ASM076 - Pokemon, Persuasion, and Parents of Gay Teens

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pokemon persuasion and parents of gay teens all that and more on this week's episode of ask sciencemic

[Music]

Welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer questions about science faith and life and i have to tell you i have really been enjoying being at home for a little while i feel like myself again it's so weird and so wonderful that i've got a lot of stuff to talk about this week less than last week but still some stuff i'm wasting the intro what do you say let's get it started okay so i have this calendar and i don't mean my normal calendar uh i mean like a special calendar and this special calendar has all these dates on it like any calendar would but on the dates of this calendar are the things we're doing to get ready for the book release my book finding god in the waves and i don't know i get so torn on this because i'm realizing that the people who listen to me the most who follow most of my work are going to hear about my book a gazillion times and i honestly worried that you're going to get tired of it but then because i have a previous career in advertising and i read my analytics and little data points i actually understand that believe it or not most people that follow me don't even know i have a book coming out so there's this weird thing where you have to say it over and over for people to hear it with the risk that the people who pay the most attention will get tired of it so the way i've tried to mitigate that is by having lots of different things happening and different things to talk about and even some rewards for the people who listen more often for example if you follow me closely on twitter facebook and this podcast you probably pre-ordered the book really early and so you got entered into this drawing that every month we're drawing a name from the people who pre-order the book and we're sending someone an early copy of the book every month and then that person is gonna have a phone call with me one-on-one to talk about their questions about the book their impressions i had the first one of those with a guy named ian it was wonderful and this week we're going to pull the winner for july but also today we're announcing the second bit of pre-order bonus content for people that pre-order the book okay so in other words you pre-order it then you go to findinggodontheways.com you fill out a little form there's a link at the bottom of the page and that gets you this stuff so in addition to the drawing if you pre-order the book you're also going to get three guided meditations that i recorded and uh michael gunger uh scored he put the music behind him so it'll take you through a couple of exercises on centering prayer and one ignatian exercise and in my book we have a whole chapter on prayer the science of prayer the logical contradictions on prayer what prayer means to us and of course types of prayer and meditation you can try that are backed by science as being good for your brain and good for your emotional outlook and good for the way that you relate to other people okay so that today big deal second round of bonus content we're gonna have additional bonus content every month as we lead into the book's release on september 13th see what i did there i gave you a new piece of information about a thing you've already heard about if you follow the show closely and if you don't and you're hanging about the book for the first time you're like oh wow a contest and free content maybe i should order the book i hope that's what you're thinking and not i'm going to pause this podcast or skip over to you made it weird uh so there's that also we last week announced the book tour which is a mixture of liturgist gathering appearances ask science mike live and me telling my story at other venues three types of appearances all of which have something in common a meet and greet and book signing so i can see you personally so our first dates have come out this week we signed an inked agreements on a couple more so we'll get ticket sales set up for those soon so this week maybe next week you'll see a few more dates come out especially if you're on the west coast pay attention this week to any potential date and venue announcements i'd love to see you on tour so basically before i answer your questions this week once again i'm pausing to talk about the book and i'm just hoping uh for those of you who follow closely you don't get tired of hearing this i've worked so hard on this book and i have such big goals for it in terms of the people who need it finding it people who feel estranged spiritually people who struggle to understand who or what god is in the light of science i've never worked so hard on anything in my life as i have on this book and it's written with uh the top 25 questions i get most often that's why the book is written like it is to try and help address things i just get asked over and over in depth in a way i'm not able to do on a podcast or a blog post or anything like that so that's why i keep talking about the book and hopefully you'll keep listening and tell your friends what do you say let's do a show hi science mike i have a question for you about the role of verbal persuasion in the process of overcoming fear so i work at a bible camp and in the summer we have lots of young kids who come up and at this camp we have a big climbing tower and you can climb up this tower and when you get to the top you can go down our zip line so i have often worked at that part of the tower we call it the perch and i that's where you take the camper off of their climbing rope and you put them on to the zip-lying rope and then they have the choice to scooch themselves off and go down and it's lots of fun but understandably a lot of kids get scared up there and they struggle to make that choice to scooch themselves off and it seems like the longer they wait and the more they hesitate the uh the harder it gets for them to do it and i have done this many times and i have talked a lot of kids through this process and i kind of feel like i only really have three tricks though like a few things i talk about i i reassure them the the equipment is reliable and it's not going to drop them all this stuff and i guess i was just wondering um it just there's just a lot of times where it seems like no matter what i say there's nothing that's going to convince those kids to go down the zip line and so last time this happened i thought i wonder what signs mike would have to say about the role of verbal persuasion and and even if i'm making the best argument possible for why this is a totally safe process and nothing's gonna happen to them it still doesn't um that that argument still doesn't take root in their minds and give them comfort so i'm kind of wondering why that is um if you have any tips for how to help them conquer their fears obviously this is challenge by choice i've never forced a kid to go down they always have the option to um to opt out and climb back down the wall so not looking to force anyone but there is something about the victory and the the smile on their face when they finally um do it and they're proud of themselves so i love to see that i love to uh help kids conquer their fears so so is there anything verbally that i can do to make that process easier thanks i look forward to hearing your thoughts it's a really interesting question and uh hopefully i can shed a little light on some possible uh procedural or methodological ideas on how to help people deal with this first of all let's talk about the fear of heights which psychologists label acrophobia it is super super common in almost any survey of common fears or phobia it's going to be in the top five often it's going to be in the top two or three lots and lots of people are afraid of heights and afraid of falling and of course they are it's not an irrational thing to be afraid of falling 9.8 meters per second squared which is the acceleration curve of gravity on the earth accelerates things really quickly so it you don't need a very far fall to create injury and not not much more than that to be potentially lethal or almost certainly lethal even and even though evolutionarily speaking some of our ancestors were probably tree dwellers humans and hominids have been on the ground for a long time so evolution has rewarded a healthy fear of heights and falling in human beings it's totally normal totally natural which i usually start there by affirming people that it's normal and even healthy to be afraid like they are right uh that can create a sense of comfort but here's the problem with even that approach verbal persuasion is working with the brain's language centers and analytical centers you're doing a lot of work in the left temporal lobe in most people uh and up in the you know pre-frontal area a lot of neocortical thinking but um someone up on a high wall or tower thinking about going down a zip line isn't looking at data points or analysis they're not thinking about the statistics of falls or accidents on the equipment that part of their brain is not part of their decision-making process at the time they are in a basic flight or fight survival state paralysis even and their limbic system is activated they're surging with adrenaline they've got an elevated pulse rate they've got elevated respiration rates they probably have tingling hands and feet they have all the physiological signs of being in a total state of fear and why not everything that evolutionists prime them for is they are in a dangerous and precarious position that could end their lives so here's the thing in my opinion once you have someone on top of that wall it's almost too late to work with their fear of heights right someone who's merely hesitant someone who's just got to get a little nerve you're going to be able to work with them but for someone who has a genuine phobia or a j or a deeper seated fear of heights nothing you can say is going to bring them out of that state once they're up on the wall so in that case your best bet in terms of what i understand about psychology and human conditioning is to work with them on the ground before they get to that state okay in the hours or even days before they're going to try to do the zipline and here's a few techniques you could contemplate or consider first of all is rehearsals on the ground you want to describe the process the equipment the surroundings to give people a sense of familiarity or even certainty about what will happen and when if possible if there's harnesses or safety equipment you may want to have that so people can try it on people can rehearse what it feels like and you may even want to go through a routine on the ground that trains people to go through the motions of going down the zipline so you you might even have a clock rhythm as they climb the wall they go on the top they hook the harness whatever happens and then on one two three and they go and if you can do that you're going to prime that flight or fight reaction to execute a path to safety and in that process after in addition to kind of working with routine and tangible practice you also want to encourage people to visualize things visualize the freeing sensation the sense of empowerment on the zip line their friends cheering for them their feet safely on the ground so you want to illustrate that the fastest way to get back to solid ground is to actually go down the zip line and not climb back down the wall but you want to say that before someone is up there once someone's up there it's not it's not really going to help the other thing to teach people is progressive relaxation and this is useful for any kind of fear or phobia where people learn to become aware of their respiration of their muscle tension of their posture and consciously adjust those things to become more calm now for people with deep deep fears a camp setting is not going to go deep enough into progressive relaxation to be helpful uh but it's it's going to be a useful skill to establish for anyone and for people with a more mild sense of fear of heights or fear of falling that may be enough that they're able to through a visualized outcome a practiced routine and progressive relaxation conquer their fear and try the zipline [Music] our next question came in via email and it reads hey mike as with every other question let me start by thanking you for your work it has provided a much needed platform for conversation i believe is so vital for so many people however my question is a rather light one i am currently walking around my neighborhood hunting for virtual animals on pokemon go and seriously enjoying it i have seen so many people like me hunting for pokemon as it seems this game has caused a massive shake in the world and seems to be a huge social phenomenon my question is two-pronged firstly what science might be involved in this type of social phenomenon i.e why has this game in particular succeeded in getting so many people involved and also what are the possible positive and negative implications of this game thanks again well thank you for the question ask science mike has recently been pretty heavy and that's just the questions that come in and the questions that get picked for the show that's not like an intentional choice i don't think i or anyone has made but i do like just talking about the fun parts of science as well even the fun parts of faith so thanks for a question that is going to lighten it up a little bit for this episode uh and let's talk a little bit about some of the psychological and behavioral itches that pokemon go scratches first of all humans do have an inclination towards collecting mcdonald's has exploited this fact for years with happy meal toys and the message collect them all baseball cards do this if we have a feeling that there's a set of something and we have part of that set we have a desire to complete the entire set so it's just a human thing it's a it's a documented behavior pokemon also is leveraging nostalgia and familiarity this is a long-standing brand pokemon has been famous and successful since i believe the 1990s and so this app version of the game with these augmented reality elements is very familiar from the start which leverages an existing platform you don't have to go get a game boy or dig your game boy out of the closet if you own a game boy you don't even have to have it on you your iphone is always there if you have an iphone and that's one of the reasons that pokemon go is so successful because you know apple announced last week that they've sold one billion iphones they've sold a billion of them there's a lot of devices out there another thing that's working for pokemon is social identity and fear of missing out a lot of people are playing pokemon when they when someone hears several of their friends or people on their social network or media figures say they've done this and tried it they want to try it too to see what the fuss is about so this kind of combination of collecting nostalgia and social identity has led pokemon go to be perfectly positioned to be really successful over 50 million downloads in just the first few days it's really really incredible you know good work on that app developer to kind of get lightning in a bottle that way now things that are beneficial about pokemon in my opinion it gets people out and moving video gaming tends to be a sedentary activity and as a society we are becoming more and more sedentary and this is a game that rewards physical movement you have to get out and go in order to collect all the pokemon uh and related to that it's great for socialization and ice breaking i haven't played a lot of pokemon but the little i have i've run into other people playing it as well and struck up a conversation with someone i don't know which i would not have done otherwise so it creates an opportunity for socialization and bonding and activity for a society that tends to be isolated and sedentary so i think that's incredibly healthy and this is really well illustrated in children on the autism spectrum because i've seen multiple accounts of autistic spectrum children asking to go outside asking to go to playgrounds when they get there socializing with their children social socializing with other adults with the shared experience of uh pokemon so it it creates a palatable tangible experience that creates just enough distance and enough familiarity for people with some autism spectrum disorder or just being on the autism spectrum are able to not only tolerate but actually enjoy activities and settings that were once overwhelming and i have seen a lot of accounts like that and there that's got to be counted as a positive implication for pokemon go now negative implications there are a few one watch out for compulsive or addicted behavior every time you're checking to see if there's a pokemon nearby you're gonna have a little dopamine spike in your brain when you find one you get this nice uh rewarding pleasure reaction in your ventral stratum most likely and that is the cycle on which compulsive behaviors and addiction are built so just be mindful of that if you like have to play some pokemon maybe take a break then the other thing that really is a concern is physical safety and i'm talking about people being distracted while they walk while they drive when they ride a bicycle don't walk into things don't walk off cliffs really do pay attention to your surroundings don't lose yourself in the rendered world on screen while you look for a pokemon i actually saw this amazing video where some rare pokemon appeared in a park in new york and there was this mob of people descending from all four directions towards this pokemon it was incredible but they were crossing over a roadway uh cars were having to stop that's dangerous be aware of your physical safety be mindful of your surroundings because you can't catch them all if you hurt yourself badly [Music] hi mike this is kevin from boise idaho my dad passed away about six months ago and his health had been failing him for some time uh leading up to the end of his life he had always talked about that he wasn't afraid to die that he knew where he was going uh he had always been a man of of great faith we couldn't really communicate much with him in his final hours and we had him kind of sitting up in his bed and he did something at the end of his life that i just can't get out of my head i think about it all the time um he kind of lifted his head up a little bit and opened his eyes real wide and just said wow and then laid his head back down um i jumped out of my chair and and was kind of shaking him a little bit and and was asking him what what did he see you know what'd you see dad but that was it uh he was gone i like to think that he got a glimpse of of where he was headed but i would imagine that there's a lot going on um in your brain as your body and and your organs are preparing itself to to shut down um so that's my question um has there ever been any studies on uh what's going on with the brain and the body as it's preparing itself to to shut down and die uh thanks for all that you do um i love the podcast i've absolutely changed my life and uh can't wait to read your book thanks bye first i want to say that i'm sorry for your loss and i know it's difficult losing a loved one especially a parent and i also want to say that i'm glad that you had the opportunity to be with him as he passed and i hope that ends up being something that is a memory that you cherish and that is valuable to you as you move on with your life now if we talk about uh studies of the brain and what happens during brain death believe it or not that is still more of a mystery than something well understood in the sciences when humans are dying we tend to focus on either keeping them alive or keeping them comfortable as they die and neither of those are especially conducive to doing brain studies and brain scans not to mention that most of the equipment that can do brain imaging is very expensive and in high demand it's very difficult to predict when people will pass for those of you who've been through an end-of-life situation with someone you know sometimes it happens in minutes or hours and other times it happens in days and because of that we just haven't had many opportunities to get a real-time picture of a human brain as it passes um we do have some experiences you know based on um medical data uh when people die they often are being monitored and recorded by medical equipment they may have eegs but in terms of a deep picture into the brain with you know modern brain imaging there's just not a lot out there so that means we have a number of plausible scientific explanations for the various near-death and death experience phenomenon that have been reported but we don't have any that are slam dunk or would have experimental or observational support to give them the kind of confidence we would need to rely on them right so if you kind of think about common themes that people describe who have been close to death a sense of peace a sense of detachment from the physical body a sense of comfort and love passing through a tunnel of light being in the company of loved ones being in the company of the divine all these experiences seem to map pretty well to our understanding of the structures and function of the brain we do know that some of these experiences the tunnel of light out-of-body experiences are sometimes experienced by pilots and astronauts as they train to deal with g-forces so if you reduce blood flow to the brain people start having uh you know experiences that are much like near-death experiences um and when we observe people who are passing what you've just talked about towards the end of life um not just a a sudden sign of life but sometimes people have a wondrous reaction and that's their last conscious and interactive experience with those around them so some of the studies we have done involve rats and their heart brain relationship so we understand that as rats enter a state of cardiac arrest which by the way your heart and your brain are very closely linked so it's not just oxygen starvation that slows down or eliminates brain activity it's literally just the heart brain linkage we know that as they go into cardiac arrest that their brains go into a hyper connected state and that that may explain some of these phenomena we also know that neurotransmitters related to a sense of peacefulness and heightened awareness are released in near-death experiences and cardiac distress situations which would help explain some of those experiences so you can imagine if that was happening with your father oh wow this sudden sense of peace a sudden lack of pain and a sudden um dramatically increased sense of spatial awareness and consciousness would be a relief and would be quite beautiful and that leads me to one of the more encouraging things we understand about near-death experiences most of them are really quite pleasant people who survive near-death experiences tend to be permanently changed through them now some people do have very disturbing near-death experiences centered on uh you know visions of violence or persecution but some neuroscientists believe that what happened with those folks is they didn't go deeply enough into a near-death experience to have the positive parts of this experience of brain death so many people who've had beautiful near-death experiences have started with a more disturbing imagery or darkness or fear that was then transcended now we would imagine neurologically that would be something like the amygdala which is uh responsible for keeping us safe through fear and anger but is also very energy expensive starting off in kind of a panic state things are wrong with the body but then there's not enough resources to keep the amygdala running so it goes quiet and then other parts of the brain experience this sense of peacefulness you know your parietal lobe is way up on the top of your brain in your neocortex it's one of the first things your brain will kind of uh stop worrying about if you're in a really significant state of distress and that's going to decrease your sense of physical awareness and increase your sense of unity and peace same thing your visual cortex is a pretty expensive bit of neurological hardware and we would imagine that as it became inactive it would look a lot like a tunnel of light which would lead to the memory centers of the brain your loved ones the ones you think about the most being present and around you now that's just the materialistic explanation and any serious scientists will be quick to tell you even people who study this as a matter of their career that our understanding of the end of life especially in regards to the brain is not well understood today so even if we can provide plausible brain based explanations for these experiences it still raises questions are our brains designed in such a way to prepare us for something that may come next or is it simply a gift of evolution a fortunate happenstance that our passage from this world appears to be one in which we experience maybe the greatest sense of peace and acceptance that we ever will in life i don't know either way death is not something that i fear the passage of our conscious experience in this body in this world is to be celebrated as much as the moment that we enter it because your dad left a mark in this world and in your own brain in your own synapses you carry this mosaic this image of your dad you can picture his face you can hear his voice you can probably even guess really really accurately how he would answer a question because you knew him so well and you carry him with you and in the same way others carry you with them it's so beautiful and that's just physics and biology when we open our minds and our hearts to the possibility of even something more something immaterial something we would call spirit then we truly see what a gracious gift that both life and death are our last question came in via email and it reads dear science mike my mom found out i am gay recently she told me they might have to kick me out if i don't try to fix it so i'm currently reading one of those ex-gay books i'm doing it because i'm afraid if i don't pretend like it's helping she will send me to an ex-gay therapy and i really don't feel like doing any of those crazy things i've seen in documentaries and whatnot she has said a lot of hurtful and ignorant things including but not limited to you don't know the difference between attraction and perversion that's the problem or you have this problem because you were too rebellious as a little boy or you need to fix this and live for jesus or i will pray for god to kill you i'm not in a position right now to change their beliefs since they still see me as subservient to them and not as an autonomous adult when i am on my own however in living my life how should i approach them both from a scientific standpoint how does one respond to things like this without turning on their flight or fight instinct by challenging their beliefs and presuppositions about gay people and our relationships and experiences i am so sorry that your parents the people who are most responsible for watching over you in making you feel loved and accepted have failed in that most basic charge there is nothing wrong with you you are exactly who god made you to be it is not a sin to be gay it is not a sin to be in same-sex relationships and i am so sorry that that's your experience and before we talk about how to change minds i want to talk about you we have got to talk about you and your safety and your well-being more than whatever your parents think i want your primary mission to be focusing on your own safety and your own well-being i don't believe your parents are safe for you emotionally and they may not be safe for you physically because you need to fix this and live for jesus or i will pray for god to kill you sounds like a threat to me and if you have any reason at any moment to believe that your physical safety is in danger seek help call 911 call a crisis center and get out there are too many dead gay children and teenagers in this country and it is time for that to stop there is nothing wrong with you in the show notes on this week's show i'm gonna have some resources so that you can find gay friendly churches support groups crisis centers anything that you need and i would just say get out as soon as you can as soon as you can financially support yourself as soon as you are legally autonomous get out your parents unfortunately are not looking out for you now once you get out boundaries will be important you don't have to cut your parents out of your life you don't have to convince them of anything your mission is to first to survive and then to learn to thrive as a human being not to redeem your parents or even to redeem what your parents think about you i don't even know you and i'm proud of you you may find that someone with more distance may be better positioned to help your parents see new things about their faith about lgbtq experiences i just would not worry about convincing them of anything now i understand you want their love and you want their approval and no one should have to go through what you're going through but this this version of the faith this version of christianity that values a legalistic structure that values fundamentalism over human life and human love it's anti-gospel but it's the story that your parents have been handed and they don't know how to let it go so you have to look out for you you have to forge relationships with other people that will love and affirm you exactly as you are now if it matters so much that you shift your parents thinking and perspective first go to therapy work through and this will probably take the rest of your life work through the feelings of pain and rejection that you feel because if if you don't it's going to be the subtext of any conversation you have with your parents the rest of your life oh man it's so brutal it's so terrible that that burden falls on you but start start with that start by finding healing and growth for yourself and then understand that scientifically speaking trying to convince someone of something puts up their cognitive defenses their self-defenses they become resistant so it is actually more powerful to share stories with people than to try to convince them of things if you listen to episode 20 of the liturgist podcast called lgbt you'll notice that it is a series of stories and lived experiences and interspersed in those stories are information and vignettes that contain scientific backing or whatever but the focus is on stories because with that podcast our goal was to actually start to change people's minds on this topic if we couldn't convince them their view on the sinfulness of same-sex relationships was wrong we hoped at least we could convince people that mocking discriminating and persecuting lgbtq people is a sin that it has nothing to do with the cause of christ and so the more you can focus on stories and the more you can focus on just being healthy the more persuasive you'll be basically the less you try to persuade uh the more you will persuade and there's hope i think there's hope for the church i even think there's hope for your parents i was reading a story this week about a musician who came out to her very religious father he went straight to his closet and pulled a bible off the top shelf and she kind of braced herself for the rebuke and he spent hours pouring through the bible to find support for who she was people are coming around we've seen enough lesbian and gay suicides we've seen enough persecution enough that america is starting to realize that yes love really is love and in time i hope simple social pressure will begin to move the minds and hearts of people like your parents i admire so much uh that you want to help them see the light i just pray that in the process you don't lose your own jesus told us to love our neighbor as ourselves and in that is the implicit command to love ourselves you can't reach out to your parents if you don't first reach out to yourself and i would just encourage you to take care of yourself right now above all else thank you so much for your email [Music] even though i'm science mike ask science mike is not my show and it's not about me how do i know because i can't ask questions the show is made possible by the people every week who send in questions about science faith and life if you'd like to be one of them use the hashtag asksciencemike on twitter or head over to asksciencemike.com where you can record an audio question or a text question including anonymous questions and we'll consider them for inclusion on the show our show is made possible by the generous contributions of my patrons on patreon and in addition to financially enabling the program they also do the work of picking the questions for each week's program if you'd like to be among them go to asksciencemike.com and click on the patreon icon to learn more now if money's tight and you don't have any questions but you enjoy the program you can still help simply log on to itunes go to podcasts and search ask sciencemike and leave a rating for the program or share one of your favorite episodes on social media it helps the program find those who need it finally i'd like to thank andrew golucky for his work in pre-production and organizing our together groups together is a series of facebook groups where people who listen to ask science mike find each other in different communities to learn more go to asksciencemike.com and click on the together icon i want to thank greg nordin the producer and sound designer for ask science mike and jeb botiford who wrote our theme song thanks for listening to ask science mike and i will see you next week [Applause] [Music]