WEBVTT - The Alex Kogan Experience 0:00:15.276 --> 0:00:22.796 Pushkin. I want to start this episode by telling you 0:00:22.876 --> 0:00:26.876 just the very beginning of a story I recently heard about. 0:00:26.876 --> 0:00:30.316 A guy named Alex Cogan born in nineteen eighty six 0:00:30.556 --> 0:00:34.596 into a Jewish family in the Soviet Union. After the 0:00:34.676 --> 0:00:37.876 collapse in nineteen ninety one, the government loses control and 0:00:38.036 --> 0:00:42.036 Jews are even less safe than before. Alex's dad starts 0:00:42.036 --> 0:00:45.756 getting death threats, so he up and moves his entire 0:00:45.836 --> 0:00:50.756 family four generations of Cogan's, to New York City. In 0:00:50.916 --> 0:00:54.356 nineteen ninety four, Alex enter's first grade in a Brooklyn 0:00:54.396 --> 0:00:59.396 public school. He's conspicuous, way taller than the other kids. 0:00:59.916 --> 0:01:03.556 He speaks no English. He's also got a talent from 0:01:03.556 --> 0:01:09.316 math and science. Once his teachers can understand him, they 0:01:09.316 --> 0:01:13.036 think he has the makings of a gifted physicist. Life's 0:01:13.076 --> 0:01:15.556 not hard for him, but as he grows up, he 0:01:15.636 --> 0:01:18.316 begins to see that it isn't always easy for everybody else. 0:01:19.796 --> 0:01:22.596 Six months after they've arrived in the United States, his 0:01:22.716 --> 0:01:25.876 great grandmother had jumped from their apartment window to her death. 0:01:26.476 --> 0:01:29.996 His parents, the loves of each other's lives, split up. 0:01:30.676 --> 0:01:34.956 Alex cries every night until they get back together. He 0:01:35.076 --> 0:01:38.956 enters high school and one of his close friends attempts suicide, 0:01:39.796 --> 0:01:45.836 another becomes clinically depressed. Alex begins to read psychology. He's 0:01:45.876 --> 0:01:48.756 a math and science kid, but he's getting more and 0:01:48.796 --> 0:01:52.796 more curious about human nature. And the first time I 0:01:52.876 --> 0:01:55.156 met him, and I really remember it very distinctly, because 0:01:55.916 --> 0:01:59.436 he almost always wore these giant basketball shorts no matter 0:01:59.476 --> 0:02:02.196 what the weather. You know, he's terribly dressed, like a 0:02:02.196 --> 0:02:05.196 lot of Berkeley undergrads, and you know, and basketball shoes. 0:02:06.276 --> 0:02:10.236 That's Daker Keltner, the psychologist at the University of California, 0:02:10.276 --> 0:02:13.516 Berkeley who runs something called the Greater Good Science Center 0:02:13.716 --> 0:02:16.516 where they study human emotion. We heard from him in 0:02:16.556 --> 0:02:21.316 episode one. Alex Cogan was a shambolic six foot four 0:02:21.356 --> 0:02:23.876 inch freshman back in two thousand and five when he 0:02:23.956 --> 0:02:26.916 knocked on Daker's office door and said he'd like for 0:02:26.996 --> 0:02:32.396 Daker to teach him. Emotions fascinated him. He'd come to 0:02:32.476 --> 0:02:35.396 cal to study physics, but he'd been thinking about love, 0:02:36.156 --> 0:02:40.996 about the distinction between loving and being loved. He wanted 0:02:40.996 --> 0:02:44.436 to study it the way you'd study a quark. And 0:02:44.556 --> 0:02:46.116 Alex came in and he said, you know, I have 0:02:46.396 --> 0:02:49.236 seven kinds of love. That I'm going to put people into. 0:02:49.596 --> 0:02:53.036 I was like, wow, that's interesting. And then there are 0:02:53.076 --> 0:02:59.196 twelve variations of I forgot what the other factor was 0:02:59.276 --> 0:03:01.756 that or set of conditions that he wanted to create, 0:03:01.836 --> 0:03:03.996 And there are eighty four different conditions in his study. 0:03:04.076 --> 0:03:06.236 So he's going to study seven different kinds of love, 0:03:06.836 --> 0:03:09.036 and he's going to study all these different variables that 0:03:09.116 --> 0:03:13.116 would maybe predict the force of the love, the power 0:03:13.116 --> 0:03:15.636 of the love exactly. So he's about to make glove 0:03:15.716 --> 0:03:18.996 more complicated than it's ever been made. So it sounds like, right, 0:03:19.476 --> 0:03:23.876 he was gonna confound our understanding of love. Daker talks 0:03:23.876 --> 0:03:27.076 Alex out of that idea, but this kid is so 0:03:27.116 --> 0:03:30.996 smart and original and full of energy, and so Daker 0:03:31.116 --> 0:03:34.196 takes him in and it isn't long before Alex is 0:03:34.236 --> 0:03:36.556 finding things to do that no one else is doing. 0:03:37.356 --> 0:03:39.516 For instance, the thing that he does after they discover 0:03:39.596 --> 0:03:43.636 a gene it's associated with human kindness. And Alex did 0:03:43.676 --> 0:03:47.636 this cool paper where he showed if you present videotapes 0:03:47.676 --> 0:03:50.556 of people who have that gene or this variant of 0:03:50.556 --> 0:03:54.036 a gene that makes them kind and I am an 0:03:54.036 --> 0:03:56.356 observer and I see one of those people for twenty 0:03:56.356 --> 0:04:00.236 seconds on video. I trust them, right, I'm like this guy. 0:04:00.836 --> 0:04:03.236 I go to battle at this guy, right, I trust 0:04:03.276 --> 0:04:06.436 this guy. By the time Alex graduates from cal he's 0:04:06.516 --> 0:04:09.796 established himself as the most promising student in the entire 0:04:09.836 --> 0:04:15.236 psychology department and the most unusual. Just this big, sweet 0:04:15.316 --> 0:04:19.076 natured guy with a serious talent for math and statistics 0:04:19.356 --> 0:04:23.476 and a desire to study huge questions like what is love? 0:04:24.036 --> 0:04:27.916 When he left and he's so unconventional, Michael, he could 0:04:27.916 --> 0:04:30.716 have gone to any graduate program in the country, and 0:04:30.756 --> 0:04:33.436 he chooses the University of Hong Kong. I'm what because 0:04:33.436 --> 0:04:36.476 he met this woman or got engaged and fell in love? Yeah, 0:04:36.516 --> 0:04:39.396 fell in love. But Daker and Alex stay in touch. 0:04:40.156 --> 0:04:43.716 They collaborate on a few papers. They're both interested in 0:04:43.756 --> 0:04:47.156 big questions about human nature. At the same time, social 0:04:47.156 --> 0:04:49.156 media has started to create a new way to study 0:04:49.196 --> 0:04:55.076 those questions. In late twenty twelve, Facebook invites Daker to 0:04:55.156 --> 0:04:58.036 visit and asks him to create a bunch of new emojis, 0:04:58.676 --> 0:05:02.716 ones that better convey actual emotions. When Daker sees what 0:05:02.796 --> 0:05:07.396 Facebook knows about its users, he's blown away. This could 0:05:07.396 --> 0:05:10.516 be the greatest data source that will ever EXI and 0:05:10.676 --> 0:05:14.476 it would help us answer questions from the scientific perspective, 0:05:14.556 --> 0:05:19.716 like how does disease spread in some neighborhoods but not others? 0:05:20.396 --> 0:05:24.556 What predicts heart attacks? Where does hate crime? Where is 0:05:24.596 --> 0:05:27.596 it likely to happen? Right? That was all tractable with 0:05:27.676 --> 0:05:30.756 the data that they had. Meanwhile, Alex had moved to 0:05:30.796 --> 0:05:34.516 England to teach at Cambridge University. He was still researching 0:05:34.516 --> 0:05:38.036 the same stuff, the positive emotions, and he too was 0:05:38.076 --> 0:05:41.676 seeing possibilities in the new social media data. And I 0:05:41.756 --> 0:05:44.876 was at Facebook doing my consulting work and I saw 0:05:44.956 --> 0:05:46.916 Alex there. I was like, what are you doing here? 0:05:48.196 --> 0:05:50.316 And he's everywhere, you know, So he's like, oh, I'm 0:05:50.316 --> 0:05:52.436 working on this other project and he told me about it. 0:05:52.756 --> 0:05:56.196 Alex Cogan told Daker that he wanted to use Facebook 0:05:56.596 --> 0:06:00.396 to study things like love and happiness. For example, you 0:06:00.476 --> 0:06:03.396 might be able to take a fairly small sample of data, 0:06:03.556 --> 0:06:07.156 say the likes of ten thousand Facebook users, to make 0:06:07.196 --> 0:06:12.436 discoveries about those emotions entire countries. The math was complicated 0:06:12.556 --> 0:06:16.036 enough the Dacker himself didn't fully understand it. He then 0:06:16.076 --> 0:06:19.436 forgot all about it until one day a year or 0:06:19.476 --> 0:06:23.156 so later, when Alex Cogan called him up. He calls 0:06:23.156 --> 0:06:26.316 me after Trump's elected and he says, I think I've 0:06:26.316 --> 0:06:30.636 done something that was part of this election. And I 0:06:30.716 --> 0:06:32.636 was like, okay, well, let's talk what is it? And 0:06:32.676 --> 0:06:37.596 he said, I created this mechanism that was purchased and 0:06:38.196 --> 0:06:40.916 used in the Trump campaign. He was worried that he 0:06:41.076 --> 0:06:43.156 actually had had some effect, or that he'd be perceived 0:06:43.196 --> 0:06:45.596 to have had some effect. I don't think he made 0:06:45.636 --> 0:06:49.276 that distinction. I just think he thought, oh now, Alex 0:06:49.356 --> 0:06:52.276 Cogan sensed that he might have a problem. He just 0:06:52.356 --> 0:06:54.516 had no idea how big it was going to be. 0:07:03.196 --> 0:07:07.476 I'm Michael Lewis, and this is Against the Rules, a 0:07:07.596 --> 0:07:10.276 show about the decline of the human referee in American 0:07:10.356 --> 0:07:15.316 life and what that's doing to our idea of fairness today. 0:07:15.356 --> 0:07:17.956 I want to talk about an entire species of refs, 0:07:18.436 --> 0:07:23.076 one that's nearing extinction, whom no one will miss until 0:07:23.116 --> 0:07:28.996 it's too late. I used to be a referee in 0:07:29.036 --> 0:07:33.516 the big leagues of dictionaries. The American Heritage. You've heard 0:07:33.516 --> 0:07:36.876 of it. The American Heritage has something called the usage Panel, 0:07:37.156 --> 0:07:39.276 and I was on it, along with a couple of 0:07:39.356 --> 0:07:42.476 hundred other word people. Every year we get this mass 0:07:42.556 --> 0:07:47.316 email asking us to judge the latest word controversies how 0:07:47.356 --> 0:07:51.836 certain words should be defined, or spelled or pronounced. English 0:07:51.876 --> 0:07:53.956 is always changing, and the dictionary wanted to keep up 0:07:53.956 --> 0:07:57.196 with the times and sometimes resist them. Was it okay 0:07:57.196 --> 0:08:00.996 to use unique to mean unusual? Should you say banal 0:08:01.316 --> 0:08:04.916 or banal or both? This year I got a different 0:08:04.916 --> 0:08:08.596 sort of email, saying I've been fired. They fired the 0:08:08.596 --> 0:08:11.196 whole panel, so I didn't take it personally, but I 0:08:11.196 --> 0:08:13.876 still want to know why. As far as I could see, 0:08:13.916 --> 0:08:18.676 we've done nothing wrong. Our definitions were still definitive. I 0:08:18.796 --> 0:08:21.356 call the guy who'd been my boss as head of 0:08:21.356 --> 0:08:25.316 the usage panel. What did you do? I advised on 0:08:26.596 --> 0:08:30.956 people to include on the usage panel. Occasionally people die, 0:08:30.996 --> 0:08:33.276 and or occasionally people would simply not respond to the 0:08:33.356 --> 0:08:36.836 questionnaire for several years running, and we'd want to replace them. 0:08:36.956 --> 0:08:41.516 His name is Stephen Pinker. Yes, that's Stephen Pinker, Harvard 0:08:41.596 --> 0:08:45.836 psychologist and author of many best selling books. In the 0:08:45.876 --> 0:08:51.956 case of disputed usage, where people wonder what is the 0:08:51.956 --> 0:08:57.116 correct use? Can I use decimate to mean destroy most of, or, 0:08:57.836 --> 0:09:00.436 as rumor has it should only mean destroy one tenth of? 0:09:01.716 --> 0:09:04.156 Or what's the best way to use epicenter. Is it 0:09:04.236 --> 0:09:06.276 just the center of something or does it have to 0:09:06.316 --> 0:09:08.916 mean propagating outward? Of course, if you want to know 0:09:08.916 --> 0:09:10.876 what a center means, you can now just google it. 0:09:11.516 --> 0:09:14.796 The Internet has been bad for dictionaries. They don't sell 0:09:14.836 --> 0:09:17.676 the way they used to. But the Internet doesn't explain 0:09:17.716 --> 0:09:20.756 why our panel was fired. We didn't cost the dictionary 0:09:20.796 --> 0:09:24.596 a dime. We all work for free. Why did they 0:09:24.636 --> 0:09:27.596 cut it? You know, I haven't gotten to the bottom 0:09:27.596 --> 0:09:30.476 of this. Maybe I'll just let someone else chase this 0:09:30.516 --> 0:09:34.276 one down. I mentioned this whole situation because it's not unique, which, 0:09:34.276 --> 0:09:37.116 by the way, should only be used to mean one 0:09:37.156 --> 0:09:41.596 of a kind. Nothing can be very unique, or most unique, 0:09:41.836 --> 0:09:45.596 or even rather unique. A thing can be either banal 0:09:45.756 --> 0:09:49.916 or banal. But it's either unique or it's not anyway. 0:09:49.996 --> 0:09:51.756 The death of the word referee is not even all 0:09:51.756 --> 0:09:54.756 that unusual. They're a member of the species of refs 0:09:54.836 --> 0:09:57.876 that the world now has no use for. The culture refs, 0:09:58.276 --> 0:10:01.676 the people who referee are most basic interactions how we 0:10:01.716 --> 0:10:05.316 should talk, who we should trust, or whom we should trust. 0:10:06.876 --> 0:10:14.556 No one particularly mourns their death until they really need one. 0:10:15.276 --> 0:10:21.356 Our bags. We are in a suburb of Dallas, at 0:10:21.356 --> 0:10:24.276 the home of Brian Garner, who has set himself up 0:10:24.316 --> 0:10:27.316 as a referee of the English language. When and what 0:10:27.436 --> 0:10:31.636 should you hyphenate? He's the author of M. Garner's Modern 0:10:31.756 --> 0:10:34.996 English Usage. Why people shouldn't use flaunt when they mean flout. 0:10:35.236 --> 0:10:36.756 We've been standing out of here for three or four 0:10:36.796 --> 0:10:38.236 minutes and there's no sign of life. We're gonna go 0:10:38.316 --> 0:10:41.236 knock on his door. All right, all right? What's the 0:10:41.276 --> 0:10:46.356 difference between species and spurious? Does it really matter if you, 0:10:46.556 --> 0:10:49.996 at this very moment are filled with angst or angst? 0:10:52.836 --> 0:10:56.036 We're a weird g. Garner's Usage manual is now more 0:10:56.076 --> 0:11:00.276 than twelve hundred pages long. The late novelist David Foster 0:11:00.356 --> 0:11:02.556 Wallace called it a work of genius. This book is 0:11:02.596 --> 0:11:05.756 so big. Did you bring your copy? No? I have 0:11:05.836 --> 0:11:09.116 xerox those pages that I want, just the front. Yeah, 0:11:09.396 --> 0:11:13.276 it wouldn't fit. You don't really expect to find guardians 0:11:13.316 --> 0:11:16.476 of the English language in Dallas, Texas. Then again, you 0:11:16.476 --> 0:11:19.436 don't really expect to find them anywhere. That's why I've 0:11:19.476 --> 0:11:22.916 bothered to find him. It's like flying to Indonesia to 0:11:22.956 --> 0:11:26.396 see the last of the Sumatran rhinos, and so here 0:11:26.436 --> 0:11:29.916 We are between a giant golf course of a lawn 0:11:30.556 --> 0:11:36.596 and a monticello of red bricks and doric columns. We're 0:11:36.596 --> 0:11:40.156 prank in the right place, Michael Lewis, Ryan Garner, very 0:11:40.156 --> 0:11:42.076 good to meet you. Thank you for letting us in truth. 0:11:43.076 --> 0:11:46.836 Are we welcome? Garner's house does have a kitchen and bathrooms, 0:11:47.116 --> 0:11:49.996 almost like a normal house, but it feels like an 0:11:50.036 --> 0:11:51.956 excuse for him to live in what amounts to a 0:11:52.036 --> 0:11:55.956 massive library. Floors of books with little ladders so you 0:11:55.956 --> 0:11:59.476 can climb up and reach them. Thousands upon thousands of 0:11:59.596 --> 0:12:03.436 mostly very old books about the English language. I've had 0:12:03.476 --> 0:12:09.636 my coffee all round. It looks like a Robber Baron's 0:12:09.916 --> 0:12:12.876 collection of books, except they look like they've been read. 0:12:13.596 --> 0:12:16.836 They look like they aren't. They aren't book spot by 0:12:16.876 --> 0:12:20.156 the yard, and they also have plastic covers on them, 0:12:20.156 --> 0:12:26.476 which is a little unusual. How many Usage Experts books 0:12:26.516 --> 0:12:29.556 do you have in this library? I mean, how many different? 0:12:31.556 --> 0:12:34.876 He published his first Usage Guide back in nineteen ninety eight, 0:12:35.156 --> 0:12:37.796 partly as a protest against the way people talked on TV, 0:12:38.676 --> 0:12:41.916 which sounds a bit snooty, but Gardner's genius was not 0:12:42.076 --> 0:12:44.436 to set himself up as some kind of elite speaking 0:12:44.476 --> 0:12:49.036 down to the illiterate masses. His judgments felt like common sense. 0:12:49.516 --> 0:12:52.636 They were relied on data. He classified any change in 0:12:52.676 --> 0:12:56.636 the language into five stages, ranging from weird new usage 0:12:56.716 --> 0:12:59.956 to a totally accepted new use of the word. He 0:13:00.036 --> 0:13:02.956 had lots of information on how people were actually speaking 0:13:02.996 --> 0:13:08.036 and writing the English language. So this is Webster's first 0:13:08.276 --> 0:13:11.716 dictionary six and this just kind of shows the evolution 0:13:11.756 --> 0:13:16.276 over the nineteenth century. But I have so upstairs. These 0:13:16.276 --> 0:13:20.916 are books on writing, a beginning all the way over here, 0:13:22.876 --> 0:13:27.596 so that this whole, that whole wall is linguistics, and 0:13:27.916 --> 0:13:31.276 look on usage and writing. I think I just assume 0:13:31.356 --> 0:13:33.636 that anybody who went this far out of his way 0:13:33.676 --> 0:13:36.116 to tell other people how to speak and write must 0:13:36.156 --> 0:13:38.676 have something wrong with him. That if you tracked his 0:13:38.756 --> 0:13:42.116 interest back to its source, you'd finally arrive at the 0:13:42.196 --> 0:13:46.396 desire to feel superior. But that's not Garner. His source 0:13:46.516 --> 0:13:51.716 energy isn't snobbery. It's outrage at an idea cooked up 0:13:51.716 --> 0:13:55.516 by academic linguistics, an idea he had encountered back as 0:13:55.556 --> 0:13:59.356 a student at the University of Texas descriptivism. It was 0:13:59.396 --> 0:14:03.556 called a native speaker of English cannot make a mistake, 0:14:05.116 --> 0:14:09.196 and it's so fact though if a native speaker says it, 0:14:09.196 --> 0:14:14.836 it is correct. That is a very extreme position to take, 0:14:14.876 --> 0:14:16.876 and I think an indefensible one, and one that I 0:14:16.956 --> 0:14:20.716 have pretty much set my face against. He set his 0:14:20.756 --> 0:14:24.396 face against descriptivism, and his face is set against it. Still. 0:14:25.196 --> 0:14:33.876 Do you consider yourself a referee? Yes? Yeah, I'm making 0:14:34.036 --> 0:14:38.756 judgment calls about and there is a lot of judgment involved, 0:14:38.916 --> 0:14:43.436 But I'm trying to be a helpful guide to writers 0:14:43.436 --> 0:14:46.836 and speakers of English. We're now up in a balcony 0:14:46.876 --> 0:14:50.796 gazing down at an amphitheater of books about the English language. 0:14:51.356 --> 0:14:53.836 He's got a whole other collection of books out back 0:14:53.996 --> 0:14:56.716 where the poolhouse should be, in a building that's an 0:14:56.716 --> 0:14:59.356 exact replica of the room in England in which the 0:14:59.396 --> 0:15:03.476 Oxford English Dictionary was created. I pulled down an especially 0:15:03.516 --> 0:15:09.556 decrepit looking book by someone I've never heard of, Lindley Murray. Murray, 0:15:09.676 --> 0:15:12.836 but there's kind of a hero of mine. Interesting guy. 0:15:13.396 --> 0:15:16.636 He was a New York lawyer in seventeen eighty four. 0:15:16.676 --> 0:15:20.116 He moved to York, England because he didn't like the Revolution, 0:15:20.716 --> 0:15:25.836 and a lot of Americans actually moved to England because 0:15:25.836 --> 0:15:29.276 they didn't appreciate what was going on. Lynn Manuel and 0:15:29.276 --> 0:15:33.396 Miranda left that out of Hamilton. I guess so, and 0:15:33.476 --> 0:15:37.476 so these two shelves are whole various ambitions of Murray's Grammar. Yeah, 0:15:37.796 --> 0:15:41.076 and Brian Garner seems to have all of them. So Murray. 0:15:41.196 --> 0:15:44.076 In seventeen ninety five he stopped practicing law and he 0:15:44.116 --> 0:15:49.556 wrote Murray's English Grammar for a Quaker girls school in York, 0:15:49.636 --> 0:15:53.676 and it became the best selling book in the English 0:15:53.756 --> 0:15:59.196 language other than the Bible for the first fifty years 0:15:59.196 --> 0:16:03.396 of the nineteenth century. He sold over thirteen million copies 0:16:03.436 --> 0:16:08.116 of his English Grammar. Every household needed an English Grammar 0:16:08.796 --> 0:16:14.836 and a Bible thirteen million copies. The joint population of 0:16:14.876 --> 0:16:17.356 Great Britain in the United States in eighteen hundred was 0:16:17.396 --> 0:16:21.076 only fifteen million, But back then people threw money at 0:16:21.116 --> 0:16:25.276 language refs. Noah Webster got rich from his dictionary, so 0:16:25.396 --> 0:16:28.716 did Fowler and Follet and Partridge and scores of others 0:16:29.116 --> 0:16:32.596 from their grammars and usage guides. Strunk and White have 0:16:32.716 --> 0:16:36.636 sold ten million copies of this style manual. There was 0:16:36.636 --> 0:16:38.756 a time not long ago when a writer could get 0:16:38.796 --> 0:16:41.756 paid to write about how to write, and the American 0:16:41.756 --> 0:16:46.316 Heritage Dictionary used to brag about his usage panel. But 0:16:46.396 --> 0:16:49.836 Brian Garner is in the wrong century. How many copies 0:16:49.836 --> 0:16:54.036 of Garner's Modern English usage is sold, I don't know exactly, 0:16:54.076 --> 0:16:57.596 but it's fewer that hauled and paltry. Brian Garner has 0:16:57.636 --> 0:17:00.716 a really nice house, but his usage manual doesn't pay 0:17:00.716 --> 0:17:05.116 his mortgage. He gives writing seminars for lawyers. The rest 0:17:05.116 --> 0:17:08.956 of his market has mostly vanished. I mentioned Barnes and Noble, 0:17:08.956 --> 0:17:13.036 but I haven't singled anybody out in particular, although I 0:17:13.116 --> 0:17:16.796 kind of did when the first two editions of my 0:17:16.876 --> 0:17:19.636 Usage book came out. Usage Book has passed a we're 0:17:19.636 --> 0:17:22.476 not going to stalk it. I mean that has a 0:17:22.516 --> 0:17:26.036 major effect, and they said, no, we've made the decision 0:17:26.276 --> 0:17:29.716 that really this category is defunct. The usage book is 0:17:29.716 --> 0:17:32.476 a defunct category. I grab another one of his old 0:17:32.476 --> 0:17:36.236 books and flip through it. Some nineteenth century guide to pronunciation. 0:17:37.636 --> 0:17:40.676 The idea that anyone would write, much less pay money 0:17:40.676 --> 0:17:46.756 for a pronunciation guide, well, it's preposterous and preposterous. It 0:17:46.876 --> 0:17:50.076 is an interesting fact, and one not sufficiently realized that 0:17:50.076 --> 0:17:52.356 a person who has a pronunciation of his own for 0:17:52.436 --> 0:17:54.436 a word is very apt to take it for granted 0:17:54.716 --> 0:17:56.676 that he hears all others has pronounced it in the 0:17:56.676 --> 0:18:00.036 same manner, when in fact his own method is entirely 0:18:00.116 --> 0:18:07.036 peculiar to himself. It doesn't make true at Also, talking 0:18:07.036 --> 0:18:10.396 about making people incredibly uncomfortable, fearful of what was coming 0:18:10.396 --> 0:18:13.076 out of their mouths, that's what he's doing. People used 0:18:13.116 --> 0:18:15.556 to feel uneasy about how they use the language. They 0:18:15.556 --> 0:18:19.076 didn't want to sound stupid or uneducated. Now they feel 0:18:19.116 --> 0:18:21.876 uneasy about anyone who would presume to judge how they're 0:18:21.916 --> 0:18:24.996 using the language, and old anxiety has been replaced by 0:18:24.996 --> 0:18:29.516 something else, a suspicion of the individual ref People still 0:18:29.596 --> 0:18:31.516 judge other people by what they say and how they 0:18:31.516 --> 0:18:34.796 say it, but they do it differently, without reference to 0:18:34.836 --> 0:18:38.316 a higher authority, but to the crowd. My own bank 0:18:38.356 --> 0:18:42.436 here in Dallas, every time there would be in any 0:18:42.436 --> 0:18:44.556 activity on one of my accounts, I'd get an email 0:18:44.596 --> 0:18:52.796 message dear dear mister Garner semicohen And I called my 0:18:52.876 --> 0:18:54.836 banker and I said, by the way, you know, you 0:18:54.956 --> 0:18:57.716 got hundreds of these things, presumably thousands going out by 0:18:57.716 --> 0:19:03.636 the day, dear customer, semicolon, And I said, you know, 0:19:03.836 --> 0:19:05.796 it's got to be either comma or a colon. He said, 0:19:05.796 --> 0:19:09.236 could you put that in writing? And I said, or 0:19:09.276 --> 0:19:12.036 I'll even give you some authorities, and I cited Garner's 0:19:12.076 --> 0:19:18.316 Modern English usage and a couple of other authorities on 0:19:18.396 --> 0:19:22.196 this point of punctuation. It's a pretty elementary point. Yep, 0:19:22.276 --> 0:19:25.156 he did that. I mean, who else is there to site? 0:19:25.676 --> 0:19:29.156 But the incorrectly punctuated letters just kept coming. Still. I 0:19:29.196 --> 0:19:32.516 was getting dozens every week of dear mister Garner semicolon 0:19:32.676 --> 0:19:34.956 and and it was I was about to change banks 0:19:34.956 --> 0:19:37.796 over this, because it's it's it's a little upsetting to 0:19:37.836 --> 0:19:44.716 think I'm doing business with people who are doing something 0:19:44.756 --> 0:19:49.356 so egregiously bad. And they didn't change it for about 0:19:49.396 --> 0:19:50.836 a month, and so I called him and I said, 0:19:50.876 --> 0:19:53.716 what's going on? He said, well, you know, I showed 0:19:53.716 --> 0:19:56.156 it to some of the people here at the bank, 0:19:56.236 --> 0:19:58.036 but we have a dispute about whether it should be 0:19:58.036 --> 0:20:01.156 a semicolon or a colon, and so we just left it. 0:20:02.596 --> 0:20:04.836 But that that is a demotic view. Well, your your 0:20:04.836 --> 0:20:07.476 opinion is as good as mine. Anybody's opinion is as 0:20:07.516 --> 0:20:11.796 good as somebody else. Demotic. Now, there is a word 0:20:12.796 --> 0:20:18.116 derived from an ancient Greek word meaning popular. That's how 0:20:18.156 --> 0:20:23.476 the language is generally refereed by popular opinion. Inside Garner's bank, 0:20:23.876 --> 0:20:26.876 by popular opinion, it was okay to send out letters 0:20:26.916 --> 0:20:31.356 teeming with semicolons that didn't belong. It's obviously not that 0:20:31.396 --> 0:20:34.556 big a deal. I mean, you can still understand where 0:20:34.556 --> 0:20:37.676 the bank was trying to say. Plus, it's sort of 0:20:37.716 --> 0:20:42.396 freeing to rid ourselves of this expert language ref this 0:20:42.556 --> 0:20:47.596 annoying little schoolmarmie voice in your head. On the other hand, 0:20:48.156 --> 0:20:51.276 what happens when that little voice ceases to exist? And 0:20:51.356 --> 0:20:54.116 not just that little voice, but the other little voices 0:20:54.196 --> 0:21:03.436 like it. I'm Margaret Sullivan and I was the public 0:21:03.556 --> 0:21:06.316 editor of the New York Times. And what's a public editor? 0:21:06.596 --> 0:21:08.476 I just asked that to loosen her up. I knew 0:21:08.476 --> 0:21:12.836 the answer. The public editor is the ombudsman, the neutral 0:21:12.876 --> 0:21:16.756 party inside the news organization whose job is to make 0:21:16.956 --> 0:21:21.236 judgments about the news in the same possibly irritating way 0:21:21.516 --> 0:21:25.756 that Brian Garner makes judgments about the language, to call 0:21:25.796 --> 0:21:28.836 out the paper when it screws up. Sullivan did that 0:21:28.876 --> 0:21:31.036 at the New York Times from two thousand and twelve 0:21:31.356 --> 0:21:33.796 until the spring of two thousand and sixteen. When she 0:21:33.916 --> 0:21:36.956 left a year later, the Times just got rid of 0:21:36.956 --> 0:21:39.956 its public editor altogether. So I would love for you 0:21:39.996 --> 0:21:44.916 to explain to me the importance of ombudsman why they 0:21:44.956 --> 0:21:48.396 exist in the first place. So, for example, and this 0:21:48.516 --> 0:21:51.396 is not the only role, but let's just say someone 0:21:51.436 --> 0:21:54.036 thinks a correction should be made in a news story 0:21:54.596 --> 0:21:58.596 and the people who are in charge of that say, well, nope, 0:21:58.756 --> 0:22:01.316 we're not going to do that because we're convinced it's right. 0:22:01.676 --> 0:22:05.316 So then they could come to the ombudsman and say, 0:22:06.196 --> 0:22:09.436 what do you think here? The thing about the is 0:22:09.476 --> 0:22:14.116 that it has to be independent. I had no editor. 0:22:14.156 --> 0:22:16.156 I mean I had a copy editor, and I end 0:22:16.156 --> 0:22:18.916 the My copy editor great person would say to me, 0:22:19.036 --> 0:22:20.596 are you sure you want to say it that way? 0:22:20.676 --> 0:22:23.756 Or don't you think going a little too far there? 0:22:24.196 --> 0:22:26.916 But he couldn't tell me not to do it. Sullivan 0:22:27.036 --> 0:22:30.156 was not just a good ombudsman. She was a famously 0:22:30.236 --> 0:22:32.876 good one. She made a big deal about reporters who 0:22:32.956 --> 0:22:36.396 let sources approve their quotes. She called out The Times 0:22:36.396 --> 0:22:40.476 for its policies allowing anonymous sources, especially in stories about 0:22:40.556 --> 0:22:44.196 national politics. Everyone in the news room read and feared her, 0:22:44.956 --> 0:22:47.876 and that probably prevented a lot of distorted or unfair 0:22:48.036 --> 0:22:51.956 stuff from ever getting into print. But the role she 0:22:51.996 --> 0:22:54.716 played is dying. The Washington Post got rid of their 0:22:54.756 --> 0:22:58.236 ombudsman in two and thirteen, and the New York Times 0:22:58.276 --> 0:23:02.956 in twenty seventeen. Even ESPN had one and got rid 0:23:02.956 --> 0:23:06.716 of it. And why so, why has it been in decline? 0:23:07.316 --> 0:23:10.676 If you ask the media organizations, the news organizations who 0:23:10.756 --> 0:23:17.836 have discontinued their ombudsperson rolls, they would say, almost to 0:23:17.916 --> 0:23:21.916 a person, they would say, it's not necessary anymore because 0:23:21.916 --> 0:23:26.396 there's so much criticism in the digital world on Twitter 0:23:26.916 --> 0:23:30.076 and elsewhere. There's so many voices, there's so many ways 0:23:30.116 --> 0:23:32.436 to get a complaint or a point of view out 0:23:32.476 --> 0:23:34.876 there that we don't need to have someone that we 0:23:35.076 --> 0:23:39.836 pay to criticize us. Internally, you don't need a news 0:23:39.876 --> 0:23:43.316 reff anymore because in the new media market, the crowd 0:23:43.396 --> 0:23:46.716 can do the reffing. The Times only created the ombudsman 0:23:46.836 --> 0:23:50.036 roll back in two thousand and three. The reasoning then 0:23:50.156 --> 0:23:54.356 was the modern media market, the Internet, cable TV, the 0:23:54.396 --> 0:23:57.156 speeding up in the news cycle that was all creating 0:23:57.196 --> 0:24:00.236 pressures that led to some really sensational screw ups by 0:24:00.236 --> 0:24:02.996 the New York Times. They printed a bunch of stories 0:24:03.036 --> 0:24:05.716 on the front page by a reporter named Jason Blair. 0:24:06.276 --> 0:24:08.796 He later confessed that he just made up quotes an 0:24:08.916 --> 0:24:12.596 entire scenes. They printed stories saying that Sodom Hussein possessed 0:24:12.636 --> 0:24:16.556 weapons of mass destruction when he didn't. Did you while 0:24:16.596 --> 0:24:19.156 you were there? Was there? Did you have a sense 0:24:19.196 --> 0:24:22.836 that there was a decline in the need for you 0:24:23.116 --> 0:24:25.036 to do this job? Was there? Where? Were there like 0:24:25.236 --> 0:24:28.916 less things coming in? Oh? No more if anything? But 0:24:28.956 --> 0:24:31.796 there was this belief in the air that the crowd 0:24:31.876 --> 0:24:35.956 could do the job. And why pay a genuinely independent 0:24:35.956 --> 0:24:39.316 news referee when you could get the crowd to do 0:24:39.436 --> 0:24:42.876 the job for free? Do you ever read it? Does 0:24:42.956 --> 0:24:46.196 any anything ever cause a story to smell for you? 0:24:46.236 --> 0:24:48.516 You go, there's something wrong. It's the kind of thing 0:24:48.556 --> 0:24:50.756 that if I were there in my job, I'd be 0:24:50.756 --> 0:24:54.036 getting emails about Oh, yes, absolutely, you can see those 0:24:54.116 --> 0:25:01.756 coming a mile away. Now I'm going to finish the 0:25:01.796 --> 0:25:05.116 story of Alex Cogan, the young psychologist born in the 0:25:05.116 --> 0:25:08.316 Soviet Union who started out in physics and ended up 0:25:08.316 --> 0:25:12.596 in love along with a bunch of other researchers and 0:25:12.676 --> 0:25:16.316 app builders. He'd signed an agreement with Facebook to study 0:25:16.356 --> 0:25:20.916