Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to do Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 2: By name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: the fourth and final part in our series on cynicism.
Speaker 3: There has been a light at the end of the tunnel,
Speaker 3: and we finally reached it. So in Part one, we
Speaker 3: defined cynicism as the tendency to believe that people are bad, selfish,
Speaker 3: and untrustworthy, and we distinguished this modern definition from other
Speaker 3: concepts like the cynic philosophy of ancient Greece, which is
Speaker 3: a whole different thing, and from similar but distinct concepts
Speaker 3: like pessimism. We also looked at research on the correlates
Speaker 3: of cynicism across a bunch of domains of life, from
Speaker 3: health to career and all kinds of things, and discovered
Speaker 3: that being highly cynical tends to have overwhelmingly negative effect
Speaker 3: on a person's life. In Part two, we focused primarily
Speaker 3: on the so called cynical genius illusion. The short version
Speaker 3: of this is that while people might not necessarily like
Speaker 3: highly cynical people for whatever reason, we tend to assume
Speaker 3: that they are smart and competent in cognitive domains, conforming
Speaker 3: to the Sherlock Holmes archetype. However, experiments showed that this
Speaker 3: is not actually the case. On average, highly cynical people
Speaker 3: are not smarter than everybody else, and if anything, the
Speaker 3: correlation usually goes the other way, And so we talked
Speaker 3: about possible reasons for this effect, and also talked about
Speaker 3: the question of what, if anything, is the actual benefit
Speaker 3: of generalized cynicism. It seems like one answer is that
Speaker 3: if you are not very skilled at telling the difference
Speaker 3: between a trustworthy situation and an untrustworthy one, generalized cynicism
Speaker 3: may protect you from catastrophic misplacements of trust, but again
Speaker 3: great cost to your well being and at the price
Speaker 3: of many lost opportunities to benefit from trust and cooperation.
Speaker 3: In Part three, we talked about the role of cynicism
Speaker 3: in politics, including the idea that cynicism has been on
Speaker 3: the rise in many democracies around the world for a
Speaker 3: possible number of reasons, one influence maybe being the use
Speaker 3: of social media. We also talked about research on the
Speaker 3: phenomenon of political cynicism, in particular as distinct from just
Speaker 3: general social cynicism or from simple distrust or skepticism of politicians,
Speaker 3: and we got into some observed characteristics of how cynicism
Speaker 3: manifests in political participation. We also talked about how people
Speaker 3: may use a mask of cynical rhetoric about politics in
Speaker 3: order to influence how they're perceived by others, maybe to
Speaker 3: sort of cover up the fact that you maybe don't
Speaker 3: know a lot about what you're talking about, and we
Speaker 3: discussed the link between cynicism and a preference for conspiracy
Speaker 3: based explanation.
Speaker 2: Another thing we discussed that ties into this episode a
Speaker 2: little bit is the idea that escape from cynicism in
Speaker 2: the modern sense, one way to escape from it would
Speaker 2: be to push through to a point of true disenchantment
Speaker 2: and essentially become an ancient cynic, a capital C cynic
Speaker 2: in the philosophical sense. Now, we'll see how well that
Speaker 2: idea pans out with what we have to talk about today.
Speaker 2: But to be clear, we're not recommending this is a
Speaker 2: standard solution to any cynicism you're wrestling with in your life.
Speaker 2: It's more interesting from the standpoint of understanding what lowercase
Speaker 2: cynicism and capital C cynicism is. So I think it's
Speaker 2: an interesting take in that regard, but not necessarily something
Speaker 2: you want to try for yourself. Like, the answer is
Speaker 2: not to I think we can state pretty clearly here.
Speaker 2: Don't try to become more cynical about life in order
Speaker 2: to reach some point of equilibrium.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think maybe I see what the author you
Speaker 3: were citing when you brought this up is getting at
Speaker 3: with the idea of a sort of total disenchantment leading
Speaker 3: to a freedom to once again embrace virtue. I mean
Speaker 3: that almost seems a kind of Buddhist in a way, like,
Speaker 3: you know, like losing your love for the things of
Speaker 3: the world, allowing you to find like different higher levels
Speaker 3: of appreciation. But I question to what extent that kind
Speaker 3: of enlightened disenchantment capital C cynicism can actually be reached
Speaker 3: just by increasing your lowercase C cynicism along the standard dimension,
Speaker 3: you know, like becoming even less and less trustful. I
Speaker 3: don't know if that eventually gets you to capital C cynicism.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think its primary purpose is to help us understand
Speaker 2: the connections between ancient cynicism and modern cynicism, rather than
Speaker 2: give us an approach for fixing our own lives.
Speaker 3: Now, given everything that we've talked about so far. One
Speaker 3: of the things, the main things we wanted to talk
Speaker 3: about today was the question of where cynicism comes from.
Speaker 3: What can we understand about its origins within a culture
Speaker 3: and within a person, how it grows and spreads, and
Speaker 3: thus how can it be counteracted. Is there anything we
Speaker 3: really know about how to stop the growth of cynicism.
Speaker 3: I think this is a field where, you know, we
Speaker 3: don't have really strong conclusions yet, but there are some
Speaker 3: good starting points based on research. And one paper that
Speaker 3: I came across that addresses this question pretty directly was
Speaker 3: published in twenty twenty three in the journal Trends in
Speaker 3: Cognitive Sciences by a pair of researchers from the Stanford
Speaker 3: Psychology Department named Eric Neuman and Jamil Zaki. And this
Speaker 3: paper is called Toward a Social Psychology of Cynicism. So
Speaker 3: the authors begin this paper by addressing what they called
Speaker 3: the cynicism paradox. Cynicism quote tracks numerous negative outcomes, and
Speaker 3: yet many people are cynical. And so this is really
Speaker 3: something we've already been talking about this series, but kind
Speaker 3: of with a different framing. We've been asking the question
Speaker 3: if cynicism is clearly so bad for our lives? Is
Speaker 3: there any compensating benefit? Because if it's harmful and lots
Speaker 3: of people are highly cynical anyway, shouldn't you think there's
Speaker 3: probably some kind of trade off that makes it worth
Speaker 3: the cost. We've already mentioned several specific ways or scenarios
Speaker 3: in which it might be adaptive, but then again, it
Speaker 3: might just be one of those things that is just
Speaker 3: plain bad for us but happens anyway, like, for example, depression.
Speaker 3: You might be able to explain how depression grows out
Speaker 3: of biological mechanisms that are evolved in order to be
Speaker 3: adaptive for us, but you don't have to assume that
Speaker 3: depression itself has benefits overall. It's just like something's gone
Speaker 3: wrong and it's bad for us. It's possible. Cynicism is
Speaker 3: usually the same way. But the authors here sort of
Speaker 3: take the same idea and they frame it as this
Speaker 3: paradox cynicism hurts the cynic and yet cynicism seems to
Speaker 3: spread and bloom a new year after year. And so
Speaker 3: the authors say, given the observation of the cynicism paradox,
Speaker 3: research within social psychology should focus on a couple of
Speaker 3: questions where cynicism comes from, and how it spreads, and
Speaker 3: how can it be countered, diminished or alleviated. So first
Speaker 3: the question what explains cynicism? Where does it come from?
Speaker 3: First they address the possibility, what if the cynic is right.
Speaker 3: We've talked about this from a number of angles. Maybe
Speaker 3: cynicism is just an accurate assessment based on observations of
Speaker 3: the world. In the words of the author's quote, perhaps
Speaker 3: it reflects a realistic perception of the suffering caused by
Speaker 3: human self interest. But we've already explored research casting serious
Speaker 3: doubt on this, For example, the various experiments showing that
Speaker 3: people tend to grossly overestimate the selfishness and treachery of strangers.
Speaker 3: Most people in most types of situations are actually pretty trustworthy.
Speaker 3: And the authors seem to agree with this conclusion, and
Speaker 3: so instead they identify three ways that they think cynicism arises.
Speaker 3: It's not necessarily that it is an accurate model of
Speaker 3: the world. But instead quote, we will argue that people
Speaker 3: often overestimate self interest, create it through their expectations, or
Speaker 3: overstate their own to not appear naive. Now, the authors
Speaker 3: here acknowledged that, of course cynicism can be and often
Speaker 3: is responsive to observations.
Speaker 4: Of the real world.
Speaker 3: For example, this is an experimental finding. We become more
Speaker 3: cynical when we witness people behaving selfishly. If you do
Speaker 3: an experiment where you stage people catching somebody doing something
Speaker 3: selfish and untrustworthy, that actually makes us less likely to trust.
Speaker 3: So we've witnessed an example that trust, you know, did
Speaker 3: not turn out well, and it affects our baseline in
Speaker 3: a way, at least within the situation, we've become less trusting.
Speaker 3: But jumping off of this, they say that we can easily,
Speaker 3: because of various psychological phenomena, biases, and so forth, become
Speaker 3: kind of trapped in an unrealistically cynical mindset that is
Speaker 3: not a good model of how the world usually works
Speaker 3: and brings with it all the harms we've talked about.
Speaker 3: And you know, you can think about this in a
Speaker 3: number of different psychological domains. Your initial tendency is based
Speaker 3: on an observation, like you do see a betrayal or
Speaker 3: an example of somebody acting selfishly, but then you form
Speaker 3: an inaccurate, totalizing worldview based on that one salient example.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's this really insightful table that they cite here
Speaker 2: that I've found very interesting with these different categories of cynicism,
Speaker 2: group cynicism, institutional cynicism, in general cynicism, and this kind
Speaker 2: of model for how things might intensify. So, like one
Speaker 2: example they include is a young colleague betrays an older
Speaker 2: one in a team project. What does the older colleague conclude?
Speaker 2: And so the initial cynicism is, well, young people are
Speaker 2: self interested, and then that's the group's cynicism. Then the
Speaker 2: institutional cynicism is people in the workplace are self interested,
Speaker 2: and then the general cynicism is people are self interested.
Speaker 2: And so you can imagine like a blossoming of cynicism
Speaker 2: more or less along these these routes, you know, from
Speaker 2: being highly specific to you know, a particular encounter, to
Speaker 2: being increasing generalities about the way the world works.
Speaker 3: That's an interesting point. Yeah, And in fact, though, the
Speaker 3: cynicism may be inaccurate at every single stage in this progression.
Speaker 3: So like let's say I observe Johnny doing something selfish
Speaker 3: in one instance, and I start by saying Johnny is
Speaker 3: an untrustworthy person. That may not actually be true about Johnny.
Speaker 3: Maybe I just caught him at his worst moment, But
Speaker 3: it might be true about Johnny. Then I abstract it
Speaker 3: to some group Johnny belongs to. For some reason, his
Speaker 3: membership in a particular group is meaningful to me, and
Speaker 3: so I see him as representative of that group and
Speaker 3: apply the untrustworthiness to the whole group. And then I
Speaker 3: could branch out even further to some institution in which
Speaker 3: Johnny exists, and then possibly to all of humankind. But
Speaker 3: at every single level, it's possible you are actually not
Speaker 3: drawing a good generalization from observing one instance of behavior.
Speaker 2: This made me think about cynicism on The Simpsons, particularly
Speaker 2: as it relates to Homer Simpson. There's a famous episode
Speaker 2: from the Golden Age of Simpson's episodes in which we
Speaker 2: kind of get an origin story for homer cynicism. It's
Speaker 2: the City of New York Versus Homer, in which a
Speaker 2: young and optimistic Homer Simpson experiences a number of betrayals
Speaker 2: and hostilities upon visiting the Big Apple.
Speaker 3: We talked about this episode in our Weird House Cinema
Speaker 3: on the Face Behind the Mask, because Peter Lourie has
Speaker 3: the exact same experience.
Speaker 2: Yes, the exact same experience, and in this episode we
Speaker 2: see how it leads to an extremely cynical view of
Speaker 2: New York and New Yorkers. But you could also argue
Speaker 2: that it perhaps underlines the general anger in cynicism that
Speaker 2: comes to define Homer, at least in these early classic
Speaker 2: seasons of the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, though it is interesting how malleable Homer's character is,
Speaker 3: and yet he still feels like a cohesive character, Like
Speaker 3: sometimes Homer is very, very trusting and other times he's
Speaker 3: very cynical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's changed a lot over the years. I mean
Speaker 2: not in a character development way, but just in the
Speaker 2: realities of the show being on television this long, with
Speaker 2: this many different writers over the years. Various commentators have
Speaker 2: discussed how, in the early sense, so certainly the golden
Speaker 2: age of the Simpsons, you have this mix of cynicism
Speaker 2: and heart that kind of balances everything out. But the
Speaker 2: cynicism and melancholy have been observed to be particularly strong
Speaker 2: during that first season, and then they move away from that,
Speaker 2: and then eventually they kind of move away from homer
Speaker 2: cynicism and anger in general and double down on his
Speaker 2: frankness and his stupidity, so he becomes you know, it's
Speaker 2: more about like the dumb jokes in the Gullible Homer
Speaker 2: as we proceed. But if you look at the New
Speaker 2: York episode, and you look at some of these episodes
Speaker 2: from the from like the nineteen nineties, you can easily
Speaker 2: fill out a chart watching how we have a situation
Speaker 2: where Homer encounters selfish people in New York, and then
Speaker 2: this fosters into a worldview that, well, all New Yorkers
Speaker 2: are selfish, and then maybe all people are selfish as well.
Speaker 2: Like you can imagine it being like the thing, it
Speaker 2: blossoms out into Homer's general cynicism.
Speaker 3: Right, this is a great comparison. So, yeah, it begins
Speaker 3: as the observation of an individual action or behavior, and
Speaker 3: then generalizing to the person who did that, then the
Speaker 3: group to whom that person belongs, and then to the
Speaker 3: society at large, and then to all of humankind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and tell you you're the type of person who's like,
Speaker 2: of course I'm going to steal roadside sugar because anyone
Speaker 2: else would do the same thing.
Speaker 3: Yes, So anyway, in this paper, the authors try to
Speaker 3: formulate a model of how cynicism can spread at three
Speaker 3: different levels of social interaction. So one is through interactions
Speaker 3: at the interpersonal level between two people. The next is
Speaker 3: at the intra group level within groups, and then finally
Speaker 3: at the inter group level between in groups. So regarding
Speaker 3: the interpersonal level of cynicism of formation, the authors raise
Speaker 3: the question, what if at the interpersonal level, cynicism is
Speaker 3: a self fulfilling prophecy, In other words, an initially false belief,
Speaker 3: or at least a belief not based on evidence, whether
Speaker 3: whether true or false, an initially false belief that influences
Speaker 3: the behavior of the believer in such a way that
Speaker 3: they make the world conform to the way they believe
Speaker 3: it is. And psychological research has identified a bunch of
Speaker 3: dynamics like this. Self fulfilling prophecies show up in all kinds.
Speaker 4: Of ways in our behavior.
Speaker 3: For example, some experiments have found that if you treat
Speaker 3: somebody in a way that indicates you have high expectations
Speaker 3: of their competence, it can actually make them more competent.
Speaker 3: And obviously there would be limits to effects like this.
Speaker 3: You know, you can't just, you know, like hand, somebody
Speaker 3: who knows no thing about medicine a scalpel and say
Speaker 3: I believe in you go do the surgery. You know,
Speaker 3: they're probably not going to know what to do. But
Speaker 3: within certain limits, of a plausible knowledge and behavior. You
Speaker 3: can imagine how having somebody else show confidence in you
Speaker 3: can make you more confident in yourself, maybe make you
Speaker 3: less nervous, increase your performance certain types of jobs, or
Speaker 3: maybe having somebody treat you as competent makes you more conscientious,
Speaker 3: more careful to do a good job so as not
Speaker 3: to disappoint them, and so forth, and so then the
Speaker 3: author say quote, just like expectations about competence, cynical expectations
Speaker 3: of moral character can become self fulfilling. So examples of
Speaker 3: this remember the trust based investing game that we talked
Speaker 3: about in previous episodes in the series, where I am
Speaker 3: given some money and then I have the option to
Speaker 3: either keep the money or hand it over to a stranger,
Speaker 3: at which point the money gets quadrupled. So maybe I
Speaker 3: initially get five dollars, if I hand it to the stranger,
Speaker 3: it becomes twenty dollars. And then the stranger has the
Speaker 3: option to either keep all of the money for themselves
Speaker 3: or split the money and give me back ten dollars,
Speaker 3: so we both get ten and I double my initial investment.
Speaker 3: This was one of the experiments that found strangers almost
Speaker 3: always honor the investors trust and give half the money back.
Speaker 3: But people greatly underestimated how often that would happen. We
Speaker 3: overestimate the selfishness and treachery of strangers.
Speaker 4: Anyway.
Speaker 3: The authors mentioned that in trust based games of this sort,
Speaker 3: maybe not exactly this game, but something like it, if
Speaker 3: one player treats the other with cynicism, the other player
Speaker 3: actually becomes measurably less trustworthy in how they play the game.
Speaker 3: In other words, if you treat me like you expect
Speaker 3: me to be selfish, I actually become more selfish than
Speaker 3: I would have been otherwise. And this dynamic has been
Speaker 3: found in laboratory experiments, of course, but also found the
Speaker 3: wild in real life scenarios. For example, studies of workplaces
Speaker 3: that find when management treats workers with suspicion, like they
Speaker 3: expect them to break the rules, and they're trying to,
Speaker 3: you know, make sure to really crack down and make
Speaker 3: sure you don't break the rules, it actually makes workers.
Speaker 4: More likely to break the rules. Quote.
Speaker 3: When cynical supervisors expect low compliance and tighten supervision, they
Speaker 3: actually lower compliance.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: This of course might not be the case in every
Speaker 3: workplace all the time, but it has been observed, and
Speaker 3: it intuitively makes sense to me. You know, when a
Speaker 3: person is treated with trust, they may feel incentivized to
Speaker 3: rise to meet that trust, and when they're treated with
Speaker 3: cynical suspicion, the mind rebels and says, no, go to hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like, if you actually put a sign up no
Speaker 2: stealing pins or no you know, printing out of dungeons
Speaker 2: and dragon supplements on the on the work printer, you
Speaker 2: know we're gonna we're gonna be like, well, why not,
Speaker 2: Why shouldn't I have pins? Well, I shouldn't I have
Speaker 2: color printouts of my DND manuals come on?
Speaker 3: Or just more generally, I mean, I think a lot
Speaker 3: of people will know the feeling of it does not
Speaker 3: inspire you to be the best kind of worker. If
Speaker 3: you have the boss constantly looking over your shoulder, that
Speaker 3: just kind of makes you you feel like, well, okay, well,
Speaker 3: why do I give a damn about this?
Speaker 2: You know, I wasn't gonna mention too much about diagenies
Speaker 2: in this episode because I don't want to confuse things
Speaker 2: too much, But there are some stories of diagenies where
Speaker 2: people expect him to act like a dog in the
Speaker 2: street and then they would like throw food to him
Speaker 2: to feed him like a dog, but then he kind
Speaker 2: of ups the ante and out dogs them by then
Speaker 2: peeing on them like a dog, which we could maybe
Speaker 2: apply to this scenario. It's like like, yeah, if you
Speaker 2: think I'm a dog, watch how much of a dog
Speaker 2: I can be.
Speaker 3: Okay, Another self fulfilling prophecy dynamic at the interpersonal level.
Speaker 3: This one's actually even simpler person to person respect quote.
Speaker 3: More generally, cynics assume the worst in others and accordingly
Speaker 3: treat them with less respect. A recent paper uses lab
Speaker 3: experiments and daily diary methods to show that cynics often
Speaker 3: disrespect others. Since people dislike being disrespected, they often return
Speaker 3: the disrespect. That's pretty straightforward. That makes sense to me.
Speaker 3: So these self fulfilling prophecy dynamics both trap the cynic
Speaker 3: in their cynical worldview by making those around them less
Speaker 3: trustworthy and more unpleasant, thus increasing evidence for the cynic's
Speaker 3: view of humankind. It's like, if you're acting, if you're
Speaker 3: already cynical, you make your environment better evidence for cynical worldview.
Speaker 3: And then also they spread cynicism like an infectious disease,
Speaker 3: causing those who have dealings with the cynic to themselves
Speaker 3: become more cynical.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 3: So that's the interpersonal level. But the next level of
Speaker 3: analysis is the InTru group level within groups, and here
Speaker 3: the authors bring up an idea that I thought was
Speaker 3: really interesting. That is the idea of pluralistic ignorance. Pluralistic
Speaker 3: ignorance is a group psychology effect that emerges when people
Speaker 3: mistakenly believe that everybody else thinks differently than they do.
Speaker 3: A classic illustration of pluralistic ignorance is the story The
Speaker 3: Emperor's New Clothes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, most people are probably familiar with the Hans Christian
Speaker 2: Anderson telling of this from eighteen thirty seven, though I'm
Speaker 2: to understand this was based in part on older tales,
Speaker 2: and you can also connect it to related stories in
Speaker 2: various cultures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the simplified version is, some con artists go
Speaker 3: to the emperor and they say, we've got some beautiful
Speaker 3: new garments for you, in fact, a magical outfit that
Speaker 3: can only be seen by people who are intelligent. It's
Speaker 3: invisible to the dim witted, and the con artists provide
Speaker 3: the Emperor in fact with no clothes at all. But nobody,
Speaker 3: including the emperor wants to admit that they can't see
Speaker 3: the clothes and thus be thought a fool, so everybody
Speaker 3: pretends the king has clothes on while he's actually just
Speaker 3: walking around naked, and nobody is able to speak up
Speaker 3: about this until finally a child points out the nudity,
Speaker 3: and finally everybody realizes they've been tricked. This story illustrates
Speaker 3: pluralistic ignorance because actually everybody privately thinks the Emperor is naked,
Speaker 3: but they are afraid to say so because they think
Speaker 3: they're the only one and nobody else is saying it.
Speaker 3: This story does slightly complicate it by adding the detail
Speaker 3: that they're afraid of being thought unintelligent, and that's not
Speaker 3: necessarily part of pluralistic ignorance, but it is pluralistic ignorance
Speaker 3: because everybody in the story just goes along pretending to
Speaker 3: believe something that none of them actually privately believes.
Speaker 2: There's a great treatment of this on the television series
Speaker 2: Arrested Development with the film The Ocean Walker, where all
Speaker 2: the studio people surrounding it just continue to talk about
Speaker 2: how great it was, but no one actually understood it.
Speaker 2: But nobody wanted to be seen as the dummy who
Speaker 2: doesn't get this amazing project.
Speaker 3: Great example, and you can think of examples like this
Speaker 3: all throughout you know, it happens all the time. So
Speaker 3: how could this actually be a factor in the propagation
Speaker 3: of cynicism The author's right quote. A group can succumb
Speaker 3: to the norm of self interest, which specifies that people
Speaker 3: are and should be self interested. Members in such groups
Speaker 3: present themselves as more self interested than they really are.
Speaker 3: So what if most people in a group actually just
Speaker 3: want to be trustworthy and cooperative, but there is a
Speaker 3: let's say, a prominent voice within the group saying it's
Speaker 3: a dog eat dog world. Everybody's just looking out for
Speaker 3: number one. The speaker could manage to convince the group
Speaker 3: that everyone else in the group thinks that way too.
Speaker 3: And the person who is not very selfish and would
Speaker 3: prefer mutual trust and cooperation, that person feels like they
Speaker 3: can't really admit how they feel publicly because they would
Speaker 3: be the only one and they would seem naive or silly,
Speaker 3: or they would fear that people might think they were
Speaker 3: misrepresenting themselves, you know, like your virtue signaling. We've heard
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. And the authors point to a
Speaker 3: study that looks into this I was published in two
Speaker 3: thousand and one by Ratner and Miller, which this paper
Speaker 3: did several experiments looking into this phenomenon. I looked it
Speaker 3: up and one of the more persuasive experiments went like this, Okay,
Speaker 3: if you anonymously privately ask people about whether they would
Speaker 3: like to take money away from a research project funded
Speaker 3: through the National Institutes of Health. Most people did not
Speaker 3: want to take the money away from medical research when
Speaker 3: asked in private. However, when it was made clear that
Speaker 3: the research in question could not directly benefit certain participants personally.
Speaker 3: For example, it's like to cure a disease that only
Speaker 3: affects a group you do not belong to, people became
Speaker 3: hesitant to speak up publicly in the group about their
Speaker 3: opposition to cutting the grant, even though they privately still
Speaker 3: supported the grant. So, to paraphrase, lots of people wanted
Speaker 3: to protect medical research that could not benefit them personally,
Speaker 3: but they were hesitant to publicly speak up about protecting
Speaker 3: the research unless it could benefit them personally. Like this
Speaker 3: hurts me, gives me confidence to speak in public, but
Speaker 3: want to I just want to help other people that
Speaker 3: might be a genuine private motivation, but people were afraid
Speaker 3: to say that in public. And there could be a
Speaker 3: number of explanations for this, but based on a few
Speaker 3: characteristics of the findings, it was interpreted by the researchers
Speaker 3: as the participants assuming a group norm of cynicism and
Speaker 3: fearing being judged by cynical third parties. So if you
Speaker 3: fear that the people watching you are cynical, you become
Speaker 3: sheepish about publicly supporting something that doesn't benefit you personally,
Speaker 3: even if you secretly believe it is good. And I
Speaker 3: thought this was so interesting because it's sort of counterintuitive.
Speaker 3: You know, we often think in public we want to
Speaker 3: come off as good people, and so you know, you
Speaker 3: would want to be seen doing something that would help
Speaker 3: other people. But I absolutely think this phenomenon. It checks
Speaker 3: out for me. I've observed this kind of dynamic before,
Speaker 3: and assuming it is real, it's obviously not the only
Speaker 3: psychological pressure on us in this kind of domain, like
Speaker 3: there will be counter pressures pushing in the opposite direction
Speaker 3: as well, because obviously sometimes people do speak up publicly
Speaker 3: in supportive causes they have no personal stake in whether
Speaker 3: that's simply because of strength of their desire to support
Speaker 3: that cause. Maybe it's just strong enough to overcome this fear,
Speaker 3: the fear of social pressure, of pluralistic ignorance, or maybe
Speaker 3: there's just some other social psychological pressure sometimes pushing in
Speaker 3: the opposite direction, maybe again, like the desire to appear
Speaker 3: selfless and moral. But I can absolutely identify the feeling
Speaker 3: of the fear of social disapproval based on the assumption
Speaker 3: of cynical group norms. Sometimes something is happening that feels
Speaker 3: really wrong, and I have an urge to point that out,
Speaker 3: to say something about it, but nobody else around me
Speaker 3: is saying anything, and I have the feeling like, well,
Speaker 3: this is none of my business, and maybe I just
Speaker 3: don't understand it well enough, and I'll look naive if
Speaker 3: I say something. But actually, maybe lots of people are
Speaker 3: secretly feeling this way because they falsely believe everybody else
Speaker 3: endorses a cynical mind your own business mentality.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's very akin to the bystander phenomena in
Speaker 2: some respects, the idea that oh, well, I'm not the
Speaker 2: one to jump in and help. There's someone else who's
Speaker 2: either more closely aligned with the situation or has the
Speaker 2: expertise that I don't, and then therefore nobody does.
Speaker 3: Anything exactly right. But in the case of cynicism, pluralistic ignorance,
Speaker 3: creating a false belief in group cynicism has the pernicious
Speaker 3: effect of actually creating real, genuine cynicism over time. The
Speaker 3: author's write quote, as cynicism rises in a group, it
Speaker 3: can make non cnics act in more self interested ways,
Speaker 3: which further reinforces group members level of cynicism. It's a
Speaker 3: feedback loop.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as folks just essentially become more and more cynical
Speaker 2: just to fit in with the group, and this has
Speaker 2: a potentially transformative effect over time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But trying to fit in with the group, even
Speaker 3: if they are mistaken about how cynical the group is,
Speaker 3: we're like overestimating the cynicism of the group and trying
Speaker 3: to fit in with that false perception.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then finally, the authors look at the inter group
Speaker 3: level cynicism between different groups, and this section involves meta perceptions,
Speaker 3: essentially what you believe about how other people perceive you.
Speaker 3: Some research has found that across many different cultures, groups
Speaker 3: within each culture that maybe have antagonistic orientations, like opposite
Speaker 3: political parties or just different groups that have some antagonism
Speaker 3: tend to have false, overly negative intergroup meta perceptions. People
Speaker 3: believe that the outgroup is more hostile to their in
Speaker 3: group than the out group actually is, and this perception
Speaker 3: gap can lead to actual intergroup cynicism and hostility via
Speaker 3: the familiar mechanisms.
Speaker 4: If you think.
Speaker 3: People hate you, you treat them with distrust, and treating
Speaker 3: people with distrust actually makes them like you less and
Speaker 3: trust you less.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 3: False meta perceptions illustrate how people can become more cynical,
Speaker 3: in part because they overestimate how polarized their fellow citizens are.
Speaker 3: All right, So those are the mechanisms the authors identify
Speaker 3: for how cynicism grows and spreads. But they say, from
Speaker 3: these observations, we can actually offer some tentative suggestions for
Speaker 3: how cynicism can be beaten back. I don't think they're
Speaker 3: presenting this as like the ultimate remedy, like we know
Speaker 3: everything about how to defeat cynicism, but there's some good
Speaker 3: starting places here. So at the interpersonal level, they say,
Speaker 3: studies show that people appreciate being trusted and seem to
Speaker 3: actually become less self interested and less cynical. On average
Speaker 3: when simply granted trust. So we have an interaction in
Speaker 3: which you trust me with something. If you do that,
Speaker 3: ion average will actually become a little bit less cynical
Speaker 3: and a little bit less selfish. And the cool thing
Speaker 3: about this is that it's transferable. So somebody trusts me,
Speaker 3: I actually tend to become not only more likely to
Speaker 3: trust that person back, but to trust an unrelated third person. Therefore,
Speaker 3: the same way that acts and displays of cynicism can
Speaker 3: create this toxic negative feedback loop that increases cynicism for
Speaker 3: all parties involved, acts and displays of trust can probably
Speaker 3: create a positive feedback loop that contagiously undermines cynicism within
Speaker 3: the culture at large.
Speaker 2: So this is the real purpose of the uh leave
Speaker 2: a penny, take a penny tray, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: it's building a better world.
Speaker 4: You joke.
Speaker 3: But I think little things like that may indeed make
Speaker 3: a difference. You know, I don't have evidence of that
Speaker 3: in particular, but I think the little moments of trust
Speaker 3: probably do not have to be huge, Like you don't
Speaker 3: have to go out so far on a limb, just
Speaker 3: going out a little bit to grant people trust. I
Speaker 3: think actually surprises them often and has this effect of
Speaker 3: undermining cynesism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that might be the case.
Speaker 3: So if you can undermine cynicism by creating these little
Speaker 3: moments of you know, just lots of pervasive, little moments
Speaker 3: of granting trust, you that's a good thing to know.
Speaker 3: But I guess the question is like, how do you
Speaker 3: actually implement this? Because you want to affect you want
Speaker 3: to primarily affect people who are high in cynicism, or
Speaker 3: at least moderate in cynicism. If you are a person
Speaker 3: who realizes that you are more cynical than you would
Speaker 3: like to be, and you have like the level of
Speaker 3: self consciousness and willpower to go out on a limb
Speaker 3: and engage in little exercises of trading trust to seed
Speaker 3: the ground for a better life, obviously that's great if
Speaker 3: you have that self awareness, go for it. But a
Speaker 3: lot of highly cynical people are probably not going to
Speaker 3: do this on their own. So it probably helps for
Speaker 3: less cynical people to kind of deliberately contrive situations of
Speaker 3: friendly cooperation to infect people suffering from cynicism with opportunities
Speaker 3: to be trusted and to see exams samples of trust
Speaker 3: rewarded I don't know exactly the best way to do this. Obviously,
Speaker 3: you can't like for cynical strangers to do trust falls
Speaker 3: with you in the grocery store parking lot. But surely
Speaker 3: there are ways to stage parts of your life so
Speaker 3: as to create little points of trading off of trust
Speaker 3: and positive social contagion.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We're going to get into some possible examples of
Speaker 2: this in a bit, but I'll go ahead and mention
Speaker 2: some of it here. These are from some of the
Speaker 2: ideas of an author we've already mentioned, Jamil Zaki, who
Speaker 2: wrote a book about overcoming cynicism Hope for Cynics, The
Speaker 2: Surprising Science of Human Goodness that came out in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. But one of the things that he discusses
Speaker 2: is essentially the idea of conducting your own behavioral experiments
Speaker 2: to produce on the whole positive evidence of human goodness.
Speaker 2: So sort of in a way like leaving the door
Speaker 2: open for little examples of trust and allowing that trust
Speaker 2: to wander in again, not leaving the whole door open,
Speaker 2: you know, not you know not like you know, writing
Speaker 2: your social Security number on your arm and just seeing
Speaker 2: if anything anybody does anything bad with it, but little
Speaker 2: smaller acts things just sprinkle throughout your daily life, like, Oh,
Speaker 2: here's a possibility to sprinkle a little trust out there
Speaker 2: and see that trust returned and in doing so, giving
Speaker 2: us more real life evidence of human goodness to counteract
Speaker 2: this welling up of cynicism inside us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and to place emphasis again on what you just
Speaker 3: said and what we were just talking about it. It
Speaker 3: doesn't have to be huge risks when you make little
Speaker 3: bids for trust. It can be little things. Now, coming
Speaker 3: back to the next level of analysis, it was the
Speaker 3: intra group level. Remember this was the idea that pluralistic
Speaker 3: ignorance can create within a group a false impression that
Speaker 3: there is a norm of cynical self interest, that people
Speaker 3: are and should be selfish, when really most people in
Speaker 3: the group don't actually feel that way. They're just afraid
Speaker 3: to speak up because they think maybe they're the only one.
Speaker 3: We might be able to overcome this and other situations
Speaker 3: of pluralistic ignorance if we create a culture we try
Speaker 3: to personally demonstrate act out a culture in which people
Speaker 3: have more courage to disagree with what they assume to
Speaker 3: be the opinions of the larger group. It might turn
Speaker 3: out that it actually is pluralistic ignorance. Maybe a lot
Speaker 3: of people already agree with you, and they just didn't
Speaker 3: want to be the only one to say something. And
Speaker 3: this is especially important if the assumed group norm is
Speaker 3: something poisonous, something that maybe is coming top down, like
Speaker 3: it's a dog eat dog world. There's like a really
Speaker 3: influential person over the group shouting this message. It's important
Speaker 3: that somebody else is saying the opposite. Otherwise the message
Speaker 3: shouted from the top can easily become assumed to be
Speaker 3: the group norm even if it's not. But also the
Speaker 3: authors point out that normative group pressure can work in
Speaker 3: the opposite directtion. This maybe sounds a little bit grubbier
Speaker 3: than some of the other ideas because this involves the
Speaker 3: idea of, well, maybe you should employ peer pressure to
Speaker 3: positive ends. But the author's write quote, just as non
Speaker 3: cynics can behave cynically under a norm of self interest,
Speaker 3: so can sinics become more trusting when they feel normative
Speaker 3: pressure to do so. There are experiments showing this. Somebody
Speaker 3: might have a kind of cynical baseline, but when there's
Speaker 3: peer pressure around them to be more trusting, it kind
Speaker 3: of works. It makes them a little bit more trusting.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is what the trust falls are all about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly the trust fall. I don't know, as
Speaker 3: a particular act might be overly tainted with the aroma
Speaker 3: of corporate seminars, but do things like that, I mean,
Speaker 3: there is a kind of kernel of wisdom at the
Speaker 3: inception of the trust fall. So I don't know, do
Speaker 3: we feel good about trying to intentionally use group peer
Speaker 3: pressure to influence people? I don't know, Like, using it
Speaker 3: to reduce cynicism seems like one of the better uses
Speaker 3: of peer pressure than I can imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, plus, just given how nefarious and how just infectious
Speaker 2: cynicism is in our lives, Like, yes, we should pull
Speaker 2: every level we have against it.
Speaker 3: And then finally at the inter group level. Remember this
Speaker 3: was the example where groups in society become increasingly distrustful
Speaker 3: of one another, in part because you imagine that the
Speaker 3: other group is more hostile to your group than they
Speaker 3: actually are. And the solution here, the authors propose, is
Speaker 3: just give people accurate information, because studies in these situations
Speaker 3: have shown that interventions of just like showing people real
Speaker 3: examples of members of the out group as opposed to
Speaker 3: leaving it up to their imagination or using cherry picked
Speaker 3: examples from hostile in group media.
Speaker 2: Or outright conspiracy theories exact oftentimes, Like that's the mode
Speaker 2: of thinking that is involved in characterizing theosing viewpoint.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just seeing like real accurate representations of who the
Speaker 3: out group is, like interacting with each other and seeing
Speaker 3: what they're actually like. These types of interventions have been
Speaker 3: found to reduce this kind of between group hostility and
Speaker 3: perceptions of metaperceptions of hostility within the out group. Oh
Speaker 3: are they actually as selfish and hostile as I imagined?
Speaker 3: Now that I see them, it seems maybe not.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So that's all I've got on this paper by Norman
Speaker 3: and Zaki. But I think that is a very interesting
Speaker 3: place to start. It's got there's a lot to work
Speaker 3: with there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I would say in general, for folks
Speaker 2: who want more information about ways to become less cynical
Speaker 2: and combat cynical cynical thought and cynicism in your lives,
Speaker 2: Zaki's work is definitely worth following. And he's out there
Speaker 2: in a lot of places talking about this stuff, writing
Speaker 2: about it. Back in twenty twenty two, he did a
Speaker 2: Ted talk on the topic, and you can look that
Speaker 2: up wherever you get your Ted talks. There's a great
Speaker 2: quote in that talk where he says, you might think
Speaker 2: that cynicism is a system upgrade that allows you to
Speaker 2: see who we really are. It's not. It traps us
Speaker 2: in a version of the world we don't want to
Speaker 2: live in and one we don't have to.
Speaker 3: That's put very well, and I think that's an important
Speaker 3: thing to emphasize. It's like a lot of the literature
Speaker 3: that we talked about, I think in part two of
Speaker 3: this series, you know, with the cynical genius illusion that
Speaker 3: like it's just framed as wisdom that seeing the world
Speaker 3: cynically as being realistic. I mean maybe in certain scenarios
Speaker 3: there are like very corrupt situations where cynicism is a
Speaker 3: more accurate diagnosis of them. But most of the time
Speaker 3: the world isn't like that. Cynicism actually makes you worse
Speaker 3: at predicting other people's behavior. It's just like it's not
Speaker 3: a good model of the world. It's not being real.
Speaker 3: It's actually living an illusion, living within an illusion that
Speaker 3: hurts you exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, this this talk was interesting because I believe
Speaker 2: it was accord in twenty twenty one, and so you know,
Speaker 2: he definitely ties some of it into the global pandemic
Speaker 2: and talking about the connection between cynicism and disasters, where
Speaker 2: something disastrous can occur some sort of widespread scenario like
Speaker 2: global pandemic, and it can lead to increased cynicism. And
Speaker 2: he also talks a little bit about the danger of
Speaker 2: slipping into what he calls a cynicism perma frost. I
Speaker 2: suppose on the individual level, we're even on like a
Speaker 2: larger societal level where if, like baseline, cynicism grows to
Speaker 2: a certain level, it's just harder and harder for.
Speaker 4: Us to shake it.
Speaker 3: Yes, cynicism is self reinforcing and self perpetuating. To come
Speaker 3: back to something from that paper, it is a self
Speaker 3: fulfilling prophecy. It makes the world in its image.
Speaker 2: Now, Zaki's twenty twenty four book again his hope for cynics,
Speaker 2: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, and he of course,
Speaker 2: in this book covers the topic at length, goes through
Speaker 2: a lot of what we've been discussing here, but then
Speaker 2: there's added information and insight as well. I recommend picking
Speaker 2: it up if you want to learn more about how
Speaker 2: to combat cynicism. But I want to go through some
Speaker 2: of the ideas that he brings forth that essentially gives
Speaker 2: you sort of a plan of attack. One of the
Speaker 2: first things that he points out is that you have
Speaker 2: to recognize the harm of cynicism. And we've been talking
Speaker 2: about this, after all, if you don't understand all the
Speaker 2: mental and physical health as well as social ramifications of
Speaker 2: a cynical mindset, you might continue to think of it
Speaker 2: as a path of cool and safe detachment, like this
Speaker 2: is what we are, this is the world we live in.
Speaker 2: Realizing first of all that it's harming you to think
Speaker 2: this way, that's a good first step.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Cynicism is not the safe bet. It's not I
Speaker 3: don't know, putting your money in CDs or something. It's like,
Speaker 3: it's more kind of like letting it get oily and
Speaker 3: leaving it next to the fire.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: The next thing he brings up is embracing hopeful skepticism
Speaker 2: and questioning your assumptions. I really like this one, because
Speaker 2: cynicism can I think, come to feel like it's a
Speaker 2: comfortable sweater that you wear, and then if someone comes
Speaker 2: around and says, get rid of that sweater, you're gonna
Speaker 2: be like, well, this is this is what I wear.
Speaker 2: This is basically my skin at this point. And so
Speaker 2: the idea here is that hopeful skepticism is kind of
Speaker 2: something that's going to fit you the same as that sweater,
Speaker 2: but it's not going to constrain your soul, you know,
Speaker 2: so you know, assume better of people in general, but
Speaker 2: also you know, self analyze your cynical ideas, engage in
Speaker 2: rational skepticism, which is to say, seek actual real world
Speaker 2: evidence for your negative opinions and beliefs, and pay closer
Speaker 2: attention to what you actually observe in the world.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, So this is coming back to the distinction
Speaker 3: we made in the last episode between cynicism and skepticism.
Speaker 3: Whereas cynicism is just a bias towards negativity and distrust,
Speaker 3: skepticism is trying to award your trust to things on
Speaker 3: the basis of whether there's good reason to trust them
Speaker 3: or not paying attention to evidence and trying as best
Speaker 3: you can to ignore your biases, whereas cynicism is itself
Speaker 3: a bias.
Speaker 2: And if you want to think about this as trust
Speaker 2: but confirm fair enough however you want to think about it,
Speaker 2: it also reminds me a lot of some of the
Speaker 2: anti anxiety techniques I've learned about in recent years, such
Speaker 2: as putting your thoughts on trial and asking yourself questions
Speaker 2: like A. What am I afraid will happen? And b
Speaker 2: what is likely to happen? Because we can often allow
Speaker 2: our negative thought patterns to just run around unchecked in
Speaker 2: our minds, like it's not at the forefront of our
Speaker 2: thought We're trying to do other things, and it's just
Speaker 2: in the background like a yapping dog. But if we stop,
Speaker 2: if we identify our thoughts and then we apply reasoning
Speaker 2: to those thoughts, we put those thoughts on trial and
Speaker 2: say like, hey, you stop barking. Now, let's talk about
Speaker 2: why you're barking and what you're barking about. Then you
Speaker 2: can actually begin to make serious headway towards dismissing these
Speaker 2: thoughts or at least diminishing their power. Saki also recommends
Speaker 2: we conduct again our own behavioral experiments to open the
Speaker 2: door for examples of trust to wander into our lives,
Speaker 2: to practice trust. And this is this is a this
Speaker 2: is one that's so big that it's going to sound
Speaker 2: like overly naive just to say it, but focusing on
Speaker 2: the positive. I mean, how many times have you heard
Speaker 2: that it can it can almost sound like you should
Speaker 2: smile more. He recommends engaging in positive gossip as opposed
Speaker 2: to just negative gossip, to making an effort to finding
Speaker 2: examples in your life and in the world of people
Speaker 2: doing good to counteract the other stories. They're going to
Speaker 2: maybe catch your attention more and certainly drift up towards
Speaker 2: the top of the news feed more.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: In a way, this reminds me of that famous mister
Speaker 2: Rogers quote about looking for the helpers. You know, I
Speaker 2: believe he said quote. When I was a boy and
Speaker 2: I would see scary things in the news, my mother
Speaker 2: would say to me, look for the helpers, who will
Speaker 2: always find people who are helping.
Speaker 3: Now, to answer the cynical thought arising in some people's heads,
Speaker 3: you might think in reaction to that, like, oh, but
Speaker 3: isn't that just sort of like turning away from reality,
Speaker 3: Like isn't that not being realistic and wanting to live
Speaker 3: in a happy, happy fantasyland.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the research we've looked at
Speaker 3: is like, this is a strategy for having a more
Speaker 3: realistic view of the world. What we have a tendency
Speaker 3: toward is an unrealistic view of the world based on
Speaker 3: the high salience of negative events. So like you know,
Speaker 3: nineteen positive events and one negative event event, the one
Speaker 3: negative event defines our memory of what happened. And so
Speaker 3: this is like trying to have a more realistic view
Speaker 3: based on the actual real world prevalence of trust and positivity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I mean it really comes down to,
Speaker 2: like make sure that you have a balanced diet of
Speaker 2: information about people the world, and that can include a
Speaker 2: media diet, it can also certainly include a real life
Speaker 2: diet and how you're interacting with people. Like one example
Speaker 2: from my own family, over the past year, we've started
Speaker 2: watching the YouTube videos of Sam Bentley, who you can
Speaker 2: find on wherever you get your videos. But this is
Speaker 2: a guy who highlights positive social and environmental news from
Speaker 2: around the world. And these are the kind of stories
Speaker 2: that are generally never the headline. And it's not to
Speaker 2: say that they should be, and it's not to say
Speaker 2: that you should be only watching this sort of new
Speaker 2: stream and not the other news streams, but you know,
Speaker 2: their general positivity and hopefulness can provide a very necessary
Speaker 2: counterbalance to the more cynical darkness that is just going
Speaker 2: to well out of you in response to the coverage
Speaker 2: the rest of the coverage out there. And again, even
Speaker 2: if the coverage is fair and you know on the level,
Speaker 2: I mean, still that's it's going to feed that cynicism
Speaker 2: that is in all of us. That is, you know,
Speaker 2: gon gonna potentially rise up if we don't keep it
Speaker 2: in check.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is very important to be aware of and
Speaker 3: informed about and have a realistic view of threats and
Speaker 3: bad things happening. But if you want to be able
Speaker 3: to respond to those in the best way possible, it's
Speaker 3: actually important not to let a cynical mindset set in
Speaker 3: which it just disempowers you. So it is important to
Speaker 3: be aware of threats and dangers and not ignore them,
Speaker 3: to have them front of mind in a way, but
Speaker 3: be able to respond to them realistically and productively, rather
Speaker 3: than just submitting to cynical surrender.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, now, we should be clear that none of this
Speaker 2: is like a one and done solution. There's not like
Speaker 2: a check sheet you can go through and at the
Speaker 2: end of it be like, ah, well, there we go.
Speaker 2: Cynicism defeated. In fact, Zaki here of the author in
Speaker 2: his ted talk drives home that he still struggles with
Speaker 2: cynicism himself all the time, and it is a struggle.
Speaker 2: You can't completely squash the infection of modern cynicism, and
Speaker 2: that's one of the cruel realities of the whole scenario.
Speaker 2: Cynicism is just going to well up again and again,
Speaker 2: potentially gaining foothold each time subconsciously, like it's just in
Speaker 2: the background growing, and it requires deliberate effort generally to
Speaker 2: counter its growth. So, you know, like any kind of maintenance,
Speaker 2: except its maintenance on your outlook on the world, on
Speaker 2: your psyche and your soul. And once again, none of
Speaker 2: this is a proposed transition from cynicism into naivety, or
Speaker 2: from cynicism into some sort of unhealthy optimism. It's a
Speaker 2: transition from an unhealthy and ultimately unrealistically bleak outlook on
Speaker 2: people in the world into something that is more balanced,
Speaker 2: more reasonably optimistic, and healthier for you in multiple regards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, see the world as it really is. Trust when
Speaker 3: you can and use those relationships of mutual trust to
Speaker 3: make life better.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and wrap up
Speaker 2: these episodes on cynicism right here. On an upnote, on
Speaker 2: a hopeful note, optim mistic note, and then maybe give
Speaker 2: you a little homework for ways that you can bring
Speaker 2: less cynicism into your manifested life. We want to remind
Speaker 2: everyone out there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
Speaker 2: We set aside most serious concerns just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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