Speaker 1: Welcome to hous To Works Now. I'm your host, Lauren Vocabaum,
Speaker 1: a researcher and writer here at hous To Works every
Speaker 1: week and bringing you three stories from our team about
Speaker 1: the weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology,
Speaker 1: and culture. This week, NASA is commissioning new ideas for
Speaker 1: how to handle poop in space and unrelated Some social
Speaker 1: scientists are saying that good behavior based Christmas traditions like
Speaker 1: Santa Crampus and now the Elf on the Shelf acclimate
Speaker 1: our children to the concept of a surveillance state. But
Speaker 1: First Senior Writer Jonathan Strickland brings us a less festive
Speaker 1: but equally important political segment. Thanks to our freelancer Patrick
Speaker 1: Jake Haiger for the research on this one, and to
Speaker 1: Aaron Scherb, the director of legislative Affairs for a government
Speaker 1: transparency and accountability lobby Common Cause, for speaking with us
Speaker 1: about the issue. Together, these three humans answer an increasingly
Speaker 1: relevant question, how can we ordinary citizens get members of
Speaker 1: Congress to really listen to us? Following the US election,
Speaker 1: people on all sides of every issue have been motivated
Speaker 1: to voice their opinions and concerns. But what's the most
Speaker 1: effective method to getting a congress person's attention. Warning, this
Speaker 1: piece is about the United States, so people in some
Speaker 1: other countries may also find it helpful when interacting with
Speaker 1: their respective governments. I have some tough news for those
Speaker 1: of us who rely on the Internet to get our
Speaker 1: point across. It's not terribly effective when it comes to
Speaker 1: actually reaching someone in Congress. Online communication is generally pretty terrific,
Speaker 1: at least for those who have the means to access it.
Speaker 1: It's instantaneous, and on platforms like Facebook or Twitter, it's
Speaker 1: easy to share, promote, or add two messages. But when
Speaker 1: it comes to making a real difference on the political level,
Speaker 1: it's not great. One reason for that is it can
Speaker 1: be difficult for a congress person and to determine how
Speaker 1: many messages come from actual constituents. If you represent a
Speaker 1: state like Georgia, for instance, you don't really care what
Speaker 1: someone in California thinks. California voters don't elect you to office.
Speaker 1: With most online platforms, it's difficult or impossible to determine
Speaker 1: where people actually live. For that reason, many politicians pay
Speaker 1: little attention to messages on social media. Email doesn't fare
Speaker 1: much better, particularly online form letters, Congressional staff tend to
Speaker 1: perceive them as one step above spam mail, or maybe
Speaker 1: even a lateral move. If you do send an email,
Speaker 1: writing your own words is better than relying on a
Speaker 1: form letter format. Snail mail is a bit more effective.
Speaker 1: A handwritten or type letter tends to be treated with
Speaker 1: more care than electronic communication, particularly if you take the
Speaker 1: time to write your thoughts out yourself. But the two
Speaker 1: most effective means of communication when trying to make your
Speaker 1: tend to be phone calls and in person meetings. That's
Speaker 1: not great for those of us who suffer from social anxiety,
Speaker 1: but the truth of the matter is that these methods
Speaker 1: tend to be taken more seriously than others. According to
Speaker 1: Emily Ellsworth, a former congressional staffer, taking the time and
Speaker 1: effort to contact a congress person's office or arrange a
Speaker 1: meeting is necessary if you really want to affect the
Speaker 1: political process. Though unless you're a politically influential person, you're
Speaker 1: not likely to land a meeting with the actual congress person. Instead,
Speaker 1: you'll chat with one of his or her staffers. Still,
Speaker 1: that's usually more effective than tweeting how angry you are
Speaker 1: about a political issue. Unfortunately, This means many people are
Speaker 1: left without an effective way to make their voices heard
Speaker 1: because it requires them to have spare time and resources
Speaker 1: to dedicate to such activities, and it could be argued
Speaker 1: that thousands of people are wasting their time voicing their
Speaker 1: concerns online rather than banding together to attend town hall
Speaker 1: meetings and other events in person. Online communication could still
Speaker 1: be an effective means to organize like minded individuals, but
Speaker 1: when it comes to making a difference, nothing measures up
Speaker 1: to talking directly to congressional staff. Next up, I've got
Speaker 1: a challenge for you from our freelance writer, Kate Kirshner
Speaker 1: and none less than the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Speaker 1: How can we better handle excrement in space? So here's
Speaker 1: what we know about everybody. They hurt, they dance, and
Speaker 1: they poop. From the Queen of England to the Queen's Corgis.
Speaker 1: Everybody on Earth has got to go, and everybody not
Speaker 1: on Earth too. The world has long been interested in
Speaker 1: the bathroom habits of astronauts. We ourselves devoted whole articles
Speaker 1: and podcasts to it. But the truth is that it
Speaker 1: hasn't always been terribly high. Astronauts on the first of
Speaker 1: Pollo missions literally had bags taped to their bums to
Speaker 1: catch the crud. Alan Shepherd had to sit in a
Speaker 1: soggy suit before taking off to become the first American
Speaker 1: in space. It's gotten better. The International Space Station has
Speaker 1: a vacuum section system that allows for a clean and
Speaker 1: easy disposal. Once waste is collected, the solid waste is
Speaker 1: flowing into space and urine is converted into possible drinking water.
Speaker 1: And if the I s S were to lose pressure
Speaker 1: and astronauts were confined to their suits, well, the I
Speaker 1: s S is only a few hours away from Earth,
Speaker 1: not long enough to cause huge harm if its crew
Speaker 1: were left to wallow in their filth, and while they're
Speaker 1: in their suits, diapers not exactly sustainable or healthy for
Speaker 1: more than a few hours. But as NASA considers missions
Speaker 1: far away from Earth on places like Mars, the space
Speaker 1: agency now needs some ideas about how astronauts can contain
Speaker 1: their waste in a space suit. So they're asking the
Speaker 1: public to help troubleshoot the issue and dangling a thirty
Speaker 1: dollar prize for an elegant solution. Something to keep in
Speaker 1: mind before you get busy designing. NASA needs a solution
Speaker 1: that allows a fecal, urine and menstrual waste to be
Speaker 1: rooted away from the body, and that can hold up
Speaker 1: to six days of waste. Here's a fun fact. NASA
Speaker 1: has estimated that astronauts would need to excrete seventy five
Speaker 1: grams that's two point six ounces of fecal matter per day.
Speaker 1: But the folks that Encyclopedia Britannica say that the average
Speaker 1: human drops off between one hundred and two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty grams that's between three point five and eight point
Speaker 1: eight ounces. What's up with the discrepancy. Maybe the space
Speaker 1: diet produces less feces. Also, the proposed solution has to
Speaker 1: work in microgravity, and of course there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of space to work with. Astronauts suits already contain a
Speaker 1: lot of important equipment, and there's not loads of room
Speaker 1: for extra bulk. Got an idea? Get working? The contest
Speaker 1: opened on October eleven, and all submissions are due by December.
Speaker 1: Sorry for our delay and response. For more information, you
Speaker 1: can head on over to hero x dot com slash
Speaker 1: space poop. Finally, this week senior writer and Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. Co host Robert Lamb raises questions about
Speaker 1: some beloved Christmas traditions, both low and old. In Court
Speaker 1: mc McCarthy's The Crossing, the author wrote, deep in each
Speaker 1: man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence,
Speaker 1: something knows and cannot be fled nor hid from. America's
Speaker 1: elder scribe of philosophic grimness was of course talking about
Speaker 1: God here or whatever counts for God and the violent
Speaker 1: delights of McCarthy's Border trilogy. But his grim pronouncement may
Speaker 1: well extend beyond the unblinking eye of divine judgment and
Speaker 1: into our modern holiday traditions. I speak, of course, of
Speaker 1: the Elf on the Shelf. Now, perhaps this most foul
Speaker 1: of Santa's Mermadon's has yet to infiltrate your house. After all,
Speaker 1: they were only unleashed in two thousand five with the
Speaker 1: publication of Chandra Belle's children's book. In the years to follow,
Speaker 1: the elf dolls made their way into millions of homes,
Speaker 1: each with Bell's scripture to govern the practices surrounding their
Speaker 1: supernatural presence. Yes, uninitiated, the Elf on the Shelf comes
Speaker 1: with rules. Each parent is encouraged to establish the following guidelines.
Speaker 1: Number one, thou shalt not touch the elf, lest the
Speaker 1: sorcery of its creation drained from its form, isolating it
Speaker 1: forever from Santa's realm. And number two, the elf shalt
Speaker 1: neither move nor speak while its human subjects remain awake,
Speaker 1: confining its unnatural movements to the inky, black dead of night.
Speaker 1: The elf watches, the elf waits. The elf reports all
Speaker 1: childhood behaviors back to its bearded polar master, so that
Speaker 1: he might exact his holiday judgment upon them. Stephen Nissenbaum,
Speaker 1: author of The Battle for Christmas, even likens traditional Christmas is,
Speaker 1: what with their crampuses and coal threats, to quote many
Speaker 1: days of doom. The elf seems an extension of that.
Speaker 1: Toys or no toys, candy or no andy. For the
Speaker 1: materialistic child, the stakes could scarcely be any higher. It's
Speaker 1: a formative time, after all, when children learned to navigate
Speaker 1: the waters of social responsibilities to human and inhuman agents alike.
Speaker 1: As such, it's no wonder that parents still argue over
Speaker 1: the potential harm of invoking Santa's magic on young children.
Speaker 1: The elf on the shelf, however, has not lived among
Speaker 1: our holiday traditions quite as long. It's less shielded from
Speaker 1: our distrust and revulsion, and perhaps we feel this way
Speaker 1: for a good reason. In the two thousand fifteen article
Speaker 1: Who's the Boss, The Elf on the Shelf and the
Speaker 1: Normalization of Surveillance, authors Laura Pinto and Selena Namoran questioned
Speaker 1: to what extent this vile wooden idol indoctrinates children into
Speaker 1: the mindset of the panopticon to refresh? The panopticon, which
Speaker 1: means all seeing, was a theoretical prison design championed by
Speaker 1: utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham in seventy seven. The prison would,
Speaker 1: in theory, require minimal supervision while offering an effective, sufficient
Speaker 1: means of regulating a prison population. Cells would line the
Speaker 1: interior walls of a vast enclosure, and a central tower
Speaker 1: ensured that any given prisoner might suffer the guard's scrutiny
Speaker 1: at any moment. The Panopticon was never built as Bentham
Speaker 1: envisioned it, though numerous facilities would later cite panopticonic influences
Speaker 1: in their design. For the most part, the idea of
Speaker 1: the panopticon lives on only as a metaphor for surveillance.
Speaker 1: Twentieth century French historian and philosopher Michael Fouco expounded much
Speaker 1: on this notion, stating that modern disciplinary society breaks down
Speaker 1: to three key governmental techniques to control the masses. Hierarchical observation, normalizing, judgment,
Speaker 1: and examination. Welcome to the panopticon. The elf on the shelf,
Speaker 1: unblinking in its lifeless gaze but imbued with parentally induced
Speaker 1: holiday magic, would seem to offer all three of these
Speaker 1: panopticonic techniques. It serves in Santa's hierarchy and stands as
Speaker 1: a symbol of you liiquitous judgment and examination. These factors,
Speaker 1: Pinto and Nomoran argue, make the elf particularly problematic in
Speaker 1: our information age. Sure, Santa was always watching you. He
Speaker 1: knows when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake. We
Speaker 1: get it. But human agents always mitigated, either in the
Speaker 1: form of holiday stress parents or perhaps one of Santa's
Speaker 1: helpers at the shopping mall. The elf on the shelf, however,
Speaker 1: is far from human. It can't be bargained with, it
Speaker 1: can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity or remorse
Speaker 1: or fear, and it absolutely will not stop, you know,
Speaker 1: until Christmas morning, at least in this time of hacked
Speaker 1: emails and Pilford eye cloud, photos of doxing attacks, and
Speaker 1: professor watch lists. Pinto and no Moorn's words of caution
Speaker 1: ring all the more true. Quote. While the elf may
Speaker 1: be part of a pre Christmas game and might help
Speaker 1: manage children's behaviors and the weeks leading up to the holiday,
Speaker 1: it also sets children up for dangerous, uncritical acceptance of
Speaker 1: power structures. Perhaps it's time to rise is up against
Speaker 1: elvin oppression. Perhaps it's time to cast down their likenesses,
Speaker 1: question authority, and remind our children that privacy still exists
Speaker 1: and that the unblinking, judging eye of eternal surveillance is
Speaker 1: not free to roam our homes. Perhaps we can even
Speaker 1: stick to those values as long as it takes us
Speaker 1: to lose patience with Junior's morning checklist, all the while
Speaker 1: the Polar Panopticon waits patiently. That's our show for this week.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for tuning in. Further thanks to
Speaker 1: our audio producer Dylan Fagan and our editorial liaison Christopher
Speaker 1: Hasseiotas filling in for Alice in louder Milk. Subscribe now
Speaker 1: for more of the latest science news and send us
Speaker 1: links to anything you'd like to hear us cover plus
Speaker 1: the name of your favorite hip hop album, classic, recent, whatever.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email at now podcast at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, and of course, for lots
Speaker 1: more stories like these, head on over to our home
Speaker 1: planet Now dot how stuff works dot com.