This One's a Tear Jerker

Summary

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The Rest Is Science

Episode: “This One's a Tear Jerker”

Date: December 2, 2025
Hosts: Professor Hannah Fry & Michael Stevens (Vsauce)

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Episode Overview

This episode plunges into the science and mystery of emotional crying — a uniquely human phenomenon. Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens dissect why humans alone shed emotional tears, what triggers crying, its biological underpinnings, the evolutionary purpose, cultural perceptions, and whether it’s really under our control. Through heartfelt stories and humorously skeptical science, they explore how tears are both intensely personal and deeply social signals.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Humans and Emotional Tears

• Uniqueness of Human Crying:
  • Only humans are confirmed to cry emotional tears.
    • “Anything with wet eyeballs is gonna have tears... but we produce a bunch when we're emotional, and we have not seen that in other mammals or birds.” — Michael [03:31]
• Types of Tears:
  • Lubricating (to prevent dryness)
  • Reflex (to expel irritants)
  • Emotional (loaded with distinct hormones and neurotransmitters)
    • “The third one is the emotional tears, which supposedly has all kinds of hormones inside of it which make it chemically distinct...” — Hannah [03:47]

2. Personal Crying Stories

• Hannah: Cried at her father’s funeral, reflecting on the overlap of memory and present emotion.
  • “It’s the bigness and smallness simultaneously of those moments that can be overwhelming, isn't it?” — Hannah [09:36]
• Michael: Cried alone at a poignant movie scene and when watching humble political speeches and military funerals.
  • “The circumstance and pomp of these ceremonies... it's just so big. The funeral procession... it's so human. It's so weak and humble, but yet so significant at the same time.” — Michael [08:23]
• Both use these stories to illustrate how crying can be triggered by both direct and vicarious emotional experiences.

3. Crying as Communication & Signaling

• Purpose:
  • Signaling need, vulnerability, sincerity.
    • “It's about the picture. It's about signaling something.” — Michael [05:46]
• Volition & Control:
  • Lack of agency when we cry, especially in high emotion.
    • “You don’t necessarily have agency when it comes to crying.” — Hannah [06:17]
• Social Importance:
  • Judgments about sincerity, warmth, instability, or manipulation.
    • “People look at criers as being more sincere and honest, warmer, friendlier, but also probably more emotionally unstable, possibly incompetent and also possibly manipulative.” — Michael [31:21]

4. Development & Evolutionary Roots

• Infant Crying:
  • Babies cry for attention — an evolutionary mechanism; initially without tears.
  • Vocal crying is a distress call, seen in many animals; emotional tears only appear later.
    • “What these two-day old babies don't do is cry with emotional tears.” — Michael [16:03]
  • Darwin’s baby: Reflex tears before 139 days old; emotional tears observed after ~4.5 months. [18:43]
• Animal Behavior:
  • Elephants and whales show mourning behavior, but scientific evidence for emotional tears in animals remains inconclusive.
    • “We've had lots and lots of reports... who've claimed that they have seen emotional tears in these situations. But it's just really difficult to prove.” — Hannah [24:51]

5. Questionable Science: Crying Equations

• Michael introduces a (tongue-in-cheek) equation:
  • Crying = (Meaning + Vulnerability) / Sensory Threshold
• Hannah comically dismantles it for its pseudo-science.
  • “Putting it into an equation gives it this false sense of precision...” — Hannah [12:19]
• Both agree the threshold concept (some are more sensitive than others) is useful, but an equation is reductive.

6. Hormones, Mood, and Context

• Hormonal shifts (prolactin, androgen suppression) and factors like tiredness or environment (e.g., airplanes) can lower the threshold for crying.
  • “The presence of prolactin can increase... He cries all the time now. Like, he'll watch, you know, like a puppy commercial or something, and there'll be a puppy on the screen and he'll just start crying.” — Hannah [33:39]
  • “People are more likely to cry watching movies, on airplanes... Maybe you're more tired, but also you're captive.” — Michael [34:18]
  • Possible effects of mild hypoxia at altitude discussed. [34:58]

7. Is Crying Adaptive, Maladaptive, or Just Accidental?

• Darwin’s View: Possibly a vestigial, maladaptive trait (scrunched face, impaired vision), but may now play important social and communicative roles.
• Conflict De-escalation: Seeing someone cry can dampen aggression or provoke empathy, serving social cohesion.
  • “Crying as a sign of vulnerability is literal. When you are crying, you are more vulnerable. Your vision is compromised.” — Michael [38:15]
• Crying helps signal social or emotional need, sometimes even unconsciously.

8. The Release: Why Crying Feels Good

• Crying may cause the release of oxytocin and endorphins, providing relief after distress.
• Some cultures (e.g., Japan) offer spaces to cry deliberately as therapeutic.
  • “Hotels would have crying rooms...where you could go and watch a sad movie and just enjoy a good old cry.” — Hannah [35:42]
• Not only is crying cathartic, it may have a physiological role in releasing stress.

9. Human Social Niche and Crying

• Homo sapiens’ survival hinges on sociality; crying is one of many uniquely human signals that foster connection.
  • “Our niche is very much about communing with others.” — Michael [39:46]
• Discussion of “phatic communion” — those automatic social signals (“enjoy your meal!” — “You too!”).
  • “It’s a way of showing we do need each other...” — Michael [40:55]
• Hermits & survival: Even those “alone” often still depend on social systems; connection is deeply embedded.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On the uniqueness of human emotional crying:

  • “I want to know why. Because there's only one animal on this planet that cries emotional tears.” — Michael [03:11]

• On evolutionary signals:

  • “Trying to cure cancer isn't like following a path. It's like trying to map out an entire forest.” — Hannah [00:17, sponsor section – content but not core subject]

• On the indescribable power of small, meaningful moments:

  • “It's the bigness and the smallest... of those moments that can be overwhelming.” — Hannah [09:36]

• On pseudo-scientific formulas:

  • “I have a severe allergic reaction to them. They make me actively angry.” — Hannah [11:14]

• On culture and judged behavior:

  • “People look at criers as being more sincere and honest... but also possibly manipulative.” — Michael [31:21]

• On catharsis:

  • “In my experience, I’ve only ever felt better after crying. I’m glad to be doing it.” — Michael [36:11]

• On evolutionary maladaptation:

  • “He thought this was something that humans practiced and could suppress... just a kind of something.” — Hannah [37:31]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Start of main topic (crying): [02:57]
• Types of tears & human uniqueness: [03:47]
• Hosts’ personal crying experiences: [05:18]–[10:00]
• Signaling, agency, and suppression: [05:46], [06:17], [30:07]
• Crying in infancy, Darwin’s studies: [13:03]–[18:52]
• Discussion of animal mourning/”elephant names”: [22:10]–[24:51]
• Hormones, tiredness, and threshold: [33:39]–[34:41]
• Cry-rooms and catharsis: [35:42]
• Evolutionary function (Darwin, conflict de-escalation): [37:31]–[38:40]
• Phatic communion & human connection: [40:54]
• Hermits, isolation, and survival: [41:28]–[44:52]
• Recap/Reflection on crying’s evolutionary origin: [45:50]–[46:36]

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Conclusion

The episode is a candid, scientifically skeptical, and emotionally honest exploration of why humans cry. Fry and Stevens blend moving personal stories, classic studies, and cultural context, giving listeners both laughter and insight. They argue that tears are a social tool, a vulnerability signal, and a deeply cathartic experience — a marker of our unique human capacity for connection.

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Final Note:
“I think it's ultimately about connection.” — Hannah [46:30]

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Transcript

[A]

This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research uk.

[B]

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[B]

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[A]

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[B]

For more information about Cancer Research uk, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org restoscience this podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Carvana makes car selling fast and easy from start to finish. Enter your license plate or VIN and get a real offer in seconds, down to the penny. If you accept, Carvana will come pick up your car from your driveway or you can drop it off at one of car vending machines. Either way, you get paid instantly. It's fast, transparent and 100% online car selling that saves your time. That's Carvana. Carvana Pickup fees may apply.

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[B]

Me, Hannah Fry and me Michael Stevens.

[A]

And we thought we would talk about crying today. Specifically, why do humans cry? Why do you cry, Michael.

[B]

I don't want to get into it right now, but I want to know why. Because there's only one animal on this planet that cries emotional tears.

[A]

Are you sure?

[B]

I know that there's some debate. There's some stories that camels have cried in emotional moments, like when they're reunited with their babies. One camel, by the way. Not camels.

[A]

A single camel.

[B]

But what is your feeling here? Do you think it's uniquely human to cry emotional tears? Because as we all know, anything with wet eyeballs is gonna have tears. Yeah, but we produce a bunch when we're emotional, and we have not seen that in other mammals or birds because.

[A]

I mean, wet eyes. There's three reasons why you have wet eyes. There's, like, the sort of lubricating tears that just stop your eyeballs from drying out, turning into, you know, raisins. There's the reflex. If you get something in your eye needs to water and flush it out. And then the third one is the emotional tears, which supposedly has all kinds of hormones inside of it which make it chemically distinct from the previous two. And that's the one that we're saying, is that.

[B]

Yeah, we just don't see it in other animals. And maybe we haven't looked closely enough. But you don't have to look very close at humans to see emotional tears. Yeah, weeping and sobbing. So why. Who was the first person to weep? At some point in evolution, we went from being hominids that didn't cry tears to suddenly there was a first person who was, like, overwhelmed. Maybe it was a baby, and tears came out and they were, like, probably freaking out. Their parents were like, the baby's leaking.

[A]

What is this?

[B]

And now the tears are just a thing.

[A]

Maybe. Actually, the distinction between not crying and crying is slightly fuzzier than you're describing, because you could still have tears running down your cheek. But it's like, the cause of it, the kind of. The thing that caused you to cry or cause the tears to leak from your face. That's the thing that slowly changed over time.

[B]

Yeah. Okay, so let's start there. What was the last thing that caused you to cry?

[A]

So my. My. Well, mine's. Mine's gonna be a bit of a downer, but my dad died this year, so I cried very much at his funeral. I was really good at the morning.

[B]

Yeah, there's a lot you just said there. You were really good at the morning. What do you mean by good? Like, I was the picture of a sight to behold. I was the picture of morning.

[A]

Of morning.

[B]

And that's just it, I think, and I think we'll get here through the talk that I think it's about the picture. It's about signaling something.

[A]

Okay, that's so interesting.

[B]

Not by choice, though.

[A]

Well, that's one thing that I think is interesting, because I was giving the eulogy, and there was a moment in the eulogy where I caught myself and I knew that I was. Had the instinct to cry and was desperately trying to repress it. My voice went high. I had the lump in my throat. Like all of the kind of physiological responses that you have to trying to suppress this cry. And that, I think, does tell you that these things aren't necessarily. You don't necessarily have agency when it comes to crying.

[B]

That's right. This matters to me because I'm. I think probably I shouldn't be, but I'm obsessed with figuring out what it is that describes humanity as simply as possible. And so looking at the things that differentiate us from other animals on this planet is a place to begin. And emotional crying is one of them. Michael, when did you last cry? Hannah? I'm glad you asked, because. Did you like my Hannah impression?

[A]

That was really good. It was good. I think I'm a bit more cockney than that, but sure, I gov' NER wouldn't you.

[B]

I don't really know English accents.

[A]

When did you last cry?

[B]

The last time I cried was very different than yours. Cause I was completely alone. I was watching about Schmidt, right? And I guess this is a spoiler, but I'm gonna say it anyway, because you can go and find your own sad movie. But at the end, this child that he has been. That he adopted, the main character, Schmidt, he gets a drawing from the child. And it's a drawing of him and the child holding hands and just got so wet in my eyes, I didn't, like, sob. It was a quiet cry, but I was just so overwhelmed at the sort of patheticness of how small this event was and yet how powerful and how much meaning it had.

[A]

Was it that you were overwhelmed by the emotion of the scene in the film? Or was it that it was tapping into something that you felt about your own family, your own, you know, your own child, your own experience?

[B]

I don't know. I didn't even have a child at this point.

[A]

Oh, wait, hang on. How? Your child's like, many years old.

[B]

Look.

[A]

Is that the look? Have you cried this decade?

[B]

All right, you got me. I cried more recently. I'll just. I don't. I don't want this to become a political discussion, but I cried after watching a politician speak and the politician said something that was just so humble.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I also, when I need a good cry, I do late at night, turn on military funerals.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The circumstance and pomp of these ceremonies with the other soldiers there doing the 21 gun salute who may have not even known the deceased. The flyover in with the empty man formation, it's just so big. The funeral procession going down the freeway and just people have come out onto the street just so their kids can see. To see what? It's so human. It's so weak and humble, but yet so significant at the same time.

[A]

It's like the bigness and the smallest of the entire world is one thing. The specific moment that triggered me when I was speaking in my dad's eulogy. I'd written this eulogy and I'd talked about the funny things that we'd done together, these amazing things. And I'd written that I remembered the feeling of holding his hand when I was a young girl. And that was the thing that got me. It was that connection of knowing that I'd held his hand that morning when he was in the casket. And then that. That very visceral sensation of being a child and looking down at your dad's hands when they're covered in dirt from work. And I think that's it. It's like it's the bigness and smallness simultaneously of those moments that can be overwhelming, isn't it?

[B]

Yeah. I saw my father's body as well. They had a room that his body was in, and they said, yeah, well, you guys can go and say last things to him. And it didn't really hit me until that moment when they asked me to go first that I was like his son. It was like, really? Yeah. See, and this is starting to make me feel like my eyes have a little bit more fluid in them.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But it's not because you're here or these people are here. Because I've cried mainly alone. I'm always alone. I've been alone in those circumstances, and yet I still did this. Still got watery eyed.

[A]

It is strange, isn't it? It is strange, the things that trigger.

[B]

You, but it's also not strange. Like, these stories all make complete sense. Right. No one's gonna go, you cried when you watched a funeral. But to put it in the context of no other animal has been definitively observed crying emotional tears. That's when I think we need to say, what are humans up To I'm still feeling very emotional. I wanna now just shift to something that I think will make you cry for a very different reason. All right. As I was looking into theories of emotional tears, I found a equation out of some research from Alabama. And I think you're gonna love this. All right, you ready? Here's the equation. Crying equals.

[A]

Oh, God.

[B]

Meaning plus vulnerability divided by sensory threshold.

[A]

Okay. This is one of the fake equations that exist in the world.

[B]

I knew you'd call it, and I've.

[A]

Gotta be honest with you. I have a severe allergic reaction to them.

[B]

Tell me why.

[A]

They make me actively angry. There's a multitude of reasons. For one thing, how are you measuring vulnerability? What's the unit of vulnerability that we're doing?

[B]

It's the metric unit one.

[A]

Pathetic.

[B]

Well, I don't know, but I see. Yeah, I see what? I agree with you.

[A]

Okay. Also, what was it? Sensory threshold. Did you say? Okay, so what happens when your sensory threshold is zero? That means you're infinitely crying.

[B]

Oh, yeah. The space time continuum is destroyed by your crying.

[A]

Oh. What about if you've got a very high threshold? Crying? I mean, whatever. If you've got a negative sensory threshold, you go to negative crying.

[B]

Negative cries. You suck moisture into your eyeballs, absorbing.

[A]

Water through your eyes.

[B]

You need to stop negatively crying. I'm drying up over here.

[A]

Also, meaning. Sorry, what is the meaning of meaning? I think, I'm not saying that there's, you know, there's some, some ideas behind that.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's like the value of an idea to you, how vulnerable you're feeling, you know, your own personal threshold. But this is like, I mean, putting it into an equation gives it this false sense of precision, which is.

[B]

False sense of precision and correctness.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I think what's being said here is that there's something called meaning and there's something called our vulnerability to it. But then it's all mediated by just how. Where our threshold is for crying. The lower it is, the bigger that ratio gets and the more crying there is. But yeah, you're right, these are such soft terms.

[A]

I'm okay with that idea. What you've just described is. I think that's, I think that's good. I mean, every. The two situations that we described about us crying definitely fit into that category. Right. But also this idea of the threshold that you as an individual have, that some people are more sensitive to crying than others, I think I'm okay with that. Broadly, as a rough idea, I think that's, that's, that's good. It's just don't make up equations.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Not in my presence.

[B]

So then let's, let's look at the data. Let's look at how crying begins in the life stages of a human.

[A]

In a baby.

[B]

In a baby.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. They're famous criers.

[A]

They're famous. Yes, they are. Mega criers. I mean, the thing is that crying in babies, there's different versions of this, right, because there's the crying as a sound for different reasons. So whether they're hungry, whether they're uncomfortable, whether they've got gas, whatever it might be, but that there's a really clear evolutionary purpose for that, which is in order to signal for attention to the carer, to sort of fix a situation.

[B]

Right. To get nurturing, to get attention. It's a distress call. And you're right. We see this in all kinds of animals.

[A]

Absolutely. There is some work. I don't know whether you've come across this. This is by a nurse called Priscilla Dunstan and she has a theory, right, that there's actually the different reasons why babies cry changes the sound that they make purely because there is some reflex that starts the sound. So for instance, when a baby is hungry, like and we're talking really, really young here, right? Like first, first three months of life when they would be suckling, they. The tongue in the mouth goes into a certain position that makes a like nyeh sound. Or there's a few others. There's like a. If they're really uncomfortable from trapped wind, it makes more of a like eh eh sound. Or there's like a, you know, one's beginning with a more of a H sound, that kind of thing. Now I should tell you that there have been like some small scale studies on this and it's really difficult to definitively pin down that this is what babies are doing. But there are lots of parents who say that this is actually a really useful rule of thumb rather than a hard and fast scientific rule.

[B]

You can kind of figure out what the baby is trying to say more specifically than just look at me, give me attention.

[A]

Exactly. Exactly.

[B]

Right. Okay. That's making me think. I don't know if you know the answer to this, but when a child is extremely young, still breastfeeding, the sound of its tears can cause the milk to.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

Does that depend on how the cry sounds is what I'm asking.

[A]

It's. It actually makes. Makes your boobs hurt.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like it's unbelievable.

[B]

Any cry or is there. Does the hunger cry cause it more?

[A]

Well, it's specifically Your baby as well.

[B]

Only your baby.

[A]

So, so the thing is that the, the hormone that, that creates letdown, that that event essentially allows the milk to, to, to run. There are a few different ways that it can be signaled and one of them is an auditory cue. And within 48 hours of your baby being born, your body essentially learns your baby's cry. And it triggers the production and letdown of milk when it hears that, that signal. And I think it is, I'm talking personal experience now rather than, rather than.

[B]

Sure, understand.

[A]

Rather than scientific stuff, but I think, I think it is specifically cry because there's a different cry when your baby is hurt.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And that doesn't signal the milk.

[B]

And these all sound like really deep evolutionary mechanisms. But what these two day old babies don't do is cry with emotional tears.

[A]

They're not watching military funerals.

[B]

They aren't. They're crying by creating a vocalization. But they're dry on the face.

[A]

They are.

[B]

Now I've, I've read that it's around four to eight weeks of age that they might, you might start to see tears, physical tears.

[A]

But are they emotional tears at that stage? You know, Darwin. Yeah. I don't know if you've heard him.

[B]

Met him a few times.

[A]

He's kind of a big deal.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He wrote this book, it's, you know, as well as the Origin of the Species and Descent of man and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, it's important books. He also wrote this book which is called the Expression of Emotions in man and Animals. And this is, it's a stonking read, Michael. I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone. All right. He's got an entire chapter on blushing. He's got an entire chapter on weeping. He goes around just observing all kinds of animals and all kinds of humans in all kinds of situations. He's got a sweaty hippo who's very cross in labour. Been there. He's got an impatient horse. He's got an orangutan who desperately wants some apple. It's like there's, it's. Honestly, it's absolutely delightful. But he also, this is, I think, the first book to have ever included printed photographs inside of it and he has within it a study of, of upset babies.

[B]

Oh, my goodness.

[A]

Isn't that amazing? So what you have here is a page of six images of very upset children.

[B]

Yes. And they look like they're like Victorian age children with their black and white photos. The kids look like they're in distress.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, I think that they well, one's in a sort of high chair. They're all wearing like really cute Victorian clothes. They're all very chubby. They're all just absolutely gorgeous little kids. But they're all crying and they've got.

[B]

Faces that are immediately recognizable as crying. The eyes are closed quite shut and the grimaces on the face.

[A]

They're very sad, they're very cute and as normal children are when they're upset. But Darwin made a study, I mean, both of which muscles were being contracted in their faces as they were crying. But he also made a study of his own infant, and he noted that one of his children, one of his babies at 77 days old, he accidentally brushed the cuff of his coat across their open eye. Accidentally, he says. And that caused tears to stream down their face.

[B]

Okay. At 77, 77 days.

[A]

But he was pretty sure that they weren't crying emotional tears. It was reflex. It wasn't until 139 days that he felt that they were weeping emotional tears.

[B]

Okay, so it took 139 days for Darwin's child to finally start shedding emotional tears. What is that, 4.5, 6986 months?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, 200,160 minutes if you like.

[B]

If you're rounding.

[A]

Yeah, if you want that.

[B]

Now, a theory I've heard about that transition, which to me feels like a kind of metamorphosis from not crying to crying. Yeah. Is that at first this distress call, just like you'll find in birds and other mammals, gets the attention that you need for all kinds of reasons, just to get it to stop because it's annoying to get it to stop because it could alert predators of your position. But also maybe just a reflex like the milk let down, going, oh, my body, my DNA tells me what to do here. But also that danger, the danger of alerting predators to where you are and aggravating the parents, eventually needs to disappear. But the helplessness and the need for care never does in our species because we have such extended adolescence pretty much our whole lives, I think we're always childlike in ways that no other animal.

[A]

Is, in the sense that we play.

[B]

For example, in the sense that we play in the sense that we're always like learning new things and always can learn new things. So instead of making a racket, a vocal racket, when we want to signal this, we can do it with the way our face looks and with tears coming out of our eyes.

[A]

Physical signal rather than an auditory one.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

So, okay, interesting idea. But Then I don't know if you've ever met a two year old. They are very noisy. Yeah. And they cry very loudly.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So what's that about?

[B]

Well, okay. Yeah, right.

[A]

How.

[B]

I guess they're not done with the, the metamorphosis yet. They're still in their cocoon, gelling into a tear crier and not so much of a loud sobber wailer.

[A]

Sure. But then also, I mean, there's sort of like loud sobbing wailing that you get from a young child, which is genuinely, I'm hurt, I'm in pain, or I'm hungry, I'm tired, I need something and I can't quite articulate what it might be. That is different from watching military funerals.

[B]

Yeah, it is. It's certainly different that a child will cry when they physically hurt themselves when they fall over. But I don't. I will cry when I hear a speech, but if I broke my arm, I probably wouldn't cry. Oh, I would. I would not feel good.

[A]

Oh, I would.

[B]

My lip would be so stiff. You guys would be like, excuse me.

[A]

I'm the British one here. Thank you very much.

[B]

I know, but I'm just saying you've got competition. No, but you see what, where I'm going with this. Like, as we age, the things that make us cry are very different than the things that made us cry when we were even more helpless. And helpless in a different way. When you're hungry, you don't always cry the way you did when you were 2 or 1 or less.

[A]

Agree.

[B]

And yeah, I don't think anyone's saying that babies are going to watch a funeral and be able to understand and feel overwhelmed. They might be overwhelmed just because the.

[A]

Sensations, I mean, about Schmidt is 12 plus. They're not even allowed.

[B]

They're not even allowed. They should not be watching it.

[A]

Okay, so there's definitely lots of evidence about the animals crying for pain or crying for hunger, all of that kind of thing. I think that there is evidence of other animals making auditory and like behavioral cues in an emotional way. So elephants is the classic example here. Lots of people have reported that they've seen elephants engaging in mourning behavior. There's, there's one particular incredible story about an experiment that went wrong. So I don't know if you know this, but, but elephants have names that they give each other.

[B]

How do they, how do they.

[A]

They rumble. They. Like, it's an auditory thing. They use their trunks to kind of call out names. It looks like elephants actually have a vocabulary of lots of different words. They have a word for bees. They have a word for human. They have a word for bad human. There's, like, actually quite a lot of complexity to animal language. Anyway, what you can do is you can turn up with a truck and a loudspeaker and play out a recording of an elephant calling another elephant's name. And if that elephant is within that herd, just that one elephant will turn around. So you'd be like, billy. And the elephant would be like, yo. Which is amazing.

[B]

That is really amazing.

[A]

You have to be really, really careful when you do this experiment. It's called a playback experiment. And the reason why is that a group of researchers went out into the savannah, played a sound of an elephant shouting another elephant's name. But what they hadn't realized was that the elephant they'd recorded had since died.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

And so the herd who she used to belong to suddenly got extremely distressed at hearing this voice, effectively from the past, from a ghost. From a ghost. And her daughter, the deceased elephant's daughter in particular, was. Was going through the bush, like, for days and days and days looking for her lost mother. So this kind of idea of, like, mourning behavior that you see in animals, we know that it exists not just in an observational way, but in those kind of slightly unfortunate situations where it's actually been an outside intervention, a human intervention, that has created this morning behavior. You get this with whales, too, right? Like, whales will. Will. Will carry the carcass of their dead children, often for days. They'll form a hub around a whale that's dying. You know, there's. There's lots of, like, extremely complex mourning behavior that you see in animals. And over the years, we've had lots and lots of reports of people who've worked closely with elephants, people, fishermen who've worked closely alongside whales who claim that they have seen emotional tears in these situations.

[B]

Really?

[A]

But it's just really difficult to prove. Right, it's really difficult to prove. How do you know that it's not dust that's got in the eye? How do you know? I mean, it's a whale, for goodness sake. It's in the water. But also, if you decided to do an observational study of a human, right, you could follow you around since 2020 and have very little evidence of you crying.

[B]

Yeah, that's true.

[A]

It's a really rare event.

[B]

That's true. So I am willing to admit that we don't know conclusively that only humans cry emotional tears, but we don't have.

[A]

Any hard evidence that any other animals do.

[B]

We don't have hard evidence. And like, personally, I think that these other animals, who knows what they're feeling. But I'd like to believe, and I think we almost have an obligation to believe, that they're feeling things quite deeply. They're expressing it differently, though. They're not contorting up their facial muscles in a way that creates this redness, this puffiness, this wetness that is almost hard to hide. Maybe they're doing something that we can't quite pick up on, but their other conspecifics immediately go, they're crying. And that, I think, gets us to what a crying person causes us to think about them, which maybe we should do after a break. This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

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Wow.

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Tell you what though, I've already had it. So between us, we're fine now.

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This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsively. Responsibility.org, jack Daniels and Old no. 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. All right, welcome back. We are talking about crying, and I want to move on to whether or not crying is a choice. How much voluntary control do we have over our emotional tears?

[A]

I mean, sometimes none at all, right? I mean, I don't know. Have you given that you've only cried once a century? No.

[B]

Come on. I cry. I cry just the right amount.

[A]

Just the right amount. Yeah. But definitely, I've had this experience numerous times where you get that feeling in your throat, the lump in your throat. And what that is, is there's a competition in your throat, right, for what the muscle should be doing. Part of you, your reflex, is to help you breathe, and the other part of you is your reflexes to try and suppress the cry. And so what you end up with is this tension in your muscle that feels like a lump in your throat. But also what happens is when you've got this tension, you lose the fine motor control that your throat normally has, which is why your voice starts to get really squeaky. Wow. Yeah.

[B]

That's fascinating, isn't it? The fact that we even are concerned about should I allow this to happen or try to resist? It says so much about the cultural and psychological importance of crying and what it means to us. The thing is, we suppress a lot of emotions. We'll suppress laughter because it's inappropriate to laugh right now. We will be really tired, but try to look really alive.

[A]

That's what I'm doing right now. Right.

[B]

Boy, I could tell you some stories about how I feel right now, but I choose not to because it's all about the end image.

[A]

It's all about the look.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

And so what do sad people look like? I'll tell you. According to some research I was reading, people look at criers as being more sincere and honest, warmer, friendlier.

[A]

Friendlier.

[B]

But also probably more emotionally unstable, possibly incompetent and also possibly manipulative.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Okay. Some of these are opposites here. You're more sincere and honest if I see you crying. Or maybe you're just really manipulative. Right. It says a lot of both good and bad things, positive and negative. It's a big indicator of stuff. And whether you think someone's tears make them seem more honest or less honest depends a lot on the context, who the person is, whether you know them or not. It's a major signal that can mean a lot. It can be arousing. It can be soothing to the crier and to others.

[A]

Watching that point about whether or not you're choosing to cry, I don't know. I've definitely had the experience numerous times in my life where I really haven't been able to control the fact that I was feeling, like, super emotional. There was once I was in a meeting. I'd just been appointed to faculty at university.

[B]

Congratulations.

[A]

I was in a very important meeting and I'd been very, very stressed. I was very tired. I think I was possibly also pregnant or at the very least had a very young baby. And the meeting progressed. Something happened in the meeting and I just immediately burst into tears. And it was International Women's Day as well. Can you imagine? And I knew that my colleagues were losing respect for me in that moment, but I just couldn't do anything about it. Couldn't do anything about it. But the thing is, is that I do think that there's lots of evidence that the hormones that you have in your body change how likely you are to cry. So I have a very good friend who has testicular cancer. He's taking some hormones as part of his treatment that suppress the androgens in his body. Androgens is a. Is. I mean, people call them male and female hormones. It's rubbish way to think of it, because everybody has both. Yeah, but what happens as you suppress the androgen in your body? Your. The presence of prolactin can increase. Now, prolactin is the hormone that your body creates when it comes to breastfeeding.

[B]

Pro Lac.

[A]

Prolactin. Exactly. Anyway, so he said that, like, during his treatment, everything's broadly been fine. He's taking these hormones, he kind of feels normal, except that he's really emotional and he cries all the time now. Like, he'll watch, you know, like a puppy commercial or something, and there'll be a puppy on the screen and he'll just start crying. And I do think that the threshold. You don't necessarily have control over where that threshold is.

[B]

That's right. So hormones affect that threshold. And in your story, too, being tired affects it a lot. And that brings up a thing I've noticed before, it sounds true to me, which is that people are more likely to cry watching movies, on airplanes.

[A]

Oh, right.

[B]

Which I think it's one. Maybe you're more tired, but also you're captive. Okay. You can't shift your attention to other things because you've just got that seat front in front of you. I don't know, you're just kind of, like, more alone.

[A]

There's, like, more social anonymity as well there. Right. Like, you know, if you're. Especially if you're tucked into. Tucked into a window seat.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like, I think you can sort of get away with crying and no one seeing you.

[B]

You can get away with it. Yeah. There's less of a feeling of, oh, hold on. This is an inappropriate time to do it. It's an appropriate time. You don't have any meetings. You're not in a meeting. You're just waiting. And so the tears flow.

[A]

I also wonder whether there's something to do with the amount of oxygen that you have. Cause, I mean, when you're in the air, it's basically like mild hypoxia, like mild oxygen starvation, which I think completely changes your ability to handle stress, you know, lowers your mood, makes you more vulnerable to. About Schmidt.

[B]

Yeah. I watched this alone in my apartment in New York. That's all it took for me.

[A]

Is it a very high apartment, though?

[B]

It was on the top floor, actually. And I felt better afterwards, which, like, is a very famous, well known thing about crying. Just having a good cry.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I think there's a lot going on there. But we have found oxytocin being released, endorphins being released because of crying. So there's a reward for crying, some.

[A]

Evidence that you physically feel better afterwards.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

You know, in Japan, this sort of trend started where hotels would have crying rooms. Oh, really? Where you could go and watch a sad movie and just enjoy a good old cry.

[B]

Oh, so it was full of things that would make you cry if you needed to just have that release.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

And that gets to what I'm saying about how people can be soothed by their own crying.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

But crying can also be arousing. It can make your heart rate go up, but it can also make it go down.

[A]

Definitely.

[B]

In my experience, I've only ever felt better after crying. I've only ever felt better while crying. I'm glad to be doing it.

[A]

A good cry. That's something.

[B]

I'm sure you can feel aroused while crying. Not that kind of aroused, Michael.

[A]

Whatever you enjoy is absolutely fine by me. Thank you. You do you. Well, one of the reasons why people think that crying makes you feel better is because of the hormones that are contained within your tear.

[B]

Within the tear. So they're. They're leaving your body.

[A]

Yeah. So andrenocorticotropic hormones.

[B]

I've heard that before. It's like a really easy answer to like, oh, tears are great because they get rid of these hormones, leaving you feeling better. And I guess I believe that, but I think hormones are not in the tears. Psychologically, something still happens when you've had that release. A lot of crying comes from, I believe, like, evolutionarily, the deep cry for help. In fact, we've seen, like, children will cry if they get hurt and no one's around. And as soon as someone arrives, they already start to feel better. This happens to adults as well. You're no longer in the mode of, help me, help me, you're being helped. The distress call can go away.

[A]

Well, Darwin was thinking a lot about the evolution of this, and Darwin's conclusion, you know, looking at different animals and their sort of emotions, but also in human and children and weeping and so on. His conclusion really was that he thought this was something that humans practiced and could suppress. Right. So different cultures had different attitudes towards crying. But he also thought that this was just like some kind of adaptation that doesn't really do anything, you know, like sneezing when you look at a bright light. He's. His. His idea was that it's like, okay, it's just sort of something. It's just a kind of something. And actually there are some people who say this is actually maladaptive. Right. Because if your eyes are filling with tears, you're scrunching up your face, you can't see as well as you were able to before. Right.

[B]

So. So crying as a sign of vulnerability is literal. When you are crying, you are more. More vulnerable. Your vision is compromised. You really do need other people's help.

[A]

Definitely. When you're around somebody else who's crying, I think that seeing their vulnerability sort of makes you want to appease them more. It's quite a good conflict de escalator crying.

[B]

It certainly communicates because it's possible for people to be revolted by a crying person if they don't know the person. If it would be really awkward, they'll avoid the person. Either way, whether a crier's tears make people come to them or flee them, it's a huge social signal. It is a huge social signal, and it may have. Maybe Darwin was right in terms of its very early emergence, because we can also produce excess tears just when we yawn. Like the stretching of the muscles around the eyes can cause the tear glands to put out more fluid.

[A]

I think a lot about how. I mean, humans in terms of our niche, right. We're these, like, very intelligent, very social creatures. And I think once it comes down to it, maybe the sort of the beginning of crying, maybe the first human who cried was. It was just. It didn't really mean anything. But I think what it's come to mean is something that's. That's both of those things. Both very social and intellectual. No.

[B]

Yeah, I think so. I think that that cognitive social niche is where we belong. And so it's just so human to do a podcast about crying. Let's have a good talk about crying, but let's also overthink it. Let's do some cognition and let's do some emoting and some socializing, which in other animals isn't the key to their survival. It's not the niche that they've worked out. Ours is very much about communing with others. We're not quite like honeybees or ants. They're almost like a superorganism in ways that. That human societies aren't. But yet, yeah, we. We do a lot of other things, which. I don't know if animals do this, but when, you know, you're at a restaurant and the server brings you your food and says, enjoy your meal, and you go, oh, you too. I mean, thanks. Right.

[A]

Have a good flight. Thank you. Oh, damn it.

[B]

The way we'll automatically respond to things like, oh, hey, how you doing? Fine. How are you? You know, and we don't answer the question literally. That's all. There's a name for that. It's called phatic communion.

[A]

Love it.

[B]

Where phatic means language, communion means coming together. And these ways that we unconsciously respond to each other just kind of signal that, like, hey, I'm a human, too. I get it. There's social rules. I'm here, I'm available, whatever. And I think that crying probably falls into that category a little bit, that it's a way of showing we do need each other, but in a way, humans do just don't need each other. Like an ant on its own cannot survive because it only has one role, but it needs all the different roles in its community.

[A]

Can humans survive on their own? I mean, like, really, really on their own? You'd have to be very, very off grid in order to not have any reliance on other human. I'm thinking about the food chain here. I'm thinking about, like, I don't know, everything you buy. Like, you sort of need other humans at some.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. No, it's a great question. I've looked a lot into, like, hermits, and it's almost always not totally independent. They would raid cabins nearby for supplies.

[A]

Cheating stuff.

[B]

So, I mean, I think the best example is Juana Maria, which wasn't even her real name. She was christened that after death. But she was a native on one of the Channel Islands. I mean, the ones off the coast of Alto, California.

[A]

I thought this was too exotic.

[B]

Right.

[A]

For the English Channel specifically.

[B]

She lived on San Nicolas Island. Her people were called the Nicolano people, and she was the last speaker of their language. I don't know the full history of the island, but there was, like, a Russian American company that came in, and they, like, massacred the indigenous people off of some rumors that there had been some violence against themselves and whatever. And then eventually, I think some of the missionaries said, let's get them all off this island for one reason or another. But they neglected to bring Juana Maria. And there's all kinds of apocryphal stories about did she get left behind because bad weather meant the ship just said leave her, or did she jump off the ship and swim back to the island?

[A]

Wow.

[B]

All we know is that she remained there from 1835 to 1853 all by herself. So for most of her late 20s and 30s, she was on this island all alone. She fashioned her clothes out of feathers.

[A]

I mean, you wouldn't bother, really, would you?

[B]

She did bother, though.

[A]

Isn't that interesting? Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. There's a rumor that her. Her feather skirt was sent to the Vatican, but then lost after she was found, of course, because people knew she was still there. So I guess there might be some truth to the story that she was left behind. Her escape.

[A]

Right.

[B]

They knew she was there all alone, and she just lived on her own. She caught seals. She made herself a tent and may have also lived in a cave nearby. When she was picked up, she was really excited to be back around people. There were, like three or four people in Santa Barbara in a mission there who still spoke her language that she was able to speak to. Some of her songs were recorded on wax cylinders.

[A]

No.

[B]

And we still have them. None of it's been translated. There are all these words that she said. We don't know what they mean.

[A]

Oh, that's so cool.

[B]

Now, she was. I. I kind of believe this part of it. I think she was really excited to be back around humans, and she was apparently really excited to be eating fruits and corn and all this stuff she didn't have on the island. But she got dysentery just a few weeks after being rescued and died.

[A]

Oh, no way.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And she wouldn't. She wasn't that old, right?

[B]

Like, no, she was. By then she was probably, like, 40, right? 41, 42. Yeah. But she survived for a very long time on her own. So, you know, the old, like, oh, you can only live a few months without food, a few days without water, but not a second without hope.

[A]

Maybe I've never heard that before, but I'm putting on a T shirt immediately.

[B]

Please do. I guess she doesn't have much to tell us about that because she may have retained hope, but she certainly lived without other people.

[A]

I wonder whether she cried in that time. I know, because on the one hand, you know, she's got total social anonymity.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Also quite a lot to cry about.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

But on the other hand, no one to socially cue.

[B]

I mean, because we know so little about her. Maybe she, like, cried tears of joy. Maybe she jumped off that ship and said, finally, the island all to myself, all that blubber. But probably not. I think. I think that, yeah, we are a social species, but. So her story makes me wonder about the social niche of humans because no one ever seems content to say, well, we're the thinking ape or whatever. I guess we are literally called Homo sapiens. The wise ape. But the social aspect of it, I think, is. Is. Is kind of explained through tears. What is its social role? Now that we've talked so much about it, how are you feeling about it?

[A]

I think it is. I think you're right. I mean, look, this is definitely one of those questions which is about what's the reason for this evolutionary trait? Right. And it's like, actually, sometimes. Sometimes there isn't an answer, and often the answer is we don't know for sure. So this is definitely in that category. Right. We cannot be absolutely sure, but I think that there's something in the idea of when you need to communicate vulnerability or when your body chooses to communicate vulnerability on your behalf. And this idea of like, just bringing down the kind of de. Escalating conflict, wanting to appease each other. I think it's ultimately about connection.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And we're connected to you, dear listener. How was that for an ending? Do you like that?

[B]

It's gonna make me cry.

[A]

Well before the tears come flooding. Please do like and subscribe on YouTube or rate and review us on your favorite podcast app.

[B]

And if you'd like to send us your thoughts, your feelings, the rest issolehanger.com if you want to send us some tears, some prolactin. I don't know what our physical address is, but stay tuned. No, please send them to me.