Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Brading. Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Matt. Our colleague nol is on adventures,
Speaker 1: but will be returning. They call me Ben. We're joined
Speaker 1: as always with our super producer Paul, Mission controlled decond
Speaker 1: Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
Speaker 1: makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: We are coming to you live ish on November twenty one,
Speaker 1: in what has popularly been called two thousand and twenty two. Uh, Matt,
Speaker 1: no idea whether future listeners will practice the same calendar.
Speaker 1: What do you think? I think the odds are okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine a massive shift at this point unless
Speaker 1: it's forced, right, oh right, like in the in the
Speaker 1: days of the French Revolution, where they unsuccessfully attempted to
Speaker 1: impose a new calendar, a new measure of time. We're
Speaker 1: coming to you in a during what is called a
Speaker 1: waning crescent phase of the moon, which will be important
Speaker 1: to many of us listening along at home. You'll see
Speaker 1: why In a previous edition of our Weekly Listener Mail segment, Matt,
Speaker 1: we got this great question from a fellow conspiracy realist
Speaker 1: that we chose to identify as r C. And our
Speaker 1: Palnell picked this one, and I think it it inspired
Speaker 1: some thing in all three of us. Is it worth it?
Speaker 1: I think we should read the email again, just so
Speaker 1: everyone knows sure. R C says, Hi, guys, my wife
Speaker 1: is a ps W, which this is Matt speaking, I
Speaker 1: think means personal support worker. But I'm unsure. Going back
Speaker 1: in and works the night shift at an old folks home.
Speaker 1: She tells me that when it's a full moon, the
Speaker 1: resident's mood changes. They become aggressive, restless, and unmanageable. Every
Speaker 1: time there's a full moon, she dreads going into work,
Speaker 1: knowing that it's gonna be a crap show. Let's say,
Speaker 1: r C. Uh, those were not her words, but those
Speaker 1: are the words I chose to use for her words. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm going back in. I think it's weird how the
Speaker 1: moon can affect a person's emotions and or action. Also,
Speaker 1: my mother has always referred to a woman's menstrual cycle
Speaker 1: as getting her moontime. Got it, Okay, I'm not too sure. Why, well,
Speaker 1: we can talk about that a little bit. There is
Speaker 1: a history to that phrase, and we'll jump into that today.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, r C. Also, as you hear, folks asked
Speaker 1: about this ancient folklore surrounding the idea of human menstrual
Speaker 1: cycles and the phases of the moon. This all got
Speaker 1: us thinking, Uh, Matt and I have had conversations like
Speaker 1: this off air before, where you say, does the moon
Speaker 1: affect human behavior? And if so, how sure the facts?
Speaker 1: You know, here's a here's the long and short of it.
Speaker 1: Earth did not always have a moon, but a long
Speaker 1: time ago, though a long time ago to monitor stuff
Speaker 1: like mcmurdos station monitors, you know, the Arctic, sorry, the Antarctic.
Speaker 1: So Earth is right now, Oh my gosh, we're gidding
Speaker 1: to the We're getting into the bleeding edges of what
Speaker 1: humans know. Right So, as far as humans can figure
Speaker 1: out today, Earth is around what they would call four
Speaker 1: point five four billion years old plus or minus about
Speaker 1: fifty million years not. You know, that's that's nothing to
Speaker 1: sneeze at. What's a few mill between friends. Somewhere like
Speaker 1: point four billion years after Earth became a thing, an
Speaker 1: object estimated to be about the size of Mars crashed
Speaker 1: into this thing that would become Earth, and the debris
Speaker 1: from this impact vultrond up together and became what you
Speaker 1: would call the moon or Luna, right, or any number
Speaker 1: of other ancient words. At least, that's the most widely
Speaker 1: accepted version of how the moon came to be, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because every time someone does research on the formation of
Speaker 1: the moon, uh, the folks hiding inside the moon to
Speaker 1: get uh you know, they get they get like their
Speaker 1: equivalent of an extraterrestrial diplomatic cable and they go, oh, staff,
Speaker 1: no change that right, So, so what what humanity so
Speaker 1: far agrees on or those two basic facts four point
Speaker 1: five billion years formation of Earth four point five zero
Speaker 1: years the creation of the moon. And now we have
Speaker 1: to we have to think about the crazy thing we
Speaker 1: promised we're going somewhere with this life as you know
Speaker 1: it currently is thought to have began somewhere around circa
Speaker 1: three point seven billion years ago. This is based on
Speaker 1: the discovery of old rocks. Basically, the smartest people in
Speaker 1: their respective fields looked for the oldest rocks they could find.
Speaker 1: That is like, that is real science, as real science.
Speaker 1: They threw away a lot of rocks that were old enough,
Speaker 1: you know, and they prices right at it all the
Speaker 1: way back to three point seven billion years ago. They
Speaker 1: found rocks that were that age, and those rocks did
Speaker 1: not have direct evidence of living things. They had types
Speaker 1: of carbon molecules that are produced by no fooling eldritch microbes.
Speaker 1: And what what that means to folks like you, Matt,
Speaker 1: Folks like nol things like me, everybody listening here, is
Speaker 1: that all life on Earth evolved with a already orbiting
Speaker 1: the planet. It's your a one since day one, is
Speaker 1: how they would say it. You know, it's always been
Speaker 1: there for all of the things, including those three point
Speaker 1: seven billion year old microbes. That's right. Can we just
Speaker 1: just really quickly you said things like me, Okay, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to make sure I heard you right. That's
Speaker 1: a look for anybody who watches the YouTube channel. Okay,
Speaker 1: here we signed a covett. I know you're right. You're right, dang,
Speaker 1: we really did, all right. It is strange to think
Speaker 1: that the moon has been there the whole time that
Speaker 1: life has existed on the planet, at least again to
Speaker 1: our best knowledge. Right, maybe life went back before even
Speaker 1: longer than that, But that's the that's the oldest evidence
Speaker 1: we have, right, But it means the moon might very
Speaker 1: well be directly connected to this planet's ability to foster life.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's probably very much likely. Yeah, we know
Speaker 1: this for a fact. It's not it's not hippie woo
Speaker 1: woo stuff skeptics in the crowd. This is hard science
Speaker 1: in a roundabout way, not a joke about orbits. The
Speaker 1: moon is a huge part of the reason that you
Speaker 1: are hearing this podcast in the first place, because Earth
Speaker 1: is uh due to gravity, right and due to the
Speaker 1: great cosmic accident of reality, if you want to call
Speaker 1: it that. Earth is not spinning in this perfect circle.
Speaker 1: You know, shout out to tool. It is kind of wobbling,
Speaker 1: has got an access is closer to us on and
Speaker 1: sometimes as further away. Other times it's a whole thing.
Speaker 1: But the Moon is there almost as a counterweight, and
Speaker 1: it moderates Earth's wobbly pattern along its axis. This moderation
Speaker 1: leads to a relatively stable climate, and of course, as
Speaker 1: we all know, it causes tides right oceans ights. That's cool,
Speaker 1: and NASA actually goes down that poetry route when they
Speaker 1: think about this, or when they tell people about this.
Speaker 1: It's kind of cool. They say that the moon has
Speaker 1: quote created a rhythm that has guided humans for thousands
Speaker 1: of years. Now, in that statement, they're only talking about
Speaker 1: the thousands of years that humans have been around. They're
Speaker 1: not talking about the billions of years that the moon
Speaker 1: has been out there affecting life, which does mean every
Speaker 1: living thing that has ever lived on this planet has
Speaker 1: been affected by that. Sucker in that not amzing including you?
Speaker 1: Is that not amazing you? From ancient microbes three point
Speaker 1: seven billion years ago? To you? That's kind of cool
Speaker 1: to consider one's place in the world, you know. And
Speaker 1: so it's no wonder that before the dawn of recorded history,
Speaker 1: as we'll find, uh, way before people were writing words down,
Speaker 1: they were writing down what we would consider mathematical notation,
Speaker 1: right and uh and you'll see what a role that place.
Speaker 1: Humans have been high key obsessed with the moon and
Speaker 1: remains so today for ever. I mean, okay, right, says
Speaker 1: the modern person. What does this all mean to me?
Speaker 1: Just a moon up there? Sometimes there's an eclipse and
Speaker 1: that's cool. But other than that, whatever, I don't see
Speaker 1: the moon change of the price in my case ideas,
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Doubtlessly billions of us just said. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's strange man. You know, Matt, you and I are
Speaker 1: both and Paul is as well, students of folklore. Right,
Speaker 1: it informs so much, and there's a lot of truth
Speaker 1: hidden in those ancient forms of communication. Civilizations across the
Speaker 1: world all have their own stories about the moon. There
Speaker 1: is no human civilization that does not have a story
Speaker 1: about the moon. It is a constant, and you get
Speaker 1: these explorations of its origin story, you get these explanations
Speaker 1: of its role in society. Everything is explained from eclipses
Speaker 1: all the way to the lunar cycle. Uh. These civilizations,
Speaker 1: to a great degree, discover this stuff independently. The people
Speaker 1: living thousands and thousands of years ago, they were just
Speaker 1: as smart and just as flawed as everyone else, you know,
Speaker 1: just using all the intake by biotechnology that everybody has
Speaker 1: had since then. Just you can observe things with your
Speaker 1: eyes and with ears sometimes, and the moon really, for
Speaker 1: humanity has been any and I thing. You look at it, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: And when you look at the moon, you've noticed that
Speaker 1: it changes. And humans as far back as twenty thousand,
Speaker 1: maybe even forty thou years have been watching the moon change,
Speaker 1: and they're like, man, why does it look different today
Speaker 1: than it did yesterday? I swear it looks a little different.
Speaker 1: Can you all tell it looks a little different to me? Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit. And then by you know, by
Speaker 1: that time next week, the moon has changed completely, and
Speaker 1: we gotta kill a goat. Yeah, because if you don't,
Speaker 1: if you don't have a way, if all you're doing
Speaker 1: is observing it, right, what are you gonna do with
Speaker 1: that observation? Just talk about it, or you're gonna try
Speaker 1: and record that in some way or write it down
Speaker 1: or keep track of it. So there are these things
Speaker 1: you found been called tally sticks, which were really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: tally sticks. Okay, if you look at them, don't know
Speaker 1: how old they are. They look like notched bones. They
Speaker 1: look like someone got a bone and just got bored.
Speaker 1: But there's quite a bit of science to them. They
Speaker 1: date back as far as twenty two forty thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: there the earliest mathematical tools improven human history, and there's
Speaker 1: an ongoing, pretty persuasive bit of speculation that these were
Speaker 1: originally created to mark the phases of the moon and
Speaker 1: the counting of the days between the moon's phases. Someone going, ah,
Speaker 1: the moon disappeared again, or it's a big weird eye
Speaker 1: or human like entity and the sky that I can see. Uh.
Speaker 1: This led to or probably led to generalized time periods. Right,
Speaker 1: A full lunar cycle, which is about twenty nine point
Speaker 1: five days, give or take, led to the idea of months,
Speaker 1: and possibly just possibly the observance of lunar phases led
Speaker 1: to the idea of what we call weeks. Pretty nuts,
Speaker 1: pretty cool, right, cool story. The moon has control over time.
Speaker 1: Here it is, but it's not really the moon. The
Speaker 1: crazy thing about it, the moon's phases. It has to
Speaker 1: do with the size of the Earth and the size
Speaker 1: of the Moon and the size of the Sun, and
Speaker 1: then the exact distances between them and how they create
Speaker 1: this word ridiculous scenario where they they appear the same size,
Speaker 1: the moon and the Sun appear the same size, and
Speaker 1: the sky that's why you can get it, clipses. That
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense, guys, who why would do that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Why would it? Why would it be just so? Why
Speaker 1: does everything appear so just so for for you? Manity?
Speaker 1: It's a great question, that's my Pete Holmes. If you
Speaker 1: haven't seen Pete Holmes stand up where he goes into
Speaker 1: the bit where he's like it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend you look up Pete Holmes and his
Speaker 1: stand up because he's fabulous. Yes, yeah, you should look
Speaker 1: up Pete Holmes, because we think this conversation would appeal
Speaker 1: to Pete as well. Today's question, can the position an
Speaker 1: appearance of the moon genuinely affect human behavior? If so,
Speaker 1: how We're gonna pause mainly so everybody gets a chance
Speaker 1: to check out Pete stand up, and then we'll be back.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy, all right, man, we gotta
Speaker 1: start in the early days, there's been this association essentially,
Speaker 1: if you're alive today, you have heard this your entire life.
Speaker 1: There's been this association with the lunar cycle, the cycle
Speaker 1: of the moon, and the human menstrual cycle, right, fertility rates,
Speaker 1: the reproductive cycle. So we'll get into that in a bit.
Speaker 1: But we have to talk about the three Okay, the
Speaker 1: three big things, the three candidates for affecting human behavior
Speaker 1: on a scientific basis, And they are in no particular order,
Speaker 1: he says, no, d or And they'll talk about these. Uh.
Speaker 1: They are they are water, they're gravity, and they're light.
Speaker 1: Those are the three big ways the moon might touch you.
Speaker 1: Oh man, and it will, it will, It'll get inside
Speaker 1: your brain. Maybe at least that's what some of the
Speaker 1: smartest thinkers in the past believed. And that's why they thought,
Speaker 1: we need to test this out, because you can observe
Speaker 1: a long time ago humans observed that that moon up
Speaker 1: in the sky does have an effect on the water
Speaker 1: here on this planet and the way it moves and
Speaker 1: and how you know, as it shifts, as the Earth
Speaker 1: spins with that moon, and as the moon goes across
Speaker 1: it does make the water change a little bit. That's weird. Well,
Speaker 1: a couple of people who was it been It was
Speaker 1: Pliny the Elder and somebody at Aristotle. They believed, well,
Speaker 1: perhaps the human body, as it is much water, especially
Speaker 1: in the brain, that's the squishy bit up there. We've
Speaker 1: cut some people open. We've seen the squishy wetness that
Speaker 1: happens up inside everybody's brain. Well, of what if the
Speaker 1: moon is actually changing the brain in some way, pulling
Speaker 1: on it, if you will, or pushing on it, and
Speaker 1: in such a way that it changes behavior. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: tide to the brain, right, I love imagining the situation
Speaker 1: where Aristotle is somehow a mad scientist supervillain, and say, no,
Speaker 1: cut him up. Cut open the head, hot dog, that's wet.
Speaker 1: That must be the wettest part. And this whole thing.
Speaker 1: Cut another one up, and that's wet too. So they genuinely,
Speaker 1: they genuinely said the brain was the wettest or moistest. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I know moist is one of the most hated words
Speaker 1: in the English language. Uh, parts of of the body,
Speaker 1: of the human body. And just like you said, Matt,
Speaker 1: they made a reasonable connection. Given with what they had
Speaker 1: to work with at the time. They said, hey, we know,
Speaker 1: like they weren't aware that human origins begin near bodies
Speaker 1: of water, that is true, but they were aware that
Speaker 1: the lunar cycle corresponded with behaviors of the oceans, and
Speaker 1: so they thought, okay, well, you know, we cut up
Speaker 1: some people, we saw brains, look wet, that's the water,
Speaker 1: and therefore maybe the moon can cause something like tides
Speaker 1: in the brain. And this belief persists for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: Think about the European Middle Ages. The vast majority of
Speaker 1: people alive during that time had were not literate, and
Speaker 1: if they were literate, they didn't have a chance of
Speaker 1: knowing about the conjecture of Aristotle or plenty of the Elder.
Speaker 1: They did transfer this through tradition though, and that's why
Speaker 1: the idea of people changing into werewolves, right, being likeanthropes, right,
Speaker 1: the skin changers and so on, that's why it got
Speaker 1: connected with the idea of this occurring during the lunar cycle.
Speaker 1: And you can find etymological evidence of this. The same
Speaker 1: character for moon is also a character for different measures
Speaker 1: of time in Mandarin, right, or you know, in those videograms,
Speaker 1: and the same you know, the word for lunacy directly
Speaker 1: comes from luna, right, lunar as well lunatic, Oh boy,
Speaker 1: somewhere right. Uh, it's clearly deriving from this longstanding belief
Speaker 1: that the moon can in some cases make people go
Speaker 1: something something something well, and it just like we heard
Speaker 1: from our c at the top of this episode, I
Speaker 1: have heard stories of of this effect, and Ben, you
Speaker 1: probably have to, especially with a teacher as a parent, right.
Speaker 1: I think having a teacher as a parent, you just
Speaker 1: hear a story about it, and it's in passing. It's
Speaker 1: not even it's not very serious. We're like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: a full moon today and it's it's like the shrug,
Speaker 1: the sigh of it's gonna get weird. I think it's
Speaker 1: just something that's been handed down for so long. It
Speaker 1: doesn't help that be made up vocabulary around it, right, right, right,
Speaker 1: Where where are the heliotics? Right? So? Who are the
Speaker 1: people who go crazy when the sun's out? Uh? You
Speaker 1: will also hear about this from first responders or from
Speaker 1: people who are in caregiving positions, from people who have
Speaker 1: authority over a given constrained population, whether that's a senior
Speaker 1: living home, whether that's a psychiatric hospital, whether that's a prison,
Speaker 1: right for just a group of kids like graders. Seriously, Yeah,
Speaker 1: teachers are always outnumbered in this country as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: and should be paid more money, so you you might.
Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realists recognize similar allegations that the moon and
Speaker 1: the full moon in particular can trigger unusual, erratic, extraordinary
Speaker 1: human behavior. There's this great scientific American article we found
Speaker 1: and they phrase out the many associations that exists in
Speaker 1: popular culture, not not just in the West, not just
Speaker 1: in the East, throughout the entire world. Quote psychiatric hospital admissions, suicides, homicides,
Speaker 1: emergency room calls, traffic accidents, fights at professional hockey games,
Speaker 1: dog bites, and all manner of strange events purportedly correlate
Speaker 1: with the phases of the moon. That's really interesting because
Speaker 1: the like we've gone past water here right now, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the appearance of the moon, and we have
Speaker 1: to be careful with the science. One thing you said
Speaker 1: that stood out to me, met is that this is
Speaker 1: not folklore restricted to people outside of the Ivory Tower.
Speaker 1: Is not stuff that the common person believes in. The
Speaker 1: O R or e Er surgeon dismisses, Oh, yeah, you
Speaker 1: are a surgeon, probably believes it way more than you do,
Speaker 1: unless you're a no our surgeon. That's just the way
Speaker 1: it goes. It's it's kind of it's a little nuts.
Speaker 1: You gotta be careful because educated people in this country,
Speaker 1: we've seen this, We've seen the surveys. Uh, College educated
Speaker 1: human beings often hold this belief as fact. Like, this
Speaker 1: is just how it is. It's true, Ben, You have
Speaker 1: a study here that uh found forty of college students
Speaker 1: believe it. Yeah, fort of college students believe that a
Speaker 1: full moon affects behavior. People get a little more wild, right.
Speaker 1: And we found another study that seems to show mental
Speaker 1: health professionals are even more likely to believe in this
Speaker 1: correlation than the average person. Several of them whold that
Speaker 1: believe that's um, I don't know. It may just be
Speaker 1: you have more exposure to whatever it is the behaviors.
Speaker 1: I guess that you would that you add measure to
Speaker 1: feel as though this is true or not? Right? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we'll get into this because you know, it reminds
Speaker 1: me of the conversation about Havana syndrome. And we'll see
Speaker 1: why in a moment, you know. We we also know
Speaker 1: that multiple police departments and first respondered units have staffed
Speaker 1: up in advance of nights with a full moon, particularly
Speaker 1: just for one example, two thousand seven, uh, several police
Speaker 1: departments in the United Kingdom added officers on a regular
Speaker 1: continual basis daring nights from the full moon because it
Speaker 1: was their belief that they were going to be higher
Speaker 1: rates of crime, and anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that
Speaker 1: many nonprofit suicide hotline outfits do the same. Do you
Speaker 1: have a brilliant friend who for years and years and
Speaker 1: years worked in the er where where we grew up together,
Speaker 1: and he brilliant human being. I can't stress that enough
Speaker 1: he would mention just openly, Man, full moon coming up.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to prepare myself mentally, just like getting ready
Speaker 1: for what he has to deal with in the r
Speaker 1: during those days. Yeah, and I've I've seen the same,
Speaker 1: and I believe it. I believe from that perspective, you
Speaker 1: see more strange things. You especially remember more strange things.
Speaker 1: So white gives with the water thing, all right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: human body about water. There's no denying that. So it's
Speaker 1: a reasonable question Aristotle and the ancients pose, could the
Speaker 1: moon somehow be disrupting water molecules at a tiny level
Speaker 1: in the human nervous system in the brain. The brain
Speaker 1: is a thing humans still don't fully understand. Uh, the
Speaker 1: answer is a big wamp wamp. Don't worry, we have
Speaker 1: more stuff to explore. But the water answer is a
Speaker 1: whampwamp for three very important reasons. Yeah, because well, I
Speaker 1: mean caveatic just a little bit. As far as our
Speaker 1: understanding of what affects the Moon could potentially and possibly
Speaker 1: have on water, it doesn't make much sense because gravity
Speaker 1: would be one of the only one of the major
Speaker 1: ways of the Moon would have an effect on you,
Speaker 1: right and your water and you compared to the Moon.
Speaker 1: When you're talking about masses and the actual gravitational interaction,
Speaker 1: there's not much going on there. When you're talking about
Speaker 1: the entirety of the Atlantic Ocean, which is, by the way,
Speaker 1: you know, connected to the Pacific Ocean, you're talking about
Speaker 1: a bunch of mass and those two bodies, you know,
Speaker 1: in their interaction there's going to be much more of
Speaker 1: an effect than on tiny little you. Unfortunately, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Moon's gravitational effects are relatively minuscule. You can try this
Speaker 1: for yourself at home. Measure something, right, take something that
Speaker 1: weighs a pound, if you're comfortable lifting that, and then
Speaker 1: go out during a new moon. Go out during a
Speaker 1: new moon and drop that thing on the ground. Peop
Speaker 1: a little timer, see how long it takes to get
Speaker 1: to the ground. Then go out there in the full moon,
Speaker 1: do the same thing, and the rate will remain constant.
Speaker 1: That's the issue right at you know, of course, you
Speaker 1: can say, well, we're talking about miniscool things, right, so
Speaker 1: something that weighs a pound is pretty big, right, And
Speaker 1: then you can also rightfully note that humans still at
Speaker 1: this point, thank goodness, don't understand everything about gravity. But
Speaker 1: there's an interesting there's an interesting place to go with this.
Speaker 1: Want to note the astronomer George A. Bell of the
Speaker 1: University of California and Los Angeles, this, this is a
Speaker 1: brilliant human before they passed away and said, Hey, logically,
Speaker 1: look at it. If we're taking the idea of the
Speaker 1: moon and gravity and water and its effect on you,
Speaker 1: then what about other things? What about mosquitoes? A mosquito
Speaker 1: on your arm has a measurably more powerful gravitational pull
Speaker 1: on you than the moon does, because the moods just
Speaker 1: so far away, right, and the mosquito is very small,
Speaker 1: but it's also very close. Like, could this gravitational discrepancy
Speaker 1: really be enough to mess with your brain? If that
Speaker 1: were the case, then take that same one pound object
Speaker 1: you experimented with during the lunar phases and just like
Speaker 1: walk around, put it next to your head. Are you
Speaker 1: thinking differently? Are you a werewolf? If so? Right in,
Speaker 1: But but all evidence seems to indicate that the gravitational
Speaker 1: force there doesn't work. Now at this point, Matt, a
Speaker 1: lot of people are going to be saying, again with validity,
Speaker 1: that hey, you guys already admitted the moon does exert
Speaker 1: gravitational effects. On the oceans. So why the oceans and
Speaker 1: why not me? Well again, for look, Ben, correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong here. But my understanding of it is
Speaker 1: that it's a mass. It is a the difference in mass.
Speaker 1: Larger things that have more mass have more gravitational effect
Speaker 1: on each other, not just one on the other. Right,
Speaker 1: Because the way gravity works, it's usually a it's not
Speaker 1: usually it is a it's almost it's a given. Take.
Speaker 1: It's what gravity does. When there's a larger mass, it
Speaker 1: has an effect on the thing with lesser mass um.
Speaker 1: But then those two masses get taken into account. And
Speaker 1: I can't do the math because I'm not smart or
Speaker 1: a scientist. But the other big thing here is that
Speaker 1: the water in you is inside a container. Right. All
Speaker 1: the water that's in you is in your cells. It
Speaker 1: might be uh like rolling in between as it's going
Speaker 1: down your esophagus into your stomach through all that weird
Speaker 1: wormy stuff that's inside of all of us. Stuff is weird, Huh.
Speaker 1: Those intestines don't think about it too much. But your
Speaker 1: your water is contained. The water that is not contained,
Speaker 1: that is just open air water is the stuff that
Speaker 1: the Moon really has a major effect on. Those are
Speaker 1: the oceans, the seas and even lakes, but too much
Speaker 1: lesser effect. Yeah, yeah, so a couple of reasons. Uh,
Speaker 1: the Moon's pretty far away, you know, for everybody not
Speaker 1: in the US or Namibia, it's about three five thousand kilometers.
Speaker 1: That's a long way away. And we know that gravitational
Speaker 1: pools decrease with distance. This is the reason tides occur.
Speaker 1: So picture of the Earth, This little blue spaceship orbiting
Speaker 1: around one side of the Pacific Ocean and just call
Speaker 1: it California to get a picture in your head, is
Speaker 1: going to be closer to the Moon than the other side, Japan.
Speaker 1: So there's a stronger gravitational pull in California than there
Speaker 1: is in Japan. So you get a high tide in California,
Speaker 1: you get a low tide in Japan around the Pacific rim.
Speaker 1: Later in the day, Earth is rotated because Earth is
Speaker 1: all super into doing that, thankfully, and Japan is closer
Speaker 1: to the Moon. Now there's a high tide there, there's
Speaker 1: low tide in California. It's over simplifying, but if you
Speaker 1: think about it that way, what you see is the
Speaker 1: distance for the open body of water. So you're container
Speaker 1: then of a liquid. If you're a human, then you're
Speaker 1: your wet, wet brain is still hopefully in a container
Speaker 1: of some sort, hopefully what you can sent to. And
Speaker 1: that means that you don't have the distance for that
Speaker 1: gravitational effect to matter. A very small head with very
Speaker 1: brilliant ideas, and we believe in you. Uh and you
Speaker 1: know that's the same reason why you're reusable water bottle
Speaker 1: is not actively generating tides. It just doesn't have the
Speaker 1: space for that discrepancy in gravity to matter. And we
Speaker 1: also hope you are not drinking from disposable water bottles.
Speaker 1: If you've heard our previous episodes, yeah, we hope you're
Speaker 1: reusing them over and over and over and letting chemicals,
Speaker 1: glass and ceramic they're the way to go. Uh. So
Speaker 1: this is a huge heart. And the third thing is
Speaker 1: the gravitational effects of the moon are gonna be constant
Speaker 1: even when the appearance of the moon is not constant.
Speaker 1: Think about it. What hold on, but I can't see
Speaker 1: it but the full moon, But it's still there, still
Speaker 1: as the same gravity is the full moon. When its
Speaker 1: eyes are closed, it's still touching you. When its eyes
Speaker 1: are open, it's still touching you. I mean, you know what,
Speaker 1: this reminds me off. There's a good way to get
Speaker 1: into it. Man, You drink water from a red glass,
Speaker 1: you drink identical water from a blue glass. Debate tastes different?
Speaker 1: M M. I like that. I was just gonna say.
Speaker 1: I would say, yes, they dude, taste different. Or what
Speaker 1: if it's what if it's like a colored liquid. Let's
Speaker 1: say milk. It's in a clear glass or in a
Speaker 1: completely black, opaque glass that you can't see inside of. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: but there's milk and both. I don't know what I'm saying. No,
Speaker 1: you're nailing it. You're nailing it because it gets into, uh,
Speaker 1: the fact that all human senses are interconnected. Right when
Speaker 1: you smell a fart, you were tasting that fart. Stop,
Speaker 1: it's true, it's true. My son, my son. I'm making
Speaker 1: him eat more beans, Ben, and thank you for sharing
Speaker 1: that article. Uh. I cooked some green beans for him,
Speaker 1: and I was talking him in, cut him into bed,
Speaker 1: read this story and he we say two did underneath
Speaker 1: the covers, and he did one of the old lift
Speaker 1: up the sheets real quick thing, and he and he
Speaker 1: had a visceral reaction to it, as did I and
Speaker 1: it was like, Dad, you gotta stop feeding me so
Speaker 1: many beans. He said that, Yeah, because beans. This guy's epic.
Speaker 1: And then he learned that he learned that rhyme the
Speaker 1: beans beans for your heart. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Uh,
Speaker 1: big fat, big fan of that kid. But but also
Speaker 1: we're talking about we're talking about the interconnectedness, right, Like, uh,
Speaker 1: you eat from a blue plate versus eating from a
Speaker 1: red plate. Right, you associate if you if you can
Speaker 1: see the full spectrum of human color as far as
Speaker 1: humans can do it, then then you have implicit associations
Speaker 1: with the other information from your senses. Right. That's that's
Speaker 1: part of why Pavlovian training works. You know, bring the
Speaker 1: bell salivate. I know this means food. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: something called is related to rather something called the illusory effect.
Speaker 1: We found a great study that's from quite a while ago. Now,
Speaker 1: Uh there's a meta analysis, and three very impressive people
Speaker 1: did everything they could. They looked at all the science
Speaker 1: they could find to figure out whether or not the
Speaker 1: full moon genuinely objectively influenced human behavior. This study was
Speaker 1: titled much Ado about the full Moon. You could find
Speaker 1: it in the Psychological Bulletin. I guarantee you can still
Speaker 1: find it. Right now, just do a little search again
Speaker 1: and again. This is this is this is metalwork, right,
Speaker 1: So this is looking at studies thirty seven other studies.
Speaker 1: They're comparing those results to find out, Okay, what can
Speaker 1: we learn from all of these studies combined. In all
Speaker 1: cases they came up empty handed, so as in, they
Speaker 1: couldn't find and they couldn't find a study that said like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's something to this guy's Uh. They basically were just like, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think this is a thing. I don't think
Speaker 1: this is a thing. Yeah. They did. Uh, they did
Speaker 1: a lot of work, and they weren't trying to be
Speaker 1: sticks in the mud, you know, they didn't come in
Speaker 1: with an agenda. They said, let's conduct a meta analysis,
Speaker 1: which is where you apply statistical processes to every study
Speaker 1: you can find. You analyze the analyzes essentially, and they said,
Speaker 1: based on their findings, full moons are quote entirely unrelated
Speaker 1: to crimes, suicides, psychiatric problems in crisis center calls. However,
Speaker 1: as we will see, one of those might not be correct.
Speaker 1: One of those might not be correct, and not for
Speaker 1: the reasons outlined in that study. It's just again, the
Speaker 1: best science is figuring out which questions to ask and
Speaker 1: how to ask them. So it sounds like they missed something.
Speaker 1: Why didn't they find a correlation? Why does blue gatorade
Speaker 1: taste somehow colder than red gatorade? Or power whatever? Are
Speaker 1: we talking about the power of the brain, even though
Speaker 1: the brain isn't maybe being affected by the moon. You're saying,
Speaker 1: it's very powerful. It can make us feel things that
Speaker 1: are just so, yes, dude, And and if that is true,
Speaker 1: which it is, then what what then becomes the difference?
Speaker 1: Right right? What becomes the difference the idea of Look again,
Speaker 1: there's an entire episode on why things taste the way
Speaker 1: they taste. And if you're a fellow conspiracy realist in
Speaker 1: the cooking biz, if you're a cooking enthusiast, we need
Speaker 1: your help for this one right in. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: just know the same factors and variables apply to the
Speaker 1: experience of a human living under the shadow of the moon.
Speaker 1: It all goes back to this idea of illusory correlation.
Speaker 1: People don't like that term because it makes it sound
Speaker 1: like you're wrong. You're not. It could be psychogenic and
Speaker 1: just like we're talking about in the Havana Syndrome episode
Speaker 1: with our pal Jack from Daily Zeitgeist that is equally valid.
Speaker 1: Illusory correlation is the perception of a relationship between variables
Speaker 1: even when no relationship exists. The essential argument here is
Speaker 1: that people tend to forget what we call non events
Speaker 1: like picture your faithful corresponse. Matt and i um are
Speaker 1: working late night at some sort of thing. Matt, what
Speaker 1: are we working at. We are working on developing a
Speaker 1: new high quality sound absorbing sponge. So we're sponge folk,
Speaker 1: were spongemen, and we're up late at night working on
Speaker 1: working on the future of sponge ry. And we get
Speaker 1: a lot of people coming in with questions and issues
Speaker 1: related to this, the future of sponges. And you know,
Speaker 1: we work the graveyard shift, so we might spend any
Speaker 1: number of nights under a new moon or waning crescent,
Speaker 1: what have you with. Nothing really happen in regular sponge questions.
Speaker 1: People call into the sponge line, you know, sizes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're solving it. We got our lap coats on, you know,
Speaker 1: and we got our sponge gloves and uh, and we
Speaker 1: don't remember these uneventful nights during the full moon because
Speaker 1: you know, we work will break it dawn, and then
Speaker 1: we go to sleep, and then we get up and
Speaker 1: record this podcast before we go back to the sponge lab,
Speaker 1: to the sponge Eury. But but Matt, if we're working
Speaker 1: one night and something strange does happen, we're more likely
Speaker 1: to remember it. Our brain is gonna also additionally seek
Speaker 1: out a pattern with which to associate this. So something
Speaker 1: weird happens on a Tuesday, and we remember three or
Speaker 1: more Tuesdays, then pretty soon we're the sponge veteran is
Speaker 1: going gotta get ready man, Tuesday, Tuesday. See, even my
Speaker 1: dogs could tell better. On my sponge lab, gray pants,
Speaker 1: she's looking at my bed as though my bed has
Speaker 1: done something. See she's having an illusory effect with my
Speaker 1: bed right now. That's my dog Penny. Okay, Uh, she
Speaker 1: always gets crazy around recording time. Uh. Yeah, she's gonna
Speaker 1: do that for a while, so I I we keep
Speaker 1: it in. Uh. This is often the experience. Let scientists
Speaker 1: argue of unusual activity during a full moon. What they're
Speaker 1: saying is people don't remember all the times the night
Speaker 1: was normal, right, They remember instead the times the night
Speaker 1: went crazy. So it's similar to batter mine Hoff syndrome.
Speaker 1: Right when you hear a word like Saturday nine, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, you feel like you hear
Speaker 1: that word all the time. We might have just beat
Speaker 1: her mine Hoff someone right now with the words Saturday
Speaker 1: nine because it's a fairly specific phrase. Oh god, I haven't.
Speaker 1: I don't even know that word, and I can already
Speaker 1: feel it coming. It's gonna happen as soon as I
Speaker 1: leave the house. I hope it doesn't, because Saturday I
Speaker 1: means slow and gloomy. I don't. I hope you don't
Speaker 1: have slow and gloomy. Yeah, it's on the way. I
Speaker 1: hope you have hyper fast and very happy times. So uh,
Speaker 1: all right, So you know, we talked about the pattern stuff.
Speaker 1: We also need to realize that one study found that
Speaker 1: psychiatric nurses who believe in this concept lunar effect. That's
Speaker 1: the name for it. Lunar effect describes the idea that
Speaker 1: people get weird during certain phases of the moon. So
Speaker 1: one study found that nurse is in psychiatric wards who
Speaker 1: believed in the lunar effect actually wrote more notes about
Speaker 1: what they saw as unusual behavior on the behalf of
Speaker 1: the patients. Then nurses who didn't believe in the effect.
Speaker 1: So if you already went in believing that the moon
Speaker 1: makes people weird, you're paying more attention to it. You're
Speaker 1: increasing your opportunities to see the stories you heard proven true.
Speaker 1: So congratulations to the skeptics. That's the show. Yep, you
Speaker 1: confirmed your own biases. There's a phrase for that, but
Speaker 1: I can't remember it. I'm biased towards how to call
Speaker 1: that confirmation. But there's That's the thing. You can't rest
Speaker 1: on your laurels just yet, skeptics in the crowd, Folks
Speaker 1: with great affection, We tell you there is more to
Speaker 1: the story. The explanation of illusory correlation is probably part
Speaker 1: of it, but it does not address the whole thing. Remember,
Speaker 1: people are intelligent. People are not trying to fool themselves.
Speaker 1: There can't be this many people in the world for
Speaker 1: this amount of time. And if there are this many
Speaker 1: people across this amount of time telling you these things
Speaker 1: are true, you should listen. We're gonna pause for a
Speaker 1: word from our sponsor, and then we're going to take
Speaker 1: it back to life, back to reality, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go see what my dogs were working at. We're back. Matt,
Speaker 1: you said something that really stood out to me. In
Speaker 1: our earlier Listener Mail segment, you said, maybe it's not
Speaker 1: the gravity, maybe it's not the water, maybe it's the light. Yeah, look,
Speaker 1: that's I have no evidence. I just I just know
Speaker 1: that if any individual human being can see a little
Speaker 1: bit better at night, then maybe you might be more
Speaker 1: inclined to go do things at night, you know, because
Speaker 1: you can see. And I feel like that's I don't
Speaker 1: know if that seems like the most elementary observation that
Speaker 1: I could muster at the time when we were making
Speaker 1: that episode, but it does feel like there could be
Speaker 1: something to it. Yeah. Yeah, In that in that Weekly
Speaker 1: Listener Male segment you did, you did pose this in
Speaker 1: such an interesting way, right, And we are very careful
Speaker 1: to separate speculation from what we know can be proven.
Speaker 1: But it reminded me I hadn't talked with you about
Speaker 1: this off air. Reminded me about how, uh, in the
Speaker 1: days before the advent of electric light, most people would
Speaker 1: sleep in a polyphasic manner, meaning you would sleep for
Speaker 1: a certain number of hours, you would wake up, get
Speaker 1: up to some I jinks, and then you would go
Speaker 1: back to sleep, and you would wake at dawn. Right,
Speaker 1: and the original human night light. The moon might affect
Speaker 1: how long you stayed awake, might affect what you chose
Speaker 1: to do simply because you could see better when the
Speaker 1: moon was brighter. Think about the times when you had
Speaker 1: to get work done light. I have to get this
Speaker 1: done before full winter sets in. If I don't get
Speaker 1: this work done, this physical labor, whatever it is, me,
Speaker 1: myself and my family or whoever I'm with, will likely
Speaker 1: die if I don't make this shelter perfect in the
Speaker 1: way it needs to be right. So if there is
Speaker 1: a full moon out you and you can see well enough,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what time it is, you can keep
Speaker 1: working right right people, humans, I mean road the natural
Speaker 1: rhythms of light from the Sun and the moon, And
Speaker 1: that is one of the great ways in which the
Speaker 1: moon has influenced human behavior throughout all of human history. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a psychiatrist named Charles L. Rayson R. A I. S. O. N.
Speaker 1: Who was at Emory University for a time, who said
Speaker 1: this lunar effect might have a small bit of truth
Speaker 1: to it, a grain a kernel of truth due to
Speaker 1: this idea of electric light versus natural light. You know,
Speaker 1: before people had outdoor lighting everywhere the bright light of
Speaker 1: a full moon deprived people of sleep, and this impact
Speaker 1: becomes exacerbated when those people are already struggling with certain
Speaker 1: mental disorders. We know, we know for a fact that
Speaker 1: sleep deprivation can trigger erratic behavior, and people with certain
Speaker 1: psychological conditions by holder disorder right uh used to be
Speaker 1: called manic depression, the full moon may have been linked
Speaker 1: to a heightened rate of bizarre behavior. And these long
Speaker 1: ago eras, way before the dawn of modern psychology and
Speaker 1: psychiatric theory. You know, you wouldn't have the words to
Speaker 1: describe what was happening in this person's mind. You would think, snap,
Speaker 1: it's a full moon. There goes Gela Breath or whatever
Speaker 1: name you want to put in there, and it's gonna
Speaker 1: be my next skyron character's name, Gerald Breath, Gerald, I
Speaker 1: don't want to brush my too Zara that. But there
Speaker 1: we go, at this present time, and we say this
Speaker 1: with no great enthusiasm. There is no clear evidence that
Speaker 1: the moon physically affects behavioral change for most people. But
Speaker 1: if we want to, if we want answers, we gotta
Speaker 1: start at a larger view. All known species have evolved
Speaker 1: under the influence of the moon, it shouldn't be surprising
Speaker 1: that research shows several species adapted some of their biological
Speaker 1: cycles to line up with the lunar cycle. But we've
Speaker 1: gotta be careful, you know, you you talked about the
Speaker 1: most affected ones. You're talking about marine animals because they
Speaker 1: live in the ocean, which is big enough to have tides,
Speaker 1: so of course they're going to be affected. Oh man,
Speaker 1: that makes so much sense. I'm just disappointed. It makes
Speaker 1: too much sense. So what about mental conditions? We know
Speaker 1: the human is uh only another sort of terran animal, right,
Speaker 1: the moon affects other animals, so logically, why should the
Speaker 1: current popular primate be any different? If you look at
Speaker 1: going back to our earlier stuff from race, and if
Speaker 1: we look at this peer reviewed study of seventeen patients
Speaker 1: with what's called rapid cycling bipolar disorder, we see that
Speaker 1: they experienced mood shifts with a pattern of regularity, at
Speaker 1: least in part influenced by lunar cycles more light less
Speaker 1: light effects behavior. That that's intense to know. I've I've
Speaker 1: you know, just personally dealt with several people in my
Speaker 1: life who suffer from varying, varying levels of that disorder
Speaker 1: and that. Wow, it makes you want to look into
Speaker 1: it further. That's fascinating to me. Uh wow, yeah, it's uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to find this study, it's called bipolar
Speaker 1: mood cycles and Lunar tide cycles. You should be able
Speaker 1: to find it there. It's in a National Library of Medicine.
Speaker 1: Is where I found one of the citations down the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole. Well, dude, we know light can and does
Speaker 1: influence human behavior. If we forget about the moon for
Speaker 1: a second. More, northern countries like Germany actually have laws
Speaker 1: requiring office buildings to have a guaranteed amount of light.
Speaker 1: Let's not forget the studies showing links between depression and
Speaker 1: self harm tied to the idea of seasonal depression lack
Speaker 1: of light. You know all those little kids in Scandinavia
Speaker 1: who have to stand under the UV lamps. Ambient nighttime
Speaker 1: light exposure has also been implicated as a risk factor
Speaker 1: for adverse health outcomes, including stuff like cardio metabolic disease.
Speaker 1: Different shades of light at night can also affect behavior.
Speaker 1: I think it was part of Japan Nagoya. I want
Speaker 1: to say, in Glasgow, Scotland, they deployed blue street lights
Speaker 1: and this appeared to tamp down in uh, certain violent behaviors.
Speaker 1: It's weird, right, like we we know. Okay, look we're
Speaker 1: running along, folks. Uh, Matt, you and I are probably
Speaker 1: not going to be able to get to the continuing
Speaker 1: conversation about human menstrual cycles and the moon. We do
Speaker 1: know that the average length of a human menstrual cycles
Speaker 1: between twenty one and thirty five days. Media length twenty
Speaker 1: eight days. Your mileage may vary, folks, And the lunar
Speaker 1: cycle itself has been again about twenty nine point five days.
Speaker 1: But that's a whole other conversation for a different time.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe this is a series, Maybe this
Speaker 1: is a two part episode, what do you think? But yeah,
Speaker 1: we can look into I think it's it would be
Speaker 1: smart for us to say that there is no confirmed,
Speaker 1: fully agreed upon connection between those two things, the moon
Speaker 1: cycle and the reproductive psychle in a woman. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and another intervening variable, maybe artificial light. Right, the human
Speaker 1: body responds to to light or to the lack thereof,
Speaker 1: So maybe we save this for future conversation right now.
Speaker 1: What we found is that while many of the anecdotal
Speaker 1: stories about the influence of the moon on human beings
Speaker 1: don't seem entirely true. There is a series of fascinating breadcrumbs,
Speaker 1: you know, their their paths that wind to certain understandings. Right,
Speaker 1: It's it doesn't seem like the gravity is the culprit,
Speaker 1: even though the gravity gets played out a lot, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like why which would be related to
Speaker 1: gravity is the culprit. Water content of the human body
Speaker 1: and that super moist brain ears, and that's super super
Speaker 1: wet brain. But it does seem like light is the
Speaker 1: primary influencer here. We consider this an open conversation. We
Speaker 1: would love to hear your thoughts. We hope the end
Speaker 1: of this year is finding you in good spirits and
Speaker 1: good health amid grand adventure. And if you have a
Speaker 1: time during your adventures to let us know your thoughts,
Speaker 1: we would love to share them with your fellow conspiracy realists.
Speaker 1: We try to be easy to find online. Yes, you
Speaker 1: can find us everywhere on most socials. We are conspiracy
Speaker 1: stuff on Instagram, we are a conspiracy stuff show. We
Speaker 1: highly recommend you check out the YouTube channel. All kinds
Speaker 1: of fun stuff, interesting stuff going on over there, and
Speaker 1: we are conspiracy stuff on YouTube. One of the things.
Speaker 1: If you've got a book and an audiobook, you can
Speaker 1: catch them right now. They exist, they're titled stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know. Just look for them. Holidays
Speaker 1: are coming up, why not get one or two or
Speaker 1: twelve for your friends and for yourself. Just keep them
Speaker 1: on a shelf, keep like ten books of Hours on yourself.
Speaker 1: It'll be fun. I'm just saying, nothing weird, like nothing weird. Also,
Speaker 1: if you don't like the book, buy it for your enemies.
Speaker 1: That'll show them uh and uh. And if you don't
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