ASM055 Tithing, Creativity, and Tip Of Tongue Syndrome

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tithing creativity and tip of tongue syndrome all that and more on this week's episode of ask science mike

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welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life and if i seem awfully happy and relaxed it's because i just finished the last major rewrite of my book oh my gosh i don't think i've ever been happier you guys it's gonna be a great show and a great week so what do you say let's get it started [Music] hey science mike my question for you is about giving i know a lot of churches recommend a tithe or 10 percent of your income to be given to the church and i wanted to know if there's any science behind that and whether or not the science correlates with what the bible has to say and whether or not giving actually affects our brain and our outlook on life i can't wait to hear your response i'm excited for everything the show's doing and thank you very much tithing is one of those areas where science and the bible get along really well it's phenomenal the research is very clear and it's not all good news for preachers who like to talk about money though so let's talk a little bit about tithing if you aren't familiar with the idea uh there's a teaching in the christian tradition comes out of a teaching and in judaism of giving 10 of your income to the church specific percentage yeah okay i'm not a flat tax guy because 10 creates different amounts of hardship for different income levels but i digress regardless of the percentage let's step back because there's not a lot of scientific data on tithing but there is scientific data and studies on giving and generosity and here's what you find when you look at the science giving makes you feel good in fact when you give when you're generous you get all the kind of release of neurotransmitters that are associated with rewards and pleasure with a friendship and good food and sex those same chemicals get released when you give in fact it's so neurologically potent to be generous that the act of giving can reduce the effects of clinical depression and chronic stress wow you ever feel down you ever feel overwhelmed it turns out being generous can help with that now i was listening to an npr piece which will be linked in the show notes on ask sciencemic.com and two researchers were talking and i'd like to read a couple of quotes basically of what they were finding and what their study was so the first researcher says we recruited a sample of students in the morning hours on campus gave them either five or twenty dollars to spend that day and simply ask them to spend the money either on themselves or someone else and then we call them back in the evening to find out how they were feeling and what we found was that the people who were randomly assigned to spend the money on others were significantly happier than those who spent on themselves here's the second researcher the interesting thing about generosity is that it's a double-edged sword giving up things can be painful but it can also make people happy so on can and other scientists are studying the conditions under which generosity fuels happiness one thing they found is being forced to be generous is not a good way to make people happy so if you read that study and then there's other studies and there are stacks of studies that show when you choose to be generous when you choose to give it has remarkable psychological and health benefits but when you are coerced or forced to give it is detrimental forced generosity undermines the neurological rewards of giving giving in response to guilt or pressure undermines those rewards so if you're tithing out of a sense of obligation you're not going to gain any benefit from that you're just not going to if you're tithing because you're pressured to tithe or guilt is placed on you you're not going to receive a benefit it turns out that it's not just god who appreciates a cheerful giver but your own brain as well if you're going to give give joyfully and if you can't give joyfully in terms of the health of your brain it's actually better not to give at all our next question came in via email and it reads hey mike i figured i'd love a fun one since you probably get lots of deep science philosophy existential questions my question is this what is happening neurologically when you are in the middle of a sentence and suddenly can't remember a word or you just lose the sentence entirely so the whole tip of your tongue slash what was i going to say phenomenon thanks well thank you i have noticed the questions of late have been deep and philosophical and existential and this is a more fun question unfortunately science is not entirely clear what's happening neurologically with taut syndromes actually tip of tongue syndrome is studied and documented that way so i just saved you some googling if you want to dig deeper instead of trying to figure out what to say just google tot syndrome t-o-t syndrome and the problem is language happens on such a fine-grained neurological scale that it's too small in the brain for us to see exactly what's happening if we use an fmri machine on someone who's having taught symptoms we simply see the activation and activity in their left temporal lobe but we don't get to subdivide and see what parts of the left temporal lobe it's just it's too fine grained a mystery now we have studied it enough to get some clues for example we know that tot syndrome is most likely to happen with words you use less often names you use less often or other bits of it you know addresses phone numbers whatever of things you just don't think about very often so there's some association with less frequent use which would also make us think this is related to what less deep neurological connections you're effectively those those words are getting on the edge of your verbal map because you use them less studies interestingly enough also show that tot syndrome is more frequent with people who are bilingual and researchers think that may be because they have twice as many words to remember and they use words less frequently and they have a greater probability of knowing more words with very similar sounds because people trying to cope with pot syndrome will often go through a list of words with very similar beginning sounds trying to find the one that they want now we've also found that tot syndrome is linked to age as you get older it happens more frequently to anxiety if you're anxious or nervous you're more likely to experience top syndrome and fatigue when you're tired you're more likely to experience tot syndrome i know that happens with me and public speaking or live versions of the podcast if i've had too many airplanes back to back i'm more likely to get tongue-tied up on stage and get stuck and be unable to find a word but we don't know exactly what's happening at the neurological level now some odd techniques have come up and how to deal with tip of tongue syndrome one study found that clinching your right fist can help you find the word you're looking for and of course that's going to be for people whose left temporal lobe is responsible for their speech which is most people if that's not you you could try squeezing your left hand instead you're creating some cross hemispherical brain action that may release that tension and you can also try listing as many words or details about what you're trying to remember as you can so if it's a name and you know the first letter is m try to think about more details of that person what they were wearing the last time you saw them what kind of car they drive even try saying several names that begin with the same letter in repetition uh mark you know mary uh michael michael his name is michael and that can help and for for any word listing similar word sounds but the most important thing you can do is stay calm because this is an interesting self-reinforcing phenomenon because you get anxious and embarrassed because you can't remember the word or the name which makes it more difficult to remember the word of the name so take a moment calm down the way i do it i actually don't even try to remember the word i move on to something else and by completely undercutting anxiety that way more often than not i find i can find the word i was looking for it just comes to me within seconds of me forgetting about trying to find that word tot syndrome it's a wild very common thing not well understood neurologically but there is hope it's relatively easy to mitigate [Music] [Applause] do you ever dread opening your email inbox because you know when you do you're gonna be flooded with messages you're there's gonna be newsletters there's gonna be sales information there's going to be coupons and discount codes and facebook notifications and tweet notifications and on and on and on and on and who wants to take the effort to go through their email with all that junk there's an answer i have found a product that i love and use myself called sanebox and sanebox is a service that scans your email and takes all that stuff out i'm not talking about spam google and whoever you use now is great with spam i'm talking about messages that are actually for you but you don't want right now what you really want in your inbox is messages from your friends families and colleagues things that you need to take action on or things you need to know today well sanebox will keep your inbox to just that while taking all those other messages and setting them aside in another folder that you can review later i love this service i've had a great experience with it and i'm so thankful that sanebox is sponsoring this show but not only are they sponsoring they've got a special offer just for my listeners if you'd like to get control of your inbox using the same email service and same email program you use today just magically fix the clutter go to sanebox.com sciencemike not only will you get a 14 day free trial with no risk and no obligation to try sanebox but you'll also get 25 off any subscription just for listening to this show i love sanebox and i think you'll love it too i recommend it to all my friends it's a great product and i'm so thankful that they sponsor ask science mike [Music] our next question comes from the email inbox and it reads hey science mike my name is logan and i'm a junior cello performance major at lee university and first let me say thank you for your work both on ask science mike and on the liturgists your work has really helped me to navigate through my deconstruction phase which is really difficult when you attend a private christian university because the calluses always seem to be getting thicker my question is about clinical depression and the creative process i struggle with clinical depression but as an artist especially as a classical musician you always hear stories of great composers and how their struggles with mental illness and other adversities inspired them to create beautiful and transcendent art i want my depression to end but i'm afraid that it will have a negative effect on the art i'm trying to make i'm wondering if you might be able to address the science behind depression and creativity and the correlations between them and offer a fresh perspective on how one is to navigate through this tension again thank you for your work and your willingness to talk to people on an honest human level logan well logan the first thing i'd like to encourage you to do if you haven't already is go all the way back to the beginning of the liturgist podcast and listen to episode one because we spend almost an hour might even be more than an hour talking about the science of creativity it's links with depression and techniques you can take to be more creative in case you don't have an hour here's some high points from that discussion as well as things i've learned recently there is absolutely a link between highly creative people and depression and other mental illness one study found that riders are more than 120 percent more likely to commit suicide than the general population that's kind of frightening news i'm a writer now why is this why do we have these stories of you know vincent van gogh and torture artists creating beautiful work well the earliest attempts to probe that didn't use very big data sets they were deep but basically anecdotal and as we've moved to larger data sets and and more rigorous studies we actually have found some link between creativity and depression and other forms of mental illness bipolar disorder or schizophrenia this may be due to the nature of creativity itself creativity happens in parts of the brain called the association cortices and these parts of the brain create connections between unexpected pieces of information and experiences that don't seem to really correlate with one another the more creative you are the more active your association cortices and basically the more wide open you view the world you filter reality less than most people and guess what parts of reality are dark look i'm a writer i love writing but in the process of viewing the world in a way that helps me tell the story of the human experience means i notice darker things than many of my friends not only that but there is absolutely a link between the best art i create the best writing i'm capable of and the darkest moments of my life one of the most red and shared pieces i've ever written was about my brush with suicide now there's hope it seems in many ways it's not actually depression that creates great art but the way we cope with and recover from depression and darkness often our great creative output comes not during a time of suffering but after and so i'll do what i do so frequently when talking about suffering and that's quote victor frankel if you want to be more creative find a redemptive perspective on the suffering you've gone through and that can create these golden ages of very high quantity and quality of creative output don't worry that as you become happier you won't be able to produce because guess what life is always going to have difficult moments you will always have things you can learn from them you can always transform that into good art i'm a pretty happy person i've had my times of darkness and my time of doubt that you all know so well if you listen to the show and have heard my story was one of the darkest times in my life but i'm able to make art from it and i can lean back into those times and i can i can put my toes into the darkness in order to tell compelling stories but i don't find it necessary to live in a perpetual state of darkness or depression in order to do good work you won't lose your artistic ability if you learn to cope with your depression you may actually find you're able to experience the joy of that art more than ever if you're able to look right into the face of your darkness and start to push it back [Music] [Applause] hi mike this is dan first thanks for all that that you do here and for all that you've done on the liturgists you've made a really huge difference for me in my faith journey so thank you for that i've been deconstructing my faith now for about three years and um actually i'm just now beginning to rebuild it i'm starting to begin to feel closer to god again and i'm finally starting to broach the subject of prayer and i'm looking for a church that's a good fit but my family doesn't know that i've even gone through this process i go to church with them every week and inwardly cringe through most of it i just don't know how to tell them over the time of my deconstruction my wife has become increasingly fundamental she homeschools our kids which i'm against and every time i broach that subject she just talks about how much he prayed about it and knows that it's god's will and gets very upset and i just don't have the courage to to push it further our differences in world view and theology are just they're too much and quite simply i'm just happier when i'm not around her which pains me to say i hate that i love my wife very much but if i just met her today and got to know her i don't think i could even start dating her because of our extreme differences in the way we view the world i know that you and michael gunger did the other side of the mattress podcast on the liturgist which i really appreciated and valued but i'd really like your advice on how to go about having this talk i've waited way too long i know that and i'm just really convinced that it's not going to end well and i fear for my kids most of all and i would love to hear your advice thanks again for all that you do i really appreciate it and keep up all the good work thanks deconstruction is a type of analytical reasoning where you take apart something it happens in a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex primarily and this part of the brain doesn't have feelings you don't your emotions don't originate in your prefrontal cortex your prefrontal cortex is an accountant an unfeeling spreadsheet driven part of your brain that breaks everything down to risk and reward into logical argument and it's terrible at parties [Laughter] i mean don't don't get me wrong the prefrontal cortex does some remarkable things it you know gives you a ethical system it gives you willpower agency and focus those are all great things it's probably the seat of your consciousness primarily don't get me wrong i'm a huge fan of the prefrontal cortex but applying it to god uh although healthy as a discipline is a great way to lose your experiences with god it's also a great way to destroy your marriage if you just think all the time about the analytical approach to your relationship what's ideal versus not ideal possible solution strategies etc etc you are training your brain to not have an emotional response to the model of your wife that you have you are de-emotionalizing your understanding of your wife and therefore your relationship with her you mentioned dating imagine for a second that you were unmarried and you were interested in someone and you said hey would you like to go out sometime and she said well what would we do and you said well you know i think it'd be really fun to talk about the existential differences in our approach to god and theology as well as optimal parenting strategies i just i don't think you'd get that date you see what i mean maybe you don't need to have that talk with your wife yet maybe you need to go out to dinner with your wife and talk about old times talk about the best memories you have maybe you need to sit in an expensive candlelit restaurant and hold her hand maybe you need to be physically close to each other maybe for a moment set aside all the problems all the rational arguments and just enjoy being in love and if you want to have a serious conversation have a conversation about how much you love her and how much you appreciate her in your life and when you've done that do it again and do it again and do it again and your anterior cingulate cortex is going to become increasingly associated with your thoughts and feelings about your wife now what i am not saying is to sweep it all under the rug i'm not but i'm saying to put your relationship in the best possible context first and then you can start talking in the context of your shared love and affection and commitment your differences in your understanding of god i would think the healthiest thing you could come to is understand the things you hold in common start there what do you both believe about guys religion a beneficial thing does the bible have value in our lives think about those parts of her belief system that you agree with find common ground we're doing a rogerian argument here and then you can say the things that trouble you as they relate to your marriage and your parenting we've established that you love each other that you're committed to each other that you agree on many things and so now you can talk about what invades your shared space here's the thing what she believes is up to her it's got nothing to do with you and you have no right to tell her what to believe any more than she has a right to tell you what to believe the only thing you have girls to discuss is where her beliefs and your beliefs intersect in the actions that happen in your home in your shared space especially the way that involves your children you can talk to her about the disadvantages from your perspective with homeschooling you can do that i wouldn't have one big meta conversation where you both talk about differences in theology and ideas about god and the way that affects the children don't have like a grievances buffet that's all you can eat and just talk about every single problem just get in the habit of talking to each other when i think about how my marriage survived this state when i didn't believe in god and my wife believed deeply and believed in a very conservative and fundamentalist view of god how we were able to survive and it's because we had a habit of talking regularly of being honest and accepting what the other had to say in grace so i'd recommend you cultivate that as much as possible in your own marriage and just be careful not to judge her or her beliefs deconstruction can feel like enlightenment the other side of deconstruction can feel like a new fresh expanded enlightened way to view god but all it is is it's the way you need to understand god today it does not make your beliefs better or superior than hers so drop the taboos step back from the fear and enter a phase of your marriage where love is an action where you enjoy each other's companies and you cultivate a relationship that has the space for honesty and disagreement and also understand you don't ever have to come to an agreement there is a laundry list of things that me and my wife don't agree on and probably never will agree on what does that do with kids that's the curveball right here's the good news your job is not to make your children believe what you believe or what your wife believes your job is to love your children to give them a nurturing supportive environment as they grow into who they will be in my home i talk about what i believe in the context that these are the things that i believe my wife talks about the things that she believes and we even share with our children the things that other people believe and why they believe them and create an environment where any question is okay i think you'll find in this process not only will your love and admiration and trust with your wife improve but the same will happen with your children when you let go of the need to be in control of what other people believe and instead just be a present nurturing supportive part of their lives that's where the good stuff is i think that's what it means to have life more abundantly [Music] [Applause] that's another episode of ask science mike in the books i want to let you know i'm going to be all over everywhere got events coming up in phoenix and los angeles with the liturgists there's things on the calendar with ask science mike live that you'll be coming out soon and i'll be doing a book tour this fall so just go to ask sciencemike.com and click on events you can see if i'm coming nearby if i'm not and you'd like me to click the book mike button that's how i go places you know like people comment on facebook they tweet me hey mike come to blank and they tell me a city i'd love to i have to get booked to go to a city so just you can make that happen go click the booking button find out more and i'll get on an airplane and come see you i'd love to i want to thank a laundry list of people first of all if you want to be on this program with a question you can do that go to asksciencemike.com you can fill out a text question you can record a question right there and i'll put it on the air if you'd like to help pick the questions for the show become a patron on patreon this show is made possible by people who donate money so you can go to 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the producer he handles all of the beautiful audio and our theme song was written by jeb bodiford if you have something that needs custom music written and recorded and produced jeb can do it all he's a one-stop shop and you can find all those people are patrons sanebox wedgwood circle andrew greg and jeb all of them are linked in the show notes on ask sciencemike.com along with resources for every question in the entire history of the programs if you've heard an answer and want to know more just go to asklandsmike.com we've got links where you can learn more thank you for listening it's been a great great week with you guys and i can't wait to see you next week [Music]