Something You Should Know
Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Sat, 05 Apr 2025
Who doesn’t love the smell of freshly cut grass? While there may be some people who don’t like that smell, it seems most people do. Why is it so universally liked? This episode starts with an explanation and reveals why that scent may actually be good for you. https://www.prevention.com/life/a20432070/spending-time-outside-relieves-stress/ Something special happens when people touch each other. It could be a handshake a passionate embrace or a welcome hug – something magical occurs. What is that magic? Why does it seem that we crave physical human contact? You have probably heard that physical touch is good for you but how exactly? Joining me to explain the interesting science on the importance and the magic of physical touch is Michael Banissy. He is an award-winning professor and author of the book Touch Matters: Handshakes, Hugs, and the New Science on How Touch Can Enhance Your Well-Being (https://amzn.to/40HlNjl). Did you know that Saturn’s rings are vanishing? Or that it is raining diamonds on Neptune or that black holes can sing? Or that our galaxy smells like rum and raspberries? Listen and you will hear these and other fascinating facts explained by my guest Dr. Jillian Scudder. She is an assistant professor of physics & astronomy at Oberlin College and author of the book The Milky Way Smells of Rum and Raspberries: …And Other Amazing Cosmic Facts (https://amzn.to/3GmAm3E). One of the leading causes of house fires is kitchen stoves. And a lot of people don’t know what to do if you stove or oven catches fire. Listen to the recommended protocol if your conventional oven or microwave ever catches fire. https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/publications/cooking_fire_safety_flyer.pdf PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at https://FactorMeals.com/something50off TIMELINE: Get 10% off your order of Mitopure! Go to https://Timeline.com/SOMETHING INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now! SHOPIFY: Nobody does selling better than Shopify! Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk and upgrade your selling today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why is the smell of freshly cut grass so appealing?
Hi, welcome to another episode of Something You Should Know. I appreciate you taking the time to join me.
One of the best things about the weather warming up, to me, is you start to smell that smell of freshly cut grass. If I had to pick my top scents, freshly cut grass would be right up there near the top, or maybe at the top. And interestingly, in an Australian survey, women chose the smell of freshly cut grass as the happiest smell over every other scent. Why do you suppose that is?
Well, there is scientific data that helps to explain that phenomenon. Inhaling the smell of freshly cut grass can actually make you feel happier by halting the brain's production of the stress hormone cortisol. For me, it just somehow sends me right back to my childhood. It's just a very relaxing and calming smell.
And interestingly, the actual purpose of the smell is that it's part of a defense process. The grass has been damaged by your lawnmower, and it goes through this process to defend and restore itself. And the smell is part of that process. And that is something you should know. The power of human touch, physical human contact.
You've likely heard that it is good for you, and it certainly can feel good when you get a hug or a massage. Touch feels nice, but how is it actually good for you? Is more touch better? And are you getting enough of it? That's what Michael Banacy is here to talk about.
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Chapter 2: What are the benefits of human touch?
Michael is an award-winning professor and author of a book called Touch Matters, Handshakes, Hugs, and the New Science of How Touch Can Enhance Your Well-Being. Hi, Michael. Welcome. Hi, hi. Thanks for having me. So, based on the title of your book, I'm sure the answer is going to be yes, but in addition to touch feeling good, does it really do anything for your health or well-being?
Well, the answer to that is yes, it does. There's a lot of work that's been shown for a whole range of different types of tactile experiences. Take hugging as an example, showing that these kind of experiences can have stress buffering effects. They can change how we respond to experiences like painful events.
They can make us feel less pain and they can even impact on things like our immune system as well.
Well, that's pretty impressive. And I guess one of the ways you would determine how good touch is for you is to look at people who don't get touched or don't get enough touch to see how bad that is.
Yeah, no, absolutely. There's something which has been really demonstrated by a number of researchers in the US, actually. So people like Corey Floyd and Tiffany Field, they've spoken for a while about something called touch hunger. And touch hunger is the situation where people don't get enough touch in their life or don't get the right amount of touch for what they crave.
people who are more touch hungry can be more lonely it can exert negative effects on things like their stress and their well-being and have a kind of range of impacts just in terms of general life satisfaction why do we think this is true why is it what is it about touch that has these magical properties One of the things we touch is that it's one of the first senses that we use.
It's also one of the last senses that goes. And it's an incredibly important sense in helping us form and build connections with others. So those kind of social connections. And those social connections and bonds that we have are incredibly important for our health and our well-being.
In that regard, one of the reasons why we think touch is so important is that it just plays this key role, almost acting a bit like a social glue that helps us to form and maintain bonds that are important throughout our lives.
So how much touch is enough? Because it seems there's a big range. There are some people who are you know, very touchy-feely and like to hug everybody and just seem to crave that. And there are other people who are more standoffish and really don't like a lot of physical contact, particularly with strangers and maybe for fear of germs. So there seems to be a big range.
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Chapter 3: How does touch influence social interactions and relationships?
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I really wish I could tell you there was a magic number of the right amount of touch. The key really is that we all know touch varies from one person to another, and it's about trying to find the amount of touch that aligns to an individual's desire. So when we talk about touch hunger, what we're talking about there is
when people aren't getting the amount of touch that they desire in their life. And that is going to vary from one person to another. But even people that don't desire a great amount of touch, when they get touch in their life, it can still be beneficial. So there are some people, for instance, who potentially have these what we might call more avoidant touch personas.
So these might be people that try to kind of, they don't enjoy too much touch. Occasionally it's OK, but they prefer not to have too much.
but in those situations you know still having you know supportive hug or supportive interactions supportive tactile interactions can bring benefits to their wellness but but the key is that it's about not doing too much there right it's it's the quality of the touch rather than the quantity because you know it's it's not necessarily a case that more is always better it's really about aligning the amount of touch that the person receives to the amount that they individually desire
Well, how do you figure that out?
I think that really comes down to communication to a large degree. I think the more that we're able to be open and discuss our needs and our preferences for touch, the better. It can be very easy sometimes when we think about others to automatically put our preferences onto them. There's a general bias that we know about from the psychological science literature that that shows this.
And so we've got to be really careful to avoid automatically mapping our own preferences onto others and actually trying to engage in more kind of open conversations with one another about what amount of touch is right for you, what amount of touch is right for me. And in that context as well, it's really important that we're mindful of just how some of these things can change.
So for instance, I don't know, if you're in a long-term relationship, you might think that those touch needs that your partner had very early on,
you know maybe they you think they continue to align throughout life well there's a there's a good chance they might change you know they may change from one situation to another for instance so we just want to make sure we're having these open conversations with one another during our relationships to try to better understand you know with the people we're interacting with what does touch mean to them are they getting the right amount of touch they need are we providing that support in a way that is beneficial or not
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Chapter 4: What role does touch play in sports team performance?
And you might think that's pandemic related, but it's important to know that even before the pandemic, there was data like this. So in 2015, Corey Floyd, who's a researcher at the University of Arizona, he conducted a study that was surveying around 1500 Americans. And in that study, he asked about affection hunger.
So not just touch, but just more generally, do people feel they have enough affection in their lives? And around 75% of the people tested, you know, agreed that, you know, Americans in their mind were in a state of affection hunger at that time, which is quite alarming when we consider just how important and powerful things like touch and affection can be for our health and well-being.
I want to find out about that 4% who say they have too much touch. Now, what does that look like? Who's touching them so much?
Yeah, I would love to have an answer to that. That's actually one of the things that we're now trying to look at a bit more in our own research. We got the figure and it's then, well, let's try to understand that. I mean...
So although we don't have that specific answer, I mean, we do know, going back to this idea about touch personas and that we might have different approaches to touch, that there are some people that prefer touch more than others.
Well, you made the distinction a few minutes ago between touch and affection. And I hadn't really thought about it, but they seem very closely related, but they're not the same thing. And I guess people could need affection and not need touch so much, right? Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. And I think that's the thing we've got to keep in mind that, you know, although there's all these benefits to touch that I spoke about in terms of health, well-being and so forth, you know, for some people, touch isn't the way to go. It's not the source of affection they need. And affection can come in a whole range of ways, right? That could be
somebody giving you a hug, sure, that's tactile, but that could also be somebody making you a coffee in the morning, right? Somebody doing that gesture for you, sending a message. There's a whole range of ways that you can get affection.
And I think that's the nice thing about this relationship between affection and health is, you know, touch is one of the most powerful sources we have for that, a really great demonstration from day to day, but there are other ways. So we can bring some of those benefits into our life through other sources, just generally sharing affection, yeah, depending on whether it's touch or not.
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Chapter 5: How does touch affect our mental and physical health?
Chapter 6: What are some fascinating facts about space?
It is a theory. It's a very plausible theory because Neptune has a lot of methane in it. It's very high pressure. Methane has a lot of carbon in it. If you crush things that have lots of carbon in it, you might make diamonds and it might fall as rain.
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Hi, welcome to another episode of Something You Should Know. I appreciate you taking the time to join me.
One of the best things about the weather warming up, to me, is you start to smell that smell of freshly cut grass. If I had to pick my top scents, freshly cut grass would be right up there near the top, or maybe at the top. And interestingly, in an Australian survey, women chose the smell of freshly cut grass as the happiest smell over every other scent. Why do you suppose that is?
Well, there is scientific data that helps to explain that phenomenon. Inhaling the smell of freshly cut grass can actually make you feel happier by halting the brain's production of the stress hormone cortisol. For me, it just somehow sends me right back to my childhood. It's just a very relaxing and calming smell.
And interestingly, the actual purpose of the smell is that it's part of a defense process. The grass has been damaged by your lawnmower, and it goes through this process to defend and restore itself. And the smell is part of that process. And that is something you should know. The power of human touch, physical human contact.
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Sign in to access all 159 segments of this chapter and more.
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