Angry: All about feelings, pt. 3

DACARI: You're listening to Brains On, where we're serious about being curious.

SUBJECT 1: Brains On is supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

SUBJECT 2: Previously on Brains On.

MARC SANCHEZ: Harvey, all my life, I wanted to be Alpaca Jack.

HARVEY: Sanden will soon star in Fleece of Mind, the next Alpaca Jack play.

MARC SANCHEZ: Yeah, I tried out for that part, too. Losing this part feels like I've lost everything.

SANDEN TOTTEN: Oh. Hey, Marc! Can I have a sip of your water?

MARC SANCHEZ: Yeah, but it's actually PickleAde.

SANDEN TOTTEN: Oh, even better. This all-grass diet I'm on to prep to play Alpaca Jack is really drying out my mouth. I want to be sure I can enunciate all my lines. Can't have a raspy star on stage, can we?

MARC SANCHEZ: Here.

SANDEN TOTTEN: Oh, thank you. Nothing like a bit of brine to prep for a top-notch performance.

And there's your jar, good sir.

MARC SANCHEZ: Sanden, I didn't say you could drink it all. Just a sip!

SANDEN TOTTEN: Got to go!

MARC SANCHEZ: And it's just a rehearsal.

HARVEY: Hello, Marc. I detect the door was shut with more force than usual. Did you replace it with one that has more mass?

MARC SANCHEZ: Hey, Harvey. Sorry to rattle your robo sensors, but it is exactly the same door as always.

HARVEY: I see. Then I calculate that you closed it with much greater acceleration.

MARC SANCHEZ: Yeah. I slammed it because I'm about to blow a fuse.

HARVEY: Oh. Fortunately, I have spare fuses in the supply closet.

MARC SANCHEZ: No, Harvey. I mean, this situation with Sanden is making me-- it is so unfair that Sanden gets to be Alpaca Jack in the play.

HARVEY: You seem to be having strong feelings. My data log shows that we processed your emotions about Alpaca Jack the other day, and you are sad. Is this more sadness?

MARC SANCHEZ: Ugh. I was sad at first. But now, no, I'm just mad.

HARVEY: Emotion updated. What is bothering you about this situation?

MARC SANCHEZ: Well, I'm upset that Alpaca Jack is all Sanden will talk about. He knows I wanted the part, too. It feels like he's rubbing it in my face.

HARVEY: That sounds setting up. I mean, upsetting. This reminds me of when I encounter a software bug. I simply reboot my system. I have heard that humans can experience something similar to a reboot when they pause and take deep breaths.

MARC SANCHEZ: That's probably a good idea. Thanks, Harvey.

HARVEY: Don't thank me. Thank my system update. My operating system now features 17 databases of information on emotions. And I have also added a kitten keyboard. Check it out.

MARC SANCHEZ: Hey, that is helping. More kittens, stat!

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MOLLY BLOOM: Welcome to Brains On. From American Public Media, I'm Molly Bloom. And back in the studio with me today is Dacari from Baltimore. Hi, Dacari.

DACARI: Hi, there.

MOLLY BLOOM: Today's episode is the third in our series on feelings.

DACARI: The first episode looks at happiness. It's a joy.

MOLLY BLOOM: And the second gets into sadness.

DACARI: Check them out if you haven't already.

MOLLY BLOOM: Today, we're moving on to a new emotion.

DACARI: Anger.

MOLLY BLOOM: And you have lots of questions.

BENNETT: My question is, how do people get angry?

MARIANNE: Why is it that when you're mad, your brain goes crazy and you do stuff you know you're not supposed to?

KATE: My question is, why do I want to smash things when I'm angry?

LUCAS: Is there a good evolutionary reason for getting angry? And how does it help us?

MOLLY BLOOM: That was Bennett from Richmond, Ontario, Marianne from Atlanta, Kate from Florida, and Lucas from London, England. So when we're angry, it's often because our brain sees something it thinks is a threat.

DACARI: After all, one of the brain's main job is to protect us from danger.

MOLLY BLOOM: Right. If your brain interprets something as potentially dangerous, it gets ready for action.

BRAIN: This brain smells danger and Thai food, but mostly danger.

DACARI: We call this fight, flight, or freeze.

MOLLY BLOOM: Because in a threatening situation, our bodies get ready to try to do one of those things.

DACARI: You can fight to defend yourself.

BRAIN: Hands, get ready for action.

HAND 1: Yes, sir! Brain, sir!

HAND 2: Just as soon as we--

HAND 1: Make this last--

BOTH: Goal! New high score! High five!

HAND 1: Ow!

HAND 2: My face!

HAND 1: Why do we do that?

MOLLY BLOOM: You can take flight by running away.

BRAIN: Feet, be ready to run.

FEET: Yes, sir. We're standing by. Or as we call it, just standing.

DACARI: Or you can freeze. You feel so threatened that you want to hide or you're not sure what to do next.

MOLLY BLOOM: This fight, flight, or freeze reaction involves natural chemicals inside your body that tell it what to do. Brains On producer, Menaka Wilhelm, is here to break it down for us.

MENAKA WILHELM: Hey, Molly! Hey, Dacari!

DACARI: Hi.

MENAKA WILHELM: And here are my notes, hot off the printer. So the fight, flight, or freeze response is kind of like a reflex. It might happen before you even realize what's going on. And there are two main chemicals involved in this fight, flight, or freeze response, adrenaline and cortisol. They're both hormones, chemicals that your body makes to send messages.

Like most things in our body, these chemicals do many different things. In terms of our fight, flight, or freeze response, these chemicals are how your brain tells your body, get ready for action. When your emotions kick in, that can ramp up your body's response even more. And anger is often related to the fight part of that fight, flight, or freeze-- ah, a paper cut. I hate paper cuts so much!

DACARI: Menaka?

MENAKA WILHELM: Who's Menaka? I'm super duper Zen. I'm the size and shape of a regular person, but with more adrenaline and cortisol inside!

DACARI: That's quite a name.

MENAKA WILHELM: Superhuman would be a good play on superhuman. But not everyone is a man, obviously. Duh.

DACARI: Well, super you person, you seem pretty angry. What's going on?

MENAKA WILHELM: That paper sliced me! That teeny tiny hole it made in my fingertip puts my life in danger!

DACARI: OK.

MOLLY BLOOM: Here, we'll help you fill in this explanation. Let me see your notes. Oh, where were you? Oh, right. In fight, flight, or freeze mode, our body's reactions change just a little. It says here, play a recording of someone named Uraina Clark. Oh, here it is.

URAINA CLARK: We'll be able to run faster and farther and act quicker and see more and pay attention to things better and remember things better.

MOLLY BLOOM: OK. Uraina studies how stress affects our brains at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

MENAKA WILHELM: That paper threatens my survival!

DACARI: A paper cut isn't really a huge threat, but I get that it might feel like that.

MOLLY BLOOM: So when the brain sees a threat, it sends a message to glands right behind the stomach, above the kidneys. The brain tells the glands, make hormones.

BRAIN: Hey, adrenal glands, why don't you get some adrenaline going? And while you're at it, get me some cortisol.

ADRENAL GLAND: You got it, boss.

DACARI: Hormones are chemicals that tell other parts of the body what to do. There are lots of different hormones.

MOLLY BLOOM: Cortisol and adrenaline each sends slightly different messages.

URAINA CLARK: Adrenaline is like, here we go. We're going right now. Go. Whereas cortisol is like, I will keep you going. You're going to keep going.

DACARI: So super you person, those hormones are pumping through your body right now, changing how your body acts and how you feel.

MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah. What's it like?

MENAKA WILHELM: Well, fast heartbeat! Deeper breath, more oxygen, more blood to heart, lungs, and limbs. Higher blood sugar! More fuel for muscles and brain. I'm ready to battle the paper! I will defeat this threat!

MOLLY BLOOM: Menaka, do you just want a bandage?

MENAKA WILHELM: Huh? Oh, wow. Thank you, Molly.

DACARI: That cut should be better in no time.

MENAKA WILHELM: You guys, what happened?

MOLLY BLOOM: You went into fight, flight, or freeze mode when you got that paper cut.

MENAKA WILHELM: It happened so fast.

DACARI: It is truly an amazing, overwhelming response.

MENAKA WILHELM: That's exactly what Uraina says.

URAINA CLARK: It's so automatic, we don't even know it happens. Before you even realize that there was a threat, you are ready to fight it. You're ready to flee it. Your fight or flight response has already begun.

DACARI: And once your body reacts, your emotions can also kick up. Sometimes, a feeling of anger can come on so quickly you don't realize what's going on.

MENAKA WILHELM: Definitely. Wow. I think I'll go take a walk to keep calming down.

MOLLY BLOOM: Thanks, Menaka and super you person.

DACARI: Bye.

MENAKA WILHELM: Protect yourselves from the paper! Later.

SUBJECT 3: Brains On.

DACARI: Some feelings like anger can come on really quickly. It can be overwhelming, but the feeling of anger isn't a big bad thing that you have to avoid or ignore.

KAZ NELSON: It is healthy to feel anger and healthy to notice that signal.

MOLLY BLOOM: That's Kaz Nelson. She's a doctor whose specialty is feelings and mental health at the University of Minnesota. She told us the key is noticing those feelings.

KAZ NELSON: What you want to do is catch it and maybe bring down the intensity of that anger. If it's not going to be an effective tool in meeting your goals, or it might hurt somebody, that's when we have to bring down the intensity of anger.

DACARI: But once you have your anger, it can also be useful in some cases.

KAZ NELSON: If you see someone else getting hurt, for example, or someone hurting another person, that might make you feel angry on behalf of that person. And you might be justified at that point to use that anger to help fix a system, or to correct an injustice that might be happening. So please know that anger is a flag and a signal. And you have to use it carefully, but it's not necessarily a bad emotion that has no use.

MOLLY BLOOM: Later on in this episode, Mallika Chopra will share a strategy for taking a break to dial back your anger. She's a meditation expert who's sharing some strategies in each episode of our feelings series.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DACARI: Meditation helps a lot of people pause when they have a big feeling.

MOLLY BLOOM: Right. But in terms of what meditation exactly does to us, it's actually a tough question to answer. Does it change our brains? Here's Alea Skwara, who studies meditation at the University of California, Davis.

ALEA SKWARA: Meditation does change your brain, but so does literally anything else you do. So does going for a walk. So does practicing an instrument. Anything you do in the world changes your brain. Your brain is very plastic. It's a learning machine, especially kids.

MOLLY BLOOM: Alea and other scientists have a lot of questions about how meditation and mindfulness affect us.

DACARI: And it's kind of tricky to measure the answers to those questions.

ALEA SKWARA: If I want to see how tall someone is, I could use a measuring tape. If I want to see how mindful someone is, there's no direct way to measure that. We're measuring things that go on inside someone.

MOLLY BLOOM: That doesn't mean it's impossible to understand how meditation works. It just means there are lots of things left to learn about meditating.

DACARI: Researchers like Alea are hard at work. They are starting to see when you meditate--

ALEA SKWARA: There do seem to be differences in your ability to maintain your attention over a period of time, to keep your attention on whatever it is that you're choosing to keep it on.

MOLLY BLOOM: Meditation helps you practice noticing things like your breath, small details in the world around you, and even feelings. And that seems to help when you have a big feeling like anger.

ALEA SKWARA: So you're able to see it as a reaction instead of feeling like, I am my anger. Being able to feel like, I am the space around the anger, and I'm feeling this anger come up.

MOLLY BLOOM: When you meditate, you practice noticing things without jumping to act. So you might start using that skill when you have a strong emotion, too.

ALEA SKWARA: And so it's not to reject it and not to push it down, but instead because you are not the anger. Being able to then make a choice on how you want to express that feeling.

DACARI: That way, it's up to you what you do next. Your anger doesn't get to pick for you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

This summer, get ready for season two of Smash Boom Best.

MOLLY BLOOM: In each episode of Smash Boom Best, debaters go head-to-head in a knockout drag down verbal match-up.

DACARI: Like chocolate versus cheese, museums versus libraries, Grand Canyon versus Mount Everest.

MOLLY BLOOM: Each side brings their finest facts and their sharpest wits, all in hopes of winning over our kid judge.

DACARI: Listeners can follow along and pick their own winner. And if you stick around to the end of this episode, get a sneak peek of this week's debate, museums versus libraries.

MOLLY BLOOM: Which one of those do you think is cooler, Dacari? Museums or libraries?

DACARI: Libraries.

MOLLY BLOOM: What's your favorite thing to do at the library?

DACARI: To read the books.

MOLLY BLOOM: What's your favorite book you've read recently?

DACARI: Percy Jackson.

MOLLY BLOOM: This is a really hard one. Libraries are so, so cool, but museums have so much stuff there that's really hard to see anywhere else. But I think we definitely have to listen to the rest of the show to make up our minds.

DACARI: I have the link to the preview. Why not subscribe to the show?

MOLLY BLOOM: And if the wait for new episodes is making you angry, maybe take a pause to decide what to do with that feeling.

DACARI: While you're waiting for more episodes of Smash Boom Best, Sam brings on a note at BrainsOn.org/contact.

MOLLY BLOOM: We love when you send us questions, debate ideas, mystery sounds, and drawings. BrainsOn.org/contact is the place to reach us.

DACARI: That's how we got this question.

BEN: Hi, I'm Ben.

MAX: And I'm Max.

BEN: We're from Ocala, Florida. And our question is, why does the sound of nails on a chalkboard bother people so much?

MOLLY BLOOM: The answer to that question is coming up at the end of this episode, right before that Smash Boom Best preview.

DACARI: Keep listening. Welcome back to Brains On. From American Public Media, I'm Dacari.

MOLLY BLOOM: And I'm Molly. We have some important business to attend to.

SUBJECT 4: Mystery sound.

MOLLY BLOOM: Are you ready for the mystery sound, Dacari?

DACARI: Yes.

MOLLY BLOOM: All right. Here it is.

[GLASS BREAKING]

OK. Any guesses about what that sound might be?

DACARI: Glass breaking.

MOLLY BLOOM: Ooh. Yeah, that is a really, really good guess. We're going to hear it again a little bit later in the show.

SUBJECT 5: Brains. Brains. Brains On.

MOLLY BLOOM: All of us get angry, but we don't necessarily get angry in the same ways. We asked you to tell us how it feels in your body when you get angry. And here's what you had to say.

LIAM: When I get angry, my body feels like it does not want to talk, and I just want to walk away and be alone for a little while.

EVE: It feels like I need a volcano to slow down my body.

BECKETT: When I'm angry, I feel like my fists are crunched up inside my body and brain.

JACK: I also feel like energy builds up inside me, and I feel like I could go really fast or really strong.

KATHY: I feel overwhelmed.

JACK: I just feel like I want to punch somebody.

JOSIE: I feel like someone shook up a fizzy water inside my body and it wants to explode.

AVA: When I'm mad and sad, I whine a lot.

KATHY: Sometimes, I play on my keyboard. I start with the low notes and I play out my emotions. And when I get more calmer, I play out calmer songs that I make up myself. And when I'm calm enough, most of the time, I'm able to talk out how I'm feeling.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MOLLY BLOOM: Thanks to Liam, Eve, Beckett, Jack, Kathy, Jack, Josie, and Ava for sharing those answers with us. Now, we've talked in this series about how different people have different emotional thermostats.

SUBJECT 6: Emotional thermostat!

DACARI: Some people really get mad really fast and other people take longer to feel upset.

MOLLY BLOOM: It turns out, even for just one person, one feeling can also have different temperatures.

DACARI: Like super hot fire, explosive anger.

[EXPLOSION]

But there's also lukewarm, simmering anger.

MOLLY BLOOM: Exactly. And people talk about those different angers a little differently depending on the part of the world they grew up in. Michaeleen Doucleff is a science reporter for NPR. She's looked into lots of different kinds of anger, so we asked her to join us to talk about it.

DACARI: Welcome, Michaeleen.

MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF: Hi.

DACARI: What are some different types of anger that you heard of in other languages?

MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF: Yeah. So first of all, there's many of them. There's kind of an infinite number. But some of my favorites are, for instance, in German, they have a word that means a face in need of a slap, that you're so angry at this person that their face is just begging you to hit them. The ancient Greeks differentiated between a short burst of anger versus long anger that lasted a really long time.

But my favorite place to find anger is in India. It's like a treasure trove of anger. One of the best is an anger called "when the eggplant hits the hot oil." So when you put eggplant or something in a hot pan, it sizzles and bursts. And so this anger is like you hear something and you just immediately become so angry, you want to burst and sizzle like something in a hot pan.

They also have a different anger that you express for people that you love and that are close to you, then anger that you express towards the boss or the government. So they separate these two out and they try not to mix them up. And then finally, they have an anger that's a loving anger.

It's like when you're with your parents or a friend, that you're angry at them, but you also just feel bad and sorry and you love them and you want to help them, but they're not letting you. So it's love mixed with anger and kind of mournfulness. It's a very, very beautiful anger, I think.

DACARI: What about your own anger? Do you have special names for any anger you feel?

MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF: Yeah. So after I did this reporting, I started looking and paying attention to what made me angry. And I started trying to make up words and ideas for these different types of anger. And one that I found that I had a lot-- my husband and I call it [? disophenous ?] anger or [? sophenous ?] anger. And it's when things are just too loud.

So in our house, we have a loud dog and a loud baby. And sometimes, people are shouting and talking, and it's just too much sound. So we call that a [? sophenous ?] anger. And we use it in our house. My husband will say, [? disophenous ?] anger, Michaeleen. And then it's useful. And I'm like, oh, yeah, you're right. Let's turn that radio off, or let's put the dog out. So it tells me why he's angry.

Another one that I have a lot is what I call hurry up anger, when people aren't doing something fast enough for me, which is kind of ridiculous when you start saying it. Someone's not driving fast enough, or my kids' not putting their shoes on fast enough. And I'm like, hurry up, hurry up. So I call it hurry up anger. And naming it like that made me realize how silly it was. And why am I getting angry? Because you're not moving fast enough.

Oh, here's another one. It's very useful. I call it boomerang anger. So this is when somebody does something to you that really hurts your feelings or makes you feel bad, and you have a right to be angry. And you get angry at them, and then they get angry at you back. They boomerang the anger back to you. And at first, I would get upset or I'd get more angry back. And everyone just gets angrier and more and more angry.

But since I've labeled it and figured this out, boomerang anger, I say now, hey, you're putting that anger back on me, but you're the one that hurt my feelings. And that is way more productive than just boomeranging anger back and forth to each other.

MOLLY BLOOM: I've seen all these angers. Do you have any of the ones Michaeleen just mentioned? Do you ever feel yourself getting any of those?

DACARI: The boomerang anger.

MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah. So Michaeleen, what made you interested in anger in the first place?

MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF: Yeah. So I grew up in a house that was just full of anger. Door slamming and shouting were just basic means of communicating with one another. And when I got married, my husband was always like, why are you yelling? Why are you shouting? And I was just kind of, I don't know. This is the way I was taught to communicate.

But then when we had our daughter three years ago, I really was like, I don't want her to grow up in a house full of anger. So I wanted to figure out what to do with it, deal with my anger in a more productive way. I don't want to come across as saying that all anger is bad and we should completely never be angry. I think that understanding the anger and the different types of anger helps us deal with the anger in a way that's more productive.

DACARI: Thanks, Michaeleen.

MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF: Well, thank you, Dacari. It was a pleasure.

MOLLY BLOOM: OK, Dacari. Are you ready to get back to the mystery sound?

DACARI: Yes.

MOLLY BLOOM: All right. This time, I'll give you a hint before you guess. This is the sound of something you might feel like doing when you're angry. Here's the sound.

[GLASS BREAKING]

So before, you guessed that that was breaking glass. Do you want to stick with your original guess, or do you have any new thoughts?

DACARI: I think you're throwing something at glass.

MOLLY BLOOM: Well, the sound you just heard was indeed glass breaking and people breaking it. So really good ears. And this sound is from a place called Rage Ground in Los Angeles where you can smash things safely to let your anger out. Brains On producers Menaka Wilhelm and Kristina Lopez got to live out that impulse. Basically, each room there is empty, except for a bunch of smashable things and a few baseball bats that you can smash with. Here's what it was like.

PETER WOLF: Hello.

MENAKA WILHELM: Hello.

PETER WOLF: Hi. How are you guys doing? My name is Peter Wolf.

EDWIN TORIBIO: And my name is Edwin Toribio. You can break stuff here.

PETER WOLF: Are both of you guys be breaking stuff?

MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah. Yeah.

EDWIN TORIBIO: We like to say that we're a place where people can come to break stuff in a safe environment to release out any anger or pent-up emotions and stress. It says, "a place and time for everything."

KRISTINA LOPEZ: Can we put these on here?

PETER WOLF: Yeah. Safety first because you're breaking things, and there's a lot of sharp objects.

KRISTINA LOPEZ: OK.

PETER WOLF: So you're wearing an orange helmet with a mesh welding mask, and you're wearing blue felt welding gloves.

MENAKA WILHELM: OK. So I'm going to put on my gloves.

PETER WOLF: And a white jumpsuit with a Rage Ground patch on it.

KRISTINA LOPEZ: Let's do it!

EDWIN TORIBIO: And right now, we have a room full of different items. We have vases, all types of glass. We have some electronics, printers, keyboards, desktops that all have been cleaned and are safe to break. All right. So I'm just going to close the door so nothing leaks out. And have fun, guys. Let us know when you're done.

KRISTINA LOPEZ: I'm so excited.

[GLASS BREAKING]

OK, I think we're done.

MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah.

EDWIN TORIBIO: Hey, how was it?

KRISTINA LOPEZ: It was great.

EDWIN TORIBIO: I think people afterwards, they just feel relieved.

PETER WOLF: Very relaxed and calm.

EDWIN TORIBIO: They come out feeling like they've gotten this huge weight off their shoulders. They usually come out smiling, or they come out sweaty because it's basically a workout in there.

MENAKA WILHELM: It made me feel physically powerful to be able to break glass and to make a dent in a computer tower. But there's other things, too, that make me feel powerful in my normal life. So it was kind of a similar feeling to exercising hard or trying to run fast.

KRISTINA LOPEZ: It felt like I was playing an awesome dodgeball game. It's that kind of same hitting things. That's really fun. And you don't have to worry about getting hurt, really. I mean, we were very careful in the room. I slept really well after. I had one of the best sleeps I've had this year.

MENAKA WILHELM: It's hard to break things. You don't think about that when you feel angry and you're like, oh, I really want to break something. But it's actually really hard work.

MOLLY BLOOM: So we should say in basically all normal situations, Brains On does not endorse breaking things. It's really important to think of ways of handling your feelings without hurting other people or their stuff, especially when your feelings are really big. Is there anything that you do that helps you when you feel angry, Dacari?

DACARI: I just close my eyes and go to my happy place, and pretend I'm the only one there. It helps me every time.

MOLLY BLOOM: That is really great. Can I ask you what is your happy place?

DACARI: My happy place is full of Legos.

MOLLY BLOOM: Oh, yes. That's awesome. What kind of stuff do you like to build with Legos?

DACARI: I build cities, houses, cars, airplanes, and helicopters.

MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah. When I'm angry, I take deep breaths. That helps me a lot. But now, I think I might start imagining a Lego room. I think that would really help me, too. And Mallika Chopra has another idea of what to do when you're angry.

DACARI: She's a meditation and mindfulness expert.

MOLLY BLOOM: In every episode of this series, she's sharing meditations you can try when you feel different feelings. Here's what Mallika suggests for big angry feelings.

MALLIKA CHOPRA: When we get angry, you can often feel it in your body. So you may feel that your face gets red. You clench your hands. Your heart starts beating really fast. And you may even feel like hitting something or shouting out loud. So your body reacts to anger.

So when we are angry, what I suggest is an exercise called STOP, S-T-O-P. So S is for stop what you're doing, T is take three breaths, because breathing helps us slow down. So take three breaths in and out. O is observe what's happening in your body.

So like I said, it's normal for your heart to start beating or your hands to start sweating or get clenched, your face to get hot. And so just observe what's happening while you're taking those breaths. And then P is for proceed. And what this does is it just helps your anger get more in control so that you feel like you can make good decisions and not angry decisions.

MOLLY BLOOM: It's very normal to feel angry sometimes.

DACARI: We evolved to sometimes want to fight and respond to a threat. But there are lots of different reasons people feel angry.

MOLLY BLOOM: Chemicals called hormones send messages within your body.

DACARI: Adrenaline and cortisol are key hormones in our fight, flight, or freeze response.

MOLLY BLOOM: But if you pause to realize what's happening to your body, you can calm down and think about what to do next.

DACARI: Scientists are still trying to understand exactly how meditation affects us. But so far, it seems to have people pause and pay attention better.

MOLLY BLOOM: Naming different types of anger can help you understand and help control this feeling.

DACARI: That's it for this episode of Brains On. Brains On is produced by Marc Sanchez, Sanden Totten, and Molly Bloom.

MOLLY BLOOM: This series was also produced by Menaka Wilhelm and Sam Choo, with support from Call to Mind, APM's mental health initiative. We had production help from Hanna Harris Green, Kristina Lopez, Elyssa Dudley, Phyllis Fletcher, and Emily Bright. And we had engineering help from Veronica Rodriguez, Bob White, and Cameron Wiley.

Special thanks to Naundia Fitzgerald, Jamar Peete, Andres Gonzalez and the Holistic Life Foundation, Kaz Nelson, Cindy Willner, John Rabe, Gabriel Cortes, Jessica Flores, Marley Feuerwerker-Otto, Libby Denkman, and Jonaki Mehta.

DACARI: Now, before we go, it's time for a moment of--

BEN: Why does the sound of nails on a chalkboard bother people so much?

ADRIAN KC LEE: When you say sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, immediately everyone has the same feeling. We actually don't know why specifically we are so repulsive to it. My name is Adrian KC Lee. I'm an associate professor of the department of speech and hearing sciences at the University of Washington.

First of all, we need to know something about frequency. So sound, you can analyze it like on a piano. There's low sound, low frequency. There's high sound, high frequency. For nail scratching a chalkboard, a particular range of the piano, shall we say, is 2 to 4 kilohertz. So it tends to be somewhat in the middle to high range.

It turns out our ear, especially our outer ear-- so the bits that you can actually feel with your fingers right now-- accentuate sounds between 2 to 4 kilohertz particularly well. In some way, that frequency range is extremely important for a lot of things. Speech has a lot of energy around that area of frequency, and so does many other environmental sounds.

People speculate we're more sensitive to that region because babies crying is around that acoustical region or chimpanzee crying. We actually don't know exactly whether that is true that we're that particularly sensitive to the fingernails scratching the chalkboard as tied to all these different environmental sounds that we're biologically predisposed to process. Now, why is it useful? I have no idea. But it's something that is universal.

MOLLY BLOOM: This list is music to my ears. It's the Brains Honor Roll. These are the remarkable listeners who send us their brilliant questions, ideas, mystery sounds, drawings, and high fives.

[LISTING HONOR ROLL]

We'll be back soon with more answers to your questions.

DACARI: Thanks for listening.

MOLLY BLOOM: And now, here's that sneak peek of the libraries versus museums episode of Smash Boom Best. Our pal, Joy Dolo, was asked to pretend she was an alien who has been sent to Earth with a very important mission, to collect data on Earth libraries and report her findings back.

JOY DOLO: Earth year, 2019. Observation subject, libraries. I have seen nothing like this place before. As I enter, a human says, welcome. I dismiss them. To my right is a herd of small humans clapping, while another much older human sings A-B-C-D-E-F-G to them. What could this mean? An algorithm? Are these coordinates back to my home planet? Have I been discovered?

I dash further. I see many-- oh, what is the word-- teenagers surrounding the box screens of information. Ah, yes. I have studied those. You type in your inquiry to be a part of the Google, and you are googled an answer. Very similar to my planet, except the word Google means ice cream sandwich. Strange, and I am hungry.

One of the teen humans glares at me. And I stumble further into the most miraculous thing, pages and pages of information packed into a leather-bound contraption and placed into many rows and even cabinets. As I approach, I wonder, how am I to know which little paper box to grab? Am I allowed to touch? What if it bites back? I feel a human behind me. Is it the herd of small humans? The teenager? Am I done for?

I turn. It says, can I help you find something? It's welcome human again. What a relief. They are offering assistance. What is this? My eyes are leaking. This cannot be. I am crying, or as my people say, fuldorfingel. The human leads me to an aisle about planets and shows me a book about space, including my home, Mars.

I must be in the comedy section because these facts are not right. Still, with all this information and entertainment in one place, it is a wonder humans don't live here.

[LAUGHTER]

I think I'm the funniest person.

[LAUGHTER]

SUBJECT 7: Wait, what was your word for crying?

JOY DOLO: Fuldorfingel.

SUBJECT 7: I am fuldorfingel with joy.

MOLLY BLOOM: If you want to hear Team Museum's response, you can listen to the episode right now. Search for Smash Boom Best in your podcast app or at SmashBoom.org. The show is so good, you will feel all fuldorfingel. Subscribe now.