Speaker 1: Pushkin. The Happiness Lab has just turned five years old.
Speaker 1: It's hard to believe, but our first series went out
Speaker 1: in the fall of twenty nineteen. Since then, we've made
Speaker 1: a couple hundred episodes and say to all of you
Speaker 1: out there, we've racked up more than one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty million doubtloads. We don't have much data on how
Speaker 1: much happiness this has sparked, but I think it's probably
Speaker 1: a ton. We've certainly tackled a lot of topics and
Speaker 1: talked to some amazing people. But to celebrate these five years,
Speaker 1: I've picked five episodes from the archive that holds a
Speaker 1: special place in my heart. My producer, Ryan Dilly, has
Speaker 1: been with me every step of this half decade journey.
Speaker 1: So Ryan, tell me what the first show out of
Speaker 1: the archive is.
Speaker 2: So it's an episode called Mistakingly Seeking Solid Shoot, it's
Speaker 2: from our very first season. So why did you have
Speaker 2: me grab this particular episode?
Speaker 1: Picked this episode because it's one of my favorite episodes.
Speaker 1: I mean, which is always hard for me to say.
Speaker 1: I love all my episodes. They're like children to me,
Speaker 1: and so you have to love all of them. So
Speaker 1: Mistakenly Singing Solitude is an episode about what we get
Speaker 1: wrong when it comes to human connection, and in particular
Speaker 1: our assumption that solitude, not chatting with people, enjoying our
Speaker 1: space by ourselves, is maybe the right path to happiness,
Speaker 1: when all the research seems to suggest that we'd be
Speaker 1: much happier if we reached out to other people. But
Speaker 1: this is genuinely one of my favorite. When I get asked,
Speaker 1: you know, what are some of my favorite ones, this
Speaker 1: one comes up at the top, and I think it's
Speaker 1: for a couple of reasons. I really loved the science part.
Speaker 1: It includes one of my favorite overall scientific guests, Nick Applee.
Speaker 1: But it was also one of the first episodes that
Speaker 1: we've recorded, I think the first episode that we recorded together,
Speaker 1: right yeah, And I.
Speaker 2: Guess it was also the first time you went on
Speaker 2: a solo recording journey out in the field. You bet
Speaker 2: the inventor of the ATM, didn't you, And you found
Speaker 2: that immediately as a recalled, you found the woes of
Speaker 2: being an audio producer, Right, Yes, that.
Speaker 1: Was a trip that I got to take to Texas
Speaker 1: to meet Don Walt's the inventor of the ATM, and
Speaker 1: he had a lovely house. He actually let me journey
Speaker 1: to his house so that I could record with him
Speaker 1: at his house live. But his house had lots of clocks,
Speaker 1: like he collected Google clocks that all kind of seemed
Speaker 1: to go off at really random times, which was lovely.
Speaker 1: It sounded beautiful, but it did not make for very
Speaker 1: clean audio.
Speaker 3: If I re call.
Speaker 2: We made the best of it. I think it was
Speaker 2: really lovely though, but yeah, there was lots and lots
Speaker 2: of clocks going off. Since we've recorded this, you know,
Speaker 2: five years ago, society seems to have gone in the
Speaker 2: wrong direction since the episode aired. Whenever I get on
Speaker 2: a train, I always lament the fact that there were
Speaker 2: quiet cars still, but there are no chatty cars, which
Speaker 2: is something we talk about. The chatty car is where
Speaker 2: you can go to meet your fellow commuteritis and actually
Speaker 2: get to know them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all a little bit depressing. I mean, when
Speaker 1: we made the episode, I'd hope the idea for the
Speaker 1: chatty car would resonate and some company would take it
Speaker 1: on and we'd all have like you know, trains now
Speaker 1: that everyone was chatting and stuff. But it didn't seem
Speaker 1: to happen, And so I think that's another one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that I loved this episode so much is
Speaker 1: that I think it matters now just as much as
Speaker 1: it did five years ago when we first put the
Speaker 1: episode out. So given all of that, here is possibly
Speaker 1: my favorite ever Happiness Lab episode. Mistakenly Seeking Solitude.
Speaker 4: The fighting in the streets of Saigon during the New
Speaker 4: Year or Test Offensive made the war.
Speaker 5: Too real tonight.
Speaker 4: I have ordered aircraft and our naval vessels to make
Speaker 4: no attacks on North Vietnam.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen sixty eight, a pretty tumultuous year had wrapped
Speaker 1: in the combat.
Speaker 6: Ban agting helped the crock the road Now officers also
Speaker 6: reportedly chased and fired on a radio equipped.
Speaker 5: Cark and very good negotiators.
Speaker 3: Certainly not optimistic about one hundred Peter League that one
Speaker 3: Tumar Tumar wounded great.
Speaker 1: But there was one event in nineteen sixty eight that
Speaker 1: didn't make the headlines even though it's still having a
Speaker 1: huge effect on your well being.
Speaker 4: I had to wait, wait, wait, and I really got
Speaker 4: a little bit averrogage because I knew I had the
Speaker 4: money there, so all I had to do is, you know,
Speaker 4: cashy check and get out of there.
Speaker 1: This is Don Wetzel calling a fateful day in November
Speaker 1: of that year when he was trying to do something simple.
Speaker 1: He just wanted to withdraw some cash at his bank.
Speaker 4: I was scheduled to take a trip on a Monday
Speaker 4: morning on so on Friday, on the lunch hour, I
Speaker 4: went to my bank to get some money. I would
Speaker 4: say maybe eight to ten people in line. My guess is,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe I was in that line for like
Speaker 4: eighteen to twenty minutes just to cash and check.
Speaker 1: Don's time was really valuable. He was a talented engineer
Speaker 1: and vice president of a technology company that was on
Speaker 1: the hunt for a new business. But instead of problem
Speaker 1: solving at his desk at work, he was stuck in
Speaker 1: a bank lobby.
Speaker 4: So my job was to come up with one or
Speaker 4: more new products, and I was getting nowhere.
Speaker 1: Half a century later, we still share Don's misery. We're
Speaker 1: stuck in lines all the time, when we wait for
Speaker 1: coffee in a cafe, when we stand on a crowded
Speaker 1: train platform, when we get stuck for hours in airport security.
Speaker 1: We know exactly what he was feeling watching time slip
Speaker 1: through his fingers. My brother Aaron wrote a book called
Speaker 1: how Many Licks? Hey, Hey, Santo's How's it going? Or
Speaker 1: How to estimate damn near anything. I asked him to
Speaker 1: calculate for us how much time we're likely to spend
Speaker 1: waiting in line over our entire lifetimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I think the number one came up with
Speaker 2: was seven thousand hours.
Speaker 1: Seven thousand hours waiting in line. That's more than six
Speaker 1: months of our life stuck in some cue. That's crazy,
Speaker 1: right With seven thousand hours, you could take a massive vacation.
Speaker 1: You could learn a new instrument, or a new language,
Speaker 1: or a new sport. But you're not doing any of that.
Speaker 1: You're just waiting, staring at the back of someone's head,
Speaker 1: and it sucks. We tell ourselves that standing in line
Speaker 1: is an awful, annoying, happiness straining waste of time. But
Speaker 1: what if we could see that line not has a
Speaker 1: huge pain in the butt, but as an opportunity to
Speaker 1: be happier. Our minds are constantly telling us what to
Speaker 1: do to be happy. What if our minds are wrong?
Speaker 1: What if our minds are lying to us, leading us
Speaker 1: away from what will really make us happy. The good
Speaker 1: news is that understanding the science of the mind can
Speaker 1: point us all back in the right direction. You're listening
Speaker 1: to the Happiness Lab with me, doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 5: Hey.
Speaker 1: Don Don Wetzel doesn't have the same name recognition as
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs, but he's an inventor too,
Speaker 1: and it turns out his irritation with waiting in line
Speaker 1: led to a creation that revolutionized the financial sector. It
Speaker 1: has also completely changed the daily routines of ordinary people
Speaker 1: around the world. Before I met Don, I had a
Speaker 1: certain image of him in my mind. I rang the doorbell,
Speaker 1: expecting to meet a slick, self important inventor guy. But
Speaker 1: then ninety year old Don welcomed me into the cozy
Speaker 1: Dallas home that he shares with his wife, Eleanor, and
Speaker 1: I realized Don wasn't the Elon Musk type I had imagined.
Speaker 4: Well, I've delighted your ear.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Don was like the friendliest grandpa you've ever met. I
Speaker 1: sat with Don and Eleanor in their living room, which
Speaker 1: was filled with comfy pillows, smiling photos of their twelve children,
Speaker 1: and clocks, lots of clocks. They were lovely, but clocks
Speaker 1: are kind of the nemesis of the podcaster. And wait
Speaker 1: till this answer stops at a second, and I'll finish up.
Speaker 6: I can stop that no, that's okay.
Speaker 1: The clocks are kind of fitting though, because Don understands
Speaker 1: the value of time. In fact, it was that feeling
Speaker 1: of wasted time back in nineteen sixty eight that led
Speaker 1: to his life changing idea.
Speaker 4: So, while I was in line, I thought, seems to
Speaker 4: me a teller's job mostly is cashy chick and taken deposits.
Speaker 4: So I just got the idea that, hm, I think
Speaker 4: a machine could do that.
Speaker 1: That's right. Don had just dreamed up the ATM, the
Speaker 1: automated teller machine that millions upon millions of busy people
Speaker 1: use every day nowadays. The idea of an ATM seems
Speaker 1: really obvious, but Don faced a lot of resistance. When
Speaker 1: he first pitched the idea.
Speaker 4: On the board of our company. There was a banker.
Speaker 4: He thought it was the dumbest idea he had ever heard.
Speaker 4: He said, we have tellers to do that. Has anybody
Speaker 4: told you that?
Speaker 5: Yet?
Speaker 4: You know, we do have tellers that do exactly what
Speaker 4: you're saying your machine can do, So why you think
Speaker 4: anybody would buy this?
Speaker 1: That board member wasn't entirely crazy. There had been earlier
Speaker 1: attempts at automated bank machines and they'd all failed, including
Speaker 1: one that took deposits. It's inventor, Luther Simjion lamented the
Speaker 1: only people using the machine were prostitutes and gamblers who
Speaker 1: didn't want to deal with the teller face to face.
Speaker 1: The genius of Don's ATM is that it won the
Speaker 1: trust of millions of regular customers who loved its convenience.
Speaker 4: You know, everybody prefers to get things done quicker, and
Speaker 4: you know, the ATM was a quick and easy way
Speaker 4: anybody could use an ATM, really, because it's very simple.
Speaker 4: Stick the card in, key in your pin number, and bingo,
Speaker 4: here comes the money if you got it in the bank,
Speaker 4: of course.
Speaker 1: But now in hindsight, can you see that this started,
Speaker 1: you know, in some ways a revolution of convenience?
Speaker 4: Well, I never thought of it that way, really, Laurie.
Speaker 4: Now I'll tell you a story about that. You know,
Speaker 4: I had to come up with a forecast as to
Speaker 4: how many of these ATMs were going to sell, and
Speaker 4: I felt like we could sell four thousand of these machines.
Speaker 1: I think there might have been four thousand just in
Speaker 1: the in the airport where I was just at DFW today.
Speaker 4: Well, at the latest report that I heard throughout the world.
Speaker 4: They estimate there is one point three million ATMs installed nowadays.
Speaker 1: But the real success of the ATM, according to Don,
Speaker 1: is that it improves people's well being. It gets them
Speaker 1: out of those annoying lines.
Speaker 4: It just made sense that nobody wanted to wait in
Speaker 4: the tell A line like I did, so it makes
Speaker 4: every bank customer happy to get in and get out
Speaker 4: and do some other things.
Speaker 1: A bit more free time is something we all need,
Speaker 1: and down simple idea has probably freed up millions, possibly
Speaker 1: billions of hours the world over. But it turns out
Speaker 1: there's an awful downside to all this convenience and save time,
Speaker 1: one that are lying minds don't even realize. Don Wetzel's
Speaker 1: intuition was that most people want a bit of extra
Speaker 1: free time, then it'll make us happier, and the science
Speaker 1: backs him up. Simply put, we all feel way too
Speaker 1: busy today. Many of us experience what scientists call time famine.
Speaker 1: We're literally starving for time, and that famished feeling has
Speaker 1: a negative effect on our well being. In fact, people
Speaker 1: who report feelings short on time are more likely to
Speaker 1: be depressed, anxious, and less happy than people who feel
Speaker 1: like they have lots of free time. Psychologists have even
Speaker 1: come up with a term for that amazing feeling you
Speaker 1: get when, say, a meeting is canceled and you suddenly
Speaker 1: have a free hour you didn't expect. We call it
Speaker 1: time affluence, and those rare moments when we feel wealthy
Speaker 1: in time can make us feel amazing. It's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that every once in a while, I sometimes
Speaker 1: surprise my Yale students by canceling my Happiness class, and
Speaker 1: their reactions show just how important a little unexpected time
Speaker 1: off can be. One student even burst into tears. She
Speaker 1: said it was the first time she had an hour
Speaker 1: off all semester. She'd almost forgotten what it was like
Speaker 1: to have some free time, so adding even a few
Speaker 1: extra minutes to our perceived time banks can feel really good.
Speaker 1: But recent studies also suggest something rather intuitive. That is,
Speaker 1: we misestimate just how busy we really are. While there's
Speaker 1: lots of work showing that we feel busier than ever before,
Speaker 1: there is very little evidence showing that we actually are busier,
Speaker 1: which is kind of weird. It's as though our minds
Speaker 1: tell us we're super busy all the time, but in
Speaker 1: reality it's not as bad as we think. But there's
Speaker 1: another even more insidious way our mind leads us astray
Speaker 1: when we try to save some time. It turns out
Speaker 1: there's an opportunity cost that comes from avoiding those bank lines,
Speaker 1: and the cost is a social one. Long lines are frustrating,
Speaker 1: but they're also an opportunity to be around other people,
Speaker 1: and the sheer amount of time we spend around other
Speaker 1: people actually predicts how happy we are. Take one famous
Speaker 1: study by positive psychologists Ed Diner and Marty Selliban. They
Speaker 1: looked at people who scored in the highest tenth percentile
Speaker 1: on happiness surveys and try to figure out what makes
Speaker 1: them so much happier than the rest of us. The
Speaker 1: researchers discover the these happy people didn't spend any more
Speaker 1: time exercising or doing religious activities. What did these happy
Speaker 1: folks do differently? They were more social. They spent more
Speaker 1: time around other humans than people with average levels of happiness.
Speaker 1: The results were so strong that these researchers deemed being
Speaker 1: around other people as a necessary condition for very high happiness.
Speaker 1: Another study by Nobel Prize winning psychologist Danny Kanneman confirmed this.
Speaker 1: He and his colleagues tested which daily activities make us
Speaker 1: feel best the winner socializing with others. It's better than eating, shopping, relaxing,
Speaker 1: or even watching TV. Just being with other people makes
Speaker 1: us feel good, even if those people are strangers.
Speaker 6: There are lots of sources of well being standing around you.
Speaker 6: You just have to tap into them.
Speaker 1: My friend Nick Epley is a professor of behavioral science
Speaker 1: at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.
Speaker 6: Happiness isn't about the intensity of experiences that we have,
Speaker 6: It's about the frequency of them. Happiness is like is
Speaker 6: like a you know, a leaky tire on your car.
Speaker 6: You don't have a nice conversation with somebody and then
Speaker 6: are happy forever. But if you're having a nice conversation
Speaker 6: with somebody on a plane, that plane ride is more
Speaker 6: enjoyable than it would have been otherwise. But then you know,
Speaker 6: once you're off the plane ride, you know your tire
Speaker 6: goes flat a little bit. You got to do something
Speaker 6: else to pump it back up. And so I find
Speaker 6: a lot of these conversations are like, are like, uh,
Speaker 6: you know, air compressors for my tires.
Speaker 1: Next studies why we're so resistant to being more social?
Speaker 1: Why don't we take more time to fill up our
Speaker 1: leaky happiness tires with a quick conversation.
Speaker 6: People get the consequences of social interaction wrong, particularly with strangers.
Speaker 6: Not engaging in conversation with somebody else gives you a
Speaker 6: cost somewhere else, and people don't always seem to recognize that.
Speaker 1: It turns out the cost of not being social, not
Speaker 1: taking enough time to connect with other people is that
Speaker 1: it makes us feel pretty awful.
Speaker 6: Feeling lonely or isolated, just kind.
Speaker 1: Of loneliness is now a growing epidemic around the world.
Speaker 1: People today report feeling lonely at double the rate they
Speaker 1: did in the nineteen eighties. Take college campuses like where
Speaker 1: I work at Yale Nationally in the US, right now,
Speaker 1: over sixty percent of college students report feeling very lonely
Speaker 1: most of the time. This is higher than in any
Speaker 1: other previous generation.
Speaker 6: A stressor like that impairs your well being at it
Speaker 6: impairs your health.
Speaker 1: Recent research shows that the physical consequences of our increased
Speaker 1: loneliness are staggering. Feeling isolated is said to be as
Speaker 1: bad for our health as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.
Speaker 1: If loneliness had a health warning, it would sound like
Speaker 1: this may cause increase risk of inflammation, disrupt its leap
Speaker 1: abnormal immune responses, depression, anxiety, higher stress levels, early cognitive decline, alcoholism,
Speaker 1: cardiovascular disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, diabetes, suicide, and even early dine.
Speaker 1: So what can we do to fight this loneliness epidemic. Well,
Speaker 1: you can get a few hints from people who don't
Speaker 1: feel all that lonely, people like Eleanor Wetzel.
Speaker 3: I'm half extrovert and half introvert, and so that part
Speaker 3: of my personality enjoys the connection with people.
Speaker 1: From the moment Don Wetzel's wife welcomed me into her home,
Speaker 1: it was obvious that this old fashioned grandmother was the
Speaker 1: opposite of lonely. She was one of the most sociable
Speaker 1: people I had met in a while. She had a
Speaker 1: story for everything, including how she met Don.
Speaker 3: It was a blind date, so we were starting at zero,
Speaker 3: and I think there was just a chemistry there.
Speaker 1: I had planned to spend only thirty minutes or so
Speaker 1: on this interview, but I ended up chatting with Eleanor
Speaker 1: for over two hours. We talked about our families, while
Speaker 1: her life was like growing up, how she was able
Speaker 1: to raise so many children and other stuff too. I
Speaker 1: asked what her secret was, how did she connect with
Speaker 1: people so easily. It turns out she just chats with
Speaker 1: strangers whenever she can.
Speaker 3: I had no problem with wrecked eye content and smiles,
Speaker 3: and you know, that's that's who we are, that's how
Speaker 3: you relate to people. But I can see a lot
Speaker 3: of downers with the technology that we have available. The
Speaker 3: ATM doesn't smile back at you, marvel or showing me
Speaker 3: their pretty eyes or whatever. So we don't want to
Speaker 3: lose all of that.
Speaker 1: It's true that Don's ATMs have given us back time,
Speaker 1: but they've also robbed us of an important opportunity to
Speaker 1: connect with human tellers and our fellow bank customers. They
Speaker 1: steal one of the small chances we have each day
Speaker 1: to fill up our leaky happiness tires with a quick conversation,
Speaker 1: which is why Eleanor has taken a relatively shocking stance
Speaker 1: on ATMs.
Speaker 3: Well, I've actually never used one period.
Speaker 1: That's right, Eleanor has never used an ATM, even though
Speaker 1: her husband is the guy that invented them. She just
Speaker 1: prefers to chat with the teller.
Speaker 3: I don't think we even know yet how much he's
Speaker 3: being lost without that interaction of human beings, the whole bit.
Speaker 3: There's just there's so many components. I wouldn't even have
Speaker 3: time to go into all of them, and I'm sure
Speaker 3: I haven't even thought of all of them.
Speaker 1: Eleanor's right here, we're automating the humans out of everything.
Speaker 1: Take music, for example. Back in nineteen sixty eight, if
Speaker 1: Eleanor wanted to hear a new song, she'd have to
Speaker 1: interact with a bunch of people. She'd have to find
Speaker 1: a record store, ask the clerk where to find that
Speaker 1: new song, stand in line with other folks to buy it,
Speaker 1: and only then could she drive home with her kids
Speaker 1: to throw it on her record player. But today it's different.
Speaker 3: Who is this Alexa that you can do everything for you?
Speaker 1: Every new automated convenience we introduce into our lives has
Speaker 1: a cost, and that cost, all too often is a
Speaker 1: social one. The problem is it's not often a cost
Speaker 1: we even realize. The question is why. But first we
Speaker 1: need some music to send us into the break. So
Speaker 1: let's tease what's coming up next, Alexa, play anything by
Speaker 1: the Talking Heads.
Speaker 5: I'm having trouble connecting.
Speaker 1: To the internet. Oh, I'm so sorry. Give me a moment,
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab will be right back.
Speaker 6: I ride the train into Chicago every day to my
Speaker 6: office in Hyde Park from one of the far southside suburbs,
Speaker 6: and every day I get on the train and I
Speaker 6: was seeing exactly the same kind of phenomena I'd seen
Speaker 6: it for years.
Speaker 1: Science begins with observation, and Nick ePIE observes something on
Speaker 1: his daily commute that is so commonplace yet so odd
Speaker 1: when you really think about it.
Speaker 6: Where people would get on sit down next to their neighbors,
Speaker 6: perfectly decent, lovely people going into Chicago to work for
Speaker 6: the day. They would sit down, cheek to jowl next
Speaker 6: to somebody else, and they would then ignore each other
Speaker 6: for forty five minutes.
Speaker 1: Most train cars are full of people, which means they're
Speaker 1: also full of knowledge, stories and jokes, but most are
Speaker 1: also deathly quiet.
Speaker 6: I mean, almost nobody ever talks on the train. The
Speaker 6: question is why.
Speaker 1: Nick decided to test this. He recruited passengers sharing his
Speaker 1: commute to work, dividing them into three different groups or conditions,
Speaker 1: as we researchers call them. He asked each group to
Speaker 1: act in a certain way while they were on the train.
Speaker 6: The one condition we told them to keep to themselves,
Speaker 6: just focus on their day ahead, don't engage others around
Speaker 6: you in conversation this morning. Second condition, we asked them
Speaker 6: to do whatever they normally do, which is typically the
Speaker 6: same as what happens in the solitude condition, almost nobody
Speaker 6: talks to strangers on the train. And in the third condition,
Speaker 6: we asked them to do something radical. We asked them
Speaker 6: to try to make a connection with the person who
Speaker 6: sits down next to you this morning on the train.
Speaker 6: Try to get to know something about him or her,
Speaker 6: so they were going to have a conversation.
Speaker 1: Let's think about these different groups for a second. Which
Speaker 1: one would you be happiest in the groups in which
Speaker 1: you could enjoy your solitude or the one that forced
Speaker 1: you to talk to a complete stranger. You might naturally
Speaker 1: have a pretty strong intuition here, but I bet that
Speaker 1: intuition is wrong.
Speaker 6: People reported the most positive commute in the connection condition,
Speaker 6: less positive in the control condition, and least positive in
Speaker 6: the solitude condition, where they kept to themselves.
Speaker 1: Being forced to talk with a stranger was far and
Speaker 1: away the most pleasurable experience. Simply making a connection with
Speaker 1: someone we don't know makes us feel really Good nixed
Speaker 1: out on this very same study. In a number of
Speaker 1: different contexts, on city buses and cabs, at the airport,
Speaker 1: in waiting rooms, they all find the same result. People
Speaker 1: are happiest when they're being social with someone. But what
Speaker 1: about that other person?
Speaker 6: You could imagine that we were potentially spreading misery that
Speaker 6: the person who has talked to maybe was I was
Speaker 6: unhappy about this. We were like polluting the train with
Speaker 6: all of this unwonted conversation.
Speaker 1: So does your conversation make other people miserable?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: Nick tested that too by creating a fake waiting room
Speaker 1: in his laboratory.
Speaker 6: They were also happier when they were talked to than
Speaker 6: when they were not talked to, and that effect was
Speaker 6: just as big as the effect on the people who
Speaker 6: were instructed to talk. So I didn't I don't think
Speaker 6: we're spreading misery on the trains or the US. Is
Speaker 6: connecting with someone as pleasant, whether you are the one
Speaker 6: who's initiating it or the one you're receiving it.
Speaker 1: Note that Nick's not advocating harassing someone on the train
Speaker 1: or continuing to try to talk to someone who clearly
Speaker 1: doesn't want you to speak to them. All nick saying
Speaker 1: is that a quick conversation can make us feel good.
Speaker 1: The problem is that's not what we think is going
Speaker 1: to happen. When Nick asked people to imagine how they'd
Speaker 1: feel getting into a conversation with a stranger, they wrongly
Speaker 1: predicted that it wouldn't be fun or uplifting.
Speaker 6: The reason that's interesting is because our expectations guide our behavior.
Speaker 6: So if you expect it's going to be freezing cold outside,
Speaker 6: you'll pick up a jacket. You'll wear it when you
Speaker 6: go outside. If you expect that it's going to be
Speaker 6: really warm outside, you won't wear a jacket. If I
Speaker 6: expect that talking to somebody will be pleasant, I'll do it.
Speaker 6: If I expect it'll be miserable, I won't.
Speaker 1: But I bet you're thinking, what if you're shy around people?
Speaker 1: Maybe all this talking to strangers stuff works if you're
Speaker 1: really outgoing, but maybe it sucks for introverts.
Speaker 6: And we did measure this, and we found actually no
Speaker 6: difference at all between introverts and extroverts, and in across
Speaker 6: these conditions, that is, introverts enjoyed connecting with others as
Speaker 6: extroverts did. Introverts did not enjoy keeping to themselves in solitude,
Speaker 6: and extroverts didn't enjoy that either. What tends to vary
Speaker 6: are people's expectations about how they're going to feel. So
Speaker 6: an introvert, because they think they're not going to enjoy
Speaker 6: a party, is going to choose not to go, whereas
Speaker 6: an extrovert who enjoys a party might choose to go.
Speaker 6: On average, people tend to feel happier when they are
Speaker 6: connecting with others, and that's true for both extroverts and introverts.
Speaker 1: Nix's results are quite challenging for a lot of people
Speaker 1: to hear. No matter what your personality type is, you
Speaker 1: will increase your happiness if you interact with people you
Speaker 1: randomly meet in stores or on public transport.
Speaker 6: Creates a social connection. It keeps you connected on the
Speaker 6: right level.
Speaker 1: I made this very point on the CBS Morning News recently.
Speaker 1: Happy people take time for social connection. They try to
Speaker 1: make connections with the people on the street, and I
Speaker 1: got some interesting reactions from the viewers. Here's one tweet
Speaker 1: from someone who says, quote, talk to a stranger on
Speaker 1: the bus? Are you insane? Don't talk to strangers, It's dangerous.
Speaker 1: Didn't your mama teach you anything. Here's another one one
Speaker 1: of my personal favorites. If a stranger talks to me
Speaker 1: on a bus, I will go nuts. People die because
Speaker 1: of shite like this. Hell no. So do you hit
Speaker 1: similar reactions where people hear these data and are just like,
Speaker 1: not true, not me.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah No. I get it
Speaker 6: all the time. I get a lot of pushback on
Speaker 6: this because the expectations are so strong. So what people
Speaker 6: are imagining, I think, are random people who might come
Speaker 6: up to you and talk to you, and they imagine
Speaker 6: sort of the worst case outcome. So they're imagining homeless
Speaker 6: people are you know, mentally ill people or something who
Speaker 6: are dangerous to them, or psychopaths whatever. But that's a
Speaker 6: different situation from what we're asking people to do here.
Speaker 6: We're just asking you to talk to a person who
Speaker 6: happens to be sitting next to you, and the person
Speaker 6: who happens to be sitting next to you is likely
Speaker 6: to just be a normal person, not a psychopath.
Speaker 1: We don't do something that's almost certain to make us
Speaker 1: happier because we think we'll be preyed upon by some
Speaker 1: imaginary psycho killer. Actually we're going into the break again.
Speaker 1: Alexa play psycho Killer by the talk, I'm having trouble
Speaker 1: connecting to the Internet. That's so annoying. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: The show will be back in a moment. Nick Epley
Speaker 1: thinks we're too scared of falling victim to some psycho
Speaker 1: killer to strike up conversations on a train. Such unfounded
Speaker 1: fears are part of why we seem to find the
Speaker 1: automation revolutions so alluring. Don Ze atm was the first step,
Speaker 1: but now we're killing the human part of so many
Speaker 1: of our interactions. I want to introduce you to someone
Speaker 1: who's deeply worried about this new direction, someone who is
Speaker 1: making changes in his own life to fight back. David Byrne.
Speaker 5: We're losing something, and a lot of the efficiency that
Speaker 5: we think is there is kind of an illusion.
Speaker 1: This is in You probably know David as a Talking
Speaker 1: Heads front man, but what you may not know is
Speaker 1: that David also writes brilliant social essays. He recently authored
Speaker 1: a fantastic article for the MIT Technology Review on the
Speaker 1: hidden dangers of automation. It's title Eliminating the Human.
Speaker 5: If these things are becoming so ubiquitous, the elimination of
Speaker 5: the human interaction, What does that mean for us as individuals,
Speaker 5: as a society, as a community.
Speaker 1: David's thesis is that humans have developed over millions of
Speaker 1: years to work, trade, have fun, and form relationships face
Speaker 1: to face.
Speaker 5: You're getting all these different signals. You're getting signals from
Speaker 5: their body language, their facial expression, what their eyes are doing,
Speaker 5: the tone of their voice. We are social animals, That's
Speaker 5: what we are. We're like ants and wolves, and we
Speaker 5: are an animal that flourishes because we are social. And
Speaker 5: you wonder what will happen or what is happening when
Speaker 5: that aspect of our deep makeup starts to be taken
Speaker 5: away from us, or not so much taken away, we
Speaker 5: give it up voluntarily.
Speaker 1: David's worried that we're all voluntarily turning our backs on
Speaker 1: our fellow humans every day thanks to new products which
Speaker 1: promise us ease and convenience, be it an ATM or
Speaker 1: an app to pre order our groceries, or a film
Speaker 1: streaming service that saves us a trip to a crowded
Speaker 1: movie theater.
Speaker 5: I'm not saying that whoever designed these things had in
Speaker 5: the front of their mind. Can I come up with
Speaker 5: a technology to eliminate some of the human interaction in
Speaker 5: my life, but it sure seems to be the result.
Speaker 1: No disrespect to inventors like Don Wetzel, who is as
Speaker 1: social as social can be. But David worries that a
Speaker 1: relatively small section of society, namely the engineers who design
Speaker 1: all this stuff, they're creating a world that the rest
Speaker 1: of us must habit, and they are creating it in
Speaker 1: their own image.
Speaker 6: My father was an engineer.
Speaker 5: I enjoy that mindset of looking at things from an
Speaker 5: engineer's point of view, but I recognize a lot of
Speaker 5: that and a lot of programmers, coders engineers who are
Speaker 5: designing a lot of the things that kind of envelop
Speaker 5: us in the contemporary world. You can sense that a
Speaker 5: lot of these guys, and most of them are guys,
Speaker 5: are not comfortable in social situations. So even if they
Speaker 5: would not vocally say I want to make a world
Speaker 5: where I never have to interact with a person, they
Speaker 5: might unconsciously do that.
Speaker 6: That's the world that has.
Speaker 5: Been made for us, and whether we want to or not,
Speaker 5: we're living in their world.
Speaker 1: Whether or not you completely buy the stereotype that engineers
Speaker 1: shun human company, most of us can admit that what
Speaker 1: they've designed is often pretty tempting. Many of us have
Speaker 1: moments where we relish opportunities to be by ourselves or
Speaker 1: just hide away a bit.
Speaker 5: When I was much younger, I was much shyer, I
Speaker 5: was much, much, much more uncomfortable in social situations. I
Speaker 5: would create a kind of facade or character or persona
Speaker 5: that would be my face for a social interaction, and
Speaker 5: it was a little bit artificial in that sense. I
Speaker 5: can identify and understand that a lot of people feel like,
Speaker 5: oh no. If I can figure out a way to
Speaker 5: navigate the world with as few annoying interactions with the human,
Speaker 5: then very good. Let's design interfaces that speed things along
Speaker 5: and help someone who is uncomfortable in social sitch situations,
Speaker 5: for example, get through them without the pesky human.
Speaker 1: At the end of his MIT Tech Review article, David
Speaker 1: argues that as we spend less and less time talking
Speaker 1: and listening to each other, will become less tolerant of
Speaker 1: each other's differences, will become more inclined to envy and antagonism.
Speaker 1: It's a chilling prospect, but can science save us? Can
Speaker 1: researchers like Nick convince the champions of automation that they're
Speaker 1: getting the balance between convenience and happiness all wrong. I'm
Speaker 1: afraid to say it doesn't look promising. Remember Nick's experiment
Speaker 1: using trained passengers, how he found that the people he
Speaker 1: forced into conversation with their fellow commuters had happier journeys.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: Nick reported these findings back to the head of marketing
Speaker 1: at the railroad company, and here was her response.
Speaker 6: Nick, You're not going to believe what we're about to do.
Speaker 6: She said, we're going to roll out a new policy
Speaker 6: on the train. We're going to put in place a
Speaker 6: quiet car. I said, oh really, And the quiet car
Speaker 6: is one she explained, where people are not allowed to
Speaker 6: engage in conversation, they're not allowed to talk on their
Speaker 6: cell phones, they're not allowed to talk to somebody sitting
Speaker 6: next to them. It's supposed to be absolutely quiet.
Speaker 1: Nick was surprised why the train company had made a
Speaker 1: decision that completely contradicted his well being research, and.
Speaker 6: She said, well, because we asked people on a survey
Speaker 6: what they wanted, and this is what they said they wanted, which,
Speaker 6: of course I pointed out, there is exactly what our
Speaker 6: participants said they wanted to and it just turned out
Speaker 6: not quite to be right. At least in terms of
Speaker 6: their well being.
Speaker 1: Nick, being a good scientist, wanted to know if the
Speaker 1: railroad people had carried out an experiment with the opposite
Speaker 1: of a quiet car.
Speaker 6: Have you ever just put a chatty car on the
Speaker 6: line where people can just get together, you know, maybe
Speaker 6: you got snacks or something, and you can get together
Speaker 6: and you just talk. You just you get to know
Speaker 6: your neighbors a little bit, get to know your commuter,
Speaker 6: your chatty car. And she laughed and she said, no,
Speaker 6: we've never done the chatty car. But we used to
Speaker 6: have bar cars on the trains where people would get
Speaker 6: together and often they would then connect with each other there.
Speaker 6: And I asked her to used to have the bar
Speaker 6: cars anymore. She said, no, we don't have them anymore.
Speaker 6: And I asked why not. I was imagining, you know,
Speaker 6: her telling stories about people stumbling off the trains drunk
Speaker 6: or something. But she said the real problem was they
Speaker 6: were too crowded. That is, they were too popular, so
Speaker 6: there were too many people who wanted to be in there.
Speaker 6: That's the point at which as a behavioral scientists you
Speaker 6: just sort of sigh, we think it clearly seems they
Speaker 6: have clear data that people really enjoy being able to
Speaker 6: connect with each other, and yet that service doesn't get extended,
Speaker 6: so they canceled it because the chatty car or the
Speaker 6: equivalent of it was too crowded.
Speaker 1: So if banks and railroad companies and app designers and
Speaker 1: store owners aren't going to come to our rescue, what
Speaker 1: are we to do to stop feeling so isolated? The
Speaker 1: answer is pretty simple. We just need to connect with
Speaker 1: other people, and not just our friends and family members.
Speaker 1: We also need to make the effort to connect more
Speaker 1: with strangers, the random people around us in lines and
Speaker 1: on our commute. They matter more than we think. David
Speaker 1: Byrne realized this. Despite his natural shyness, he's trying to
Speaker 1: be part of the cure. He now embraces opportunities to
Speaker 1: connect with the people who cross his path.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it happened the other day. The subways were messed
Speaker 5: up and there was a Chinese guy who was really
Speaker 5: having a heart. He had some luggage with him and
Speaker 5: he was really having a hard time. Everything, all of
Speaker 5: everything has changed. You know, this train's now on this line,
Speaker 5: This train's now running on this line. This used to
Speaker 5: be an express, now it's a local. And it was
Speaker 5: all this we kind of figured it out together, which
Speaker 5: was kind of sweet. You have made a connection. And
Speaker 5: what I discover is very often they'll smile that you
Speaker 5: are sharing this acknowledgment with them. They might laugh, You'll laugh,
Speaker 5: and so it kind of well, it sounds like a cliche,
Speaker 5: but it brightens your day for another fifteen minutes at least.
Speaker 1: So what have we learned in this episode? For one thing,
Speaker 1: we too readily assume that convenience, efficiency and near instant
Speaker 1: gratification are the roots to happiness, but that assumption is
Speaker 1: often wrong. Tiny human interactions are the burst of air
Speaker 1: we need for our happiness. Tires to steal. Next metaphor,
Speaker 1: your mind might tell you a quick conversation is going
Speaker 1: to be awkward, too much time, not worth it. But
Speaker 1: those intuitions are wrong even for shy folks. So get
Speaker 1: out there and make a new connection. Next time you
Speaker 1: are standing in line, talk to the person next to you.
Speaker 1: If you can't think of something to say, you could
Speaker 1: tell them that lines are an opportunity, and that the
Speaker 1: guy who had the inspiration for the ATM machine did
Speaker 1: so while waiting in a bank line, and that his
Speaker 1: wife has never used that invention. You could even tell
Speaker 1: them that you heard that on a podcast, a podcast
Speaker 1: called The Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos,