Episode 160 - Fear Itself

We explore the evolutionary roots of fear, and the science of how it works. Why do some people love thrills and chills, while others don't? Why does fear make us stinky? And how can we think about something as personal and ephemeral as fear in the archaeological record?

• Why We Physically Feel Fear (University of West Alabama)

• The biology of fear- and anxiety-related behaviors (Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience)

• What Happens in the Brain When We Feel Fear (Smithsonian)

• Humans can smell fear - and it's contagious (NBC News)

• Humans Respond to Scent of Fear (LiveScience)

• The Powerful Smell of Fear Doesn’t Smell Like Anything At All (Inverse)

• Alexithymia and emotional reactions to odors (Nature: Scientific Reports)

• Instructed fear learning, extinction, and recall: additive effects of cognitive information on emotional learning of fear (Cognition & Emotion)

• Monsters on the Brain (Social Research)

• What we fear most: A developmental advantage for threat-relevant stimuli (Developmental Review)

• Playing With Fear: A Field Study in Recreational Horror (Psychological Science)

• Why is it fun to be frightened? (The Conversation)

• Why Do Some Brains Enjoy Fear? (The Atlantic)

• Our age of horror (Aeon) - cn image of human remains

• The Archaeology of Anxiety: The Materiality of Anxiousness, Worry and Fear (via Google Books)

• The Architecture of Fear: San Sabá’s Lasting Impact on Spanish Colonial Mission Construction as Exemplified at Mission San Lorenzo in Real County, Texas (The Digital Archaeological Record)

Image: The Man Made Mad with Fear, painting by Gustave Courbet, c. 1844