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[00:01]
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[00:32]
Public Health Announcer
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[00:34]
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[00:36]
Public Health Announcer
Even if your teen's been vaccinated in
[00:37]
Altra Running Advertiser
the past, they could still be missing meningitis vaccinations.
[00:41]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Ask your teen's doctor or visit meningitis.com today. Sponsored by GSK, ABC Listen Podcasts, radio news, music and more.
[00:52]
Public Health Announcer
In the course of my travels, I've been recording nature soundscapes with the aim of helping you Australia to relax. And in this particular ocean overnight recording, there was this one duck that just kept screaming its guts out. Anyway, don't worry, I've selected only the best, most relaxing soundscapes that absolutely do not feature this duck. Find Nature Sounds by Ann Jones wherever you get your podcasts and on the ABC Listen app.
[01:22]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
So, Tegan, when was the last time you had a good greet?
[01:25]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
You get greet sounds like something you say when you're saying hello to someone. Have I got that right?
[01:29]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
No, no. Well, that's, you know. Cause I grew up in Scotland. Having a good greet means you're having a good cry.
[01:34]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
I actually went to a memorial on the weekend, so it's quite recent and it was a very deep greet.
[01:40]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
[01:42]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
How about you? Are you, are you a regular crier?
[01:44]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
So I can choke up and sometimes I'll choke up on air.
[01:49]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Really?
[01:50]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
I've done it. So, distant past, you currently are a presenter of Life Matters. I used to co present Life Matters with Geraldine and you know, and often enough we would, I would have somebody on with a really emotional story. I remember one in detail, which was just very briefly. We had on a story about a psychiatrist and this will get you crying. So he was really disabled and blind from having stepped on a landmine in Vietnam during the Vietnam War when he was a medic.
[02:20]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Oh my gosh.
[02:21]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
And told the story about his remarkable rehabilitation and he'd become a psychiatrist and so on a really amazing story. And we got an email in from a listener who said, and I can almost cry actually saying it, saying, I was helicoptered in, in the Vietnam War to a platoon of Australian servicemen who'd got caught in a minefield. And I came across this doctor who was very badly wounded and he said, I'm going to die, go after the others.
[02:53]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Oh, my gosh.
[02:54]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
And I've often wondered what happened to him, and now I find out.
[02:59]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Far out.
[03:01]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
And we actually put on Life Matters. We put them together. I mean, just, you know, if that doesn't really tear you up, nothing will. And I find it very hard to control myself on air. I mean, really beautiful.
[03:14]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
And, yeah, as you say, I now present Life Matters four days a week and I probably weekly will get misty at minimum on air. We're just always talking about such human stuff that gets me right in the feels.
[03:25]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Yeah, but crying is what we're going to talk about today on what's that Rash?
[03:29]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
It's the show where we answer the health questions everyone is asking. Well, today our question comes from Ian, and yes, it is about crying. Ian says, I've just had my good, usual unmanly cry, quietly and in the dark, so as not to disturb others, at a Film society screening of the corny but beautiful musical movie An American in Paris, 1951, starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. In the case of this movie, I'm crying at the sheer loveliness of everything, the singing and dancing and music and depiction of true love. But after the movie left happy and a little dehydrated by it, I got wondering why we cry over whatever we cry over. Loveliness and. Or tragedy, heartbreak, life's miseries. What physiological purpose does crying serve? Why have we evolved to do it? How does it come about? What pieces of the mind and body are employed? If we cry to excess, does this do us any medical harm? Or is crying only ever beneficial? Yours Clean Exley, Ian of Canberra. Ian, I love this question so much because I am a pretty regular crier. I get emotional over all sorts of things, often wonderful things. So I'm really curious to dig into this one as well.
[04:46]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Yeah, really important. And then he's got a big. Ian's got a big idea, which is probably just going a little bit far, that you and I should act out the Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron singing, dancing episode of what's that Rash?
[04:58]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
We'll have you in stitches and itches. What's that rash?
[05:00]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
The Musical or Crying in Sympathy.
[05:04]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
I'm down with it. So Ian has basically scripted a whole episode for us, Norman. Just all of the different ways that crying benefits us as a species. I think probably we should start with what crying actually is because it's not just sound, it's not just facial expressions. It's not just water coming out of our faces. It's sort of this magical combination of the three.
[05:27]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Yes. And tears do not mean that you're crying. We produce tears all the time. That's how we keep our eye lubricated. If something goes in your eye, you produce tears to actually help clear it out. And then there's what some people call psychic tears, which are produced when we're in an emotional state.
[05:43]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
And it looks as though psychic tears. I want to start a band so I can just call it psychic tears. It's such a cool phrase.
[05:49]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
That's exactly right. And so it looks as though human beings are unique in that we cry with tears. So animals do cry, but it looks as. And there's these stories about gorillas and other animal species, but when you talk to veterinarians and zookeepers and others who deal with animals all the time, they don't report crying with tears, although they do report crying or what they interpret to be crying. So humans do seem to be peculiar in that they cry and produce tears as well. So it's.
[06:23]
Altra Running Advertiser
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[06:23]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
That's fascinating. You hear there's so many crocodiles.
[06:27]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Crocodile tears.
[06:28]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Well, I was thinking about crocodile tears, but I've also heard. I've heard of animals shedding tears in sort of tails before, and I. I actually kind of second guess myself on this. But, yeah, it does seem that the best systematic study to date, which did survey vets, as you say, said that there isn't evidence of emotional tears in any other animal species. Not to say that other animals don't experience emotions, but they don't get faces wet when they do it.
[06:54]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Exactly. And to answer one of Ian's questions about, you know, what's the biological basis? It looks as though the biological basis of crying is changes according to your age. I mean, some people call it an acoustic umbilical cord, so that when you. The vocalization of crying becomes less as you get older and the tearful part becomes more prominent.
[07:16]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Yeah, I mean, babies cry really loudly. It's sort of like, come here, care for me. Whereas when you get older, you might cry tears, but you're not generally wailing.
[07:26]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
And it's what induces. That's right. So it's what induces that crying. So it's part of attachment. It's a part of wanting comfort. Emotion is involved and probably becomes more and more involved as we get older.
[07:40]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
It's funny, I was thinking about this, and I was thinking about the fact that I consider myself to be a fairly frequent cry. I definitely get teary fairly easily, but I couldn't tell you the last time I cried because I hurt myself. You know, like when you're a kid and you fall over and scrape your knee, you cry. And that's a fairly normal response there. I don't cry from pain, but I cry from much more emotional reasons or feelings of, like, awe rather than pain.
[08:05]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
And that exactly fits with the evidence later on. It's about something that psychologists call the theory of mind. And the theory of mind is it can be really complicated or really simple. I'll be really simple, and I'll probably get lots of emails from psychologists saying how wrong I've got it. But it's about understanding self and other what's me and what's you, and being able to read the emotional state that another person is in. It overlaps with other aspects of social cognition. But this theory of mind, this empathy that you have with others can bring on crying, can make you tearful because you're empathizing with another person's situation.
[08:49]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
There's a wonderful chart in one of the research papers that we looked at for this which talks about adult antecedents of crying. So basically, reasons prompting crying, and some of them, on one side of the chart, it's negative reasons, and on the other side, there's positive reasons, but there's this beautiful kind of like, mirrorness to them that these things are two sides of the same coin. So on one, loss or grief obviously could elicit tears, but so could the birth of a child. On one side, separation or a breakup could elicit tears. On the other side, a wedding or a reunion could conflict or harmony, loneliness or union like these, just big emotions on either side of the scale can sometimes be enough to tip into crying, whether it's for sorrow or for joy.
[09:33]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Yeah, And I'll often choke when it's something where a group of people have got together.
[09:37]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Yes.
[09:38]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
To help another. I really am a sucker for that. You know, like every second Australian story, you know, you choke up. It's probably why Australian story is so popular. And that's the other. We'll come back to that in a moment. Why do you feel good after crying? And do you always feel good after crying? I mean, we'll come back to that in a moment.
[09:55]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Yeah, we'll come back to it. Because I do want to talk about that. I want to talk about who's crying and how frequently, because this is something that's very. It Varies a lot between people. So the ABC a couple of years ago did the Australia Talk survey. There was a big survey of Australians. And then you could kind of do a quiz to see how similar you were to this reference group. And one of the things that they looked at was how frequently Australians cried. And Norman, I'm probably on the far end of the female spectrum, but you're probably quite unusual among men, at least according to this survey data. But if you add up all of the men who say they either never cry or cry less than once a year, I. E. Never, that's half of men.
[10:38]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Oh, really?
[10:38]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Yeah, yeah. Or the men are lying and we're not exactly comparing apples with apples, but a third of women say they cry at least once a month, 14% say weekly and 3% daily. So very frequent.
[10:51]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Probably now the time to talk about the emotional reaction and psychological reaction to crying. Because there's a bit of a myth that, you know, it's good to cry, good to get it out of your system, which is really a kind of old fashioned fraud, Freudian notion about catharsis. Often people feel quite low after a cry, but if you actually then survey them an hour to an hour and a half later, their mood has picked up too often higher than it was before they cried. So it's not necessarily a bad thing. It depends why you're crying. I mean, if you are basically depressed, you're not necessarily going to feel better by crying. That's going to be part of the spiral that you experience. Whereas if your mood's pretty okay and you cry and you might be down a bit, but then you're going to come back up, it's a very. What's interesting about crying, and as you see as we've got into this for this episode, is how little people have actually researched it.
[11:47]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Well, even researching it is really hard. So you talked about the research where people cry and then they're sort of basically interviewed straight afterwards and then an hour and a half later and they feel worse and they feel better. But I'm not sure how I would feel having my cry in a lab with people observing me and quizzing me about it afterwards. It's a very private thing. It's sort of like a. That needs to vomit. I want to crawl away to another room and have my cry in private. I don't want to be observed during it.
[12:13]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
It's an expression of your brain activity and it's influenced by all sorts of things. Have you had a bad night's sleep? Are you tired? Are you stressed? Are you feeling low? Are you going through a period of poor physical health? Are you drinking more than you otherwise would? Are you using other recreational drugs? All those things can affect your propensity to crying or not crying.
[12:32]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Can we talk a bit about the physiology of crying? We've sort of gestured at it a couple of times, this idea that there probably hormones involved if you're going to feel better or worse afterwards. It's a physical act. What's actually the physiology of crying?
[12:46]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Short answer is nobody's absolutely sure what it is. So there are various parts of the unconscious, the autonomic nervous system that get involved. There's the sympathetic nervous system, which tends to wind you up, narrow blood vessels. Then there's the parasympathetic nervous system, which does the opposite, gets blood flowing. And some people argue that the initial part of crying is induced by the sympathetic nervous system, nervous system, adrenaline, noradrenaline. And then you get the parasympathetic nervous system coming in and that's when you get this tearful response and perhaps feeling better. Some people think that oxytocin is involved, which has been called the empathy hormone, and that gets involved in the process. And, you know, there's debate about the extent to how deep into the brain crying goes. Does it go right down to the brain stem, which is involved in fundamental processes like breathing your heart rate and so on, or is it much more cortical and aware and people. It's not really been tied down. A lot of research in this area has been in small studies. What's thought to be quite important is the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in planning, in making decisions, and various other processes, a very important part of the brain. And some research with small groups of people have suggested the prefrontal cortex is involved here, which is a very high order part of the brain, very conscious part of the brain.
[14:12]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Where do our tears actually come from?
[14:14]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
They come from the lacrimal glands, just under your eyelids.
[14:17]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Are they kind of juiced up all the time? Sometimes I wonder how I could possibly have enough tears to cry out. But they keep on coming.
[14:24]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
They're juiced up all the time. If anybody listening who's had dry eye syndrome or Sjorgen syndrome knows the disability of having dry eyes and having to constantly put drops in your eyes, you constantly produce tears.
[14:37]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
So we got a lot of questions in Ian's email. We've talked about the emotions involved in crying. We've talked about why we've maybe evolved to do it. What parts of the body are employed. One of the questions, though, he said was, what physiological purpose does it serve? I don't know if we've given him a clear answer yet, Norman.
[14:55]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
I think we have. Well, I think I have, but I'll say it again. I think that it has different physiological purposes, which are really evolutionary purposes. It's about keeping yourself attached to the carer initially in your life so that that carer is nearby and responds to your needs. Because a newborn baby, an infant, is helpless without a carer nearby. And therefore crying is the evolutionary response to actually cement that attachment to your carer. And then as time goes on, this attachment idea continues, that it becomes part of that comfort that you need from people who are close to you, who are going to protect you. And then as you get older, well, it may well be as simple as when you get older, there may not be an evolutionary reason for it. It may just be a vestige of that early crying. But this idea that you might actually feel a bit better a while after you cry, but it also may mean that you find that when you cry you get a response from others which is positive. Now, that's not necessarily true in the modern world, where crying in public may be seen as weakness, wrongly. So the evolutionary benefits as you're older become harder to explain.
[16:10]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
And so for Ian's final question, if we cry to excess, does it do us any medical harm?
[16:16]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Well, interestingly, people have thought, well, maybe the process of crying gets rid of toxic stuff from your body because all these tears coming out. Well, firstly, yeah, your tears do contain a lot more than just salt, but you'd have to really cry buckets to make a difference to the hormones in your body. So I think it's unlikely that you're going to do yourself any harm apart from dehydrating yourself after watching Gene Kelly.
[16:41]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Well, Ian, thank you so much for your email. Loved going through all of those questions together with you. Feel free to have a little weep whenever you watch a sappy old movie without fear or favour. If you want to be like Ian and send us an email with your question in it, our email address is thatrashbc.net.au and what's in the mailbox? So, a couple of emails for us off the back of our Ultra Processed Foods episode, Norman, which really point to the fact that we have talked about different ultra processed foods in the past. So Christopher says, some years ago, my partner, who had just started a new office job at a large Sydney margarine manufacturing company, arrived home from work. I told her what delicious dish I'd cooked for dinner and she said not hungry. She was almost green. When I asked what was wrong, she told me that they'd had a factory tour that day and said, do you know that after they process the oils to make them more solid, the result is black? They then bleach it and artificially dye it yellow.
[17:40]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Oh gosh. Now we have done an episode on butter versus margarine and we'll put a link in our show notes if you can, if you can, if you can stomach it.
[17:49]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
There was actually a stage where margarine was dyed pink. That's a whole thing. It's in the episode. You should go and listen to it. There's also an email from Marion who says regarding your recent episode on Ultra Processed Food, I thought it would be worth including a recent study co led by Monash and Deakin Universities. The authors showed that heavily processed foods can negatively impact the brain's ability to focus and the increase the risk of developing dementia. Interestingly, this person says the effect occurred regardless of a person's overall diet quality, even for people following a healthy Mediterranean diet. Norman I left my bell upstairs today. Somehow I didn't think it would come up in our episode about crying. Wasn't I wrong?
[18:33]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
I used to go off and have a cry about that.
[18:34]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
That I might, Marian says, suggesting the link between diet and cognitive function extends beyond just missing out on healthy foods and nutrients.
[18:43]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
And one theory behind this is it's the microbiome at work.
[18:47]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
I think I might need a new sound effect for microbiome if you're going to keep on talking about it. Norman and Ionia says, my algorithm seems to have cottoned onto the fact that I'm an avid gym rat who loves being complimented on my deltoids. Ionia says it happens all the time. Sigh. Quite a literal flex there, Ionia. Left, right and center. I get fitness influencers pitching their Gorilla mind Ultra Protein and T Rex Max Whey. Given the current craze around protein and in the context of your episode of Ultra Processed Foods, where do these protein powders land? I'm curious, as I'm somebody who relies on them occasionally to fill in the gaps. But I'm also questioning whether this obsession with 1.6 grams of protein per kilo of body weight is a little pedantic. Are these powders perhaps doing more harm than good?
[19:35]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
We do have an episode on protein protein powders and we'll again have this in our show. Notes the link to that episode. So protein powders are ultra processed foods. You can't get away from that and not a natural way of taking in protein. And there are certain requirements of protein which rise as you get older. And also if you're trying to build muscle, preferably taking your protein as natural food would be much better for you. But we could not find much evidence of harm from protein powders in our episode, apart from just being part of that mix of ultra processed foods.
[20:07]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
If you can get what you need from a healthy whole food diet, that's obviously preferred, but I think in the end of the day fed is best indeed. Well, that is it. From the mailbag today. If you want to add to our mailbag our address ishbc.net au see you next week. See you then.

Summary6 min read

Podcast Summary: "Why do we cry?"

Podcast: What's That Rash?
Host: ABC Australia
Date: August 11, 2026
Episode Theme: In this episode, hosts Tegan and Norman answer listener Ian’s probing questions about the science, evolution, and psychology of crying—including why we do it, what purpose it serves, and if it can ever do us harm.

Overview

The episode delves into the phenomenon of crying, particularly "emotional crying"—why humans shed tears in response to both sorrow and joy, the evolutionary and physiological purposes of crying, and common questions about its impact on mind and body. Through listener Ian's poetic and heartfelt query, the hosts explore what makes crying uniquely human, how it relates to empathy and social connection, and whether tears themselves serve a physical or psychological function.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Cultural and Personal Perspectives on Crying

[01:21] Tegan and Norman share personal anecdotes about what makes them cry.
- Norman recounts choking up on air during emotional interviews on "Life Matters," particularly a moving incident involving a Vietnam veteran.
“I find it very hard to control myself on air. I mean, really beautiful.” – Norman [03:00]

2. Listener Question and Why We Cry

[03:29] Ian from Canberra emails about crying at "An American in Paris," pondering the role and benefits of crying.
- The hosts introduce the main questions explored:
  - Why do we cry for positive and negative reasons?
  - What is the evolutionary or physiological purpose?
  - What is actually happening in the body and mind?
  - Is excessive crying harmful?

3. What is Crying? Types of Tears

[05:04] Crying is more than sound or facial expression; it's a combination, and not all tears are emotional.
- Basal Tears: Lubricate the eyes constantly.
- Reflex Tears: Clear irritants from the eye.
- Psychic Tears: Shed in response to emotion.
“We produce tears all the time. ...There’s what some people call ‘psychic tears,’ which are produced when we're in an emotional state.” – Norman [05:26]

4. Crying in Animals vs. Humans

[05:49] Humans seem uniquely capable of emotional (tearful) crying.
- Animal "crying" is observed behaviorally, but wet-tear crying hasn’t been documented.
“...There isn’t evidence of emotional tears in any other animal species. ...they don’t get faces wet when they do it.” – Tegan [06:28]

5. Evolutionary Purpose of Crying

[07:16] Crying changes with age:
- For infants, it's loud and vocal—for attachment and care.
- For adults, emotional tears are linked to empathy and social bonds.
“Some people call it an acoustic umbilical cord...the vocalization of crying becomes less as you get older and the tearful part becomes more prominent.” – Norman [06:53] “It’s part of attachment. ...emotion is involved and probably becomes more and more involved as we get older.” – Norman [07:26]

6. The Emotional Triggers and Social Context

[08:49] Both negative and positive high-emotion experiences can trigger crying.
- Chart from research paper: Loss/grief ↔ Birth, Separation ↔ Reunion, Conflict ↔ Harmony.
“Big emotions...can sometimes be enough to tip into crying, whether it’s for sorrow or joy.” – Tegan [09:22]

7. Gender and Frequency of Crying

[09:55] Survey data (Australia Talks):
- Half of men say they never cry or do so less than once a year.
- A third of women say at least once a month, 14% weekly, 3% daily.
“If you add up all of the men who say they either never cry or cry less than once a year...that’s half of men.” – Tegan [10:37]

8. The Catharsis Debate: Does Crying Make You Feel Better?

[10:51] The common belief that crying is universally cathartic (“good to get it out”) is more nuanced.
- Immediately after crying you may feel worse, but often mood improves an hour or so later—unless you are clinically depressed.
“Their mood has picked up to often higher than it was before they cried. ...It depends why you're crying.” – Norman [11:02]
Laboratory studies may not simulate real crying experiences well.

“I don’t want to be observed during it.” – Tegan [11:47]

9. Physiology of Crying: How Does It Work?

[12:32] Crying is mediated by the autonomic nervous system:
- Sympathetic ("fight or flight") may initiate crying.
- Parasympathetic ("rest and digest") follows, bringing calm and relief.
- Hormones like oxytocin ("the empathy hormone") may play a role.
- The prefrontal cortex (higher reasoning, empathy) likely involved.
"Some research...suggested the prefrontal cortex is involved, which is a very high order part of the brain." – Norman [13:34]

10. Source of Tears

[14:11] Tears are produced by the lacrimal glands under the eyelids and are continually generated to keep eyes healthy.

“They're juiced up all the time.” – Norman [14:24]

11. Does Crying Serve a Physiological Purpose?

[14:54] Crying initially serves to cement caregiver attachment in infancy—a clear evolutionary benefit.
- In adults, the benefit is less clear but may involve seeking comfort and social support.
"Crying is the evolutionary response to actually cement that attachment to your carer." – Norman [14:58]
- In modern society, crying in public may be misinterpreted as weakness.
“...the evolutionary benefits as you’re older become harder to explain.” – Norman [15:47]

12. Can Crying Too Much Harm Us?

[16:15] Crying is not medically harmful except for possible dehydration if excessive.
- Tears don’t meaningfully remove hormonal “toxins.”
“I think it’s unlikely that you’re going to do yourself any harm apart from dehydrating yourself after watching Gene Kelly.” – Norman [16:41]

Notable Quotes

“You get greet sounds like something you say when you’re saying hello to someone. ...Having a good greet means you’re having a good cry.” – Norman [01:24]
“I want to start a band so I can just call it psychic tears. It’s such a cool phrase.” – Tegan [05:42]
“It’s sort of like a need to vomit. I want to crawl away to another room and have my cry in private. I don’t want to be observed during it.” – Tegan [11:47]
“Crying is the evolutionary response to actually cement that attachment to your carer.” – Norman [14:58]

Memorable Moments

Norman gets emotional recalling a listener-reunited Vietnam veteran story [02:21–03:00].
Tegan and Norman joking about starting a band called "Psychic Tears" [05:42].
Humorous riffing on acting out "An American in Paris" as a “What’s That Rash?” musical [04:46].
Discussion of crying's social acceptability—public vs. private weeping [11:47].

Important Timestamps

[01:21] Hosts share personal crying experiences
[03:29] Listener Ian’s question sets the agenda
[05:04] Defining crying, types of tears
[06:28] Emotional tears: Only in humans
[07:16] Evolutionary roots and childhood crying
[08:49] Chart: Positive and negative crying triggers
[09:55] Crying frequency: Gender and survey results
[10:51] Mythbusting the cathartic effect
[12:32] Physiology—nervous system and hormones
[14:11] Where tears come from
[14:54] Evolution and purpose of crying
[16:15] Is excessive crying harmful?

Tone and Style

Clear, warm, and relatable—hosts blend scientific insight with personal experiences and gentle humor, inviting listeners to reflect on their own relationship with tears without judgment.

Conclusion

This episode of "What's That Rash?" answers the common, complex question: "Why do we cry?"—covering the biology, psychology, evolution, and social context of tearful emotion. The bottom line: crying is a uniquely human act rooted in early life attachment, influenced by empathy and social context, and generally brings relief rather than harm. The hosts encourage listeners to feel no shame over a “good cry”—whether it’s at a sad story, a joyful reunion, or just a corny old musical.

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[00:01]
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[00:32]
Public Health Announcer
may include the bacteria that can cause
[00:34]
Altra Running Advertiser
meningococcal disease known as meningitis.
[00:36]
Public Health Announcer
Even if your teen's been vaccinated in
[00:37]
Altra Running Advertiser
the past, they could still be missing meningitis vaccinations.
[00:41]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Ask your teen's doctor or visit meningitis.com today. Sponsored by GSK, ABC Listen Podcasts, radio news, music and more.
[00:52]
Public Health Announcer
In the course of my travels, I've been recording nature soundscapes with the aim of helping you Australia to relax. And in this particular ocean overnight recording, there was this one duck that just kept screaming its guts out. Anyway, don't worry, I've selected only the best, most relaxing soundscapes that absolutely do not feature this duck. Find Nature Sounds by Ann Jones wherever you get your podcasts and on the ABC Listen app.
[01:22]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
So, Tegan, when was the last time you had a good greet?
[01:25]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
You get greet sounds like something you say when you're saying hello to someone. Have I got that right?
[01:29]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
No, no. Well, that's, you know. Cause I grew up in Scotland. Having a good greet means you're having a good cry.
[01:34]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
I actually went to a memorial on the weekend, so it's quite recent and it was a very deep greet.
[01:40]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
[01:42]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
How about you? Are you, are you a regular crier?
[01:44]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
So I can choke up and sometimes I'll choke up on air.
[01:49]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Really?
[01:50]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
I've done it. So, distant past, you currently are a presenter of Life Matters. I used to co present Life Matters with Geraldine and you know, and often enough we would, I would have somebody on with a really emotional story. I remember one in detail, which was just very briefly. We had on a story about a psychiatrist and this will get you crying. So he was really disabled and blind from having stepped on a landmine in Vietnam during the Vietnam War when he was a medic.
[02:20]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Oh my gosh.
[02:21]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
And told the story about his remarkable rehabilitation and he'd become a psychiatrist and so on a really amazing story. And we got an email in from a listener who said, and I can almost cry actually saying it, saying, I was helicoptered in, in the Vietnam War to a platoon of Australian servicemen who'd got caught in a minefield. And I came across this doctor who was very badly wounded and he said, I'm going to die, go after the others.
[02:53]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Oh, my gosh.
[02:54]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
And I've often wondered what happened to him, and now I find out.
[02:59]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Far out.
[03:01]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
And we actually put on Life Matters. We put them together. I mean, just, you know, if that doesn't really tear you up, nothing will. And I find it very hard to control myself on air. I mean, really beautiful.
[03:14]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
And, yeah, as you say, I now present Life Matters four days a week and I probably weekly will get misty at minimum on air. We're just always talking about such human stuff that gets me right in the feels.
[03:25]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Yeah, but crying is what we're going to talk about today on what's that Rash?
[03:29]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
It's the show where we answer the health questions everyone is asking. Well, today our question comes from Ian, and yes, it is about crying. Ian says, I've just had my good, usual unmanly cry, quietly and in the dark, so as not to disturb others, at a Film society screening of the corny but beautiful musical movie An American in Paris, 1951, starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. In the case of this movie, I'm crying at the sheer loveliness of everything, the singing and dancing and music and depiction of true love. But after the movie left happy and a little dehydrated by it, I got wondering why we cry over whatever we cry over. Loveliness and. Or tragedy, heartbreak, life's miseries. What physiological purpose does crying serve? Why have we evolved to do it? How does it come about? What pieces of the mind and body are employed? If we cry to excess, does this do us any medical harm? Or is crying only ever beneficial? Yours Clean Exley, Ian of Canberra. Ian, I love this question so much because I am a pretty regular crier. I get emotional over all sorts of things, often wonderful things. So I'm really curious to dig into this one as well.
[04:46]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Yeah, really important. And then he's got a big. Ian's got a big idea, which is probably just going a little bit far, that you and I should act out the Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron singing, dancing episode of what's that Rash?
[04:58]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
We'll have you in stitches and itches. What's that rash?
[05:00]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
The Musical or Crying in Sympathy.
[05:04]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
I'm down with it. So Ian has basically scripted a whole episode for us, Norman. Just all of the different ways that crying benefits us as a species. I think probably we should start with what crying actually is because it's not just sound, it's not just facial expressions. It's not just water coming out of our faces. It's sort of this magical combination of the three.
[05:27]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Yes. And tears do not mean that you're crying. We produce tears all the time. That's how we keep our eye lubricated. If something goes in your eye, you produce tears to actually help clear it out. And then there's what some people call psychic tears, which are produced when we're in an emotional state.
[05:43]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
And it looks as though psychic tears. I want to start a band so I can just call it psychic tears. It's such a cool phrase.
[05:49]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
That's exactly right. And so it looks as though human beings are unique in that we cry with tears. So animals do cry, but it looks as. And there's these stories about gorillas and other animal species, but when you talk to veterinarians and zookeepers and others who deal with animals all the time, they don't report crying with tears, although they do report crying or what they interpret to be crying. So humans do seem to be peculiar in that they cry and produce tears as well. So it's.
[06:23]
Altra Running Advertiser
That's.
[06:23]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
That's fascinating. You hear there's so many crocodiles.
[06:27]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Crocodile tears.
[06:28]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Well, I was thinking about crocodile tears, but I've also heard. I've heard of animals shedding tears in sort of tails before, and I. I actually kind of second guess myself on this. But, yeah, it does seem that the best systematic study to date, which did survey vets, as you say, said that there isn't evidence of emotional tears in any other animal species. Not to say that other animals don't experience emotions, but they don't get faces wet when they do it.
[06:54]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Exactly. And to answer one of Ian's questions about, you know, what's the biological basis? It looks as though the biological basis of crying is changes according to your age. I mean, some people call it an acoustic umbilical cord, so that when you. The vocalization of crying becomes less as you get older and the tearful part becomes more prominent.
[07:16]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Yeah, I mean, babies cry really loudly. It's sort of like, come here, care for me. Whereas when you get older, you might cry tears, but you're not generally wailing.
[07:26]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
And it's what induces. That's right. So it's what induces that crying. So it's part of attachment. It's a part of wanting comfort. Emotion is involved and probably becomes more and more involved as we get older.
[07:40]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
It's funny, I was thinking about this, and I was thinking about the fact that I consider myself to be a fairly frequent cry. I definitely get teary fairly easily, but I couldn't tell you the last time I cried because I hurt myself. You know, like when you're a kid and you fall over and scrape your knee, you cry. And that's a fairly normal response there. I don't cry from pain, but I cry from much more emotional reasons or feelings of, like, awe rather than pain.
[08:05]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
And that exactly fits with the evidence later on. It's about something that psychologists call the theory of mind. And the theory of mind is it can be really complicated or really simple. I'll be really simple, and I'll probably get lots of emails from psychologists saying how wrong I've got it. But it's about understanding self and other what's me and what's you, and being able to read the emotional state that another person is in. It overlaps with other aspects of social cognition. But this theory of mind, this empathy that you have with others can bring on crying, can make you tearful because you're empathizing with another person's situation.
[08:49]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
There's a wonderful chart in one of the research papers that we looked at for this which talks about adult antecedents of crying. So basically, reasons prompting crying, and some of them, on one side of the chart, it's negative reasons, and on the other side, there's positive reasons, but there's this beautiful kind of like, mirrorness to them that these things are two sides of the same coin. So on one, loss or grief obviously could elicit tears, but so could the birth of a child. On one side, separation or a breakup could elicit tears. On the other side, a wedding or a reunion could conflict or harmony, loneliness or union like these, just big emotions on either side of the scale can sometimes be enough to tip into crying, whether it's for sorrow or for joy.
[09:33]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Yeah, And I'll often choke when it's something where a group of people have got together.
[09:37]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Yes.
[09:38]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
To help another. I really am a sucker for that. You know, like every second Australian story, you know, you choke up. It's probably why Australian story is so popular. And that's the other. We'll come back to that in a moment. Why do you feel good after crying? And do you always feel good after crying? I mean, we'll come back to that in a moment.
[09:55]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Yeah, we'll come back to it. Because I do want to talk about that. I want to talk about who's crying and how frequently, because this is something that's very. It Varies a lot between people. So the ABC a couple of years ago did the Australia Talk survey. There was a big survey of Australians. And then you could kind of do a quiz to see how similar you were to this reference group. And one of the things that they looked at was how frequently Australians cried. And Norman, I'm probably on the far end of the female spectrum, but you're probably quite unusual among men, at least according to this survey data. But if you add up all of the men who say they either never cry or cry less than once a year, I. E. Never, that's half of men.
[10:38]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Oh, really?
[10:38]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Yeah, yeah. Or the men are lying and we're not exactly comparing apples with apples, but a third of women say they cry at least once a month, 14% say weekly and 3% daily. So very frequent.
[10:51]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Probably now the time to talk about the emotional reaction and psychological reaction to crying. Because there's a bit of a myth that, you know, it's good to cry, good to get it out of your system, which is really a kind of old fashioned fraud, Freudian notion about catharsis. Often people feel quite low after a cry, but if you actually then survey them an hour to an hour and a half later, their mood has picked up too often higher than it was before they cried. So it's not necessarily a bad thing. It depends why you're crying. I mean, if you are basically depressed, you're not necessarily going to feel better by crying. That's going to be part of the spiral that you experience. Whereas if your mood's pretty okay and you cry and you might be down a bit, but then you're going to come back up, it's a very. What's interesting about crying, and as you see as we've got into this for this episode, is how little people have actually researched it.
[11:47]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Well, even researching it is really hard. So you talked about the research where people cry and then they're sort of basically interviewed straight afterwards and then an hour and a half later and they feel worse and they feel better. But I'm not sure how I would feel having my cry in a lab with people observing me and quizzing me about it afterwards. It's a very private thing. It's sort of like a. That needs to vomit. I want to crawl away to another room and have my cry in private. I don't want to be observed during it.
[12:13]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
It's an expression of your brain activity and it's influenced by all sorts of things. Have you had a bad night's sleep? Are you tired? Are you stressed? Are you feeling low? Are you going through a period of poor physical health? Are you drinking more than you otherwise would? Are you using other recreational drugs? All those things can affect your propensity to crying or not crying.
[12:32]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Can we talk a bit about the physiology of crying? We've sort of gestured at it a couple of times, this idea that there probably hormones involved if you're going to feel better or worse afterwards. It's a physical act. What's actually the physiology of crying?
[12:46]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Short answer is nobody's absolutely sure what it is. So there are various parts of the unconscious, the autonomic nervous system that get involved. There's the sympathetic nervous system, which tends to wind you up, narrow blood vessels. Then there's the parasympathetic nervous system, which does the opposite, gets blood flowing. And some people argue that the initial part of crying is induced by the sympathetic nervous system, nervous system, adrenaline, noradrenaline. And then you get the parasympathetic nervous system coming in and that's when you get this tearful response and perhaps feeling better. Some people think that oxytocin is involved, which has been called the empathy hormone, and that gets involved in the process. And, you know, there's debate about the extent to how deep into the brain crying goes. Does it go right down to the brain stem, which is involved in fundamental processes like breathing your heart rate and so on, or is it much more cortical and aware and people. It's not really been tied down. A lot of research in this area has been in small studies. What's thought to be quite important is the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in planning, in making decisions, and various other processes, a very important part of the brain. And some research with small groups of people have suggested the prefrontal cortex is involved here, which is a very high order part of the brain, very conscious part of the brain.
[14:12]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Where do our tears actually come from?
[14:14]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
They come from the lacrimal glands, just under your eyelids.
[14:17]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Are they kind of juiced up all the time? Sometimes I wonder how I could possibly have enough tears to cry out. But they keep on coming.
[14:24]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
They're juiced up all the time. If anybody listening who's had dry eye syndrome or Sjorgen syndrome knows the disability of having dry eyes and having to constantly put drops in your eyes, you constantly produce tears.
[14:37]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
So we got a lot of questions in Ian's email. We've talked about the emotions involved in crying. We've talked about why we've maybe evolved to do it. What parts of the body are employed. One of the questions, though, he said was, what physiological purpose does it serve? I don't know if we've given him a clear answer yet, Norman.
[14:55]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
I think we have. Well, I think I have, but I'll say it again. I think that it has different physiological purposes, which are really evolutionary purposes. It's about keeping yourself attached to the carer initially in your life so that that carer is nearby and responds to your needs. Because a newborn baby, an infant, is helpless without a carer nearby. And therefore crying is the evolutionary response to actually cement that attachment to your carer. And then as time goes on, this attachment idea continues, that it becomes part of that comfort that you need from people who are close to you, who are going to protect you. And then as you get older, well, it may well be as simple as when you get older, there may not be an evolutionary reason for it. It may just be a vestige of that early crying. But this idea that you might actually feel a bit better a while after you cry, but it also may mean that you find that when you cry you get a response from others which is positive. Now, that's not necessarily true in the modern world, where crying in public may be seen as weakness, wrongly. So the evolutionary benefits as you're older become harder to explain.
[16:10]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
And so for Ian's final question, if we cry to excess, does it do us any medical harm?
[16:16]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Well, interestingly, people have thought, well, maybe the process of crying gets rid of toxic stuff from your body because all these tears coming out. Well, firstly, yeah, your tears do contain a lot more than just salt, but you'd have to really cry buckets to make a difference to the hormones in your body. So I think it's unlikely that you're going to do yourself any harm apart from dehydrating yourself after watching Gene Kelly.
[16:41]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
Well, Ian, thank you so much for your email. Loved going through all of those questions together with you. Feel free to have a little weep whenever you watch a sappy old movie without fear or favour. If you want to be like Ian and send us an email with your question in it, our email address is thatrashbc.net.au and what's in the mailbox? So, a couple of emails for us off the back of our Ultra Processed Foods episode, Norman, which really point to the fact that we have talked about different ultra processed foods in the past. So Christopher says, some years ago, my partner, who had just started a new office job at a large Sydney margarine manufacturing company, arrived home from work. I told her what delicious dish I'd cooked for dinner and she said not hungry. She was almost green. When I asked what was wrong, she told me that they'd had a factory tour that day and said, do you know that after they process the oils to make them more solid, the result is black? They then bleach it and artificially dye it yellow.
[17:40]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
Oh gosh. Now we have done an episode on butter versus margarine and we'll put a link in our show notes if you can, if you can, if you can stomach it.
[17:49]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
There was actually a stage where margarine was dyed pink. That's a whole thing. It's in the episode. You should go and listen to it. There's also an email from Marion who says regarding your recent episode on Ultra Processed Food, I thought it would be worth including a recent study co led by Monash and Deakin Universities. The authors showed that heavily processed foods can negatively impact the brain's ability to focus and the increase the risk of developing dementia. Interestingly, this person says the effect occurred regardless of a person's overall diet quality, even for people following a healthy Mediterranean diet. Norman I left my bell upstairs today. Somehow I didn't think it would come up in our episode about crying. Wasn't I wrong?
[18:33]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
I used to go off and have a cry about that.
[18:34]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
That I might, Marian says, suggesting the link between diet and cognitive function extends beyond just missing out on healthy foods and nutrients.
[18:43]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
And one theory behind this is it's the microbiome at work.
[18:47]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
I think I might need a new sound effect for microbiome if you're going to keep on talking about it. Norman and Ionia says, my algorithm seems to have cottoned onto the fact that I'm an avid gym rat who loves being complimented on my deltoids. Ionia says it happens all the time. Sigh. Quite a literal flex there, Ionia. Left, right and center. I get fitness influencers pitching their Gorilla mind Ultra Protein and T Rex Max Whey. Given the current craze around protein and in the context of your episode of Ultra Processed Foods, where do these protein powders land? I'm curious, as I'm somebody who relies on them occasionally to fill in the gaps. But I'm also questioning whether this obsession with 1.6 grams of protein per kilo of body weight is a little pedantic. Are these powders perhaps doing more harm than good?
[19:35]
Host 2 (Male, co-presenter, possibly Norman)
We do have an episode on protein protein powders and we'll again have this in our show. Notes the link to that episode. So protein powders are ultra processed foods. You can't get away from that and not a natural way of taking in protein. And there are certain requirements of protein which rise as you get older. And also if you're trying to build muscle, preferably taking your protein as natural food would be much better for you. But we could not find much evidence of harm from protein powders in our episode, apart from just being part of that mix of ultra processed foods.
[20:07]
Host 1 (Female, possibly a health or science communicator)
If you can get what you need from a healthy whole food diet, that's obviously preferred, but I think in the end of the day fed is best indeed. Well, that is it. From the mailbag today. If you want to add to our mailbag our address ishbc.net au see you next week. See you then.