Absolutely Mental Season Two
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
153.72049
Summary
A clip from the second season of Absolutely Mental, in which Ricky Gervais and I discuss sleep paralysis, hypnosis, and the strange things people do in their sleep. Plus, a story about a guy who thinks he might have seen a UFO abduction, and why he thinks it might have been a good idea to wear a sequin glove when you're sleeping. And, of course, we talk about sleep paralysis and other weird things that happen when you don't get enough sleep. The entire series is available on Amazon Prime and Vimeo worldwide. If you want to hear the rest of the series, both seasons are available at AbsolutelyMental.net. You can also catch up on the first two seasons of the Absolutely Mental series on Vimeo. Thanks for listening and Good Luck Out There, and Happy Halloween! Sam Harris Make Sense? Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. The theme of this episode is called "Goodbye Outer Space" by Suneaters, courtesy of Lotuspool Records. Our ad music is by Build Buildings Records, recorded live at SPOTIFY Records, located in Los Angeles, CA. Please rate, review, and tag us in the comments section below. Thank you for your support and subscribe to Making Sense. It helps spread the word out there about this podcast. Thank you, Sam Harris, and I hope you enjoy it! -- it really does make sense. -- Your support the podcast. -Sam Harris, the creator of The Making Sense, and we hope you'll listen to this podcast and share it on Anchor.fm/YouTube, and send us your thoughts on it on social media, and spread it out to the world. and other places like it helps spread it around the word. "Make Sense" -- and other things like it's a little bit more than that, too! -- Thank you! -- thank you, please spread it everywhere you can do it. -- Thanks, Sam, again, and thanks you're listening out for it. XOXO. Sam, Kristian, Kristy, and all the best, and good vibes. xoxo, Caitie, Sarah, and a big thanks you, Caitlyn, and Sarah, too, and much more! -- Sarah, Rachael, and everyone else.
Transcript
00:00:26.320
Well, today I want to share a clip from the second season of Absolutely Mental, the podcast
00:00:35.360
Many of you will have heard the first season, in whole or in part, and I think the second
00:00:45.220
The genesis of this podcast is that Ricky and I would have an occasional phone call, and
00:00:52.240
it occurred to me that these conversations were fun enough that we should record them
00:01:00.620
So the podcast itself really is virtually indistinguishable from telephone conversations we were having
00:01:14.420
Obviously we're aware that we're recording it, and it's a podcast, but to a remarkable
00:01:19.440
degree, it really is the kind of conversation we were going to have anyway, which is unusual
00:01:28.500
So for many months I've had the pleasure of rolling out of bed on a Saturday morning and
00:01:34.500
getting on a line with Ricky, only to be reminded that with civilization unraveling all around
00:01:48.660
So now this is a clip from Season 2, Episode 2, and I hope you enjoy it.
00:01:55.480
And if you want to hear the rest of the series, both seasons are available at absolutelymental.com.
00:02:24.620
Although I was just anesthetized, which doesn't happen often, and that's an interesting experience.
00:02:32.060
I don't think I've ever had a general since I was about maybe 10 to have a tooth out.
00:02:48.160
Whenever you get one of these urchins who are covered with coal dust, you just put them
00:02:53.300
No, and I'd always wake up crying because I don't know what it was.
00:02:57.300
I assumed it was some sort of mix of nitrous oxide.
00:03:01.560
Yeah, that wouldn't be a general, but that would be common among dentists.
00:03:08.220
Yeah, no, I guess the distinction between a general and what might be called a twilight
00:03:14.700
anesthesia or anything other than a general is that in a general, you're not breathing
00:03:23.140
You're that deep, and there may be gradations that I'm not aware of.
00:03:33.680
You can be completely unconscious, but still, it's not a general.
00:03:45.160
No, I had the glorious intervention of a colonoscopy, and so they give you propofol, which is what
00:03:53.120
Michael Jackson was using recreationally to sleep with his crazy doctor, which wound up
00:04:00.040
Is that why you went for it, because it's a celebrity endorsement?
00:04:13.040
Anyway, everything's okay, but it's amazing to have the lights turned out that emphatically.
00:04:24.800
So it's deeper than your unconscious sleeping self, even?
00:04:30.760
Yeah, well, presumably it must be, because I'm pretty sure I would wake up if someone was
00:04:49.620
But in sleep, don't the body freeze itself so you can't get injured?
00:04:56.460
So when you're imagining you're fighting and running, you're deadly still, you're sort
00:05:01.320
Yeah, during REM sleep you are, and there's a disorder of REM sleep where you're basically,
00:05:09.740
you kind of wake up, but you're still frozen, so you can feel like you're...
00:05:14.980
That's the explanation for many kinds of UFO abduction experiences and other weirdness.
00:05:22.980
Well, that usually ends with a finger up the arse as well, doesn't it?
00:05:27.260
It's just not a human finger, a really long green one.
00:05:37.620
Well, I mean, this conversation makes my question seem a bit tame.
00:05:43.580
I was going to ask you, although it's probably in the ballpark, do you know about hypnosis
00:05:49.620
and how it works, if it works, and if it works, how does it work?
00:05:54.660
And I mean, I don't mean the mechanics of doing it.
00:06:01.380
Yeah, well, I have very little direct experience with it, although I do have one experience that
00:06:09.400
So I'm, from the literature, I can certainly say that it works for some things on some people.
00:06:15.760
I mean, there are people who are, there's a spectrum of hypnotizability, and there's a
00:06:21.000
scale, a Stanford scale of hypnotizability that ranks people based on a test.
00:06:27.960
And actually, when I was an undergraduate, I had that test.
00:06:31.700
I was in a, you know, psych 101, and they were looking for experimental subjects, and
00:06:40.140
Oh, there's literally, you mean there's literally a scientific scale that's been sort of peer
00:06:44.480
reviewed, and that is, oh, wow, I didn't know that.
00:06:46.880
I think it's at least 50 years old, but it's the Stanford, I think it was a Harvard one
00:06:51.360
too, but it's a Stanford scale of hypnotizability that is the standard.
00:06:56.800
And I forget all of the exercises we had to do, but one stands out in my mind, and this
00:07:03.240
really proved to me that there was something there.
00:07:06.120
Because I was, I think I was fairly, I recall being fairly skeptical that there was anything
00:07:10.380
to this, but you're asked to do various things, and then one thing I remember being asked to
00:07:16.940
do was to, I'll describe the procedure in a second, but you're inducted into the state
00:07:21.500
of hypnosis, and you're given various suggestions.
00:07:26.300
There's the induction, and then the suggestion phase.
00:07:30.080
And one suggestion was kind of an age regression.
00:07:34.040
We were now told we were now nine years old, I think it was, and then given a piece of paper
00:07:43.800
And I remember writing the year in 1976 without any, you know, arithmetic in my head.
00:07:57.260
And, you know, without any conscious, I guess there could be an unconscious wish to comply
00:08:04.400
But at the time, it really felt like, you know, an automaticity.
00:08:07.940
I signed my name in precisely the bubbly, childlike handwriting that I would have, you know, would
00:08:16.300
It certainly wasn't appropriate to my 18-year-old self.
00:08:19.560
So that regression experience seemed pretty strong to me.
00:08:28.760
And I was, I was a nine in terms of hypnotizability.
00:08:34.380
So does, is that, does, that suggests to me that you're very weak-willed.
00:08:42.140
So the scale presumably relates to a characteristic.
00:08:48.560
Have they looked into why some people are more easily hypnotized?
00:08:52.940
Like, you know, joking aside, could it be, you know, more complicity?
00:08:56.700
Could it be, you know, that, that, that, that you want, you, you believe it more or that
00:09:02.640
you're, you're naive or you're cynical or is the, are there, are there more firm characteristics
00:09:13.640
I think there are other things that it's correlated with, like having a fantasy life or having
00:09:18.720
kind of vivid daydreaming, you know, like you could, like you can really recall what
00:09:26.080
I don't actually know how much is understood about differences in, in hypnotizability, but
00:09:35.960
If it, if it was that say, I won't hold you to it, but if it was that you have, you
00:09:41.000
know, more of vivid imagination is, are there, is that a type?
00:09:44.680
Is that a brain type that some people have more vivid imaginations than others?
00:09:48.720
Well, I think we could probably get at it from the side of, of what's happening when
00:09:52.740
people are, are, seem to be successfully hypnotized.
00:09:56.080
And there, there has been some neuroimaging work on hypnosis and, and the place where it's,
00:10:02.640
it's actually, where the effect of hypnosis is, I think, least in dispute is with pain suppression.
00:10:09.940
I mean, there are people who've undergone surgeries, you know, real surgeries with no anesthetic,
00:10:18.540
And this has been attested to for a very long time, but I recently had someone on my podcast
00:10:26.820
And yeah, there are many, many people who have undergone surgery under hypnosis.
00:10:31.940
And, and then people use hypnosis as a adjunct to anesthesia, they'll be given, let's say
00:10:40.040
a local when they might've been given more of a twilight anesthesia.
00:10:43.840
And then, and so it's all, you know, just a local plus hypnosis.
00:10:48.920
So supposing that works and they're, and they're not screaming.
00:10:57.360
So they're not suppressing, they're not going, I don't mind this pain.
00:11:00.220
They're going, it's, something's not getting to them, but that's impossible, isn't it?
00:11:04.080
Because isn't pain a literal physical thing of synapse jumps?
00:11:08.360
And it seems, I mean, again, I don't think the work, the work here is definitive because
00:11:13.480
I think this topic is, is somewhat in, in ill repute among scientists.
00:11:19.480
I don't, I don't think most neuroscientists are seriously considering focusing on hypnosis
00:11:24.520
as a, as a topic, but I mean, the neuroimaging work that's been done that I'm aware of has
00:11:30.120
found that actually hypnosis is blocking the painful stimuli from, from even registering
00:11:41.860
So they're, they're under hypnosis, whatever that is, right?
00:11:46.260
They're hypnotized, whatever that is, whether it's some sort of compliance or subconscious
00:11:53.460
And literally the pain isn't getting to the pain receptors or I can't, I can't imagine.
00:12:00.900
There can be downward, there can be downward, top-down modulation of sensory cortex.
00:12:07.540
It's a, you know, I think probably, um, there's an area in the, the midline in the frontal
00:12:16.400
And that, that, that shows up in, in many different paradigms, but it, it's definitely
00:12:24.100
And, um, it's, there, there are, uh, more senior, more executive areas that could inhibit
00:12:33.840
And yes, I mean, that, you know, that seems to be, I'd still say, if that, even if that
00:12:40.120
was working and it was going well, I still like to think a finger up my arse would bring
00:12:59.040
Well, but there's an interesting thing here because it's not clear whether hypnosis is
00:13:04.600
a state, you know, cause it's, it's definitely advertised as being a state that gets induced
00:13:10.560
and it's on the basis of that state that you then become suggestible.
00:13:15.080
But it's possible that, that the suggestion itself is really the whole story or, or, or
00:13:21.380
For instance, I think there've been experiments done where the exact same induction and, and
00:13:26.600
this suggestion process is happening, but in one paradigm it's called hypnosis and in
00:13:36.260
And it has a very different effect on people, just the framing of it.
00:13:39.900
I mean, the people thinking they're going to get hypnotized matters as opposed to thinking
00:13:47.800
I know it's all about perception, but I still think of pain as a literal objective thing.
00:13:55.600
Like, you know, electricity jumping and hurting and you're, whether you like it or not, you
00:14:07.140
Well, just, I mean, yes, the pain signal, you know, let's say at your, at your finger,
00:14:13.440
It has to be the same from the finger on in, but at a certain point, what you're imagining
00:14:18.980
is pure sensation is being modulated by the rest of what the brain is doing, right?
00:14:26.500
And, and it becomes susceptible to significant influence and even cancellation.
00:14:32.000
And we're in the network of, of the brain that's happening.
00:14:37.520
I'm not sure if, I mean, maybe someone has a good sense of it now, but I'm just not aware
00:14:42.660
of it, but it may still be somewhat mysterious, but this relates to the placebo effect, which
00:14:47.300
is also well demonstrated for, for pain and for many other things, but it's also not understood,
00:14:54.040
but it's clearly a belief based process that gets started that is medically efficacious.
00:15:01.660
I mean, it becomes a challenge to design drugs that beat placebos in many cases because they're
00:15:08.300
So even though, even though there is a, an actual physical act to do with the laws of
00:15:14.620
physics and electricity and all those things, it then become how you, how you perceive it
00:15:24.460
I suppose that's like, if you put your foot into a boiling hot bath by mistake for a split
00:15:31.820
You think there's something wrong here and you go, oh, and then you go, no, no, no, it's
00:15:42.360
The point to take on here, I think is that a belief is also a physical act in your brain.
00:15:49.220
It's no less a physical act than you getting hit with a hammer.
00:16:05.440
In fact, but we went with the very British, absolutely mental.
00:16:12.020
And if you enjoy both our company, you can find more of it at absolutely mental.com.
00:16:17.440
Phillips, it's, you can find more of it at all.