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About Josh Clark
Josh Clark
Josh Clark is a senior writer at HowStuffWorks.com and, along with Chuck Bryant, serves as co-host of the “Stuff You Should Know” podcast. Josh attended the University of Georgia, where he studied anthropology and history and took off to start an alternative newspaper with six core classes left until graduation. He regrets nothing. When he gets the chance, Josh likes to while away his weekends watching "Magnum P.I." on DVD in his pajamas with his three sneaky dogs. According to the Death Clock, Josh has until 2041 to live, which he finds suspect.
Most Recent: Josh Clark Postings
Link between Creativity and Mental Illness Discovered (Again)
by Josh Clark
November 17, 2009
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Around 7:30 on the morning of Sunday, July 2, 1961, Earnest Hemingway went downstairs to the foyer of his home in Ketchum, Idaho, still clad in pajamas and robe, removed a 12-gauge shotgun from a rack near the front door, and shot himself in the head with it.
Hemingway was 61 when he shot himself and he’d just been released after a two-month stint at the Mayo Clinic, where he’d been treated for severe depression. He followed in the footsteps of his father, who had shot himself at age 57.
Reason No. 4,599,032,433 to Hate the Nazis: A Very Swastika Christmas
by Josh Clark
November 16, 2009
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Everybody hates the Nazis. Except, of course, neo-Nazis, and everybody else hates them too. The reasons are pretty much endless: the Holocaust, the horrific medical experiments, the ones who got away to Brazil and Alabama. Nazis are fun to hate, really. When else has there been a body of people so dedicated to such utterly despicable ideals? It’s like it was totally lost on them, their future place as history’s whipping post.
The Effects of Music on the Human Psyche: From Empathy to Hostility to Sleep Deprivation
by Josh Clark
November 10, 2009
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Music has a real effect on us. Why, I’m listening to music right now (Devo at the moment) and it’ll probably help shape this post. Case in point: There’s a new study out in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin that covers how songs with prosocial lyrics have a prosocial impact on its listeners. Take, for instance, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Remember Band Aid? The all-star group recorded that song 25 years ago to raise money for famine-stricken African nations. And it worked; the single raised over 8 million pounds. That’s pretty prosocial.
Personal Genome for 1,000 Bucks or Less Coming; Same for Brave New World
by Josh Clark
November 9, 2009
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There is a race afoot among blue chip IBM and a number of smaller start-ups to reach the $1,000 mark for sequencing individual DNA. Ever since the Human Genome Project completed its work in 2001, the quest to read a single person’s genetic code went from a possibility to a reality. The reality cost the U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan, France and China conglomerate a cool $1 billion, however. You have a billion dollars lying around to have your genetic make up sequenced? Me either. Do you want to have your personal genetic code cracked? Probably. Maybe. I don’t know either.
Sociology and Psychology to Leg Wrestle for Total Domination of Serial Killing
by Josh Clark
November 3, 2009
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There is a massive, albeit subtle to those of us not really paying attention, grab being made by the field of sociology right now. The social science is making a move to wrestle control of the study of murder from its soft science sister field of psychology. I find this intensely interesting. For the last X decades, since psychology has been around really, the field has had complete and unadulterated domain over the crime of murder. When Jack the Ripper was running around Whitechapel, the cops rounded up everyone who even seemed crazy and sent them off to asylums. The tacit implication was that anyone who butchered women must be insane.
Witch Bottle Discovered in UK. “What evidence of strange behavior?” asks archaeologist of European descent
by Josh Clark
November 2, 2009
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Europeans have a longstanding tradition of being really, really weird and really, really suspicious of other people.
Chuck and I just recorded a podcast on totem poles that should be out soon and in the article there’s section on totem pole myths, specifically that they were used to ward off and/or worship evil spirits. That would be incorrect: totem poles are instead akin to a very tall wooden family history. Think a bit further, though. Where would that myth have come from? Yes, that’s right, European settlers. (I wrote another post on how European suspicions created the idea of witches.)
How about cannibalism? There’s a guy named William Arens who posited in 1980 that there’s never been a culture that practiced cannibalism. Instead, it was suspicious rumor generated by early contact between Europeans and native tribes. It’s not entirely odd, if you think about it. All it takes is an explorer in the grips of awe and cynicism while meeting a previously-undiscovered group of humans noticing there happen to be a lot of piles of bones here or there. Instead of considering the possibility that the people practice funeral rites that don’t include burying their dead (true), the explorer concludes that they eat one another (false), high tails it out of there and goes to tell everybody else that the group practices cannibalism. Sadly, the image of bone-nosed natives cooking Bugs Bunny in a huge pot is not a caricature of a real thought, but a pretty accurate portrayal of how whites viewed unconverted tribes.
What’s that smell? Why, it’s the stench of morality!
by Josh Clark
October 27, 2009
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Science doesn’t really have a good grasp on how a lot of things work. Like antidepressants. Neurologists can’t rightly say how they work, but psychiatrists know they do, so antidepressants get prescribed. I would imagine that if you’re suffering from crippling depression, you don’t really care how a pill can make everything seem sunnier, just as long as it does.
Much the same goes for our sense of smell. There are a number of competing theories out there on how we perceive the world through that sense, including one that covers quantum physics. Under this hypothesis, odorants unlock their designated receptors through the superposition of the quantum material that comprises them.
By 2409 women should be a lot squatter than they are now
by Josh Clark
October 26, 2009
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Thanks a bunch to Mr. Rob Sheppe for sending along a link to a recent article in New Scientist about a prediction that in the future women will be shorter, plumper and have better tickers than they do now. The prediction was made by a Yale evolutionary biologist named Stephen Stearns, who looked at medical histories from what is arguably the most intensive and sweeping study every carried out in the history of the whole wide world, the Framingham Heart Study.
Back in 1948, a very clever person named Dr. Thomas Dawber thought it might be a good idea to begin a study that followed the residents of a single town in Massachusetts called Framingham. The extensive longitudinal study has been ongoing since then and it’s yielded a wealth of information about things like cardiovascular disease, smoking habits, dementia, hearing disorders and, now, a snapshot of evolution at work.
Burger King and the Importance of Friends
by Josh Clark
October 20, 2009
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I don’t peruse Jezebel too terribly often since my accident, but it turns out my editor Chanel does. She sent me a post about the recent advent of public outpouring of emotion in Great Britain over things like the death of Michael Jackson and Susan Boyle’s devastating loss on this year’s Britain’s Got Talent. The Brits, long known for their stiff upper lip and all that rot, are kind of disgusted that their youth are not only grieving for people they don’t know, but are doing it in the streets.
If you ever want to fool a Nazi, just dress up a dead body as a British agent, dump him at sea, sit back and thank me in the morning
by Josh Clark
October 19, 2009
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I learned recently that because of the terrible economy, the incidents of bodies going unclaimed at municipal morgues has doubled in some places. Families down on their luck and faced with a choice of purchasing SPAM and eggs or burying a recently deceased relative are opting for the former over the latter in increasing frequency. The corpses are piling up in ample enough supply that even the beloved body farm at the University of Tennessee (boooo!) began turning down cadaver donations, as its three acres are now packed to the fences with dead bodies.
