Kent Dunlap on the Biology, Evolution and Cultural History of the Neck
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The neck is the body's superhighway. It carries blood to the brain, air to the lungs, food to the gut. It's got rest stops, lymph nodes, vocal cords, the thyroid, and it pivots to allow for the perfect selfie and can be adorned in all manners of scarves, necklaces, and ties to denote social class and style. In his new book, The Neck, biologist Kent Dunlap considers the power, beauty, and vulnerability of necks in humans and the animal kingdom.

We talked to Dunlap. That's all coming up next after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Grace Wan in for Mina Kim. The writer Nora Ephron once devoted an entire essay about how much she hated her neck and

It was the one part of her body that showed visible signs of aging and all its crepey, wrinkled, and mottled glory. But she might have changed her mind about her neck after reading biologist Kent Dunlap's new book, The Neck, A Natural and Cultural History. As Dunlap notes, the neck does so much more than hold up your bowling ball of a head. There's a lot of biology and physiology going on in there. And more than that,

We often valorize, maybe even fetishize the swan-like neck, the neck that holds its posture. In history, we've

adorned it with Elizabethan ruffs or stack bands of brass. So take a moment to consider the neck. Turn it left, go right, give it a good stretch, because Dunlap is here to share why the neck needs our time and attention. And by the hour's end, maybe you will love your neck a little more than Nora Ephron did. Welcome to Forum, Kent. Thank you very much. Happy to be here. Well, I'm

Well, we're delighted to have you to talk about the neck. Your day job is as a biologist, and in your spare time, you're a potter. And your time at the potter's wheel gave you a new insight into the neck. How so?

That's right. I'm a zoologist by training, and I spend a lot of time thinking about the diverse necks in all kinds of animals. But at the same time, I was making pots in my backyard, and I became particularly interested in making vases, that is, pots that have necks. And in thinking both about animal necks and the necks of vases, it became really interesting to me to think about this process.

region of both a pot and of a body, which is both very graceful and functions in many ways, but it's also extremely vulnerable too. So I started thinking about the confluence of grace and vulnerability in both pots and in animals.

I think most of us don't really pay that much attention to our necks until they're sore or they're not working properly. You write that the neck's construction is, quote, gloriously quirky and seemingly improvised. What strikes you as quirky and improvised about the neck's construction? Well, our neck is a product of evolution, and our fish ancestors did not have necks.

But the tissue behind their head was taken up mostly by gills. And so what's happened in animal evolution is that region, which was formerly used for a breathing apparatus, has gone through all of these quirky transformations to make many of the structures in our neck. So for example, our larynx, the voice box that I'm using right now, our tonsils, part of our tongue,

part of our parathyroid gland, all came from the remnants of the fish gills. And so this is, and it's mashed in there in this very curious, quirky kind of way. No engineer would have dreamed of making a structure this way. I mean, you write about the fish gills as leftover scraps in our body, which made me laugh.

Yes. So let's talk about what is actually in our necks. I mean, it's a lot. So tell us a little bit. You highlight, for example, that about half a wine bottle of blood per minute flows through our neck. What is going on traffic-wise?

there's an astounding amount of traffic that goes through the neck. In fact, this is one thing that I couldn't actually believe when I made the calculations. So we have blood, of course, going from our heart up to our very hungry brain. We've got food going downwards to feed our body, and then we've got air trends passing back and forth to our lungs.

And the amount of fluid flow is incredible. Just in terms of volume, even on a quiet day, we transport about 3,000 gallons of fluid, air and fluid, through our neck. And that amounts to over a ton of material that goes up and down our neck in a given day.

That's great. It's really incredible. And when you kind of break down the structure of the neck, you kind of do it. There's a front of the neck. There's the back of the neck. Break that down for us. Well, in general, the back of the neck is all about mechanics. It's about turning the head. It's about holding the head up.

and so forth. And then the front of the neck is more about transporting fluids, just as I mentioned, but it also has the critical larynx in there, the voice box. It's got two important endocrine glands. It's got a bone, a hyoid bone, which attaches to our tongue and so forth. So we do all of our swallowing and breathing in the front of our neck, and we do most of the turning in the back of the neck.

Well, you write that a correct swallow is a matter of life and death. How so? Well, as one of our quirky features that you mentioned earlier is that we have this crazy design in our neck where our food tube, our esophagus, and our windpipe, the trachea, do this crisscross right in our neck. And there's a valve there that's governed by the epiglottis.

And that can be a source of a lot of danger. And we've all experienced that if we've ever taken a gulp of food in the wrong way. And so if we accidentally transport food down from our mouth into our windpipe instead of our esophagus, it can indeed be a matter of life and death. And choking to death is a remarkably common consequence of that in the U.S.

I think that goes to the quirkiness of the design, right? It's like you would, I mean, here's a tube that takes, you know, air to your lungs. And oh, wait, there's next to that, there's another tube that's taking food to your digestive system. And it's all compacted into this one column. I mean, what is the average size of a human neck?

It's roughly about eight inches in length, but the diameter varies substantially between the sexes. So the volume of a male neck is on average about 33% bigger than the volume of a female neck. And that's a very big difference in the neck. So we're talking about how vital the neck is. Obviously, one can't live without it. Yet,

As you point out, it's in an extremely vulnerable place on our body. Would you say that as a result, the neck is maybe badly designed?

In some ways it is. We are vulnerable to all kinds of death at the neck. We can have our spinal cord snapped there. We can bleed out to death there. We can joke and so forth. And so, yes, without a doubt there are vulnerabilities. But it also does a remarkable amount of stuff that keeps us alive as well. So I... And part of this...

quirky design that we have is related to the certain trade-offs that we have. So, for example, we can make amazing things with our voice box and we can also breathe quite well. But one thing that happens is because of the position of our voice box, we become susceptible to

breathlessness every single night that we go to sleep. So a remarkably high number of people have sleep apnea. And this is engendered in part because there's this big space above the voice box that is liable to collapse as we fall asleep. I mean, just the wind that goes through. I mean, your book is filled with

so many facts. It's like a Jeopardy quiz as you go through it. And there's one where you write, coughing moves air through our necks at 600 miles per hour, which I'm not a very fast runner. So I sort of felt like, oh, I have some speed in me.

Very much. Yeah. You know, when we think about necks, as I said earlier, often we don't think about it until something's wrong with our neck. And one thing that is a modern affliction, perhaps, is this idea of tech neck. Can you describe what that is and whether it really is a new thing or something that we've always had?

That's a good question. So, yes, one 21st century malady that many of us are confronting is the fact that we spend a remarkable number of hours a day with our head tilted over our devices.

This causes all sorts of strain on the neck. As one sort of example of that, our head weighs about 10 pounds, but when we tilt it over in a 45-degree angle, it weighs the equivalent of about 50 pounds or about the size of a 7-year-old child on the neck. So there's a lot of weight to hold up there.

A lot of this, the head's weight is held up by the muscles on the back of the neck, and some of these muscles are stretched out when we're in this text neck position. And when they're both stretched out and contracting, they can result in some lesions in the muscle that make our neck sore.

And is this a modern thing? I mean, some people say that, oh, you know, humans have been leaning over things for the entirety of their existence. Very much so. As a species, we've been reading books for a long time, leaning over tools and so forth. It's a good point. But what researchers are kind of coming to the fact of is that one thing that we do is we simply spend so much time leaning over that way.

It's estimated that the average American adult spends about five hours leaning over their device. And furthermore, we kind of glue our head down there and keep it fixed in one place for a long time. I mean, is that five hours a day? That's right. I believe it is.

I mean, probably for an adult, five hours. Perhaps for a tween, maybe more like 15. And I mean, does it depend how old you are? I mean, is there more flexibility, more mobility as you're young? Or is the damage the same regardless of your age? Yeah.

I know that certainly teenagers have been reported to have sort of a near epidemic of neck pain in their neck. So I don't think that youth really protects you against this. Well, sometimes we can hold the stress of modern life in our necks. And there is a section of your book where you describe this cognitive testing to see if it was true that, you know, people always say, oh, I feel like the stress is in my neck.

And these were cognitive tests that include timed math tests where like every minute or so the proctor would point out all the questions you got wrong. I was reading this and my hands were sweating just reading it. I was getting sort of tense. Is it true that we hold stress particularly in our necks versus other parts of our body or is that just me?

No, I think that at least this research definitely shows, our experience indicates that, but also these scientific tests indicate that. That is, for many muscles in your body, yes, you get tense when you are put in under some sort of stress,

But for most muscles, you tend to relax them once the stress is gone. But curiously, in your neck muscles, in particular that big triangular muscle on the back of your neck called the trapezius, it will stay tense even after the cognitive stress is relieved. And so, yes, it does seem like your neck holds memory of your daily stress then.

Well, I think I'm still, maybe I have PTSD from taking the SAT, not sure. But we're talking about necks, why we adorn our necks, why their quirky design leaves us vulnerable, and the multitude of other functions they serve in our bodies, as well as in the animal kingdom. We're here with Kent Dunlap. He's a professor of biology at Trinity College, and his new book is The Neck, A Natural and Cultural History.

We want to hear from you. The neck is the body's superhighway. What questions do you have about it? And does the neck as an object or in nature have any special meaning for you? And, you know, feel free to tell us about the pains in your neck, physical or otherwise. You can email your comments and questions to forum at kqed.org. You can find us on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. We're at KQED Forum. Or give us a call now, 866-733-6786.

That's 866-733-6786. More about next after this break. I'm Grace Wong, in for Mina Kim.

Turing with Tia is the quirky YouTube talk show where Tia Creighton is the host and all her guests are talking AI chatbots. Whether it's health and beauty, science and technology, pop culture, or current events, Turing with Tia delivers answers about everything. That's T-U-R-I-N-G, Turing with Tia, a funny and fascinating way to experience artificial intelligence. Only on YouTube at Turing with Tia.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Grace Wan in for Mina Kim. We're talking about necks, both in humans and in the animal kingdom. Why we adorn our necks, why their quirky design leaves us vulnerable, and how necks kind of help in courtship.

We're joined by Kent Dunlap. He's a professor of biology at Trinity College, and his new book is The Neck, A Natural and Cultural History. We're also taking your calls and questions about your neck or other animals' necks. The neck is the body's superhighway. What questions do you have about it? And does the neck as an object...

Thank you.

You know, Kent, you're a zoologist by training, and there's a lot of interesting facts and kind of observations about necks in the animal kingdom, because there are some pretty incredible necks out there. And there are a lot of interesting theories about how these evolved. So let's start with some real obvious ones, and that would be the giraffe. I always thought that giraffes have long necks so they can reach for leaves higher up, but that is not the whole story.

That's right. It's probably still, it's one of the classic cases of evolution that Darwin talked about, about how giraffes over time, those that had longer necks were able to reach higher leaves and survive during periods of drought. But one thing that became clear for some researchers that were working in Africa, in Namibia, earlier in the century, they found that actually giraffes

Giraffes really don't reach that high for leaves even in the drought times. But what they did notice is that giraffes would engage in this pretty brutal kind of male-male aggression where they would bash their necks against each other in the context of mate competition.

So, these researchers then started looking a little more carefully about the role of the neck and they could see that yes, it was very important in these male-male aggressive interactions.

Interestingly, subsequent to that, they found a fossil of a giraffe, a proto-giraffe, shall I say, that had a medium length neck, but it also had a very, very armored skull. And so they presume that this armored skull was also involved in these kind of bashing events that were probably also related to sexual competition.

So I think that people still believe that the neck of a giraffe plays an important role in reaching high leaves in rough periods, but that it may also have functioned in these sexual competitions. Well, if the male giraffes need long necks for courtship and sexual competition, why do female giraffes have long necks as well? Is that just selection?

That's a good question. And the idea is that maybe there was selection for long necks in males, but sometimes evolution works by even increasing one...

particular body part in one sex along with the other part. So it may have the long neck in a female may have come along just sort of along for the ride as a correlated response. Along for the ride. I mean, I think another neck in the animal kingdom that makes us maybe a little jealous is the owl. I mean, it feels like the owl's head is maybe on a lazy Susan. How does the owl manage to turn its neck around and

virtually 360 and what keeps the blood vessels in an owl from constricting? Well, the owl is truly amazing and it can look clear around its whole body and no doubt that contributed towards the owl's notion of being sort of wise and omnipresent and able to see all around itself. But it does that, but the question does arise how can it possibly turn their head 360 without twisting its neck clean off and particularly its spinal cord.

It turns out that owls bend their necks at least in two different places. And it's best to think about the owl neck not as a straight column that's only twisting up at the top,

but rather it twists at the top, yes indeed, but down at the base of the neck it also swings to the left and right. So what looks like an owl twisting on a single axis is actually two different kinds of motion. And because the rotation is divided between these two different kinds of motion, then it produces less stress on the spinal cord. So interesting.

I mean, again, because you are a zoologist, there's just a lot of interesting necks in this book from the animal kingdom. But another that bears a real solid look, the namesake of my favorite kind of sweater, the turtleneck. So the turtle has this incredible neck. And I'm just curious, did the neck come first or the hard shell that protects it?

It looks like probably the hard shell that protected it came first, and that is some of the early turtle fossils have necks that it looks like they could not be able to retract their head clean inside of their shell. So some people believe that one of the earliest roles of the turtleneck was not so much to hide the head, but it was rather to pull the head back and then be able to launch it forward in a predatory strike.

So we think about turtles as being sort of slow and lumbering and protective. But in fact, the original function of their very flexible neck may have been to be a voracious predator over unsuspecting fish that went by them. They look so cute and yet so vicious. Let's go to the phones. We've got Mike from San Bernardino on the line. Mike, welcome to Forum.

Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my call. This is such a fascinating subject. I had a question for the doctor regarding back in my EMS days, they were always talking about the first and second cervical vertebrae. One was titled atlas axis and the other atlas. And I just was

was going to ask him if he could kind of explain the functions of those two vertebrae regarding, you know, movement. Oh, that's a really interesting question. What is the role of the vertebrae in our next, Kent? Well, those two vertebrae that the caller talked about are indeed very interesting. In fact, there was even a 17th century philosopher who sort of saw those two vertebrae as so elegantly designed that he's saying,

said that they were evidence of God's intelligence right there in our neck. Well, can I just stop you for a second? Help us locate where they are exactly. Are they high or low? So the atlas, just as the term, as the name implies, is what holds the globe of the head up. So it's the first neck vertebrae right underneath the skull. Okay, I'm feeling for mine. Yes, okay. And at that joint between the skull and the atlas is where you tilt your head up and down.

The next vertebrae is called the axis, and as the name implies, it's involved with rotation. So when you swing your head left to right as though you were shaking your head to say no, most of the movement occurs between those two vertebrae.

Wow, that is so interesting. When we think about how the neck moves back and forth, and then there are these, the arteries, there's the carotid and the jugular, as you mentioned, they're so close to the surface of our skin. Just curious about why, I mean, maybe do we know why evolutionarily, why it's so close to the skin? Because that feels kind of vulnerable.

It certainly is very vulnerable. And it's kind of a byproduct of the fact that in order for our neck to be really flexible the way it is, our neck has to be very narrow. And yet there are all of these pipes that have to go up and down to it. And simply there's not enough space there. That is, the jugular and the carotid kind of have to be near the surface because the neck is so narrow. Well, let's go to this idea of what kind of role the neck plays

not just in a physical sense, but in courtship. And in the animal kingdom, one place that comes up is in the manes of male lions. It was once thought that these were only meant to help the neck in fights. But you cite research that manes maybe help attract the ladies.

That's right. So in lions, there's a very clear sexual difference. Males have these big, huge, fluffy manes and females don't. And yet manes of males can also vary. They can vary in length and they can vary in color as well, ranging all the way from blonde to quite dark.

And the mane, both the length and the color, can be important in social communication. And so it appears that females are in part basing their decision on mating related to the manes of the males.

And the scientists who did this research used a toy company, I think, to substantiate their findings. Tell us a little bit about that. That's right. The researchers working in Africa contracted with this Dutch toy company to make lion manes that they could put on their lion dolls. So they had life-size lion manes.

models there and they wanted to test the difference between whether the length of the mane or the color of the mane really was important in attracting females. So they took these models and they took wigs of different lengths and different color made by the toy company and put them on and see how the females reacted differently to these manes. I mean, I love that the mane is with the hair extension of the natural world. I mean, that's awesome.

We're talking about necks and why we adorn our necks, what kind of quirky design elements we can find about necks in the natural world and in us humans. We're joined by Kent Dunlop. He's a professor of biology at Trinity College in Connecticut, and his new book is The Neck: A Natural and Cultural History. We would love to hear from you. The neck is the body's superhighway. What questions do you have about it?

When you think about your neck, are there ways that you adorn it? A cherished scarf, a necklace? How are you showing off your neck? I'd love to hear some examples of that. You can email your comments and questions to form at kqed.org. You can find us on all the socials. We're at KQED Forum. And you can give us a call now at 866-733-6786.

That's 866-733-6786. I mean, we're going to start talking about how we make our necks pretty. What are you doing? Moisturizing, scarves, necklaces? We want to hear it all. So we were talking about courtship in animals. And of course, humans also use their necks in the act of courtship. And we don't call it necking for nothing. Why and how does the neck show up in our courtship rituals?

Well, certainly it shows up in part in the way we move our neck in courtship. So the classic example is of people sort of tilting their health and being a little bit coy in courtship, and that certainly involves neck movement. One thing that we do in courtship is we put perfumes and fragrances on our neck, and that's involved with sexual communication that way.

The neck has very thin skin and it's loaded with nerves and so it's a very sensitive area. And it's also usually naked, it's usually bare. And so it's this region which is very exposed but also very vulnerable. It's a region that really we only entrust to people like

massage therapist or a little child or our lover. And in that sense, it's a very intimate place on our body. Yeah, I love this deep dive you did on how we use our necks, the way we pose ourselves to look more approachable or attractive. I mean, I guess there is some science behind tilting your head and maybe the mugshot is not a good look, although I think Donald Trump has decorated the White House with his mugshot. But

Tell us a little bit about why, when I look on Instagram, 99.9% of the people are tilting their head. Yes, it seems like somehow as a species, we are really averse to this square on look straight into the eyes of someone. And if you look across art in the Western, at least in Western art, you see that really ever since...

the Greek period, almost all portraits and all sculptures do have some sort of twist or torque or cant to their head. And that also shows up not just in formal art, but in the sort of informal self-portraits that we're taking a lot. You've no doubt seen people taking selfies and they never take it straight on. They're always looking up, looking to the side and so forth. And my sense is that the

The neck is such a region of expression that if it's putting our head straight towards the viewer, it looks like it's without expression. And that's probably why our driver's license and our passport photos often look so impersonal and dull is because we have this head square on our shoulders. Well, there's also this – I mean, there have been studies done that –

that we like, we prefer when people pivot to the left, like we like the left side of the head better? I mean, explain that to me. The idea there is that we, of course, have a lateralized brain. And somehow when we tilt the, it's been shown repeatedly in all sorts of studies that when we show our left cheek, that's somehow considered more approachable and more

personal than if we tilt show our right cheek and I don't know exactly the basis of that but the author's sort of contended it's related to the lateralization of our brain. So interesting. Let's go back to the phones. We have Wanda from Palo Alto. Welcome to Forum, Wanda.

Good morning. I was wondering about the lion's mane on the lion's neck. Does a male lion raise his mane up to threaten competitors?

competitors, the way a male cat, when he is threatened, will fuzz himself up and hiss and make himself look bigger. Does the mane function that way on a lion? Oh, that's such a good question. That is a good question, and I don't exactly know the answer to that. I assume that it does, because

because many other kinds of animals do it. It may be, though, that because there's such a fluffy mane there that whatever they're doing at the base of their hair to fluff it up maybe doesn't show so much on that big, heavy mane. Oh, thanks for that question, Wanda. I mean, I want to ask you, there's this idea of like the hairs on the back of your neck raising up or your hackles are raised. Is that an evolutionary response? And does everybody have that?

I don't know if everybody has that, but certainly many of us have experienced that. And that probably is, yes, a evolutionary holdover from the fact that when we did have more hair around our bodies, that that was a way of making us appear bigger. Well, we have a lot of questions about how to like our necks and sleep. And this meter writes, what role do pillows play in neck pain? Any advice on whether or not to sleep with a pillow?

Well, yes, pillows are part of our everyday life and they also are very individual. It seems like everybody has their own particular kind of pillow and if they have to travel sometimes people will even take their own pillow with them. The diversity of pillows out there is phenomenal, one to suit everybody's taste. So I was looking at a website recently and I think there were 42 different kinds of pillows.

Pillows for back sleepers, pillows for side sleepers, pillows for people who like to sleep cool or warm or whatever. Certainly, we are generally much more comfortable having a pillow when we rest.

And this is really kind of a byproduct of our unusual anatomy. That is, we humans, compared to most mammals, have relatively broad shoulders. And so what that means is that when we lay down on our side, then our head tilts over, and that can give us a crook in the neck.

On the other hand, if we slept on our belly, like, for example, your dog might do, we couldn't really do that because our face would be planted straight down into the bed, and it's difficult for us to tilt our chin up the way that your dog might do. So...

I think that, yes, putting a pillow under your head where it keeps your neck flat is generally considered the most healthy, but it's very clear that people have their own very nuanced preferences for their pillow. Well, in the 30 seconds before the break, I have to just ask, airplane pillow, yes or no? I mean, is there one that you like? No.

I personally don't use them, and I just read an article that was ranting about how these neck pillows that everyone are carrying are not at all comfortable at all. And so it seems like people are buying them, but I've never heard anybody who seems to love their neck pillow as well. Well, we'll have to...

poll our audience if you've got a great neck pillow. We're talking about necks with Kent Dunlop. He's a professor of biology at Trinity College and has a new book, The Neck, A Natural and Cultural History. We're taking your calls and questions about your neck and what it means to you. You can email your comments and questions to form at kqed.org or call us at 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. What's the neck mean to you and how do you like to adorn yours? Give us a call. I'm

I'm Grace Wan in for Mina Kim. More about next after this break. You think you are good.

Turing with Tia is the quirky YouTube talk show where Tia Creighton is the host and all her guests are talking AI chatbots. Whether it's health and beauty, science and technology, pop culture, or current events, Turing with Tia delivers answers about everything. They

That's T-U-R-I-N-G, Turing with Tia, a funny and fascinating way to experience artificial intelligence. Only on YouTube at Turing with Tia. Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union, now offering real-time money movement with instant pay. Make transfers and payments instantly between financial institutions, online or through Star One's mobile app. Star One Credit Union, in your best interest.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Grace Wan in for Mina Kim. It's Friday and we're talking about necks and everything about them. What's happening on the inside, what's happening on the outside, how we like to decorate our necks, and then fascinating necks of the animal kingdom.

We have Kent Dunlop here. He has a new book, The Neck, A Natural and Cultural History. When he's not writing about necks, he's a professor of biology at Trinity College in Connecticut. And we're taking your calls about your neck, what you do to adorn it, what you do when it's in pain. Maybe

a favorite pillow on the plane? You can email your comments or questions to form at kqed.org. You can find us on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. We're at KQED Forum. Or you can give us a call now at 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. We have a lot of questions about next that I wanted to dive into, Kent, from our listeners. Joanna asks,

Ever since I was a child, I have not been able to tolerate clothing that is tight around my neck, such as turtlenecks and shirt collars. Can you shed some light on why that might be? Any thoughts, Kent?

Well, it is true that the neck is extraordinarily sensitive and loaded with nerve endings. And so I think it's an area where we're very sensitive to. I think it also speaks to kind of our unconscious, deep-seated sense of vulnerability at the neck, that some of us are very uncomfortable having any kind of constriction at all around there because we are so instinctively vulnerable.

of anything that might be closing in around our neck. Well, talking about neck sensitivity, we have Arlene in Alameda. Arlene, welcome to Forum. Hi, thank you so much for taking my call. I haven't heard anybody bring up the issue of how people...

tattoo their necks. And here you're discussing how sensitive the neck is and, you know, so many variations, of course, themes and colors and imagery. But if maybe you can discuss about that a little. Yeah, I mean, tattooing the neck, Kent?

Yes, certainly with the wave of tattoos that the tattoos are creeping all the way up into the neck. One thing that's interesting about tattoos at the neck though is that unless you're wearing a turtleneck it's almost always exposed. So most tattoos on your skin are more typically covered up but tattoos on the neck can be exposed. So in some ways it's a really public

sense of you have to have a lot of confidence that you're going to be confident in your tattoo that you're willing to show everyone because it's generally not covered. It's the ultimate billboard. It is the ultimate billboard. Well, Celeste asks, I learned about a tribe in Myanmar where their cultural practices involve neck elongation for women. I was wondering how that affects the vertebrae. And if you are more knowledgeable in the subject, I heard it's fatal for the rings to be removed, but I would love a fact check on that.

So yes, the Padang people in Southeast Asia have a long tradition of where the girls and the women will add brass rings to their neck as a way of apparently extending their neck as a sign of beauty. It's a tradition that's gone on for centuries. Not long ago, well actually maybe in the 80s or 90s, a radiologist looked at the skulls

skeletons of these women. And it turns out that their neck is not elongated at all. That is, the neck vertebrae are not longer, the muscles are not longer, and so forth. The consequence of these brass rings are not so much to stretch the neck out as to push the collarbones and the shoulders down, and thereby sort of giving the illusion that it's a longer neck. And what happens when the rings are removed?

I don't know a lot about that, but yes, I have heard that because their necks have been supported by these brass rings rather than muscles for a long time, that the stability of their neck is definitely compromised after they take them off. Your book offers a cultural take on necks and...

And what we can communicate about ourselves, I mean, our status by what we wear around our necks. I mean, for example, you talk a lot about neckties. I mean, what do they how do we use that as a status symbol and why the necktie as as that thing, you know, versus a coat or a jacket or the pants that you're wearing?

Yes. So neckwear can convey all sorts of things. It can convey status. For example, if you're wearing a very expensive piece of jewelry, sometimes a necktie will indicate what your alma mater is and so forth, and it can convey membership as well. And one of the things about neck

ornamentation is that it's very visible to the general public and other being right next to the face where the gaze is often cast you can see the neck ornamentation in the periphery of your vision and so it's visible all the time but it's also in a region where it's not going to get in the way and you can and there's also sort of a natural constriction that you can hang things from there

So I think it's a place that you can display things like status and membership where people can see it, but they're not having to look all over the place to identify whether you're high class or low class or what membership you have. I mean, I think the same could be even said for a necklace. I mean, it kind of denotes...

What you're trying to say about yourself as all personal style and jewelry and clothing does. I mean, there was a time when the choker necklace was used to symbolize that someone was a sex worker.

That's right. Particularly in the 19th century, European prostitutes would often use that as a symbol of their sex work. And in fact, this was displayed sort of most controversially in a painting by Edward Manet in 1865 called Olympia. And there is this very famous painting of this prostitute that has...

something on her ankle, something in her hair and something on her and a black ribbon around her neck and nothing else. And she was looking very confidently at the painter and it was scandalous at the time. I mean, and now we don't think about that in that way at all.

No, not at all. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny, too, because the lack of neckwear also seems like a symbol, a status symbol. I mean, tech bros have shunned ties and Steve Jobs famously wore turtlenecks. I mean, not having anything on your neck could say something as well.

That's right. So the classic business attire was for men to wear a buttoned up collar with a tie and coat and so forth. But yes, beginning largely with Steve Jobs and so forth, there was sort of a new wave of business attire and there was a certain confidence to that that I can run

global businesses, multi-billionaire, multi-billion dollar businesses, but I don't have to be involved with the entrapment and all those traditions of traditional business wear. And since then, yes, increasingly business people are shedding their ties and other sorts of formal attire. And you know, one thing that's cool about your book, there's so much that we kind of put

put into the necks. I mean, you talk about blue collar, white collar, pink collar, and how, you know, we have terms like redneck. And then there was this term neckbeard, which I actually was not familiar with. Maybe tell us, tell our audience what that is. Well, the neckbeard sort of started as a meme not several decades ago. And it characterized people who were

didn't take care of themselves so much, might be spending a little too much time in front of video games and so forth. And it's not clear why that became this meme, but it was sort of this symbol of a

of a person who really wasn't taking care of themselves. Interesting. I mean, let's go back to some of the questions that we have. I mean, Mike asks, is the word neck etymologically related to the word next? Do you know?

Not that I'm aware of, no. It derives from German, but I don't think it's at all related to the word NEXT. And Peter asks, can you talk about the role the carotid artery plays in the neck?

So the carotid artery is one of the two main arteries that go from the big vessels coming out of the heart up to the brain. And they really feed the brain. The brain is a very, very hungry organ and requires a lot of blood flow. And the carotid artery is what supplies most of that blood. There's another set of arteries that go up sort of through the neck vertebrae called the vertebral artery, which is also...

But the pressure in the carotid arteries is really high. And so if you sever that artery at all, it's

probably going to be very, very dangerous because you'll deprive your brain of most of your oxygen. Yeah, that does not sound good. And it kind of leads into this other question, which a book about the cultural history of necks obviously needs to consider the vampire, as you do. And vampires are not sucking blood from your wrist or ankles. Why is the neck bite such a powerful symbol? Is it because of the veins and arteries we have flowing through our necks?

I think it's that, and it's also the fact, again, that your neck is almost always exposed, and you have this very deep sense of vulnerability there, and that's where a vampire will strike. And yes, the blood pressure would be really high there, and the vampire could get a good suck of blood from the neck as well.

Good to know if anybody wants tips on how to do that. We have a question from Steve who writes, this is a macabre question, but can your guests speak about the role of the neck in capital punishment in history? For example, the guillotine and hanging. Apparently, there were two types of hanging. The earliest form of stringing up left the victim to die more slowly from lack of oxygen, while the latter method was much quicker and more humane because it used the drop, which evidently broke the person's neck, killing them instantly.

Not a happy topic, but tell us a little bit about that because you do write about it.

Yes, the caller talks about that correctly, that early on, the hanging by a noose was generally a pretty slow, gruesome death because it involved constricting some of those arteries that we just were talking about, sometimes not completely, and so the victim could stay alive for a while. But later, when they started doing traditional gallows where they dropped the

the person being killed very quickly, it would snap their neck and break their spinal cord, and that was a much quicker death.

One thing that's interesting is that another form of capital punishment, that is the guillotine, arose originally as an implement of equality. That is, Joseph Guillotine, right around the time of the French Revolution, saw that people were getting executed in really different ways. The lucky noblemen were getting beheaded, and that was a quick death, whereas the

plebes were getting hung and that was a much more cruel death. And so he was involved with inventing the guillotine as a way that everyone could get a quick, easy death.

Not a common way to think about that contraption. I mean, we're talking to Kent Dunlop about necks. He's a professor of biology at Trinity College, and he has a new book, The Neck, A Natural and Cultural History. We'd love to hear from you about your interesting facts about the neck and what your neck means to you. You can email your comments and questions to form at kqed.org. Give us a call now at 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. Any weird or interesting facts about the neck that you'd like to share.

This is a fundraising period for many public radio stations. You're listening to Forum. I'm Grace Wan in for Mina Kim. Going back to the questions that people have, I mean, is there anything from the animal kingdom that we can learn from about how we might take care of or protect our necks?

I think the biggest threat to our own neck has to do with the fact that many of us are living a stressful lives and we focus a lot of the stress in our neck and that makes us sick and so forth.

If I could recommend a lifestyle, I would recommend the lifestyle of a turtle. The turtle does not live a very stressful life, and that's largely because it can simply pull its head back in and protect itself within its fortress. So I...

I think that we would all do best just to sort of become less stressful and we would feel a lot better in our necks as well. I mean, are you saying that we should just wear turtlenecks and just pull them over our head when things are feeling a little bit rough? Excellent idea. Excellent idea.

I mean, we had on the show two exercise specialists a while back who said that we humans are not turning our necks enough these days. I mean, not just because we have tech neck, but because backup cameras and some cars have backup cameras. And, you know, we seem to be creating a world in which we're trying not to pivot our necks as much as maybe anybody.

in the wild we might have beyond these modern conveniences like phones. Are there ways in which we're not utilizing our necks like we should be?

Well, I think that's true is that when we tend to stare at books, we tend to stare at screens and so forth. And in doing that, we have a very singular focus. And I agree with your previous guest that it would be much healthier for our bodies if we spent more time moving around. And that's much more likely to happen, for example, if you're outside and you're trying to scan in a broad area rather than inside and focused on a two-dimensional object.

I mean, are there ways to sort of improve your ability to, you know, move your neck around? I mean, you note that the neck kind of moves up. It's a yaw, right? It moves up and down. It moves left and right, backwards and forwards. I mean, are there ways in which we should be exercising our neck to strengthen it or to keep it mobile?

Well, I think it's certainly just rotating it back and forth in all directions. That's one of the great things about necks is they move the head in all different dimensions. And I think, yes, daily we should stretch our neck that way. I mean, it's hard when we're in these postures to keep good posture. I mean, is there a right way to be holding our necks? Well, yes.

Yes, we're certainly in a much better situation if our head is straight forward rather than tilted down. And so one bit of advice that some...

physicians will tell people is that when you can and you need to use your device, put your elbows on a table and hold the device up higher. So that's one, so your head doesn't have to tilt down so much. Another bit of advice is that, in fact, actually phones are probably not as bad for necks in general as

where because tablets are often commonly put down on a table surface, and in order to see that, you really have to tilt your head forward. So if you're going to use a tablet, again, once again, try to keep it up closer to eye level. You can't necessarily keep it up at full eye level, but just maybe more at chin level would be a good one.

I mean, after writing this book, do you find yourself sitting up straighter, Kent, and keeping your phone like right up to your face? Absolutely. And I definitely tend to take breaks from the screen and move my head around.

Well, Denise asks, when it comes to pain in the neck, arthritis pain, what can really help? I mean, is it physical therapy, acupuncture, surgeries? I mean, you're not a medical doctor, but have you, through your research, found things that, oh, yeah, that's something that people talk about a lot as being helpful?

Well, certainly massage can help a lot of people and it's very non-invasive and it can do wonders for people. I've interviewed massage therapists and how people can come in with all sorts of different aches all over their body, but once they get their neck massaged, many of those aches and pains go away. They can sleep better, they can move better, they can speak more clearly and so forth. So I think certainly neck massage is a good place to

uh,

And yes, I'm not a doctor, but I certainly recommend that you contact your doctor for more specific advice. Well, you know, bringing it back to Nora Ephron, she who despaired of the turkey gobbler that she called her aging neck, what would you want to tell Nora, God rest her soul, about why she should love her neck, Kent? Well, certainly the neck is absolutely incredible in what it does for us. And we use it to express ourselves. We use it to nourish.

ourselves, we use it to simply hold our head, to relax, and so forth. So I think one feature of our neck is we're sort of...

destined to show a lot of aging at our neck. The skin on our neck is very thin and tends to sag quite a bit. The skin on our neck doesn't attach to the muscles as well as it does in some other parts of our body. So I think it's just a question of becoming, recognizing all of the kinds of strengths and function that it does have and just let the neck be the neck.

Well, we've been talking to Kent Dunlop, professor of biology at Trinity College in Connecticut, and his new book is The Neck, A Natural and Cultural History. Thanks so much for joining us, Kent. You're welcome. It was a pleasure. This Hour of Form is produced by Caroline Smith, Mark Nieto, and Dan Zoll. Francesca Fenzi is our digital community producer. Jennifer Eng, our engagement producer. Susie Britton is the lead producer. And our engineers are Danny Bringer, Brendan Willard, and Christopher Beale.

Our interns are Brian Vo and Jesse Fisher. Katie Springer is our operation manager. Ethan Tove and Lindsay is our VP. And Holly Kernan, our chief content officer. I'm Grace Wan in for Mina Kim. Thanks for listening.

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