Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And as always on Saturdays, the vault opens up, the door swings wide, and the darkness beckons. But today there's a special kind of beckoning of the darkness. Right, that's right, We're gonna be talking about the call of the void, jumping into the void. This is an episode today with Christian back at the Dawn of and this one deals with like the the curious situation we often experience if we stay at the top of a tall building. Now so might experience. This is the the the the sort of fear. It's not quite a it's like a mix between a fear and a temptation to jump or or the way I've I've experienced it before. And as in an example I explained in this episode is that I'll be are to be stay on the top of the Empire State Building and there's no way I could actually jump off. I couldn't you know, I wouldn't be able to scale the barrier and then jump. But I I'll find myself thinking about what would happen if I threw my wallet over the side, you know, what if I what have I got my my phone out and somehow managed to fling that over the side as well. What is this peculiar call of the void we experience? I think what would happen is you would suddenly have a lot more free time, probably probably, But then I'd be freaking about out about who's trying to call me and email me? It would, yeah, it would. It would be bad either way, the call of the void or the call of the phone. I don't know which is worse. Uh well, either way, this is a really interesting topic. I'm glad you and Christian explored it, and I'm glad we get to share it with you out there in the audience. Yet again. Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how stuff works, Carl. One day, the men and dogs were sitting on the crest of a cliff which fell away straight down to naked bedrock three ft below. John Thornton was sitting near the edge, bucket his shoulder. A thoughtless whim sees Thornton, and he drew the attention of hands and pete to the experiment he had in mind. Jump buck He commanded, sweeping his arm out over the chasm. The next instant. He was grappling with Buck on the extreme edge while Hands and Pete were dragging them back into safety. It's uncanny, Pete said, after it was over and they had caught their speech. Thornton shook his head. No, it is splendid and it is terrible too, do you know it sometimes makes me afraid. Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert lamp and my name is Christian Sager. Hey, Robert, have you ever been standing at the edge of like a cliff or a building, or maybe you're waiting for a train, like a subway train. You just think I should jump? Well, it never quite manifests itself as I should jump. I find that for me, it manifests itself as what if I did jump? Like you know, it's this intense contemplation of the choice I have in the matter, and the fact that I could if I wanted to fling myself off of this cliff, you know, fall into the Grand Canyon, go in front of a train, or a variant of this thing I that I encountered a top of the Empire State Building. Have you ever been up to the top of the Empire State Building? You know, that they have these, it's basically being in a cage match. There's no you would have There's basically no way you could throw yourself off the Empire State Building, at least not on a whim. It would take, it would take some some some planning and some effort. But what I did find myself struggling with was what if I threw my wallet over the side down into the street below. That would be horrible, And so I ended ended up wrestling with that possibility, which is kind of like throwing a piece of your life over the side. Isn't there that adage? And I think how stuff works is even done an article on this about like what happens when you throw a penny over the side of the Empire State Building? And I think there's the urban legend is that it can kill a person. Yeah, I don't know what the science is bey and that I seem to recall it doesn't quite pan out. It's it's been a while since I've looked at that one, but I still I'm not gonna go throwing pennies over I feel like my wallet would maybe just balks somebody in't have probably with my wallet would probably not go through somebody. Yeah. Well. The other one of these is uh captured in Woody Ellen's Annie Hall movie when Christopher Walkin is talking about how he wants to swerve into traffic and at night and he's looking at the other headlights coming the other way. They're all related. Uh, and this is you. You out there are probably going like, this is real morbid guys, where are you going with this? Uh? This is an actual phenomenon, so so common that it has multiple names, and there has been a major study done on it. Um, so we're gonna cover that today. It is the sudden feeling that we want to put ourselves in harms way. Examples of this often include the urge to jump off a tap building or to veer into oncoming traffic. The French term for it is a pel dou vede, which means call of the Void, which I really like. And that's how I how I came to this was there's this pretty brutal hardcore band that I like called Call of the Void, and I was typing it into Google the other day in an article on this phenomenon popped up and I was like, I've never heard of this before, and then I said to you let's let's talk about this. Yeah, I mean I knew about it, I've had the experience, but I feel like most people have had the experience. I would I would definitely like to hear from anyone who has not had some variant of this. Now you mentioned it. It's called often referred to as Call of the Void, and some of our listeners might have recommended the reading at the top of the episode as being from Jack London's nineteen o three novel The Call of the Wild. I like how this particular bit from that novel. Certainly that this is the main part of the novel that always sticks out in my mind because it gets into similar territory as the Call of the Void, the idea that with a split decision you could bring being into un being. In this case it's the dog and really the but the dog also um represents much about the central character in The Call in the Wild as well. What's strange about it is it's like the ultimate form of control when you feel like you don't have control, right, It's like this ultimate expression where you're like, oh, like you think I don't have control over anything. The one thing I can totally control is I could just kill myself right now if I wanted to, which is horrible to think about, but we're gonna get into it. There's like a lot of theories as to where this thing comes from. I don't know about you, but like when I've experienced it, I feel it in the pit of my stomach, like it's like a full body sensation. It's not just like a little like thought like I wonder if I if I jumped, you know, there's this weird Yeah, it's gravity, visceral kind of vibe from it. It's it's not so much like you're having to hold yourself down, but sometimes you do kind of. I have been in places where I feel like I kind of want to squat down and maybe touch the ground a little bit, even though I'm not near the edge now. One thing I will say is that I have not felt this recently because I find that when I am in places with ledges or anything of that nature, I tend to be there with my wife and son, and so I'm more concerned about them falling out off, especially my son being like just four going on five, He falls off the stuff all the time, so like he and he ends up generating all of my anxiety about people falling or jumping, and then I don't I guess I have less room for myself. Sure, well that makes sense based on the cognitive dissonance theory that we're going to talk about today, that that your parental authority would like override, override the biologue goal like brain stuff that's going on theoretically here that causes it. There's a whole theory as to what causes this seems close, But let's go through all this stuff and kind of figure it out. Before we do that. I wanted to add a John paulse Sartra observed this decades ago, and he said that this emotion is unsettling because it creates an unnerving, shaky sensation of not being able to trust one's own instincts, which is which is really interesting. Like I hadn't even thought about it as that that like you feel like, so I just expressed it as a thing where it's like you feel like you're in total control. But then his version of it is you're totally out of control. Well, it's kind of the you know, it's It's another reason I like the Call of the Wild quote here, because he talks about this thing being splendid and terrible at the same time. And to to stand it's it's like standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, Like the Grand Canyon is an awesome experience to see that much emptiness, but it's also you feel vulnerable. If you're gonna go and you want to go in style, that seems like that would be kind of like a beautiful way to do it. Well, a lot of people have Yeah, I mean, I'm not suicidal. Don't think that, audience, And we're gonna talk about suicidal thoughts and relation to this as well, because it's a pretty serious topic. But I could there there's something, there is a beauty to it, and um, this is where Mr Sigmund Freud comes in and we'll we'll we'll talk about that as well. But first let's look at the more recent study. This is really the hinge of this episode. So in twleven, a team of scientists from Florida State University decided to investigate it, and this was in the Journal of Effective Disorders and the authors of the paper were led by a woman named Jennifer Haymes. She's was a graduate student and she's currently faculty at Notre Dame UH and this was at F s us Joiner Lab. And you might be going, why would anybody want to study this? Like, where would this come from? Well, the idea here is that could shine light on the whole idea of a death drive, that some suicides are impulsive and have nothing to do with depression. Uh. And that was interesting. I hadn't really thought of that before myself, but I could reading up more on Freud's death drive theory, I guess I could see where that came from. Yeah, I do have to say for my own part, I'm I'm I'll entertain the possibility that that exists, but I'm rather I'm rather doubtful that suicide is can occur or or does occur in any significant to any significant degree, completely isolated from depression or willful intent, Like the idea that someone's just like, oh I could jump off the into the canyon and die. Let's do it, bam, done, the end of deal. Like, I can see the impulse being a factor if there is already some underlying depression, or if one already had some sort of a plan in mind, and this is just like this is the day that I act on it. Yeah, So you know, I think that it's worth saying. Like, uh, from my subjective experience, like I said, I myself am not suicidal, and I haven't. I've had what we will refer to later as suicidal thinking, but I've never had suicidal planning. And there's a major difference, right and and and this is sort of the call of the void, the high the high place phenomenon. Those are those are versions of suicidal thinking. That's about as far as it's gone for me, right, yeah, well, suicidal thinking. I feel like it's often tied into with the romance of suicide because we have so many stories and you know, these generally are very lopsided in their presentation of suicide. Uh, the display it is this this noble, poetic thing that doomed dreamers and doomed lovers Romeo and Julia, Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we've all been teenagers, so we've all had moments where we're like, oh, my life is so tragic, and you might envision the scenario, but there's to your point, there's a difference between envisioning it, daydreaming about it, and uh and thinking about when everyone will say when you're gone, versus actually putting some sort of plan in place. But for our listeners, I do want to establish upfront, you know, I have experience with people who were suicidal or have committed suicide, so I am sympathetic to that, and I don't want this episode to feel like it's callous. This is connected to that, but it's a The suicidal thinking that goes along with the call of the void syndrome seems to be a far cry from the actual act of it um and but we're gonna get into that at the end of the episode. So back to this research. They found that more than thirty percent of the people they talked to said they had experienced this phenomenon at least once, and the researchers refer to it in their study as high place phenomenon. They weren't take king into account like throwing yourself in front of a train or driving an oncoming traffic uh. They were also curious whether it was related to a person's history of suicidal thinking, and from their findings they found that it is common even among people who have no depression or suicidal thinking history. So this was their methodology. They asked four and thirty one college students whether and how often they had experienced the urge to jump off of tall things. Then they examined their depressive symptoms in their history of suicidal thoughts. They also took a look at how sensitive these people were to anxiety, as well as how fearful they were of anxiety symptoms such as an elevated heartbeat and shortness of breath. Among those who had never had suicidal thoughts, still, seventeen percent of them had experienced the urge to jump. Among those who had experienced sidal thoughts, fifty six percent experienced it. So that's significant if if it lines up, now we'll talk. There's a little bit of methodology stuff with this, this that I'm calling the question. The researchers were also interested specifically in the sensitivity to reactive safety signals and if that corresponded to a higher likelihood of experiencing the urge to jump. So to mark this reactivity, they looked at levels of anxiety sensitivity, such as a faster heartbeat. Uh. This was because previous research suggested that high anxiety sensitivity is actually tied to a tendency for us as human beings, to misinterpret random, innocuous bodily sensations as being dangerous. Yeah, we we tend to We tend to make that air and cognition because there is a survival advantage in jumping to conclusions rather than not making any conclusions. One gets you eaten by a tiger. One just means you go about your daily life constantly looking for the tiger that might eave. Yeah, I mean I've actually experienced this, I'd say, in like the last two weeks, where like I'll get up and I'll read about current events in the news, and my heart will start beating rapidly and I'll go, oh, this is is there something wrong? Do I need to go see my doctor? And I realized it's anxiety. It's it's not normal, but I'm having a normal anxious reaction to the things that I'm reading about. Right, But then my thought is like, oh, what if I have a heart attack? You know. So this is kind of along those lines where the ideas that we misinterpret these random bodily sensations as being dangerous. Okay. So their studies finding was that yes, more sensitivity to anxiety was related to the frequency of the urge to jump, especially in people who had never experienced suicidal thoughts. They also interpreted this as people without a history of suicidal thoughts as being more sensitive to bodily cues that they could misinterpret. So that's interesting. So if you've never et suicidal thoughts, they're saying you're more likely to interpret say like your heart beating faster as as something of danger. It's interesting. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like if you if you've ever had an anxiety attack, if you if you have, if you have one and they're rare, then the first time you have one, it can be extremely alarmente. If you think, oh goodness, I'm about to die now. So the study ultimately translates as follows, people with high anxiety sensitivity were more likely to have higher chances of suicidal thoughts. Okay, that makes sense. So if you're sensitive to the bodily reactions and you're worried about being anxious, then you're more likely to have suicidal thoughts. But subsequently, you were also more likely to report experiencing this call of the void phenomenon. So that's interesting. Why do we experience this though Like? Where is this coming from? Well, let's take a quick break and we come back. We'll dive into that very question. All right, we're back. So one theory about this call of the void phenomenon or the idea of high place phenomenon, is that there's something going on with a temporary uncoupling of our different perceptual systems in our brains. It's kind of like cognitive dissonance. Yeah. Yeah, the idea, and this comes up comes up all the time on the podcast, the idea that you have two different ideas, two different inclinations in your mind, and they conflict with each other. So the classic, the easy one to go to here, of course, is oh, I I think homosexuality is wrong, but I have homosexual thoughts in my head. These two do not go with one another, um and this generates it's kind of a friction in the mind exactly. So their theory was that when you're standing on the edge of a skyscraper, your brain has fast fear circuitry, that's what they called it. Obviously it's not circuitry that and this may alert you of danger, just the danger of hey, you could fall, But then our perceptual system in our brain is slower than our fear system, and that kicks in afterwards and it makes you realize there's actually no danger. So to make sense of the safety signal. Our brain mixes this up as cognitive dissonance and we assume we want to jump, which is why people get confused by this. So this is interesting. So individuals who are experiencing this are not necessarily suicidal. Instead, it seems to reflect their sensitivity to internal cues affirming their actual will to live. So that lines up with what we're saying earlier that they're sensitive to, like oh, I'm feeling anxious or oh I'm feeling depressed or whatever, So it makes sense that they would be more sensitive to their both their fear system and their perception system. Yeah. I do like how the main idea here is that you're safe, but you're still taking in the sensory data says you're not safe. And I think that we actually get a little bit of this when we watch a particularly terrifying video like we've all, especially within the age of go pro. I'm sure everyone has seen like base jumping, crazy skiing videos, stuff with great heights, or people climbing up antennas, and you watch it and you couldn't be more safe watching it in your you know, living room, in your office, on your phone or your personal computer. But you feel a visceral, you know, if it's probably empathic. But also you're taking in certain sense data about a dangerous environment and you can't help it feel part of that. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting, and I think I'm leaning towards agreeing with this theory. But let's remember that this study, there's only one study on this as far as I can tell, and it isn't conclusive. Um. Their explanation is simply theoretical and it doesn't have neurological evidence. Uh, the methodology also has some weak so let's acknowledge those. First of all, they only used university students, and let's be honest, university students are not representative of humanity, right right, Yeah, it tends to be a profile of a very specific socio economic, racial division of society. Yeah, and the volunteers themselves were confessing, well, they may have misremembered their experience or even falsely reported it. So that doesn't mean the studies flawed. It just means we need more research. Um. So a proposal for this is to actually conduct an experiment where scientists would have to take subjects and position them at different heights to test at what elevation they begin having the thought to jump. Um, there's another explanation that goes along I think with what you were saying about the watching those videos, which is that it could simply be connected to our thrill of not buckling under fear, which is a kind of cognitive dissonance. Um, this is the same reason why we go to haunted houses, right, both real and uh, you know, fun haunted houses. But like think about like when you're a little kid, uh and somebody says, let's go that house over there is haunted, I dare you to go into it, Right, It's kind of the same vibe. Uh. And then subsequently you go to something like I don't know, our version is another world here in Atlanta. You go to that you know somebody's going to jump out with a fake chainsaw and try to scare you. But the thrill of overcoming that fear is part of why you go and pay money to do it. Yeah, I mean, it fills you with endorphins. You're you're very much living in the moment. People who aren't into meditation or yoga, they still might go to a haunted house or watch a scary movie, and that's that's kind of meditative in a sense. It puts you in the now. Yeah, it's It's probably another reason why jump scares are so successful in horror films. There's an addiction to it. Yeah, And it's simple and it works, and it ties into our basic evolutionary state to be on the lookout for the tiger that jumps out of the grass. Now, there's a no take on all of this, and it ties in, I think nicely to what you said about the varying heights. At what height does it kick in? For my own part, I feel like there is definitely a difference between any call of the void that occurs at at lower heights as opposed to like truly awesome heights like Grand Canyon, cliff Edge type. Total obliteration. Yeah, total obliteration, I think is the thing because it's such it's such a it would be such a drastic choice. Okay, it would be such a choice between life and and and I don't know. I almost to say death like puts too much of an atmospheric twist on it, but more like between being an unding and I think this is I keep thinking this is the two roads diverge in a Yellow Woods approach. Um, So in the choose your own adventure book that is life. We encounter plenty of working paths, right, but many of these are hardly choices at all. I mean, on some level, we all choose whether they're going to go to work this morning or find a liquor store and drink our purchase in the woods behind the Yeah. Yeah, I mean for most of us, a lot of people struggle with that every morning. Well, some people realistically do. No, I'm not I'm not being sarcastic. Yeah, but but for many of us, it's not really a choice. Like the things we do are the things we do. We have this pattern and there's really this is where we get into that idea that we're not really making choices and more if at all. However, there are choices that are more real than others. Where two paths of equal weight and possibility are presented, and uh, and what is weightier than the old to be or not to be? The choice between being and unbing that stands before us when we stand at the edge of a great expanse. So it's not so much that we're tempted, but that our path choosing brain can't help but engage in one of its many cognitive superpowers, cognitive superpower that we all possess and uh and used to thrive. And this is a chronosthesia, which is also known as mental time to travel. So this entails our ability to be aware of our past and future and to envision multiple possible futures before us. So it's the key to our survival. But it's also the reason you might listen to NPR in the morning and mentally time travel to the dawn of the Third World War. So in that anxiety, yeah, the anxiety, anxiety comes out and you feel it in your body. So in that moment in the car listening to NBR, we're forced to wonder what what we're capable of, what we're willing to lose to gain. And on some level, it's kind of like the you know, the scene in the Old Testament with Abraham raising his dagger up in the sky and then above his son Isaac, and it's just well, the hand of the Angel come in time to spare him. Yeah, yeah, looking to something beyond, which gets into the Freudian aspect. Yeah, so that's another possible explanation for it. I tend to feel like we've got some of this definitely a part of it. But I also think the co native dissonance argument is also very valid, and it does like we've talked before on the show about how situations of cognitive dissonance often lend themselves well to supernatural experience. That's not to say actual supernatural occurrence, but the experience of something supernatural to us, especially in our demon possession, exorcism, matter sism episode, that is hugely tied to cognitive dissonance. Yeah. And when you get down to it, like the the idea of of encountering the choice between being and un being, this this kind of panicky pondering over to what extent you have free willed, to what extent you have control over your fate? I mean that is that's pretty supernatural sounding to me. Yeah. Yeah, Well this is a good opportunity for us to get into a guy who, let's be honest, in some situations, was quasi supernatural. Uh and his name was Sigmund Freud. Uh So Freud after a lot of his better known principles, Uh connected this to all the phenomenon to an idea that sometimes is referred to as a death wish, although that just calls to mind Charles Bronson for me, but it is referred to as the death drive, articulated in his ninety essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and this describes a drive in all of us towards self destruction and a return to the inorganic. Now, I used a paper by Joanne Faulkner on the subject to sort of see unpackaged this. Now. She argues that the death drive is when Freud departs from scientific methodology entirely, and it articulates what he thought of as higher functions in the psyche that weren't necessarily empirical. Okay, so this is why I say, like, we're getting into supernatural territory here. Freud thought this was beyond sciences. Um, it's highly speculative and it's not grounded in scientific perspective. But Freud's idea was that the death drive circumvented our pleasure in an effort to undo a person as an organic whole, and so as such it gave us both pleasure and discomfort. I can sort of see where he's coming from here based on what we were previously talking about with like, I don't know, scares right, Like it's both pleasurable and uncomfortable. But his idea, of course, being Freud, there has to be this model framework so that everything fits within. And it was that the death drive was the opposite of what he called the life drive or the libido. And while the libido attaches itself to others and creates ties of affection, the death drive destroys relationships and strives for disintegration. So if the libido manifests insects, the death drive manifests in aggression, and if this is directed inward, it could result in suicide. But here's the thing. Does the death drive lead to what we today understand as depression? Right? Like Freud didn't really have a grasp on that the way we do now. It's possible if it's directed inward, I guess. But in fact, some Eastern philosophy indicates that self centered acts maybe a form of this kind of self destruction, That selfishness itself isolates us from others, leads us to not having support. So maybe there's a little bit of a connection between depression and death drive. I don't know. I'm not a pcent on board with this. I see how it could sort of make sense at the time, and it's connected to thoughts that we're having. But huh, what is interesting you mentioned the Eastern philosophies. It is interesting to think of self destruction perhaps is it's not merely well, let's say, to to take self destruction and think of it in terms of of of the of of the wheel of sam Sara and the different states, and the idea that you know, you're reincarnated into two upper and lower forms. Yeah. One of the realms is that of the hungry ghosts, where one is just you know, constantly grasping for something and and and unable to to fill yourself with it. And and there's another realm, which is more of the hell room. And this is where I feel like things really line up with this idea of death drive just this you know, rageful uh, you know, assault on the things that anger you. I can give you like a personal version of this that I experienced. And this might be a little bit t m I, but um I often I'm compelled by the urge to just go be somewhere in complete isolation. Like I think when I when I have this urge, it's like, oh, I like a like a rundown motel in the middle of nowhere, off of a highway somewhere, right, and I'll just sitting there for a week, Like there's something about that that's just very compelling to me. And I don't want to destroy myself. I don't want to commit suicide, but there's something about it that that draws me there, right, And I think based on what you're talking about here, there's a similar idea here, right, Like if you believe in reincarnation and you think to yourself, well, if I die, I'm going to be reincarnated, possibly as a lower life form. Right, there's something kind of zen about that, right, There's something kind of relaxing about the idea of like I'll come back as a toad. Let's just live life as a toad, and I won't have as many concerns to bear. It's true, yeah, now, But I like this idea that you brought up here too because it also brings to mind like what each of us are. So we're certainly we're an organism that's that's alive. We're also an organism that's is generally moving in various uh social shares, and you have all of these kind of like invisible spider webs of social obligation all around us, and so to do to walk away from all of that first, say a week and go to this cabin in the woods. You are not necessarily destroying yourself, but you might be doing damage to these various social spider webs that are that have bound you up totally. And I can see where it would be at once liberating to walk away from all of those, uh, and then but then at the same time many would argue, well, that is self destructive. You were doing damage to these social structures that had helped maintain you. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, And that's compelling to write. The pop culture example of this that drew me in the most, And my wife immediately recognized it when we saw this, and she's like, you love this, don't you was And spoilers for this TV show if you don't want to, you might learn something you don't want to know about Breaking Bad here. But in Breaking Bad, there's a point where the main character it goes in hiding to New Hampshire for a year and he just lives in if small cottage with nothing but like you know, canned food and newspapers for a year and he just sits there and thinks on what he's done and sleeps and eats and is he just is and he's entrapped by snow when we find him. And I saw it, and I was just like, oh God, that that seems like the best vacation ever to me. But at the cost of all of his social relationships, which is sort of the point in the show. Uh. You know, this reminds me a lot of a Warren Zevon song that also when I when I have this feeling, I'll play this song and listen to it. It's called Splendid Isolation. It's great because the lyrics are basically rolling through these three different through or four different scenarios that he is craving, like I want to live on the Upper east Side and never go down in the street, you know, put tinfoil up on the window. I want to live in the desert like Georgia O'Keefe. You know, he's doing scenarios where um, we're we're Waren is talking about just walking away from everything and just encapsulating himself in uh in in in total isolation and and ultimately kind of self destructive self centeredness, because he ends up like making comparisons to to Neverland Ranch interesting, you know, locking yourself up in your own private Disney sort of thing. Well, I never put tinfoil on my window, but in my twenties I have to admit, Uh, I took cardboard and nailed it up over all the windows in my bedroom just because, like I wanted complete and utter darkness in there. Did you have a black light poster? No? No, I didn't missed opportunities mushroom wizards. Well, back to this Freud thing, I think it reeks of the subjective. It's a little bit of magical thinking, which is fun, but most people in this realm, in this discipline think of it as being eccentric. Regardless, it does apply to depression. If you understand that there's an innate voice that wishes for death and destruction, well that's that's helpful, right At least in therapy you can help separate that and distance yourself from those thoughts, and that takes away their power and allows you to challenge them and minimize them and disregard them. So there's something to that. People who have just like outright dismissed Freud. I'm sort of in the middle, Like, I don't buy it a hundred percent of the time, but I do think that there's some value and that he helped the profession sort of edge along slowly. Yeah, I mean I I always come back to my my lens analogy, where what I what I want to walk around with with the Freud lens in place all the time, with my Freud goggles on all the time. No, I would not, but I do find it as helpful in varying scenarios to pull the the Freud lens down over my own vision, of my own worldview and think, oh, well, how might the supply to the current scenario, What does what? How does Freud illuminate what's going on here? Well, why don't we take a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to delve into some actual statistics about suicidal thinking that may help us unraveled this call of the void phenomenon a little more. Alright, we're back. So when mental health professionals refer to these call of the void moments, they usually call it suicidal ideation. But that term seems broad for our purposes here today, So let's let's try to separate out what the difference might be. Okay. In eleven, the c d C conducted a really big study examining statistics about suicide, suicidal thinking, uh, and um, suicidal preparation, and they found that three point seven percent of adults in the United States had had suicidal thoughts in just the last year. Now, let's put that into perspective. That's eight point three million people. That's a lot of people. Other studies have placed this even higher, saying that it's actually around eight to ten of the population. Now let's look at the previous study on the high place phenomenon. That's not even close to the thirty to fifty percent of people who reported that they had experienced that phenomenon. Right, So it seems like what we think of as suicidal ideation and and high place phenomenon or call of the void, those are different. It seems like it suggests that there's there's some kind of different thought process going on there. Yeah, And of course with all of this, it depends on exactly how you're phrasing the question and how the individual on the other end views suicidal thoughts, uh, etcetera. I mean, because the big thing is like, what does that individual's culture say about suicide? Yeah, Now, even there there's this is the kind of thing that we would have to bust out in a longer episode. But even within the United States, that you're going to have varying subsets of people that are going to have different ideas about suicide. Yeah, and that actually plays in these statistics as well. Uh In the c d C report, they actually summarize the data on ninety two thousand, two hundred and sixty four respondents. But this establishes a difference between having suicidal thoughts and actually making plans for a suicide or attempting it. Plans and attempts are very different from just thinking about it. Okay, The estimates vary based on a couple of things, sociodemographic factors as well as the region of the country that you live in. So what you're just saying, here we go. Suicidal thoughts were higher among young adults between the ages of eighteen to twenty nine than they were for people over thirty. It was also significantly higher for women. In general. Non Hispanic Whites were the group with the highest prevalence of suicidal thoughts, while non Hispanic Asians were the group with the lowest suicidal thoughts. And regional factors, this is really complicated, but they think it could be related to indicators such as divorce rates or resources to access like healthcare. Uh, and so the cause and effect relationship here is unknown, but there's a there's a couple of things like, for instance, adults with less than a high school education and those who are unemployed at the time were more likely to have these thoughts. Finally, those in the Midwest and the West were more likely to have suicidal thoughts than those in the Northeast in the South. Now, I don't know how to unpack that, but what you presented sounds sounds close, which is that like, various cultures have different beliefs about suicide, right, and and or like they said that, there's like real world factors like how much access they have to healthcare or or or do they have a job, things like that. So there's limitations to this accounting though that we should note as well. For instance, previous studies indicate that adults, when they're talking about suicidal thoughts, they under report, especially when they're talking about when they were adolescents. So if they're adults now and they're saying, well, when I was an adolescent, this is you know, this is how often I experienced that they're they're known to under report. That makes sense to me, Yeah, I mean, I mean you're a different person when you're adult when you're an adolescent, So you're really kind of teasing apart the thoughts and motivations of a different you entire So I can see where there might be a tendency to say, oh, well that that that twenty year old me, that eighteen year old me. You didn't know what you're talking about now, even serious about that. And this study also didn't account for a couple of populations. Uh, first of all, institutionalized populations, which would probably have I mean, we would assume would have a higher rate of thinking about suicide. It and it totally cut out any kind of Native American populations. So and that wasn't like on purpose, it was just because they didn't have access to enough evidence. Yeah, I think there is a large factor here that comes down to is suicide an open pathway to this individual? Is it at all socially acceptable? To what degree is it socially acceptable? And that is going to be governed by your culture, your history. Indeed, what what books and movies, what beats of bits of fiction you you you value, But these are all going to help to skew this idea of of whether or not suicide is a practical option for an individual. Yeah, but very different from the idea of standing on a ledge and looking and just kind of getting that urge to je right. So that's why I put these statistics in here to sort of just give you like, these are very different things, and we can see the statistical differences just between these two studies. It's also worth remembering all of this stuff for both studies is self reported, and that is not a reliable Now to sort of pull out of the gloomier aspects of this this topic, um, I will ask everyone to to think about the call of the void. You know, uh, the situation in which the gravity of disastrous choices. You know, it's not merely anxiety inducing or or threatening to one sense of self control, but it is exhilarating. It's it's it's sort of endorphin pumping high that want to achieves from skydiving or even less dangerous smaller acts. And and plus what is the true call of the void but but a contemplation, however unformed of oblivion, a complete emptying of self, not merely hearing the call of the void, but but kind of touching the void, having almost a spiritual moment. To go back to that quote from Call of the Wild again, you know something that is at once splendid and terrible. Yeah, And so, as we've been doing in some of our episodes recently, we want to make sure if you heard this and this like touched upon something for you, and and you were hearing these statistics or whatever and you thought, well, this this resonates within me and I'm a little concerned. There's actually a nonprofit that we would like to throw a line out too, so that you, in case you're feeling that way, have some support. And it's the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Uh. It's a support line. It's seven, it's free, it's totally confidential. It's for people who are in distress. Uh. And it helps prevent crises and provides resources for you and your loved ones. So maybe it's not you, maybe it's somebody you know. Uh. So the number for that is one eight hundred two seven three eight to five five. Again, it's one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five. All right, and hey, if you want to hear more at the pisodes of stuff to blow your mind. If you want to check out videos, blog post, you name it links out to our social media accounts, head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's right, and I want to hear from you the audience. Have you experienced the call of a void? Have you thought about jumping off a tall building or the Grand Canyon or maybe even onto a train track before, but of course you didn't want to. You just got mixed up with these feelings inside. That's that's basically how we all feel nowadays. I'm just so mixed up with these feelings inside. Uh, let us know. You can let us know on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, or Instagram, or you can write us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. And it close out here today. I'm just gonna read another quote. This one comes from a book by Robert Graves. A number of you may be familiar with him from his more popular work such as I Claudius, but he also wrote a book called Goodbye to All That, and he talks about the Great Four. He talks about mountain climbing, and this is just a quick quote where he talks about climbing. My worst climb was on a little wit the most formidable of the precipices, when at a point that needed most concentration, a raven circled round the party in great sweeps. I found this curiously unsettling, because one climbs only up and down or sideways, and the ravens seem to be suggesting diverse other possible dimensions of movement, tempting us to let go our hold and join him. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works dot Com? No,

Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And as always on Saturdays, the vault opens up, the door swings wide, and the darkness beckons. But today there's a special kind of beckoning of the darkness. Right, that's right, We're gonna be talking about the call of the void, jumping into the void. This is an episode today with Christian back at the Dawn of and this one deals with like the the curious situation we often experience if we stay at the top of a tall building. Now so might experience. This is the the the the sort of fear. It's not quite a it's like a mix between a fear and a temptation to jump or or the way I've I've experienced it before. And as in an example I explained in this episode is that I'll be are to be stay on the top of the Empire State Building and there's no way I could actually jump off. I couldn't you know, I wouldn't be able to scale the barrier and then jump. But I I'll find myself thinking about what would happen if I threw my wallet over the side, you know, what if I what have I got my my phone out and somehow managed to fling that over the side as well. What is this peculiar call of the void we experience? I think what would happen is you would suddenly have a lot more free time, probably probably, But then I'd be freaking about out about who's trying to call me and email me? It would, yeah, it would. It would be bad either way, the call of the void or the call of the phone. I don't know which is worse. Uh well, either way, this is a really interesting topic. I'm glad you and Christian explored it, and I'm glad we get to share it with you out there in the audience. Yet again. Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how stuff works, Carl. One day, the men and dogs were sitting on the crest of a cliff which fell away straight down to naked bedrock three ft below. John Thornton was sitting near the edge, bucket his shoulder. A thoughtless whim sees Thornton, and he drew the attention of hands and pete to the experiment he had in mind. Jump buck He commanded, sweeping his arm out over the chasm. The next instant. He was grappling with Buck on the extreme edge while Hands and Pete were dragging them back into safety. It's uncanny, Pete said, after it was over and they had caught their speech. Thornton shook his head. No, it is splendid and it is terrible too, do you know it sometimes makes me afraid. Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert lamp and my name is Christian Sager. Hey, Robert, have you ever been standing at the edge of like a cliff or a building, or maybe you're waiting for a train, like a subway train. You just think I should jump? Well, it never quite manifests itself as I should jump. I find that for me, it manifests itself as what if I did jump? Like you know, it's this intense contemplation of the choice I have in the matter, and the fact that I could if I wanted to fling myself off of this cliff, you know, fall into the Grand Canyon, go in front of a train, or a variant of this thing I that I encountered a top of the Empire State Building. Have you ever been up to the top of the Empire State Building? You know, that they have these, it's basically being in a cage match. There's no you would have There's basically no way you could throw yourself off the Empire State Building, at least not on a whim. It would take, it would take some some some planning and some effort. But what I did find myself struggling with was what if I threw my wallet over the side down into the street below. That would be horrible, And so I ended ended up wrestling with that possibility, which is kind of like throwing a piece of your life over the side. Isn't there that adage? And I think how stuff works is even done an article on this about like what happens when you throw a penny over the side of the Empire State Building? And I think there's the urban legend is that it can kill a person. Yeah, I don't know what the science is bey and that I seem to recall it doesn't quite pan out. It's it's been a while since I've looked at that one, but I still I'm not gonna go throwing pennies over I feel like my wallet would maybe just balks somebody in't have probably with my wallet would probably not go through somebody. Yeah. Well. The other one of these is uh captured in Woody Ellen's Annie Hall movie when Christopher Walkin is talking about how he wants to swerve into traffic and at night and he's looking at the other headlights coming the other way. They're all related. Uh, and this is you. You out there are probably going like, this is real morbid guys, where are you going with this? Uh? This is an actual phenomenon, so so common that it has multiple names, and there has been a major study done on it. Um, so we're gonna cover that today. It is the sudden feeling that we want to put ourselves in harms way. Examples of this often include the urge to jump off a tap building or to veer into oncoming traffic. The French term for it is a pel dou vede, which means call of the Void, which I really like. And that's how I how I came to this was there's this pretty brutal hardcore band that I like called Call of the Void, and I was typing it into Google the other day in an article on this phenomenon popped up and I was like, I've never heard of this before, and then I said to you let's let's talk about this. Yeah, I mean I knew about it, I've had the experience, but I feel like most people have had the experience. I would I would definitely like to hear from anyone who has not had some variant of this. Now you mentioned it. It's called often referred to as Call of the Void, and some of our listeners might have recommended the reading at the top of the episode as being from Jack London's nineteen o three novel The Call of the Wild. I like how this particular bit from that novel. Certainly that this is the main part of the novel that always sticks out in my mind because it gets into similar territory as the Call of the Void, the idea that with a split decision you could bring being into un being. In this case it's the dog and really the but the dog also um represents much about the central character in The Call in the Wild as well. What's strange about it is it's like the ultimate form of control when you feel like you don't have control, right, It's like this ultimate expression where you're like, oh, like you think I don't have control over anything. The one thing I can totally control is I could just kill myself right now if I wanted to, which is horrible to think about, but we're gonna get into it. There's like a lot of theories as to where this thing comes from. I don't know about you, but like when I've experienced it, I feel it in the pit of my stomach, like it's like a full body sensation. It's not just like a little like thought like I wonder if I if I jumped, you know, there's this weird Yeah, it's gravity, visceral kind of vibe from it. It's it's not so much like you're having to hold yourself down, but sometimes you do kind of. I have been in places where I feel like I kind of want to squat down and maybe touch the ground a little bit, even though I'm not near the edge now. One thing I will say is that I have not felt this recently because I find that when I am in places with ledges or anything of that nature, I tend to be there with my wife and son, and so I'm more concerned about them falling out off, especially my son being like just four going on five, He falls off the stuff all the time, so like he and he ends up generating all of my anxiety about people falling or jumping, and then I don't I guess I have less room for myself. Sure, well that makes sense based on the cognitive dissonance theory that we're going to talk about today, that that your parental authority would like override, override the biologue goal like brain stuff that's going on theoretically here that causes it. There's a whole theory as to what causes this seems close, But let's go through all this stuff and kind of figure it out. Before we do that. I wanted to add a John paulse Sartra observed this decades ago, and he said that this emotion is unsettling because it creates an unnerving, shaky sensation of not being able to trust one's own instincts, which is which is really interesting. Like I hadn't even thought about it as that that like you feel like, so I just expressed it as a thing where it's like you feel like you're in total control. But then his version of it is you're totally out of control. Well, it's kind of the you know, it's It's another reason I like the Call of the Wild quote here, because he talks about this thing being splendid and terrible at the same time. And to to stand it's it's like standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, Like the Grand Canyon is an awesome experience to see that much emptiness, but it's also you feel vulnerable. If you're gonna go and you want to go in style, that seems like that would be kind of like a beautiful way to do it. Well, a lot of people have Yeah, I mean, I'm not suicidal. Don't think that, audience, And we're gonna talk about suicidal thoughts and relation to this as well, because it's a pretty serious topic. But I could there there's something, there is a beauty to it, and um, this is where Mr Sigmund Freud comes in and we'll we'll we'll talk about that as well. But first let's look at the more recent study. This is really the hinge of this episode. So in twleven, a team of scientists from Florida State University decided to investigate it, and this was in the Journal of Effective Disorders and the authors of the paper were led by a woman named Jennifer Haymes. She's was a graduate student and she's currently faculty at Notre Dame UH and this was at F s us Joiner Lab. And you might be going, why would anybody want to study this? Like, where would this come from? Well, the idea here is that could shine light on the whole idea of a death drive, that some suicides are impulsive and have nothing to do with depression. Uh. And that was interesting. I hadn't really thought of that before myself, but I could reading up more on Freud's death drive theory, I guess I could see where that came from. Yeah, I do have to say for my own part, I'm I'm I'll entertain the possibility that that exists, but I'm rather I'm rather doubtful that suicide is can occur or or does occur in any significant to any significant degree, completely isolated from depression or willful intent, Like the idea that someone's just like, oh I could jump off the into the canyon and die. Let's do it, bam, done, the end of deal. Like, I can see the impulse being a factor if there is already some underlying depression, or if one already had some sort of a plan in mind, and this is just like this is the day that I act on it. Yeah, So you know, I think that it's worth saying. Like, uh, from my subjective experience, like I said, I myself am not suicidal, and I haven't. I've had what we will refer to later as suicidal thinking, but I've never had suicidal planning. And there's a major difference, right and and and this is sort of the call of the void, the high the high place phenomenon. Those are those are versions of suicidal thinking. That's about as far as it's gone for me, right, yeah, well, suicidal thinking. I feel like it's often tied into with the romance of suicide because we have so many stories and you know, these generally are very lopsided in their presentation of suicide. Uh, the display it is this this noble, poetic thing that doomed dreamers and doomed lovers Romeo and Julia, Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we've all been teenagers, so we've all had moments where we're like, oh, my life is so tragic, and you might envision the scenario, but there's to your point, there's a difference between envisioning it, daydreaming about it, and uh and thinking about when everyone will say when you're gone, versus actually putting some sort of plan in place. But for our listeners, I do want to establish upfront, you know, I have experience with people who were suicidal or have committed suicide, so I am sympathetic to that, and I don't want this episode to feel like it's callous. This is connected to that, but it's a The suicidal thinking that goes along with the call of the void syndrome seems to be a far cry from the actual act of it um and but we're gonna get into that at the end of the episode. So back to this research. They found that more than thirty percent of the people they talked to said they had experienced this phenomenon at least once, and the researchers refer to it in their study as high place phenomenon. They weren't take king into account like throwing yourself in front of a train or driving an oncoming traffic uh. They were also curious whether it was related to a person's history of suicidal thinking, and from their findings they found that it is common even among people who have no depression or suicidal thinking history. So this was their methodology. They asked four and thirty one college students whether and how often they had experienced the urge to jump off of tall things. Then they examined their depressive symptoms in their history of suicidal thoughts. They also took a look at how sensitive these people were to anxiety, as well as how fearful they were of anxiety symptoms such as an elevated heartbeat and shortness of breath. Among those who had never had suicidal thoughts, still, seventeen percent of them had experienced the urge to jump. Among those who had experienced sidal thoughts, fifty six percent experienced it. So that's significant if if it lines up, now we'll talk. There's a little bit of methodology stuff with this, this that I'm calling the question. The researchers were also interested specifically in the sensitivity to reactive safety signals and if that corresponded to a higher likelihood of experiencing the urge to jump. So to mark this reactivity, they looked at levels of anxiety sensitivity, such as a faster heartbeat. Uh. This was because previous research suggested that high anxiety sensitivity is actually tied to a tendency for us as human beings, to misinterpret random, innocuous bodily sensations as being dangerous. Yeah, we we tend to We tend to make that air and cognition because there is a survival advantage in jumping to conclusions rather than not making any conclusions. One gets you eaten by a tiger. One just means you go about your daily life constantly looking for the tiger that might eave. Yeah, I mean I've actually experienced this, I'd say, in like the last two weeks, where like I'll get up and I'll read about current events in the news, and my heart will start beating rapidly and I'll go, oh, this is is there something wrong? Do I need to go see my doctor? And I realized it's anxiety. It's it's not normal, but I'm having a normal anxious reaction to the things that I'm reading about. Right, But then my thought is like, oh, what if I have a heart attack? You know. So this is kind of along those lines where the ideas that we misinterpret these random bodily sensations as being dangerous. Okay. So their studies finding was that yes, more sensitivity to anxiety was related to the frequency of the urge to jump, especially in people who had never experienced suicidal thoughts. They also interpreted this as people without a history of suicidal thoughts as being more sensitive to bodily cues that they could misinterpret. So that's interesting. So if you've never et suicidal thoughts, they're saying you're more likely to interpret say like your heart beating faster as as something of danger. It's interesting. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like if you if you've ever had an anxiety attack, if you if you have, if you have one and they're rare, then the first time you have one, it can be extremely alarmente. If you think, oh goodness, I'm about to die now. So the study ultimately translates as follows, people with high anxiety sensitivity were more likely to have higher chances of suicidal thoughts. Okay, that makes sense. So if you're sensitive to the bodily reactions and you're worried about being anxious, then you're more likely to have suicidal thoughts. But subsequently, you were also more likely to report experiencing this call of the void phenomenon. So that's interesting. Why do we experience this though Like? Where is this coming from? Well, let's take a quick break and we come back. We'll dive into that very question. All right, we're back. So one theory about this call of the void phenomenon or the idea of high place phenomenon, is that there's something going on with a temporary uncoupling of our different perceptual systems in our brains. It's kind of like cognitive dissonance. Yeah. Yeah, the idea, and this comes up comes up all the time on the podcast, the idea that you have two different ideas, two different inclinations in your mind, and they conflict with each other. So the classic, the easy one to go to here, of course, is oh, I I think homosexuality is wrong, but I have homosexual thoughts in my head. These two do not go with one another, um and this generates it's kind of a friction in the mind exactly. So their theory was that when you're standing on the edge of a skyscraper, your brain has fast fear circuitry, that's what they called it. Obviously it's not circuitry that and this may alert you of danger, just the danger of hey, you could fall, But then our perceptual system in our brain is slower than our fear system, and that kicks in afterwards and it makes you realize there's actually no danger. So to make sense of the safety signal. Our brain mixes this up as cognitive dissonance and we assume we want to jump, which is why people get confused by this. So this is interesting. So individuals who are experiencing this are not necessarily suicidal. Instead, it seems to reflect their sensitivity to internal cues affirming their actual will to live. So that lines up with what we're saying earlier that they're sensitive to, like oh, I'm feeling anxious or oh I'm feeling depressed or whatever, So it makes sense that they would be more sensitive to their both their fear system and their perception system. Yeah. I do like how the main idea here is that you're safe, but you're still taking in the sensory data says you're not safe. And I think that we actually get a little bit of this when we watch a particularly terrifying video like we've all, especially within the age of go pro. I'm sure everyone has seen like base jumping, crazy skiing videos, stuff with great heights, or people climbing up antennas, and you watch it and you couldn't be more safe watching it in your you know, living room, in your office, on your phone or your personal computer. But you feel a visceral, you know, if it's probably empathic. But also you're taking in certain sense data about a dangerous environment and you can't help it feel part of that. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting, and I think I'm leaning towards agreeing with this theory. But let's remember that this study, there's only one study on this as far as I can tell, and it isn't conclusive. Um. Their explanation is simply theoretical and it doesn't have neurological evidence. Uh, the methodology also has some weak so let's acknowledge those. First of all, they only used university students, and let's be honest, university students are not representative of humanity, right right, Yeah, it tends to be a profile of a very specific socio economic, racial division of society. Yeah, and the volunteers themselves were confessing, well, they may have misremembered their experience or even falsely reported it. So that doesn't mean the studies flawed. It just means we need more research. Um. So a proposal for this is to actually conduct an experiment where scientists would have to take subjects and position them at different heights to test at what elevation they begin having the thought to jump. Um, there's another explanation that goes along I think with what you were saying about the watching those videos, which is that it could simply be connected to our thrill of not buckling under fear, which is a kind of cognitive dissonance. Um, this is the same reason why we go to haunted houses, right, both real and uh, you know, fun haunted houses. But like think about like when you're a little kid, uh and somebody says, let's go that house over there is haunted, I dare you to go into it, Right, It's kind of the same vibe. Uh. And then subsequently you go to something like I don't know, our version is another world here in Atlanta. You go to that you know somebody's going to jump out with a fake chainsaw and try to scare you. But the thrill of overcoming that fear is part of why you go and pay money to do it. Yeah, I mean, it fills you with endorphins. You're you're very much living in the moment. People who aren't into meditation or yoga, they still might go to a haunted house or watch a scary movie, and that's that's kind of meditative in a sense. It puts you in the now. Yeah, it's It's probably another reason why jump scares are so successful in horror films. There's an addiction to it. Yeah, And it's simple and it works, and it ties into our basic evolutionary state to be on the lookout for the tiger that jumps out of the grass. Now, there's a no take on all of this, and it ties in, I think nicely to what you said about the varying heights. At what height does it kick in? For my own part, I feel like there is definitely a difference between any call of the void that occurs at at lower heights as opposed to like truly awesome heights like Grand Canyon, cliff Edge type. Total obliteration. Yeah, total obliteration, I think is the thing because it's such it's such a it would be such a drastic choice. Okay, it would be such a choice between life and and and I don't know. I almost to say death like puts too much of an atmospheric twist on it, but more like between being an unding and I think this is I keep thinking this is the two roads diverge in a Yellow Woods approach. Um, So in the choose your own adventure book that is life. We encounter plenty of working paths, right, but many of these are hardly choices at all. I mean, on some level, we all choose whether they're going to go to work this morning or find a liquor store and drink our purchase in the woods behind the Yeah. Yeah, I mean for most of us, a lot of people struggle with that every morning. Well, some people realistically do. No, I'm not I'm not being sarcastic. Yeah, but but for many of us, it's not really a choice. Like the things we do are the things we do. We have this pattern and there's really this is where we get into that idea that we're not really making choices and more if at all. However, there are choices that are more real than others. Where two paths of equal weight and possibility are presented, and uh, and what is weightier than the old to be or not to be? The choice between being and unbing that stands before us when we stand at the edge of a great expanse. So it's not so much that we're tempted, but that our path choosing brain can't help but engage in one of its many cognitive superpowers, cognitive superpower that we all possess and uh and used to thrive. And this is a chronosthesia, which is also known as mental time to travel. So this entails our ability to be aware of our past and future and to envision multiple possible futures before us. So it's the key to our survival. But it's also the reason you might listen to NPR in the morning and mentally time travel to the dawn of the Third World War. So in that anxiety, yeah, the anxiety, anxiety comes out and you feel it in your body. So in that moment in the car listening to NBR, we're forced to wonder what what we're capable of, what we're willing to lose to gain. And on some level, it's kind of like the you know, the scene in the Old Testament with Abraham raising his dagger up in the sky and then above his son Isaac, and it's just well, the hand of the Angel come in time to spare him. Yeah, yeah, looking to something beyond, which gets into the Freudian aspect. Yeah, so that's another possible explanation for it. I tend to feel like we've got some of this definitely a part of it. But I also think the co native dissonance argument is also very valid, and it does like we've talked before on the show about how situations of cognitive dissonance often lend themselves well to supernatural experience. That's not to say actual supernatural occurrence, but the experience of something supernatural to us, especially in our demon possession, exorcism, matter sism episode, that is hugely tied to cognitive dissonance. Yeah. And when you get down to it, like the the idea of of encountering the choice between being and un being, this this kind of panicky pondering over to what extent you have free willed, to what extent you have control over your fate? I mean that is that's pretty supernatural sounding to me. Yeah. Yeah, Well this is a good opportunity for us to get into a guy who, let's be honest, in some situations, was quasi supernatural. Uh and his name was Sigmund Freud. Uh So Freud after a lot of his better known principles, Uh connected this to all the phenomenon to an idea that sometimes is referred to as a death wish, although that just calls to mind Charles Bronson for me, but it is referred to as the death drive, articulated in his ninety essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and this describes a drive in all of us towards self destruction and a return to the inorganic. Now, I used a paper by Joanne Faulkner on the subject to sort of see unpackaged this. Now. She argues that the death drive is when Freud departs from scientific methodology entirely, and it articulates what he thought of as higher functions in the psyche that weren't necessarily empirical. Okay, so this is why I say, like, we're getting into supernatural territory here. Freud thought this was beyond sciences. Um, it's highly speculative and it's not grounded in scientific perspective. But Freud's idea was that the death drive circumvented our pleasure in an effort to undo a person as an organic whole, and so as such it gave us both pleasure and discomfort. I can sort of see where he's coming from here based on what we were previously talking about with like, I don't know, scares right, Like it's both pleasurable and uncomfortable. But his idea, of course, being Freud, there has to be this model framework so that everything fits within. And it was that the death drive was the opposite of what he called the life drive or the libido. And while the libido attaches itself to others and creates ties of affection, the death drive destroys relationships and strives for disintegration. So if the libido manifests insects, the death drive manifests in aggression, and if this is directed inward, it could result in suicide. But here's the thing. Does the death drive lead to what we today understand as depression? Right? Like Freud didn't really have a grasp on that the way we do now. It's possible if it's directed inward, I guess. But in fact, some Eastern philosophy indicates that self centered acts maybe a form of this kind of self destruction, That selfishness itself isolates us from others, leads us to not having support. So maybe there's a little bit of a connection between depression and death drive. I don't know. I'm not a pcent on board with this. I see how it could sort of make sense at the time, and it's connected to thoughts that we're having. But huh, what is interesting you mentioned the Eastern philosophies. It is interesting to think of self destruction perhaps is it's not merely well, let's say, to to take self destruction and think of it in terms of of of the of of the wheel of sam Sara and the different states, and the idea that you know, you're reincarnated into two upper and lower forms. Yeah. One of the realms is that of the hungry ghosts, where one is just you know, constantly grasping for something and and and unable to to fill yourself with it. And and there's another realm, which is more of the hell room. And this is where I feel like things really line up with this idea of death drive just this you know, rageful uh, you know, assault on the things that anger you. I can give you like a personal version of this that I experienced. And this might be a little bit t m I, but um I often I'm compelled by the urge to just go be somewhere in complete isolation. Like I think when I when I have this urge, it's like, oh, I like a like a rundown motel in the middle of nowhere, off of a highway somewhere, right, and I'll just sitting there for a week, Like there's something about that that's just very compelling to me. And I don't want to destroy myself. I don't want to commit suicide, but there's something about it that that draws me there, right, And I think based on what you're talking about here, there's a similar idea here, right, Like if you believe in reincarnation and you think to yourself, well, if I die, I'm going to be reincarnated, possibly as a lower life form. Right, there's something kind of zen about that, right, There's something kind of relaxing about the idea of like I'll come back as a toad. Let's just live life as a toad, and I won't have as many concerns to bear. It's true, yeah, now, But I like this idea that you brought up here too because it also brings to mind like what each of us are. So we're certainly we're an organism that's that's alive. We're also an organism that's is generally moving in various uh social shares, and you have all of these kind of like invisible spider webs of social obligation all around us, and so to do to walk away from all of that first, say a week and go to this cabin in the woods. You are not necessarily destroying yourself, but you might be doing damage to these various social spider webs that are that have bound you up totally. And I can see where it would be at once liberating to walk away from all of those, uh, and then but then at the same time many would argue, well, that is self destructive. You were doing damage to these social structures that had helped maintain you. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, And that's compelling to write. The pop culture example of this that drew me in the most, And my wife immediately recognized it when we saw this, and she's like, you love this, don't you was And spoilers for this TV show if you don't want to, you might learn something you don't want to know about Breaking Bad here. But in Breaking Bad, there's a point where the main character it goes in hiding to New Hampshire for a year and he just lives in if small cottage with nothing but like you know, canned food and newspapers for a year and he just sits there and thinks on what he's done and sleeps and eats and is he just is and he's entrapped by snow when we find him. And I saw it, and I was just like, oh God, that that seems like the best vacation ever to me. But at the cost of all of his social relationships, which is sort of the point in the show. Uh. You know, this reminds me a lot of a Warren Zevon song that also when I when I have this feeling, I'll play this song and listen to it. It's called Splendid Isolation. It's great because the lyrics are basically rolling through these three different through or four different scenarios that he is craving, like I want to live on the Upper east Side and never go down in the street, you know, put tinfoil up on the window. I want to live in the desert like Georgia O'Keefe. You know, he's doing scenarios where um, we're we're Waren is talking about just walking away from everything and just encapsulating himself in uh in in in total isolation and and ultimately kind of self destructive self centeredness, because he ends up like making comparisons to to Neverland Ranch interesting, you know, locking yourself up in your own private Disney sort of thing. Well, I never put tinfoil on my window, but in my twenties I have to admit, Uh, I took cardboard and nailed it up over all the windows in my bedroom just because, like I wanted complete and utter darkness in there. Did you have a black light poster? No? No, I didn't missed opportunities mushroom wizards. Well, back to this Freud thing, I think it reeks of the subjective. It's a little bit of magical thinking, which is fun, but most people in this realm, in this discipline think of it as being eccentric. Regardless, it does apply to depression. If you understand that there's an innate voice that wishes for death and destruction, well that's that's helpful, right At least in therapy you can help separate that and distance yourself from those thoughts, and that takes away their power and allows you to challenge them and minimize them and disregard them. So there's something to that. People who have just like outright dismissed Freud. I'm sort of in the middle, Like, I don't buy it a hundred percent of the time, but I do think that there's some value and that he helped the profession sort of edge along slowly. Yeah, I mean I I always come back to my my lens analogy, where what I what I want to walk around with with the Freud lens in place all the time, with my Freud goggles on all the time. No, I would not, but I do find it as helpful in varying scenarios to pull the the Freud lens down over my own vision, of my own worldview and think, oh, well, how might the supply to the current scenario, What does what? How does Freud illuminate what's going on here? Well, why don't we take a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to delve into some actual statistics about suicidal thinking that may help us unraveled this call of the void phenomenon a little more. Alright, we're back. So when mental health professionals refer to these call of the void moments, they usually call it suicidal ideation. But that term seems broad for our purposes here today, So let's let's try to separate out what the difference might be. Okay. In eleven, the c d C conducted a really big study examining statistics about suicide, suicidal thinking, uh, and um, suicidal preparation, and they found that three point seven percent of adults in the United States had had suicidal thoughts in just the last year. Now, let's put that into perspective. That's eight point three million people. That's a lot of people. Other studies have placed this even higher, saying that it's actually around eight to ten of the population. Now let's look at the previous study on the high place phenomenon. That's not even close to the thirty to fifty percent of people who reported that they had experienced that phenomenon. Right, So it seems like what we think of as suicidal ideation and and high place phenomenon or call of the void, those are different. It seems like it suggests that there's there's some kind of different thought process going on there. Yeah, And of course with all of this, it depends on exactly how you're phrasing the question and how the individual on the other end views suicidal thoughts, uh, etcetera. I mean, because the big thing is like, what does that individual's culture say about suicide? Yeah, Now, even there there's this is the kind of thing that we would have to bust out in a longer episode. But even within the United States, that you're going to have varying subsets of people that are going to have different ideas about suicide. Yeah, and that actually plays in these statistics as well. Uh In the c d C report, they actually summarize the data on ninety two thousand, two hundred and sixty four respondents. But this establishes a difference between having suicidal thoughts and actually making plans for a suicide or attempting it. Plans and attempts are very different from just thinking about it. Okay, The estimates vary based on a couple of things, sociodemographic factors as well as the region of the country that you live in. So what you're just saying, here we go. Suicidal thoughts were higher among young adults between the ages of eighteen to twenty nine than they were for people over thirty. It was also significantly higher for women. In general. Non Hispanic Whites were the group with the highest prevalence of suicidal thoughts, while non Hispanic Asians were the group with the lowest suicidal thoughts. And regional factors, this is really complicated, but they think it could be related to indicators such as divorce rates or resources to access like healthcare. Uh, and so the cause and effect relationship here is unknown, but there's a there's a couple of things like, for instance, adults with less than a high school education and those who are unemployed at the time were more likely to have these thoughts. Finally, those in the Midwest and the West were more likely to have suicidal thoughts than those in the Northeast in the South. Now, I don't know how to unpack that, but what you presented sounds sounds close, which is that like, various cultures have different beliefs about suicide, right, and and or like they said that, there's like real world factors like how much access they have to healthcare or or or do they have a job, things like that. So there's limitations to this accounting though that we should note as well. For instance, previous studies indicate that adults, when they're talking about suicidal thoughts, they under report, especially when they're talking about when they were adolescents. So if they're adults now and they're saying, well, when I was an adolescent, this is you know, this is how often I experienced that they're they're known to under report. That makes sense to me, Yeah, I mean, I mean you're a different person when you're adult when you're an adolescent, So you're really kind of teasing apart the thoughts and motivations of a different you entire So I can see where there might be a tendency to say, oh, well that that that twenty year old me, that eighteen year old me. You didn't know what you're talking about now, even serious about that. And this study also didn't account for a couple of populations. Uh, first of all, institutionalized populations, which would probably have I mean, we would assume would have a higher rate of thinking about suicide. It and it totally cut out any kind of Native American populations. So and that wasn't like on purpose, it was just because they didn't have access to enough evidence. Yeah, I think there is a large factor here that comes down to is suicide an open pathway to this individual? Is it at all socially acceptable? To what degree is it socially acceptable? And that is going to be governed by your culture, your history. Indeed, what what books and movies, what beats of bits of fiction you you you value, But these are all going to help to skew this idea of of whether or not suicide is a practical option for an individual. Yeah, but very different from the idea of standing on a ledge and looking and just kind of getting that urge to je right. So that's why I put these statistics in here to sort of just give you like, these are very different things, and we can see the statistical differences just between these two studies. It's also worth remembering all of this stuff for both studies is self reported, and that is not a reliable Now to sort of pull out of the gloomier aspects of this this topic, um, I will ask everyone to to think about the call of the void. You know, uh, the situation in which the gravity of disastrous choices. You know, it's not merely anxiety inducing or or threatening to one sense of self control, but it is exhilarating. It's it's it's sort of endorphin pumping high that want to achieves from skydiving or even less dangerous smaller acts. And and plus what is the true call of the void but but a contemplation, however unformed of oblivion, a complete emptying of self, not merely hearing the call of the void, but but kind of touching the void, having almost a spiritual moment. To go back to that quote from Call of the Wild again, you know something that is at once splendid and terrible. Yeah, And so, as we've been doing in some of our episodes recently, we want to make sure if you heard this and this like touched upon something for you, and and you were hearing these statistics or whatever and you thought, well, this this resonates within me and I'm a little concerned. There's actually a nonprofit that we would like to throw a line out too, so that you, in case you're feeling that way, have some support. And it's the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Uh. It's a support line. It's seven, it's free, it's totally confidential. It's for people who are in distress. Uh. And it helps prevent crises and provides resources for you and your loved ones. So maybe it's not you, maybe it's somebody you know. Uh. So the number for that is one eight hundred two seven three eight to five five. Again, it's one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five. All right, and hey, if you want to hear more at the pisodes of stuff to blow your mind. If you want to check out videos, blog post, you name it links out to our social media accounts, head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's right, and I want to hear from you the audience. Have you experienced the call of a void? Have you thought about jumping off a tall building or the Grand Canyon or maybe even onto a train track before, but of course you didn't want to. You just got mixed up with these feelings inside. That's that's basically how we all feel nowadays. I'm just so mixed up with these feelings inside. Uh, let us know. You can let us know on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, or Instagram, or you can write us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. And it close out here today. I'm just gonna read another quote. This one comes from a book by Robert Graves. A number of you may be familiar with him from his more popular work such as I Claudius, but he also wrote a book called Goodbye to All That, and he talks about the Great Four. He talks about mountain climbing, and this is just a quick quote where he talks about climbing. My worst climb was on a little wit the most formidable of the precipices, when at a point that needed most concentration, a raven circled round the party in great sweeps. I found this curiously unsettling, because one climbs only up and down or sideways, and the ravens seem to be suggesting diverse other possible dimensions of movement, tempting us to let go our hold and join him. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works dot Com? No,