人为什么会哭？

20160601ou 一中两外锵锵三人行 今日话题：人为什么会哭？ LW: Now, little kids do it all the time, women do it more often than men, and men only tend to do it at sports games, apparently. And the answer to this is crying. We take a look at some recent surveys. A recent study has come out that has actually kind of posed the question, why do we cry? Do we understand that we do? I think it’s very clear that we understand that we do, and we maybe even understand the things that make us cry, but we don’t understand the reason why we cry. Nick. NL: And when you stop and think about it, it’s really actually quite weird. Water comes out of your eyes and rolls down your face, and what purpose does that serve? It doesn’t seem, on the face of it, to have any kind of biological explanation. LW: The psychologist William Frey, he did a study, back about thirty years ago or so, which I think is still relevant, and he found that women cry, on average, 5.3 times a month, as men only cry 1.3 times a month, which is fantastic, because I didn’t know there was a .3 of a cry. NL: What is one cry? LW: Exactly! Is it one cry across the whole day? Or is it, you know, a series of unrelated cries? Or if you cry twice about two different things, are those two cries? And they found also that, on average, when a woman cries it’s likely to be for five or six minutes, compared with two or three minutes. NL: Maybe women have, you know, more stored water reserves than men. LW: I have no idea. WY: Oh, come on! Come on! LW: Wu You, let me ask you this. Wu You, do you, on average, are you above or below that average of 5.3 times a month? WY: 5.3 times a month? That is too little! That is underestimated. LW: Too little? Wow, that seems like quite a lot. WY: I can spend that quota in one day! LW: So five cries, just one day? WY: It’s just like, sometimes, when you’re crying for like twenty minutes, you might be a little bit tired, and you need a rest, and you need to calm down and restore your energy for five minutes. LW: Oh, restore. Is that when you do the whole [panting sounds], that’s when you can’t breathe any more, you just, what makes you, what makes you cry, Wu You? WY: Very touching South Korean TV series. LW: Oh, okay. WY: You know, the main character died. LW: But what else that make you cry? WY: In real life? LW: Real life situations. What makes you cry? WY: Okay, just like, very touching presents. LW: Oh, okay, so gratitude, just kind of. WY: Yeah. LW: Oh, that’s great, okay. WY: Tears are more like a pearl in the scallop, or tears symbolize the words when you’re talking. LW: Okay, all right. Nick, what about you? Do they, are they the pearls in your scallop? Are you crying on a, are you above or below that 1.3? NL: I reckon I’m below, you know. LW: You reckon you’re below. NL: I don’t think I’ve cried in the last month other than for like, chopping onions. WY: No way, no way. LW: No no no no no Nick, we’re not going to allow that, we’re not going to allow that, think, think, you know what, I will actually give you a little bit of a time to think, I’ll tell you the last time I cried, it was actually watching the film Room, that I was in tears. I was flooded in tears by the end of that. And before that, it was for the Inside Out. WY: That was a cartoon. LW: Yes, I was very emotional when I watched that one! Yeah, but those kind of things tend to get to me as well, I totally get what you mean, Wu You, like, I don’t really respond in tears to real-life situations, it’s mostly hypothetical ones and animation. What about you, Nick? What makes you cry? NL: Okay, I’ve got one, I don’t know if it’s necessarily the last time, but it’s a time. There’s a program on in the UK in which people who have, like, a long-lost relative come on, and then the show tracks them down, and then they get reunited. WY: That’s touching. NL: Yeah, there’s always this ridiculous scene at the end where they’ve built it up, and built it up, and built it up, and there’s violins playing, and one of them is sitting in a room, and the other one’s coming up the stairs. WY/LW: Yeah.