How Sneezing Works

13:16Chuck Bryant:there it's a very small group of people who sneeze with their eyes open most people just it's like involuntary um it's part of the involuntary process of sneezing i don't know if we said that or not sneezing is an involuntary reaction to an external stimuli in your nose

13:31Josh Clark:yeah like you can't i mean you can try and trigger a sneeze and we'll talk about certain things that can trigger a sneeze, but you definitely can't make yourself sneeze like full stop.

13:43Chuck Bryant:Yeah. No, no. I mean, yeah, there's definitely things you can do to make yourself sneeze like you're saying, but there are things you can do to keep yourself from sneezing, whether you want to or not is a different question because, you know, sneezing can feel pretty good if you don't throw your back out.

13:56Josh Clark:Well, we'll talk about my sneeze pattern later.

13:58Chuck Bryant:I know I've talked about it before, but I find it fascinating. You accidentally tap out drink your Ovaltine and Morse code through your sneezes? Is that your thing? Very nice. Thanks. Should we take a break? Let's take a break, Chuck, and then we'll come back and talk more about sneezing.

14:32Josh Clark:What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

15:08Josh Clark:It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

15:36Chuck Bryant:Well, now, when you're on the road, driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's Stuff You Should Know. Stuff You Should Know. All right. Hey, man, before we get back into it too far, I realized I didn't give a shout out to the guy who gave me the idea for this episode. Dr. Sneez-a-lot? Yes. Dr. Todd G. Sneez-a-lot. No, one of my neighbor friends, Wesley, was like, hey, man, he actually listens. And he's like, hey, man, have you guys ever done one on sneezing? And I'm like, sure, of course we have. He's like, oh, because if you haven't, you know, you really should.

16:16Chuck Bryant:That's a great one. And I went back and looked, and to my astoundment, we had never done one on sneezing. Like, never. I just can't believe that that wasn't like one of the first 10, you know?

16:27Josh Clark:Yeah, that seems like it would be an early Stuff You Should Know.

16:29Chuck Bryant:For sure. And it kind of feels like one of those right now as we're doing it.

16:35Josh Clark:You know, my neighbors think I'm unemployed. It's great.

16:37Chuck Bryant:Yeah. But hats off to Wes for coming up with that one. Thanks, Wes. Yeah. Now leave Josh alone. He's the one that we got the loveyourmama.com stuff for. And he's like, we're halfway done with our room spray. We need some more because we're using it so fast.

16:56Josh Clark:And you're the pusher man?

16:57Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I was like, first one's on me. Next one's going to cost you.

17:01Josh Clark:Yeah, I don't correct my neighbors. They think I'm down on my luck. So that's all good in my opinion.

17:06Chuck Bryant:No, that's definitely the way to go. He's very nosy, so he found out. I had to finally just stop lying. Oh, that's good stuff. So we're back to sneezing. We're talking sneezing. And one of the things we mentioned was the sneezing center, which is this up until not too many years ago a theoretical part of the brain that causes us to sneeze that coordinates this involuntary response because you're not like your brain's not consciously saying like okay now diaphragm expel the air like this is all like we said involuntary um that'd be great if you had to say that every time you wanted to sneeze right expel air um so it makes sense that there would be a region that was responsible for this because we've already, we'd already seen it in cats.

17:56Chuck Bryant:Don't ask how we know where it is in cats, but in cats, it's in the medulla. And so it was hypothesized that it was in the lateral medulla in humans too. And finally, I think around 2005, there was basically incontrovertible evidence that came in the form of this fisherman, I believe he might've been Spanish, who had this sneezing fit one day of like about 20 really violent sneezes in a few minutes. And then all of a sudden he stopped sneezing and couldn't walk right. Like his gait was affected, almost like he had a stroke. And apparently either he caused a lesion on his lateral medulla from the sneezing or that violent sneezing was like an initial symptom of a lesion, kind of like here's your last sneezes ever.

18:43Chuck Bryant:And he went to the doctor and they started testing him and they would do things like put capsaicin in his nose, like red hot chili pepper in his nose, which makes everybody sneeze. It's like a universal sternototorin, right? Makes everyone sneeze and it wouldn't make this guy sneeze. It would burn his nose and it would make his nose runny, but it wouldn't make him sneeze. On the other side, it would make him sneeze, the other nostril, but not the right, I think. And so they found this lesion on his lateral medulla and they said, sneezing center, welcome to our understanding.

19:19Josh Clark:That's such a bad red hot chili peppers joke that I just sat on through that whole spiel.

19:23Chuck Bryant:That's very grown up of you. Should I say it? Sure. Whoever said we were grown ups.

19:31Josh Clark:I was just thinking the doctor would do the capsaicin and ask him how he feels and he'd say, well, I don't know, sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner. That was pretty good. Yeah, you know, it's better than Fight Like a Brave. I don't know. I'm trying to think of Chili Pepper songs.

19:48Chuck Bryant:What if the doctor came in wearing nothing but one of those reflector headbands and a sock on his penis? I saw that coming.

19:56Josh Clark:And that was it. Oh, that'd be great. You know you got the right doctor. Yeah, you do. The party dog. So things that can make you sneeze. I know you kind of rattled off some jokes about perfume and smoke earlier. Oh, I wasn't joking. But those are all realities. The most common cause of a sneeze is, and the collective term, is rhinitis, R-H-I-N-I-T-I-S. And that is just your sort of standard inflammation and swelling of your mucous membrane when you've got allergies, when pollen's in the air, when you have a cold. But there are all kinds of other things that can cause a sneeze, too, that are all different types of rhinitis.

20:39Chuck Bryant:Yeah, speaking of rhinitis too, I ran across a term. The clinical term for a runny nose is rhinorrhea.

20:46Josh Clark:Gross.

20:46Chuck Bryant:Yeah, isn't that grody? Like that makes it at least 12 or 15 times worse than runny nose, you know? Yeah, weird. Yeah. So there's occupational rhinitis, which is basically when stuff you're working around makes you sneeze or irritate your nose. things like cleaning supplies or you know flour I saw was a pretty common occupational rhinitis sternitatory or sternitative depending on your preference cigarette smoke if you work in a place where they let you smoke like maybe a cigarette factory although I heard that they don't allow smoking inside some cigarette factories now in like North Carolina isn't that just the the end-all, be-all.

21:34Chuck Bryant:You think they would allow you to do that while you're working? They used to up until very recently. Really? Oh, yeah. I have the impression you could just pluck one off the line and light it up. Wow. I guess if you're a smoker, that's a big perk. It is. But then now they're like, no smoking inside, which leads you to the follow-up question, why? Yeah. Why can we not smoke inside? Because it kills you, and they go, what?

21:57Josh Clark:Very dangerous, you dummy. Let me see. You've also got the hormonal rhinitis, which is women might experience that when they have high estrogen levels. Maybe if you're pregnant or you're on the pill or you're going through puberty, you might have some sort of run-on sneezing episodes.

22:16Chuck Bryant:Sure. There's drug-induced rhinitis. There's certain drugs that have been identified. What did you say? The hippest kind. Right, yeah. Mushrooms will make you sneeze. Apparently, I'm guessing that, I didn't see this anywhere, but this is an educated guess. Tell me if you think it sounds convincing. Those drugs probably stimulate your mast cells to release histamines. And that's just basically almost like a phantom allergen. Okay. That's what I'm going with.

22:49Josh Clark:All right.

22:50Chuck Bryant:But apparently NSAIDs, beta blockers, and some antihypertensive drugs are the ones that are known drug-induced rhinitis sternototorias.

23:02Josh Clark:If you are of advanced age, you might have what's called geriatric rhinitis, which is when those submucosal glands atrophy, and that means your nose can get really irritated and you might sneeze a lot.

23:21Chuck Bryant:Right. That is very sad to me if you think about it because there's not much that can be done. I'm sure you just put like maybe Vaseline or something in your nose. That's got to be the cure for that. But it's just sad because it's like your little body's, you know, running down. We should have a cure for that. Yeah. Like our medicine is not far enough along in my opinion for this to be 2020. It's kind of a disappointing 2020, everybody. Am I right? Yeah. So we've talked before, Chuck, multiple times about photic sneezing, which I'm a photic sneezer, and I don't remember if you are or not.

24:00Josh Clark:I feel like I have, but it's not like roundly something that happens to me. I don't think so.

24:07Chuck Bryant:Okay. I am a photic sneezer more than I'm a native-born Toledoan even. Maybe they're tied. So how does it get you? Like any time you turn on a light? Very rarely light. It's almost always sunlight. And I think it's just because of the intensity of it. But yeah, like if I walk out, say like if I go see a movie in the middle of the day, like it's just a slacker. I miss those days. And I come out, isn't that nice? And I come out and it's very sunny. Sure. It is guaranteed three sneezes in a row. Hmm. Is that your usual pattern? Yeah, usually. And I looked into that, like why do we sneeze multiple times?

24:43Chuck Bryant:Apparently there's a very simple answer for it. And it's that your brain has determined that the irritant hasn't been ejected yet. But with photic sneezing, it's almost like it's mistaken identity, right?

24:56Josh Clark:Yeah. I actually did see some other things, too, about the patterns because that's always fascinated me because I always sneeze in threes.

25:04Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah. Okay.

25:04Josh Clark:And I did see where some places said that just once isn't enough. So it's like a setup, a get it to the front of your nose and then a get out. But I also saw where it could be genetic. Yeah. Like that you inherit a sneeze pattern. Oh, really? And that like double sneezers beget double sneezers.

25:24Chuck Bryant:It makes sense because there are like photic sneezing is one of a couple ways that you can inherit a genetic sneezing trait. So that would make sense.

25:33Josh Clark:Yeah, that's right. I'm sorry, photic sneeze reflex is passed on by autosomal dominant inheritance. and I love this acronym because this is one of those reverse engineered ones that we like so much. Do you like this one? I like this one. I hated the other one. Yeah, man, with a passion. Like I wasn't even going to bring that one up to be honest.

25:57Chuck Bryant:Okay, we'll just pass it by and let everybody wonder for the rest of their lives.

26:01Josh Clark:But autosomal, dominant, compelling,

26:06Josh Clark:helio-ophthalmic outburst syndrome, achoo. it's a little rough

26:12Chuck Bryant:it is I mean there's a whole D a whole dominant in there that's missing but okay fine we'll go with that but that's the that is a term for photic sneezing that was coined at some point by someone who's obviously that's your biggest pet peeve right for

26:28Josh Clark:acronyms is when they just sneak a word in there and don't use it for a letter yeah it's lazy although I mean

26:34Chuck Bryant:I get where they were coming from you don't want it to be ad chew it's like why even do it but you got to figure it out you know I mean just take dominant out just go with autosomal you know yeah who would know I wouldn't have noticed so you were saying was that it for the patterns the sneezing patterns

26:56Josh Clark:yeah I mean there are just a couple of theories either hereditary or that it just takes that much but I'm not I just don't know if I buy that for myself because it's always threes and it's not like I have a weak sneeze so it takes three. I don't know. It feels ingrained somehow.

27:14Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Like if you only do two, you notice and it, does it feel incomplete?

27:19Josh Clark:It does, but it, that almost never happens. Occasionally I'll do a four banger, but I don't, I don't know that I ever sneeze once or twice. It's almost always three. Yeah.

27:30Chuck Bryant:And speaking of incomplete, if you actually go, if you experience the afferent phase, but the efferent phase isn't triggered, but it's enough to drive you nuts, there's things you can do. And one of those things that's recommended is to look at a bright light or don't look directly at the sun, but look toward the sun. And that should help jumpstart that efferent phase, the second part where the actual sneeze takes place.

27:57Josh Clark:Oh, okay.

27:58Chuck Bryant:That makes sense. But they think what's going on is that there's a crossover between the sneeze reflex arc and the pupillary light reflex arc, which basically is one nerve becoming so stimulated that it stimulates by proxy the other nerve, the sneeze nerve. So you're getting so overloaded with bright light when you see that sunlight that it accidentally jumps on over to your sneeze reflex as well and makes you sneeze. It's like, are you getting all this light? Are you getting this? Get a load of this.

28:34Josh Clark:I think they've landed on about between 23 and 25 percent generally of people have this photic sneeze reflex.

28:44Chuck Bryant:Right. So that's I mean, it's pretty substantial. There are some other like small identity groups of sneezers that are far smaller than that. Apparently, there are people who there's four families, not one in four people, four families. as far as anyone knows, who have something called snatiation, which is where if they eat too much and they feel overly full, it will trigger a sneezing attack.

29:14Josh Clark:Yeah, I would call that rare.

29:16Chuck Bryant:Yeah, four families for sure. And we're just going to pass right on by it, right, Chuck?

29:22Josh Clark:Yes, acronym. Getting back to the photic sneezing, though, They think it also could be a holdover and evolutionary advantage from when we were little babies because little babies don't have – they can't blow their nose. They don't know what that even is. So the only – they can't pick their nose. They can't use any implement at all to clear out their nose except the sneeze. They rely on the sneeze to get that mucus out or, of course, parents who will suck that stuff out through a little device. Yeah. which is no fun, but necessary.

29:59Chuck Bryant:Or you hold them on their side and you blow in their ear. That usually clears out the nose. I should probably just go ahead and say, don't do that. That was a joke.

30:09Josh Clark:You can whisper sweet nothings.

30:11Chuck Bryant:Sure.

30:12Josh Clark:But don't, yeah, don't do that. But babies are pretty sensitive to that photoclite reflex, and they think that may be a reason that basically we, that's just sort of a holdover from when we were babies.

30:24Chuck Bryant:It makes sense. It also makes sense to me that babies might have more active or kind of raw or nerve pathways. So maybe they're just more sensitive to that jump over, that crossover. Maybe. Plucking nose hairs, does that ever happen to you? Every time. So it doesn't make me sneeze, but it makes my eyes water. Like I've just seen every long distance commercial from the 90s all at once.

30:52Josh Clark:Yeah, and it's interesting because those, you talked earlier about the trigeminal nerves that are all through the face. I think it's just all related. Like you could pluck an eyebrow and it could make you sneeze and your eyes are watering and that's part of your face. Like it's just all sort of one big nerve bundle that's all interrelated and it could, any of those could trigger either watering of eyes or definitely sneezing. Even if you like pluck a hair out of your head, that could do it.

31:20Chuck Bryant:That's never happened to me, but my nose hair and my eyebrow hair, oh, man, my eyes will start watering. It's not a pleasant experience for sure. I've never plucked an eyebrow hair. Oh, every once in a while, I'll get one that's a big, fat, long goat hair. It just suddenly comes up overnight. No, I've seen, I've got those too. Okay, well, I pluck those. I just trim those. You know, maybe I should trim them. That's a good idea. Yeah. But have you ever noticed if you get one, there's almost invariably one on the other side, too? Like they come up in pairs? Does that happen to you? I have not noticed that.

31:59Josh Clark:When you pull on one, does the other one get shorter?

32:05Chuck Bryant:That was a wonderful shot. That'd be great. Yeah. It's like pulling that spaghetti through your nose and out your mouth. Don't do that either.

32:12Josh Clark:Can you do that? No, I've never tried to do stuff like that.

32:15Chuck Bryant:I've never tried either. I don't want to. No. There's also a group of people who sneeze when they become sexually aroused.

32:23Josh Clark:Yeah, that's a thing apparently. Or if you orgasm, like after you orgasm, it could trigger a sneezing fit.

32:28Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's apparently a bigger group than you would expect. Some researcher went around to internet chat rooms and said, hey, does anybody sneeze when they become aroused or when they have an orgasm? And she found 17 people who sneeze from sexual ideation and three who sneeze from orgasm, which is, that is way more than I would expect from just going around on internet chat rooms and asking people, you know?

32:53Josh Clark:Yeah, and also, we should point out, way not scientific.

32:56Chuck Bryant:No, not at all. But yeah, anecdotally, it's still impressive. But I read an explanation for this. It's a terrible explanation, but it's an explanation by the Journal of the Association of Physicians of India. It's an Indian journal, coincidentally enough. they suggest that it's because the nose contains erectile tissue which it does which erectile tissue is just tissue that can become larger engorged by blood flow and yes you have erectile tissue in your genitalia um yes you have it in your nose but they're not they're not in any way related as far as anyone's ever even thought aside from the the people in this journal Isn't that the most bizarre thing you've ever heard?

33:42Chuck Bryant:It's pretty bizarre. Like your nose is becoming aroused is basically what they're saying. And so you sneeze.

33:49Josh Clark:Yeah.

33:50Chuck Bryant:Fantastic.

33:52Josh Clark:There's also intractable sneezing or psychogenic. And that is something that's almost exclusive to young women. Girls, adolescents basically going through puberty. And these are girls who may not suffer from allergies. They're not sick with a cold or anything. but can go on these big sneezing binges for days and days at a time. Yes.

34:16Chuck Bryant:And apparently the world record holder is a girl named Donna Griffiths who was 12 when she started. She started in 1981, January of 1981, and her sneezing fit ended 977 days later in September of 1983. I remember hearing about this one. And as it went on, I was way too young for this, but had I been more aware, I would have felt very bad for this girl. Because as it went on, if she sneezed once in a day, it was considered part of the record. And I think that that was kind of how it was toward the end. But that first year sounds like a bear. Yeah, no good. A million sneezes in the first 365 days, which is basically a sneeze a minute on average.

35:06And, Chuck, and it's impossible to sneeze in your sleep.

35:11Chuck Bryant:You cannot sneeze in your sleep. If you sneeze while you're sleeping, you wake up to sneeze. Your brain just isn't functioning correctly to sneeze while you're sleeping. So that means this girl was averaging a sneeze a minute just during waking hours. But a sneeze a minute over 24 hours compressed into, say, 10 or 12 hours that she was awake that day.

35:31Josh Clark:Or would she wake herself up sneezing?

35:34Chuck Bryant:I don't know. If that's the case, then she had a really, really rough year because she was sneezing every minute and not getting any sleep.

35:42Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, it's disruptive no matter what. No one, I mean, you can't hold down a job if you're sneezing every minute.

35:48Chuck Bryant:Well, luckily she was 12 and this is after child labor laws were passed. I'm hoping she didn't have a job. Get out of that cigarette factory. That's right. She has nimble little fingers for sorting cigarettes. Perfect. Should we take another break?

36:00Josh Clark:Yeah, I think so. All right, we'll talk about the travel and droplets right after this. Great band.

36:20Josh Clark:What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

36:56Josh Clark:It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

37:23Chuck Bryant:Well, now, when you're on the road, driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's Stuff You Should Know. Stuff You Should Know. All right.

37:39Josh Clark:All right. So this is pretty relevant now. And I know, and I think this was put together before. I feel like we've been sitting on this one. Was this before coronavirus?

37:49Chuck Bryant:No, I think it was during.

37:51Josh Clark:Was it during? Okay.

37:51Chuck Bryant:And this is a, Dave helped us out. Dave Ruse helped us out with this one.

37:55Josh Clark:Yeah. So, and I think we've all seen these videos by now with everything that's going on. But in 2016, a researcher from MIT named Lydia, ooh, boy, goodness me. Borubia? Sure.

38:12Chuck Bryant:Boriba? I'm going with borubia. Borubia? It is, there's a couple of ooh sounds in there that follow one another. It makes it very difficult.

38:22Josh Clark:Yeah. Whenever you pack three vowels in a row, it's always sort of a dealer's choice. So she published some slow-mo 2 ,000 frame per second film images of people sneezing and what that looked like. That's where we get, and other people have done this too and measured the sneeze, but that's one place where we get the 100 miles per hour stat. Oh, from that study? Yeah, and other places. I mean, that's pretty common knowledge now, but up to 25, 30 feet, you can blow a sneeze. It can stay suspended in the air for a few minutes. And they likened it to if you would take a bucket of paint and just throw the paint out of the can into the air.

39:06Josh Clark:Yeah. Sort of is how a sneeze works. They call it sheets of fluids. And, you know, you got these big, big hunks of mucus and saliva that just sort of come out together and then break apart. little by little until you get to the fine mist that sort of can hang in the air.

39:23Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it starts as a clump and then turns into ropey filaments and then into increasingly smaller particles. And those really small particles, the aerosolized stuff. That's the scary stuff. I saw a Bristol study that said, and this wasn't necessarily coronavirus, but that contagious germs can stay in the air, suspended in the air for weeks possibly. That would have to be a very hardy, contagious virus or bacteria. Yeah, with like no airflow. Right. Yeah, to just sit there. But the 27 feet, which is kind of common knowledge these days in the era of coronavirus, that your sneeze can project those particles up to like 27 feet.

40:03Chuck Bryant:there's little pockets of gas and turbulence that are in a room, even a room that seems still, but certainly one that has like the AC on or air flowing through it. And those little particles can hitch rides on those pockets and travel, I saw, 200 times further than you expel them with just your sneeze. Yeah. So you know what prevents that? Covering yourself, your mouth, and your nose when you sneeze and or wearing a mask.

40:32Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, they teach, I mean, this has nothing to do with coronavirus, but this is especially important. But they teach little kids from the moment they can even understand things in preschool to always sneeze into your elbow and cough into your elbow. Because that's something that kids can, you know, you can't always get to a tissue. Right. Which is what they say is sort of the best thing to do.

40:55Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

40:55Josh Clark:But that elbow is a pretty good, it's a pretty good system, I think.

40:59Chuck Bryant:It's really cute to see a little kid do that, too.

41:02Josh Clark:Yeah, because they're doing the right thing. It is adorable. I agree.

41:07Chuck Bryant:But, yeah, the ideal is to sneeze into a tissue. Throw your tissue away and wash your hands thoroughly. That's what you're supposed to do after you sneeze. Every time. Every single time.

41:19Josh Clark:Every single time. And I don't sneeze a lot. Emily sneezes a lot. Oh, yeah? Yeah, because she's got the allergies.

41:25Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah. That'll do it.

41:27Josh Clark:She's got a lifelong persistent tickle in her nose. It's terrible.

41:32Chuck Bryant:Does she have, what's it called, that kind of sneezing where it's a psychogenic intractable sneezing?

41:39Josh Clark:Well, no, because she's not 13. Man. No, it's just allergy related, but lots of sneezing when it's really bad. It's pretty tough to be around. Not tough for me, but, you know.

41:54Chuck Bryant:Right, right. It's really annoying. Stop. So I did look up to find out where we stood as far as knowledge on sneezing and contagion outdoors goes. And from what I can tell, there was some study that was done by some engineers that sprayed an aerosol can running, walking, and then on a bike. And the results showed that this stuff spreads really far and wide. but they didn't take into account a lot of different things, a lot of different factors so that if you are outdoors, as long as somebody doesn't sneeze at you basically in your face or in your direction within, you know, 20 or 30 feet directly toward you, you're probably not going to catch enough of a viral load of something like coronavirus to become sick from it, especially if you're not in a crowded group.

42:48Chuck Bryant:If you're just walking outside and somebody else is walking, you know, 15 feet ahead of you and they're just breathing and they're on the other side of the street, you're probably going to be fine just because that stuff's going to dissipate so much because of all the factors, the environmental factors that exist outdoors rather, as opposed to indoors. Indoors is a totally different ballgame. Outdoors, you're much safer.

43:11Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, I haven't been around a human that sneezed aside from my wife in, you know, four or five months. Right. Like I would, even when I've gone to the store and like I'm on the lookout for that stuff. Oh, yeah. And like I think we all are, but I haven't even been in a store like on an aisle where someone's like sneezed because I would, and probably unreasonably, you know, freak out a little bit. Sure. I think you're allowed to yell at that person. But I haven't even seen anyone, been around anyone that sneezed. Yeah. So that's been a comfort.

43:46Chuck Bryant:Yeah, Yumi went to the store and came back and said somebody sneezed twice and the whole store just started looking around like where that come from.

43:52Josh Clark:Yeah, it's weird, huh?

43:53Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's basically like a stampede or something to get away from that thing. It is. It's a weird time to be alive. We're all going to be very, very weird even after things go back to normal, I think. Yeah. You know? I know I will be.

44:07Josh Clark:Yeah. So should we talk a little bit about culture and, you know, sort of what people say all around the world? I know here in America, it's sort of custom to say, God bless you or bless you. And that, you know, there's some different explanations. But one of them that seems to hold water, I think, dates back to the Middle Ages with the Black Plague when Pope Gregory VII basically said, hey, everyone, you know, things are pretty bad. We should just say God bless you. if someone is sneezing because they might be dying.

44:42Chuck Bryant:Yeah, which is, from what I saw, a big departure from earlier Christian teachings, which taught people to just totally ignore sneezes. Or say God is dead. Right, which I find very weird. Like, why would you teach people to ignore sneezes? I didn't get that. But I found this really awesome article called Romance and Tragedy of Sneezing by Dr. Wilson D. Wallace in Scientific Monthly from 1919. And he cited that. That earlier Christians were like, just ignore it. Just pretend it didn't happen.

45:14Josh Clark:Yeah, I'm a bless you guy. I don't do the gesundheit or salute, which is Spanish, to your health, that kind of thing. Yeah, it's also a toast. Yeah, I don't say that ever really. Sometimes I'll say it when I toast. But I don't know. I don't remember what I'd do with anyone anymore. You know, I forgot to deal with people.

45:40Chuck Bryant:I always raise my glass and say, it's time to get toe up from the flow up. I say, may Jupiter bless you. Right. I saw another one from the Greeks too. I love that one. Live, Zeus preserve you.

45:54Josh Clark:I think you and I should bring back both of those. Okay. That's fantastic.

45:59Chuck Bryant:Can't you imagine everyone in Greece just like being like, don't sneeze, don't sneeze. It's just everyone's all twitchy and shaky from people yelling that at them.

46:06Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, it's weird, too, because it's a very kind thing to do to a stranger. It's this one, I guess Dave just says an academic, but they called it a micro affection, which is nice. You know, it's just a little quick, nice thing to say to a stranger. And I'll always do it. We've done it during our live shows when someone sneezes. And not to be funny, it gets a laugh, but it's just sort of a, It's almost like an involuntary micro affection, I think, for most non-monsters.

46:38Chuck Bryant:For sure. Yeah, where people just kind of have a brief connection right then, even though they don't know each other. But now it's like, I'm a human being. You're a human being. What is it now?

46:47Josh Clark:Well, just bless you and please get very far away from me if you're going to do it again.

46:52Chuck Bryant:Bless you over there. So there's also a very common understanding that people thought that a demon was trying to get in or your soul was trying to get out. Yeah. And I kept seeing like other cultures or old ancient cultures, that kind of thing. The closest one I could find that seemed like that was in Persia. Zoroastors believed that your body was fighting off a fiend that had invaded, like an invading demon or spirit. and that a sneeze was basically your body signaling that it had been victorious in fighting this fiend and getting this fiend out and that that deserved a prayer and that if you overheard somebody sneeze, you would say the same prayer with them.

47:33Chuck Bryant:I couldn't find what prayer, though.

47:35Josh Clark:Yeah, it seems to be a good luck thing in a lot of cultures throughout the years. According to the Talmud, it's a good omen if you sneeze when you're praying. in China and Japan. If you sneeze, it means someone's sort of like your ears are burning. Someone's talking about you. And one sneeze means they're saying nice things. Two means they're spreading gossip. I don't know what they would think about me with my three. Three means you die.

48:02Chuck Bryant:Right. What would three mean? I don't know.

48:05Josh Clark:I mean, because there's only two ways people can talk about you, right?

48:08Chuck Bryant:Exactly. They might be saying something like, Chuck has a beard. Okay. That's as neutral as it gets. Exactly. So there's folklore and then there's what we think is true, which is a kind of folklore, but it's actually, it's just folklore too. Urban legends is what we call them or old wives tales. And we talked about one where that your eyes will pop out of your head if you sneeze with your eyes open. We debunked that one pretty clearly, I think, don't you? Can't do it. And then there's some other ones too. There's one that Yumi told me about that. I had no idea until she said this, but apparently some people believe that you basically die for a second while you're sneezing.

48:53Chuck Bryant:Like your body just shuts down, including your heart, and that you're technically dead for that half second while the sneeze is going on. I've heard your heart stops. I had never heard that before until a couple days ago. And yeah, I looked it up and it's a thing, but no, that's not at all true. Like your heart rhythm might actually change and the volume of blood in your heart might decrease or increase because of the pressure of the air in your chest or the release of pressure. But the electrical activity remains the same. And that's the key to whether your heart's alive or not.

49:27Josh Clark:Yeah, yeah. Your heart does not stop. No. That's like playground stuff.

49:31Chuck Bryant:It is. I thought it was very cute. Yeah. What about sneezing after sex-preventing pregnancy? Did you see this one?

49:38Josh Clark:Well, I mean, what are you sneezing out of?

49:41Chuck Bryant:Right. So, I mean, that's the idea that if you sneeze, you're expelling, well, there's really no other way to put it, semen, and that that would keep you from getting pregnant. Wow. Seems a little ridiculous.

49:55Josh Clark:Yeah, that's another playground thing. I guess so. What playground have you been hanging out on?

50:02Chuck Bryant:Pretty advanced playground activity. You got anything else? Oh, I've got one more thing, Chuck. You got anything else? I got nothing else. In 2016 or 18, a man in Leicester in the UK ruptured his throat from trying to stifle a sneeze. The pressure was so great, it broke open his throat. Wow. Yeah. Internally, it didn't break through the skin, but his throat internally was ruptured.

50:26Josh Clark:Because that's what I pictured. Right. Like a throat explosion.

50:29Chuck Bryant:It just blew his head completely off like that guy in scanners. Well, I guess that's it for sneezing, everybody. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks again to Wes for the idea. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail.

50:44Josh Clark:We call this Atlanta, Texas. Hey, guys, my name's Ben Lee, local Atlantan, Georgia. And my wife and I are huge longtime fans. In your recent episode on Pirate Radio, y 'all briefly brought up Radio Atlanta, which was named after Atlanta, Texas. And you joke that no one knew that town exists, even the people that live there. And that's pretty much true. My family is originally from Atlanta, Texas. It's pretty small, just about 5 ,000 residents, so it's totally understandable. I was born in Texarkana, Texas, not too far from there, which is basically famous for being in the Smokey and the Bandit movie.

51:19Chuck Bryant:I thought that was the town that dreaded Sundown, too, wasn't it?

51:24Josh Clark:I don't know about that. I definitely remember from Smokey and the Bandit.

51:27Chuck Bryant:Okay.

51:27Josh Clark:Because they're driving that beer from Texarkana to Atlanta. And Benjamin here says, I don't know why they didn't do Atlanta to Atlanta. Wasted opportunity.

51:36Chuck Bryant:It really is. It sounds like Benjamin moved from Atlanta to Atlanta, though, huh?

51:42Josh Clark:Maybe. Kind of. I mean, he's in Atlanta. Right. He teaches at Georgia State. That's pretty awesome.

51:48Chuck Bryant:Hey, hats off to you for teaching these days, Benjamin.

51:51Josh Clark:Yeah, he says there's a lot of towns in Texas that are also Georgia names. There's an Athens, Texas, a Douglasville, a Columbus, Dallas, Georgia, and Texas. And he said there's even a Georgia, Texas.

52:05Chuck Bryant:Well, that's just confusing.

52:06Josh Clark:And he said thanks for all the great stuff.

52:08Chuck Bryant:And that is from Benjamin Bowden-Lee. Thanks a lot, Benjamin Bowden-Lee. That was a great email. We appreciate it. Any email that references Smokey and the Bandit, we're all right with. Yep. Well, if you want to email us about Smokey and the Bandit or anything else, we'd love to hear from you. you can send it to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

52:32Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

52:48Josh Clark:Peace to the planet. Charlemagne the God here. And listen, we are back. The Black Effect Podcast Festival is back in Atlanta on April 25th at Pullman Yards. And the full lineup is nuts. We got the Grit Sinead's podcast, Deontay Kyle and Big Ice Cup Cat. We got Club 520 with Jeff Teague and the gang. Don't call me white, girl. Mona will be there. Keep it positive, sweetie, with Crystal Renee. We got Reality with the King with Carlos King. And yes, Drink Champs will be in the building. Plus, you know, we're going to have a lot of guests. So you need to join us. And we got the Black Effect Marketplace to pitch your podcast and everything you expect from the Black Effect Podcast Festival.

53:26Josh Clark:Tickets are on sale right now. Go get yours at blackeffect.com slash podcast festival. Don't play yourself, okay? Pull up.

53:37Josh Clark:What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?

53:53Chuck Bryant:I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.

53:56Josh Clark:Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.