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1:03

The. Science Museum in London is

1:05

one of the all best science

1:07

museums in the world. It's got

1:09

James Watt steam engine, It's got

1:12

Alexander Graham Bell telephone. It didn't

1:14

get this mechanical clock from the

1:16

thirteen hundreds if this kind of

1:18

serious education. All family friendly place.

1:21

But. Then one night every month around

1:24

six pm big kick out! all

1:26

the kids and the vibes start

1:28

to shift. The.

1:30

Opening bars they have this silent

1:32

disco, They have lots of live

1:34

experiments and they have lots of

1:37

college students in. This is m

1:39

a Burn. She's a neuroscientist to Was working at

1:41

the museum a few years ago. And I

1:43

was looking for good sort of

1:45

sensory neuroscience experiments that I could

1:47

do with conrad demonstrations on these

1:49

people at work. So wondering three

1:51

The Science Museum of the Thursday

1:53

Evening. her job was to teach

1:55

them basic scientific concepts but you wanted something

1:57

kind of wacky so she could get attention

2:00

of all these drunk college students. Here we

2:02

go, get smushed! So she

2:04

decided to try this weird experiment she'd

2:06

heard of. You get people to come

2:08

up. I am hummus, hummus. And you say,

2:11

do you want to do this experiment

2:13

on pain tolerance and swearing? Pain

2:16

tolerance and swearing. And

2:18

this is the part where I should tell you that there

2:21

are going to be all kinds of swears we're not

2:23

bleeping in this episode. Just

2:25

a huge heads up. It was like I'm fucking with you.

2:28

I am not fucking with you. Anyway,

2:31

here's the experiment. If you stick

2:34

your hand in a bucket of water, so

2:36

called that it's actually painful, will swearing help

2:38

you tolerate that pain and let you keep

2:40

your hand in there longer? And

2:42

you've got some fairly, you know, people who've had

2:44

a cup of drinks by this point and are

2:46

fairly game for it. I am not fucking drunk.

2:49

But Emma really wanted to teach some

2:52

scientific concepts here. Not just try and

2:54

get people swearing for shits and giggles.

2:56

Not fucking drunk. She needed a control

2:58

for her experiment. Something people could

3:00

say as a test while holding their hands in ice

3:03

water. So you ask them for

3:05

a neutral word to say, describe

3:07

a table. Woody. And then she

3:09

asked them to pick a swear word. The words

3:11

I've had have ranged from the sort of

3:14

usual fucks and shit. Fucking

3:16

shit. To bollockses. Bollocks!

3:19

To slightly more colorful

3:21

portmanteau words. Alright, you cockwumbles.

3:25

The students would stick their hands in the ice water

3:27

twice. First to test the neutral word.

3:29

Woody. And then to test the swear

3:31

words. Shit. And Emma would flip a

3:33

coin to see which one went first. Usually

3:36

if I'm doing this in a pub, I usually ask

3:38

people if they think head or tails is dirty and

3:40

then choose whichever one of those is going to

3:42

be the swear word. Arguments for both, right? Absolutely.

3:44

It tells me a lot about the person I'm

3:46

talking to. And that allows me

3:49

to make sure that there isn't any

3:51

primacy or recency effect. So you're

3:53

randomizing. You're so annoying. Then

3:56

Emma would lay out the rules for each ice

3:58

water attempt. All in an act of... saying

4:00

is just the one word from that

4:02

category. So what are you... Over and

4:04

over again. Oh, shit. Until

4:06

they reach the point where they feel they can't

4:08

keep their hand in that water anymore. The longer

4:10

the students can keep their hand in the water,

4:12

the higher their pain tolerance. And

4:14

it turns out, swearing really fucking

4:17

helps. Yeah, if you were saying, what

4:19

are you... You might be able to keep your hand

4:21

in ice water for about 90 seconds, but

4:23

if you're saying shit, it's probably going to be, you

4:25

know, two, two and a half minutes. Shit. Shit.

4:30

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

4:33

Shit. Okay, it's worth saying that Emma's experiment

4:36

with drunk college students, it's

4:38

not exactly publishable scientific work.

4:40

Because I'm essentially doing this

4:42

in a frat house. It's

4:44

just, you're not getting good

4:46

data here. But seeing just how

4:48

excited the students were about this sort of

4:50

experiment, it made her kind

4:52

of fall in love with the science of

4:55

swallowing. The fact that there were

4:57

scientists studying swearing just seemed to blow people's

4:59

minds, and it kind of blew mine as

5:01

well. So she started reading every paper

5:03

on swearing she could get her hands on. You

5:06

just know that was research, Remit Hall. You're

5:08

looking at a paper and there's maybe five or

5:10

six citations that you're thinking, I really want to

5:12

read those. And each of those has got five

5:14

or six citations. And each of those... And before

5:16

you know it, you're in a pile of papers

5:18

that's sort of above your head. But

5:21

as she dug into the research, she

5:23

found that this ice water experiment doesn't

5:25

just work on drunk people. It's been

5:28

replicated tons of times in way more

5:30

reputable settings. And it is so incredibly

5:32

robust. So Emma started doing this experiment

5:34

all over the place. And

5:36

everywhere I do it, I get the

5:39

same result. It's

5:42

almost like this kind of magic incantation.

5:45

Like abra come motherfucking dabra and

5:47

poof. Increase your pain

5:49

tolerance every time. But if

5:52

you change just one letter of this spell, The

5:54

effect vanishes. There's a study that's

5:57

been done using what we call

5:59

minced oof. That

6:03

kind of thing, Doesn't

6:07

work at all. it has to be the

6:09

real thing and the some the you experience

6:11

that say what's being. The best said

6:14

the pain killers is only I didn't

6:16

say fudge. I said well I'm a

6:18

Muslim probably and mother father, mother fucker.

6:21

Which. Raises always it's leading

6:23

questions about what's happening when my

6:25

Cyrix. This

6:31

weekend? Unexplainable. How does this

6:33

magic spell actually work? How

6:35

can a word, a very

6:37

particular kind of word, be

6:39

powerful enough to reduce something

6:41

as visceral as pain? So.

6:48

In order to understand how swearing can act

6:50

like this sort of magic word that reduces

6:52

pain, I feel like we gotta get more

6:54

basic for a second. Set. Of

6:57

what is a snail. The

6:59

most common definition.

7:02

Is that it expresses something that

7:04

is considered to both Six So

7:06

something you're not allowed to say.

7:09

Yeah, something you're not allowed to say

7:11

unless the thing that makes it such

7:13

a slippery beast is it. What do

7:15

we mean by not allowed. To right

7:18

right? But the fact. That we

7:20

tell ourselves that we citizens is what

7:22

keeps it. it's power. It is unlike

7:24

any other part of our language and

7:26

if it weren't for the to blue

7:29

paw just wouldn't work. I

7:33

imagine if a release the things you're not allowed

7:35

to say it must be for a lot across

7:38

cultures or across the world. Absolutely Sire

7:40

and fleas. Snake in the

7:42

says i'm so sorry for

7:44

my is terrible pronunciation but

7:46

was later. Has C

7:48

and Tabak snacks. Save

7:50

the things that a

7:52

city with the Catholic

7:54

mass. Things that have

7:57

to do We see communion. Success.

8:00

The did shipping really offensive can

8:02

appoint that kind of in French

8:04

Canadian. Where's

8:15

the she said that in say in

8:17

Paris or whatever they'd be confused with

8:19

to say sorry Vocabulary is a lot

8:22

more like versus English or American. English

8:24

is an awful lot of bodily functions.

8:27

For fuck off. Cause

8:30

said. Sexual

8:33

behavior like trying to use

8:36

a croissant as a fucking

8:38

build. It doesn't have. The job

8:40

and it makes a fucking. Paul

8:43

said suppose. A Sixty Six Six Six

8:45

Six Six. I

8:47

mean, this is that. a lot. There

8:50

are cultures in the world when means

8:52

of these. It is. I usually

8:54

suburbs so I think it's Dutch.

8:57

Things like and places.

9:00

His and cancer danger lies

9:02

which is basically the worst

9:04

every. Culture has it's own

9:07

particular choice of words. On

9:09

your they love lives of a

9:11

coup mama means your mother's which

9:13

was so simple as which means

9:15

suck my dick sosa pool and

9:17

I'll come on. Everything that you

9:19

think could be employed as a swear word.

9:21

probably use some West and the other one.

9:23

I know it. You'll nine all. Which

9:27

mean your mom. And

9:32

all of these swears that sounds totally different. They're

9:34

all having this kind of impact on the brain,

9:37

get you need to. They saw the written word,

9:39

so it's. Not the sounds that your mouth is

9:41

making, it's the activity that you blames. Experiencing.

9:44

To them, what do we actually know

9:46

about what's happening in the brain Men

9:49

were swearing say, usually in order

9:51

to produce spoken words a pretty

9:53

signed words there are parts of

9:55

the most the core sex a

9:58

devoted to language that the that.

10:01

I'm using an awful lot of areas

10:03

that for about 95% of us are

10:05

kind of on the left side of

10:07

the brain. But when we're swearing, particularly

10:09

when we're swearing emotively, rather than if

10:11

I were just to give you an

10:13

example of a swear word right now,

10:16

we also see activity in far

10:18

more parts of our brain than most of our normal

10:20

language. So

10:23

the idea is that swearing seems to originate

10:25

maybe or be controlled by a part of

10:27

the brain that is not language.

10:30

It's more like if you're

10:32

familiar with the term in computer

10:35

science or engineering of redundancy, sure,

10:37

where there are multiple ways in

10:40

which swearing can be produced. And

10:42

if you lose one, there's still a good

10:44

chance another one is still online. So the

10:46

amygdala gets involved, start signaling whether or not

10:49

there's something truly stressful going on. Remind

10:51

me what the amygdala is again? Oh, the

10:53

amygdala are like small parts of the

10:55

brain that say, you know, oh, there's

10:57

something we should be alert to here.

10:59

So we know if you stimulate the

11:02

amygdala during brain surgery, that swearing is

11:04

involuntarily produced, it almost acts like a

11:07

kind of a go button for swearing.

11:10

We know that the emotional processing parts

11:12

of the brain definitely get involved. So

11:15

if you have a stroke on the right hand side,

11:18

you lose the ability to understand jokes

11:20

and people who've had that kind of

11:23

injury just tend to stop swearing. So

11:25

it's almost like that loss of non

11:28

literal speech also takes swearing with

11:30

it. So

11:32

it's super connected to the right side of the brain,

11:34

then not just the language side? Yeah. And

11:37

the most astonishing thing about that is

11:39

that you can have the entirety of

11:41

your left hemisphere removed. If

11:43

you, you know, have a very invasive

11:45

cancer, for example, or a terrible brain

11:48

injury, and it is possible to survive

11:50

without the entire left hemisphere of the brain.

11:52

But you're losing a lot of

11:55

really important stuff. So things that

11:57

control this kind of volitional language

11:59

that I'm using. now. However,

12:01

for people who've had that

12:04

left hemisphere, who are what's

12:06

generally called aphasic, meaning without

12:08

speech, they do still speak. But

12:11

the things that they speak in tend to

12:13

be childhood endearments and swear

12:15

words. The two really

12:18

big, emotionally valent forms of

12:20

language that we have. So

12:28

just so we're on the same page

12:30

here, people can have the entire main

12:32

language hemisphere of their brain removed, and

12:35

they can still swear? Yeah. I think

12:37

about a chap who'd lost the entirety

12:40

of his left hemisphere, could no longer

12:42

produce the listener language, was doing the

12:44

test that he was put through by

12:46

the physicians who were dealing with him.

12:49

So we show him things like a picture of a speech,

12:52

and they would painstakingly

12:54

record how long

12:56

it took to make any kind of sound

12:59

whatsoever. So watch. No,

13:03

can't do it. Give me the next one. All right,

13:05

share, similar thing. Bed, similar

13:08

thing. Picture of Ronald

13:10

Reagan. And it says in this paper, the

13:13

patient responded with a surprisingly

13:15

fluent production of swearing. Ronald

13:18

Reagan! Don't write down what it

13:20

was! Oh my God,

13:23

that's nuts! What is the picture that

13:25

would elicit swear that it's Ronald Reagan?

13:27

It was Ronald Reagan. We have no

13:29

idea if he said fucking asshole or

13:31

whatever. Or fucking great president, right? Or

13:34

fucking great president. Well, he might have

13:36

struggled with great and president. But yeah,

13:38

like either... He might have been the biggest Reagan

13:40

fan ever. He might have been the biggest Reagan fan.

13:42

It might have been, fuck yeah, it could have been,

13:44

fuck him. We don't know.

13:51

So we know swearing is connected to way

13:53

more parts of the brain than normal languages,

13:57

That it's in touch with our emotions in this

13:59

unique way. But how

14:01

exactly does it reduce? Same with.

14:03

Still trying to figure this out

14:05

in the South, but says a

14:07

lot that we still don't know.

14:09

We'll get into all that when we're best. That

14:36

he so I'm A. We know that

14:38

swearing isn't like normal language, that you

14:41

know you can lose the entire half

14:43

of your brain that controls language and

14:45

you can still swear, especially if you're

14:47

looking at pictures of Ronald Reagan. So

14:49

we get from swearing being this special

14:51

kind of word to actually impacting paint

14:53

Him. As a site when

14:56

the slurring his i the generators

14:58

and emotional place or registers in

15:00

an emotional place. Heart rates

15:02

go up. people's. Tend to construct

15:04

your hands sense to a bit

15:06

more spicy. All of the things

15:08

that happen when we know that

15:10

we're getting prepared for some source

15:12

of emotional. Event: It

15:15

to be that it's helping us. To.

15:17

Withstand pain or teams have more

15:20

stamina because the getting activation in

15:22

those exact parts as our body

15:24

eve that previously responded to the

15:26

sound of a saber toothed tiger

15:29

growl leg. In either case the

15:31

sound that's very a most it

15:33

so even though the would suck

15:35

it's the same sound whether or

15:38

not I'm sort of saying suck

15:40

that I thought same or of

15:42

us fucking brilliance your brain a

15:44

more importantly your body the empire

15:47

Some distribution. Sense of I'm

15:49

ready to fight and sleep

15:51

is responding differently. So the

15:53

idea here is that like saying fuck

15:55

is almost like pressing the button on

15:58

your. most sick

16:00

primal nervous system to say

16:03

like get ready it's like you're being

16:05

prepared to fight. It really seems to

16:07

yeah so because of

16:10

how slowly the body

16:12

creates and then disposes of things

16:14

like adrenaline and cortisol it's very

16:16

hard to get the kind of rapid

16:18

snapshots of whether or

16:21

not you know it's boosting adrenaline

16:23

and so on but all of

16:25

the proxy variables for adrenaline like

16:27

pupillary response or sweaty palms or

16:29

fast heart rate suggest that this

16:32

cascade of neurotransmitters and of hormones

16:34

and of the activation

16:36

even of the rest of our breathing

16:39

all gets us ready to say whatever

16:41

it is I'm ready for it. Okay so

16:43

one idea is that we have a higher

16:46

pain tolerance and fight or flight situations

16:48

and this is kind of triggering that.

16:51

What are some other potential hypotheses

16:53

for how swearing might reduce pain?

16:55

So one of the other competing

16:57

hypotheses is the fact that because

16:59

swearing is so redundant so distributed

17:01

in the brain that it's just

17:03

taking more effort and is therefore

17:06

full distracting that if you've

17:08

got limited cognitive availability to think you

17:10

know am I in pain maybe

17:13

that's just really distracting and

17:15

then the other one is that actually

17:18

by swearing we may not be ginning

17:20

up the parasympathetic nervous system what we

17:22

might be doing is allowing ourselves to

17:25

siphon off some of that

17:27

activation to sort of say look I've

17:29

put some of this bad load into

17:31

the world. So like letting

17:33

off steam just kind of coping with

17:35

stressful situations? Yeah sort of going

17:37

and punching a punch bag for a long

17:39

time so the swearing either

17:42

might jen us up and bring this

17:44

response or it might allow us to

17:47

pass through that more quickly. So

17:51

if we take what we know about

17:53

the different ways swears might be impacting

17:55

our pain perception and we bring

17:58

in the thing you mentioned at the top that

18:00

we don't get this effect with these

18:02

sort of semi-swears like Fudgecicle. I

18:05

imagine I'd only be getting the effect of

18:07

pain reduction if I said something that I

18:10

understood as a swear, right? Like if I

18:12

said a swear in a language I'm not

18:14

fluent in like Pendejo or Gaycock and Offenjam

18:16

or something like that, I imagine

18:18

I'm not going to get that pain-killing

18:21

effect. Yeah, and we

18:23

know thanks to some

18:25

research on people who

18:28

become bilingual either before adolescence

18:30

or after adolescence. If

18:32

you had been bilingual from birth

18:35

or in your teens and Pendejo

18:37

had been something that you'd heard

18:39

among your peers growing up, you

18:41

would have imbibed this sort of

18:44

emotional link between the word,

18:46

the sound, the feel of it in your own

18:48

mouth and the emotional taboo

18:50

response and the feeling in your

18:53

body. It's the

18:55

fact that what is happening

18:57

is happening so deeply in

18:59

the brain and it's happening

19:01

because of the way our

19:03

relationships between sounds, movements and

19:05

feelings have been idiosyncratically

19:07

laid down in our

19:09

late adolescence that

19:12

yeah, you can't prescribe a particular

19:14

swear word for everyone. Okay,

19:18

so the idea here is that for a

19:20

swear of any language to get

19:22

your power you have to be

19:24

introduced to it and learn

19:27

that you're not allowed to say it very, very

19:29

early on. It's got to like get buried into

19:31

your brain somehow. Is that the idea? It

19:33

does and it gets linked with the emotions

19:35

in your brain by seeing the emotional response

19:37

that other people have. So for

19:40

example, for me the word twat, I

19:42

can still feel the smack around the back

19:44

of my head that I got when I

19:46

first used that word. So

19:48

if we zoom out a little bit

19:50

on this overall question of swearing and

19:52

pain, what are

19:54

some of the biggest unknowns? We

19:57

still don't know whether or not there's a

19:59

dose of... or whether or not the

20:02

fact that you swear a lot, whether that

20:04

has much impact on the way

20:06

in which it affects you when you

20:08

need it for pain killing. The

20:11

two competing hypotheses are that if

20:13

you swear a lot, then

20:15

you're going to become habituated to it

20:17

like some pain killing drugs. And

20:20

obviously, the competing hypothesis to that

20:22

is just no, that doesn't happen.

20:25

And so far, the jury seems to

20:27

be out the data that have been

20:29

collected point in either direction.

20:32

And is there anything that makes that

20:34

particularly hard to figure out or that

20:36

makes this question of swearing

20:38

and pain hard to study in general?

20:41

Partly it's the fact that it is

20:43

so idiosyncratic. Each and every one of

20:45

us has our own unique relationship between

20:48

words and emotions. So that

20:50

makes it really hard because you can't sort of

20:52

isolate it. And the other thing

20:54

is, is that swearing is usually relational.

20:56

I mean, in the cold water task,

20:59

you're kind of taking away as much of

21:01

the relationship as possible, you're swearing, if anything,

21:04

it's at the cold water. But

21:07

when swearing happens in the world,

21:10

we do it as a communicative act, we

21:12

do it because we want to elicit

21:14

an emotional response from another person. So

21:17

that then adds another layer of complexity, we've

21:19

got what's going on in the brain, and

21:22

the body of the swear, or what's going on in the

21:24

brain of the body of the hero, you can

21:26

never just point at a word and go,

21:28

we can understand that swear words, each

21:31

individual swearing act is

21:34

essentially its own thing. So

21:36

then this takes us way beyond just

21:38

killing pain, right? I mean, it has

21:40

this pain killing ability, but it

21:43

also sends social messages to other people.

21:45

And some of the ways in which

21:47

those social messages work is

21:49

by altering the person who's

21:51

listening to you's emotional nervous

21:53

system. I

21:56

still remember my daughter's first swear word, we

21:59

got on holiday. and the

22:01

place was absolutely bedlam. And

22:03

of course my daughter was at toddling stage and

22:05

wanted to run around. And so I said, look,

22:07

I know we don't use a high chair at

22:09

home, but just for now, I'll put you in this

22:12

high chair because you absolutely have to stay put. We'll

22:14

have our dinner and then we'll go outside. We'll run

22:16

around when you're finished. And she sat

22:18

there eating and then all of a sudden I'm

22:20

talking to my husband, I think. And I heard

22:22

this little voice very clearly beside me going, mommy,

22:27

get me out of this fucking high chair.

22:29

And I thought, do you know what? I'm

22:32

fine with this. Cause three months ago, that

22:35

would have been that kind of

22:37

back arching, food throwing, screaming,

22:39

you know, like the projectile

22:42

weeping kind of tantrum. And

22:45

it had turned into this powerful

22:47

word that could get my emotional

22:49

attention. It's like, look, you know,

22:51

I'm this pissed off

22:53

with this high chair. I have got to

22:56

get out of it without

22:58

having the full blown meltdown, which

23:01

is glorious. I was very, very happy with

23:03

that. Yeah. It seems functionally

23:05

very helpful to

23:08

have something that goes between I'm

23:11

going to express the time a little bit frustrated

23:13

with this and actually full on, you know, trying

23:15

to choke a bitch and then

23:17

having this register that's in between the two.

23:21

That's why every register is incredibly useful.

23:24

I'm. If

23:40

you want to learn more about the science

23:42

of swearing, check out Emma Byrne's excellent book

23:44

called Swearing is Good for You. This

23:47

episode was produced by me, Noam Hasenfeld.

23:49

We had editing from Brian Resnick and Jorge Just

23:52

and with help from Meredith Hoddanot, who also manages

23:54

our team. Mixing and sound

23:56

design from Erica Huang. Fact-checking from Angeline

23:58

Mercado. Music. For me, Christian

24:00

Ayala is spinning the globe, landing when,

24:03

is crossing the country, and Bird

24:05

Pinkerton turned to the Doctorpuss, who

24:07

handed her a small blinking device.

24:11

This is a beak, people, said

24:13

the Doctorpuss. If there's a beak

24:15

nearby, you won't know that. Just

24:17

remember, be careful of

24:20

the birds. If

24:25

you're looking for transcripts of our show, we've got a link

24:27

in the show notes, and if you have thoughts about

24:29

this episode or ideas for the show, please

24:32

email us. We're at unexplainable at vox.com.

24:35

We'd also love it if you left us a review or

24:37

rating. This podcast and all

24:39

of Vox is free, in part because of gifts

24:41

from our readers and listeners. You

24:43

can go to vox.com/give to give

24:45

today. Unexplainable is part

24:48

of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we'll be back

24:50

next week. One

24:57

quick thing before we go. There's this one last

24:59

bit of research that Emma did on swearing that

25:02

I just love. It really

25:04

gets at just how many different things

25:06

swears can communicate, and it does it

25:08

in what I think is the funniest

25:10

possible way. During the soccer

25:12

World Cup, we looked

25:15

at people swearing on Twitter, and

25:17

we found something we

25:20

called the fuck shit ratio. So

25:22

fuck goes up whenever anything

25:25

happens for your team.

25:27

It could be scoring, it could

25:29

be conceding a goal, it could be an

25:31

injury. But when shit

25:33

goes up at the same time, you

25:36

know it's negative. So by looking

25:38

at the way in which, for a given

25:40

hashtag, the frequency of fuck has gone

25:42

up but shit hasn't, you can build

25:44

these predictive models that will basically flag

25:46

for you, saying I think something good's happened for

25:48

this team. Fuck!

26:02

Certainly illustrates the diversity of her health.