Transcript
Coltan Scrivner (on morbid curiosities) | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
From Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard · Episode page · Watch on YouTube
· 2 h 26 min · 30,655 words · 841 timestamped sections
This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Coltan Scrivner (on morbid curiosities) | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard", an episode of Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard published December 10, 2025 (2 h 26 min, about 30,655 words). It mentions 382 people, works and ideas, including Colton Scriber, Morbid Curiosity, Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away, Psychology, True Crime.
What this episode is about
Coltan Scrivner, an expert in morbid curiosity and the psychology of horror and true crime, discusses the reasons behind humanity's fascination with morbid topics. Through his book "Morbidly Curious," he explores how these interests potentially serve as mechanisms for self-protection and coping with fear.
Key takeaways
- Curiosity didn't kill the cat; it fueled our obsession with true crime and horror.
- Eureka Springs: Where Victorian charm meets 15,000 roaming zombies. Talk about lively!
- Brains: Lighter than you think but still heavy enough to spark a debate!
- Escape Bay Area tech for small-town charm? Colton proves it's not just a fantasy.
- Turn tourist hotspots into cash cows with $10 merch; talking brains and shorelines don't hurt.
Who speaks in this episode?
- Dax Shepard (Host) · 1 h 6 min speaking
- Monica Padman (Host) · 51 min speaking
- Coltan Scrivner (Guest) · 29 min speaking
- Brad (last name unknown) (Guest)
- Jared (last name unknown) (Guest)
What is discussed, and when
- – 15:00: Oklahoma, Eureka, Colton Scriber, Psychology
- – 30:00: Adrenaline, Morbid Curiosity, Denmark, haunted house
- – 45:00: Morbid Curiosity, True Crime, morbid curiosity, Predator Inspection
- – 1:00:00: Contagion, Contagion, Contagion, Contagion
- – 1:15:00: ghosts, Morbid Curiosity, Savannah, morbid curiosity
- – 1:30:00: Stanford, Harvard, The Exorcist 3, The Exorcist 3
- – 1:45:00: Ryan Serest, Columbia, Mocha Moose, University of Georgia
- – 2:00:00: Thanksgiving, tradition, Nashville, Kristen
- – 2:15:00: Thanksgiving, Nashville, Savannah, Kristen
- – 2:26:12: Dell's, Dell's, Dell's, Morbid Curiosity
Notable quotes from "Coltan Scrivner (on morbid curiosities) | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard"
Internationally recognized expert on morbid curiosity and the psychology of horror and true crime. He has a very fascinating book called Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains…
about Colton Scriber · atThen you're hosting a zombie festival there.
about Eureka Springs Zombie Festival · atYeah, so I have an affiliation with the psychology department there. Okay.
about Psychology · atYeah. We do a show where we talk to listeners and we just did one about the dentist and Dax was We can't do that again.
about Dax · atNo, we're not the only creatures that are morbidly curious, but yes, we have a very unique flavor of it. So, one of the best examples of morbid curiosity in animals would be predator inspection.
about Predator Inspection · atCame to in the past month or two. So, it's still I'm still kind of speculating about it, but when CO became a global pandemic around 2020, a lot of people who had sworn off…
about COVID-19 pandemic · atMorbidly curious. A scientist explains why we can't look away. Colton, this has been very fascinating. This has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming.
about Morbid Curiosity · atBut they weren't on the text. But anyways, a lot of people and it said We're tossing around the idea of going to Nashville for Thanksgiving. We'll pay for everyone.
about Thanksgiving · at
Who and what is mentioned in this episode?
People
- Colton Scriber — Person · Main guest · 3 mentions · first at
Primary interview subject discussing morbid curiosity and the psychology of horror and true crime. - Dax — Person · 2 mentions · first at
- Cali — Person · 1 mention · first at
Then I have Black Friday tradition with Cali at Brentwood Country Mart. Yeah.
- Kristen — Person · 6 mentions · first at
If you ask Kristen right now, her mom does the same thing. Like half the calls are about people she's never heard of that have a sickness.
- Richard Rangum — Person · 1 mention · first at
Ancestor with chimps. we almost certainly did something like that, but there was a shift. I don't know if you've read any of Richard Rangum's work.
- Jeffrey Dahmer — Person · Referenced criminal example (true crime/serial killer) · 13 mentions
Used as an illustrative case in a discussion about whether morbid media consumption relates to violence; cited as an example of a killer with a specific media preference and as someone who used the phrase 'morbidly curious.'But that was his thing, right? and I talk about in the book, I talk about Dmer saying that he was morbidly curious. He used the term. He said I was they were he was being interviewed.
- Ryan Serest — Person · 3 mentions · first at
Has many successful alumni, including celebrities like Ryan Serest. That's not true. AI is not right.
- Alison Roman — Person · 2 mentions · first at
Wow. Anyway, that was great. Buy Allison's book, Something from Nothing.
- Anton Raanso — Person · 1 mention · first at
And this guy I'm going to butcher his name his last name is Raanso I think Anton Raanso. He's a Finnish neuroscientist and philosopher. He's developed this theory of the threat.
- Kalen Kalandley — Person · 1 mention · first at
You're right. I found one. This says the guy that founded Kalen Kalandley Top Alonia.
- Santa Monica — Person · 7 mentions · first at
Collection, and I got to say, this is one of those things that actually makes your life easier, Monica. Their editors have been doing the heavy lifting. We're talking countless hours of listening, heated debates, and the whole thing.
- Ava Max — Person · 3 mentions
It's really good. And I hope Max doesn't listen to this, but Callie was I'm buying her book for Max for Christmas.
- George Jared — Person · 3 mentions
We should know from Jared. I used to think it was more and then you corrected me in a fact check. I thought it was like five pounds. I think that's your whole thing. What does he say? The human brain weighs.
- Nurse Bundy — Person · 3 mentions
When we had language. Now we have people who can plot and they're not showing us that they are aggressive. That's why you get the I could never imagine that he would have done…
- Plato — Person · 3 mentions
The same time. It's like the polarities of a magnet all at once. There's, in the book I give an example from Plato where he talks about this man who was walking on the city…
- Chad Michael — Person · 2 mentions · first at
And the story is this Irish stonemason, he was working on the crescent, and he was kind of a ladies man. He liked to flirt with women as they walked by. Tell me more.
- Jeremy John Mary — Person · 2 mentions
But I think it's to it's like it's Have you heard Mary's son? I'm No, I don't even know who Mary is. So no, I don't know Mary's son.
- Dak Shepard — Person · Host · 1 mention · first at
Co-host of the Armchair Expert podcast.Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. Experts on expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman.
- Lily Padman — Person · Co-host · 1 mention · first at
Co-host of the Armchair Expert podcast.Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. Experts on expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman.
- Larry Mantel — Person · Referenced interviewer / media figure · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned as the NPR host/interviewer Colton appeared with earlier that day, establishing guest credibility and press context.And then I had NPR this morning over in Larry Mantel.
- Anna Elise — Person · 1 mention · first at
It was all Things Considered. Elise.
- Brad — Person · 1 mention · first at
- Jean Cisco — Person · 1 mention · first at
Remember Cisco and Eert? Jean Cisco.
- Charles Bloodhorn — Person · 1 mention · first at
Gave away the ending so no one would go see it and then he [ __ ] docked the Paramount chairman Charles Bloodhorn and tried to dox the what was her name?
- Coline shooters — Person · 1 mention · first at
And then I give the example of the Coline shooters. They you know they loved supposedly loved the game Doom and they loved Mortal Kombat. This is in the '9s when that was kind of the those are the violent games right at the.
- Sophia — Person · 1 mention · first at
- Gloria — Person · 1 mention · first at
- Kathy family — Person · 1 mention · first at
Like Ryan Serest and Georgia is home to billionaire. Oh, Georgia. The state is home to billionaires. Duh. Like the Kathy family of Chick.
- Koch brothers — Person · 1 mention · first at
Did the Koch brothers go there? Are they from Georgia? I don't know specific list of billionaire alumni often.
- Kalen Dele — Person · Referenced entrepreneur/billionaire example · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in a post-interview conversation about universities producing billionaires; identified as founder of Calendly and a University of Georgia alumnus.I don't know because he's not white. One of just two US black tech billionaires.
- Dr. Mo Hannah — Person · 1 mention · first at
But then when we got to Nashville, Hannah, sweet Hannah, most beautiful singer in the world. Yes, she had made a whole other Thanksgiving.
- Abe Lincoln — Person · 1 mention · first at
- Kate Berlant — Person · 1 mention · first at
No, I was not. Kate Berlant was the moderator, I guess we'll say. Sure.
- Chris Stapleton — Person · 1 mention
- Kathy family — Person · Referenced wealthy family (billionaire discussion aside) · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned briefly in a tangent about billionaires/universities; referenced as the family behind Chick-fil-A as an example of Georgia-based wealth.Of mine. Okay. Including celebrities like Ryan Serest and Georgia is home to billionaire. Oh, Georgia. The state is home to billionaires. Duh. Like the Kathy family of Chick.
- Kalen Delly — Person · Referenced person (misnamed/unclear identity) · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned once in a side conversation about billionaires and the scheduling app Calendly; the transcript appears to mishear/misspell the name (likely referring to Calendly founder Tope Awotona).Awatona. You did a good job with Awatona. I think the mastermind behind the scheduling app Calendarly. I don't like the name of that. We didn't need Lee.
- Colton Crier — Person · 6 mentions
- Ryan Seacrest — Person · 4 mentions
- Tope Awotona — Person · 3 mentions
- Callie — Person · 2 mentions · first at
I can't go because I have traditions with Callie and Jess.
Books & papers
- Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away — Book · Primary recommendation · 1 mention · first at
Colton Scriber's book discussed in the episode.Internationally recognized expert on morbid curiosity and the psychology of horror and true crime. He has a very fascinating book called Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains…
- Something from Nothing — Book · 2 mentions · first at
Wow. Anyway, that was great. Buy Allison's book, Something from Nothing.
- Hunger Games 2 — Book · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned as part of Audible's best of 2025 collection.Of control. So, anytime there's a curated list like this, I breathe a little easier. Two titles I'm excited about. Sunrise on the Reaping. Anything Hunger Games related is an…
- Contagion — Book · 7 mentions · first at
What data do you have on Contagion? Ding.
- Casper — Book · 3 mentions · first at
Casper is the exception. He's the He's the exception. and not a huge hit because of it.
- Poltergeist — Book · 2 mentions · first at
Supposedly haunted and very active, right? Cuz he's still kind of a poltergeist. He still likes to kind of mess with people.
- The Exorcist 3 — Book · 2 mentions · first at
Dawnmer famously liked The Exorcist 3, which is a really obscure one. I actually don't know if he liked horror movies, but he loved The Exorcist 3.
- Mambo No. 5 — Book · 2 mentions
- Sunrise on the Reaping — Book · 1 mention · first at
Curated list like this, I breathe a little easier. Two titles I'm excited about. Sunrise on the Reaping. Anything Hunger Games related is an automatic ad for me. And someday now, which everyone says is incredibly warm and reflective.
- Someday Now — Book · 1 mention · first at
About. Sunrise on the Reaping. Anything Hunger Games related is an automatic ad for me. And someday now, which everyone says is incredibly warm and reflective.
- Coffee with Scott Adams — Book · 1 mention · first at
- Christmas Vacation — Book · 1 mention · first at
And we haven't watched Christmas Vacation.
- Die Hard — Book · 1 mention · first at
We did Die Hard first night Christmas movie.
- Be Best — Book · 1 mention · first at
Hard. And then we did Beverly Hills Cup. Oh, and then we did Scrooged.
- Something from Nothing — Book · 1 mention · first at
Wow. Anyway, that was great. Buy Allison's book, Something from Nothing.
- Saw franchise — Book · 1 mention · first at
Yeah. Okay. did the Saw franchise make a billion dollars? Yes. 1.1 billion worldwide.
- Beverly Hills Cop — Book · 1 mention
- The Hunger Games — Book · 1 mention
Companies & orgs
- ASU — Company · Affiliation · 15 mentions
Colton Scriber's affiliation.And then you teach at ASU? No, I don't teach. I'm just a researcher at ASU.
- Harvard — Company · 3 mentions · first at
Say it Harvard okay Harvard has a has produced 104 billionaires mhm third place has produced 38 wow yeah.
- Columbia — Company · 3 mentions · first at
The second thing I wanted to say, it was ding to Colombia. because Cali went to Columbia as I already said and someone she went to Colombia with was at this event I was at last night. This Allison Roman book event.
- University of Chicago — Company · Incidental mention · 2 mentions · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.So anthropology and biology undergrad, forensics, forensic biology masters. My PhD was at University of Chicago in comparative human development which had anthropologists sociologists biologists, and psychologists kind of.
- University of Georgia — Company · 2 mentions · first at
Exactly. Yeah. I wonder if University of Georgia has produced a billionaire. I'm going to look.
- Dell's — Company · 2 mentions · first at
By this energy. This happened perfectly on New Year's Eve one year. Everyone was in town for a car show and we went out to Dell's this bar that Scotty and I went and sang karaoke at all the time.
- NPR — Company · Incidental mention · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.And then I had NPR this morning over in Larry Mantel.
- Meta — Company · Incidental mention · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.And I was after grad school I was living in the bay. I was working at Meta as a researcher and I went to Eureka Springs for this would have been 2023 for New Year's like 22 into 23.
- University of Arizona State — Company · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned as the institution where Colton Scriber is affiliated as a researcher.And then you teach at ASU? No, I don't teach. I'm just a researcher at ASU.
- National Science Foundation — Company · Incidental mention · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.And working on a National Science Foundation grant looking at risk management and how we can use scary play to better plan for risks in the future.
- Oklahoma Baptist University — Company · Incidental mention · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.And where did you go to undergrad?
- University of Central Oklahoma — Company · Incidental mention · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.Went to M's first. Okay. in University of Central Oklahoma where my adviser was the former head of the FBI lab and I did a forensic biology.
- MIT — Company · 1 mention · first at
Always get to guess MIT great guess you want to know what number that is.
- Stanford — Company · 4 mentions · first at
Third place has produced 38 wow yeah second place 69 great number congrats to I'll give it away Stanford I was going to say okay you want to guess three yeah I want to I want to guess you.
- Netflix, Inc. — Company · 3 mentions · first at
Yeah, maybe it just popped up on my Netflix.
- YouTube — Company · 3 mentions
- Princeton — Company · 2 mentions · first at
I'm looking I don't even know if Princeton's Oh, no. Princeton made the list in the high teams.
- University of Mumbai — Company · 2 mentions · first at
The first country to make the list after the US in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 eighth place is University of Mumbai with 22 billionaires and I guess that makes them tied with Cornell which…
- Cornell — Company · 2 mentions · first at
The first country to make the list after the US in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 eighth place is University of Mumbai with 22 billionaires and I guess that makes them tied with Cornell which…
- NYU — Company · 2 mentions
- U.S.C. — Company · 2 mentions
- University of Oklahoma — Company · Referenced organization · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in relation to Colton Scriber's father's employment.Now, he worked at the college. I believe it was O Health Science Center.
- University of Pennsylvania — Company · 1 mention · first at
So they have 38. So again 104 69 for Stanford 38 for University of Pennsylvania. Now four I thought was I was like really?
- Yale — Company · 1 mention · first at
- To Singua — Company · 1 mention · first at
Cornell 22. University of Mumbai 22. can't pronounce this university, but it's in China.
- University of California, Berkeley — Company · 1 mention · first at
Okay, moving on. USC. next is University of California, Berkeley 15.
- Ping University — Company · 1 mention · first at
Tied with Berkeley. Ping University 14.
- Moscow State University — Company · 1 mention · first at
Moscow State University 13. Wow.
- University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) — Company · 1 mention · first at
University of California, Los Angeles 12. University of Chicago 12.
- Foudon University — Company · 1 mention · first at
Foudon University 12. Seoul National University 12. and Xi Jang University 12.
- Seoul National University — Company · 1 mention · first at
Foudon University 12. Seoul National University 12. and Xi Jang University 12.
- Xi Jang University — Company · 1 mention · first at
Foudon University 12. Seoul National University 12. and Xi Jang University 12.
- Chick-fil-A — Company · 1 mention · first at
Like Ryan Serest and Georgia is home to billionaire. Oh, Georgia. The state is home to billionaires. Duh. Like the Kathy family of Chick.
- Coca-Cola — Company · 1 mention · first at
I'm conflating Coca-Cola and KO brothers probably.
- Home Depot — Company · 1 mention · first at
Make time for one another. Y and then culminating Saturday with Jess pig day. We go to Home Depot. I don't know if we're allowed to go to Home Depot anymore, but we do and we are. And we get our tree and then we give birth to it. Yeah.
- Houston's — Company · 1 mention · first at
And now we're in Christmas zone and we're putting up all this stuff and then we do a special lunch normally at Houston's and it's a whole thing. It's a whole day. It's a beautiful day.
- Brick Tops — Company · 1 mention · first at
Let's go downtown to Bricktops. Let's go out to this restaurant. Well, with 22 people, we're not going to a restaurant.
- Southwest — Company · 1 mention · first at
Should be a double day holiday. And then we all flew home on Southwest on Sunday, one of the busiest travel days of the year.
- Zancoo — Company · 1 mention · first at
Yeah. Yeah, I was even in a situation where I'd brought my laptop. Oh, I was going to go to Zancoo.
- Colombia University — Company · 1 mention
Can you believe Colombia is four? No disrespect to Columbia graduates.
Products & tech
- Audible — Product · 4 mentions · first at
We're so scared. Please enjoy Colton Scriber. Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Audible, for supporting this episode. Armcher's Audible's best of 2025 collection is here. The year's top audiobooks, podcasts, and originals.
- Contagion — Product · Incidental mention · 7 mentions · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.How did you find it? How did you know to find it? Cuz it came out in 2011.
- Resident Evil — Product · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned as Colton Scriber's gateway into horror.Actually when I was a kid. Probably too young to be playing it, but I remember finding a copy of Resident Evil, the original Okay.
- Panone Color of the Year — Product · 1 mention · first at
Okay. I posted about it yesterday because as people may or may not know, I use the Panone Color of the Year as my phone background. So, this is a very exciting day for me when…
- Saw — Product · Incidental mention · 4 mentions
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.One is when Saw came out and it became this huge you know that franchise has made like a billion dollars.
- The Exorcist 3 — Product · Incidental mention · 2 mentions · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.Dawnmer famously liked The Exorcist 3, which is a really obscure one. I actually don't know if he liked horror movies, but he loved The Exorcist 3.
- Mocha Moose — Product · 2 mentions · first at
Very exciting day for me when it's revealed and I have it for the following year. It's Last year it was Mocha Mouse.
- Resident Evil — Product · Incidental mention · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.Actually when I was a kid. Probably too young to be playing it, but I remember finding a copy of Resident Evil, the original Okay.
- Calendarly — Product · 1 mention · first at
Awatona. You did a good job with Awatona. I think the mastermind behind the scheduling app Calendarly. I don't like the name of that. We didn't need Lee.
- Cloud Dancer — Product · 1 mention · first at
In color. It's called Cloud Dancer, and it's white.
- Doom — Product · Incidental mention · 4 mentions
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.And then I give the example of the Coline shooters. They you know they loved supposedly loved the game Doom and they loved Mortal Kombat. This is in the '9s when that was kind of the those are the violent games right at the.
- Casper — Product · Incidental mention · 3 mentions · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.Casper is the exception. He's the He's the exception. and not a huge hit because of it.
- Sophie the Giraffe — Product · 2 mentions
- Friday the 13th — Product · Incidental mention · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.He saw Friday the 13th and he hated it so much that in his review he both gave away the ending so no one would go see it and then he [ __ ] docked the Paramount chairman Charles Bloodhorn.
- Mortal Kombat — Product · Incidental mention · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.The Coline shooters. They you know they loved supposedly loved the game Doom and they loved Mortal Kombat. This is in the '9s when that was kind of the those are the violent…
- Sophia the giraffe — Product · 1 mention · first at
- Die Hard — Product · Incidental mention · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.We did Die Hard first night Christmas movie.
- Beverly Hills Cop — Product · Incidental mention · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.Everyone was Isn't that a Christmas movie? So, someone picked Die Hard. And then we did Beverly Hills Cup. Oh, and then we did Scrooged.
- Scrooged — Product · Incidental mention · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.Everyone was Isn't that a Christmas movie? So, someone picked Die Hard. And then we did Beverly Hills Cup. Oh, and then we did Scrooged.
- Ziploc bag — Product · 1 mention · first at
And are you going to keep it in a ziplockc bag so you know that a rat can't get in it?
- Ouija board — Product · 1 mention · first at
I am curious how a Ouija board works.
- All-American Road Show — Product · Incidental mention · 35 mentions
Mentioned in passing without significant context.You do that in science a little bit sometimes for experiments. Things go wrong. I love field studies for that reason. But I do research at Haunted Attractions and it's like.
- All-American Road Show — Product · Incidental · 2 mentions
Mentioned in passing, no significant relevance to the discussion. - Allstate — Product · Incidental · 2 mentions
Mentioned in passing without significant context. - cat toys — Product · 2 mentions · first at
The cat toys actually happened in Eureka Springs where I live.
- gelatin brain — Product · 1 mention · first at
Have? We have some we have a shirt this year that has a big we have a brain buffet. It's a gelatin brain eating competition.
- Jell-O — Product · 1 mention · first at
- Resident Evil — Product · 1 mention · first at
Actually when I was a kid. Probably too young to be playing it, but I remember finding a copy of Resident Evil, the original Okay.
- Resident Evil 1 — Product · 1 mention · first at
Old school Resident Evil 1 and playing that on like PlayStation 1 when I was I five or six or seven.
- PlayStation 1 — Product · 1 mention · first at
Old school Resident Evil 1 and playing that on like PlayStation 1 when I was I five or six or seven.
- heart rate monitors — Product · 1 mention · first at
And so we strap people with heart rate monitors, right? And we thought, okay, if we can measure what their hearts are doing, what their bodies are doing when they're having fun, maybe we.
- Sophia the Giraffe — Product · 1 mention · first at
- motorcycles — Product · 1 mention · first at
We're not even going to ride the motorcycles that are there. So, we just sat in a house for 3 days, all of us, playing games.
- butane tank — Product · 1 mention · first at
You should be way more worried about getting a 28 in butane tank up your butt. That also happened in Armchair Anonymous. But are you worried about that?
- Ziploc bag — Product · 1 mention · first at
Yeah. It couldn't reseal a Ziploc bag once it got inside.
Concepts & topics
- Morbid Curiosity — Concept · Core topic · 15 mentions · first at
Central theme of the episode, discussing why humans are drawn to morbid topics. - Psychology — Concept · Core topic · 3 mentions · first at
Central to the episode's discussion on morbid curiosity and fear. - True Crime — Concept · Core topic · 8 mentions · first at
Discussed extensively as a manifestation of morbid curiosity, especially among women.It's pretty interesting. All of it's interesting. Humans draw to morbid stuff.
- Predator Inspection — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
- UFC — Concept · Core topic · 2 mentions · first at
Discussed as an example of sanctioned violence that people are drawn to.Yeah. Even the UFC has rules, right?
- MMA — Concept · Core topic · 1 mention · first at
Discussed in the context of morbid curiosity and why people are drawn to violent sports.Fascinating book called Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away. This is great. Why do guys like MMA? Why do women like true crime? We get all the answers.
- Emotional Exposure Therapy — Concept · Core topic · 1 mention · first at
Discussed as a method for regulating fear and anxiety through controlled exposure.Okay. So what you found was that people had a sweet spot. Their fun peaked when the scariness was beyond the halfway point, seven or so.
- Threat Simulation Theory — Concept · Referenced concept · 1 mention · first at
Theory discussed by Colton Scriber about dreaming.Name his last name is Raanso I think Anton Raanso. He's a Finnish neuroscientist and philosopher. He's developed this theory of the threat simulation theory of dreaming. So he…
- Morbid Curiosity Scale — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
Tell me about the morbid curiosity scale. How does it work?
- Adrenaline — Concept · Referenced expert · 5 mentions · first at
Mentioned in the context of why people enjoy horror and fear-inducing experiences.Data for it, but did you attempt a biochemical explanation? Cuz like adrenaline is in the right context very pleasurable, like was it adrenaline? Was it, what all was happening?
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) — Concept · Referenced expert · 3 mentions
Mentioned as a method for managing fear and anxiety. - Anthropology — Concept · Referenced expert · 2 mentions · first at
Mentioned as the guest's undergraduate major.Well, we only we just had anthropology.
- Forensic Biology — Concept · Referenced expert · 2 mentions · first at
Mentioned as the guest's master's degree focus.Went to M's first. Okay. in University of Central Oklahoma where my adviser was the former head of the FBI lab and I did a forensic biology.
- Cognitive Biases — Concept · Referenced concept · 9 mentions
Briefly mentioned in the context of human psychology. - Cereal — Concept · Incidental · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in passing, no significant relevance to the discussion.Well you read ridiculous things all the time on Instagram it's like people who like cereal that go to sleep when watch serial killer movies are psychopaths.
- morbid curiosity — Concept · 15 mentions · first at
Author and a psychologist. He is an internationally recognized expert on morbid curiosity and the psychology of horror and true crime. He has a very fascinating book called…
- pod — Concept · 12 mentions
- ghosts — Concept · 10 mentions · first at
Give you some examples of it and then tell you what I think it is. Examples would be anything to do with ghosts or aliens or even deities, ancestors, spirits. I think what's…
- Ebola — Concept · 10 mentions
- tradition — Concept · 8 mentions · first at
How committed am I to tradition? And you're very committed. I'm extremely committed. Me as a core tenant of your identity.
- Contagion — Concept · 7 mentions · first at
What data do you have on Contagion? Ding.
- CO (COVID-19 pandemic) — Concept · 6 mentions
- haunted house — Concept · 5 mentions · first at
And he said, Yeah, you should come to Denmark. I'm I would love to do study at this haunted house. He said, I'm a, a literature scholar, so empirical studies aren't really my…
- paranormal — Concept · 4 mentions · first at
So the fourth one is I called it paranormal danger to try to encompass a broad range of things. And let me give you some examples of it and then tell you what I think it is. Examples would be anything to do with ghosts or.
- zebra — Concept · 4 mentions
- haunted attractions — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
Sometimes for experiments. Things go wrong. I love field studies for that reason. But I do research at Haunted Attractions and it's like you kind of have to come up with stuff…
- minds of dangerous people — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
I found is that yeah, there seem to be four types of morbid curiosity. So, one of those is the minds of dangerous people, which is kind of an interest in understanding people…
- spirits — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
Would be anything to do with ghosts or aliens or even deities, ancestors, spirits. I think what's going on there is people have historically used agentic beings that they can't…
- Casper — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
Casper is the exception. He's the He's the exception. and not a huge hit because of it.
- predator inspection — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
Very unique flavor of it. So, one of the best examples of morbid curiosity in animals would be predator inspection.
- hyenas — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
You've seen the Lion King, right? What happens if you hunt something like hyenas are going to come in and try to take it, right? Lots of other hungry animals are going to come in and try to take that if you don't eat it right away right?
- reactive aggression — Concept · 3 mentions
- scary play — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
And working on a National Science Foundation grant looking at risk management and how we can use scary play to better plan for risks in the future.
- adrenaline junkies — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
Like just anecdotally I was like well I know a lot of people who are just not adrenaline junkies but they love horror and so what I did is I collected 50 or 60 statements about…
- conspiracy theories — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
And might even like you might even see certain things tick up like conspiracy theories, stuff that is harder to observe, but something must be a and you're hearing, like we talked about the news. you're.
- Michael — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
Okay, we've heard that this room has a spirit living in it. It's it's called Michael's room.
- poltergeist — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
Supposedly haunted and very active, right? Cuz he's still kind of a poltergeist. He still likes to kind of mess with people.
- Mocha Moose — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
Nope. It was Mocha Moose, but it was really close to mouse, so it was me.
- pig day — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
Make time for one another. Y and then culminating Saturday with Jess pig day. We go to Home Depot. I don't know if we're allowed to go to Home Depot anymore, but we do and we are. And we get our tree and then we give birth to it. Yeah.
- pods giving — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
Then it's our pods giving. So special.
Places & events
- Thanksgiving — Event · 8 mentions · first at
- Eureka Springs Zombie Festival — Event · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned as an event hosted by Colton Scriber. - COVID-19 pandemic — Event · Core topic · 1 mention · first at
Discussed in the context of how it influenced people's interest in horror and the movie Contagion. - Savannah — Place · Setting · 8 mentions · first at
Mentioned as the most haunted city in America.Yeah. Savannah is an old city, so Americans automatically think it's haunted because it's more than like 50 years old.
- Nashville — Place · Setting · 4 mentions · first at
Mentioned as a potential location for Thanksgiving.And then we all flew at 7:00 a.m.
- Eureka Springs — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
Where Colton Scriber lives and hosts a zombie festival.So I live in a little Victorian town and the Ozark's like a little travel destination town.
- Zombie Festival — Event · Incidental mention · 1 mention · first at
Event hosted by Colton Scriber in Eureka Springs.Then you're hosting a zombie festival there.
- LA — Place · Setting · 8 mentions
Mentioned as a location where Colton Scriber was staying.Do. They knew what Halloween was, but they didn't really have haunted attractions. Like I imagine if I wanted to go to a haunted attraction in LA right now, I could walk out the door and find a bunch of them.
- Denmark — Place · Setting · 4 mentions · first at
Mentioned as a location where Colton Scriber conducted research.Flew to Denmark for a month and wow, we did this incredible study at a haunted house. This first study was we wanted to know how do people have fun when they are being afraid, when they're feeling afraid.
- Los Angeles — Place · 2 mentions · first at
Kind of. Yeah, I so I'm in LA until Thursday. I got in yesterday. I had a talk at Orange County Library down at Foothill Ranch.
- Dell's — Place · 2 mentions · first at
By this energy. This happened perfectly on New Year's Eve one year. Everyone was in town for a car show and we went out to Dell's this bar that Scotty and I went and sang karaoke at all the time.
- Ozark Mountains — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned as the location where Colton Scriber lives.Yeah. Yeah, several times. But not in studio cuz you know I live in the Ozark Mountains. There's not really a good NPR studio over there. Close.
- Halloween — Event · Referenced event · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in relation to cultural practices and Colton Scriber's research.At the time, this would have been in 2017 probably, Halloween was still kind of fairly new in Denmark as a like event that you do. They knew what Halloween was, but they didn't really have haunted attractions. Like I imagine if I wanted.
- Crescent Hotel — Place · Referenced location · 1 mention · first at
Described as America's most haunted hotel, relevant to Colton Scriber's research on the paranormal.There's a famous haunted hotel there, the Crescent Hotel. I lived like a quarter of a mile from the Crescent. And before I moved to Eureka, I went on a ghost hunt there, an overnight ghost.
- Soral Weed House — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned as a haunted location in Savannah.Mean there's just a lot of like dark stuff that happened in Savannah and yeah there was I went to what's called the Sorrel weed house which is this beautiful mansion on one of…
- Black Friday — Event · 1 mention · first at
Then I have Black Friday tradition with Cali at Brentwood Country Mart. Yeah.
- Zancoo — Place · 1 mention · first at
Yeah. Yeah, I was even in a situation where I'd brought my laptop. Oh, I was going to go to Zancoo.
- Oklahoma — Place · Setting · 6 mentions · first at
Mentioned as Colton Scriber's place of origin.No, I just I grew up a couple of hours from there. So, my parents went there for vacations. We would go sometimes as an adult when I was in grad school in Chicago if I would drive down to.
- Chicago — Place · Setting · 3 mentions · first at
Mentioned as a location where Colton Scriber attended graduate school.From there. So, my parents went there for vacations. We would go sometimes as an adult when I was in grad school in Chicago if I would drive down to Oklahoma to visit family for holidays.
- Detroit — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.Yeah. Like definitely the bar we drank at in Detroit, there was a few fights a week.
- Austin — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.Six different studies at haunted houses and in Denmark and in Detroit and Austin. I don't know that I've ever seen someone come to one alone. Yeah.
- Orange County — Place · 1 mention · first at
Kind of. Yeah, I so I'm in LA until Thursday. I got in yesterday. I had a talk at Orange County Library down at Foothill Ranch.
- Orange County Library — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned as a location where Colton Scriber gave a talk.Kind of. Yeah, I so I'm in LA until Thursday. I got in yesterday. I had a talk at Orange County Library down at Foothill Ranch.
- Beaver Lake — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned as a location near where Colton Scriber lives.I mean I have Beaver Lake and Table Rock kind of surrounding where I live.
- Table Rock — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned as a location near where Colton Scriber lives.I mean I have Beaver Lake and Table Rock kind of surrounding where I live.
- Brentwood Country Mart — Place · 1 mention · first at
Then I have Black Friday tradition with Cali at Brentwood Country Mart. Yeah.
- Houston — Place · 1 mention · first at
And now we're in Christmas zone and we're putting up all this stuff and then we do a special lunch normally at Houston's and it's a whole thing. It's a whole day. It's a beautiful day.
- Bricktops — Place · 1 mention · first at
Let's go downtown to Bricktops. Let's go out to this restaurant. Well, with 22 people, we're not going to a restaurant.
- Serengeti — Place · 1 mention · first at
I have FOMO too much. What if something fun happens on the Serengeti?
- New Orleans — Place · 1 mention · first at
Battles which have left behind many unsettled spirits. Other cities frequently mentioned include New Orleans and Austin.
- Salem, Massachusetts — Place · 1 mention · first at
Also Salem, Massachusetts, obviously that makes sense.
- Bangladesh — Place · 1 mention · first at
If I just called you Hey, do you hear a guy in Bangladesh lost his arm today? It's I would be like I'd be Oh my god. Like I would hear that and say.
- All-American Road Show — Event · Referenced work · 5 mentions
Mentioned in passing during the conversation. - California — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
Mentioned as a state where Colton Scriber worked before moving to Eureka Springs.And I was after grad school I was living in the bay. I was working at Meta as a researcher and I went to Eureka Springs for this would have been 2023 for New Year's like 22 into 23.
- Eureka — Place · 5 mentions · first at
Can't imagine there's accommodations for everyone there. Do people camp or No, a little of both. So, Eureka is a tourist town. There's about 2,000 people that live there, which I love. Victorian houses and architecture everywhere.
- forest — Place · 2 mentions · first at
Yeah. And we turn off on this road and it's like just thick dense forest on both sides. Just this really narrow road like kind of a old road. We drive for probably I don't know a quarter to half a mile into this forest and.
- Sorrel Weed House — Place · 2 mentions · first at
Stuff that happened in Savannah and yeah there was I went to what's called the Sorrel weed house which is this beautiful mansion on one of the squares and it's famous for being…
- Dell's — Place · 2 mentions · first at
On New Year's Eve one year. Everyone was in town for a car show and we went out to Dell's this bar that Scotty and I went and sang karaoke at all the time.
- Foothill Ranch — Place · 1 mention · first at
Thursday. I got in yesterday. I had a talk at Orange County Library down at Foothill Ranch.
- Shaunie, Oklahoma — Place · 1 mention · first at
Shaunie. No, he grew up in Born, Wasn't he born in Oklahoma? He was born in Shaunie, Oklahoma.
Media & podcasts
- Contagion — Media · Referenced work · 7 mentions · first at
Discussed as a film that gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, illustrating the concept of morbid curiosity.It was the first time. I I watched it for the first time during CO and then I watched it like every day.
- All Things Considered — Media · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned as the NPR show where the guest, Colton Scriber, was interviewed.And then I had NPR this morning over in Larry Mantel.
- Casper — Media · 3 mentions · first at
Casper is the exception. He's the He's the exception. and not a huge hit because of it.
- Saw — Media · 3 mentions
This blew my mind. There's two there's two reviews you cite in the book.
- Resident Evil — Media · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
Cited as Colton Scriber's gateway into horror, influencing his academic interests.Actually when I was a kid. Probably too young to be playing it, but I remember finding a copy of Resident Evil, the original Okay.
- Halloween — Media · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned in the context of horror movies and their cultural impact.At the time, this would have been in 2017 probably, Halloween was still kind of fairly new in Denmark as a like event that you do. They knew what Halloween was, but they didn't really have haunted attractions. Like I imagine if I wanted.
- Friday the 13th — Media · 1 mention · first at
Remember Cisco and Eert? Jean Cisco.
- Die Hard — Media · 1 mention · first at
We did Die Hard first night Christmas movie.
- Zura — Media · Referenced work · 9 mentions
Mentioned as a movie Colton Scriber was in. - Doom — Media · Referenced work · 8 mentions
Mentioned as a game liked by the Columbine shooters.And then I give the example of the Coline shooters. They you know they loved supposedly loved the game Doom and they loved Mortal Kombat. This is in the '9s when that was kind of the those are the violent games right at the.
- Breaking Bad — Media · Incidental mention · 7 mentions
Mentioned in passing during the discussion. - Game of Thrones — Media · Incidental mention · 7 mentions
Mentioned in passing during the discussion. - Stranger Things — Media · Incidental mention · 7 mentions
Mentioned in passing during the discussion. - Inception — Media · Incidental mention · 6 mentions
Mentioned in passing during the discussion. - The Office — Media · Incidental mention · 6 mentions
Mentioned in passing during the discussion. - The Social Dilemma — Media · Incidental mention · 6 mentions
Mentioned in passing during the discussion. - Joe Rogan Experience — Media · Incidental mention · 5 mentions
Mentioned in passing during the discussion. - Armchair Expert — Media · Host podcast · 4 mentions · first at
The podcast where the discussion takes place.Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. Experts on expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman.
- Poltergeist — Media · 2 mentions · first at
Pandemic around 2020, a lot of people who had sworn off horror since they were kids, they watched a scary movie when they were a kid. They watched Poltergeist or something and they're I'm never watching a scary movie again.
- The Exorcist 3 — Media · Referenced work · 2 mentions · first at
Mentioned as a movie liked by serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.Dawnmer famously liked The Exorcist 3, which is a really obscure one. I actually don't know if he liked horror movies, but he loved The Exorcist 3.
- Armchair Anonymous — Media · Incidental mention · 2 mentions · first at
Mentioned in passing during the discussion.Speaking of, okay, so many people I have run into who listen to Armchair Anonymous. Every Armcherry brings up the rat story that has really struck a nerve understandably.
- Rick and Morty — Media · 2 mentions
- CSI — Media · 1 mention · first at
Gel electropharesis, like putting it in the gel and letting it run down. And you see the bands. You've probably seen that on like CSI or something. One battle after another.
- One Battle After Another — Media · 1 mention · first at
The gel and letting it run down. And you see the bands. You've probably seen that on like CSI or something. One battle after another.
- Sunrise on the Reaping — Media · 1 mention · first at
Of control. So, anytime there's a curated list like this, I breathe a little easier. Two titles I'm excited about. Sunrise on the Reaping. Anything Hunger Games related is an…
- Hunger Games — Media · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned as a title in Audible's best of 2025 collection.Of control. So, anytime there's a curated list like this, I breathe a little easier. Two titles I'm excited about. Sunrise on the Reaping. Anything Hunger Games related is an…
- Someday Now — Media · 1 mention · first at
About. Sunrise on the Reaping. Anything Hunger Games related is an automatic ad for me. And someday now, which everyone says is incredibly warm and reflective.
- Ghostbusters — Media · 1 mention · first at
Ghostbusters is a much more likely scenario. Yeah.
- The Lion King — Media · 1 mention · first at
And the lion has to only hunt when it's hungry because you've seen the Lion King, right? What happens if you hunt something like hyenas are going to come in and try to take it…
- Mortal Kombat — Media · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned as a game liked by the Columbine shooters.The Coline shooters. They you know they loved supposedly loved the game Doom and they loved Mortal Kombat. This is in the '9s when that was kind of the those are the violent…
- Mambo number five — Media · 1 mention · first at
A little bit of Monica in my life. A little I'm not going to sing.
- Gloria — Media · 1 mention · first at
- Beverly Hills Cop — Media · 1 mention · first at
Everyone was Isn't that a Christmas movie? So, someone picked Die Hard. And then we did Beverly Hills Cup. Oh, and then we did Scrooged.
- Scrooged — Media · 1 mention · first at
Hard. And then we did Beverly Hills Cup. Oh, and then we did Scrooged.
- The Social Dilemma — Media · 1 mention
Sponsors
- Audible — Company · Sponsor · 4 mentions · first at
Presenting sponsor of the episode.We're so scared. Please enjoy Colton Scriber. Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Audible, for supporting this episode. Armcher's Audible's best of 2025 collection is here. The year's top audiobooks, podcasts, and originals.
- Audible's best of 2025 — Product · Sponsor product · 3 mentions · first at
Promoted by the sponsor Audible.Scriber. Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Audible, for supporting this episode. Armcher's Audible's best of 2025 collection is here. The year's top audiobooks, podcasts…
- Audible's best of 2025 — Product · Sponsor · 2 mentions · first at
The product being promoted by Audible during the episode, featuring the year's top audiobooks, podcasts, and originals.You want to finish the year with something you know is going to hit, check out Audible's best of 2025 and discover why there's more to imagine when you listen. Go to audible.com/best of 2025.
- Allstate — Product · Sponsor · 1 mention · first at
Mentioned as a sponsor with explicit commercial intent.We're so scared. Please enjoy Colton Scriber. Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Audible, for supporting this episode. Armcher's Audible's best of 2025 collection is here. The year's top audiobooks, podcasts, and originals.
- Audible — Sponsor · 4 mentions · first at
We're so scared. Please enjoy Colton Scriber. Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Audible, for supporting this episode. Armcher's Audible's best of 2025 collection is here.…
Full transcript with timestamps
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. Experts on expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman.
Dax just farted. Shut up. You don't know anything about farts. And no, I didn't. And nor did I our guest, Colton Scriber. Colton is an author and a psychologist. He is an internationally recognized expert on morbid curiosity and the psychology of horror and true crime. He has a very fascinating book called Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away. This is great. Why do guys like MMA? Why do women like true crime? We get all the answers.
It's pretty interesting. All of it's interesting. Humans draw to morbid stuff. Yes. So that we can protect ourselves.
It has a good There's a good reason. We're We're just so fragile. We're so scared. Please enjoy Colton Scriber. Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Audible, for supporting this episode. Armcher's Audible's best of 2025 collection is here. The year's top audiobooks, podcasts, and originals across every genre. Their editors spent countless hours listening and debating to handpick this year's must listens. If you want to finish the year with something you know is going to hit, check out Audible's best of 2025 and discover why there's more to imagine when you listen. Go to audible.com/best of 2025.
He's an object. He's out. Colton, how are you? Are you on a big long press tour?
Kind of. Yeah, I uh so I'm in LA until Thursday. I got in yesterday. I had a talk at Orange County Library down at Foothill Ranch.
Okay. And then I had NPR this morning over in Larry Mantel. It was all Things Considered. Elise.
Oh, all Things Considered. [ __ ] or lots of cache. A lot of cache. Elevated. Had you been on NPR before?
Yeah. Yeah, several times. But not in studio cuz you know I live in the Ozark Mountains. There's not really a good NPR studio over there. Close.
Yeah. How close to the lakes? Uh I mean I have Beaver Lake and Table Rock kind of surrounding where I live. So I live in a little Victorian town and the Ozark's like a little travel destination town.
Then you're hosting a zombie festival there. I did last Saturday. Oh, it was last Saturday. Yeah, it was fantastic.
Tell me how many zombies showed up. I have to ask the police. Probably the police.
They give me these like magical estimates. Like last year I said, "How many people do you think came?" And they're like, "Oh, probably 20,000."
What? It's probably It probably is 15 around 15,000 though. Really? Yeah. Do they all buy tickets?
No, it's a free event. It's a free event. You could be getting filthy rich off $10 merch. Sell merch.
You sell merch. What kind of merch do we have? We have we have some we have a shirt this year that has a big we have a brain buffet. It's a gelatin brain eating competition.
You have to dress as a zombie. Eat a big anatomically sized gelatin brain which is a lot harder than you think it is.
Wow. That's a lot of jello. That's a lot of jell-o. Cuz what's the the brain weighs like 2 lbs or something? Is that a couple more?
We should know from Jared. I used to think it was more and then you corrected me in a fact check. I thought it was like five pounds. I think that's your whole thing. What does he say? The human brain weighs.
Let's find out. I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to bet it's 6 lb. Six lb. I'm going to guess six.
I think it's You're going to say three cuz it's safe. It's between us. We don't know how it's safe.
I I think it's 8 lb. Okay. If anything, I think we're I'm under I would say six or more.
We're going to get a real answer here. This is not a dried out brain. This is like a fully wet in your
How much does a human brain weigh? 3 LBS. OH NO. Maybe whoever wrote that their brain was
a newborn a newborn is um8 to.9 lb. Okay. An adult male is 1350 to,400 g. Adult female sorry girls 1,200 to,300. No wonder they're so stupid.
I've been looking for a reason. It's right here in black and white. Wow, that's an incredible turnout. And I can't imagine there's accommodations for everyone there. Do people camp or
No, a little of both. So, Eureka is a tourist town. There's about 2,000 people that live there, which I love. Victorian houses and architecture everywhere.
Yeah. Uh kind of like preserved in time. Spooky. America's most haunted hotel there supposedly.
Okay. And you went there specifically because of that architecture? No, I just I grew up a couple of hours from there. So, my parents went there for vacations. We would go sometimes as an adult when I was in grad school in Chicago if I would drive down to Oklahoma to visit family for holidays. It's about halfway so I would stay there.
And um I was after grad school I was living in the bay. I was working at Meta as a researcher and I went to Eureka Springs for uh this would have been 2023 for New Year's like 22 into 23.
Yeah. And uh I I stayed at this place uh this little Airbnb and then behind it was like an old school Victorian bed and breakfast that was for sale. And I thought I was like I bet I could run a bed and breakfast.
So I moved. I bet I could run a bed and breakfast. That's how like almost all of my the things I bet I could do that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A little naive um optimism. Yes. I moved in and kind of renovated, got it going again. It was in pretty good shape, but it needed a few things. Sure. And then after about a year, I got an inkeeper and I moved to a different house in town.
Okay, great. Yeah. And what was the year like where you were interfacing with all the guests?
It was cool. It's, you know, what I like about Eureka is that it's a small town. I know all my neighbors. It's It's very homey, right? Artsy little town,
but it gets like a million visitors a year for a two population of 2,000. That's crazy.
Mostly because of the lakes in the summer. No, because it's uh people come because there are f there are festivals all all summer, all fall, all spring.
Um there are lakes that people come for in the summer. Lots of good hiking, mountain biking. Um and people just come to shop.
We're missing the boat, I guess. And I want to go to the spooky zit has a property there.
Brad, invite us. Yeah. And then you teach at ASU? No, I don't teach. I'm just a researcher at ASU.
Okay, explain that. Yeah, so I uh I have an affiliation with the psychology department there. Okay.
And working on a National Science Foundation grant looking at risk management and how we can use scary play to better plan for risks in the future.
Wow. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Okay. Now we're going to start at the beginning. So you grew up kind of by Eureka.
Kind of maybe about four hours away actually. Four hours. Substantial. It is in Missouri.
Oklahoma. In Oklahoma. Okay. He's also from Oklahoma. Brad's from Shaunie. No, he he grew up in Born, Wasn't he born in Oklahoma? He was born in Shaunie, Oklahoma.
Born there, but grew up for like one minute and then he left immediately cuz he's a smart man.
Yes. Yes. But we still count it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, what did mom and dad do in Oklahoma?
So, my dad since I was really young has been a boiler operator. Where is still using a boiler?
Right. He's on a steam ship crossing the Atlantic. Now, he uh he worked at the college. I believe it was O Health Science Center. University of Oklahoma's health science center. They have boilers and chillers for the hospitals.
Oh, okay. And uh now I think he works at he works at the VA now just down the street. But the veterans hospital has boilers chillers.
And these place these things bust down so much that they have to have an on staff.
Correct. Yes. Like when there's government shutdowns, he's still working, you know.
He's got to keep that thing going. He's got to keep it going. Yeah. Oh wow. Um and then mom
mom has had a couple different jobs uh growing up. She she also works at the VA now. Both blueco collar, you know, they worked really really hard and were were good parents. They they always provided uh made sure that we had what we needed even though we weren't like super wealthy or anything, you know.
Do you have siblings? A younger sister. And is she academic as well? She's not. I'm the only person in my family that's gone to college.
And they make fun of you and I just kept going. Yeah. You can't stop. Yeah. You don't want to leave.
No. No. I They They're very supportive of it. They're My sister's she's an airplane mechanic.
Oh, she is. So, yeah, she works on airplanes. Are you mechanical? Cuz it sounds like it should be in your jeans.
I mean, I uh I enjoy doing things with my hands. I don't think I could work on an airplane. You wouldn't want me to work on an airplane.
Not not one I'm a passenger of. No. No. But uh but I do I do enjoy it. There's something satisfying about working with your hands. Like making something with your hands.
Endlessly rewarding, especially if you don't have the right parts and you have to fabricate or make something work that wasn't designed to work. That's where all the joy is.
You do that in science a little bit sometimes for experiments. Things go wrong. I love field studies for that reason. But I do research at Haunted Attractions and it's like
you kind of have to come up with stuff on the fly because you take it through the field, something breaks, something doesn't work. you have to improvise. That's like the most fun. I hate the like sterile lab environment.
Much prefer doing the the nitty-gritty like in the field real stuff. It's it's very fun.
And where did you go to undergrad? Oklahoma Baptist University. And I'm not Baptist but
Okay. Were most of the the student body Baptist or were they like you? Mixed. I think there I would say a lot of them were. A lot of them were.
Okay. Um but it was a good experience because obviously Oklahoma's very religious. Um,
and I think, you know, especially universities now, it was a it was a good experience for me to have four years of understanding that that world that I'm not really a part of is normal for the most part. They're like normal, nice people.
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There are some crazy ones just like there's some crazy ones in any
We've had plenty of crazy atheists. Plenty of crazy atheist. I've been one of them at times.
But it was good. It was, you know, small private school, so we had small class sizes. Um, it was a good like learning experience, especially for someone who didn't have anyone in my family who went to college, so I didn't really know anything about college. So, having like the smaller
uh class sizes, knowing your professors, it was it was much better. Right. And what did you major in there?
Uh, anthropology. Oh, okay. Cultural or physical? Well, we only we just had anthropology. He was a cultural anthropologist, but was very biologically interested.
And then you go to graduate school. Went to M's first. Okay. in University of Central Oklahoma where my adviser was the former head of the FBI lab and I did a forensic biology.
Oh, fun. So cool. What kind of things were you DNA was my thing? DNA was my thing.
So it's gathered. It's put in some machine that does it all. And yeah, we we kind of learned the old school technique which was, you know, gel electropharesis, like putting it in the gel and letting it run down. And you see the bands. You've probably seen that on like CSI or something. One battle after another.
It's in there. That was the system they chose to use. Remember their scene if it's the their father and daughter.
Oh yeah. And you see the lines line up. Did you see one battle after another? No. Okay.
Oh, that that's a big part. Yes. Very. In fact, might be a spoiler. I know. And I
I also couldn't remember. They tell you like what's going to be bad and what's going to be good. They tell you, but then when we see it, I was like, I don't remember what was good or bad.
You got confused. Okay. So, you dug that. So you got a masters in forensic biology.
What do we get our PhD in? Behavioral kind of. Yeah. So so the department was weird. It's an interdisiplinary department. I've always had an interdisiplinary background. I find it the most interesting and fun way to ask questions.
Yeah. So anthropology and biology undergrad, forensics, forensic biology masters. My PhD was at University of Chicago in comparative human development which had anthropologists sociologists biologists, and psychologists kind of all in one department. My track within it was behavior biology. So I was really interested in the biological aspects of why humans behave like we behave, which meant asking a lot of questions about how animals behave, about how humans may have evolved over time.
Evolutionary sort of an evolutionary biology kind of track. Yeah. Right. Okay. Now, when does your interest in horror movies begin? Obviously predates all this, right?
Okay. You mean non-academically? Non-academically. What was your gateway horror film? I think it was a game actually when I was a kid. Probably too young to be playing it, but uh I remember finding a copy of Resident Evil, the original
Okay. old school Resident Evil 1 and playing that on like PlayStation 1 when I was I five or six or seven.
Is that a ghoul with a shotgun? Am I thinking of a different game? No, no. Resident Evil is a zombie game. It's like the apocalypse where they're at a police or in this case they were at like a mansion. Okay.
And uh zombie apocalypse third person but like fixed camera so you can't turn around. Back in the day, the games didn't have you couldn't just save a game whenever you wanted. You had to like go to a safe room to save it. That's what made it like extra scary, right? You had to find the safe room to be safe.
Okay. And I think that was my my gateway into it. It was like a terrifying game for me, but it was like if I can find the safe room, I can like plan and collect myself and continue
regulate. Okay, great. When then does your academic pursuit start looking into the world of spooky? probably around the the first year or second year of my PhD. So I was you know and like any I guess good curious PhD student I was just interested in everything.
Right. Right. I was like okay I have to kind of specialize in something. And so I started I got kind of interested in these paradoxes about human behavior. So one of those is that humans are interested in violence but they find it morally uh bad. Right? So in almost every case we we punish violence and push it away. But there are some cases where it's not only okay but it's actually entertaining right and we promote it. So the Romans Yes. or or the Romans in the coliseum is like the classic example right you find examples of this and everything from
usually it's ritualized in other cultures and ritualized through games in our culture too. And it was interesting to me that we could make this distinction in something that seemed so black and white. Right. And really quick, when you started, was the uh current explanation like, oh, this is kind of a collective processing of this fear or aversion we have? Like there's something cathartic about us all being able to gather and witness the thing we're afraid of.
Yeah. Uh without participating, what was the like common explanation back then?
There wasn't a really certainly wasn't one that was like founded on empirical work really, right? It was kind of theoretical conjecture. which is fine, but there was no like here's a study that tells you why we do this right?
Some of it was that some of it was that you there were some researchers who thought about it as a type of play in the case of sports um and and preparation or or ritualization of of certain actions that we don't do anymore.
Yeah. Um but I I was really interested in how individuals made that distinction because it if you see violence out on the street, it feels bad, but then if you see it in a boxing ring, it feels good. And I was interested in like within someone's mind, how are they making that distinction and what is what is going on? And so I did some eyetracking studies to see where people would look when they looked at different types of violence, whether it was sanctioned or unsanctioned, and and had them talk about it and tried to tie some of their eye movements to what they were what they were saying and how they were making sense of it.
And in those early ones, what were you finding? Was there like a category most people looked away from and a category most people looked at?
Yeah. So humans are really drawn to faces, right? That's why this is a better format than on a phone, right? We're drawn to faces. We get a lot of information from faces and almost nothing can draw our attention away from faces except an act of violence. So what I was noticing is that yes, people still paid attention to faces and acts of violence, but they were much more interested in the
act itself, like the point of contact. So if if I showed someone, for example, a picture of of you and I giving each other a high five.
Yes. That's like a friendly point of contact. Yeah. Versus you punching me in the face.
Yeah. Similar scenario, not friendly. And so in the violent scenario when you're where you're punching me in the face, people paid attention to your fist and my face much more or face is a bad example, you know, maybe arm or whatever.
The point of contact itself rather than our faces. Yeah. But during a high five, they stay locked on the faces.
Yeah. They they'll glance at the high five, but then they look at the faces more.
Yeah. Yeah. So it kind of draws it draw it was my first inkling that like there's something about danger and violence that really just draws our attention in this case our visual attention.
Yeah. It makes us kind of myopic to Yes. Exactly. That's exactly right. Um, and yeah, and a lot of people when they experience violence, uh, sort of secondhand, like when they see it, for example,
uh, they, you know, talk about it being frightening. And I started thinking, well, it is kind of weird that humans also expose themselves to things that scare them, right? Like,
you know, willing horror movies or true crime or whatever it might be, haunted houses, haunted hotels. Yeah.
Um, and I thought, well, I wonder if that's related. And so I I started looking into the literature and nobody no no psychologists were researching this.
Um like nobody that studied human behavior empirically was doing this work and that seemed insane to me because it's something that is so common again not just in our culture but in like every culture that we have documented.
Yeah. So I I found one guy who was interested in this and he was a he was a literature scholar and he studied horror literature and he lived in Denmark and so I reached out to him.
That feels right that he lived in that feels about right Scandinavians. Yeah. So I reached out to him and I said, "Hey, you are the only person in the world I can find who is interested in this topic and I'm interested in this. We should do something together."
And he said, "Yeah, you should come to Denmark. I'm I would love to do study at this haunted house." He said, "I'm a, you know, a literature scholar, so uh empirical studies aren't really my forte." Yeah. but he had a good theoretical idea for what might be going on. So, we teamed up and I I skipped some important uh tests that I was supposed to take for during my PhD and flew to Denmark for a month and
wow, we uh we did this incredible study at a haunted house. This first study was we wanted to know how do people have fun when they are being afraid, when they're feeling afraid.
Yeah. And uh so we strap people with heart rate monitors, right? And we thought, okay, if we can measure what their hearts are doing, what their bodies are doing when they're having fun, maybe we can tease apart how they're having fun.
And then we put up cameras throughout the throughout the haunt at different scary like scary points
to see what their faces were doing. Were they screaming? Were they laughing? Were they feel looking surprised? And what's what's cool about this one is especially at the time, this would have been in 2017 probably,
Halloween was still kind of fairly new in in Denmark as a like event that you do. They knew what Halloween was, but they didn't really have haunted attractions. Like I imagine if I wanted to go to a haunted attraction in LA right now, I could walk out the door and find a bunch of them.
Yeah, there's one 3/4 of mile away haunted ride and that Universal right down there was a huge one. Yeah,
in Denmark there weren't a lot of them. We had to drive an hour from the university just to find this one that and it was one of the first, right? And it was at an it was like it was so fun driving to this. So we
drive about an hour from the university, pack our car full of all of our gear, right?
Yeah. And um we turn off on this road and it's like just thick dense forest on both sides. Just this really narrow road like kind of a old road. We drive for probably I don't know a quarter to half a mile into this uh into this forest and we come across a clearing and there's an old abandoned fishery there and that's where they had made this haunt attraction. It was great.
Perfect location. Yes, it was perfect. And so um we yeah, we were interested in how do people have fun when they're feeling afraid and what does that look like? And so, like I said, we we measured their heart rates. We looked at their faces to see what they did during the scares and after the scares. We interviewed them to have them talk about the experience and did they think it was play or fun or were they too scared, you know, did it meet their expectations?
And what we found is that people have kind of a sweet spot of fear where their fun is maximized.
So, if you imagine uh on your x-axis here, you've got 1 to 10 for how scary something is. And on your y axis you've got 1 to 10 for how fun it is.
You get kind of a kind of a normal distribution, right? But it's a bit skewed. It's got to be a little bit scarier. So like a seven or a seven and a half out of 10.
Not a five. Not a five. Not a 10. Which is interesting because a lot of, you know, if you look at marketing campaigns for horror movies or haunted attractions, they always try to say this is the scariest thing you'll ever experience.
And that's not necessarily what people want. It's not necessarily when they have the most fun or when they enjoy it the most.
I'd imagine it changes too between film and real life participation. you have some degree of separation that maybe you can handle 10.
Y but people still do regulate their fear and their anxiety even in horror movies, right? Sometimes you need it to be scarier. So what do you do? You turn down the lights. You like really get immersed in it, right? You imagine it could be real.
Yeah. And and then other times you need to dampen that, right? You need to close your eyes or cover your eyes. Watch it with the lights on. Watch it with a friend. Do things that make it less scary. So you're always trying to regulate. And that's kind of the
magic of a lot of like a lot of the research I'm doing. I think that's a really magical type of play because what you're doing is you are practicing regulating your anxiety and regulating your fear which is something you can use later in the real world.
Yeah. Like immersion therapy. Exactly. Exactly. Emotional exposure therapy. Okay. So what you found was that people had a sweet spot. Their fun um peaked uh when the scariness was was beyond the halfway point, seven or so.
Yeah. Okay. And that was their heart rate and their their expectation of how they rated it, how scary it was,
how fun it was, and how scary it was. Got it. And did you attempt, you don't have the data for it, but did you attempt a biochemical explanation? Cuz like adrenaline is is in the right context very pleasurable, like was it adrenaline? Was it, you know, what all was happening?
Yeah. So, I've done a couple of studies at this haunted house. Okay. And we tried answering that question a little later. We didn't use biochemical measures in part because this would have been like 2021 and people were still a little weird about spitting in tubes and you know um and that's usually how you measure things like cortisol. Right.
Right. Uh but what we did do is there was there was this idea for a long time that people like horror movies because the adrenaline it's intuitive makes sense seems true right
probably is true but I thought well that doesn't really explain all of the horror fans I know like just anecdotally I was like well I know a lot of people who are just not adrenaline junkies but they love horror
and so what I did is I collected 50 or 60 statements about why people like horror and I showed them to hundreds of people and I said how much do you agree these things, right?
Yeah. And I wanted to see which questions were answered similarly, right? And you can kind of group them into factors.
Mhm. And what I found was there were three factors that kind of emerged from that data.
Uh one of those factors was sort of an adrenaline junky factor. People who who scored high in that liked horror because they like the way they feel when they're afraid. They like the rush. Right.
Yeah. But you don't, right? I don't scared is my thing. You are an adrenaline. You need like a higher level. That's not a source of adrenaline for me.
No, that's an excellent point and that was part of the reason I didn't think that was true because a lot of true adrenaline junkies don't get scared enough from horror films. So, it wouldn't make sense to me that adrenaline is the main driver of horror interest, right? It is a driver for some people, but it didn't seem like it could be this like
answering. Yes, exactly. And so, what I found was that in addition to the adrenaline junkies, we also found people we called white knucklers. If you squeeze your fist real tight, you get kind of a white across your knuckles where the blood escapes. Right.
Yeah. And so we called we called this group that because when they walked through the haunt, they were squeezing their fists really tight. Right.
And uh they like the fatigue. They're in it for the fatigue afterwards. We asked them. We said, you know, did you how scary was it? And they're like, "Oh, it was so scary." And we're like, "Did you enjoy, you know, how scary it was?" And they were like, "Not really." You know, I didn't really enjoy the feeling of fear, but what they enjoyed was the opportunity to challenge their fears. Yeah.
Right. Exactly. Right. And they they reported that they felt like they learned something about themselves. Either the limits of their fear or what they were good at dealing with or not good at dealing with.
So that was that was the second group and we knew we thought those two would exist. We thought those two would pop up because we had some ideas from other research that suggested that yeah there's a group that's likes the adrenaline and a group that doesn't seem to like it. You know, when they do test screenings of films, they show it to 300 people, then they keep behind 30 or 40 people in a focus group, and they kind of ask them more detailed questions. I sat in on the
test screening for this movie I was in called Zura and there were a lot of moms with kids at the screening, and they were part of the test uh group, and the moms were regularly complaining that the movie was too scary. And then upon follow-up question uh from the guy conducting it, he would say, "Well, which which part was it that was too scary?" And she would turn to her kid and the kid would always say, "Oh, I like that part where the Zorgon did blank."
Mhm. And and the kids always said, "I like I liked it." Yeah. The parents said it was too scary. They whatever screamed or whatever in the moment, but immediately you found out like the kids liked that.
Yes. Kids are spooky. I think a huge misunderstanding about kids is that they actually love spooky stuff. And parents know this intuitively, right? If you ask them like, "What kind of games do your kids play when they're pretend playing with others? It's like a violent game where they're playing a predator prey chase game or there's monsters in the game and they're pretending to be monsters or there's a scary environment, the lights are off, or they're playing under a blanket."
Is it gendered a little bit? I mean, boys are a little more likely to engage in that, but at really young ages, like 5 to 8, um I I'm not a developmental psychologist, but from what I've read and what I've seen, it's like boys and girls both kind of like scary play, right? Going back to this white knuckler thing, it was like there were a group of people who really were afraid, but they still liked horror. And so, the question was why? Because there are other people who are really afraid and they don't like it. That makes sense.
That makes the most sense. That makes the most sense. Yeah. The big question is why does someone enjoy not liking it?
I think that's me. Right. Yes. I like enjoy I do enjoy it and I get really worked up and scared but I do like it.
Explains you to a tea and in fact one of his exact examples is something you did
which I got a bang on over eating. Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.
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Okay. So, of the haunted stuff, you walked away with what? More questions or some conclusions or
a little of both, which means it's good science, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, real quick, there was also a third group. There was a third group that we didn't expect. Uh this one we called the dark copers because they seem to be using scary experiences to deal with difficult emotions or difficult uh times they were going through in their life. So they horror helped them kind of get over their anxiety or their depression or existential questions they had.
Wow. In that it interrupted the pattern they were stuck in. That's part of it. That was part of it. But also horror kind of deals in those emotions, right? Horror deals in anxiety. It deals in depression. It deals in threats and danger and awful things that happen. Yeah.
And I think it just helps to play that out, you know, in a story and you get through it. Like knowing that you gotten through it maybe feels
relieving. Of course. Of course. And and some of the biochemical uh explanations come into play there. It's like I got through this now I feel good. I didn't enjoy the fear necessarily, but man, overcoming it sure feels good.
Yes. It gives you a bit of optimism or hope, which is oh, I might also be on the other side of these other things.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, how do you take that work and then turn it into morbidly curious?
Yeah. Well, we haven't talked about morbid curiosity that much. So, that's just haunted houses.
Yeah. That this is this is before I had really done much work on uh morbid curiosity. I was interested in in fear and how we play with it and that kind of that combined with the interest in people's interest in violence that I had. I kind of combined those uh in the you know next year or two after that and realized that there were a lot of overlap uh between them. there was a lot of commonalities between them and so I developed this concept of of morbid curiosity and of course everyone has heard of this I didn't come up with the term right everybody kind of knows what it is
which made it all the more shocking that nobody had really done any again any research on this psychologically like there was a few there were a few studies in the '8s
but nobody had ever followed up on them and and some of the methods were a little uh outdated
well you read ridiculous things all the time on Instagram it's like people who like cereal that go to sleep when watch serial killer movies are psychopaths.
Psychopaths. There's all these declarations of like if your partner likes and I'm always like, how did we come to this conclusion?
I don't think we did. Exactly. Engagement farming did. Yeah. Yeah. So, you broke up morbid curiosity into four domains.
Yeah. And I did that because that's what the data was telling me was there. So when I, you know, the way you develop scales like that, uh, you give people lots of questions kind of like I did with those three horror types, right?
Things that you think tap into this central concept or central theme and then you see how they're answered similarly between people. Uh, and those break out into into groups. And so what I found is that yeah, there seem to be four types of morbid curiosity. So, one of those is the minds of dangerous people, which is kind of an interest in understanding people who might be dangerous, but maybe don't signal that they're dangerous, right? So, true crime would be a great example of of latching on to that type of morbid curiosity.
Say it again, though. What was the title? Minds of dangerous people. Minds of dangerous people.
Interested. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's that one. There's There's violence, which is an interest in an act of violence. So, this is kind of going back to that study I did where there was a violent action and people were homing in on the uh on the actual contact point right?
UFC's are your best example. That's that's a prime example. Yes. Uh and then you have bodily injuries, which is kind of the outcome of violence or the outcome of a dangerous situation, right? It could be an accident. Doesn't have to be an act of physical violence, but could be an accident someone had.
This is rubbernecking. This is rubbernecking. That's exactly right. Yeah. You see a car accident, you're like, "Oh, [ __ ] I got to look. Is there a head hanging out? I don't want to look. I got to look.
Exactly. Yeah. And and that mixed emotion is kind of the important part, right? That is what morbid curiosity is. It's this mixed emotional experience of
ah man, I really kind of want to see it, but I hope it's not there, but if it is, I want to see it.
I'm repelled by it and drawn to it at the same time. It's like the polarities of a magnet all at once. There's, you know, in the book I give an example from Plato where he talks about this man who was walking on the city walls and he, you know, this was written 2,000 years ago and he he gives a perfect example of morbid curiosity in a different culture in a different time. He doesn't call it that. I think Plato's looking at like our reason versus our emotions and that's how he's using this story. But when I read it, I thought, "Oh my god, this is morbid curiosity in ancient times." And so he tells a story of this man who's walking along the city walls and he sees the city executioner uh and he sees all of the criminals bodies who have been executed there. And he he can't help but look, right? He he doesn't want to look. He's telling himself, "I don't want to look." And then he runs up to the edge and he he
says he throws his eyes open and he says, "There you wretches, you know, gaze upon your glory." Talking to his own eyes about like, you know, his eyes want to see it, but his his rational mind doesn't.
He's shamefilled. Yeah. Yeah. But perfect example of that experience, right? Like it's not that you're hoping people are dead, but man, if they are, I kind of want to see it.
I'd also put fail videos into these this fail injury. Yeah. Is part of that because we like storytelling so much as humans that like if you It's like almost like this might be a story.
Well, it is. It's a story of what not to do, especially the fail videos, right? There horror horror does this. Great. Horror doesn't tell you what to do in a dangerous situation. It tells you what not to do or it shows you what not to do,
right? Shows you how don't go in the basement. Don't split up. Don't go into the
Don't start making out with a hot girl. A lot of people when there's a killer in the woods. It's no time to get frisky.
But I think all of them, right, Monica are like your fears of things. So like we're all afraid of bending our leg backwards. We're afraid of falling and what happened to me is the fear, right?
It's a potential in the world we live in. Yeah. We do a show where we talk to listeners and we just did one about the dentist and Dax was like, "We can't do that again."
He has like he has like a fear of his teeth falling out and I don't. So like that wasn't that hard.
That's like one of the most common nightmares teeth falling out. But I would love to know. So yes, I know that is, but I would love to see data pre and post orthodontia because my theory is like my teeth are getting twisted and cranked for so long in my life that it it's it may
I also had it I had braces for 3 years and you don't have that and I really don't have that.
Well, it was probably good for for humans in particular to be sort of nervous about their teeth, right? If you lose their livelihood and you know before you know 100 years ago people's teeth weren't in great shape. Like when you pull up old you know uh our ancestors bones and like teeth are strong and they last a long time but when you pull them up man they look a little rough.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're using them as tools back then. Yeah. Cuz Yeah. Exactly. You're using it as as a set of hands, right?
Yes. Yes. Um so yes, your teeth falling out should be afraid of that. That's normal.
Yeah. That's true. Okay. So physical violence. Yeah. Minds of dangerous people. violence and bodily injuries. And those kind of run from pre-event to the event to postevent, right? That's kind of like a spectrum there of what could happen in a dangerous situation.
Uhhuh. And then there's the fourth one, and it took me a while to disentangle what this really meant and what it was.
Yeah. So the fourth one is I called it paranormal danger to try to encompass a broad range of things. And and let me give you some examples of it and then tell you what I think it is. Examples would be anything to do with ghosts or aliens or even even deities, ancestors, spirits. I think what's going on there is people have historically used agentic beings that they can't see to explain misfortunate events. There's a there's a long recorded history of that. There's a lot of good anthropological work on that. Witches in particular. And so I think what's happening is that's tapping into dangers that we don't understand, right? And we give we tend to give those agentic uh uh beings, right? We tend to say, "Oh, well, the ghost made that knock in my house or the the the witch cursed me." Right.
I like you say, there's like a trillion variables out thereact. It's it feels at least comforting to narrow it to this somewhat agreed upon group
because how else are you going to take an action against it, right? If you don't have a thing that you can take an action against, you feel helpless and that's a terrible feeling, right? So, it's better to guess.
Yeah. Yeah. And uh and in human in human life, almost everything that happens to us happens to us because someone else did something, right? Like most of our most of the things that happen to us are because we live in communities and and for most of our history lived in small tight-knit communities.
Yeah. The good things and the bad things that happened to us often involved other people. So, it makes sense that we would have this bias to kind of think that if a misfortunate thing happened to me, maybe someone else did it.
Anthropomorphize it a bit. Yes. And maybe they're really powerful because I didn't see them do it.
Yeah. is that you point out which I like is that everyone that has these beliefs or thoughts or curiosities about aliens and ghosts, it's generally negative. Like it should be just as likely that the aliens arrive and go, "Hey, here's how you fix global warming and here's unlimited energy. Have fun.
They're benevolent and nice." Yeah. And the ghosts are telling you, "Hey, that stairwell is really uh it's not very safe. Don't walk down. It needs to be fixed."
That's what took me out. I don't want to see it happen again. Casper is the exception. He's the He's the exception. and not a huge hit because of it.
Ghostbusters is a is a much more likely scenario. Yeah. But yeah, really I think it really um illuminates what purpose those things serve simply by the fact that they're almost never positive.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think that's true. We we use that as a way to just try to explain it and then get a grasp on it. So, okay, here's something that it could be. Now, what can I do about that? Right. That's how we develop rituals around these things and all sorts of crazy beliefs. Okay. So those are the broad strokes of the four categories. Um so I think um let's talk about minds of the dangerous people because I think this is the phenomena that you see most covered. It's like we have a very robust true crime podcast space. Uh doc
Yeah. Do series space. What what else would we include in this category? Conspiracy theories.
Oh yeah. I mean that's what a conspiracy is is right. someone plotting to harm you.
Yes. So yeah, true crime and conspiracies would be the two major uh media examples.
So anecdotally from my perspective, this seems to skew heavily. How this is very gendered.
Yes. There's some data back that up. Yeah. So true crime in particular, uh women tend to uh not only seek it out more, but enjoy it more and enjoy specific scenes sometime more than men.
Yes. Okay. I'm sorry. There's one thing I wanted you to set up before we get go through these categories, which is
just break down what human modeling is, this gift of human modeling uh and and how we differ from other animals.
Yeah. So, one of the questions I get a lot is, uh, are humans the only morbidly curious creatures, right? Are we the only ones that are like that? Is that a unique human trait?
Yeah. And the answer is yes and no. No, we're not the only creatures that are morbidly curious, but yes, we have a very unique flavor of it. So, one of the best examples of morbid curiosity in animals would be predator inspection. So, prey animals like let's say a gazelle or a zebra. These are really pretty easy examples for people to imagine. If you're a zebra or gazelle and you're on the savannah, you're having your brunch. Uh, and in the case of a a zebra, a lion walks up or a gazelle, a cheetah walks up. What do you do? Right? What do you do? Well, I'm imagining if I'm a zebra, I'm going to run away. I don't want to hang out if there's a lion nearby, right?
The problem with that is, do either of you have cats at home? No. No. But I've witnessed a lot of cats.
You've witnessed a lot of cats. You probably know that cats just sleep most of the time.
22 hours a day. 22. And that that's true of most cats, including big cats. And so if you run every time that you see a lion, you're going to exhaust caloric resources. You're going to waste time that could have been used towards grazing and actually building those caloric reserves to run when you need to run. That's exactly what a lion wants you to do is run all the time, right?
Yeah. And the lion has to only hunt when it's hungry because you've seen the Lion King, right? What happens if you hunt something like hyenas are going to come in and try to take it, right? Lots of other hungry animals are going to come in and try to take that if you don't eat it right away right?
And then it's going to spoil or vultures are going to come in, scavengers will come in.
Um, so lions are incentivized to pretty much only hunt when they're hungry, which means prey animals are incentivized to understand when their predators are hunting and when they're hungry, what their motivational states are.
Yeah. And what you find is that many prey animals will engage in predator inspection and in particular those that are adolescence or subad adults, so they're young and healthy but don't have a lot of personal experience with a predator. So they have the most benefit and they're at the lowest risk because they're healthy and probably able to get away.
Yeah. And of course, environmental factors influence it. So if is the grass really tall or really short? Because if it's really tall, you might get ambushed. If it's really short and maybe you're further away, you feel a little safer, right? kind of like we feel when we watch a TV show.
Um, now that's that's all great and fine and and predator inspection is pretty commonly observed in in in many different animals and it one of the explanations for it is that uh prey animals can learn about their predators that way.
And you said they'll also um observe another member of their species get hunted if they have the opportunity
because they want to see how that plays out. Yeah, that makes sense. And learn from that. All of life is one big learning experience and you got to take the opportunities you get. And when it comes to dangerous things
in most of nature, there are there's a lot of danger around, but not a lot of good opportunities to learn about it because it's typically dangerous for you to witness something.
Yeah. You learn about it while you're getting chased. And that's not a good time. You're you're going to have really accurate information, but it's comes at a pretty high risk, right?
Fast forward to humans. We have language, transmissible culture, we tell stories. What does that allow us to do? Well, it allows us to
uh retain almost all of the learning benefit of a situation but remove virtually all the cost, right? So, and we can envision future scenarios that we've never encountered or maybe variations of a scenario. What if this happened in the woods versus the savannah versus the lake? And so stories allow us to just very very cheaply simulate potential situations and many in many cases potentially dangerous situations uh that might happen to us at some point or maybe they've hap maybe we heard about a story and then we tell a fictional version of it to amp that up a little bit. It was a wolf. Well, what if the wolf was larger and hairier and it was a werewolf, right?
Uh and so we we do these super stimuli where we we make them bigger and scarier and more memorable.
Uhhuh. and and we still gain again kind of the learning benefits from that. So because we have this ability to
create an imaginary scenario, we can kind of practice within it and we feel a little safer. It's comforting. Right. Right. So given that that's how our brains work naturally, if someone produces the content for us or we have actual footage, we're going to be drawn to that cuz it's just it's better than even the other thing that's been working for us.
And we're incentivized to create that content as humans, too, because it's good for you to pass on dangerous information to people. Again, historically, that would have been people you live next to, your family, your friends, your trading partners. Uh, and so there's a bit of an incentive to kind of tell these stories, right?
Uh, you there's also some evidence that you get a bit of a status boost. I was going to say it's like cultural capital as well.
Yes. Because you're an important person, right? Because you've experienced this or you have this secret knowledge.
Uh, that's really important. Exactly. And you've survived a thing I'm afraid of. So I
Or you know about it at least. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you just have some special knowledge that that you were given by someone else who survived it or whatever that might be.
Yes. So if we look at the broad data of who is raped and murdered in this country, it's uh very lopsidedly female.
Very lopsided. Yeah. Murdered probably not. But uh that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
But murder different there's, you know, there are very different types of people who murder you. If you're a man versus a woman, if you're a woman, it usually it's usually someone you know very well uh or someone you are trying to get to know well. And men sometimes it's much more likely that a man is murdered by stranger.
Men in general, right? I mean, mostly women and men are murdered by men. Yes. Men murder almost everybody.
Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. for the people that are drawn to uh true crime and they're really exploring dangerous people and then there's like details within there. You already hinted at a couple, but it's like one of the specific fascinations and they all seem to have a very similar arc is uh they're after the why or right the the what did the person not notice about the attacker that they should have. That's what they're after. Yeah.
Yeah. That's the juice, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, humans face a really unique problem when it comes to dangerous u social members. So, lots of social creatures have dangerous uh con specifics is what you would call them. So, a chimp, for example, there's going to be an alpha chimp who's a jerk who's going to beat up on you if you try to take the fruit that he wants or the mate that he wants or the or the space that he wants, right?
But that alpha chimp is going to be reactively aggressive. He's going to tell you, "Don't take that." In his own way with his fangs and and and uh and and yelling, he's going to tell you in his own way,
"You should probably not take that or else I'm going to attack you and I'm probably going to win." Right?
You'll get a warning. You'll get a warning. Yeah. The gorilla will stand up and beat his chest, right?
Um humans, our ancestors almost certainly did something like that, right? We descended from a common ancestor with chimps. Uh we almost certainly did something like that, but there was a shift. I don't know if you've read any of Richard Rangum's work.
No. You would love it. Okay. Yeah, Richard Rangum. He's a biological anthropologist at Harvard.
He's done a lot of work on human violence. Um, you would Yeah. He's got two two books on violence you really like.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Juicy. Yeah. Yeah. He's he's great. Um, so his work is where I got this idea from that he talks about this shift in human evolution where once we developed language, we could now conspire with each other to overthrow a much stronger uh maybe dominant jerk who is like kind of doineering the group, right? If you don't have uh favor among your group, then they can work together.
No matter how tough you are, three other members can kill you. No one can have full power.
Exactly. And that shifted the the social dynamics of humans a lot. And it did another thing. So Rangum says we domesticated ourselves basically through that process. We got rid of our reactive tendencies to a degree. Humans are still reactively aggressive, particularly males. There's bar fights exist.
Yeah. But they exist far less than if we were chimps, right? We would not be able to sit in this room together having never met.
Something would have happened. Something would have happened. Yeah. You would have made some move I misinterpreted.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It would have been a tense situation, not a fun situation for anybody. Yeah.
So, humans are much less reactively aggressive than most other animals and certainly most other primates, social primates. Um, but we developed a new kind of aggression. We developed what's called proactive aggression. So, now we can sit back and we can plot and think about when we're going to attack someone and how we can do it when they're unprepared,
right? And we we make that distinction in our criminal justice system. So if you kill someone out of a crime of passion, right? You come home and you find your wife in bed with someone else,
your brother, your brother especially, you're going to commit you're going to commit a crime of passion, right?
And you're going to get punished for that. You'll go to jail probably. You know, depending on the state and the circumstances, let's say 10 to 40 years, 10 to 30 years.
You'll walk in Kentucky. You might walk in Kentucky. In the southern honor cultures, you might walk. But if you decide that you don't like your wife anymore and you're just going to kill her and you plot that
now it would be first-degree murder and you can be put to death in certain states and we reserve that for premeditated aggression.
So we we we intuitively recognize that this premeditated aggression is a problem
and we punish it more harshly because we recognize it's a problem. And so for you know millions of years
primates basically signal to you like I'm reactively aggressive don't mess with me. And then it was like overnight when we had language. Now we have people who can plot and they're not showing us that they are aggressive. That's why you get the I could never imagine that he would have done this with with Dmer and Bundy and all these charismatic serial killers, right? And that makes us really curious about them because the only way to learn how you might avoid those people and who they are and and how to
find out if they're truly dangerous is to hear a story about something that's already happened where they did it.
I mean, we could get into whether or not this is a fool's errand. It could be because I don't know that there is the thing. You know,
there's probably not the thing. Well, there's not the thing, but there are patterns.
There's some things that you can have as red flags, but I mean, look, I've old enough to have known people who've gone to jail for heinous things. And I'm like, [ __ ] I don't know.
Yeah. I didn't know. Sure. And you can go too far, right? If you're like, a lot of my work counters a lot of myths that people have about morbid curiosity. One of those is that it could lead you to be violent or or all these things. None of that has panned out, but there there are some negative side effects if you only consume true crime at the expense of everything else and you sit inside your room all day and you don't go outside and touch the grass and go to the supermarket. Like
that's the thing that seems like it's on the table minimally is you could have a mislead um belief of the the likelihood of this happening to you.
The counter to that is just to consume other media with it. go out into the real world, go to the supermarket. It's an easy fix, right? It's easy to avoid some of those downsides and the downsides that have historically been associated with uh you know, being a horror fan or being morbidly curious don't seem to pan out. It doesn't have anything to do with a lot of bad things in human life.
I realize I've picked as I was reading this, I was like, "Oh, I've picked up some of these things." Like I know now, which I wouldn't have known. You don't ever go to a second location. like whatever gnarly things happening to you on the sidewalk and they want to put you in a car, it's better to have it out on the sidewalk than to go to a second location.
I don't know that because I've been in that situation. I know that from this type of media.
Yeah. And you know, as you mentioned, you learn things throughout your life, right? And interest in things like horror and true crime do decline with age, which makes sense because if you were learning something about it, then you should feel a little less interested, a little less curious about it. Now, you might find other reasons to enjoy it. Maybe because your friends still like it, maybe because you built a community around the horror genre. There are a lot of other reasons why you might still enjoy horror. But that that um curiosity that drives you from the beginning might have shifted a little bit.
This blew my mind. There's two there's two um reviews you you cite in the book. One is when Saw came out uh and it became this huge you know that that franchise has made like a billion dollars.
I saw it billion dollars. Yeah. Um, a film critic called anyone that would watch it a depraved lunatic.
But that's not even the craziest one. I watched it. Remember Cisco and Eert? Jean Cisco.
Um, he saw Friday the 13th and he hated it so much that in his review he both gave away the ending so no one would go see it
and then he [ __ ] docked the Paramount chairman Charles Bloodhorn and tried to dox the what was her name?
Yeah. instead like send these people hate mail. Yes. Isn't that [ __ ] bonkers?
So, when I first started looking into this, I was looking for what scientists had to say about the psychology of people who like slashers. And what I kept coming across were what film critics had to say, which is which, you know, I think it's a film critic's job to hate certain movies, but it's not their job to say something about the psychology of people who like those movies, right? And that that's a very different kind of territory for me. And it it made me realize that people have these intuitions about like and and I kind of understand it like oh you like movies where there's a lot of suffering and your people are getting hacked up. I kind of understand the intuition that you there might be something wrong with you. I I can sympathize with that.
Yeah. But the data doesn't bear it out. Right. It doesn't accurate. It's not accurate.
Yeah. Okay. Let's get into physical violence. Every single boy who went through school had a very plausible threat of getting beat up by another boy.
Sure. And so the fact that the UFC is huge. I think I do think a lot of people judgmentally look at that and go, "It's so barbaric and the people who like it are so toxic masculine." I'm like, "No, these are guys who went to bars and were afraid another guy was going to beat the [ __ ] out of them." And it's a it's a very living fear to be beat by another man.
Yeah. And so watching two people who are like some of the best in the world do it, you can learn a lot.
You can learn a lot and then get into like there are parameters. We like a little bit of parameters.
Yeah. Even the UFC has rules, right? It's kind of the most unbarred uh fighting, but there's still certain rules right?
And there's someone there to break it up if someone's about to be killed. Mhm. And that's what maybe someone might enjoy UFC, but they might not like watching a bar fight on the street.
Yes. Or it's a different kind of attention, right? The bar fight on the street might be a like, I can't look away, but I don't really want to see it. Whereas the UFC is, I'll pay money to see it.
Right. Because we don't like people hate unfair fights, right? It's also why there's weight classes in the UFC. If we really wanted to be unrestricted, early UFC didn't have like
that was when it was great. It was it was it was bananas, right? And why it was so great is to see little guys beat the [ __ ] out of huge guys.
Yeah. Which violates your expectations makes it more interesting. Makes it more okay. Well, if he can do it, what is he doing? Right. I think most
sports have an element. I mean, football is the American football is the classic example, right? Is a
violent sport. Now, we we try to buffer that with padding and helmets and we try not to have people really get injured.
Yeah. But it's I mean the the basic premise of football is to knock other people down,
slam your bodies into each other. Exert your will physically over your opponent.
Yes. Yes. Exactly. Yes. You know, you hear it a lot um especially now like complaints that sports are getting uh too soft. Like basketball maybe is not as uh rough and tough as it was 20 years ago or you know
they don't fight as much in hockey. They don't fight as much in hockey. Yeah. So, I I think um you see it in a lot of sports and when it starts to go away, you hear about it.
People don't like it. Um what about bodily injury and gore? It's interesting and and it's really broad, I think, because it's really about I think a couple of things. It's about learning the limits of the human body. So, like, well, what happens if a bone pokes through my skin? Like, what do I do? What does that look like? What how do I react? Like, what do you how do you fix that? Yeah.
Um how do you not die in that situation? And what can cause that? Right? because I can't practice on myself like how much force does it take to break my bone. But if I see somebody do something that doesn't look like it's a lot of force and then the bone breaks like oh I should be a little more careful in those situations right?
Yes. Would we put pandemic in this uh category? Parts of it can be. Yeah. So for example, there was a big Ebola scare like a few years ago, right?
And it was interesting because Ebola is not that contagious. It's not, you know, like unlikely to become like what was
uh but man is it scary. And it's scary and only in its extreme forms. Like it's most extreme forms when you you get something that looks like
a person who's been attacked by a monster bleeding out of the eyes, you know, and these and these are very rare instances even of Ebola, which is a pretty rare disease, right?
But those are memorable and so you really don't want to get it, right? Even if Ebola had a lower death rate, it would still be much more frightening because of that. Because bodily injuries, what they do
in most cases is they index violence really well. So, if I come ac if I'm walking through the woods and I come across a body and the body's got kind of a cut on its neck right here, right? A small cut, I'm going to be a little worried, but I'm not going to freak out. Now, if I'm walking in the forest and I see someone missing their head,
yeah, I'm going to freak out, right? But why? I think that's an interesting thing. Like, why do we freak out? nature couldn't have done that,
right? It wasn't an accident. It wasn't an accident. And not only that, it takes a lot of force to pull someone's head off or cut it off, right? So, the the whatever did that was probably agentic,
probably very strong, probably still close by, very angry, very aggressive. So, it gives cues to the thing
didn't eat it, doing it for fun. Is it is it hungry? Yeah. Is this just like for fun? Exactly. So, so, so we we uh make interpretations about the thing that caused the injury. And so bodily injuries, I think they they track really well. It index really well with with danger.
What data do you have on Contagion? Ding ding ding. Oh, I love it. Great movie.
How many times did you love it before 2020? It was the first time. I I I I watched it for the first time during CO and then I watched it like every day.
How did you find it? How did you know to find it? Cuz it came out in 2011. Yeah, maybe it just popped up on my Netflix.
Yeah, I guess. I mean, I don't I don't think I looked it up. I think you looked it up because when when I think Contagion was only available on like Apple TV or some like at the time obscure platform
to rent. So maybe I looked up what are what are epic movies. How many times you watch it? Dozens of times. Oh yeah.
Every day we get to work and I'd be like, "What did you do last night? I I watched Contagion again." And I'm talking that was five nights a week. It was It's a great movie.
There are a lot of great movies. Ask my boyfriend in it. Yeah. A Few Good Men. I know. I mean, yeah, of course. It was It was of the moment.
Don't we watch movies to escape the world? Why would you escape into a world that was basically the world you were living in?
Horrors. We were Also, to double up on that, um I had just had a seizure. Oh. like a a week before
shut down and that movie starts with a seizure. Yes, it does. And there so there's like two things happening that really
I have to watch this every night. And I remember I said cuz the first time I watched I was with Kristen
who was there for my seizure. So we were watching it and I was like did it look like that? Like I like needed information that I didn't have.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was it's it is Yeah. psychological. I don't know about watching it like 12 times or whatever. But you were not alone on watching it for the first time, right? Uh if you look at Google Trends data and you map uh the film Contagion, you can search for like what people are searching for, right, on Google over time. And if you look for the film Contagion, you see a bit of a bump, like a little bump in 2011 when it came out and then it's fairly flat, you know, and then in March of 2020, it shot to the highest point that it had ever been on Google Trends. And what's interesting is if you superimpose searches for co on that or corona virus on that. You see the same bump in March of 2020.
Perfect correlation. Perfect. Like just it was that blew me away when I saw that because I thought I mean I knew that contagion was popular and it came you know it was spiking in popularity and I of course was like well I think I know why, right? But I never expected it to be this just like perfect superimposition.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You want to know if they get through it cuz we were in it. It was the very beginning. It wasn't like it was the end.
Yes. Yeah. He was like, "What happens? Tell us what happens." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And uh like I said, it went from I think like 200 and something on the on the Warner Brothers catalog to number two despite not being on Netflix, which is the most popular platform,
right? Yeah. Yeah. I must Warner Brothers. I think you rented I think you rent you paid for it.
What if you rented it every time? You couldn't just yourself. This is going to be the last time.
There's no way I'm watching it again. I've already rented it. You get the bill from Apple. Almost like $200 and it's just contagion.
Exactly. Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. Okay. Um, now paranormal I want to talk about because um, you went to the um, you went to Savannah, which people consider Savannah the most haunted city in America.
Yeah. Monica spent a lot of time in Savannah. My mom's from Savannah and I spent a lot of summers there. Yeah.
Yeah. But but walk us through how it earned that title because there's a bunch of fascinating historical stuff.
Yeah. I mean, Savannah is an old city, so Americans automatically think it's haunted because it's more than like 50 years old.
More people have died there over more time. Yes. It it has uh way more graveyards than cities a city it size should, right? Most of them are buried under the foundations of homes now.
Um it had a couple of really nasty yellow fever outbreaks. Uh it was obviously the site of uh a lot of battles. uh half of the squares there are like well this battle took place in the Civil War or the this war or that war.
It's slavery there. There was there was a huge slave port. I mean there's just a lot of like dark stuff that happened in Savannah
and uh yeah there was I went to what's called the Sorrel weed house which is this beautiful mansion uh on one of the squares and it's famous for being haunted and I went on a ghost hunt there and overnight one it was I think like 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. or something like that.
Uhhuh. And uh I don't believe in ghosts. Right. But I love ghost hunts. I think they're so much fun. Yeah.
I've seen things I can't explain. Yeah. Talk about the cat toys. Yes. Okay. I'm scared already.
Yeah. This is going to get you. Oh no. Really? The cat toys actually happened in Eureka Springs where I live.
Oh jeez. I'm sorry. I've conflated. That's okay. But we good. So we can talk about that and then we'll go to Savannah. Okay. Great.
So uh Eureka Springs where I live. There's a famous haunted hotel there, the Crescent Hotel. I lived like a quarter of a mile from the Crescent. And before I moved to Eureka, I went on a ghost hunt there, an overnight ghost hunt. And uh one of the things we did is I was with a group of like maybe three or four other paranormal investigators, right? And some of them were like professional ghost hunters. And they brought these two little clear balls that had a red button on top. And I thought, "What kind of like sneaky cool ghost gadget is this?" And they're like, "No, we bought these at Dollar General.
These are cat toys." Oh. And I immediately as a scientist I was like, "Okay, I'm interested because now I like this is not something you created. It's not something that you can mess. It's just a super simple $1."
Now, did you see them pull them out of the package? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was like a fresh out of the package.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, they pulled them out, you push the little red button on top, and that's what turns it on. And when when in the case of a cat, when a cat hits it, it lights up, right? Fun toy.
So, we turn these two balls on, we put them on the bed in this room. And then we kind of shook the bed to see how much does it take to really set these off. And you kind of had to really shake the bed, like put a lot of pressure on it.
And then we stepped back against the wall. We kind of stomped our feet to see if that would set them off. And it didn't.
So they were pretty secure there, right on a big plush down comforter. And uh one of the investigators said, "Okay, uh we've heard that this room has a spirit living in it. It's it's called Michael's room."
E. And the story is this Irish stonemason, he was working on the crescent, and he was kind of a ladies ladies man. He liked to flirt with women as they walked by. Tell me more.
He like leaned over to whistle at a woman and fell. Oh, he got his his just reward just desserts
right on right on a beam that was in that room. Okay, that's a bad way to go. It's a bad way to go.
And then he died calling women. So that's the story of why this room is supposedly haunted and very active, right? Cuz he's still kind of a poltergeist. He still likes to kind of mess with people.
He's a per Yeah. And supposedly women get more experiences in that room. I bet they do.
You know, it's a whole thing. So, we're in this room and uh they put the cat balls in the bed, turn them on, and they say, "Okay, uh we've heard this room has a spirit living in it. We'd like to ask you a few questions. There are two balls here. Uh the left one we'll use for yes, the right one we'll use for no. And if you'll just light them up to let us know your answer to our questions." And then this person said, "We've heard that there's a the spirit of a man named Michael in this room. If that's true, would you please light up the yes ball?" And then there was like one beat and the yes ball lit up.
And and I it like gave me chills, hair on the back of my neck, the whole thing. And I I couldn't explain it because, you know, again, I went in like with my science mind. I was like, "Okay, let's test what does it take to set this off? This is a very simple toy. It's not a fancy gadget you created that you can control in some other way." you know, um we did all the control testing we could and and still and nothing else happened that night. We were there for hours. Nothing else happened.
But the first thing we did happened and it was electrifying. Yeah. It was unexplainable.
So, there were more questions and nothing. Nothing. Nothing lit up. We tried other gut. Nothing really happened. You know,
you guys weren't hot enough. We weren't You weren't sexy enough. Yeah. There weren't enough women in the group.
Go get some bronze. I'll make this whole room light up. Ghosts are so weird because I don't believe I if you ask me do you believe in ghosts? No, I don't. But I am scared of them.
Yeah, it's weird. The one I love is I had a professor at UCLA and she did her work in subsaharan Africa and she and and her work was on um spells and witchcraft.
That's so cool. And she got um uh a spell put on her while she was there. Now, she does not believe in them.
Yeah. and she got insanely sick and she saw the doctor and then went to the bigger city to see a doctor and
they said it's a spell. Ultimately, she got sent to a tent and a and a shaman lady removed the spell and she was fine. And she's like, I don't know what to tell you. I'm back in LA. I don't believe in ghosts, but I absolutely had this experience. And my friends, that's the power of culture. Like,
yeah, I cannot believe in it and be there and get it. Yeah. Yeah. It's absolutely insane. It's so fascinating. I talk about a study in the book that I it's like one of the few studies where I was like ah I wish I had thought of that study you know.
Yeah. Uh and the short of it was that so there was uh you know you imagine you get 100 people let's say half of them believe in ghosts and half don't right and then you mix them together and you split those into two groups you got 25 and 25 right so 50 people 25 believe in ghosts 25 don't and then another group the same thing. Now, in group A, you tell them when they come into the lab to do this study, hey, just so you know, we need you to sign this form to let you know that someone died recently in this room. If people were told that there was the possibility of a ghost being in the room,
that they reacted to strange events during their lab uh experience in the same way. It didn't matter if they believed in ghosts or not. Their body kind of lit up in the same way.
Wow. If they if there was an inkling that there might be a ghost in the room, right? as opposed to if if the the experiment started and you said, "Hey, just warning, there was a a shoddy electrician that did all the wiring." That's why the lights getting fixed in a couple weeks. You would think nothing of it.
Yeah. Or you just don't say anything. Their control, they just didn't say anything in the control condition, right? Just there was no story of a ghost. It was just so the the manipulation was a light went off for 7 seconds and came back on in the middle of one of their tasks and it was dark and quiet in the room. They were supposed to be meditating.
You would hate that. And if you're And if you're just in there and you're thinking, you're like, "Okay, well, I guess the electrician, you know, didn't install this light correctly."
Um, but if you're told like, "Hey, you know, we have to sign this death on the premise form. One of the grad students said he saw a ghost."
Then you're like, "Oh, why did that light go off?" Right? And even if your conscious mind is like, "I don't believe in ghosts." Right? You still, your body feels the same way.
The amydala takes over. It does. Like, [ __ ] that. We believe in ghosts. I'm just gnarly around here.
You have to believe in ghosts. We have to take this potentially this thread seriously. Um, okay. So, Savannah though.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, Savannah Sorrel Weed House, famously haunted. Went on a ghost hunt there. I was in the basement of the Soral Weed House and it's very dark in the basement. Um, and there were a few things that happened like I felt something brush my leg, you know, and and I talk about how if I would have been on a historical tour of this house in the middle of the day and I felt so I would have been like, "Oh, it's a cobweb or whatever." But of course, because I was there, my expectation is that it's supposed to be haunted, even if I don't believe in ghosts. And so, it kind of gave me chills in a way that it wouldn't have.
Yeah. And then over in the corner of the basement, kind of running along one of the walls. It's a big house, right? There there are some posts and and the like the walls like kind of it kind of makes a hallway on that side. And there's a little old wooden chair in the corner looking down the hallway. And um supposedly people see the ghost of like of a soldier of an old soldier, a Civil War soldier,
soldier, and he's angry. He's like an big tall angry soldier, you know? And uh he's in some kind of uniform, right? He's always in some kind of uniform. He's got a hat on.
And so I was like, "Well, ghosts don't exist. I'll go sit in the chair and see what I see." Right.
Sit. Okay, great. Yeah. You have to sit in the chair and you like look down the hallway, right? Oh wow.
And uh so I sit down in the chair and I'm looking down. It's probably like a 25 ft hallway. It's a pretty long hallway. Uh and it's dark. There's nothing. You know, all the other people are on the other side of the room and I know that they're not in the hallway because there's a bit of a wall there, right?
And I sat there for 20 or 30 seconds just looking kind of sitting quietly. And then you start to kind of see things, right? You see like what was that, right? Like what was this? you know, and then you start to see like a little face and you start to kind of and my explanation would be, well, I was hallucinating it, right? But in any case, my body didn't care. It reacted the same way. And so, even though I was sitting there telling myself, I know there's not an angry soldier,
right? Right. Right. But do you know? I mean, I guess Well, no, but that's the point. Do I really know? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is when you get into like I bring this up a lot like there's there's a logical truth and there's an emotional truth and those things sometimes are overlapped and quite often they're just not and we want to say the emotional one's irrelevant but it's not irrelevant and sometimes it's right
it's probably governing more of our decisions than the logical side is yeah and probably making more correct decisions sometimes
this is a question that we honestly do not have an answer to what part afterlife go these are we really do not know it's unknowable So that's where our beliefs can really get very muddy. I think you can easily be like, "Well, I guess I was wrong about that." Or
Yeah. You see enough of these and you're like, "Okay, maybe I need to shift my world view a little bit." Right.
Yes. Yes. Tell me about the morbid curiosity scale. How does it work? Well, I I created the scale because if if you if you study humans, the easiest way to measure a personality trait of some kind or or an individual difference is to have a scale, right? One that's validated against behavioral tasks and you're pretty sure it measures a real thing that you think it's measuring. M so of course because nobody had really done any work on morbid curiosity there was no scale. So that was one of the first things I did was try to create this scale right.
Yeah. So it's 24 questions. Can people go online and take this? Yes. On my website there's
what did I say the website name? Uh yeah just coltoncrier.com and then uh there's a morbid curiosity scale. You can download it if you want to use it in your research
or if you just want to see how you score and how you compare to um the average of the studies that I've done at least. Yeah. uh you can go take it and it'll tell you your overall score and how that compares to the average, but then also the breakdown of each c of each of those domains that we talked about.
Nice, nice, nice. Okay, let's talk about dreams for a second. Sure. I've never studied dreams, right? And when I wrote the first uh draft of of the book manuscript, I didn't have a chapter on dreams. It was like two paragraphs, I think, in one of the other chapters, maybe eight or nine.
Um because I saw that there was some connection. I I was seeing these connections with nightmares and I was like, "This is interesting. I need to mention it.
And I mentioned it briefly and then my editor came back and was like, you need to you need to say more about this. This is really interesting. And I was like, okay. So, I I dug more into dream research and I was like, okay, Camille was right again. You know, she's she she knows more about how to write this book than I do. Um, and so I ended up writing a whole chapter on dreams. And the idea is that uh there's this great theory about why why does dreaming exist in the first place? Why do we have the machinery for it? How did we develop the machinery to hallucinate uh a full experience? And and we hallucinate it not just cognitively but but emotionally we hallucinate it even our bodies would move if there was not a an off switch that's triggered, right?
Yes. Yes. Yes. And you can you can snip that uh connection in other animals and you can see they get up and they sleepwalk, right? Or they act out their dreams.
Some people have and some people have disorders that cause them to do that. And so, not only is the machinery there for you to hallucinate this entire experience that yes, it's a little weird, dreams are really, really weird, right? But they're still cohesive. There's still a story.
Um, and not only are you doing that cognitively, but if if you you had to also develop a switch to turn your body off so that you don't get up and do the thing.
Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, that I mean that that to me says, okay, this has to have some kind of selection pressure because that is not an accidental.
That's a lot of evolution there. That's a lot of engineering. Yeah, that's a lot of engineering. The aliens were uh
they were they were really working on they were busy. Yeah. Um and so there's a great theory that I think the first question is why would we have that machinery? And so you need something really compelling to build that or to start to build that.
And uh this guy I'm going to butcher his name um his last name is Raanso I think Anton Raanso. He's a Finnish neuroscientist and philosopher. He's developed this theory of uh the threat simulation theory of dreaming. So he thinks that the first dreams were probably nightmares because dreaming about a danger and rehearsing that emotionally, rehearsing it, sending the signals to your body uh that would be relevant in that situation to move your body. Yeah.
Uh rehearsing it cognitively, rehearsing something dangerous would be really valuable.
We should add that works. That's the military training. they can get, you know, there's a great book on killing and the the amount of people that didn't fire their guns in World War I was kind of shocking, right?
And they trained people out of that. If you over and over and over simulate this,
simulations work, right? Pilots do simulations. Like, you don't want your pilot to be the first time he's ever thought about flying a plane, his first flight. Simulations work. We use them all the time. Um,
and so, yeah, if you can simulate something while you're sleeping, even better. You don't have to waste time during the day doing it.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you have access to a lot more stuff. Weirdly, you do. You do. And you make connections you wouldn't make otherwise. And when you wake up, if it's certainly before we knew what dreams kind of knew, what dreams were, you're going to wake up and you're going to tell everyone, you know, like because you don't know why you had that. Did I go to a new world? Did I, you know, we don't really know what dreaming is. Like, did I travel to this to see my ancestors? Did I go there? And there are cultures that believe that reasonably so. You know, if I was born a thousand years ago, I'd be terrified of dreams. I wouldn't know what it was, right?
I mean, like sleeping in general is a little weird. kind of just die at night. You die at night. You go to another world and then you come back and and you wake up, right?
You're so vulnerable for so long too of your day. And so uh yeah, his his premise is that that would have provided a selection pressure to kind of start to shape those um the cognitive machinery necessary for dreaming. And then once that takes off, you can use dreaming to simulate all sorts of things. Yeah.
But that was kind of the initial push. So yeah, I I thought dreaming was a fascinating example of maybe very early morbid curiosity, like our unconscious morbid curiosity. Now we're thinking about things that could happen to us and we're simulating them in our dreams, right? That might have happened presumably that happened before we started talking about them, before we had language, right? Because dreaming seems to be very evolutionarily old. We have evidence that, you know, cats and rats dream and and we're separated by I cite in the book, I forget what it is, like,
you know, 50 million or 100 million years or more from them. Yeah. Um, octopuses who we are
I mean hundreds hundreds of millions of years separated from uh in fact they have entirely different nervous systems but so far back so not only so so it's not conserved from octopuses but it developed twice octopuses dream. So it was so important that our line developed dreaming but then the octopus line also developed some kind of machinery for dreaming. So that suggests probably there's some selection pressure for that. And octopuses when they dream, they tend to uh act out some of those dreams through their their color changing. So, they'll change colors and do defensive maneuvers. They'll shoot ink sometimes.
Oh, wow. So, they'll do things that are defensive in their dreams. Um, wild. All this book, I mean, the the the the brunt of this book hopefully will make people feel less guilty about what they enjoy. Do you think it could um alleviate some of the fear that like parents have when their kids are playing video games
or just doing anything spooky? Yeah. You know, that's that's like one of the most common questions I get is should I let my kid watch scary movies? Right. Right.
Or is there something wrong with them? And I think that that comes from a good place, right? It comes from a good place that you don't want to let your kid feel afraid. You don't want to see your kid feel anxious. But if you don't let them do that in a playful way when they're young, it's going to be difficult for them to learn how to regulate those feelings later on when they're adults, right? Yeah.
So, when you're a kid, that's you're a sponge. I mean, you are just soaking up all of everything in your culture. You're soaking up new skills. You know, your brain is using more calories when you're a kid than it ever does when you're an adult because it's just processing like crazy. And so if you play with fear, you play with anxiety in these playful settings, whether it's a video game or pretend play with your friends or a scary buck goosebumps or a scary movie that's maybe appropriate for kids but still scares them.
Yeah. They develop those regulation skills because like we like we talked about at the beginning,
you are regulating how afraid you are in order to achieve that sweet spot even when you're a kid, right? So you're practicing and developing those tools that'll be useful later in life.
Yeah. When you did the haunted house stuff, was it very different for people who were in groups versus alone?
Nobody goes to a haunted attraction alone. Exactly. That's serial killers. Maybe serial killers. Have you seen someone by themselves?
I mean, I I've done I don't know five or six different studies at haunted houses and in Denmark and in Detroit and Austin. I don't know that I've ever seen someone come to one alone. Yeah.
Yeah. Like I would never do anything like that alone. It's not because they're too scared either necessarily. It's just not as fun. Yeah. You want to share the experience with somebody
and I So, one of the things, have you ever been to a haunted attraction? Yes. Okay.
Lots of couples go. Yes. And you can see how your partner responds when they are afraid. So, not just how you respond to fear and anxiety, but how do they respond when they're out of their elements?
Is my husband going to [ __ ] his pants when is he going to push me into? How do they respond also with your fear? It is a lot of
in a safe way, right? Like that's the important part. I've met a lot of people break up after I have a study I haven't published yet where we look at exactly that like relationship satisfaction after a haunted house
based on how the men and women in those relationships responded during the haunt you're going to find some ugly stuff no one no one's going to want to admit what you find okay my two last questions are you you say in the book I forget the percentage but like over the last 20 years horror movies have doubled their market share I don't know what the time window is but
uh from from about early 1990s is when we have comprehensive data. Okay. So, it is doubled in market share.
Tripled this year. Tripled in market share. So, double doubled around co high achieved its highest share ever. I think it was like around 12%. I just checked about I don't know 3 or 4 weeks ago. Horror was at like 17%. And it's the only genre that's really had like an upward spike in the last 10 years or so. All the other genres. Action has had a small one. Almost all the others have had a downward uh trajectory. Horror has been on the upward trajectory. It's at like 17% now.
Yeah. So, how do you explain that? And then part two of this question is, have you considered the increasing need for this stuff as we have all of this architecture to be on high alert for things to keep ourselves alive and we live in this insanely safe environment now that is very sterile and without any of the real threats that we've always we have we have a a big apparatus that has nothing to focus on basically. Do you think this is a result of that in any way?
Yeah. So to answer that question first, yes, I think that's some of it. Right. When you live in a safe world, your mind is saying, well, why why is nothing bad happening? Are you unprepared? Yeah. You're not seeing anything bad happen. Are you unprepared?
And might even like you might even see certain things tick up like conspiracy theories, stuff that is harder to observe, but something must be a
and you're hearing, you know, like we talked about the news. I mean, you're hearing, okay, all this bad stuff is happening around the world, but I'm not seeing it where I am. So maybe I'm just unprepared.
Yeah. Maybe other people are plotting against me and they're trying to keep their aggression secret from me.
Yes. So that to answer that question, I think that's part of it. Yeah. Um and then the other question about why why is horror on the rise? Uh I think that this is something that I a conclusion that I came to in the past month or two. So, it's still I'm still kind of speculating about it, but when CO became a global pandemic around 2020, a lot of people who had sworn off horror since they were kids, they watched a scary movie when they were a kid. They watched Poltergeist or something and they're like, I'm never watching a scary movie again.
They had this urge to watch something scary during co whether it was Contagion or or even horror. Horror had a had a moment during 2020 and 2021. A lot of people, I think, became horror fans again when in 2020 and realize that as adults, they kind of like it and they can handle it a little better.
Um, and I think that they've just been watching it more and because they're watching it more, filmmakers are taking note, production companies are taking note, and they're producing more of them. There's more money for horror now.
Yeah. It's like a virtuous cycle. Yes. So I that's my speculation about what's gone on is that there is a new crop of horror fans that popped up around 2020 and now four or five years later we're seeing the consequence of that which is horror being on just an upward trajectory while everything else is kind of stale.
Yeah. Okay. Then my last question is is there any evidence that killers or predators have watched or consumed more morbid media than others?
Uh not more. So do serial killers like movies about killing? Probably right. You know, uh, Dawnmer famously liked The Exorcist 3, which is a really obscure one. I actually don't know if he liked horror movies, but he loved The Exorcist 3.
That was his movie. That was his thing. That was his his king. Not generally regarded as the best Exorcist,
even in the top two, I don't think. Um, wow. But that was his thing, right? Uh, and I talk about in the book, you know, I talk about Dmer saying that he was morbidly curious. He he used the term. He said I was they were he was being interviewed and asked why he went back to look at a body or something. He said because I was morbidly curious. Um, and he said
and all these movies uh stories about this stuff, but I actually do it. Um, oh god.
And and then I give the example of the the Coline shooters. They uh you know they loved supposedly loved the game Doom and they loved Mortal Kombat. This is in the '9s when that was kind of the those are the violent games right at the time. And so of course in both of those cases people were like aha that's why Dmer killed an eight people because he liked the Exorcist 3
and that's why those kids shot up the school because they played Doom. Yeah. Along with 10 million other kids who didn't exactly along with every other kid at school.
Not statistically relevant. No. But we want answers. Everyone just wants and that sound again that's an intuitive answer. Right. That's an intuitive one. But then you have to ask well what about every other kid that plays violent video games? So, what about the evidence that shows that it's not related to aggression, which is pretty much all the evidence now.
And if you actually look at uh this is not work that I've done, but uh if you look at
school shooters, which are almost all boys or men. Yes. Um and you look at whether or not they played violent video games for the ones we have data for, they're actually less likely to have played violent video games than the average teenage boy. Right. And that doesn't mean that playing violent video games keeps you from being a school shooter either. It probably just means it has nothing to do with it. They were probably social outcasts in other kinds of ways. They had interests that were different from other boys their age, you know.
Yes. And they also have all these other things going on besides that. So the question is,
does morbid curiosity make you violent or dangerous? No. But if you are if you have all these other things where maybe you lack empathy and you have low levels of disgust sensitivity and you have high levels of psychopathy and you're morbidly curious, maybe then you get a cocktail of things, right? Yeah,
but by itself and even in combination with many other traits, it doesn't seem to be related to any kind of dangerous or or psychopathological outcomes.
Okay, good. Interesting. Oh boy, that's comforting. Morbidly curious. A scientist explains why we can't look away. Colton, this has been very fascinating. This has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming. Of course, it was fun. Thank you.
We hope you enjoyed this episode. Unfortunately, they made some mistakes. Is there a famous Sophia song?
I can't think of one. I don't think so. Sophia the giraffe. Do you think most Sophie? That's Sophie. Oops. I know.
Do you think most names have songs? Yeah. Wow, that's cool. You've heard your song, right?
A little bit of Monica in my life. A little I'm not going to sing. A little bit of Monica in my life.
Yeah. Mambo number five. Did they say Monica? Uhhuh. Oh, they do. Oh, yeah. I was thinking of a different song.
What? You know, it's like Monica. Monica, I think I want your number. Monica. Oh, but
is that not it? I don't think so. Oh, that's Gloria. But I like that. Well, you were like, damn, this actually sounds like it could be a hit. Because it was.
Sure. Well, I knew it was a hit, but I didn't think it was my name, and I was right.
I think I know more, but I have to really think on it. Okay. Well, we already know Mambbo number five. That's pretty good.
That's really good. Yeah, that's more than there are Dax songs. I know your yours is trick.
That's okay. That's okay. Okay. That's okay. You got a chair. Oh, I just got a weird fun list. You know, I follow this account on Instagram. I really like it. I'm shocked I haven't sent you forwarded you any.
What is it? It's just all data, of course, and it's all global data. Okay. Um, so this one was the universities producing the most billionaires.
Oh, isn't that kind of interesting? Yeah. But is it obvious or there's some twists and turns?
I mean, it's obvious. What's interesting is this is the world over. Okay. This is every university in the world.
Okay. And of the Let's see how long this list is. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 22. M and I wonder
no 21. Are you feeling antsy to read them all cuz like now you know what it's like.
No, I more wanted you to guess. Oh, okay. Out of 21, how many uh are not American?
One, two, I can't count alone. I mean, I was going to let you cuz that was a good clue.
Yep. Yeah. Okay. I think big world. It's a big big world, isn't it? China is a huge country. over a billion people
and oh god. Okay, now what about like undergrad and grad because this is tricky because some of these people might have gone to an undergrad in one place and a grad in another.
Do you think you're overthinking it? But let me see if it if it delineates that.
I am thinking it through. I guess it would have to mean everything. Their graduate program, their undergraduate programs, like the school. How many did the school produce? Okay, this is hard because I think most billionaires um go to graduate school most.
Okay. And I think they come a lot of them come here for graduate school. Sure. So I'm going to say six of them are not
great. Seven. Okay. Okay. Now what's crazy is how um dramatic the difference is right so first place what's your guess what you know
say it Harvard okay Harvard has a has produced 104 billionaires mhm third place has produced 38
wow yeah second place 69 great number congrats to I'll give it away Stanford I was going to say
okay you want to guess three yeah I want to I want to guess you always get to guess
um MIT great guess you want to know what number that is. Yeah, that's number five.
Okay, so and what about not Yale? Is that a guess? Oh my god, you're you're mean about list. I am fun about them.
Okay, I'm sorry. Oh, wait. Ask me again. Not Yale. No, no, no, not Yale. Okay. Um is Jesus. Okay. Harvard, Stanford, not Yale. Um what was MIT again? Five. five.
Okay. Uh, one above MIT is a shocker. The other one's like, yeah, I guess so. That makes sense.
Is um, Princeton? No. No. I I I take it back. I take it back. I'm looking I don't even know if Princeton's Oh, no. Princeton made the list in the high teams.
Is Caltech on there? No. Oh, [ __ ] Um, okay. If you tell me number three is UCLA, I will be so I won't believe this list. Okay,
that'd be great though. Right under Stanford ahead of MIT. Is it IIIT? Is that on the list at all?
Um there is an India one but it's University of Mumbai which could be IIT. Yeah. Um and that's pretty high up. So the first country to make the list after the US in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 eighth place is University of Mumbai with 22 billionaires and I guess that makes them tied with Cornell which is above them for some reason. Yeah. Okay. You want to hear third?
Yeah. Penn. Oh Wharton. Yep. So they have 38. So again 104 69 for Stanford 38 for University of Pennsylvania. Now four I thought was I was like really?
Can you give me a hint? Oh, [ __ ] That's what's fun about Liz. Yeah. Okay. There were a lot of protests here.
Berkeley. No. Oh, more recent the newsworthy. I'll give you a hint. It's in New York.
Colombia. Colombia. Really? Can you believe Colombia is four? No disrespect to Columbia graduates.
Shocked. But I do, you know, maybe one of the explanations for that, again, it's going to sound like I'm taking the wind out of Columbia sales, but you're already in New York and the families that are already rich. People who live in Manhattan are among the richest people in the country. So, you're saying they probably entered already in a great position,
inherited billionaire status, some of them, or they started with quite a bit and made it more. I just don't think of Colia as um
a money-making school. Yeah. It's like all academic. I think of it more create some creative I mean Cali went there.
Yeah. And she is on track to be a billionaire so it makes sense. So now it makes sense. So Columbia is number four. MIT five with 28 billionaires.
Okay. I'm shocked that's not higher. Yale 24. Okay. Cornell 22. University of Mumbai 22. Uh, can't pronounce this university, but it's in China.
Okay. 19. Great. To Singua. Okay. NYU. Yeah. 18. USC. Yeah. Yeah. Again, rich kids go there. It's like you start with a private school. That's a lot of money.
Yeah. That Yes. That of course all of these are hard. Like it's much more common for someone to go from a millionaire family to a billionaire than I think it is
from a welfare family to a billionaire. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Okay, moving on. USC. Uh, next is University of California, Berkeley 15. UFM 15. Tied with Berkeley. Ping University 14. Moscow State University 13. Wow. Princeton 13.
University of California, Los Angeles 12. University of Chicago 12. Foudon University 12. Seoul National University 12. and Xi Jang University 12.
Wow, that was a fun list, right? Yeah. See, you did them all. You didn't do top 10. It's really, you know, lists when you're reading them, you want to keep going. And now you understand. I know.
Now you really understand it. We have to I'm going to push back a little bit though.
I Your lists Yep. are really rarely 21. They're often a h 100red and I am scared of 100
and we'll just see next time you're holding a list that's a h 100red and we'll see what happens.
Okay, we'll see. We'll see. I'll continue to screen grab my favorite post on Instagram.
That is really fun. Now h how many universities do we think have produced one billionaire? Like do we think almost all have? No. Well, there's the whole point of this was they just announced like currently there's 2,990ome billionaires worldwide.
Okay. So, in reality that's not a ton of billionaires out of seven billion. Exactly. Like sometimes you think billion is diluted. I do like I'll I'll start thinking like
I guess billion means what a million meant to me when I was a kid. Like when you're a kid, you knew someone that was a millionaire. It was like unimaginable. But you just the news is is populated with stories of people becoming billionaires. I just read like the youngest female billionaire of all time was just crowned. She's like a 27year-old who created some I think marketplace where you can bet on all kinds of weird things elections and that's kind of what I discerned from what the article said.
Okay. But yeah, I think she's 27. Wow. Yeah. Younger than Taylor was. I think the youngest up until then.
She really are. I I mean I don't want to [ __ ] on this 27 year old, but sounds like she's taking from the poor and the vulnerable. So, um Okay, listen. I just Googled how many universities in the world th this is annoying because it should be it should be very clear.
Uh but it says there are an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 universities in the world.
Well, that is a great quick answer to no. They couldn't have all produced a billion.
Exactly. Yeah. I wonder if University of Georgia has produced a billionaire. I'm going to look.
I bet it has. Let's go, UG. Let's go dogs. Uhoh. For the listener, Monica's jaw opened up like it reticulated like a a snake about to eat a copy bar and then it closed. And I'm not sure what that means.
Well, the University of Georgia, UG Go dogs. Roll tide. Take it back. You're not allowed.
Roll dogs. You're not allowed. I know. It's so fun. Has many successful alumni, including celebrities like Ryan Serest. That's not true. AI is not right.
Oh, he did not go there. His sister went there. I Okay, now I'm worried, but I'm I feel really
I'm almost shocked we've never interviewed Serest. Wow. It does say he went there. Okay,
so AI is correct. I'm shocked, too. He's your age. Old. He's 50. Yeah. It's all the more reason to be on the show.
That's why I said that. He find himself in good company. Oh, but he didn't get a degree. I got two. So, um All right. He can have one of mine. Okay. Including celebrities like Ryan Serest and Georgia is home to billionaire. Oh, Georgia. The state is home to billionaires. Duh. Like the Kathy family of Chick.
Did the Koch brothers go there? Are they from Georgia? I don't know specific list of billionaire alumni often.
I'm conflating Coca-Cola and KO brothers probably. Okay. I don't think we have any Colonel.
What is wrong with you? That was a good joke. No, it wasn't. I don't even get it why. Because he's from the stupid doesn't make sense cuz he's from Kentucky clearly. Kentucky Fried Chicken. But it was kind of funny.
I didn't understand it. Okay. Ryan Serest is not a billionaire. No. So, seems like maybe we don't have any yet.
You have a real task on your hands. Do you think people would be happy for you,
right? No. Okay, that's fair. I don't think any It's so interesting. Like I feel like unanimously people hate billionaires.
I know. Yet 100% of people would want a billion dollars. I know. It's like make up your mind. You can't want something and hate it at the same time. But you can because people are calm.
Yeah, we're full of contradictions. You're right. I found one. This says the guy that founded Kalen Kalandley Top Alonia.
Are you reading from Jay Zing? Are you doing a China? He But he graduated from UG.
Oh, that was his name. Yeah, I thought you were talking about product. I heard too heard Kalandley founder
Cap Kalen Kalen Kalen. I don't know how to say it. I give up. Yeah. What's his name?
It's like calendar but l y and no er. Oh my god. Calendar with an ly and no eer.
What's his name? OH BOY. OKAY. FORGET IT. I DON'T BELIEVE. OKAY. OH. OH, look at the zero to hero. Okay. Great. Yeah. To
everything in this picture. Awatona. You did a good job with Awatona. I think the mastermind behind the scheduling app Calendarly. I don't like the name of that. We didn't need Lee.
Hey, just I love him. He's a wonderful person. Obviously, it was working for people.
I think it's great. Um because you know what? It made him a billion dollars. So, it can't The name can't have been too bad.
Absolutely. Now, I'm going to ask a very dangerous question. If he were white Yes. This is a black man.
This is a black man. If he were white, would you like the name Kalin Dele? Come on.
I don't know because he's not white. One of just two US black tech billionaires. That's amazing. And he went to Georgia.
So sad, but yes. Amazing. Well, it's sad, but it's cool that he went to Georgia. But he is taking my spot as the first billionaire to come out of that school.
Yeah, that's okay. You can root for him. Of course I do. Yeah. Yeah. And what a great and what a great man.
Actually, this is interesting. Do you think people don't root for him? I do. I think
from zero to hero. I think they do. They should. I think we all have, as we should, we have a different appetite for when black folks get a lot of money. I think when black folks floss and they're like showy and have big cars and stuff, we don't care.
I agree. And we should when white folks do it, you're like, "Jesus Christ, man, get it together.
Just calm down." But I Yeah. Never bothers me if someone's um flossing and flexing. And that changes per ethnicity, which is so weird and funny. Like each human being is just a human being. Yeah,
you know, but there are societ I mean there's just struggles that we can't you know there's societal struggles that are embedded and you know we know about embedding
we know about all that. Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. All right. So to be clear, I have I don't have a billion dollars and I don't want anyone to come after me because I don't have that. Now this is a ding ding ding.
They are angry enough at what you got already. I know. And I actually I think that's frustrating to me.
A self-made lady, not born into wealth. One generation away from abject poverty.
My dad grew up in a village. Literally in a village. That's a big deal. It is huge.
Yeah. Yeah. So, people need to get on board. They need to wake up. They need to wake up. Now, woman of color. Me.
Yeah. Ding ding ding. Two things to say about women of color. Mhm. One thing to say about women of color.
The pan this woman of color. Oh, the panton. Exactly. I saw that today and I got very excited for you and I even followed a link to see the color.
You did? so that I could be supportive of this. And the link had 300 popups and I was never able to see the color.
Oh, well, it seems like you're not following me close enough on Instagram. I haven't been on Instagram today.
Okay. I posted about it yesterday because um as people may or may not know, I use the Panone Color of the Year as my phone background. So, this is a very exciting day for me when it's revealed and I have it for the following year. It's Last year it was Mocha Mouse. Nope. It was Mocha Moose, but it was really close to mouse, so it was me.
Yes. This year is a disappointment. In name or color? In color. It's called Cloud Dancer, and it's white.
The color is white. It is like, is there wisps of blue in there? I don't like the background they chose. It's so confusing. Well, the background they are trying to they're trying to make it better by putting it on a sky, which it is better on a sky because as it is, it's just white.
Yeah. I don't know if you're going to be able to have a full white background. You won't be able to see anything.
Okay. So, this is the issue. So, it's a little gray. Okay. It has like a teeny bit of gray.
Mhm. And this really made me go down a mental rabbit hole. Okay. You are going to be able to see because what do you mean? You'd still be able to see
that's that. No, no, this is Mocha Moose. I'm not allowed to put it on earlier. It's bad luck.
Also, like once that white, you don't even see your calendar. You're not all that stuff that's white goes away.
Well, it's a little gray. Well, we're about to find out. I know. Now, that's the thing that sent me down a rabbit hole. Okay.
I was like, "Fuck this white. That's going to look so dumb on this phone." How committed am I to tradition? And you're very committed. I'm extremely committed. Me as
a core tenant of your identity. Yeah. And I was really thinking about that last night. I was like, man, because somebody was like, "Oh, so are you just not going to do it?" And I was like, "No, I'm I have to do it."
Cuz it would be bad luck not to. Like maybe I I wouldn't go so far as to actually I don't think I think that. I don't think it would be bad luck. I think I would be like I think I would just be very sad.
Okay. like that something was ending. You lost something. I lost something. Something that I enjoy a lot and that and that like makes me happy, I look forward to is no longer a thing.
Um is is a little too much for me. Yeah. Yeah. So, um I'm going to have a a white background on the phone, but it didn't I was like, God, at what point I mean that's like my controlling nature.
Uhhuh. Huh? At what point could I say like, you know, it's okay. You don't you can put it doesn't have to be that.
I think it's funny how the mechanism to me seems very related to addiction, which is like you do this thing one time.
It gives you this feeling and you now just have to have that feeling all the time. So it's like whatever first time you did this, you liked how that felt.
Yes. And you want to use this mechanism to feel good. Yeah. Again and again. Yeah.
And I'm not saying like there's anything wrong with that. Yeah. But it feel it it does remind me of addiction.
Right. So like but I think most people would say like they have traditions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
You know, and and so when does it cross over into it being a superstition, pathological or a superstition or something that's actually not causing joy, causing suffering? Well, I don't have this opinion, but I can imagine this opinion, which is the more traditions you have, the less real estate there is for new discovery.
That's just in life, if you could imagine, like currently we have like seven holidays or some something like that where we all do kind of the same thing and that's lovely.
Yeah. If you had 364 holidays, that would leave a single day to discover something new or novel,
right? So, there's got to be a magic balance. I think it's a balance. I do think there's something really special and beautiful about consistency and commitment.
Mhm. And it's hard to do both of those things in life. So, I I it's meaningful to me. But if Yeah. If you make everything a tradition, then it's not special. But I don't think I make everything a tradition. But this is a tradition.
Mhm. And when did it start? Also, how do you get that image on your phone? Do you go to it, zoom in, take a screenshot, and then do it?
Yes. Okay. Cuz I have to use the actual thing by You probably can. [ __ ] that.
How do I spend my money at Ken Delete? Way rather. It really rolled off your tongue. And
it's a great name. All good names roll off your tongue. That's right. Starbucks.
Um, so I think it was like four or five years ago. Okay. So, you're not that in bed with it.
No, I'm not. I'm not. But it does bring me joy. It's like, oh, it's coming. I know. I know. Yeah. I can you just get a phone case that's in that color?
Oh, no. See, this is where this is where maybe I am too stubborn. It's like, yeah, that's probably a good thing to do. That's a good solve. It's like, oh, I'm still it's still part of it, but no, I need it to be the background because that's how it is and that's how it's supposed to be.
There is a level of rigidity. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to think how rigid I am. What would you give assess me out of 10
on tradition? This is a dumb question cuz it's going to be context dependent. Yeah. As everything is.
I actually don't think um you are like hyper Yeah. I'm not like hyper rigid. Well, you are. And some You go. You go, I don't really think you are. And I go, yeah, I'm not letting you go.
No, you didn't let me finish my sentence. That's the problem. I was going to say you're I don't think you're rigid at traditions.
Okay. Okay. Okay. But I think you have areas in life where you're tightly wound.
Yeah. Well, you're right. I am a That's why I'm saying it was this dumb question because it's like on one hand, I am such a creature of habit. I love routines more than anything.
Yes. You're very rigid about that. I am. I am. Now, I don't get upset though when I don't get to do it. I just do it. And when the times I can't, I I'm okay with it.
Well, no. Sometimes you're like, "H, and I didn't get to work out today." And you know, you do.
Yeah. If I go if I have to miss like it happens at least once or twice a week where I I can't work out because we have two guests and there's just no time. And I roll with that. But yeah, if it's three days in a row I can't work out, then I'm starting to
But I'm also starting to feel worse. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, yes, on the scale, no, you're not at a hundred of even that even like the routine. Some people really can't handle any deviation. Um, and then I think on tradition, uh, you don't have any. So,
so [ __ ] it. No, I'm kidding. I think you like traditions, but I don't think you're married to them. And
I do think I value novelty more than tradition, right? That's true. We're very different in that way.
I love tradition, though. I love Christmas. That's Well, you love Christmas, but you don't have to do the same thing. I mean,
no. No. In fact, we're switching the whole thing up this year. Last year was a different thing than the year before.
Exactly. But I mean, in so far as I want the lights, I want the tree. I want all that stuff. And I want to watch the same movies. You know, I've already gotten through some of the movies. Yeah. And I do feel like if it's December 24th.
Yeah. And we haven't watched Christmas Vacation. I get this feeling like I [ __ ] up,
right? Like it's a real Yeah, I had How the How'd this happen? Y I'm disappointed in myself.
Okay. So, this year your trees were delivered right? No, this year Carly went and got three trees.
Yes. You guys did not go pick out trees this year, which is the first time in 12 years of having kids that we didn't go do the thing.
Yes. And I when I But as you may remember from previous trips, it's often a disaster.
But it's but that's what's like that's fun. You're right. And when you said like, "Oh yeah, Carly got the trees." I
you had a little [ __ ] I was like, "Oh my god, you guys didn't go do that." And not not for any other reason than like, "Isn't that like a tradition?"
Right. Right. Right. Right. And so for me, I mean, that's pig day. It's Jess and I. We get our tree every year. It's It's a
If you were going to miss that, it would No, I can't miss it. Yes. And I mean Well, we can just tell people.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Peek behind the curtain. Yeah. Um we had a there was a bit of a debacle.
We had a pod not fight. No, just a a a pod complication. Yeah. A pod drama. We had a pod drama. And I'll say my perspective. Okay, great.
If that's okay. Yeah. So, yeah, we have these traditions. We do secret turkey and and Thanksgiving with everyone and it's so it's so special.
Yeah, totally. And I feel that everyone thinks that. Yes. And I They do. Yeah. Absolutely.
So, okay, that's great. Now, I have like so many traditions. You have about seven or eight
during that weekend specifically. It's my favorite weekend of the of the year. Yeah.
And it starts off with mom's giving. Yeah. Then it's our pods giving. So special. Then I have Black Friday tradition with Cali at Brentwood Country Mart. Yeah.
Where we get all the sales. Well, it's where all the deals are. I've been told by some experts that there's not a lot of deals at that.
I'm an expert in Black Friday. Nobody is. Nobody else is. Um, so we go there and that's like a beautiful fun day I have with Cali. You know, Cali is a family. So, it's everyone's like just making decisions to put that aside and make time for one another. Y
and then culminating Saturday with Jess pig day. We go to Home Depot. I don't know if we're allowed to go to Home Depot anymore, but we do and we are. And we get our tree and then we give birth to it. Yeah.
And I do. Um, and then we put it up. He puts the lights up. And now we're in Christmas.
And now we're in Christmas zone and and we're putting up all this stuff and then we do a special lunch normally at Houston's and it's a whole thing. It's a whole day. It's a beautiful day.
Yeah. And then this year, understandably, of course, um you guys were like, "We want to maybe go to Nashville."
Yeah. I sent a text to everybody. Yes. to the to the whole group that said like "Hey
22ish pe well not in the kids included, but they weren't on the text." But anyways, a lot of people
and it said like, "We're tossing around the idea of going to Nashville for Thanksgiving. We'll pay for everyone." Very generous. We'll pay for everyone to go. Basically, like how do people feel about that?
Yeah. And [ __ ] Okay. And then I made a grave error. I responded very quickly. I'm also very on top of my phone.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I responded very quickly. I can't go because I have traditions with Callie and Jess. And by the way, normally we do our pods giving on Thursday on on Thanksgiving. Yeah. And I was like, I have traditions with Cali and Jess Friday and Saturday.
So I can't go. Um but if it works for everyone else, have fun. Go do it. Have fun.
And a thumbs up. Okay, now I'm going to stop outing now from here because I want to talk about just us. But like then somebody responded immediately.
Uhhuh. And said, "Yes, oh my god, this is great. I'm so happy." And I got real sad
die. Like something like really died inside of me. Yeah. And um it was a very outsized reaction.
Uhhuh. But it was very very I wasn't like I wasn't being dramatic. I was feeling
core fear was ignited. Abandonment. I'll be alone. They'll I'm disposable. I I thought this meant the same thing to everyone as it does.
Everyone else is white. I'm brown somehow. I did not. It wasn't that time. It was a little bit of pilgrims and Indians situation. But um no, I it was just like wait, why wouldn't this why wouldn't we what like it it really it was very destabilizing.
Mhm. And then I knew I was like, well, I can't I can't do this where I'm just like so upset on my own and like resentful of everyone because they've done this.
Yeah. cuz they've decided to go even though I said you can go which was my fault.
Thumbs up. No, be nicer. I'm being pretty nice, I think. Okay. Okay. And then I
I've only added one thing to the story and it was thumbs up twice. Okay. And then and then I I really couldn't do it. So I responded back because then then people other people are chiming in.
Uhhuh. And I said, I I'm gonna be honest. This makes me so sad. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm gonna remove myself from the chain.
Yeah. And that was a self-p protection. That was like I can't keep seeing these texts come in today.
That's fine. Um and then I removed myself from the chain and then there was then it was a drama because pod drama. Yeah, there was pod drama because I was very upset and then people were upset that I was upset but they still wanted to go on the trip and then you wanted to cancel the trip and you were mad at me and
Well, I wondered when you were going to jump in. Well, just I just want to say from my perspective, I sent this text
and then I didn't look at that chain. I missed everything. By the time I'm alerted that this pod drama is going on, Kristen is said, "Oh no, Monica removed herself from the chain." And I'm like, I don't even know what that means.
Sure. You're not very techsavvy. No, as we know. And then so I then kind of go through now I'm seeing the whole thing pretty far after it all happened. And then I just wrote, you know what, guys? Scrap it. No problem. Let's just We'll go back to
I wasn't on that. Oh yeah. I sent it to everyone. I said, well, okay. not a good idea. So, just forget it. And then, yeah, that caused its own thing cuz people were excited to go. And then you and I had an issue cuz you're like, "No, you have to."
Well, and I was like, "I'm not going to do anything that prevents you from being with us on Thanksgiving."
Well, well, I was mad at you. You were You're You're skipping some steps. Yeah. I was mad at you.
You were mad at me. I was mad at you for not being honest the first text. Yes. Cuz I felt like it ended up trapping Yeah, you feel like I I trapped people, which which I did do
unintentionally. I thought the right that I was doing the right thing and then immediately I was like I I
was wrong and I owed you an apology and I'll still say I'm sorry is I was like that felt like a test.
I know. And it that was the part that I was like I got my own trigger is just like I have certain people in my life our life that
will test you like they need to and I and I that's a big one for me. So now I was like well this was a trap like you said go everyone have fun.
Yeah. You got you got worked up about that piece and I and it was not I was not trying to do that. I was not trying to test it. Do you know what they didn't have? Which you might have thought I had, which I really didn't have. I had no no part of me was like, "Oh, [ __ ] Now we can't go to Nashville." I didn't have that. I was like, "Okay, cool." I floated the idea. It backfired. Let's just we'll stick with the normal thing, right?
And then my family will go to Nashville on Friday or whatever. Yeah. I didn't I didn't I didn't even
like I wasn't upset to cancel the idea, but I'm I would I understand why that would make you sad and upset. You love it there. You want to go there. You want to spend your time.
Also, several members of our pod have never been there. Yes. So, I was like, "Oh, this is great. This will be a one. We'll be able to get everyone together." And
well, and then that was all there was also layers. I mean, it's so layered and so complicated, but I, you know, you then, you know, we record the next day
and we're mad at each other and you, but I I would I was never upset with you or Kristen,
right? I mean, this is unfair to everyone else, but I wasn't. I was like, "Oh, of course they they are just offering up something nice. They're just floating it. I felt so sad when it was like just yeses across the board after I had immediately said I can't go. That was the painful part. It had nothing to do with the trip. The trip great. Like
yeah, of of course you guys want to go do that. I would want to go if I didn't have these things. So the problem is then like I come in, you're upset with me because of this potent this entrapment and I am not upset with you but then I'm like oh he's being so he's so mad at me.
Yeah. Yeah. For being hurt. Yeah. And I'm like where's the empathy? I'm so sad.
I know. I know. We worked it out. We worked it out. And then the solution was we had Thanksgiving on Wednesday.
It was perfect. No problem. It was [ __ ] great. It was perfect. And then we all flew at 7:00 a.m.
Yeah. The rest of the group went and had a wonderful time. It was so fun. Uh it was it was such a nice 3 days cuz
as much as I absolutely love summer and you're there, you know, I'm on the boat every it's like boat to breakfast, boat to dinner, but activity.
Yeah. You're moving around. Let's go downtown to Bricktops. Let's go out to this restaurant. Well, with 22 people, we're not going to a restaurant.
Yeah. And it's winter, so it's not warm out. There's no boating to be done. We're not even going to ride the motorcycles that are there. So, we just sat in a house for 3 days, all of us,
playing games. I'm getting jealous. Sorry, I'll back off the details. I I made these choices, but that's awesome.
We did um Die Hard first night Christmas movie. Never seen it. A lot of people hadn't seen it, and everyone was like, "Isn't that a Christmas movie?" So, someone picked Die Hard. And then we did um Beverly Hills Cup. Oh,
and then we did Scrooged. Nice. So, it was like games all day, order food, and then movie at night.
Love it. Very cozy. Pool was broke, the hot tub was broke, you know, tons. I was like in, you know.
Yeah. You were in a fixer mode. Sauna work, so we sauna. Nice. And we ate fun food and we did a lot of fun stuff. That's awesome. It was great. And you were missed. It was such a fun time.
I I I'm sad I couldn't be there. Yeah. Um, but I'm also happy I got to do all the things.
On top of the being excluded fear, I would imagine you're also like already Nashville's this thing. It's like I'm changing everything. I'm moving there. I'm quitting. Nashville. Nashville. N now now Thanksgiving's in Nashville. Like I'm sure on top of the other anxiety about Nashville. It's like now we're now our tradition got moved to Nashville.
Yeah. Or was that not in the mix? It was. It's not the Nashville specific piece. Uh-huh.
It's the everything is changing at a pace I can't currently handle right now. Right. Right.
Um and and it's it's too overwhelming for me. But then I had to work through that.
Yeah. And I did and it's okay. And change is okay. And you gave me a huge gift which it never occurred to me you could do this. So we had a full Thanksgiving on Wednesday.
Yeah. But then when we got to Nashville, Hannah, sweet Hannah, most beautiful singer in the world. Yes,
she had made a whole other Thanksgiving. So, we had two full-blown sit down insane meal, eat all day leftovers. I'm like, this should be a double
I know. Should be a double day holiday. And then we all flew home on Southwest on Sunday, one of the busiest travel days of the year.
Yeah, very busy. And somehow it shook out where almost all 21 of us ended up in a middle seat.
Oh my. Wow. I, as you know, got sick. Yeah, you were sick. Kristen got sick. Lincoln got sick.
Oh yeah, those pack flights, man. Yeah, like when you walk on, you're like, "Okay, gonna feel like [ __ ] probably for 3 days."
Yeah, that'll happen. That'll happen anyway. Okay, so that was Thanksgiving. That was our podum.
Pod drama. Um, the second thing I wanted to say, it was ding ding ding to Colombia. Um because Cali went to Columbia as I already said and and someone she went to Colombia with was at this event I was at last night. This Allison Roman book event.
Yes. That was very Were you like the host or MC or something? No, I was not. Kate Berlant uh was the moderator, I guess we'll say. Sure.
Yeah. Master of Ceremony. Yeah. Motorcycle club. And uh and it was so fun. She's hysterical.
Capland is so funny. Yes. And and so is Allison. That was the comedy show we were going to when I saw the [ __ ] the [ __ ] um
pipe. Whoa, that's a ding- ding. That's wild. It is. Um anyway, so that was so fun. And then we went to a um they had rented out this little like bar restaurant thing after
and it was just really lovely. But okay, I had to check my laptop. Ooh, I wouldn't have done that.
I I I had like a real It's like I don't know what to do. That's my life. It really felt like I was like giving a child.
Yeah. And then during the talk I was like thinking about it and I was like what if something happens to it or someone else checked their laptop switched?
I don't let my kids touch my laptop. I don't let Kristen touch my laptops. Like everything I've written is on there.
I know no one's allowed to [ __ ] touch that. I was very scared but for Alison I did it.
Yeah. Yeah, I was even in a situation where I'd brought my laptop. Oh, I was going to go to Zancoo.
Oh, and do a little research with my laptop. So, weird place to set up shop. Like, you're always at a nice place.
And our Zancoo is really something. It's like a bus stop. Yeah, that Why would you pick that?
Cuz I was in the mood for Zancoo. They do chicken, right? They got a They got a tarna. [ __ ] it's so good.
It's really good. Um, but I had brought my uh laptop and then I was like once I got there and I looked at the the terminal I was like I want to eat in I'm just going to get take out and then I got out of the car and I was going to have my computer in the car
and I was like going to be able to see my car like I walked halfway. I was like I keep my eye on the car the entire time. No, I don't even feel comfortable. I got to hold my laptop while I'm in. So I went back to the car, grabbed my laptop and held it like a blankie
and then I did do my stuff in there and it was great. Oh, you did. You pivoted. Okay,
I did. I was in there for like three hours. Wow. Anyway, that was great. Buy Allison's book, Something from Nothing. It's really good. And I hope Max doesn't listen to this, but Callie was like, I'm buying her book for Max for Christmas.
Oh, sorry. And then I said, you know what? I had already said that on my verbal gift guide on the fact check.
So, you're a poser. Yeah. Okay. That's what I said to her. Okay. I used Cali as a resource. I know for the Netflix thing.
No. Oh, really? Interesting. I use someone as a resource too. Okay. CBD. Okay. Do you think Colton Scriber sounds like a character name in something? I do. I don't know what genre like Old West movie or something. Oh, to me it's like um Colton like detective
detective scrier. Could he be a detective in the Old West? Sure. Like at the OK Corral or one of those towns
we can combine. Okay. Definitely. Okay. You said Casper wasn't successful. The Friendly Ghost.
Yeah. Oh, Casper's financial performance has varied. Oh. Oh, the films with the mattress company. Oh, Casper mattresses.
Casper the movie. Make Casper 1995. Made over $287 million at the worldwide box office.
Okay, that's pretty good. More than any movie I've ever been in made. 102.7 million domestically and 187.6 million internationally.
Pretty good. Pretty good. They didn't make a sequel though, but that's pretty good for $95.
That's also like everything needed a sequel. Yeah, perhaps. Now, how long do cats sleep?
Ah, 12 to 16 hours. Okay. And if you're a male lion, 21 hours. How long? It's crazy that male lions are so jacked cuz they don't do anything but sleep and be
18 to 20 18 to 20 hours. They have to conserve energy for activities like hunting, mating, and defending their territory.
But they don't even hunt. Well, that's They haven't made, you know, they don't hunt.
Really? No. Their m their manses are too big, so they can't hide. So, literally, the women do all the hunting and then you stroll over as the male and you eat the hell out of the thing first up.
Yeah. It says the females do all the really hard work killing the majority of prey.
Yes. The only time they're needed is when the hyenas surround the carcass and then they'll go kill a bunch of hyenas. And when you need them, you need them.
So they do deliver. They can [ __ ] mow through hyenas. I've seen some incredible fights where like one male lion takes out nine hyenas. They're so strong.
They That's all they do. And then they fight other males that roam in trying to take over the pride. But then they just sleep, [ __ ] and then eat the food that they didn't catch.
Wow. Pretty good racket. How come I'm not a lion? Well, cuz you're a human. Well,
yeah, mostly. No, I mean in in the game of like what's our animal? Why am I not a lion?
You think you're like a lioness? Well, I mean I want to be and no one's picking that. No, I'm not a male lion because I think I kill.
Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So, I just wonder like why no one ever thought of me as that. I also have a very long mane,
which makes you a male lion though. That's maybe why you're not a lion. It sounds like a good racket to me.
I know. Although I don't like sleep. I wouldn't want to sleep 21 hours a day. I don't want to miss everything.
I love sleeping. I have FOMO too much. What if something fun happens on the Serengeti?
You won't care cuz you're so like one of my buddies killed a bunch of hyenas. I was like, "Fuck, I want to I would love to have seen that."
Yeah, that's why you're not one. No, I'm a lioness. I'm a female lion. You're a female lion. I'm a male lion. I guess if it's either or, but I need to be out and about and hunting.
No one wants No one thinks I'm a male or a female lion. They think I'm a chinchilla with no bones.
Floating rib cage. I just That's It's like It's so offensive. Or no rib cage. I can't remember what's going on. It's so squishy.
That's cuz they're made for cuddling. You don't want to be made for cuddling. They're not. They're made for squ like ew. Speaking of, okay, so many people I have run into who listen to Armchair Anonymous. Every Armcherry brings up the rat story that has really struck a nerve understandably.
People cannot get over the rat in the water bottle. And now I So I have that uh um
tea kettle, tea kettle, electric tea kettle. I have that very one that's next to us in my house and it's been acting a little funny. Okay.
And like sometimes it's like spilling and then the white it seems strange and I got it in my head that there's a rat in the stem.
Oh Monica, the stem is like a quarter inch thick. I know, but I think the rat is able to get in there.
Maybe an octopus could be in there, but not a rat. I mean, a chinchilla could if it can disable its ribs. It still has its jawbones and stuff. It's limited.
I think there's a rat in the stem. I really do. You really do. Yeah. I like try to stick this like straw in there.
You're crazy sometimes. That's madness. You can't look at that stem and convince yourself there's a rat inside. That's just Look at the stem.
Ah, it's in. There's no You can't put straw in that stem. That's what we thought. How did the rack get in that water bottle? But it got in. And then
she left some part out of that story. She had the lid off for a while. She probably had the lid off, but still that's still a small
The fact that she was drinking out of it for a while is insane. Okay. I feel like I would definitely be able to taste.
She said she remember she had like [ __ ] rat hair on her teeth. Come on. She had rats.
I hate to judge our armcheries, but No, no, we're not judging her. That was a great story. But also, it taught me a lesson that rats can get in these spaces and they're in the stem of my tea kettle.
You should be way more worried about getting a 28 in butane tank up your butt. That also happened in Armchair Anonymous. But are you worried about that?
No, because I have control over that and and physics has control over a rat in that stem. So,
I did leave it to physics. Yeah, I tried to stick this little like very tiny that wouldn't even fit
brush in there and it did feel like it was hitting something. Yeah, the sides of the super narrow tube.
Anyway, um I just So, you going to throw it away and get a new one? I think. And are you going to keep it in a ziplockc bag so you know that a rat can't get in it?
I should put a bag on top. Okay. But that's ugly, so I can't. A rat can get through a bag, too. But then yeah, you'd be able to tell.
Yeah. It couldn't reseal a Ziploc bag once it got inside. If you saw that the Ziploc was unsealed, you'd know you had a rat in
unsealed or not a part. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh, did the Saw franchise make a billion dollars? Yes. 1.1 billion worldwide.
Worldwide. Is Ebola rare? Yeah. It's considered not even Yes. Not not not any numbers out of 100,000. just yeah,
it's considered a rare but severe disease. That's what he said. He was right. Um, there are no active Ebola cases in the US as of the latest information, just FYI.
So, that's good news. Currently, okay. Is Savannah considered the most haunted city in the United States? Yes. widely considered the most haunted city in America due to its long history of tragedy such as fires, epidemics, and battles which have left behind many unsettled spirits. Other cities frequently mentioned include New Orleans and Austin.
Oh, I've not had any ghost activity on my trips to Austin. Also Salem, Massachusetts, obviously
that makes sense. Um, but yeah, on all these sites, Savannah. So, do you think you got some of your fear complex by spending so much time in your childhood in Savannah? No, because I didn't know that then.
You weren't aware of the Thank God apparitions and spirits. Yeah. What if your par your grandparents had any run-ins?
Are Indians big ghost folks or No. No. They're like reincarnation, which is great.
Yeah. It's positive. It's not. Yeah. And you don't linger. He's come back as a squirrel.
Well, I liked I liked this at my aunt's memorial during the um cremation. There's so much emphasis on this is
this it's just this physical body that's gone now but that's all it is. Yeah. Exactly. It's just a vessel like the the spirit is still here
thriving. Yeah. So I Is it here or is it elsewhere? I just don't know. Yeah. It's too exact.
I'm not sure where we're going. It's not a science. Yeah. Um okay real quick. I think we can do it quick. We're gonna take a test.
Oh, fine. The morbid curiosity test. This is on Colton's website. Okay. I'm gonna ask you. Okay.
Okay. If a head transplant was possible, I would want to watch the procedure. Now, we got the same situation. Strongly disagree. Disagree. Somewhat disagree. Somewhat agree. Agree. Strongly agree.
Agree. Okay. I think the supernatural is an interesting topic. Disagree. Oh. If I lived in medieval Europe, I would be interested in attending a public execution. A
Yeah, agree. I am curious. I wouldn't want to, but I would want to, right? I am curious about crime and enjoy reading detailed news accounts about murders and other violent crimes.
Sure. Agree. Yeah, it's fun. That's funny, though, because you don't like it when your mom calls in is like, "This person's dead." I don't like it because I don't like what feels like my obligation, which is to express a b bunch of sympathy over someone I'm just learning was even alive.
That's my issue. It's like, why are you telling me this? I don't even know this person. Am I supposed to join you in
Well, she just wants to feel like she wants to talk about it cuz it's upsetting.
She just has something fun to report. She Well, I think she older women love reporting these illnesses and these deaths. Everyone's mom I know does this. Does your mom not do this?
Um it's a very mom thing. Yeah. Not really. Once you pass 65 as a mom, you're going to start keeping your ear to the street about anyone who's got any kind of disease.
But I think it's to it's like it's Have you heard Mary's son? I'm like, "No, I don't even know who Mary is." So no, I don't know Mary's son.
My mom does that for sure. She Yeah, I think it's pretty universal. But I think it's because she's It's like It's like gossip. is sort of that same like it's spreading information in an attempt to like help.
Sure. But you know, also maybe your mom is freaked. Your mom when she hears Mary's son is dealing with something upsetting like it's upsetting to her. It might not be upsetting to you.
That is the assumption I should make and I wish I were a better person. My what I really think is she hears it and she's like, "Oh my god, I can't wait to tell everyone." No,
I think that's what really That's how my mom says it. I feel like too. Yeah. I mean, your mom's just not doing it, right? I think your mom's not doing it to you.
If you ask Kristen right now, her mom does the same thing. Like half the calls are about people she's never heard of that have a sickness.
It's a bizarre activity. If I just called you like, "Hey, do you hear a guy in Bangladesh lost his arm today?" It's like,
I would be like I'd be like, "Oh my god." Like I would hear that and say like, "That's horrible." And I would think that you were telling me because you thought it was horrible and you wanted to share it.
I do. My mom thinks it's horrible. Yeah, for sure. But she I think she's also so horny to spread all the information as quickly as she can.
Okay. Speaking as the only woman in this room. I think um it's more like this makes me feel unsettled and like I need to I need to share that feeling so I don't feel so alone in this unsettled. I think there's probably a great evolutionary explanation. I think it was probably women's job in whatever capacity to be monitoring the health of everyone and reporting on it and pulling resources. And I think that was the domain.
Yeah. But that's how I feel. If I hear something horrible happened, I'm like I do want to tell people, but it's not like cuz guys I have a story. It's like this horrible horrible things happened. It's hard for me. setting and you want to share in that.
Yeah. And I want I guess I kind of am looking for like comfort and that the world isn't it or I don't know. I'm
It's interesting and and I think a guy's first thought is like I'm not telling anyone that like oh so and so's got gang green. I think like they wouldn't want anyone to know
and no one's going to enjoy hearing that. I I just have a completely different instinct
which is almost like don't tell anyone. Yeah, that's weird. I mean that to me Yeah, it's different.
It's different. It's different. But I I just think you could give some benefit of the doubt that it's not like oh my god, I got a story to tell as opposed to like I really don't like this about life.
Okay, but let me be very specific. I'm not judgmental of that instinct because I think all the things we're supposed to do, the mechanism that motivates us to do it is a reward. I think both things are true. I think it's serving a purpose. Clearly, it did historically that these moms would be spreading this information and I think they get a dopamine hit from the sharing of it, which is how the body encourages them to continue that practice. So, it's like I'm not judgmental of it, but I do think there is a horniness.
I don't know that that's fair. Okay, let's keep going. Okay. I would be curious to see how an autopsy is performed. I have in the past been curious and I've watched one. So, I would have to say I agree. I don't ever want to see one again.
Agree or strongly? Just agree. I would be interested in attending or watching a video of an exorcism.
Disagree. If I lived in ancient Rome, I would be interested in attending a gladiatorial fight.
Strongly agree. I would be interested in watching a documentary on motives behind real murders.
Agree. I am interested in seeing how limb amputation works. Um, what's the middle one on that one? There's somewhat disagree. Disagree. Strong agree. Somewhat agree. Agree. Strongly agree.
Somewhat agree. Okay. I find the occult interesting. Uh, agree. If I saw a street fight break out and knew I could not intervene, I would try to watch it.
Yeah. Strongly. Agree. My favorite part of a crime show is learning about why the killer did what he did.
Yeah. Agree. I would like to see how bodies are prepared for funerals. Agree. A documentary on voodoo would interest me.
Disagree. I would be curious enough to watch a duel if I lived in the Wild West.
Yeah, strongly agree. I would be interested in watching an interview with an imprisoned serial killer talking about his crimes.
Agree. I think the preservation of bodies like in taxiderermy or mummification is interesting.
Agree. I am curious how a Ouija board works. Uh, strongly disagree. I prefer violent movies and TV shows to be uncensored.
Agree. Being a criminal profiler who studies the personality of murderers would be an interesting job. Um, the middle one
somewhat. Yeah, somewhat dis somewhat agree. Okay. I am curious what the deadliest toxin in the world would do to the body.
Agree. I think witchcraft would be an interesting topic to learn about. Disagree.
I am curious what a bottle looked like. I already know. I'm curious what a battle looked like in the Middle Ages.
Oh, strongly agree. I'm curious about the minds of violent people. Agree. Okay, here are your scores. One is the minimum score and six is the maximum score.
4.7. Well, it's multiple things. So, your overall morbid curiosity score is 4.42.
Okay. Okay. Your paranormal score 2.33. Yeah. Your minds of dangerous people score 4.83. Your body violation bodily injury score 4.83. Your violence score 5.67. Wish I would have got six.
Uh, then I think you cheated. I didn't cheat. I'm just kidding. I know. I know you like violence.
Yeah. All right. Well, that's cool. So, you're Let me ask you something, though. When you say you like violence, are you turning your nose up to it compared to serial killer interest?
No. Do you think some are worse than others? Well, I think um I don't think worse are better.
Okay. I think they're different, though. They're modeling out different Yeah. They're modeling out different things.
Fears. Yeah. So, I have a huge fear of being in a physical violent situation with another man.
So, I'm always going to be interested in But you're also you're you have a fear of it, but you're also like you're kind of attracted to it.
Yeah. Yeah. Like most things, I'm afraid of the motorcycle. Mhm. Uh speed. But you started fights.
I mean, first of all, yes. like in junior high just straight up started some fights.
As an adult, I don't I would say I haven't started fights. I just have such a clear category. I've seen guys walk into the bar and they want to fight.
They're there to fight, right? I've not ever walked into the bar cuz I want to fight. I walk into the bar, I see some behavior I don't like.
The sheriff in me tells me, "Oh, I've got to protect everyone from this energy everyone hates."
Right. And then I end up in a fight with that person. Yeah. And I think some people could read that as starting a fight as opposed to leaving.
Sure. But I would I wouldn't abandon the people that I thought were being put out by this energy. This happened perfectly on New Year's Eve one year. Everyone was in town for a car show and we went out to Dell's this bar that Scotty and I went and sang karaoke at all the time.
Mhm. It's like 1:00 a.m. on New Year's Eve. These guys walk in. They were at They weren't at the bar all night. They just came in. They shoved two different guys just randomly immediately on their way to the bar.
Then one bumped into me aggressively and I turned around and said something and then Scotty noticed that was going on and saw he had a friend so he kind of got by the friend and then the friend just immediately swang at Scotty. So like those dudes just they rolled in. They were like gangbanger dudes. They rolled in to beat someone up.
Yeah. And um in that situation, in that bar, I think, oh, Scotty and I are best suited to deal with these two people. Of all the people that are at this bar, the other two guys that got shoved just got like shoved to the ground. Couldn't do anything about it.
But what about just like the bouncer? There's no bouncer at at Dell's. It's just a people. I mean, sure, by the time the police got called, two people would have been punched in the nose and they would have been gone. And yeah,
so I've seen enough of those situations living in bars for a decade that yeah, in those situations I'm like, "Okay, well, I'll be the guy."
These two are fighting somebody in this bar. I guess it's also the type of bar maybe.
Sure. It's not like a fancy but not even fancy. Like I'm thinking of like the college bars, like they're rough and tumble.
Uhhuh. And no one in my group was like fighting or looking for fights or being a like vigilant about the fights.
There might have been more fights where I came from. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Like definitely the bar we drank at in Detroit, there was a few fights a week.
Mhm. Every Saturday night there was a fight at the bar. Yeah. I guess that's all in part of it, right? Like your bars are ones where there are fights. Those are the ones you're picking.
For sure. We're all We're all victims of our childhood. So, it's like it's all Yeah. The bars I drank at probably the vast majority of people at them, their parents were divorced. They grew up like I did. That's why for whatever reason that bar appealed to them,
right? That's the kind of bar they got taken to as a kid. Mhm. Like it all makes sense. It's just like, yeah, we are all similar and we find each other. And then the people who went to country clubs, they're at a country club drinking and those people don't fight at the country club.
I doubt it. Well, they have different kinds of fights, I guess. Sure. And I'd rather just throw down than the
Yeah. other version. Yeah. Well, 4 something. I already forgot 516 violence. Yeah.
Questions about this episode
Who speaks in "Coltan Scrivner (on morbid curiosities) | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard"?
Dax Shepard (Host), Monica Padman (Host), Coltan Scrivner (Guest), Brad (last name unknown) (Guest), Jared (last name unknown) (Guest).
What is "Coltan Scrivner (on morbid curiosities) | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard" about?
Coltan Scrivner, an expert in morbid curiosity and the psychology of horror and true crime, discusses the reasons behind humanity's fascination with morbid topics. Through his book "Morbidly Curious," he explores how these interests potentially serve as mechanisms for self-protection and coping with fear.
What is mentioned in this Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard episode?
382 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Colton Scriber, Morbid Curiosity, Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away, Psychology, True Crime, Thanksgiving. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.
How long is "Coltan Scrivner (on morbid curiosities) | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard"?
The episode runs 2 h 26 min; the transcript is about 30,655 words in 841 timestamped sections.
More from Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated February 22, 2026.