Annoying by Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman
Annoyances are everywhere: annoying sounds, annoying smells,
annoying drivers, annoying friends, annoying strangers, annoying spouses. There’s nowhere to hind, and no one is
immune.
In Annoying, NPR Science Correspondent Joe Palca and Science
Friday’s Flora Lichtman dig through the scientific literature in search of
explanations for what gets under our skin.
In this widely ranging scientific tour, you’ll meet
researchers who have made strides in understanding why some things tick us
off. You’ll find out why blabbing on
cell phones is so irritating and why you can’t help but tune in. You will learn the secrets of trash talk and
how athletes overcome it, or don’t.
You’ll hear about an illness that makes people annoyed to the point of
dysfunction and visit a tiny island where no one seems annoyed. You’ll discover why chili peppers stand on
the cusp between pleasant and painful, why odor is so powerful and how skunks
have taken advantage, why raw onion fumes make us cry, and why some chemicals have
been irritating life on Earth for half a billion years. The science is there. You just have to know where to look.
I picked up this book partly because I wanted to know how
you make a scientific study of something that seems so subjective. I also wanted to see if knowing why something
annoyed me helped me be any less annoyed.
The second part didn’t work out so well for me. And the first part turned out to be a very
complex thing that touched on many aspects of science and journeyed to others
parts of the world. This appealed more
to my love of general science than I thought it would because it explores so
many fields. It goes from defining
annoyance (is it just a mild form of anger?), to how our vision and sense of
smell works, to medicine, to music, to mouse genetics, to cultural differences,
to why quirks in your spouse are cute when you first get married but years
later make you want to tear your hair out.
It covers sights, sounds, smells, events and other people’s behavior and
why they all annoy us. And though there
is a lot that is subjective and unique to an individual there are patterns and
scientific reasons why almost everyone in the world hates cell phone
conversations they feel are forced upon them and the sound of nails on a
chalkboard. All the bits and pieces
taken individually are interesting and the fact that the search for the answer
to one question leads to all these places makes the whole even more
interesting. Can I avoid getting annoyed
now? No.
Not by a long shot. But in some way,
it does help knowing that I’m not just being cranky all the time. That there is science to back up feelings.
Some times.
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