Elijah. He, him from Provo, Utah. Awesome, Elijah. That's really cool. Thank you for that. We totally didn't run across it, so thanks for bringing it to our attention. And speaking of Utah, Chuck, it just reminded me. Have you seen Friend of the Family on Peacock? No. Don't know anything about it. It is off the rails. It's set in the 70s. True story,

weirdo true crime in a way, but also just beyond nuts. And it has the extra bonus of my niece Mila being in it. She's one of the daughters. Fantastic. Check it out though. It's really good. What through without Mila, but it's even better because Mila's in it. Of course. And you know, while we're shouting out Peacock, I don't know if we ever shouted out our good friend Andy Sierra's show, The Resort. Oh no, we didn't. No. Yeah, it's our old friend Andy Sierra who we got to know through the band he was in, the Henry Clay people, he and his brother Joey. Long story short, they wrote the theme song to our TV show and we're also story editors, screenwriters for our show. Andy's the one that did the Hulu movie with Andy Sandberg called Palm Springs.

And he has his very own TV show that is fully on Peacock now. It's called The Resort. It was really good. Joey was a writer on it as well. And it's just a very cool, fun show. I highly recommend it. Emily and I loved it. Well, congratulations Andy. That's enormous. Good stuff. Yeah, we're going to check that out. Thanks for telling everybody about it too, Chuck. Well, thanks for Elijah for that email. And if you want to be like Elijah and send an email that jogs our memory to talk about unrelated TV shows, we'd love that kind of thing. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastatihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or

wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball,

International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.