Hey, true weirdos, we've got some bonus content for you at the end of the episode. Stick around if you want.

Does it shock you to learn that humans have only explored 5% of the world's oceans? How about the Great Lakes? We've only mapped about 15% of those. In fact, we know

more about the surface of Mars than we do the Great Lakes. How about that? Water covers more than

70% of the Earth's surface. Do you know what lies beneath all that water? Do you want to know?

Because not everyone who catches a glimpse of that most mysterious and unknown world

lives to share what they've seen.

And some of those who do survive come back with stories strange and fearful as a nightmare.

And they got a small beam of light against the mirror.

True. Weird stuff.

The feeling of being watched. We've all experienced it.

Like the slightest prickle on the back of your neck and awareness so sudden and sharp that you abruptly turn and meet the eyes of the watcher and then just as quickly look away it happens

everywhere to everyone school work public transit parties church services it can happen in a crowd or a small group. Bright daylight, darken city

street. It's an instinct humans possess, one we explain away as a relic of our earliest days in

the trees and the caves when we were just as much prey as predator.

It turns out that the ability to sense the gaze of another upon us is even more fascinating

than we know. Our brains, those mysterious wrinkly blobs of gray goo, get super busy with

the information coming in through our eyes.

Those visual signals get sent off to at least 10 specific areas of the brain,

including the amygdala.

The amygdala is small but mighty, responsible for the processing of emotion.

That emotional processing also influences behavior and memory.

A really simplified way of thinking about it is this.

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