[RADIOLAB INTRO]

LULU MILLER: Hey, it's Lulu. Gonna kick off today with a little ghost story for you. So there's this woman, and she's going through weight-loss surgery, and when she gets home she starts hearing these gurgles and creaks, and realizes she is being stalked by the former bits of herself—her flesh that she has cut away. Or there is a house that is maze-like and haunted by quiet cruelties that occur between you and your partner, and it feels like there is no way out.

LULU: These are some of the stories of the prize-winning writer Carmen Maria Machado. Some of them are true, some of them are fiction. All of them are charged with this sense of spookiness. I have spent hours of my life being pleasantly spooked by her, and so I was totally delighted when she wrote into our show, wondering about something that had happened with her partner of four years, Lauren Brown ...

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: You're rolling?

LAUREN BROWN: Yes.

LULU: ... that spooked her.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: Should I—should I say?

LAUREN BROWN: You can say.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: The first time Lauren and I hooked up with each other, I noticed goosebumps on her body, right before she, like, had an orgasm. But the pattern was really unusual. It wasn't just universal response. It was these kind of like leopard spots goosebumps. ​​Sometimes I'll, like, touch Lauren on the arm and, like, she'll get goosebumps, like, where I've touched her.

MARIA PAZ GUTIÉRREZ: So it's like you leave a trace?

LULU: Radiolab reporter Maria Paz Gutiérrez.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: Yeah.

LAUREN BROWN: Yeah.

SOREN WHEELER: Wow!

LULU: And editor Soren Wheeler who sat in with Carmen and Lauren to hear their tale.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: Sometimes you have—you call them crispy ones, which is like, they're really, really, really pointy.

LAUREN BROWN: Yeah, extra crispy is like I say that you could, like, great parmesan or, like, zest a lemon on me. Like, they just are, like, so intense and feel really, like, sharp.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: Right. So, like, as soon as we started seeing each other I think I was just, like, really paying attention. Like, I was just like, I've never seen this, and this has never happened to me. Like, I mean, you have goosebumps, like, all day, like, in some form or another.

LAUREN BROWN: Yeah, I'm pretty consistently getting them.

LULU: And what stuck out to Carmen wasn't just how often Lauren was getting goosebumps, but it seemed like they would prickle up in response to almost contradictory things.

LAUREN BROWN: You know, watching a sports highlight. And music.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: But then also it's like, moments that are, like, sad or, like, it doesn't actually have to be the same emotion every time.

LAUREN BROWN: Yeah.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: And so it was just sort of in my head. And so then I was like, even more closely watching Lauren and being like, what is this?

LAUREN BROWN: Sometimes I think about it and I'm like, if I was a different kind of person, I would be like, I'm haunted.

LULU: So Carmen started researching goosebumps and writing about them. She's now years' deep into a novel with a title that comes from an old-fashioned word for them.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: The holy shiver.

LULU: The holy shiver? I like that.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: Yeah.

LULU: It's a term that's been used by scientists to describe the kind of goosebumps a prey animal gets when it realizes it's being watched by a predator, but also that the predator gets just before it goes in for the kill.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: Like, it's—it's arousal that, like, connects things like sex and fear and pleasure and excitement. And so thinking about that, like, it was just sort of in my head, and then I was like, what is actually happening in your brain that's moving from, like—for whatever the reason is, like, it's moving from this, like, sort of some kind of neurological impulse into your body, and why? And then I was like, surely Radiolab has done an episode on goosebumps. That feels like a very Radiolab thing to do.

LULU: But it turns out we have not.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: And so yeah, so here we are.

LULU: So today on Radiolab, we right this wrong and bring you an episode all about ...

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Chair de poule or frisson. In Spanish, calofrío.

LULU: Goosebumps.

BONNIE TSUI: Sometimes they're called a skin orgasm.

SOREN: [laughs]

NICCO REGGENTE: I've heard someone say "God bumps."

LULU: We head out on a journey to find out why do we get them in these more mysterious situations, and what, if anything, are they trying to tell us?

BONNIE TSUI: We're not necessarily aware, but actually they're kind of magical.

LULU: Some answers, some chills, and some honestly, incredibly sci-fi–sounding scientific experimentation coming your way.

LULU: Paz? Soren? Take us away!

MARIA PAZ: Uh, okay.

LULU: Okay, so ...

SOREN: Reporting journey. Journey. Off on a journey.

MARIA PAZ: Right, right, right.

BONNIE TSUI: Hi!

MARIA PAZ: Hi!

MARIA PAZ: So our first stop ...

MARIA PAZ: Thank you so much for being here with us.

BONNIE TSUI: I'm so excited. [laughs]

MARIA PAZ: ... was science writer Bonnie Tsui.

BONNIE TSUI: Bonnie Tsui. I'm a journalist. I have written a lot about activity, like movement, like your body moving, what that actually does to your brain. And I've actually written ...

MARIA PAZ: We called her up because Bonnie actually wrote this book. It's called On Muscle, and it's sort of like this journey through all the muscles of your body.

BONNIE TSUI: Your biceps, your butt, your heart and blood vessels and your gut.

MARIA PAZ: And she told us that after writing that book, she became obsessed with one particular muscle.

BONNIE TSUI: Arrector pili.

MARIA PAZ: Yes.

BONNIE TSUI: Arrector pili. So "arrectus," to raise, and "pili," hair.

MARIA PAZ: They're the muscles that give us our goosebumps.

MARIA PAZ: That was not—that was not what I would have expected. Like, you spend all this time writing a book about muscles.

SOREN: Yeah, there's so many muscles out there.

BONNIE TSUI: I know. I know. So many sexy muscles, so many very obvious muscles. And big muscles. And I, of course, went for the smallest and the weirdest. [laughs]

MARIA PAZ: Why?

BONNIE TSUI: I think the arrector pili give us so much information, right? About how we're doing and feeling. And I love that. I love that it's muscle as existential state.

MARIA PAZ: Hmm.

BONNIE TSUI: But backing up a little bit ...

MARIA PAZ: Okay. So just to quickly explain the history of this muscle. Around 200 million years ago or so, mammals evolved from reptiles. In the process, they evolved hair or, you know, fur. And then around the same time, mammals also evolved ...

BONNIE TSUI: This little muscle fiber.

MARIA PAZ: Little tiny muscle. It's attached to the base of every hair follicle underneath the skin. That little muscle's default is to kind of just chill.

BONNIE TSUI: Yeah, exactly. You can kind of think about it being relaxed against your skin.

MARIA PAZ: Unless ...

BONNIE TSUI: The brain is registering, like, something dangerous.

MARIA PAZ: ... that animal feels a threat. Let's say that animal's hit with, like, a sudden cold wind or ...

BONNIE TSUI: Predators.

MARIA PAZ: ... it catches a predator or a competitor right at the corner of its eye. In that moment ...

BONNIE TSUI: The brain triggers this automatic response.

MARIA PAZ: It would send this immediate unconscious signal to all the different hair follicles all across the body. And then ...

BONNIE TSUI: And then all those tiny muscles contract, you know, causing hair to stand on end, giving you that goosebump appearance.

MARIA PAZ: Now that could be a really useful thing, because raised hair traps air next to the skin.

BONNIE TSUI: So there's like a layer of warm air that's insulating.

MARIA PAZ: Keeping animals just a little bit warmer. Or it was also just useful if they were about to get into a fight.

BONNIE TSUI: You know, if you have a cat, you see, like, when your cat gets agitated, like, the hair goes up. It's like—zoop!—like, you know, I'm bigger. I'm—you know, I'm dangerous.

MARIA PAZ: But for us humans ...

BONNIE TSUI: You know, this response is kind of a vestigial, because we don't have that much hair anymore.

MARIA PAZ: ... not very useful.

BONNIE TSUI: Or most of us don't have that much hair anymore, so it's not gonna really—it's not really effective.

MARIA PAZ: And we just end up with little bumps on our mostly hairless skin. But the really weird thing is that ...

BONNIE TSUI: As we have evolved as a species ...

MARIA PAZ: ... we humans started using this automatic survival reflex for things that seem to have nothing to do with our survival.

BONNIE TSUI: So music, right? A swelling music or, like, a really emotional scene in a movie or, like, big places like the ocean or the Grand Canyon or at the edge of a cliff, right? And for us as humans, again, it's, like, less about the cold and less about the fear, and more about the way we experience the world.

SOREN: But I mean, I'm still just working in my head to connect these different categories of things. Like—like, are the—are the goosebumps that used to just make hair stand up for thermal reasons, and the goosebumps that used to make hair stand up for physical appearance reasons, now suddenly standing up for some—or is there one reason behind it all?

BONNIE TSUI: I think—I mean, I hear what you're saying, right? How is this hair standing up for cold and fear now giving us this emotional component? But I think that, to me, it is intelligence. It is like body intelligence that I'm, like, paying attention. I think it's about my body and my mind kind of coming together to try to figure out, like, what it is that I am feeling in that moment. What is it? I don't know what it is, but I'm paying attention.

MARIA PAZ: Which, you know, it sort of made sense to us, like, that the body is trying to tell us to pay attention, but it—it just left us with this question, like, what exactly is the body trying to tell us to pay attention to?

LULU: We'll get to that right after this short break.

LULU: Lulu. Radiolab. Goosebumps. We are back with reporter Maria Paz Gutiérrez who has gotten a little stuck trying to figure out what exactly is going on with these special kind of goosebumps that humans get that have nothing to do with being cold or afraid.

MARIA PAZ: But then, lucky for us ...

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: He is rolling. Okay.

NICCO REGGENTE: He is rolling.

MARIA PAZ: ... we ran into a couple scientists ...

LULU: Hello!

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Hello, good morning.

NICCO REGGENTE: [laughs] Hi.

MARIA PAZ: ... who have been studying this very particular kind of goosebumps which scientists call "aesthetic chills."

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: You know, shivers of psychological origins.

NICCO REGGENTE: I've heard someone say "God bumps."

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: God bumps?

NICCO REGGENTE: Yeah, God bumps. [laughs]

LULU: [laughs]

MARIA PAZ: So anyway, these two guys ...

NICCO REGGENTE: I can go first. Yeah, hi.

MARIA PAZ: ... are Nicco ...

NICCO REGGENTE: I'm Nicco Reggente. I'm currently the research director at the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies.

LULU: Ooh, okay.

MARIA PAZ: And his partner-in-crime ...

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Hi, I'm Félix. I'm a senior research scientist at the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies.

MARIA PAZ: ... neuroscientist Félix Schoeller.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Yeah.

MARIA PAZ: So why goosebumps?

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: So me, when I started my PhD ...

MARIA PAZ: Félix says back when he was starting out in grad school ...

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: I needed a problem to work on.

MARIA PAZ: ... he'd been told that when it comes to these aesthetic chills ...

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Nobody really knows what they are and why they occur. And I thought that would be a good problem to work on.

MARIA PAZ: So his first step was to try to figure out exactly what triggers these kinds of chills.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: First, I started asking everybody, what gives you chills? And building sort of this database of chill stimuli.

MARIA PAZ: And he found things that I think a lot of us would expect.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Giant sport games in the stadium.

MARIA PAZ: People talk about being in the crowd when some impossible comeback happened.

LULU: Totally.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Religion is a big thing.

MARIA PAZ: Personal religious revelations.

LULU: Hmm!

MARIA PAZ: Sudden acts of kindness from a stranger

LULU: That always gives me chills.

MARIA PAZ: Yeah, totally.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Very meaningful conversations with—with people on topics that you care deeply about.

MARIA PAZ: Or even these, like, particular moments where you're experiencing music or poetry.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Art in general, but also science. A lot of physicists report that they experience chills when they discover a concept that allows them to make sense of a wide range of experiences.

LULU: It's like the intellectual version of the holy shiver. Like, someone coming upon the prey of their idea of their idea and then—pew! Like, they're about to get it, you know?

MARIA PAZ: Yeah, kinda. I mean, you know, after, like, years of doing this research, talking to a lot of people ...

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Reading a lot of books and documenting moments where ...

MARIA PAZ: ... Félix says he landed on a theory.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: It's when you sort of touch the—the limits of your knowledge. So I guess another way to think about chills is the limits of cognition.

LULU: Oh, I love that! Like the limits of cognition—like, cannot compute. Wow!

MARIA PAZ: Yeah, but the key is, Félix says, is when the thing that you cannot compute is a deeply-held belief.

LULU: Hmm.

MARIA PAZ: The basic idea is that we all walk around carrying these very broad generalizations about how the world works. Anything from "what goes up must come down" to "the world is a dangerous place," or "humans are fundamentally good," or "money equals power." We rely on these beliefs to help us navigate the world. And Félix says that when we run across an experience or feeling that challenges one of those deeply held beliefs, that's when we get the chills.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Yeah.

LULU: Oh!

NICCO REGGENTE: Yeah. So when I was exposed to some of Félix's work, it kind of clicked that it's like, oh wow! Chills may very well be what it feels like to update your meaning-making process on such a large scale.

MARIA PAZ: Now at the time, this was just an idea.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: An idea in Nicco's brain and I ...

MARIA PAZ: So they started thinking, okay ...

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: How do we operationalize that idea, and try to get empirical data so that we can do science?

MARIA PAZ: So they decided what they needed to do was get people in a lab ...

LULU: Mm-hmm?

MARIA PAZ: ... so they could give them chills.

LULU: Induce it?

MARIA PAZ: Mm-hmm. Induce it.

LULU: But doesn't it feel like that's uninducible? Like, it's such a private, spiritual thing.

MARIA PAZ: Not on the internet.

LULU: What does that mean?

MARIA PAZ: So Félix created this algorithm ...

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: That can span through YouTube networks, and look at millions of videos and analyze all of the comments.

LULU: Oh, I'm so sad right now. Okay, keep going.

MARIA PAZ: [laughs] Specifically, they were looking for ...

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: When people mentioned chills, shivers, goosebumps.

MARIA PAZ: So they gather up all these videos. There are these, like, very famous speeches from very famous people like Mister Rogers, Carl Sagan's "The Pale Blue Dot" speech. Some of them are just straight-up life coach inspirational talks. Footage of whales breaching, stuff like that.

LULU: [laughs]

MARIA PAZ: And one that just completely I did not expect was ...

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Commercials from Thailand.

SOREN: Wow!

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: [laughs] Yeah.

SOREN: Whatever their Madison Avenue crew is has the finger on the pulse of chill?

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: It seems like it. [laughs]

LULU: Okay, wait. I have seen one of these, I think. And it's about this guy who, like, helps all these strangers. And it totally worked. It totally gave me chills. It's a very good commercial.

MARIA PAZ: What that probably means is that you've been walking around with this belief that people suck and that they're not generous or kind.

LULU: I mean, yeah.

MARIA PAZ: So that's—that's great. I mean, it's a pretty direct hit on your worldview.

LULU: Yeah.

MARIA PAZ: But they also said that a lot of these videos were just like straight-up music.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: A lot of choral music.

MARIA PAZ: Especially these moments where ...

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: The soprano singer suddenly takes over the entire orchestra.

LULU: There is something, like, out of reach, you know, beyond, in that sound?

MARIA PAZ: Yeah. So they gather up all these videos from online, and they actually brought people into their lab and had them watch these videos so they could, like, see, like, which ones make the skin actually prickle? And they actually told us there's, like, one video that was, like, the number one trigger.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rufus Wainwright: I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the lord.]

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, sung by ...

NICCO REGGENTE: Rufus Wainwright, with a large collection of people.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Sort of singing along, yeah.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Rufus Wainwright: You don't really care for music, do ya?]

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: You know, this stimulus, for example, will give chills to 75 people out of 100.

LULU: Huh!

MARIA PAZ: Anyway, at the end of all this, Nicco and Félix ...

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: We were able to identify 300 stimuli that reliably induced chills in hundreds of people.

LULU: Oh my God!

MARIA PAZ: So then they started showing people these videos in their lab.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Three thousand participants in Southern California.

MARIA PAZ: With one extra little step in there.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Before we show them the stimulus, we asked them a range of questions, personality questions, demographics questions.

MARIA PAZ: What are they?

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: All right. So please rate the following in terms of how much you agree or disagree with each statement. It is important to take care of people who are vulnerable.

MARIA PAZ: And in particular, they were asking questions that sort of, like, helped them zero in on some of those deeply held beliefs we just talked about.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Some people think I'm selfish and egotistical.

NICCO REGGENTE: What types of schemas are you running around with? Are you seeing everybody as connected ones or as independent players and, you know, you need to get to the top.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: I'm not as dependable or reliable as I should be.

MARIA PAZ: And based on how you answer these questions ...

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: I find humor in almost everything.

MARIA PAZ: ... Nicco and Félix can figure out what gives you chills.

LULU: Oh, interesting! So, like, you—oh, well, you answered yes to this, so cross out the sports one, but, ooh, that Hallelujah chorus?

SOREN: Yeah.

LULU: So now they're making—like, the survey helps them create, like, a bespoke chills, induced chills ...

SOREN: Playlist.

MARIA PAZ: Playlist, yes.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: And I can predict with 73.5 percent accuracy which of the stimulus is the best one for you to look at right now, so that I can give you chills in my laboratory and study it under controlled conditions.

MARIA PAZ: And with their little bespoke chills machine, Nicco and Félix have done a bunch of different studies. One of the coolest things for me was, like, they actually hooked people up to this, like, EEG machine so they could watch their brains while they get the chills.

NICCO REGGENTE: And the moments when you have chills are almost indistinguishable from a psychedelic experience.

LULU: Wait, what?

MARIA PAZ: The way they described it, it's like the level of complexity and disorder in the brain signals look like someone who is tripping.

LULU: Okay, that—I mean, that really makes neurologically good on their limits of cognition thing. Like, they are watching a brain just—zoop!—go haywire.

MARIA PAZ: Yeah. You know, maybe some other people would have been like, "Okay, we've sort of figured this out, job well done," but Félix and Nicco were not done.

LULU: Okay?

MARIA PAZ: Because one of the things that Nicco and Félix had heard about was that it wasn't just like you understood something or something changed inside you and then got the chills, but rather that the chills came first. Like, the chills were this signal to the rest of your brain and body to notice something.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: A lot of physicists actually talk about how chills was instrumental in helping them understand the importance of some of the work that they were doing.

SOREN: So not so much I understand it and then get chills, but you seem to be saying that, like, oh, the chills helped me know that I had understood something.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: Yeah.

NICCO REGGENTE: It's almost as though when you do get chills, it's—it's this moment of calibration and orientation.

MARIA PAZ: So then they thought well, if we can give people the chills, maybe we can use that to sort of hack the brain, reverse engineer someone into this moment where they're ready to rethink the way they think about the world.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: We have a funky term for this. We call it "schema surgery."

NICCO REGGENTE: [laughs]

LULU: Oh! That sounds like something out of a dystopian novel.

NICCO REGGENTE: Yeah, I mean, a lot of terrorist recruitment videos leverage chills as this way of, like, showing this recognition of shared humanity and martyrdom for it. So this, like, full ego dissolution. That is a really dark underbelly of some of this, right? Because it's so motivational. The behavioral activation that emerges after chills is really potent. But dystopian aspects aside ...

MARIA PAZ: But fortunately for us, what Félix and Nicco are trying to do is use chills ...

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: As a novel form of treatment for major depressive disorder.

MARIA PAZ: ... to help people with depression. Because when ...

LULU: What?

MARIA PAZ: Because if you think about people who are depressed, like, they're usually stuck in their worldview.

LULU: Oh!

MARIA PAZ: You know, they have these, what Nicco called—or Félix called these "maladaptive beliefs," right? Like, I am alone in the world, or I am bad.

LULU: Yeah!

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: So negative self beliefs, negative beliefs about others, and then negative beliefs about the world in general, like the world is a dangerous place. You never know what's going to happen.

LULU: Totally, just these, like, calcified certainties.

MARIA PAZ: Yeah.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: And what we've been doing is trying to use the chill stimuli that we've identified to try and open up people's minds, then gather evidence that will go against these dysfunctional beliefs so that they basically expand the scope of their perception.

MARIA PAZ: This is early, early research, and they're trying to figure out a bunch of different things. But one of the studies that I thought was interesting focused on this one particular element of depression called "anhedonia."

NICCO REGGENTE: And anhedonia, right? Anhedonic, like, they lack this ability to kind of feel pleasure, and that impacts their sensitivity to reward.

MARIA PAZ: So let's say you ask them ...

NICCO REGGENTE: Hey, I have $5 in this hand and $20 in this hand. Pick one, right? People with anhedonia, they're indifferent.

MARIA PAZ: They'd be like, "I don't care. I really just don't care."

NICCO REGGENTE: They'll choose the $5 and $20 with kind of equal likelihood.

LULU: Huh!

MARIA PAZ: And this, they said, is one of the main characteristics of treatment-resistant depression.

FÉLIX SCHOELLER: For a simple reason, it's like these are patients that are no longer motivated to take the necessary actions to get back to the business of life.

MARIA PAZ: So Félix and Nicco, they take these people one by one into a little room, sit them in front of a computer screen.

LULU: Mm-hmm?

MARIA PAZ: Have them take the survey.

LULU: Yep.

MARIA PAZ: And then they are given their internet content to watch. They have some moment where their body's going—shoop! And after this experience, they put them through that reward task again. Now what do you think? $5 or $20?

NICCO REGGENTE: They behave as if they were normal controls.

LULU: They're like, "I want my $20."

MARIA PAZ: Yeah. "Give me my 20 bucks."

NICCO REGGENTE: And, you know, a great majority of the participants that, you know, even just experienced one chill, but even more so if you experienced three chills, these people go on to then not even be able to qualify for the study in the first place, right? So it's like a clinically significant amelioration of some of their symptoms.

LULU: Okay. Can I—let me unprickle my skin.

MARIA PAZ: Mm-hmm?

LULU: Because I am feeling this. I am like, oh my God! Like, you get the chills and your certainty melts. And then you could jump through this window to change your life and get your depression in remission. But then I'm also like, come on, no! So you watch a couple videos a week of—of whales breaching and choruses singing. And then you're, like—you can feel better from things that, like, full-on meds and CBT therapy or whatever won't help? Like—like ...

MARIA PAZ: I mean yeah, it is early work. They're still doing these studies. But, like in most cases with depression, I imagine it's probably the right combination of a bunch of different things. Although one of the things they do in one of these studies is, like, after people get the chills, like, they ask them, "What did you think about when you were experiencing the chills?" They'll sort of ask them about their goals, like the things they want to do or achieve. And it does look like people, after these chills, at least for a moment or a while or whatever, are sort of a little bit more motivated to just, like, get up or out or do something, just engage with the world. That, to me, feels like sort of part of the mix of things that keep you alive.

LULU: So that makes me think that this kind of chills is your—you know, it's maybe just as important as conserving warmth or looking bigger. Like, it's pointing you almost like a compass, toward—toward where you need to go, what you need to engage with.

MARIA PAZ: Mm-hmm. So in the midst of all this, it turns out Nicco and Félix's experiment where they give people chills, they—they actually have more recently turned it into like an app.

LULU: Huh!

MARIA PAZ: I thought I should go and try this. I want to see if you can actually give me chills.

LULU: All right. And so what happened?

MARIA PAZ: So I came into the studio ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz: All right, here we are. Here we are, my friends.]

MARIA PAZ: ... and I opened the website.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz: First question. About you. What is your name?]

MARIA PAZ: I took their little survey of questions.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz: Would you describe yourself as someone who gets easily moved or touched? Not that very often.]

MARIA PAZ: And then ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz: Okay, based on your answers we've chosen ...]

MARIA PAZ: ... it just served me this song.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz: "De Ushuaia a la Quiaca," Gustavo ... ]

MARIA PAZ: It's a song from a movie called Motorcycle Diaries.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz: I've actually heard this song before.]

MARIA PAZ: Which coincidentally, I had watched, like, two weeks before. And I was like, "This is mid."

LULU: [laughs]

MARIA PAZ: When I watched the movie.

LULU: Huh!

MARIA PAZ: So to be honest, I wasn't feeling very optimistic about getting the chills, but then I was like, okay, I'm gonna actually sit with it. And I hit play. It has this kind of like, tinge of sadness and longing, and then there's this part where this kind of like, almost like a flute-like instrument comes in, and it almost sounds like a bird, and in that moment ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz: [whispers] That's so weird!]

MARIA PAZ: ... I felt the goosebumps on my skin.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz: I feel it in my legs, making their way up to my arms.]

MARIA PAZ: And then I was just, like, looking at my arm, and ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Maria Paz: Yeah, they're nice and bumpy. That's so nice!]

MARIA PAZ: And it happened again, I got, like, another wave. And I had just never had the experience of just like being, like, hit, like, woo woo woo.

LULU: What—do you remember at all what you were thinking about?

MARIA PAZ: I think in that moment I was thinking about a trip that I took to Chile, and it reminded me of this day where I was—I think I was doing some kind of like—kind of like field recording of some musician playing the harp, and—like, in the street. And it was just, like, reminded me of that version of myself. Like, I used to just travel alone all of the time, different places all over Latin America. But, like, as you get older, like, you're just not as crazy as you used to be. And it's uncomfortable. And I think that, for me, so much of reading the news creates this, like, illusion that, like, the world is like a really dangerous place. But I've been to these places, a lot of these places that, like, are quote-unquote "dangerous." And even just like on a random streetcorner, there's so much beauty, and I also just have felt really safe.

LULU: So in that moment with, like, the prickled skin, the waves, was it sort of like, those memories are in you, and those places might be out there, and ...

MARIA PAZ: Go.

LULU: Just—just go.

MARIA PAZ: Yeah. Go—go back out there. Just go.

LULU: Hmm.

MARIA PAZ: And so regardless of how we label these goosebumps or exactly what triggers them, it does feel like, if you do notice those moments, give your brain a space to catch up with your body, which is clearly saying something, I think there's value in that. It might just loosen you up a little bit, and maybe even get out the door in a slightly different way.

LULU: Hmm. Yeah. Just, like, that alone, don't—don't just let them pass you by.

MARIA PAZ: Anyway, I think there is one more thing that's worth saying about goosebumps.

LAUREN BROWN: Hello.

MARIA PAZ: Hi!

SOREN: We have now learned many different ...

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: I'm sure. I cannot wait to hear.

LAUREN BROWN: I'm so excited to hear about it.

MARIA PAZ: It's something that actually came up when we called Lauren and Carmen back to tell them about all the things we'd learned.

SOREN: There's a little—a bunch of little muscles underneath our skin.

MARIA PAZ: About the cold fear survival reflex.

MARIA PAZ: And then in that moment, they stand up.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: Got it.

MARIA PAZ: And about Nicco and Félix's work on aesthetic chills.

SOREN: You answer these questions, and then they can deliver you the content that will get you to have the goosebumps.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: Oh my God!

LAUREN BROWN: Wow!

MARIA PAZ: And, of course, about how those goosebumps are sort of the unconscious brain and the body's way of telling you that something important is going on that's, like, worth pausing and thinking about.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: Right. You're, like, catching up to your body basically, yeah.

MARIA PAZ: Yes.

LAUREN BROWN: Yeah, that makes sense to me too, even, like, thinking about moments where I find myself just, like, completely covered in goosebumps. My whole body feels it.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: Yeah, it's almost like your body is, like, tapping on your brain and being like, "Hello?" But I feel like for me, it's like this place where it's like ...

MARIA PAZ: But then Carmen told us that even though she doesn't get the goosebumps all that often, she does now find herself thinking about what Lauren's goosebumps are saying, not just to Lauren, but to her.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: Or, like, I'm assuming, like, when you saw like Alysa Liu, I'm sure you had them then.

LAUREN BROWN: Oh my. Yes. Yes!

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: [laughs] I was out of town and Lauren was texting me, like, "You have to watch it!"

LAUREN BROWN: I am getting, like, patchy goosebumps right now. I have them on my legs and I have some on my arms.

MARIA PAZ: Okay, so quick context. Alysa Liu was a star figure skater when she was very young several years ago, and at sort of the height of her game, under all this pressure to win, she just straight up quit. She took some time off, and a couple years later, she came back to participate in the Winter Olympics.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: She said, "I don't need a medal, I just need to be here and show people what I can do." But what she doesn't know if she does that, it probably means a medal.]

MARIA PAZ: And when you see her, she's clearly there on her own terms.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: [crowd cheering]]

MARIA PAZ: She straight up kills it. Like, she gives a nearly perfect performance.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Once again, triple lutz, double axel, double toe loop.]

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: She looks so relaxed, so genuinely happy.

MARIA PAZ: Even the announcers are blown away.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: She seems so loose and completely herself out there.]

MARIA PAZ: The crowd is going wild.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: That's the secret every athlete wants to solve.]

MARIA PAZ: And when she finishes ...

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: She got off the ice and she was like, "That's what I'm fucking talking about!"

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alysa Liu: That's what I'm fucking talking about!]

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: I was like, I love—I know this feeling, I recognize that feeling. I love that feeling where I've been like, "I did it!" I mean, I watched it and I had, like, full-body—even now, I have, like, full body chills talking about it.

LAUREN BROWN: Oh, you do! She has goosebumps.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: I do. I literally do. I know. Oh my God.

LAUREN BROWN: She had texted me, I think, the next day after everything had happened and was like, "I'm just watching clips of Alysa Liu in the airport and, like, crying." And I'm like, "Yeah, I was doing that last night."

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO: Yeah, like, I get to, like—it's like this sort of shared experience, right? And it, like, deepens my understanding of who Lauren is. Like, people are the same to me as like God, because it's like, this unknown—this actually fundamentally unknowable thing. But with Lauren it's like, I can get as physically close as is humanly possible.

LAUREN BROWN: Yeah. Even if it's not rational, I just feel a little bit more known in that way, I think.

LULU: Maria Paz Gutiérrez. Thank you, MPG. Special thanks to Rachel Gross, Gregory Rupik and to Carmen and Lauren, who set us off on this whole journey. Carmen Maria Machado is currently hard at work on her novel all about the holy shiver, but in the meantime, she's got a new book coming out in the fall of 2027. It's called A Brief and Fearful Star. You can also find a link to Bonnie Tsui's beautiful book on muscles on our website. It is not just about muscle. It's also a message in a bottle to her dad. If you want to see Alysa Liu's gold-winning routine or the Thai commercial or the performance of Hallelujah we mentioned, there are links on our website. This episode was reported and produced by Maria Paz Gutiérrez, with help from Sindhu Gnanasambandan. Mixing help from Jeremy Bloom, and fact-checking by Angely Mercado.

[LISTENER: Hi, I'm Gabby. I'm from the Bay Area, California, and here are the staff credits. Radiolab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser. Soren Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Sandbach is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Mona Madgavkar, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Natalia Ramirez, Rebecca Rand, Joanna Strogatz, Anisa Vietze, Arianne Wack, Molly Webster and Jessica Yung, with help from Gabby Santas and Maia Appleby Melamed. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Natalie Middleton, Angely Mercado and Sophie Sanahee.]

[LISTENER: Hi, I'm Aubrey, calling from Salt Lake City, Utah. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

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