Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from House stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's here,
Speaker 1: and uh, stuff you should know. We've got the eighteen
Speaker 1: Yeah in the house, not the Chuck Holograham. It's not
Speaker 1: guest producers mad or Noel. It's not pocket Josh, not
Speaker 1: pocket Josh, although I did have a pocket Josh on me.
Speaker 1: So he's here, He's always here. That's a voodoo doll. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's clearly a voodoo doll. That's my hair.
Speaker 1: I recognize. How's that back pain treating you? Hurt so bad? Uh?
Speaker 1: How's it going pretty good except for the back pain. Well,
Speaker 1: let me just massize your little pocket Josh. I think
Speaker 1: the touch me, Chuck. I'm excited about this one. Our
Speaker 1: ongoing series on happiness. Yeah, we've covered it with the
Speaker 1: Bhutan Yeah, a Gross National Happiness, and then we did
Speaker 1: our audiobook All about Happiness, super Stuff Guide to Happiness,
Speaker 1: and all that was I guess a hold over from
Speaker 1: was it right before or right after the financial global
Speaker 1: financial collapse? M I feel like it was sort of
Speaker 1: in the midst of okay, because I think what it
Speaker 1: was was the world got cocky, especially the developed world.
Speaker 1: Sure like, hey, things are going so well, We're all rich,
Speaker 1: everybody's pretty happy. We're we're at war with not one
Speaker 1: but two countries at once. Look at us, go um,
Speaker 1: let's start talking about happiness and what makes us happy.
Speaker 1: Let's start blogs about how we try to be happy
Speaker 1: and enter it in once a day every day and
Speaker 1: then get a book deal out of it. Let's just
Speaker 1: think about happiness, happiness, happiness, happiness. Well, a few years on,
Speaker 1: there's been some changes over time. Everybody said, people don't
Speaker 1: talk about happiness anymore. Like there is a little while
Speaker 1: where there was a period basically from my impression about
Speaker 1: two thousand five to two thousand nine, where you could
Speaker 1: get substantial grants to conduct research into the nature of happiness,
Speaker 1: to quantify happiness, what makes people happy, what makes people unhappy,
Speaker 1: how to make people happier? Um. And there was an
Speaker 1: offshoot of psychology called positive psychology that we talked about,
Speaker 1: the super stub guided happiness that said, we're good at
Speaker 1: diagnosing um maladies, which physical maladies, no like problems, psychological problems,
Speaker 1: but we're terrible at um how to make people happier.
Speaker 1: So hence now we're going to have something called positive psychology,
Speaker 1: which appears to have fallen by the wayside um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all negative psychology. Well, psychology itself as a field
Speaker 1: is under tremendous amount of attack, and positive psychology. I
Speaker 1: think they gave the chance to retreat. They're like, look,
Speaker 1: you're you're pretty easy target. You should probably go. This
Speaker 1: isn't even a real thing. I don't know. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was a valiant attempt. I think it just came in
Speaker 1: at the wrong time. But the the the point is,
Speaker 1: if you look up happiness now, you will notice, like
Speaker 1: just about everything cuts off. In two thousand nine, I
Speaker 1: did notice that actually American doesn't care about being happy anymore,
Speaker 1: or maybe they just hanging on studied and learned everything
Speaker 1: they need to know, and we're like, all right, here
Speaker 1: we are. Well, you know what, it's funny that you
Speaker 1: say that, because if that's true and you're you could
Speaker 1: be right, that represents them possibly the shortest amount of
Speaker 1: time any subject has ever been studied. No, really, because
Speaker 1: it started and what makes people happy? And maybe I
Speaker 1: think two thousand three I read I read a study,
Speaker 1: and it was about how this was one of the
Speaker 1: first studies to ever try to figure out what makes
Speaker 1: people happy. So then this field of study existed from
Speaker 1: like two thousand three to two thousand nine, and they
Speaker 1: were saying that the reason that this would be the
Speaker 1: first studies because it's been so accepted for so many
Speaker 1: years ever since. Hume the philosopher Hume, David Hume, Robert Hume,
Speaker 1: the Scottish philosopher is one of my favorites. Just if
Speaker 1: you're on Jeopardy, you could just say hum hum, We'll
Speaker 1: go with hum um. Who is hum if you're on
Speaker 1: Jeopardy he was the Scottish philosopher. No, I'm just had
Speaker 1: to phrase it, Okay, I'm just teasing um, he said.
Speaker 1: He was one of the first people to mention this
Speaker 1: concept of what makes people happy insofar as what we're
Speaker 1: talking about today, which is does an object make you happier?
Speaker 1: Or does an experience make you happier? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: they've done like the lottery studies before two thousand four,
Speaker 1: like if lottery winners, But um, that's a pretty specialized study. Yes,
Speaker 1: So to my point is to try to honify happiness,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing and really investigated. But it started
Speaker 1: in the early two thousands, that ended by the mid
Speaker 1: two thousand, the first decade of the tea. Well, while
Speaker 1: I'm reading all these studies, I'm looking oh seven oh
Speaker 1: eight oh four, Yeah, very keen observation, and I can't
Speaker 1: quite figure out. I mean, obviously, I think the Great
Speaker 1: Recession is almost entirely responsible for that falling to the wayside.
Speaker 1: But if you look still today, there's there are still
Speaker 1: related studies. It's just not happiness studies. Yeah, I found
Speaker 1: when I was reading this, I disagreed with a lot
Speaker 1: of these findings and studies. They didn't seem fully fleshed out,
Speaker 1: did they. Well, for instance, we'll go ahead and start
Speaker 1: with this supposed fact. Researchers have done some studying and
Speaker 1: they have pinned down how long a material object can
Speaker 1: will make you happy, and they say between six and
Speaker 1: twelve weeks, then you get bored with it. Basically, I
Speaker 1: just don't know about that because it wholly to me,
Speaker 1: it wholly depends on what the object is. That's something
Speaker 1: that gives you ongoing pleasure, like a guitar, let's say, yeah,
Speaker 1: because that is also an experience an object. But like
Speaker 1: I will love my guitars until I die because I
Speaker 1: play them and enjoy it and play them with my friends.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, And what you're talking about the gift
Speaker 1: that keeps giving right exactly, that's called um uh, active engagement.
Speaker 1: It is a It is a purchase. And when we
Speaker 1: say purchase, we're not talking about necessarily just an object,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in a little bit. You can
Speaker 1: also you purchase experiences as well. In fact, they say
Speaker 1: that's the way to go, right. So there's a happiness purchase,
Speaker 1: is what we're saying. And your guitar that you purchased,
Speaker 1: that's an object, but you purchased it, but it's making
Speaker 1: you happy, you know, over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: The reason why is because you become actively engaged in
Speaker 1: an active engagement in anything that is positive or that
Speaker 1: makes you happy can continue to make you happy for
Speaker 1: longer than say another object that doesn't actively engage you,
Speaker 1: Like a pair of shoes that you wanted really really
Speaker 1: bad and then got and then like sit in your closets,
Speaker 1: you don't wear them anymore because after well, you may
Speaker 1: still wear them, but you're wearing them as shoes. You're
Speaker 1: not wearing them like I'm I'm the King of Rotterdamn
Speaker 1: here and check out my shoes. You know that that
Speaker 1: kind of thing that lacks active engagement, that lacks social interaction,
Speaker 1: and that lacks exercise. And those are the three, the
Speaker 1: big three things that you can buy objects wise that
Speaker 1: kind of sit outside of that six to twelve week Um,
Speaker 1: happiness adaptation is what it's called. Um. So, yeah, you
Speaker 1: kind of nailed it right there with the guitar. It's
Speaker 1: not just guitar. Video games are another good example. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you buy your PS three and you may get
Speaker 1: sick of some of the games, but they're always releasing
Speaker 1: new games, right. Um, if you bought a um, a
Speaker 1: language module, you learn a language or something, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean like it's you're something that actively engage you,
Speaker 1: something that that you use for exercise, or something that
Speaker 1: leads to social interaction. Are the three object types that
Speaker 1: make you happier longer? Well, that makes me feel better
Speaker 1: than and um the whole six or twelve weeks though,
Speaker 1: whether that's a an accurate number not the chuck um.
Speaker 1: Remember we talked about the hedonic treadmill. It's evidence of
Speaker 1: the hedonic treadmill. That's just a thing called um hedonic adaptation,
Speaker 1: and that is that something that makes you happy isn't
Speaker 1: gonna make you happy forever. Something you've purchased pretty much,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, you're going to eventually subsume it into
Speaker 1: your everyday life. You're gonna end up taking it for granted, basically,
Speaker 1: is another way to put it. How long, how short
Speaker 1: that happens, or how long that happens is um. It
Speaker 1: definitely differs depending on the type, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the type in the minute. But what people end up
Speaker 1: getting on once once an object stop making stops making
Speaker 1: them happy, they still want to be happy. So they
Speaker 1: end up on the hedonic treadmill and buy another pair
Speaker 1: of shoes, and then another, and then another and then another.
Speaker 1: And you end up just trying to keep pace, buying
Speaker 1: all this stuff, accumulating all of this material stuff, and
Speaker 1: it's just kind of keeping you at a a steady
Speaker 1: pace of happiness without any kind of real enrichment. And
Speaker 1: that's the hedonic treadmill. Yeah, and that's materialism UM. Which
Speaker 1: they've done studies on materialism. There was one by these
Speaker 1: dudes Chaplain and John in two thousand seven where they
Speaker 1: linked it to low self esteem generally from childhood, Like
Speaker 1: you're sort of always trying to gain your self esteem
Speaker 1: through material objects. Uh. They've linked it to narcissism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people who try to build themselves like up through having
Speaker 1: you know, fancy things and showing them off. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: there's the I mean, that's that is a real um
Speaker 1: technique that people use to establish their identities, established their
Speaker 1: worth to others. And it's a ironically, it's a cheap
Speaker 1: and easy way to do it. It may be very
Speaker 1: expensive dollar wise, but you don't have to put a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of thought or effort into it. You just
Speaker 1: go by the most expensive, most obvious, uh obviously expensive
Speaker 1: item you can and wear it out and broadcast it
Speaker 1: and get your sense of self worth from that. So
Speaker 1: it is very shallow thing materialism. I think everybody kind
Speaker 1: of knows that intuitively, but it's been studied, you know,
Speaker 1: like it it is linked to all these kind of
Speaker 1: um personality disorders. There's a guy named Russ Belk who's
Speaker 1: a marketing researcher, and he was the first one to
Speaker 1: really research materialism on the Belk Chain of Stars, I wonder,
Speaker 1: and he uh, he found it to be a character
Speaker 1: trait marked by envy, non generosity, and possessiveness. Yeah, materialism
Speaker 1: is so hard to define for me though, because it's
Speaker 1: like a guitar is a material object and a nice
Speaker 1: guitar is. I don't know. I definitely not materialistic, I
Speaker 1: don't think, but I want a nice guitar because it
Speaker 1: sounds awesome, it looks cool. But I think that that's
Speaker 1: why like Belk and Chaplain and John went to the
Speaker 1: trouble of like kind of investigating it. It's like, do
Speaker 1: you do you have like a clinically flawed personality? Uh,
Speaker 1: that's based on your desire for material objects. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: see that, like it's all personal. Like I might think
Speaker 1: it's material to go out and buy a pair of
Speaker 1: eight hundred dollar shoes, but the person might get a
Speaker 1: lot of joy out of those shoes, and say, I
Speaker 1: think it's stupid to go pay a thousand dollars for
Speaker 1: a guitar. You know, Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm saying. You don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you raise a good point, and it's it's
Speaker 1: valid because there that the research isn't that deep. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could be exactly right, and I think it's subject yes.
Speaker 1: And not only is this whole you know, the finding subjective,
Speaker 1: the reportings are subjective to Like there's a study in
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, UM in two thousand nine. The last
Speaker 1: year that happiness was ever studied, the last year of
Speaker 1: happiness mattered m and basically this uh, this group had
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty four college students, it's pretty small
Speaker 1: fill out a survey. They said that we want you
Speaker 1: to pick um. We want you to write down a
Speaker 1: little bit about an object that you purchased to make
Speaker 1: you happy in the last three months, or an experience
Speaker 1: that made you happy in the last three months that
Speaker 1: you purchased. Yes, which is important to distinguish that, right,
Speaker 1: because you think you're gonna have free experiences too, you can, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that. But the college students um
Speaker 1: self reported that the at the time of the purchase,
Speaker 1: the experiences made them happier, and the happiness lasted longer
Speaker 1: than the ones who reported an object made them happy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean every study pretty much confirms experiences over material objects. Yes.
Speaker 1: My point is it was self reported, so it's subjective
Speaker 1: right out of the gate, and that's the problem with
Speaker 1: studying things like happiness. It's it's an emotion which is subjective.
Speaker 1: And then it was also a small sample of college students, um,
Speaker 1: homogeneous group and what do they know? Not they'ren't money
Speaker 1: for anything now there, But there's this UM acronym for
Speaker 1: college for studies like that. It's weird. It's Western educated,
Speaker 1: uh something rich and democratic. Yeah, I can't remember what
Speaker 1: the eye but weird it's it's and it's saying like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of studies out there that people rely
Speaker 1: on that are weird that the population sample are like
Speaker 1: eighteen to twenty one year old, right, you know, fairly
Speaker 1: well off western kids, right, Like, what does that really
Speaker 1: tell us? Yeah? Yeah, so um, this is an example
Speaker 1: of that. I saw another study that thought was interesting.
Speaker 1: As far as objects go, um, Like, like we said,
Speaker 1: across the board, it's they pretty much have said experiences
Speaker 1: purchased or free mean more to someone in the long
Speaker 1: run than an object. But um, when it comes to
Speaker 1: spending on objects, this one study did find that spending
Speaker 1: on others across the board, even on an object, is
Speaker 1: brings more happiness than spending on yourself for an object. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And in fact, uh, people were assigned to spend money
Speaker 1: and one of these studies, and they experienced greater happiness.
Speaker 1: And people assigned to spend money on themselves, like here's
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars go by yourself something nice, or here's
Speaker 1: a hundred bucks go by someone else something nice. People
Speaker 1: were happier that bought something for someone else, which was interesting.
Speaker 1: And that's you're saying, that's like the case with objects
Speaker 1: and experiences as well. I think that was just objects,
Speaker 1: but I would say it probably holds true for experience,
Speaker 1: Like you takes someone out to dinner, you feel good
Speaker 1: about it. So what you what you have there is
Speaker 1: you're spending on another person. It's there. It's fostering social interaction,
Speaker 1: which is another key huge and it's an experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much like you couldn't get happier than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the social thing is kind of the key to all
Speaker 1: of this, they say, because generally your experience happiness is
Speaker 1: usually not alone, like you'll go to a concert with
Speaker 1: someone or to dinner with someone. But um, but not
Speaker 1: always right and not always is a pretty good little
Speaker 1: buzz term for this part of the podcast, because um,
Speaker 1: there's also research that shows that objects can bring more
Speaker 1: happiness than experiences, depending on the experience. Like for a
Speaker 1: long time, the literature just basically said experiences make you
Speaker 1: happier than objects. It's exactly. And these researchers found that
Speaker 1: um a an unhappy experience, Yeah, especially one that was
Speaker 1: meant to be happy. Like let's say you want on
Speaker 1: a cruise or you went on a vacation and it
Speaker 1: just sucked like that. That compared to an object that's
Speaker 1: supposed to make you happy, that object is gonna beat
Speaker 1: that experience and you're gonna have that bad memory of
Speaker 1: the experience longer too. Yeah. You know what else I
Speaker 1: think I haven't seen pointed out is you can't you
Speaker 1: can't get your money back on a bad dinner and play. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. But if you get an object, you know,
Speaker 1: like this thinks you can usually return that unless you
Speaker 1: took a bite out of it already. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a good way to say it. But you can't, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like you take a vacation that
Speaker 1: ends up being a disaster, I would be more upset
Speaker 1: about that because it's like you've lost your money, You're
Speaker 1: gonna have this bad memory. But if you buy some
Speaker 1: stupid thing. You can like just resell it or on
Speaker 1: Craig Lester send it back, right. And um, so that's
Speaker 1: that's one distinction between materials, I guess objects and experiences. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and we should give a shout out to start here.
Speaker 1: Who start sart Oh? Yeah, John Paul Sartra, the philosopher
Speaker 1: um who is kind of credited with really introducing this
Speaker 1: concept or codifying it into the mainstream. To start, there
Speaker 1: were three paths to happiness, are three types of happiness.
Speaker 1: There was um, having, doing and being and being we're
Speaker 1: not even talking about in this one, but having and doing, um,
Speaker 1: materialism and experientialism um start in the fifties. I think,
Speaker 1: uh just kind of introduce us into the literature, and
Speaker 1: that ultimately is what kicked off the this kind of
Speaker 1: study into which one is better, which one makes you happier? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I like how you you wrote this, right. I
Speaker 1: like how you point out about Buddhism, how they feel
Speaker 1: that material objects actually get in the way of happiness.
Speaker 1: Not only may they not bring you happiness, but they
Speaker 1: will prevent it. Sure. And it's not just Buddhism, it's
Speaker 1: UM for centuries. It's just basically been accepted that an
Speaker 1: object is less desirable if you're seeking happiness than an experience,
Speaker 1: and it's that's why the researchers were saying, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: we're one of the first studies to to conduct and
Speaker 1: an investigation into this because it's just been generally accepted
Speaker 1: that that's the case, but no one knew exactly why.
Speaker 1: So now we've kind of reached the why parts. And
Speaker 1: one of the things you said is, um, you can't
Speaker 1: take an experience back. All right, hold on to that thought.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick message break and we'll get back
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Speaker 1: dot Com enter stuff. Okay, So why well, um, you
Speaker 1: mentioned that objects. Uh, you can take an object back,
Speaker 1: you can't take an experience back. One of the big
Speaker 1: differences that researchers came up with is that with experiences
Speaker 1: you can because you can't take them back. They're kind
Speaker 1: of esoteric. They're also more subject to revision. Right, so
Speaker 1: you can you can think back to an experience and
Speaker 1: over time, but stopped pump it up, alter it slightly, um,
Speaker 1: make it more meaningful, whatever. Um, you're just kind of
Speaker 1: adding to it. You remember when we did that thing
Speaker 1: on memory, We research memory, and it's like every time
Speaker 1: you bring up memory, you kind of add to it.
Speaker 1: When you store it away, it's different, it's altered in
Speaker 1: one way. Well, what you're remembering an experience, you're not
Speaker 1: remembering an object because you have the object in your
Speaker 1: hand and you're shaking it and you're like, why don't
Speaker 1: you make me happy anymore? What happened to you? I
Speaker 1: wanted this this object so bad, and you know, and
Speaker 1: and now it's whatever. And the reason why is because
Speaker 1: it's part of your present, and experience is part of
Speaker 1: your past. It can be your immediate pastor just past whatever,
Speaker 1: and that is subject to revisionism, which is one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why they think that when you especially self
Speaker 1: report what makes you happier, you're probably going to go
Speaker 1: with an experience. Yeah, and I'm kind of that way.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people, even with bad experiences,
Speaker 1: later on you might think, uh, oh, you know it
Speaker 1: was bad at the time, but we also we laugh
Speaker 1: about it now, or you know, how you can reframe
Speaker 1: bad experiences or if you're like super on the ball.
Speaker 1: In the moment, you can say, you know, maybe we'll
Speaker 1: be laughing at this in ten minutes, like you know,
Speaker 1: some terrible vacation, Like I have fun memories about bad experiences,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it's revisionism. I think it's uh,
Speaker 1: just time. And maybe at the time you're not looking
Speaker 1: at the positives, you know, right, because your genes are
Speaker 1: expressing all sorts of horrific things that are making you
Speaker 1: so mad, you know. Um, But once the genes go
Speaker 1: back to normal, Yeah, things kind of take on a
Speaker 1: different cast. Like, for instance, Uh, we went on a
Speaker 1: big group camping trip like five or six years ago,
Speaker 1: a bunch of us, Um, my dog got in a
Speaker 1: fight with my friend Justin's dog, poured down rain and
Speaker 1: it was the worst camping trip I've ever been on.
Speaker 1: But now we look back at it and we laugh,
Speaker 1: and we remember the midnight dance party we had in
Speaker 1: the rain and we made the best of it. But
Speaker 1: at the time we're all like, man, I gotta get
Speaker 1: out of here. This is miserable, do you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying? Like I look back on certain miserable experiences
Speaker 1: and kind of laugh about him. There aren't many awful
Speaker 1: experiences unless it's involved, like, you know, something really bad
Speaker 1: and like life changing. Like I don't look back at
Speaker 1: like the death of a relative and say, you know,
Speaker 1: that was really pretty fun. Now I thought that that
Speaker 1: dress they buried her and was horrible, but now it's hilarious. Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't do that with an object. No, you can't
Speaker 1: do that. And even if you stay well, I remember
Speaker 1: when I was eight, I got this awesome um Castle
Speaker 1: Gray school place and it was the bomb and I
Speaker 1: was so happy. Um, what you're doing right there is
Speaker 1: remembering an object, which is significant, but sort of the
Speaker 1: experience of having it thought. Yeah, that's the big distinction.
Speaker 1: And I don't think anybody in the literature has done
Speaker 1: a very good job or did a very good job
Speaker 1: over that six year period when happiness was studied of
Speaker 1: explaining that that. When you're talking about materialism versus experientialism,
Speaker 1: objects versus experiences, like you're talking about the object itself
Speaker 1: and not your propensity to generate memories and experiences through
Speaker 1: the object, which is kind of confusing and cluttering frankly,
Speaker 1: but it's an important point. Uh. There's a book out
Speaker 1: people love writing books about this stuff too, telling them
Speaker 1: for you know online. Elizabe Dunna. Michael Norton wrote one
Speaker 1: called Happy Money. The science is Smarter Spending. Uh. And
Speaker 1: they track down some key principles. Um. They they obviously
Speaker 1: say experiences are more valuable than objects, but they break
Speaker 1: it down further and give you some advice, like you
Speaker 1: should buy an experience. First of all, you should make
Speaker 1: it a treat, which means, you know, it makes it
Speaker 1: more special if you limit your access to these things. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I get that if you go to like some
Speaker 1: really fancy restaurant, it's great, but if you go like
Speaker 1: every week, you're kind of like, all right, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of sick of sick of this place. They say you
Speaker 1: should buy time, which I'm not fully sure to understand
Speaker 1: what that means. You go to another human being and
Speaker 1: say I would like to purchase one to two years
Speaker 1: of your life. Um, and you just put it onto
Speaker 1: my little watch here. I'm gonna take it from your watch.
Speaker 1: How much do you want? And then they give you
Speaker 1: some of their life o. Uh. And then they say
Speaker 1: to invest in others, which goes back to that original
Speaker 1: study I was talking about. And then pay now and
Speaker 1: consume later, and that delayed consumption leads to increased enjoyment.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, which is the opposite of one of the
Speaker 1: tenants of materialism, like exactly, and then you pay now. Apparently,
Speaker 1: people who are um um, I guess registered materialists. I
Speaker 1: don't remember how they quantified at r MS figured it
Speaker 1: out in the UM in the study, but people who
Speaker 1: are materialistic have UM more credit cards, typically have at
Speaker 1: least one loan of a thousand dollars and more outstanding. Um.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of a not only does it lead
Speaker 1: to or is it associated with character flaws, it also
Speaker 1: has other pitfalls and pathfalls associated with it too, like debt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the exact opposite that's consumed now, pay later exactly,
Speaker 1: whereas the other is like cantra and this is like
Speaker 1: whatever the opposite of tantra is. I don't know, um,
Speaker 1: but the the there's this kind of unspoken or very
Speaker 1: rarely spoken indictment of material culture um and that well,
Speaker 1: I ran across this one quote. It's called it's a
Speaker 1: consumer Materialism is a degrading outcome of untrammeled marketing power.
Speaker 1: That it's kind of like you have people who possibly
Speaker 1: have low self esteem, low self worth, and are looking
Speaker 1: for a way to generate their own identity. Who are
Speaker 1: more highly susceptible, maybe too being marketed to like, if
Speaker 1: you drink this liquor, you're going to turn into a
Speaker 1: lion and own the barrier. And no matter what your
Speaker 1: salary is, as long as you can afford a bottle
Speaker 1: of this, no matter how much it puts you out,
Speaker 1: you're gonna You're gonna be awesome. Your friends are gonna
Speaker 1: be awesome. And some people say, like, I need to
Speaker 1: feel awesome right now, and I'm willing to shell out
Speaker 1: fifty bucks for that, and I'm gonna do it. And
Speaker 1: who knows, maybe it does pump them up a little bit,
Speaker 1: hopefully though ideally, if it does pump them up, pump
Speaker 1: them up to a level where they realize that materialism
Speaker 1: isn't going to make them happy. What about a facelift?
Speaker 1: That's neither an object nor I guess the experience is
Speaker 1: having the new face. Apparently, plastic surgery um people are
Speaker 1: reported to have surgery people they they are reported to
Speaker 1: have longer lasting happiness. That hedonic adaptation takes way longer
Speaker 1: for plastic surgery than other I guess purchases interesting. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: going back to the whole lottery thing, I think everyone
Speaker 1: knows that all the studies generally point to it's like
Speaker 1: a baseline happiness. Objects can make you happy in the moment,
Speaker 1: But with lottery winners, they did find out repeatedly that
Speaker 1: they generally go back to their baseline happiness from before
Speaker 1: they had the dough. And I would say that's the
Speaker 1: case for most of these studies. It's not about how
Speaker 1: happy you are in a moment or even in a
Speaker 1: given experience or holding an object, but eventually you're going
Speaker 1: to return to the schmuck that you are. You're either
Speaker 1: happy or you're not. You know, we're remember when we
Speaker 1: did our super Stuff Guide to Happiness, there was that um,
Speaker 1: one of the founders of trans humanism, who was saying, like,
Speaker 1: we need to figure out how to ratchet up everybody's
Speaker 1: base level happiness. Yeah, like even with pills and things right,
Speaker 1: or genetic um manipulation or whatever. He's like, whatever it takes,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that should be a pursuit
Speaker 1: of humanity is making everyone happier by nature. I don't
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, I think you said the same thing
Speaker 1: in the stuff. Yeah, because I think pathos is valuable.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I'm pretty sure we made that point.
Speaker 1: It seems like something you would say and I'd be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do. I think it's valuable to the human experience.
Speaker 1: I think it's I can do a lot of good
Speaker 1: to be uh, briefly depressed. And well here's an example
Speaker 1: of that. Um, this the Great Recession. Since the Great Recession,
Speaker 1: teenagers have been reporting um less desire for material objects
Speaker 1: than the teenagers for a decade before. Um, They're like,
Speaker 1: but you're not talking about my smartphone, right, everything? But
Speaker 1: that right, Well, they were saying like they're there. Um,
Speaker 1: they were scoring on like materialism surveys as less materialistic
Speaker 1: than their counterparts a decade before, and they were more
Speaker 1: likely to say things like I want a job that
Speaker 1: benefits society. They were they were becoming less materialistic and
Speaker 1: more pro social, and they were saying that that's a
Speaker 1: direct result of this Great Recession. So lessons learned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your point that, um, that depression of one way or
Speaker 1: one sort or another can be beneficial. It's on a
Speaker 1: social societal level that's true too. Apparently, Yeah, I did it.
Speaker 1: Happiness objects or or experiences. What do you think I
Speaker 1: think objects super shiny, golden, golden, sparkly objects. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is one last thing. I think you made a really
Speaker 1: good point, like wanting a guitar is doesn't make you
Speaker 1: a materialist. You don't have to reject all possession to
Speaker 1: be a good, grounded, normal, happy person. Yeah. Listen to
Speaker 1: our podcasts on freegans, yeah, dumpster diving. I think those
Speaker 1: people are happy. I think I say yes, yeah, and
Speaker 1: go check out our super Stuff Guide to Happiness. It
Speaker 1: was very, very good. It's on iTunes. It's available on iTunes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just blow the dust off of it. It's still relevant
Speaker 1: because everything stopped in two thousand nine. It was so
Speaker 1: interesting too. Yeah, it was a good one. Uh. And
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about objects or um experiences,
Speaker 1: you can type those words in the search bar at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and it will bring up
Speaker 1: this article that we were working off of. And since
Speaker 1: I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this grocery waste. We did our podcast
Speaker 1: on de fridging, and we got a surprisingly a lot
Speaker 1: of responses from people. Yeah, I was kind of surprised.
Speaker 1: It really hit home. Uh. So this is from a
Speaker 1: former grocery store employee when he was in high school.
Speaker 1: He said, part of my job at the store was
Speaker 1: to find all the eggs, bread and milk that had
Speaker 1: a cell by date within the next three days. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's really terrible because cell by dates are designed
Speaker 1: with some wiggle room just to make sure nothing is
Speaker 1: spoiling before the date on the cart. And when I
Speaker 1: had the cart loaded up with perfectly good food, I
Speaker 1: had to throw the bread and eggs into the garbage
Speaker 1: compactor and pour all the milk down the drain dozens
Speaker 1: of gallons a night. M It's just like maddening. And
Speaker 1: I got with the local f f a teacher whatever
Speaker 1: that is, and asked if yeah, look at you, okay,
Speaker 1: whatever that is, I don't remember for you remember. Um?
Speaker 1: They asked if all this wasted food? Um. I asked
Speaker 1: if all the wasted food could be used to slap
Speaker 1: the pigs that the students were raising, and he said
Speaker 1: that'd be a great idea. So I went to the
Speaker 1: manager of the grocery store, said we should do this
Speaker 1: and it might even be good pr for us. It
Speaker 1: turns out the grocery store got back partial store credit
Speaker 1: from their suppliers for expired food that they threw away.
Speaker 1: And here's the hitch. They would not get any credit
Speaker 1: if any of the expired food was put to any use.
Speaker 1: Isn't that awful. Some suppliers would even refuse credit if
Speaker 1: they decided the store wasn't doing enough to prevent dumpster
Speaker 1: divers from retrieving food. What's worse, many foods that don't
Speaker 1: actually spoil for years and years, but they have arbitrarily
Speaker 1: short sell by dates because they found that people don't
Speaker 1: trust foods to have an expiration date too far into
Speaker 1: the future. Can you remember didn't we talk about, Oh,
Speaker 1: I did a brain stuff on water going bad, and
Speaker 1: it's like, there's no reason for it to have an
Speaker 1: expiration date. Yeah? Uh so, he says. Thus, I spent
Speaker 1: one memorable evening throwaway throwing out hundreds of dollars worth
Speaker 1: of cheese that was a known danger of spoiling anytime soon.
Speaker 1: Even asked if I could take some home, and they
Speaker 1: said that that would be considered shoplifting. Wow. So I
Speaker 1: don't see food waste being addressed until it becomes a
Speaker 1: matter of public outrage. On the level of sweatshop labor.
Speaker 1: There are just too many economic barriers in the way.
Speaker 1: That is from Todd from Okay. See thanks Todd, And
Speaker 1: that is just his store. We heard from other people
Speaker 1: some stores have different policies where they can actually put
Speaker 1: some of that food to use, but I don't think
Speaker 1: that's the norm. No. And we heard from another guy
Speaker 1: too who was fired because he got so tired of
Speaker 1: throwing stuff where he took a bunch of baguettes to
Speaker 1: a homeless shelter and they found out about it and
Speaker 1: he was fired because of it. Um, but he said
Speaker 1: he didn't regret. It's still his day. Good good for him. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: thanks Todd from Okay. See I would say go thunder,
Speaker 1: but go heat instead. Uh. If you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with Chuck or Me or Jerry, UM, you
Speaker 1: can send us a tweet. Our handle is s y
Speaker 1: s K Podcast with the little at symbol ahead of that.
Speaker 1: We're on Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know
Speaker 1: check us out there. UM. You can check out our
Speaker 1: YouTube channel Josh and Chuck that's the name of it.
Speaker 1: You'll love it. Um. You can also send us a
Speaker 1: regular old email Stuff podcast at discovery dot com and
Speaker 1: want to st at home on the web. It is
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