BOO! The Science of Scary with Mathias Clasen & Heather Berlin

Why do we like being scared? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice explore the haunting effects of horror and recreational fear with horror scholar and author, Mathias Clasen, and neuroscientist, Heather Berlin, PhD.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Got with me my co-host Chuck Nice. Chuck, baby.

• 0:24Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil.

• 0:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Always good to see you. Always good to have you. So today Chuck, this is an overdue topic for StarTalk. I don't know why we didn't do this years ago.

• 0:35Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna talk about horror. In particular, horror movies, horror stories, and why people like it. That's just weird.

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  It is weird.

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, why?

• 0:49Chuck Nice?

  Why do you like being scared out of your gourd?

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why? Why? What is this? And, and believe it or not, there is a person who studies this professionally. Okay, as you know, we reach into the academic halls to find people with just the kind of expertise necessary for that topic. And today, we have Matthias Clasen, I think I pronounced his name right. And he's director of the, get this, recreational fear lab.

• 1:21Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 1:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At Arhust University.

• 1:23Chuck Nice?

  Now, let me just tell you. You ain't gonna find no brother anywhere

• 1:29Chuck Nice?

  who wants to engage in recreational fear. Our lives are filled with too much real fear.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actual fear.

• 1:36Chuck Nice?

  For us to be like, you know what I think I'm gonna do is relax with a little bit of fear.

• 1:42Chuck Nice?

  So, excuse me, could you do me a favor? Could you put some red and blue lights on while I'm driving?

• 1:49Chuck Nice?

  I just wanna experience a bit of recreational fear.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and there's that spooky house on the hill. Let's go hide in it. Yeah, that's right. So the Arhous University is in Denmark.

• 2:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's Danish here and he's associate editor, checking his pedigree here. Associate editor of Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. I mean, this is, this is, this is like, my gosh, the people have expertise in this stuff.

• 2:17Chuck Nice?

  I love it.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he's author of Why Horror Seduces? And, and something that's coming out around now is a very nervous person's guide to horror movies. And so this, and he's got a TED Talk, Lessons From A Terrified Horror Researcher. So this is, all right, we got it here. This is.

• 2:40Chuck Nice?

  Matthias has all the bases covered, man.

• 2:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Matthias, tell me, first, welcome to StarTalk, welcome.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, excellent. I don't know what recreational fear is, I'm sorry. You're gonna have to explain that one.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Right, yeah, I think it's a concept that we invented for the occasion.

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  We, we define it as those kinds of activities in which people derive pleasure from fear.

• 3:06Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  So the prototypical.

• 3:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Crazy people do that, yeah, yeah, okay.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Actually, well, we can get back to that, but.

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  You know, the, the prototypical example of recreational fear is probably horror. Horror movies, Stephen King novels, horror video games, haunted attractions. But also activities like extreme sports or pretending you're a monster and chasing your kids through the apartment. That's a kind of recreational fear. Activity in which the child gets to experience what it feels like to be a little bit afraid while realizing there is no real danger.

• 3:42Chuck Nice?

  So it's fear while maintaining the cocoon of safety. You feel, you know that you're safe, but yet somehow you're tricking your brain into feeling like you're scared.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, okay. So, so, and you would distinguish that from like, like Chuck is saying, actual fear, where there is no safety net there, or you don't know that there's a safety net. So the fear triggers different things within you. So did you, did you come to this as someone who's just a big fan of horror novels? What's your background on this?

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I used to not be a big fan. I used to get nightmares from the most, you know, innocent ghost story. But then something changed in my teenage years and that's a very usual trajectory. A kind of hedonic reversal where what used to be aversive to me became attractive.

• 4:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And aren't teens a big part of the marketplace for horror movies?

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, they are. We did some studies on that relationship between age and horror liking. But so yeah, my professional interest really grows out of, you know, personal fascination.

• 4:48Chuck Nice?

  And so that is the normal trajectory, what yours or no, yours is the reverse?

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Well, the normal trajectory is that kids are fascinated with scary stuff, but mildly scary stuff. And then that fascination kind of increases during development and it peaks in the late teenage years.

• 5:09Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'm fairly typical in that respect.

• 5:13Chuck Nice?

  Well, that may explain why I lived my entire life terrified because I'm old.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  You're stuck in a teenager's mind.

• 5:20Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly. I can't grow up.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, why is it that, okay, if that's an arc and if it's normal and it's a common human trait, why isn't it in everyone? What do we have our numbers here? It's about only about half of people like horror? I would be in like the other half, right? It's not that I'm afraid of it or don't, I'm just not interested. All right, and so.

• 5:45Chuck Nice?

  Ah, once again, the scientists. Look at that. Once again, the analytical mind overrides everything.

• 5:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it kind of did. It kind of did. And so, so tell me what, what's going on? Why, what is the recipe in the half of people that do enjoy this versus those that don't? Am I missing something or do I have something that the other half doesn't have?

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wish, I wish I knew. I mean, we've been trying to get a grip on the personality profile of horror fans. I teamed up with a good colleague, Hans Kjellgaard Kristiansen. He's a media scholar. And so we tried to get a fix on what big five personality traits are correlated with horror liking. And thrill-seeking seems to be a personality trait that is related to enjoying horror movies, but also a trait called openness to experience. So people who enjoy new adventures, intellectual stimulation.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  But you would fit that bill. So I'm not sure what exactly.

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, in my mind, but not my body.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, once you put your body in this vice, that's a new experience. No, I can think that one through.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Yes, right.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a difference between what your body's going through and what your mind goes through, I guess.

• 7:06Chuck Nice?

  See, and it's funny, though, I am not a fan of horror films, simply because I don't. The scary part is really too scary for me. And I'm, and I've, you know, I know.

• 7:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you, and you're black.

• 7:17Chuck Nice?

  Well, let's be real. Let's say, let's, exactly. Because, you know, and I am that person who's in the theater going, no, girl, don't go in there. What's the problem?

• 7:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't go in there.

• 7:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God, don't you, don't you, no, did you just hear that? Am I the only one who heard that? Like, okay.

• 7:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't hide next to the chainsaw.

• 7:37Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. He's right behind you. Right, so, I mean, I have to be honest, though. I am fully aware on an intellectual level that, you know, that I'm in no danger and that I have suspended disbelief so that I can be a part of this experience. But yet, what, what happens to me afterwards, I can't take. I can't take it. It keeps replaying in my head and it starts to affect me. And that's just what happens to me, you know? But yeah, I am a, yet I'm a thrill seeker.

• 8:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so Matthias, tell us about the, what's going on inside someone physiologically while they're experiencing it versus what effect it might have on them later? And not only just intellectually, but how about biophysiologically? What do you know about changes in the body and in the mind?

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Right, so we know that when people experience recreational fear, horror specifically, they get the physiological arousal that is associated with fear. So they experience fear, but they find pleasure in that experience. So it's not just, I mean, they experience fear and joy at the same time. And there is a peculiar relationship between fear and enjoyment in these kinds of recreational activities. And that is something we have actually measured in a study we did in a haunted attraction, where we looked at the relationship between fear and enjoyment and we found that there was a sweet spot. It used to be the case that people thought that the more fear, the more enjoyment. I mean, you've seen movie trailers for horror films that say, you know,

• 9:16Speaker 02

  you won't sleep for two weeks, where this will scare the crap out of you, kind of suggesting that the scarier, the better. But it turns out, actually, if we look at the heart rate and people's self-reported experience, there is a sweet spot, a just-so, just-right amount of fear that is conducive to the most pleasure. So lots of physiological arousal. The heart is hammering, the palms get sweaty. The mind is kind of narrowed on the stimulus, the movie or the actors who are trying to scare you. And then afterwards, it takes a while for people to calm down. And most people actually claim that they have

• 9:57Speaker 02

  some lingering effects, that they feel more vigilant, that they, you know, they watch a horror movie, they go into the basement to collect the laundry, and they think that tiny little sound in the corner of their face is evidence of a chainsaw killer.

• 10:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Going into the basement for any reason.

• 10:15Chuck Nice?

  Anything.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nothing good ever happened in a basement, all right?

• 10:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 10:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People get buried there. Okay, yeah. So, and what about your immune system? What were we reading about this?

• 10:30Speaker 02

  There is some evidence to suggest that there is a short-term boost to the immune system from watching a horror movie. But this is, it's very preliminary. The doctor is not going to recommend horror movies as a immune system boost anytime soon.

• 10:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is it could give you a heart attack, and kill you, but if it doesn't, you have a better immune system?

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Well, it's super rare that people die from fright and watching horror movies, super rare.

• 10:59Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Take two Freddy Kruegers and call me in the morning. There you go.

• 11:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is this some of what you talked about in your TED Talk? Just the sort of the physiological responses here, right? So how about your people's mental health?

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does it improve it? Is it indifferent?

• 11:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  That's, you know, that's one of the most exciting lines of research that we're pursuing. Because people used to think that it was probably bad for your mental health. I mean, there's a lot of bias and prejudice associated with horror.

• 11:29Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  That it's psychologically harmful, that it's morally corrosive.

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It could turn you into the person committing the horror.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 11:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Copycats or whatever.

• 11:38Chuck Nice?

  I gotta tell you, that's the reason why I worship the devil.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  Same here, right? Well, maybe it's not in.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, this is your last show.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  No, well, so it does look actually like there can be positive health effects. We did a study during the pandemic where we looked at psychological resilience and horror movie consumption. And it looks like people who watch a lot of horror movies actually had better mental health during the pandemic, possibly, because they have a lot of practice in fear regulation. So they watch horror movies, they get scared, and they use a bunch of strategies to regulate their own fear. And then they use those strategies also in, you know, real life.

• 12:26Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. So you watch a lot of zombie movies. All of a sudden, this pandemic comes and you're like.

• 12:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's a walk in the park.

• 12:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you're like, I'm good. I've already been through like eight zombie apocalypses. This is nothing.

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because a pandemic such as that approximates some of the early stages of a zombie apocalypse.

• 12:48Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 12:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because in a zombie apocalypse, certain industries get taken out because all those workers are dead or zombified. So they're not making the toilet paper, right? They're not producing the energy, they're not producing. And you see these shortages in society. So wow, so the horror movie folks were just chilling.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Exactly, they were. And that's, that's why the CDC had a zombie apocalypse campaign 10 years ago. They said that if you're ready for the zombie apocalypse, you're ready for any kind of disaster.

• 13:16Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow. How did I miss that? How did I miss that? The government telling you to be ready for the zombie apocalypse? That's amazing.

• 13:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so how about?

• 13:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, I'm just reminded, there was this hilarious sketch by Key and Peele. There's this neighborhood, right? It's an integrated neighborhood. And so there's some black folks over on the side with the barbecue and other white folks. And zombies are coming down the street. And they turn towards the black home and then they turn away and keep walking. And they only eat the white people. And they said, "These are racist zombies."

• 13:59Chuck Nice?

  That's a funny sketch, actually.

• 14:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a pretty crazy sketch.

• 14:04Chuck Nice?

  We don't like dark meat. That's funny.

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look for it, it's somewhere online. You gotta find it. "Racist zombies." But Matthias, tell me, if I have a prior condition, could it be worsened? So, sorry, not necessarily a prior physiological condition, but a prior mental condition? If I come from war and I have some PTSD, could this trigger something within me? That's an important word these days. What triggers you?

• 14:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think it could go either way. So, there is some evidence to suggest that people with pre-existing mental health conditions can be hurt by horror movies. But there is also now emerging some evidence to suggest that people with anxiety disorders actually get relief from watching horror movies. So that they self-medicate with scary movies for a bunch of reasons. I think partly because if you have an anxiety disorder, you find yourself in this fog of free-floating anxiety, day in and day out, with no clear source and no control.

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And no benchmarking of it, yeah. No calibration for it, yeah. Interesting.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Exactly. And that kind of calibration and the sense of control and a clear identifiable source comes with seeking out a horror movie. And maybe also the kind of practicing of coping skills, the emotion regulation expertise that you can develop through engagement with recreational fear.

• 15:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we gotta take a quick break. But when we come back, more on the sort of physiology and psychology of fear with Matthias Clasen on StarTalk.

• 15:58Speaker 03

  Hey, I'm Roy Hill Percival and I support StarTalk on Patreon. Bringing the universe down to earth. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk. Part two of our investigation into horror. What it feels like, what you're thinking, how you react to horror movies and horror stories. And we've got one of the world's experts on this. Mathias Clasen, and he's the director of the recreational fear lab. Yes, such a thing exists at the Arhus University. And this is in Denmark, of course. So, let's continue with this. Mathias, tell me about, do you have to keep feeding the horror to the person? Or is just one or few of these experiences good enough for them to just reflect on it? So in other words, is it like a drug?

• 17:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you have to get more and more and more of it as you continue?

• 17:04Speaker 02

  In order to derive pleasure from it?

• 17:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Does your thresholding keep rising and you have to then get more and more of it?

• 17:12Chuck Nice?

  I think probably, yes.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  I think there is a kind of habituation. Just as if you're an aficionado of hot peppers. You know, you'll probably graduate to ever increasing.

• 17:26Chuck Nice?

  You build a tolerance.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And I think you build tolerance in different ways. And also, over time, people develop media literacy. They become better at using strategies for reducing fear in response to a horror movie. For example, by reminding themselves that it's just a movie or by seeing through the effects that create the scares.

• 17:49Chuck Nice?

  Interesting. It's funny because, you know, the same thing happens kind of with comedians. They don't. They don't laugh. They, and then what they do laugh at becomes more and more dark. They just, they become more and more, they become exceedingly dark. Uh, and, and the darker it is, the more it elicits a laugh, which is how many of them just end up getting canceled.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay, yeah, that's where they drive off the cliff.

• 18:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When that, when that happens, right, right. They don't see the warning signs of it. So, so you still haven't told me, Matthias, why some people love it and some people hate it, or some people are indifferent. I'm more in the indifferent camp. Why, if it's that physiologically potent, why isn't it a hundred percent reaction?

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Right. I was sort of hoping you wouldn't get back to that because I don't know.

• 18:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, that's fine. That's fine. Because what we will be doing in, in our third segment is bringing on our favorite neuroscientist to tell us what research in neuroscience says about this. Because you come to this from the literary side of academia, correct?

• 19:00Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you're still doing experiments on people, so that's cool. It's sort of like experimental psychology.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Yes. I teamed up with people who, you know, who have expertise in cognitive psychology and experimental studies. So it's a big part of what we do.

• 19:12Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And, and so is Chuck right that if you spend a lot of your life in danger, in actual danger, that you're not gonna wanna go into situations where there's pretend danger? Because it doesn't really do anything for you? Another example, you, because you, you correlated horror movie watching with, what did you say, extreme sports or extreme experiences, you know, jumping out of airplanes and things? And to Chuck's point, I, I don't know how many...

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Black people have ever died purposely jumping out of an airplane. Because they just don't do that. Just thinks, no, I'm just gonna try to survive this walk down the street. All right, rather than jumping out of planes. So is there any truth to the dangers you experience in everyday life? And whether you want to seek them out in these forms of entertainment?

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Right, that's one of the many, many things we don't know. I'm not so sure. Because horror movies did better than ever before in 2020 and 2021. I mean, the market share of horror movies just blew up. So people are finding themselves in a pretty scary world. And yet they seek to scary entertainment, perhaps as a context in which they can confront, you know, anxiety and have a little bit of fun with it. Derive a little bit of pleasure from it.

• 20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but if you can get accustomed to, what's the term you used? That you, the novelty of the horror can wear off.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they have to sort of do it a little differently next time. I'm reminded when Steven Spielberg spoke of Jaws, he had a regret in that movie. The regret was he showed twice a bobbing, decapitated head in the water.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and he said, I should have never done that a second time. Because he watched people's reaction the first time, it was like, ah! And the second time, oh, another bobbing head. And I completely lost the impact. And so, that was one of his earliest movies, and he learned from that, right? And so, the, I'm just curious if you,

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  if showing the same thing twice loses its novelty, haven't we run out of horror movie plots by now?

• 21:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or ways to scare people? Aren't we done?

• 21:41Speaker 02

  No, I mean, we've been going over the same basic plot structure for probably thousands of years.

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  You know, good guys meet evil monsters and may or may not survive. So it's kind of like the blues, you have a few chords and you can get a lot of creativity out of different combinations of those chords.

• 21:59Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  So I think that the building blocks of horror are few and basic and they are circumscribed by human biology. The kinds of things we fear are reflected in horror.

• 22:11Chuck Nice?

  I get what you're saying, but why is it that the things that we fear are never, like the real things we fear are very rarely represented in horror films? Like for me, the horror film would be, "The mortgage is late again." Like that, that would be like the horror film that I would have to go watch. Because that's like a real fear.

• 22:34Chuck Nice?

  You know, they always tend to be supernatural. And if they're not-

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Especially Stephen King stories, yeah.

• 22:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, if they're not supernatural, then the supernatural element is just not acknowledged, but it's there. And then if it deviates, not deviates, but if it's not that, then it's kind of like slasher. Like even like Freddy Krueger, which is supernatural, right? He's still just really, it's a slasher film.

• 23:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  I think, I think the, the stuff that does occur over and over again in horror, you know, the, the haunting, the demons, the ghosts, the zombies, the, all the creepy supernatural stuff and those crazy killers in hockey masks and wearing chainsaws. I mean, that stuff is dramatic, that stuff is potent and it sparks the imagination. If you, if you wanted to sell a movie, you know, a shocking thriller about the overdue mortgage, nobody's gonna buy it.

• 23:31Chuck Nice?

  No!

• 23:34Speaker 02

  It doesn't really, it doesn't exist in any-

• 23:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'd be true, but it wouldn't be an economic success.

• 23:43Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly. Chuck Nice stars in "The Overdue Mortgage."

• 23:48Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 23:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Matthias, tell me, why, tell me about the startle reflex. Some people have it, for better or for worse, and others don't. And is it because they're expecting to be scared and then it happens in a way they don't expect it? What's going on inside the mind for that?

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, so, so the jump scare is one of the most- Common, well-known, and universally detested um tropes of horror movies. We all know the jump scare. You know, the character is going around, dark basement, somewhere they shouldn't be, and then suddenly, boom, uh, something nasty jumps out. And you hear a loud, sudden noise, and everybody in the movie theater jumps. Ah! Um, so the, so the jump scare, and there are about ten jump scares per uh horror movie. It's designed to really um engage this, the startled response, which is a very basic biological reflex, basically. We share it with a bunch of other animals. I mean, you can, you can do a jump scare on a cat, if you have a cat, or uh-

• 24:51Chuck Nice?

  Or a fainting goat.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Exactly, yes. And, and they respond in a fairly similar way.

• 24:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  So the jump scare is a really effective technique, and lots of people frown on it because it seems cheap. You know, it's easy to create a jump scare.

• 25:05Chuck Nice?

  Now, now, let me ask you this.

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can do it not only, you can do it not only visually, but all, also um with sound, right?

• 25:11Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can, and then there's a loud sound, even if nothing jumps in the way, that can be, that can startle you too, right?

• 25:16Chuck Nice?

  Hmm. So, let me ask you this. So I got a fifteen-year-old son, and he loves horror films, and so do all of his kids, I mean, his friends, right?

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 25:24Chuck Nice?

  Here's the thing, they've all adopted this disposition where the less scared you are, the more analytical you are, then the better you are at watching horror films. So, if there's a jump scare, he's like, "Oh, that's BS, ah, that's, you know, I can't believe you fell for the jump scare," and they're like, so is, i- is that some kind of just like, I don't know, are you a poser if you're scared of jump scares? Because they scared the hell out of me.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Right. Uh, they scared the hell out of me as well. Um, and, but it sounds like your, your kid and his friends are using a very effective coping strategy. I mean, you know, approaching horror movies as construction. They're trying to get behind the scenes and see the jump scare for what it is, a cinematic technique. Um, and that's one of the reasons why I think people should watch horror movies with their kids, to teach them how to approach it analytically, because that's an important skill.

• 26:19Chuck Nice?

  Except that he's the one teaching me!

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Right, yes, yeah, the roles are flipped around.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The roles are reversed, yeah.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, do you have any insights into how or why Key and Peele, after that racist zombie skit that they performed?

• 26:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck hadn't seen it.

• 26:39Chuck Nice?

  I had not seen it until the break and I gotta tell you, man.

• 26:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man's looking at it during the break.

• 26:44Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god, it's hilarious.

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So, and what happens? So, Jordan Peele afterwards does a horror movie called Get Out.

• 26:54Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 26:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? And so, is there, is this something every director wants to do? Do you think it, you gotta have at least one of these in your portfolio? Are there any thoughts about that?

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a really interesting question because horror movies, for the longest time, have been associated with lowbrow, mindless, low-budget, aesthetically uninteresting fluff, basically. I mean, I work in an English department and I'm a horror researcher and, you know, it's not, it doesn't have the same cultural prestige as being an expert in Renaissance poetry or, you know, the sonnets of Shakespeare. So, lots of directors.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You think?

• 27:37Speaker 02

  I think, I do think that.

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can imagine just going down the faculty resumes, right? It's like, "Well, expert on Renaissance art and on Shakespeare, on Milton."

• 27:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Horror movies.

• 27:54Chuck Nice?

  Right, okay.

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we love you, that's why we have you on the show, we don't have any of your colleagues here.

• 27:58Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:01Chuck Nice?

  Screw those pompous asses. No, never, sorry.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  For sure. But, but I think some of that, some of that prejudice toward horror is actually going away and I think one large reason is the success of Get Out because Peele very consciously used storytelling devices from the horror genre and from science fiction. To tell a story that was very progressive. He wanted to change things in the world.

• 28:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  And he did that by using the tools of horror.

• 28:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and it was socially relevant, the way.

• 28:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, of course, everything.

• 28:34Chuck Nice?

  Everything about it. So let me ask you this, speaking of what you guys just brought up, which is Jordan Peele and horror, is there any combination where comedy actually enhances the effects of horror or vice versa? Where being scared makes you, you know, enjoy the laughter anymore? I don't know of any real, like, comedy horror films, but even in Get Out.

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, Scary Movie is a comedy horror film.

• 29:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but it didn't scare me.

• 29:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. Yeah, it made fun of the genre. It made fun of it. It was a parody, whereas Get Out scared me. And there were some really funny moments in that movie. That's true. That's true. Good point.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think for one thing, the kind of the contrast between laughter and screams can be used very effectively in a movie like Get Out or, you know, Cabin in the Woods. Or I'm reading Joe Hill right now, one of my favorite writers, and he is hilarious, but he can also write some really scary stuff. But also, I think often the line between humor and horror is kind of, it's a thin and porous line. Something can be so horrible on the screen that it kind of becomes grotesque and funny, like in the Evil Dead movies. It's just over the top and, you know, it's so far out that you stop screaming and you start laughing. So it's a kind of thin line.

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could it be like there's a scene in Jurassic Park where T-Rex bites into the outhouse and grabs the lawyer who's on the toilet and swallows him in one gulp? That's kind of funny.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  It kind of is.

• 30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Made me laugh. Made me laugh just hearing you bring it up again. I pictured it in my head and I started giggling because it's... I mean, nobody wants to be on a toilet and then eaten by T-Rex. But this was a kind of a reprehensible character in the story.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Exactly. He was a lawyer.

• 30:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. I love it. Well, Matthias, we're gonna have to say goodbye to you. For a third segment, we're gonna bring in a neuroscientist to sort of see what they have to say about this very same genre. But I don't know what they'll know that you don't know because you've been doing all these experiments. And that's ultimately how we get the answers in science. But it's been a delight to talk to you. It's been a delight to even know that you exist as a person with this expertise. Because as an academic, I just love it that somebody just devoted their lives to something that everyone else either just takes for granted or doesn't think there's anything there because there usually is when you part the curtains. You know what we never got to? Your favorite horror film of all time. Oh, oh, let's ask that, sure. What, just before we go, what is that?

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Um, let's say, uh, always hard, um, Halloween by, uh, John Carpenter.

• 31:20Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 31:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, very classic.

• 31:23Chuck Nice?

  Very classic.

• 31:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I haven't seen nearly as many horror films as you. I've probably seen 1% of them that you have, but I have to put up there the Omen.

• 31:32Chuck Nice?

  Right. Oh, yeah.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Also.

• 31:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just because the idea of what was going on.

• 31:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To me, it wasn't how bloody things were or anything. It was just, oh, my gosh.

• 31:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is actually happening.

• 31:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is terrifying. And...

• 31:47Chuck Nice?

  And it was, because it's like a huge conspiracy playing out the entire movie.

• 31:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 31:54Chuck Nice?

  And there's nothing you can do to stop that conspiracy from unfolding.

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 31:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, correct. So that was spooky.

• 32:01Chuck Nice?

  It's a good one.

• 32:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How about you, Chuck?

• 32:03Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man. Oh, I'm gonna say Finding Nemo.

• 32:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. That shark scared the wits out of you, yeah.

• 32:16Chuck Nice?

  Bruce, Bruce got me. Bruce got me, man.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, no, we gotta wholly quits there. So, so Matthias, do you have a website we can direct people to? Or social media?

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Well, my lab has a website. It's fear.au dk. And I'm also on Twitter and try to share some of our exciting findings, so...

• 32:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what's your handle on Twitter?

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Uh, it's my name. Uh, so the funny looking A and then Matthias Clasen.

• 32:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it.

• 32:44Chuck Nice?

  At Matthias Clasen. Okay.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. All right, dude. Well, thanks for being on StarTalk. When we come back, we're gonna bring in Heather Berlin. She's our, our neuroscientist at large, and she's gonna tell us all about what's happening in the neurochemistry of fear and startling and anything else that might keep you awake at night. We'll be right back.

• 33:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk. We're talking about the science of fear, of recreational fear, coming off of two segments with one of the world's experts in that subject, from the recreational fear lab, Mathias Kleason, in, is it Denmark Chuck, where that was?

• 33:40Chuck Nice?

  I think so, yes, it is Denmark.

• 33:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, so, we thought we'd bring in our favorite neuroscientist to see what she has to say about Heather Berlin. Heather, welcome back to Star. Always good to have you in arms' reach of us, because we get to these moments where, I don't know what's going on, you know what's going on Chuck. Never. So, neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, associate clinical professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai. Not the Icahn School.

• 34:11Heather Berlin?

  No, it's Icahn.

• 34:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Icahn, Icahn. Heather, what's your favorite scary movie?

• 34:17Heather Berlin?

  Favorite? I like psychological thrillers, so I'm into like Silence of the Lambs and that kind of genre, you know? I don't know if I have a favorite. I mean, Poltergeist really left a mark on me as a kid, that really, you know, there's some that are just imprinted in my brain, and that's one of them.

• 34:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, tell me about people who seek this stuff out, because what came up in a previous segment was Chuck and I were commiserating, we're saying, you know, just, if your life is already a risk, just walking down the street, because you grew up in a tough neighborhood, or the cops might be beating up on you, you're not saying, gee, I want more scary horror in my life. So, we were hypothesizing that if you live a life... Of danger and risk that you don't then need to seek it out. So can you distinguish between those two?

• 35:15Heather Berlin?

  I do think that there is some truth to that. Um, you know, some of the joy uh or the pleasure that people get out of sensation seeking or seeing horror films and getting themselves scared. Um.

• 35:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does that include jumping out of airplanes? I mean, that kind of thing as well?

• 35:30Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, yeah, it does. It does. It's the same, you know, it's the same physiologic reaction where you're getting that sort of fight or flight response. You're getting the cortisol, the adrenaline. Um, and depending on the context you're in, you could interpret it as being a really pleasurable sensation or a really terrifying sensation. But the actual physiologic response is the same. It's just how you perceive it, how you interpret it, which is context dependent, changes. So, so some people who maybe are slightly understimulated as a baseline chronically are seeking out those higher levels of stimulation to, to feel satisfied, to feel good. And there's also something about scaring yourself in a scenario where you know there's no real threat. Um, because then you get that sort

• 36:14Heather Berlin?

  of high and then there's also that release when you're what's called the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in and calms everything down. That's also very pleasurable. So there's this exciting ride.

• 36:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's pleasurable because you were in a tense state and then you come out of the tense state and that transition is where you derive the pleasure, I guess. Is that right?

• 36:33Heather Berlin?

  Exactly, exactly. The release of tension as well is really pleasurable. And.

• 36:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you know, that's, that's kind of weird. It's kind of like hitting my thumb with a hammer and then sticking it in some ice. You know, it's like, damn, that hurt. Oh, that feels so good.

• 36:50Heather Berlin?

  Well, you know, I mean.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is how Chuck brings pleasure to his life only after he imparts pain. Yes, okay.

• 36:55Heather Berlin?

  Right. Well, there are some people who have, who are dealing with different, you know, psychological issues that are in a lot of psychological pain and they, they self-harm, you know, people who cut themselves, harm themselves. Um, because in a way it is a release of tension, of psychological tension that they have. Um.

• 37:13Chuck Nice?

  It's why I do comedy.

• 37:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want to harm yourself every time, Chuck.

• 37:17Heather Berlin?

  But but but there's something about it also brings you into the moment. There's an immediacy. So if you think of a free climber, a rock climber, you know, they can't think about all their problems or anticipate things about the future. You're right there in the moment. There's an intensity to it. That's also, there's something pleasurable about it. But people who, in their everyday life, are living under constant stress or who have to be sort of hypervigilant, they tend to not be as attracted to scaring themselves for entertainment purposes. So, you know, and people who have come out of, let's say, war situations or have sort of PTSD and are hypervigilant, so any little thing can trigger them. They're not looking for more stimulation.

• 38:00Heather Berlin?

  They're already sort of chronically overstimulated and don't need anymore. It's people who kind of maybe need a bit more to get that same high. So I would, I would intuit that you got, that if you grew up in a, in a sort of environment that was threatening, you're not going to be attracted to these horror films as much.

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But is there any therapeutic value to purposefully scaring someone? If, for example, they had PTSD or some other kind of, some other kind of trauma in their life, does more trauma but controlled help get them out of it? Or do you just avoid it altogether?

• 38:36Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, and that's part of what exposure therapy is about. So the idea-

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the term I was looking for there, yeah.

• 38:42Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, exposure therapy. So you, you basically, you create a hierarchy with somebody. So like, what is like your worst fear? You'd rate it like a 10, all the way down to a 1. And what you do is you, you start out with something that where they're at like a, a five or a six in terms of their fear and anxiety. You expose them to a situation, but it's still a safe environment until they eventually habituate. So the brain over time can't be chronically in this state of fear. Eventually it subsides. And then when the person gets down to say a, a one or a two in terms of their fear level, then you take them up to the next notch. And so you keep sort of gra, it's called gradual exposure. Gradually exposing a person to their worst fears until their brain learns, okay, you don't have to be afraid of this anymore. These are when people are having irrational fears, right?

• 39:27Heather Berlin?

  If it was something, a real fear, you know, you're not going to expose them to- Say, you know.

• 39:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, of course, of course.

• 39:34Chuck Nice?

  So it's like good tolerance instead of bad tolerance. Like alcohol is bad tolerance.

• 39:38Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 39:39Chuck Nice?

  You gotta keep drinking more and more. And this, you actually wanna ramp it up so that you can come down.

• 39:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But for example, if you if you fear pigeons, that's not rational, right? Because a pigeon is not.

• 39:50Heather Berlin?

  Right, or even spiders, you know, people with spider.

• 39:52Chuck Nice?

  I don't know, man, is the pigeon sitting over top?

• 39:57Chuck Nice?

  That might.

• 39:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you fear pigeon poop. That's different, that's a different fear.

• 40:04Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 40:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so you were saying, Heather?

• 40:07Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, um, so let's say you fear a spider, for example. You know, you know, it's also interesting is that there are some evolutionary predispositions we have to certain types of fears. So people aren't born necessarily with the fear of electric sockets, right? Because that wasn't, you know, that didn't exist deep in our.

• 40:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Serengeti didn't have electric sockets?

• 40:26Heather Berlin?

  No. So.

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They only had one prong sockets, the two prong and three prong came later.

• 40:32Heather Berlin?

  So we don't, we don't have, so that's not a common fear. What are common fears? Claustrophobia, heights, you know, fear of insects or spiders. Because I think there is a genetic component to certain types of fears that that we are predisposed to. Then there's also learnt fears over time. If you see somebody in your environment growing up that's always afraid of, say, a spider, you might learn that fear as well. But with the exposure is that you first, you you see what they can tolerate. Maybe it's just the picture of a cartoon of a spider and then you get them to habituate that. And then you show them a real spider. And then over time, with this process, you can get someone who is terrified of spiders to hold a tarantula in their hand and be okay with it.

• 41:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I wonder if Chuck, this applies to comedy? Like you start people out slow and then you can get them to laugh at you.

• 41:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, no, it doesn't work that way. You start out slow and then it's all downhill from there.

• 41:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Heather, what about people who who don't have a fear factor but still love horror movies? Like, what are they getting out of it?

• 41:33Heather Berlin?

  People who love, well, this is the thing with horror films, is that it activates this sort of fear center of your brain, the amygdala. And and there's a way, in a sense, it's like you're almost rehearsing for if there was a real threat, but you're doing it in a safe environment. So you're kind of, um, okay, well, what would what would happen if I was walking down the street alone and I heard a strange noise or a man came at me? And then you're in a way, you're you're putting yourself in the scenario, um, playing it out, and then you'll have a toolkit for if anything like that ever happened to you in real life. So there is some sort of rehearsal aspect to it as well.

• 42:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the problem with that rehearsal is, in all these movies, the people do the dumbest thing ever. You know, it's just like, yeah, well, let's run to the shed. Yeah. No. No, you know that's where all the tools are, and he's gonna kill you.

• 42:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Chuck, that's a different question for Heather. Heather, why are the teens in horror movies so stupid?

• 42:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 42:33Heather Berlin?

  Their prefrontal cortex is not fully developed.

• 42:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's it? You got an answer to that?

• 42:37Chuck Nice?

  Oh, look at that, you got an answer.

• 42:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 42:39Heather Berlin?

  There's no rational thought, it's just pure adrenaline and no rational thought.

• 42:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's funny. It would not be believable if you had a 40-year-old person saying, let's run to the haunted house to be safe from the scary things. That doesn't play accurately. Very good.

• 42:54Heather Berlin?

  Because we have a more evolved prefrontal cortex, we can kind of override the fear response, think things through a little bit more, and make more logical decisions.

• 43:02Chuck Nice?

  And and also, sex isn't worth dying for because we've had it. Like, you know.

• 43:07Heather Berlin?

  They always die, yes.

• 43:09Chuck Nice?

  You know what I mean? So it's just like, it's like, meet me, meet me by the lake and we'll go skinny dipping. And it's like, nah. Nah, how about this? You meet me at 2 o'clock tomorrow afternoon, okay? And we will do it. How about that? I don't have to go to the lake at midnight to have sex.

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So so Heather, what about the startle response? I mean, you could be like intellectually afraid, but to be startled, for example, I bet when you were watching Silence of the Lambs, there's nothing really startling in that, right? So what's the difference between not being startled but still being afraid?

• 43:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:47Heather Berlin?

  So, okay, well, the startle response is is almost is an unconscious response, right? You know, the brain, it's there's there's different pathways in the brain. There's one that just goes straight to the amygdala that sets off this sympathetic nervous system, which which puts into place this fight or flight response. And that can happen automatically. That's kind of a startle response. So stimulus comes in, a loud noise, you jump. Then there's the kind of slower, more cognitive fear response, which is that psychological thriller that is more about the anticipation, which is building up a suspense and the fear of what might happen. And films are really good at doing that, you know, like.

• 44:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how I felt with Get Out, by the way. That wasn't specifically a horror movie, but it had me terrified just because I I had been in situations that greatly resembled many of the scenes portrayed in that film. And, you know, people come up to you, I like your body, I like this, I like that. It's like, okay, why? What do you, you know, what? What? And they took this to like a scary extreme where people then start bidding on your body after a brain transplant. And so they don't want your brain, they want your body. It's like, whoa.

• 44:56Heather Berlin?

  So, I mean, that's it. It has more to do with anxiety. So the difference between anxiety and fear is, you know, anxiety is anticipation of a future threat, something bad might happen. And so you're getting these cues and these signals like you need to be prepared, something bad might potentially happen, though it hasn't happened yet. And that's that's anxiety. Fear is that immediate, it's happening right now, run for your life. And so there's this subtle difference between the two. And humans are one of the only animals that actually can have anxiety, which is fear of a future potentially bad, something happening, because we can think far into the future. Animals are more just having an immediate fear response and less so about anticipation

• 45:40Heather Berlin?

  of a future negative event.

• 45:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, animal ever said, next week, this could be bad for me.

• 45:45Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 45:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not, it's not.

• 45:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. So Heather, if there's, can you explain to me the difference between?

• 45:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fear factors on things that we obviously didn't evolve to be afraid of. So, so some people might be afraid of a chainsaw. Some people might be afraid of some other weaponry. Or, and people tend to be more afraid of that than just a gun. Right? Since when are guns ever used in horror movies? Like, never. That's, that's too boring. Right? But it's, but it's probably a more potent means of you losing your life. So, why are we afraid in ways that are not direct?

• 46:31Chuck Nice?

  The most unlikely way of dying doesn't scare you. But the thing that could be outlandish terrifies you.

• 46:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. I, I, so guns should be scary. And, but they're not used in horror movies. It's the hatchet, the chainsaw, the, you know, something else, yet.

• 46:50Chuck Nice?

  Oh, well, maybe it's because we're in America and everybody knows that there's a really good chance you gonna get shot.

• 46:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody's got guns, ain't nothing scary about it.

• 47:01Chuck Nice?

  Right, there's nothing scary, we've all made peace with the fact that there's a good chance we'll get shot. So now a hatchet is like, oh my god, that's, that's terrifying. Like, nobody gets hatcheted.

• 47:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so, so, so is it because they're, they're getting more and more inventive with ways they can kill you in a horror movie?

• 47:18Heather Berlin?

  So, what I think, first of all, with guns, um, part of it is we've habituated to guns. Um, they're not as scary because they're, we, we see them so often. Um, and it's also tends to be a very quick death. Right? You get shot, you die. These other forms of death that they tend to use in horror films kind of drag it out. They're more gruesome in a way, you know? Um, but outside of that even, you know, there, there is psychological aspects to this, particularly classical conditioning. So, i- i- the original studies of classical conditioning with somebody, it was Little Albert, um, it was called. And they basically, it was a little boy and they played this really loud startling noise for him.

• 48:01Heather Berlin?

  And then they paired that startling noise, which was the thing that he became afraid of.

• 48:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was outlawed?

• 48:06Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, this, these were experiments like in the nineteen, you know, fifties before we, we had ethical considerations.

• 48:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you said it like, yeah, I got Albert next door, you know? I became my husband.

• 48:19Chuck Nice?

  Later on, little little Albert became Jason.

• 48:22Heather Berlin?

  Exactly. This poor kid, and so they trained him to fear this loud noise. Then what they did is they would pair the loud noise with like a little, I think it was like a white rabbit or something, or a little white rat. And then it became fear of the white rat. And then then that generalized to fear of any white fluffy thing. And over time, you start to make these sort of associations. And so that's sort of part of what we're they're playing at in some horror films. Like, maybe it's not even the knife you're afraid of, but it's, you know, walking into the the the store that sells, you know, knives or whatever it is, it starts to, you can generalize out, so the fear expands to all these other objects that are surrounding the actual fearful thing.

• 49:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So so the best horror making horror movie producers are those who've spoken to you in advance? And no.

• 49:15Heather Berlin?

  I do consult on films. Yeah, I mean, the well, filmmakers really do understand the psychology of fear and they really play on your fear. Part of it has to do with uncertainty. So there's a suspense, there's a buildup, they're they're playing with your because when you're uncertain, if something is going to be there, is there going to be a tiger present or not? You're you're hyper vigilant, you're paying exquisite attention to what's happening in the environment, anticipating something happening. So they they kind of wrap you rope you in with that with some suspension music. And then it's the shock, you know, the fear, and that's where the adrenaline surges. So they're playing with your neural chemicals in ways that they they understand how after working with people like me. And and they they're masterful at it.

• 49:59Heather Berlin?

  So it's like, almost like when you enter a movie theater, you're allowing your brain to be played in a way. And you're going on a kind of emotional roller coaster ride and you're allowing yourself to go on that with them. But that the music, the lights, the light, all of it is is to build the suspense and the unexpected. And then suddenly, you know, burst out and scare you.

• 50:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what about being scared of things that are not real and were never real? You know, like ghosts or or

• 50:26Chuck Nice?

  vampires.

• 50:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, vampires, like, why? Is it because we have such a good imagination that the never real become real for us to fear them? That just it's it feels very inefficient, evolutionarily inefficient to fear things that never existed.

• 50:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, like my irrational fear of Santa Claus.

• 50:47Heather Berlin?

  So we have these evolutionarily older systems that are at play and they can be easily triggered by by uncertainty. Ghosts, it's sort of, it's this uncertainty. You hear a sound, you hear a noise. And then, of course, we've been fed information from films from the time we're little kids, right? So this imagery has gotten in there and we make these associations, even though our rational brain, our prefrontal cortex knows, you know, there's no such thing as the boogeyman, for example. But there's this more animalistic part of our brain that's been fed this information over many years. And so it can't help but sort of have an automatic thought like, oh, what if it's a ghost? What if it's the boogeyman? And then only after does your prefrontal cortex kick in and give you sort of is is

• 51:32Heather Berlin?

  giving you a rationalization of the fear and then it can start to quell it, then it starts to down regulate the amygdala, the fear center of the brain. So what happens is first the amygdala of the fear is triggered, crazy thoughts can, you know, pop up based on things that you were exposed to in childhood even. And then the prefrontal cortex says, oh, no, no, it's okay. You know, it was just the cat knocking something over. And then it calms down the amygdala.

• 51:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you need all the pieces and working together in a sequence there. Interesting. Because when I was a, I was a very geeky kid and I just rationalized away almost all fear that would grip others in in.

• 52:07Heather Berlin?

  So what are you afraid of? Are you afraid of anything?

• 52:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I can't think of anything. I don't startle. I don't, you know, if someone jumps in front of me, it's like I, I, I'm ready to fight them. I can do that because, you know, I used to do martial arts, but I don't, I don't.

• 52:23Heather Berlin?

  Sharks?

• 52:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not swimming with sharks. Okay, yes.

• 52:29Chuck Nice?

  So then let me get it. You fear land sharks. There you go.

• 52:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I should be, fine.

• 52:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, Heather. So I would fear things in places where such things exist that I fear, but I know never to go there. How about that?

• 52:46Heather Berlin?

  Okay. So I'll tell you my biggest fear. My biggest fear, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Number one is death. I definitely don't want to die, so that's a huge fear. And another, and this is probably not a fear that you have, but if anybody offered me to go to space, like go stay at the International Space Station, I would say hell no. Because the idea of being trapped in a little tube and away from Earth is, to me, terrifying. So I think-

• 53:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I would do it only if the person who designed the spaceship had already sent their mother and brought them back successfully. That's the data that I would use to override that fear, and then I would go.

• 53:22Heather Berlin?

  Okay, so you must have, you have a very strong, the prefrontal cortex is strong in you, Neil.

• 53:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 53:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You may go in peace with the force.

• 53:37Chuck Nice?

  Here is the beginning of the dark side.

• 53:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Guys, we gotta call it quits there. This has been a fun show. I learned a lot. And this is a great topic. Maybe we can revisit it in other ways, because there's no end of fear and fear factors in, on the scientific frontier, especially in your field of study, Heather. So thanks for coming in for this.

• 54:01Heather Berlin?

  Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

• 54:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, always good to have you, dude.

• 54:05Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 54:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This has been StarTalk. We've been talking about the science of fear. And as you know, on StarTalk, we talked about the science of everything. Just happened to be fear this time. All right, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.

• 54:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here we go.

• 54:28Chuck Nice?

  Oh my God. I'm sorry, I'm watching the sketch.

• 54:33Chuck Nice?

  While you guys were doing that, I'm watching the sketch.

• 54:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's completely hilarious.

• 54:37Chuck Nice?

  Hilarious. No, yeah, I thought it was like, um, you know, I didn't realize that the zombies themselves are racist. All the zombies are white.

• 54:49Chuck Nice?

  And Key appeal and walking around. And the zombies won't go.

• 54:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're afraid of the black people.

• 54:56Chuck Nice?

  They're actually afraid of black people. And they're zombies. And then there's one scene where the little girl just goes.

• 55:05Chuck Nice?

  And the parents go, no, no, no, no, no.

• 55:09Chuck Nice?

  The zombie parents like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 55:14Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God, I'm sorry.

• 55:17Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry.

• 55:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How could you not know about this?

• 55:20Chuck Nice?

  I can't believe. I didn't know about that sketch. Oh, my God, that's hilarious. It's so funny. Okay, sorry.