Episode 6: The Science of Fear

Hidden Brain

Hidden Brain Media

Arts, Science, Performing Arts, Social Sciences

4.6 • 40.4K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2015

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, for Halloween, the Hidden Brain podcast gets spooky. We explore the science of fear — traveling to a haunted house curated by a scientist to investigate what scares us, and why some people enjoy this sensation more than others.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.
0:02.5	This week for Halloween, the Science of Fear.
0:08.4	We'll talk about what scares us and why sometimes
0:10.9	anticipating being afraid can be worse than the thing itself.
0:14.5	Uh, I don't know if I can do this.
0:17.1	We're going to talk about how changing a few subtle things
0:20.1	can make us feel disoriented.
0:21.9	Yeah, your body is basically just preparing itself
0:24.2	to face whatever it's going to encounter around the next bend.
0:28.4	And how this sense of disorientation can increase your fear.
0:32.8	Oh my god, it's so good of bad.
0:35.7	We'll also explore the upside of fear.
0:38.2	Sometimes being scared can actually be a good thing.
0:42.0	We're going to do things a little differently in this episode.
0:44.4	We decided to recruit a very brave guinea pig.
0:47.7	Oh my god.
0:49.0	Oh my god.
0:50.6	What's that?
0:51.6	Maggie Pennman is one of the producers of this podcast.
0:54.4	Maggie, welcome.
0:55.3	Hi, Shankar.
0:56.0	I don't sound very brave in that clip, I have to say.
	...

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