The Science of ASMR (And People Who Hate It)

The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week

Popular Science

Science, Education, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2019

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we have a very special episode all about the science behind the autonomous sensory meridian response, a.k.a. ASMR. While people who experience ASMR feel extremely pleasant and satisfying tingles when hearing their trigger sounds—which often include hair brushing, nail tapping, chewing, and whispering—another group can hear the same sounds and become filled with anxiety and rage. Eleanor, Rachel, and Amy dig into Eleanor's feature package all about these phenomena, which appears in the winter issue of Popular Science. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our Facebook group or tweet at us! Click here to learn more about all of our stories! If you want to see us in your town, click here to take our listener survey! Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Eleanor Cummins: www.twitter.com/elliepses Amy Schellenbaum: www.twitter.com/acsbaum Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden Edited by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week.
0:11.2	And while most of the things we find end up in our articles, we also come across plenty
0:16.5	of weird facts that we just keep around the office.
0:21.0	So we figured, why not share this with you?
0:24.3	Welcome to the weirdest thing I know in this week, a podcast from the editors of Popular Science.
0:29.9	I'm Rachel Fultman.
0:31.4	I'm Amy Shellenbaum, and I'm Eleanor Cummins.
0:34.6	And Eleanor is very upset already.
0:36.7	Yes.
0:37.3	So listeners, I'm going to, I'm slowly transitioning out of the whisper because I feel like I'm
0:42.2	just going to scream accidentally.
0:45.0	Usually on the weirdest thing I learn this week, we offer up little teases and share little
0:49.5	facts and spin them into crazy stories, little science yarns, if you will.
0:55.3	And we vote on which one was the weirdest thing we learned this week.
0:58.3	But this week, we're diving into a feature package that Eleanor wrote for our latest
1:03.2	print issue.
1:04.6	Yes, we make a print magazine four times a year.
1:07.3	It's pretty excellent.
1:08.8	And the topic, as you may have guessed, is ASMR.
1:13.5	That was so good.
1:16.3	ASMR is this internet phenomenon where people seek out videos that have like sounds of
1:21.3	hair brushing and whispering and chewing and things like cosplay, all because it gives
	...

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