Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and we're flying solo again, which means we hopefully
Speaker 2: won't crash this joint. And this is stuff. That's right,
Speaker 2: that's right. How are you man? You're still sick? Huh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and this is kind of I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't like playing it this close, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of fun to be a little more current with like
Speaker 1: listener mails and updates and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it keeps us on the edge where we need
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this will be out on Tuesday, I guess.
Speaker 1: And in real time, this is the day after the
Speaker 1: automat Oyster stewed debacle.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was a debacle that turned
Speaker 2: out to be a pretty good.
Speaker 1: App and Aaron Cooper already came through.
Speaker 2: Oh good, I haven't seen it yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny. I'm okay. You know, things subside in
Speaker 1: the early afternoon, so I'm actually feeling a little better
Speaker 1: than it was like twenty minutes ago even.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just I gotta go to the doctor and
Speaker 1: just get it over with, you do.
Speaker 2: I heard that there's a really bad neurovirus going around,
Speaker 2: and that's gotta be what you got man going around
Speaker 2: Mexico City, going around the world.
Speaker 1: Oh really, yeah, Mexico City is included. This feels bacterial
Speaker 1: diverticulitis related.
Speaker 2: Oh that's true. I forgot you got that. Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: there's still a neurovirus going around, so don't catch that too.
Speaker 1: I'll try, but I'm hanging in there. I am working
Speaker 1: on less than three hundred calories a day for five
Speaker 1: days now, so I am a shell of a human.
Speaker 2: You're gonna look lean and mean, have you been doing
Speaker 2: push ups?
Speaker 1: I can't do one push up right now, there's no way.
Speaker 2: Well, Chuck, I guess it's entirely possible since I haven't
Speaker 2: seen you, I've just you know, been talking to you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: while we record, I have no idea whether you're actually
Speaker 2: sick or not. And it's entirely possible that you're fooling
Speaker 2: me right now. Oh and if you are, I would
Speaker 2: argue that doesn't make me gullible because I generally believe
Speaker 2: you're trustworthy. There's no reason to believe that you're not sick.
Speaker 2: So really, you'd just be a shameful, dirty liar, and
Speaker 2: I would be the hero in this situation.
Speaker 1: That's right. This is on gullibility and this you know,
Speaker 1: we were just talking offline that there are I think
Speaker 1: a hundred different ways to approach this kind of topic,
Speaker 1: and sometimes that's like freeing, and sometimes that's really frustrating,
Speaker 1: and I think this one was a little frustrating. Lvia
Speaker 1: put together a great article, I think, but it's just
Speaker 1: a hard one. When I pitched it to her, I
Speaker 1: was like, you know what I feel like, especially here
Speaker 1: in America, we're at peak gullibility as a nation, and
Speaker 1: like I just wondered, like, is there any science of that,
Speaker 1: or like there are people more gullible than others? And
Speaker 1: can science be gullible? And this is what we came
Speaker 1: up with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Interestingly, yes, science can be gullible. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: you could argue that Americans aren't more gullible than usual,
Speaker 2: that there's actually just different factors involved that make people
Speaker 2: want to believe things. Maybe it's a it's it's weird.
Speaker 2: I think one of the reasons why it's so hard
Speaker 2: to wrap our head around is social psychologists are still
Speaker 2: trying to wrap their head around it.
Speaker 1: Totally.
Speaker 2: And and you know what happens when social psychologists get
Speaker 2: a hold of something.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's an oyster stew party.
Speaker 2: It's a little unsteady as they figure it out. That's right,
Speaker 2: it's an oyster stew party. So I think it's not
Speaker 2: it's not us, as what I'm trying to say. And you,
Speaker 2: dear listener, if you're like, what is going on, it's
Speaker 2: not you either. It's social psychology.
Speaker 1: That's right. I guess we can start by talking about
Speaker 1: I mean, we're going to talk about a different a
Speaker 1: lot of different people, a lot of different people that
Speaker 1: study this kind of stuff, a lot of different studies,
Speaker 1: some of which make more sense than others. But this guy,
Speaker 1: Stephen green Span, is an author. He wrote a book.
Speaker 1: He wrote the book on it, Annals of Gullibility Colon
Speaker 1: Why we are duped and how to avoid it. And
Speaker 1: one sort of important thing he does upfront is say, hey,
Speaker 1: there's a difference between credulity and gullibility. Credulity is if
Speaker 1: you know you'll believe something just without looking at all
Speaker 1: the evidence, and gullibility means you have an active response
Speaker 1: to perhaps being conn.
Speaker 2: I take issue with us right out of the gate.
Speaker 1: I kind of think too.
Speaker 2: I think that's a terrible distinction because I think you
Speaker 2: can totally fall for something and be duped. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: you be the only person who knew that. Who knows it.
Speaker 2: You know, somebody could say something that duped you, and
Speaker 2: they don't stop and focus to get like that that
Speaker 2: that question of whether they duped you or not answered.
Speaker 2: They just keep going on. But you know you've been duped.
Speaker 2: You don't have to respond to a Nigerian prints email
Speaker 2: or send somebody a bunch of Walmart cards to get
Speaker 2: out of some random federal case that's against you. To
Speaker 2: have been gullible, you just have to believe, and usually
Speaker 2: in the absence of any kind of supporting evidence, and
Speaker 2: sometimes in the presence of contradictory evidence. That's gollibility in
Speaker 2: my in my understanding. Thanks You're you're believing something without
Speaker 2: bothering to go check it out, and that to me
Speaker 2: is the baseline of gollibility.
Speaker 1: I totally agree. I thought that definition was really weird,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad both are in here though, because sometimes
Speaker 1: it's a nice contrast. But along the lines of what
Speaker 1: you were saying, there's a group of researchers social psychologists
Speaker 1: from McQuary University. There can be a lot of Aussie's
Speaker 1: in this.
Speaker 2: You can say that name better than that McQuary.
Speaker 1: Oh like Ausie style, Yeah, McQuary.
Speaker 2: Although anytime you do that you sound like Murray from
Speaker 2: Flight to the Concord.
Speaker 1: Murray present Alessandra k Tenise.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's what I'm going to find it.
Speaker 1: Much in the way you and I would, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people would, which is simply the
Speaker 1: propensity to accept a false premise in the presence of
Speaker 1: un trustworthy clues. That's it. That's it. You don't have
Speaker 1: to act on it.
Speaker 2: No, you could just believe and no one in the
Speaker 2: world could know besides you that you believed, and you're
Speaker 2: still gulible in that sense. The thing that I really
Speaker 2: stood out to me that we'll talk about a lot more, though,
Speaker 2: is you could make a really good case that people
Speaker 2: aren't as gullible as other people think they are. And
Speaker 2: I found that kind of reassuring. We'll talk about that later,
Speaker 2: but I don't want anybody to get the impression that
Speaker 2: we're just like, Yep, people are generally stupid, yeah, and
Speaker 2: here's how they fall for stupid stuff now and you're
Speaker 2: probably stupid too. That's not actually what the science of
Speaker 2: gollibility is turned up.
Speaker 1: No, And there's a lot of factors, And this is
Speaker 1: where I think Greenspan did kind of hit on something
Speaker 1: his four factors of gullibility. Situational like if there's a
Speaker 1: lot of if everyone else is doing it, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of social pre sure, like all the bros
Speaker 1: are investing in the same cryptocurrency and it's at a
Speaker 1: great price, and you're like, oh man, I got to
Speaker 1: get in there. All the guys are right, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone's in on that. So there's social pressure where you
Speaker 1: can fall for something. Cognitive issues like well, as we'll
Speaker 1: get to later with you know, our senior friends. Sometimes
Speaker 1: there's like legit brain cognitive issues that's a different thing
Speaker 1: than this. But this is just lacking expertise, and you know,
Speaker 1: you can't evaluate what you're being told because you're just
Speaker 1: not I don't want to say smart enough, you're just
Speaker 1: not an expert in whatever that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're not informed enough in that particular thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what else.
Speaker 2: Personality is another one. If you're impulsive, this is a
Speaker 2: big one, big one. If you're lowing curiosity and you're like,
Speaker 2: I don't care, Just tell me what difference. I'm too
Speaker 2: lazy to go figure it out myself. Uh huh, I
Speaker 2: got better things to do than think. Or if you
Speaker 2: have a high need for independence, And this struck me
Speaker 2: quite a bit because if you were, if you're independence minded,
Speaker 2: you don't need smarty pants, pencil neck college boys telling
Speaker 2: you what's right or what's wrong, or what's true or
Speaker 2: what's false. You can figure it out yourself. And those
Speaker 2: people are actually a high risk of being duped, which
Speaker 2: is really surprising, but if you stop and think about it,
Speaker 2: it makes total sense. They're overconfident and that's a huge
Speaker 2: factor in being gullible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally think it makes sense, you know, because
Speaker 1: it happened to his cousin.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Emotion can play a big factor in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about some of those with some studies
Speaker 1: later on, but one way is, like, let's say we're
Speaker 1: specifically talking about being conned. If it gives you a
Speaker 1: positive feeling, whether it's a somebody catfishing you and making
Speaker 1: you feel loved, or you know, some sort of financial
Speaker 1: thing that you think might provide for your long term
Speaker 1: security or like, man, no one else knows about the
Speaker 1: steal but me, I'm so smart for getting in on
Speaker 1: the ground floor here that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Right, and as strangely ironically, almost as if he did
Speaker 2: it on purpose, because it supports everything he wrote about.
Speaker 2: Stephen Greenspan, the author of that book about golibility, he
Speaker 2: finished his book and shortly afterward he was informed by
Speaker 2: I guess his stockbroker that he had lost a bunch
Speaker 2: of a bunch of money by investing in Bernie Madoff's contest.
Speaker 1: Scheme with the ironies. Huh.
Speaker 2: So he was like, even the guy that researched this
Speaker 2: and wrote the book on golibility can fall for it.
Speaker 2: That's a really great little tidbit. Yeah, but I think
Speaker 2: it also goes to show just how specific golibility is,
Speaker 2: because I don't get the impression that Stephen Greenspan was like,
Speaker 2: this madeoff guy is making a lot of really great
Speaker 2: points and this is incredibly high risk, but I'm going
Speaker 2: to go along with it anyway, Like he went through
Speaker 2: a stockbroker and everything. So, yeah, there's only a certain
Speaker 2: amount of golibility.
Speaker 1: It's just.
Speaker 2: Bernie Madoff is like shorthand for fooling people, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, not to pick on Stephen green Span
Speaker 2: or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Now I feel very bad for him despite his poor definition.
Speaker 2: Right. So some other people have said, well, we really
Speaker 2: want to show off as social psychologists, we're going to
Speaker 2: create a gibility scale, and in fact, Alessandra to Nie
Speaker 2: from Macquarie University, I'm not even gonna try that one.
Speaker 2: But it's Australian for university. Sorry, Australians. There's this beer
Speaker 2: called Fosters that here in America we think you drink
Speaker 2: a lot of. And in America the ad campaign says Fosters,
Speaker 2: it's Australian for beer.
Speaker 1: I love that you barely use an accent. You just
Speaker 1: say it seriously and that gets the point across.
Speaker 2: It makes people pay attention.
Speaker 1: Australian for beer.
Speaker 2: That's the best I can do. That's how I think
Speaker 2: Australians talk.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. So this gullibility scale was self report did
Speaker 1: basically like do you self reported, meaning do you think
Speaker 1: others do you perceive yourself as gullible? And do you
Speaker 1: think others perceive you as gullible? And then they you know,
Speaker 1: they filled in with some other questions like how persuadable
Speaker 1: are you? And stuff like that, and it actually for
Speaker 1: a self reported study, which you know a lot of
Speaker 1: those can be tough. This seemed to work out pretty
Speaker 1: good for them, don't you think it did?
Speaker 2: Because they backed it up. They I can't remember what
Speaker 2: it's called, but they tested the validity. They tested the
Speaker 2: validity of this self reporting panel and found that the
Speaker 2: people who reported themselves or scored the highest on gullibility
Speaker 2: on this test were more likely to click a link
Speaker 2: on a phishing email than people who scored low. Right,
Speaker 2: So it seems like a valid test. And one of
Speaker 2: the things I went and looked at up Chuck, and
Speaker 2: one of the questions wasn't even a question. It was
Speaker 2: you are very persuadable, And the only option to check
Speaker 2: was yes, Ah, what I'm kidding?
Speaker 1: Oh man, this is so upciting.
Speaker 2: That's all right, You're not at one hundred percent at all.
Speaker 1: I didn't think you would take advantage of this today.
Speaker 2: It was more of the joke. I wasn't trying to
Speaker 2: take advantage of you, although I realize now that I didn't.
Speaker 1: It's okay. All for the show. On that scale, they
Speaker 1: found some traits that were common among those that scored
Speaker 1: high in gullibility. Social intelligence was one of them that'll
Speaker 1: keep coming back over and over. Vulnerability, emotionality, which we've
Speaker 1: talked about a little bit, a weak sense of self
Speaker 1: which also comes up in different ways. I think you
Speaker 1: found an article about how parents can wreck kids by
Speaker 1: not giving them self confidence, right, and they'll end up gible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much, and depending on And it doesn't even
Speaker 2: have to be like you're such a stupid kid every day.
Speaker 2: It can just be things like where your opinion is
Speaker 2: not really heard or validated, or just all sorts of
Speaker 2: little missteps that parents can make that make parenting a
Speaker 2: lit nightmare you can carry on as an adult. And
Speaker 2: it can make you doubt your own opinion, so you're
Speaker 2: not gonna speak up. It can make you be afraid
Speaker 2: of looking stupid, so you don't ask questions because you
Speaker 2: don't want to seem like I don't I didn't immediately
Speaker 2: get it, so I'm gonna look dumb if I ask
Speaker 2: these questions. There's like it just sets you up for
Speaker 2: being more likely to be a victim of being duped
Speaker 2: than somebody who has a lot of confidence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a good friend who had a pretty
Speaker 1: bad stepfather, and the abuse in this situation was exclusively
Speaker 1: he made him feel stupid at every opportunity.
Speaker 2: That is so wrong, Like I should be in jail.
Speaker 1: He's passed on now. But it's I can't think of
Speaker 1: any I mean, there are all kinds of things that
Speaker 1: are worse, obviously, but something so damaging for such a
Speaker 1: small person to do that to a child. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: literally like oh you think so, like you know, just
Speaker 1: that's how he was talked to it his whole life
Speaker 1: growing up. It's awful. That is rough and he's super gullible.
Speaker 2: Oh is he really?
Speaker 1: No? Actually, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Oh, you got me back there. You should just do
Speaker 2: that to one another, like every d or too.
Speaker 1: One thing we should mention though, because this pops up
Speaker 1: a couple of times and I think it's super fascinating.
Speaker 1: Is another trait they found on the gullibility scale if
Speaker 1: you're very gullible, was belief in paranormal activity. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: park it right there.
Speaker 2: But I guess that depends on whether paranormal activity is
Speaker 2: real or not.
Speaker 1: You know, well, I guess so.
Speaker 2: I mean that's described from a point of view where
Speaker 2: you're just like that's all fake anyway. So yeah, duh.
Speaker 2: One of the things about social intelligence that's worth pointing out.
Speaker 2: So that's basically a package that you can have. Some
Speaker 2: people are much better at it than others, but basically
Speaker 2: everyone alive in a society has some degree or other
Speaker 2: of this package of skills that forms social intelligence, Like
Speaker 2: whether or not you're good at conversation, whether you are
Speaker 2: good at effective listening, what your knowledge of like social
Speaker 2: roles and social scripts are, and then awareness of like
Speaker 2: what make other people tick, and then what people think
Speaker 2: of you. And you put all this together, and if
Speaker 2: you have like high emotional or social intelligence, you're going
Speaker 2: to be able to navigate interactions with other people much
Speaker 2: better than somebody with low intelligence. Part of that is
Speaker 2: not getting scanned by somebody by being able to be like,
Speaker 2: you're a scammer and I'm not going to send you
Speaker 2: a Walmart gift card now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's a trade I think that you can't
Speaker 1: necessarily teach, but is really beneficial to have as a human.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I admire people with high social intelligence because it's
Speaker 2: not just you know, being able to spot a scammer,
Speaker 2: it's being able to see the best in other people,
Speaker 2: and I think to bring out the best in other
Speaker 2: people and let them bring out the best in you.
Speaker 2: And that's just it's maybe in another life, maybe in
Speaker 2: the next lifetime.
Speaker 1: Oh buddy, I think you're great. They did another study
Speaker 1: at the University of Leicester where they found that childhood
Speaker 1: traumas can really affect you later in life in terms
Speaker 1: of gullibility, like any kind of bullying, death of a
Speaker 1: family member or something like that. It leads you more
Speaker 1: susceptible to fall for tricks later in life. And apparently
Speaker 1: they say it could be because that kind of trauma
Speaker 1: just makes it hard to trust your own judgments and
Speaker 1: you know, I guess everyone else's intent.
Speaker 2: For sure, and then some people because it's actually kind
Speaker 2: of counterintuitive if you think if you've gone through the
Speaker 2: school of hard knocks, I think is the way that
Speaker 2: the study put it. Yeah, you could think that they'd
Speaker 2: come out like much more world wary and like suspicious
Speaker 2: of people, and so they'd be less likely to fall
Speaker 2: first game. But no, instead, like you said, they just
Speaker 2: they question their own judgment for having gone through what
Speaker 2: they went through.
Speaker 1: So that's terrible.
Speaker 2: It is, It is very terrible. Childhood is just fraught.
Speaker 1: You know, it really is.
Speaker 2: It's a wonder any of us can function in any
Speaker 2: like real way.
Speaker 1: Oh I know. I mean we're pretty good parents, but
Speaker 1: I often think like, how are we messing her up?
Speaker 1: Because I know we are in some way.
Speaker 2: Yep, I mean I can't I can't imagine, Like that's
Speaker 2: got to just keep you up at nights sometimes if
Speaker 2: you think about it too much. You know, I sleep
Speaker 2: pretty good good you just wake up to throw up
Speaker 2: every hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, just try to limit that stuff as
Speaker 1: a parent, Like, there's you can't be perfect. I mean,
Speaker 1: my brother is a perfect parent, but there's only there's
Speaker 1: only one.
Speaker 2: Scott.
Speaker 1: Another thing I thought was interesting, and this makes total sense,
Speaker 1: is if you rely on your intuition a lot, you're
Speaker 1: a lot more vulnerable, vulnerable to being duped by something,
Speaker 1: just like you know, some people have a good gut,
Speaker 1: and some people think they have a good gut but
Speaker 1: do not.
Speaker 2: Yes. Another one that really stood out to me though
Speaker 2: that this this I would not have predicted, is the
Speaker 2: more cynical you are. Studies have found like this that
Speaker 2: the likelier you are to be gullible or duped. And
Speaker 2: the reason why actually makes time sense. Again, if you're cynical,
Speaker 2: you think you've got everything figured out, like you're just
Speaker 2: you think the world sucks and everybody's trying to take
Speaker 2: advantage of you, and the government's constantly screwing you over,
Speaker 2: and everyone's going to try to get an angle on you.
Speaker 2: That's cynicism, right, at least in the modern sense. And
Speaker 2: it's actually a lazy shortcut to experiencing reality because on
Speaker 2: the one hand, you lose out an opportunity costs you
Speaker 2: miss a lot of great stuff, Like you might not
Speaker 2: make friends that you could have made because you were
Speaker 2: suspicious of this stranger chatting you up at the outset
Speaker 2: or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But as far.
Speaker 2: As gullibility goes, if somebody comes along and talks to
Speaker 2: you in your language, they can pull one over on
Speaker 2: you much more easily because they are tapping into your cynicism,
Speaker 2: which again is just lazy shorthand for experiencing reality. It's
Speaker 2: based largely on intuition and supposition and not necessarily taking
Speaker 2: each experience and looking at it based on the facts.
Speaker 2: Is a unique thing. It all has this one cast
Speaker 2: to it that's the same, and that's just not how
Speaker 2: the world actually works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think you know, that kind of suggests
Speaker 1: that if there's like a country with an authoritarian leader
Speaker 1: in place, like the simple sort of easy to understand
Speaker 1: radical solutions that are pitched out oftentimes in those situations
Speaker 1: are very easy to fall for if you're a gullible person,
Speaker 1: because that itself is a mental shortcut. Well, we we
Speaker 1: just got to do.
Speaker 2: This for sure. And then conversely too, not being cynical
Speaker 2: requires way more brain power and thought and just participation
Speaker 2: than being cynical does. Like you have to actually like
Speaker 2: ask yourself like, is this true? What kind of source
Speaker 2: is this coming from? I might need to go do
Speaker 2: some research. I might need to ask people. It's just
Speaker 2: so much easier to be like, nope, there's screw me over.
Speaker 2: I don't even need to bother to look into that,
Speaker 2: because you're also defending yourself at the same time from
Speaker 2: getting taken advantage of again until somebody comes along and
Speaker 2: is talking your language, and then you will oftentimes fall
Speaker 2: for whatever they're saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, should we take a break, Yeah, all right, we'll
Speaker 1: take a break and talk about mood right after this.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. We promise to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about mood because The fact is you are not
Speaker 1: always gullible or always not gullible. Everybody could get due
Speaker 1: to that anytime from you know, that changes from day
Speaker 1: to day, sometimes from hour to hour, depending on a
Speaker 1: lot of factors, like mood. If you're really really tired,
Speaker 1: if you're super distracted, if you're upset, you may not
Speaker 1: notice something that can, you know, make you fall for
Speaker 1: a scam. Also, the same holds if you're in a
Speaker 1: really good mood. You know, if you're just feeling great
Speaker 1: about everything, you're like, yeah, yes to life, Yes to everything.
Speaker 1: There was a study in nineteen thirty eight by a
Speaker 1: researcher named Gregory Razran who found that giving a free
Speaker 1: lunch made people more receptive to a political message. And
Speaker 1: apparently that is sort of where like the sales lunch started.
Speaker 1: Taking people out to sell them something and feeding them
Speaker 1: you're more likely to close a deal. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: the same thing like golf course sales. Things like the
Speaker 1: salesperson's not out, they're beating the person in golf that
Speaker 1: they're selling to. I guarantee it. I don't know how
Speaker 1: that works, but I imagine you're letting them win and feel
Speaker 1: good about stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, think about how good you have to be to
Speaker 2: purposely lose at golf.
Speaker 1: Oh, I could play bad golf on purpose and I'm not.
Speaker 2: Really Yeah, okay, well I take that one back and
Speaker 2: on accident. So yes. But on the contrary, if you
Speaker 2: are an upset, if you're sad, if you're depressed, if
Speaker 2: you're mad, if you're in a low mood, you are
Speaker 2: actually more likely to pay attention to granular things. I
Speaker 2: think it actually kind of ties into rumination. You're just
Speaker 2: thinking about stuff. You're turned inwards. So if somebody comes
Speaker 2: along and tries to sell you something, yeah, that makes sense,
Speaker 2: it's going to be harder to slip it past you
Speaker 2: because you're paying attention more than somebody who's like, yeah, whatever,
Speaker 2: let's have another round.
Speaker 1: Right. So overall, if you think about people who might
Speaker 1: be goable, you might think, and you know, if you're
Speaker 1: going to stereotype it, like people like kids, very young people,
Speaker 1: very old people, and people that aren't very well educated obviously,
Speaker 1: but it's not necessarily true. What There is a lot
Speaker 1: of factors, one of which I mentioned earlier. You can
Speaker 1: get you know, a lot of skewed studies about the
Speaker 1: gullibility of someone who's older, because if you're older, you're
Speaker 1: more likely to have a cognitive ability that's literally keeping
Speaker 1: you from being able to determine whether something is true.
Speaker 1: But they've also conversely found that sometimes they're a little
Speaker 1: more protected because they're constantly have their children and everyone
Speaker 1: else saying like, no, no, no, watch out for scams. They're
Speaker 1: trying to scam you. Everyone's trying to scam you.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, so it's like a self fulfilling prophecy that
Speaker 2: they are less likely to be scammed because they're so vigilant.
Speaker 2: That's amazing to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there was this one study that kind of backed
Speaker 2: all this up from the University of Tirana, and they
Speaker 2: found they looked at adults sixty to ninety who handled
Speaker 2: their own finances. They didn't have any diagnosed cognitive issues
Speaker 2: use and they found that people who had reported being
Speaker 2: victims of a fraud, there was nothing that really happened,
Speaker 2: or there was no characteristic demographically anything like that that
Speaker 2: made them different from anybody else. The only thing that
Speaker 2: seemed to really kind of stick out was that they
Speaker 2: the people who had been scammed before were low had
Speaker 2: low conscientiousness one of the big five. They were less honest, humble,
Speaker 2: which is another another kind of personality trait from a
Speaker 2: different scale, and that from what I could see, the
Speaker 2: honesty thing means. They explained it like, you're if you
Speaker 2: are low on honesty, you're more likely to try something
Speaker 2: that might be a scam because you might get rich
Speaker 2: quick or something like that. You're more willing to take
Speaker 2: a shortcut, say, than somebody who would score higher on honesty,
Speaker 2: which you put you at greater risk. But that was
Speaker 2: about it. There wasn't like, you know, the older you
Speaker 2: get or the less educated you are in this group,
Speaker 2: you're more likely to get scammed. It was some other
Speaker 2: stuff entirely. But they found also that people who do
Speaker 2: experience cognitive decline do tend to get taken advantage of more,
Speaker 2: which is really messed up, sad, but it's true. And
Speaker 2: as a matter of fact, they've started to some people
Speaker 2: have started to push this idea like, if you fall
Speaker 2: for a scam, you should immediately be tested for Alzheimer's
Speaker 2: or dementia because there's a high correlation with getting scammed
Speaker 2: as an older person and the early early developments of
Speaker 2: cognitive decline. Yes, you got to feel terrible. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's bad enough to feel like you're getting scammed, but
Speaker 2: then to stop and be like, well, is this it
Speaker 2: for me in my mind?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely, I mean thankfully, nothing like that's ever happened
Speaker 1: to my parents. But it's you hear the stories all
Speaker 1: the time, and it's just you know, it's tragic and
Speaker 1: shameful for sure. There was a study in twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: that I thought was pretty interesting a woman named Monica
Speaker 1: t Witty, another Aussie when we talk about like being catfish,
Speaker 1: which is if I guess I threw that word out,
Speaker 1: assuming everyone knows that that's like when you get scammed
Speaker 1: in a sort of a romantic thing online by someone
Speaker 1: who's pretending to be someone they're not.
Speaker 2: Generally, we should do an episode on that sometimes because
Speaker 2: I just don't I don't. I mean I get it,
Speaker 2: but I don't understand like where it started or anything
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's put that down. That would be super interesting. Okay,
Speaker 1: do you remember the Notre Dame football player?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I thought he was. Isn't he like the Dolphins quarterback.
Speaker 1: Now or no?
Speaker 2: He?
Speaker 1: I don't think he's in the league anymore. He played
Speaker 1: the NFL for a little while, but he was a
Speaker 1: linebacker for Notre Dame that oh gotcha was famously catfished
Speaker 1: and like, you know, smart, handsome, young athlete guy. So
Speaker 1: it's not like just you know, the lonely loser in
Speaker 1: the basement that falls for stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Have you heard about the lonesome loser?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he still keeps on trying, man, little riverman so good.
Speaker 1: At twenty eighteen, Monica Whitty did one on sort of
Speaker 1: catfishing but really just romance scams is what they called it,
Speaker 1: and she said, if you fall for something like that,
Speaker 1: you obviously will be a little more impulsive in sensation seeking.
Speaker 1: And so if someone's building up about all these great
Speaker 1: stories and these big travels, and you know, it's always
Speaker 1: it's never just like wow, I just kind of sent
Speaker 1: around at home like they always present themselves as offering
Speaker 1: some new, exciting life, it seems like. But she also
Speaker 1: found that they were more highly educated than average, and Lvia,
Speaker 1: I think is on the money, kind of speculates that
Speaker 1: could be, and I think it's true. When we did
Speaker 1: our thing on online dating, it's generally people that are
Speaker 1: college educated that participate in online dating a little more statistically,
Speaker 1: But also maybe that if you're more educated. You just
Speaker 1: think like, I'm not going to fall for countfishing. I
Speaker 1: know all about that, and this is not that right,
Speaker 1: over confidence, right, and then you're on that hook.
Speaker 2: And then another thing about being online too. The Better
Speaker 2: Business Bureau back in twoy fifteen, I think they looked
Speaker 2: at a I guess a bunch of their like scam
Speaker 2: complaints that came in just to see who reported them,
Speaker 2: and they found that people between twenty five and thirty
Speaker 2: five were more likely to lose money on a scam
Speaker 2: than older people, which is totally contrary to what people
Speaker 2: think of when they think of people who get scammed.
Speaker 2: And one of the explanations that they came up with is,
Speaker 2: in part, younger people are just online more so they're
Speaker 2: just more likely by the numbers, to have scams presented
Speaker 2: to them, which means that they're more likely to probably
Speaker 2: go for a scam than say, people who are online
Speaker 2: less right.
Speaker 1: I agree with that in the old days. I think
Speaker 1: that's changing because I've never seen a generation as phone
Speaker 1: addicted as boomers are smart.
Speaker 2: Oh really good?
Speaker 1: Oh man, they have a lot of boomers, do you
Speaker 1: They have gen Z beat every boomer I know, just
Speaker 1: obsessively stares at their phone and looks things up and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought they all had like flip phones that
Speaker 2: only dial numbers.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, they want to show you all the
Speaker 1: information in the moment.
Speaker 2: I got it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got in the middle of dinner at a
Speaker 1: nice restaurant. Even.
Speaker 2: I guess I've not experienced.
Speaker 1: That, but I do think that that generally is true. Okay,
Speaker 1: I just want to take a shot at boomers.
Speaker 2: Well, then that makes it, That makes it even less
Speaker 2: understandable that twenty five to thirty five year olds would
Speaker 2: be more likely to be scammed. I don't know, maybe
Speaker 2: that generation is just more trusting these days or something
Speaker 2: like that, or I actually I got to take that back, because,
Speaker 2: as we'll see, trusting, being trusting is not necessarily corely
Speaker 2: with being gullible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which I think we'll get to in a minute
Speaker 1: before or after the next break. But can we talk
Speaker 1: about science, because this is one thing. When I sent
Speaker 1: Livit the idea, I was like, I think I read
Speaker 1: an article about scientists being gullible, and I was like, no,
Speaker 1: not scientists. But it turns out they very much can
Speaker 1: be because a lot of times when you are that's
Speaker 1: well versed in a field, you might you might kind
Speaker 1: of think you know it all and like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I know what I'm doing, and so you might be
Speaker 1: more apt to believe a result that isn't accurate because
Speaker 1: you think you did it the right way. Like that's
Speaker 1: just one aspect of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Another aspect is, like you said, people people in
Speaker 2: science typically know a tremendous amount about their field, but
Speaker 2: they can make a mistake and think that that understanding,
Speaker 2: that depth of understanding will just apply to other fields
Speaker 2: as well if they just don't know as much about Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's another way they can fall prey to it.
Speaker 2: But also scientists like to be right as much as
Speaker 2: anybody else. And you know, I don't remember what episode
Speaker 2: we did this, and I think it was about the
Speaker 2: the just reproducibility crisis in science papers if I remember correctly.
Speaker 2: But just how like the scientists don't set up experiments
Speaker 2: to disprove their hypothesis. They set them up to prove
Speaker 2: their hypothesis. That's how you get published, that's how you
Speaker 2: get celebrated. Like nobody wants to hear about you failing,
Speaker 2: even though that's what science is meant to be. That's
Speaker 2: a that's a part of it as well, just wanting
Speaker 2: to be right. So if somebody comes along, it's like, yep,
Speaker 2: you're right, let's let's uh, let's use that to explain
Speaker 2: this other thing that's actually not true. The scientists might
Speaker 2: go along with it because if it is true, then
Speaker 2: it will prove their their hypothesis and make them very famous,
Speaker 2: and they'll probably end up having an HBO movie made.
Speaker 1: Well, that was probably a scientific method. Huh.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe, but I mean we definitely talked about papers
Speaker 2: just being some of them just being outright fraudulent because
Speaker 2: their experiments are set up incorrectly. It could have been
Speaker 2: scientific method.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or like the little student in Rushmore that faked
Speaker 1: the results.
Speaker 2: I remember that part.
Speaker 1: You know, Max has his sort of little budding girlfriend
Speaker 1: at the end and he says something about she won
Speaker 1: some science award and I think she had to give
Speaker 1: it back or something, and she said, He's like why,
Speaker 1: she said, I faked the results. It didn't work, so
Speaker 1: I faked it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I thought that was so her line where she
Speaker 2: tells Bill Murray that she won't dance with them, it
Speaker 2: was a little out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 2: A little harsh. I think is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who didn't want to dance with Bill Murray?
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 1: You? And Lucy Lou?
Speaker 2: All right, wait, Lucy Lou doesn't or does want to
Speaker 2: dance with Bill Murray.
Speaker 1: No, I don't think she does. They were on Charlie's
Speaker 1: Angels together and had some words.
Speaker 2: Oh that's right, I remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I doubt she's dancing with Bill. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: should we take a break? Wait?
Speaker 2: I just before we go to a break, I was
Speaker 2: saying I would like to dance with Bill Murray. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: I just want to make sure that no one walks
Speaker 2: away to this ad break thinking that I don't want
Speaker 2: to dance with Bill Murray.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was being sort of a opposite with my
Speaker 1: Lucy lu joke. Okay, this, you know I'm not firing
Speaker 1: on all cylinders. I'm doing my best.
Speaker 2: I'm not either, apparently.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll be right back and Josh will lead
Speaker 1: off with a little bit on trust.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're back, everybody. And I mentioned before that trust
Speaker 2: is not necessarily correlated with gullibility, and I love that.
Speaker 2: That just makes me feel good about the world again.
Speaker 1: You know, you can trust people and think the best
Speaker 1: of people and still not be gullible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so we'll kind of explain why. But there
Speaker 2: have been study after study after study that basically say, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's actually true, Like you can have a high level
Speaker 2: of trust, be tested for that kind of thing, and
Speaker 2: you are not more likely to be gible. And in fact,
Speaker 2: it seems that if you are a higher trusting person,
Speaker 2: you're actually less likely to be gible compared to say,
Speaker 2: like the cynic right, Like, there's this researcher named Toshio
Speaker 2: Yamagishi who's considered one of the most prominent researchers in
Speaker 2: glibility and trust out of Kaido University. I know how
Speaker 2: to say, Hokkaido. I don't know why I had trouble
Speaker 2: with that at first, but one of the things that
Speaker 2: Yamagishi did in the nineteen nineth these was to tell
Speaker 2: people who scored high in trusting this and other people
Speaker 2: who scored low about the story of Bill and Chuck.
Speaker 2: I think you should take it because Bill's got a
Speaker 2: great story.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I kind of understand this, but not one hundred percent,
Speaker 1: but I think I get it. So what he would
Speaker 1: say is Bill, your friend. Bill stated at a hotel
Speaker 1: for a week, he was only charged one day. Do
Speaker 1: you think he would tell the cashier about this even
Speaker 1: though there's like no chance, let's say there's no chance
Speaker 1: of him getting caught later on, do you think he
Speaker 1: would do that? And people who scored high on their
Speaker 1: trustworthy score, like people who were trustworthy, they were more
Speaker 1: likely to say that Bill would do the honest thing.
Speaker 1: But when he added in a twist here, which is
Speaker 1: to tell them some negative things about Bill, like by
Speaker 1: the way, just want to let you know, Bill also
Speaker 1: cut in line. The other day.
Speaker 2: He also makes his steps on feel stupid.
Speaker 1: He also makes his steps on feel stupid. But if
Speaker 1: the added in a couple of nuggets like that negative
Speaker 1: things about Bill, the people who had high trust in
Speaker 1: people generally put a lot more weight on that additional
Speaker 1: information than the other people did the people that were
Speaker 1: low and trustworthiness.
Speaker 2: Right, But the bottom line was even with positive information
Speaker 2: like Bill litard, but he also cut in line. If
Speaker 2: you took all of the tallies, you would see that
Speaker 2: people who are low in trusting others and people who
Speaker 2: are high in trusting others they had about the same scores.
Speaker 2: So this research from yam Magishi and others shows that
Speaker 2: you can trust other people and it doesn't open you
Speaker 2: up to being taken advantage of. And that just doesn't
Speaker 2: make any sense because just the idea of being gullible
Speaker 2: means that you're trusting what somebody else is saying. That's
Speaker 2: the popular conception of it. But as we've seen, really
Speaker 2: the idea of gullibility is trusting what somebody says because
Speaker 2: you either don't care enough to go figure it out yourself,
Speaker 2: because you don't feel like thinking for yourself, because what
Speaker 2: they're saying confirms your biased beliefs, not that you just
Speaker 2: trust people in general. And the explanation that I saw
Speaker 2: that really kind of drives it home for me, Chuck,
Speaker 2: is that people who have high trust are also more discerning,
Speaker 2: so they would have probably a better social intelligence than
Speaker 2: people who don't trust as much. And that makes sense
Speaker 2: because if you don't trust people like the cynic, you're
Speaker 2: actually protecting yourself. You're guarding yourself. You know that you
Speaker 2: are probably not as discerning as other people, and so
Speaker 2: rather than get yourself into trouble time and time again,
Speaker 2: you just keep people at arms length, you don't really
Speaker 2: trust them, whereas if you are high trusting you are
Speaker 2: better at discerning, And that either means that because you're
Speaker 2: good at discerning, you have the freedom to trust other
Speaker 2: people because you can be confident in your judgment of
Speaker 2: other people and you're probably not going to be taken
Speaker 2: advantage of. Or if you are just a trusting person
Speaker 2: by nature, you have to have a higher discernment or
Speaker 2: else you're going to be taken advantage of. Either way,
Speaker 2: high discernment and high trust go hand in hand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that can be a very freeing thing. And
Speaker 1: that's how Yamagishi sort of thought about it when he
Speaker 1: talked about his emancipation theory, which is, if you're trusting,
Speaker 1: you're kind of or if you're untrusting, I guess you're
Speaker 1: kind of shackled in a way because you'll you may
Speaker 1: just be stuck in a place because why why hire
Speaker 1: a different person to do it, because they're just going
Speaker 1: to be a scammer two and so you can get
Speaker 1: stuck in this cycle. But if you free yourself from
Speaker 1: that with his emancipation theory, and you break those shackles
Speaker 1: and you start trusting people, it makes you much more
Speaker 1: apt to make a positive change in life because you
Speaker 1: trust somebody or something or some situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because at base, you can go through life not
Speaker 2: trusting other people, and you can make it all the
Speaker 2: way to old age and die at pretty much the
Speaker 2: the same age that you would have had you trusted people.
Speaker 2: But you're again, you're missing out. There's opportunity costs to
Speaker 2: not trusting other people that people who do trust other
Speaker 2: people are not missing out on, and you're just not
Speaker 2: connected as socially, and research after research after research shows
Speaker 2: that social connections are like the number one predictor of
Speaker 2: living to a healthy older age. So you're actually robbing
Speaker 2: yourself by just not trusting other people. But again, it's
Speaker 2: kind of understandable if you were taught that your judgment
Speaker 2: is questionable, either through trauma, through a jerk stepdad, or whatever,
Speaker 2: it's understandable. And I'm not sure if that's something that
Speaker 2: you can learn to break out of, although I sincerely
Speaker 2: hope it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, there are people that think we are
Speaker 1: actually not as gullible as everyone thinks. There's this writer,
Speaker 1: Hugo Mercier, who wrote a book in twenty twenty called
Speaker 1: Not Born Yesterday. Great title for a book like that,
Speaker 1: and he's like people are less gullible than we think,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of like criteria people used
Speaker 1: to work out if they're if they believe something or not,
Speaker 1: and we're better at it than we all think. We
Speaker 1: are like a lot most people, or I guess in
Speaker 1: his idea, most people are actually looking for well informed
Speaker 1: or well intentioned information, or if it's a has logic
Speaker 1: to it, if it's logically strong, or you know. Maybe
Speaker 1: people are less like this, which is I'm just going
Speaker 1: to accept something or I'm sorry, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: accept something as a new piece of information because it's
Speaker 1: not something that I have found to be true. He
Speaker 1: argues that people are less like that than they say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and people also judge other people to be more
Speaker 2: likely to be duped than they are more gullible than
Speaker 2: they are. But yeah, his whole message is like, no,
Speaker 2: we're actually as a as a group, as a species,
Speaker 2: not all that gulible. What appears to be gullibility is
Speaker 2: actually just somebody not caring enough to argue a point,
Speaker 2: or they're accepting information but they're hanging on to it loosely. Olivia,
Speaker 2: I thought this is awesome. She pointed out that if
Speaker 2: you are shown like an AI generated baby peacock that
Speaker 2: looks super cute and has huge eyes and is colorful,
Speaker 2: and it is nothing like what a baby peacock really
Speaker 2: looks like. If you're not like a peacock researcher or
Speaker 2: your job doesn't depend on positively identifying baby peacocks, it
Speaker 2: doesn't really matter if you think that that's what they
Speaker 2: look like, because you're holding onto it loosely enough that
Speaker 2: if somebody comes along and it says that's not what
Speaker 2: baby peacocks actually look like, you're not going to like,
Speaker 2: that's not the hill you're going to die on. You're
Speaker 2: going to be like, oh, that's crazy what AI can do?
Speaker 2: Or oh it got me, or or just be like, great,
Speaker 2: I now know what baby peacocks look like. And that's
Speaker 2: his point is that's not gullibility. That's just not stopping
Speaker 2: to analyze, you know, whether it's true or not, because
Speaker 2: it just isn't that important, right.
Speaker 1: Then, Yeah, exactly. He also points out in the book
Speaker 1: when it comes to like propaganda, that propaganda isn't something
Speaker 1: that can usually really completely change someone's mind. What propaganda
Speaker 1: is good at is taking someone who already has those
Speaker 1: beliefs and putting them on turbo speed and reinforcing them
Speaker 1: even like the Nazi propaganda machine. You know, he contends,
Speaker 1: probably wasn't making someone anti semitic, but if you were
Speaker 1: anti Semitic, then it really drove you down that road
Speaker 1: at a pretty fast pace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it came at your beliefs and said, yep,
Speaker 2: go for it. Like that's what that's the official line now,
Speaker 2: is anti semitism.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And also similarly, political ads don't really work.
Speaker 1: That's what they say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that makes me wonder though, if that's just
Speaker 2: being suspicious of the messenger because of polarization, that you're
Speaker 2: not gonna be like, hmmm, let's hear what this opposing
Speaker 2: political party has to say about medicare I'm really interested.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna keep an open mind. No, it's like this
Speaker 2: message is from the opposing party. I'm just gonna laugh
Speaker 2: at it because it's just so full of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think political ads are terrible and
Speaker 1: ridiculous and so over valued, but I feel like these
Speaker 1: days it's less like it's more just beating that drum
Speaker 1: of like aren't you mad? Aren't you mad? Go vote?
Speaker 1: Go vote?
Speaker 2: I know, man.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The thing is, though, is this. None of this is
Speaker 2: to say that they're like, people don't get scammed. There's
Speaker 2: a group called the Global Anti Scam Alliance, which sounds
Speaker 2: like a scam itself. They came up with the report,
Speaker 2: doesn't it. They came up with a report that found
Speaker 2: that worldwide, people lose a trillion dollars to scams every year. Man,
Speaker 2: that's a lot of money. But some of these same
Speaker 2: researchers are like, hey, there's actually some short like easy
Speaker 2: stuff you can walk around in your head with to
Speaker 2: use to apply to new information to protect from being
Speaker 2: gold which is actually a word.
Speaker 1: Let's hear it. Do you have a list?
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of them is. The first step is to
Speaker 2: admit that you're as susceptible to being scammed as anybody else.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, just a reality check. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, it also puts the kibosh on being overconfident, which
Speaker 2: again can increase your chance of being duped.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Don't make emotional decisions like we talked about, keep a
Speaker 2: lid on impulsivity. Don't respond to like act now supplies
Speaker 2: are running out kind of like come ons. Don't respond
Speaker 2: to false scarcity, like remember people hoarding toilet paper. Yeah, oh, Yeah,
Speaker 2: those are emotional decisions. You want to just say cool
Speaker 2: and level headed. Another one is asked questions, ask for
Speaker 2: more information, don't be afraid to look dumb. That's a
Speaker 2: that's a big one. Yeah, that's a big one. And
Speaker 2: then consider the source. Is there any supporting information? And
Speaker 2: when you put all together, you are probably going to
Speaker 2: come up with a good decision or understanding. And if
Speaker 2: you're being gold by somebody that's a real word, you
Speaker 2: are probably going to say, I don't believe what you're saying. You, sir,
Speaker 2: are a cad and a scoundrel. Right, please get out
Speaker 2: of my face before I smack you with my glove
Speaker 2: and we.
Speaker 1: Have to duel. We get I'm sure anyone who works
Speaker 1: where big companies get these, and maybe even small companies
Speaker 1: do this. But when they send out the the test,
Speaker 1: like the test phishing emails, and then like the next day,
Speaker 1: you'll get an email that's like did you fall for it?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: It's always I'm always nervous. I'm like, oh God, did
Speaker 1: I click on that thing that you know from you know,
Speaker 1: Facebook dot gold dot au. It's usually there in the
Speaker 1: email address, you know.
Speaker 2: Well, at least the next day when they send out
Speaker 2: the email. They ask if you fell for it. They
Speaker 2: don't show like a list with.
Speaker 1: Prices of all the people who did command for it.
Speaker 1: They should do that, just pictures of everyone.
Speaker 2: You got anything else?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. I think you know we did
Speaker 1: a pretty good job on this one.
Speaker 2: I agree, and that is no fooling. And if you
Speaker 2: want to know more about gullibility, go do some research
Speaker 2: yourself on it. That's kind of the point of not
Speaker 2: being gold, which is a real word. And since I
Speaker 2: said that, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: This is a great current listener mail from yesterday's I'm
Speaker 1: Sorry Thursday is rather episode yesterday to us on automats right, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: two friends and I gave each other a graduation present
Speaker 1: from high school in nineteen seventy and spent a week
Speaker 1: by ourselves in New York where we went to the Automat.
Speaker 1: And it was still great in seventy four years later.
Speaker 1: This gets so good. Four years later, as a senior
Speaker 1: in college, a group of us did an independent study
Speaker 1: in humor and music as an excuse to do a
Speaker 1: concert of Bach stuff. I got to be the soloist
Speaker 1: in the Concerto for horn and hard art nice and
Speaker 1: he sent a video. Unfortunately it was just audio. I
Speaker 1: mean it sound like a hoot, and really it was great,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to see everything because here's what they did.
Speaker 1: This piece is for orchestra and also a table filled
Speaker 1: with various household items to play. Ideally they should have
Speaker 1: been picked out of an automat on stage in order
Speaker 1: to play them. However, this is beyond our set construction abilities.
Speaker 1: We did have the recommended We did at least have
Speaker 1: the recommended banner overhead reading in Latin, less work for
Speaker 1: mother along with trying to master the rather challenging music.
Speaker 1: It involved me running around Gettysburg with a pitch pipe,
Speaker 1: trying to find bell's pots, uga horns, and lots of
Speaker 1: other items that played specific notes. This is so great.
Speaker 1: Thanks for speaking those wonder sparking those wonderful memories. I
Speaker 1: discovered you during COVID and have been an extremely faithful
Speaker 1: listener ever since. And that is from the Reverend doctor
Speaker 1: Mark Oldenburg steck Miller, Professor Emeritus of the Art of
Speaker 1: Worship and the music chair at Getty's United Lutheran Semmetary.
Speaker 1: Pronounce him wow.
Speaker 2: Also the most interesting person we know.
Speaker 1: Now totally Reverend Mark. Write in more please the doctor,
Speaker 1: Reverend Mark, the doctor Reverend esquire the Reverend doctor.
Speaker 2: Sorry either way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty impressive.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Mark. I'm just gonna call you Mark
Speaker 2: for now because I feel like we're on a first
Speaker 2: name basis. That was a train email. Great story and
Speaker 2: if you want to see if you can top Mark,
Speaker 2: you can send us an email too. Send it off
Speaker 2: to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
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