Speaker 1: From how Stuff Works dot com. This is the Stuff
Speaker 1: of Life. I'm Julie Douglas, host of The Stuff of Life,
Speaker 1: a podcast that teases a part of the tales we tell,
Speaker 1: because when we crack open a story and look inside,
Speaker 1: we see the seeds of what make our world so maddening,
Speaker 1: so strange, and so achingly beautiful, not to mention ridiculous.
Speaker 1: The Stuff of Life is a podcast about how we're
Speaker 1: all just getting by, learning and surviving through the stories
Speaker 1: we share. In this episode, we take on the power
Speaker 1: of fear, and we talked to a swap team member
Speaker 1: and a former firefighter about how we react when the
Speaker 1: survival chips are down. Then we eavesdrop on the how
Speaker 1: stuff Works collective and the types of emergencies they imagine
Speaker 1: but rarely voice. Finally, a professor of sociology who's trying
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of what Americans are really
Speaker 1: scared of. He schools us on what we're obsessing about
Speaker 1: and why fear has this double power over us. It
Speaker 1: has the power to to you know, of course, frighten us,
Speaker 1: to make us coward, to change our behavior, but also
Speaker 1: the power to make us ask all these questions about ourselves.
Speaker 1: And question who we are. Most of us seldom actively
Speaker 1: ponder the things that could go wrong instead are subconscious.
Speaker 1: Is the jar of our fears. I mean, think about it.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't be able to function if every single worry
Speaker 1: came to the forefront of our conscious minds. We'd be
Speaker 1: completely stunned. So we jar up the worst case scenarios.
Speaker 1: We put them on a shelf and there they remain
Speaker 1: until a nightmare unleashes them. Or we say, board a
Speaker 1: plane and we take that jar the shelf to examine it.
Speaker 1: And we've been doing this since we were children, absorbing
Speaker 1: messages from fairy tales like beware of the wolf disguised
Speaker 1: as a family member, or do not enter that charming
Speaker 1: cottage that smells like gingerbread. These are survival kinds, the
Speaker 1: very first fears to go up on the shelf. The
Speaker 1: idea in this episode is to try to square up
Speaker 1: the real and imagined fears that made it into adulthood,
Speaker 1: how we think about them, and how we deal with them.
Speaker 1: So first we turn to two experts who have their
Speaker 1: boots on the ground preparing for the real deal picture
Speaker 1: the Jason Movies or the Freddy Krueger and the girls
Speaker 1: getting chased. She's got a hundred yards on the guy.
Speaker 1: All she has to do is unlock her car with
Speaker 1: the Keith and she can't do it. And you're in
Speaker 1: the movie theater screaming at her unlocked, unlocked the door,
Speaker 1: locked the door. We think that's just movie. It's actually
Speaker 1: what happens to people. That's Brock Ryan, a former firefighter who,
Speaker 1: along with Paul Merritt, a member of the Atlanta Police
Speaker 1: Department swat team, formed a company called Life Safety Solutions.
Speaker 1: They used their own blueprint for survival, all those high
Speaker 1: wire moments they've encountered to teach others how to meet
Speaker 1: their own life or death moments. That moment came to
Speaker 1: me as a firefighter UM I was doing evacuation training
Speaker 1: for the fire Department for high rise buildings. I was
Speaker 1: trying to introduce them into how serious the matter can be,
Speaker 1: and at that point there was a lot of people
Speaker 1: not taking that serious. The planes said the building in
Speaker 1: New York City and everything changed. Everything changed in the
Speaker 1: sense that the veil had fallen. We had to now
Speaker 1: think harder and smarter about the places we assumed were safe.
Speaker 1: And while we all know that Sir vibing. An emergency
Speaker 1: can sometimes come down to dumb luck, like say you're
Speaker 1: close to an exit door. Sometimes the ability to persevere
Speaker 1: comes down to self possessed split second decisions, something Paul
Speaker 1: Merritt knows firsthand. If someone is not prepared for it
Speaker 1: and they don't know what their options are, when they're
Speaker 1: hit with that surprise emergency threat and they get big,
Speaker 1: that big dump of adrenaline in their system, they're gonna
Speaker 1: have a hard way thinking their way through the issue.
Speaker 1: They're not going to take action. They're gonna search in
Speaker 1: their and their brain for the proper response, and if
Speaker 1: there's nothing there, that's when we see people take highly
Speaker 1: logical actions. Paul said two things that I think we
Speaker 1: can all relate to. That adrenaline rush that washes over us,
Speaker 1: changing our body temperature, stiffening our muscles, dilating our pupils,
Speaker 1: a feeling like the inside of our stomach is being
Speaker 1: hollowed out flight or fight, as it's known. The other
Speaker 1: thing we do is what we hide in plane sight,
Speaker 1: just like you see young kids do when they first
Speaker 1: try out a game of hide and seek. There they
Speaker 1: are out in the open, hands pressed to their eyes.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of magical thinking. If I can't see you,
Speaker 1: you can't see me, and then the incantation please please
Speaker 1: don't see me. If you look at the Columbine shooting,
Speaker 1: they had students who were hiding under tables and plain
Speaker 1: sight in the library that it was not a good
Speaker 1: place to be. But because they were hit with this
Speaker 1: unexpected stressor they couldn't logically think their way through it.
Speaker 1: And in hindsight, we'll look at it like, what were
Speaker 1: they thinking? How could they do something like this? That's
Speaker 1: the issue. We can't are We can't logically solve a
Speaker 1: problem when we're scared to death. One of the things
Speaker 1: Brock and Paul talk about is a kind of mental
Speaker 1: rolodex that your brain flips through during an emergency. They
Speaker 1: point to the cliche of your life flashing before your eyes.
Speaker 1: They say, it's not that your mind and is giving
Speaker 1: you a last glimpse of your life. It's your brain
Speaker 1: looking for an answer to the problem in front of you,
Speaker 1: perhaps even looking inside of those jars of fears. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: your body is undergoing a massive chemical change that can
Speaker 1: result in cognitive distortion and the loss of fine motor skills.
Speaker 1: A lot of things both cognlively and perceptual distortions that
Speaker 1: happened to people. Not everyone gets all of them, things
Speaker 1: like tunnel vision, things like auditory exclusion, time, slowing down,
Speaker 1: time speeding up, trouble with death perception, all these things.
Speaker 1: Save someone's in the building and they might get tunnel
Speaker 1: vision on the exit. Why they're totally focused on the
Speaker 1: exit and their perfect vision is gonna basically go down
Speaker 1: to nothing. We see that all the time with people
Speaker 1: who were from from a law enforcement aspect. When you
Speaker 1: talk someone's been rocked and they you say, what's the
Speaker 1: description the guy. I can't tell you what he looked like.
Speaker 1: I can't tell this, I can't that. But his gun
Speaker 1: was huge. It was a massive gun. The gun was gigantic.
Speaker 1: Why because all their focus is on is on that threat.
Speaker 1: It's that gun. All of a a sudden, it might be
Speaker 1: a little revolver, but the gun looked like a howitzer
Speaker 1: because they were totally focused on it. Now, remember what
Speaker 1: Brock said about Freddy Krueger. He's chasing the girl, getting
Speaker 1: closer and closer, and she's fussing with the keys. She
Speaker 1: can't unlock the car door. That turns out to be
Speaker 1: a pretty good example of the loss of fine motor skills.
Speaker 1: We think that's just movie, it's actually what happens to people.
Speaker 1: She cannot unlock the door. She's too scared. She can't
Speaker 1: control the key. It will not go on the whole. Okay,
Speaker 1: so your heart's racing. You have only your gross motor
Speaker 1: skills at your immediate command. What do you do well?
Speaker 1: You breathe from the beginning. There's one thing that everybody
Speaker 1: can do, and we just call it tactical breathing. You
Speaker 1: call it psycle breathing. It's a four count breathing exercise
Speaker 1: where I would breathe four and through my nose, hold
Speaker 1: of four for sole the release of the mouth, hold
Speaker 1: it for four. And when you do these breeding exercises,
Speaker 1: it will help bring that hormone increased heart rate down
Speaker 1: a little bit, which will improve improve your cogn ability.
Speaker 1: It will reduce those perception storations, help you perform a
Speaker 1: little bit higher level. They also train people to build
Speaker 1: up a blueprint for themselves, learn their environments and their options.
Speaker 1: It's about specifics, not generalities. They may even have blocks
Speaker 1: of wood that they hit together to mimic the sharp
Speaker 1: report of a firearm. So that if you ever do
Speaker 1: encounter the real thing, the real sound, you won't be
Speaker 1: quite as thrown by it. It's funny. We were doing
Speaker 1: a training exercise in one building, and we train it.
Speaker 1: We tell everyone, Hey, wherever I am, we hit these
Speaker 1: blocks of wood together. I'm the bad guy. So when
Speaker 1: they knew what their options john, we tell everyone there
Speaker 1: is no right and wrong option. You do what's best
Speaker 1: for you in relation to the threat, but bear in
Speaker 1: mind I am the bad guy. So and this is
Speaker 1: why it kind of tell the stories why it's so
Speaker 1: important to have more than one option, more than one.
Speaker 1: If I get this, if a happens, I'm always going
Speaker 1: to do be Because I'm standing in the hallway and him.
Speaker 1: These two pieces would together, and this guy comes out
Speaker 1: of it and he's decide he's gonna practice evacuation and
Speaker 1: he's leaving his cubicle and he starts coming right at me.
Speaker 1: I was between where his desk was and where the
Speaker 1: exit was, and I said, what are you doing? I'm
Speaker 1: the bad guy. He goes, but that's my exit. And
Speaker 1: that was a good teaching point because you saw his
Speaker 1: shoulders kind of dropped and he realized, you know, no
Speaker 1: it's an odd idea. So then we kind of thought
Speaker 1: through what what will be a better option, because most
Speaker 1: floor plans double back on themselves. He's like, why could
Speaker 1: have gone this way or that? But I was, I
Speaker 1: was only he'd made up his mind what he's gonna do.
Speaker 1: But this type of training looks simple, but it's not easy.
Speaker 1: There's a lot there's many many ways to do it wrong. Um.
Speaker 1: For example, one, uh, there's a lawsuit going on right
Speaker 1: now from a place out west. They decided at a
Speaker 1: retirement community to a surprise active shooter drill. Not surprisingly,
Speaker 1: people were traumatized, people were scared um and lawsuits arose
Speaker 1: from it. We saw this also happened last year at
Speaker 1: a school in Florida to where let's do a with
Speaker 1: realistic weapons shooting planks, do a surprise active shooter drill.
Speaker 1: We never ever, ever do surprise at active shooter drills.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter that people know what's going on. What
Speaker 1: is important is they get the stimulus, they get to
Speaker 1: practice their response and they succeed at it. If there's
Speaker 1: anyone thread connecting Brock and Paul from their past to
Speaker 1: their presence that they credit for keeping them out of
Speaker 1: a jam. It's that four count breath or tactical breathing,
Speaker 1: something Brock isolates in his memory of the Olympic Park
Speaker 1: bombing in Atlanta. I was the first engine in for
Speaker 1: the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. We were two blocks away
Speaker 1: on a medical calm when the radio rang out, we
Speaker 1: have a bomb in the park with several bodies down.
Speaker 1: I turned the fire engine around, drove to the bottom
Speaker 1: of the hill, turned into introve up into the park.
Speaker 1: Um As we were pulling in, things were still settling
Speaker 1: from the explosion. We were there in about forty seconds
Speaker 1: after the explosion. From that, I remember specifically looking through
Speaker 1: the chaos. I remember the lieutenant I was driving. I
Speaker 1: remember the lieutenant looking at me. We got out, we
Speaker 1: came around to the front of our truck and just
Speaker 1: visually assessed what was out there. We looked at each
Speaker 1: other and I told him, I said, Lieutenant, we've done
Speaker 1: this before. It's just been one at a time. There's
Speaker 1: a bunch of them. Let's go through one at a time.
Speaker 1: And we actually did our tactical breathing. A lot of
Speaker 1: things that happened with my career, but on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: we ever get a swap call out, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: on virtually all of them, the person you should be
Speaker 1: talking to negotiators saying, yeah, they come in, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: shoot Hi, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna kill everybody. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm married, I've got a family, I want
Speaker 1: to go home. It's stressful at times, so but that
Speaker 1: that's the common call. So as we're going to the call, um,
Speaker 1: you know, people will be joking around, still trying to
Speaker 1: keep things light. But as as we get close to
Speaker 1: the call, as we as we get there and as
Speaker 1: we start moving to the house, all the joking will
Speaker 1: always stop. People stop, and and what starts At that
Speaker 1: point everyone kind of gets in their own head. But
Speaker 1: what do you hear? You hear that four count breathing
Speaker 1: pretty much from everyone from all twenty guys we have.
Speaker 1: Let's take another jar off the shelf of fears. Any
Speaker 1: good Boogeyman story is just a stand in for the
Speaker 1: terrible knowledge that life is fleeting. We will all die.
Speaker 1: But the fictional version of the Boogeyman allows us to
Speaker 1: die over and over again and resurrect ourselves each time.
Speaker 1: After all, he's stuffed inside the pages of a story
Speaker 1: far far away from us. But as we get older,
Speaker 1: we begin to understand that he's escaped. He could be anywhere.
Speaker 1: Once I was walking down a deserted street late at
Speaker 1: night when a man appeared. How do you catch a
Speaker 1: unique rabbit, he asked, assessing me as he took a
Speaker 1: drag off of his cigarette. Unique up on it. Whenever
Speaker 1: I step out into the dark alone, that punchline comes
Speaker 1: swinging back, and I think of the split second between
Speaker 1: prey and predator, the boogeyman and the dark. We'll look
Speaker 1: into this primal fear the dark, but first we talked
Speaker 1: to some unique rabbits from How Stuff Works to get
Speaker 1: their thoughts on fear and survival. The rabbits in question
Speaker 1: senior editor Alison louder Milk, writer and podcast host Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: An editor and podcast host Holly Fry. We need the
Speaker 1: potato gun active and armed at all times. I wanted
Speaker 1: to know what was lurking in the jars of the
Speaker 1: fears of my coworkers. We need to pick who is
Speaker 1: strongest in the office that could use you like a javelin,
Speaker 1: So I asked them to share the scary stuff that
Speaker 1: they had pushed way way back on the shelf. I
Speaker 1: think exactly the reason it's uncomfortable is the reason it's interesting,
Speaker 1: Like there's something like strangely uncomfortable about talking about this.
Speaker 1: Let's hear from Joe, who has given this topic a
Speaker 1: lot of thought, and by the way, he wants you
Speaker 1: to know that you should do your very own research
Speaker 1: on how to survive his worst case scenario. The following
Speaker 1: is just what he has built up over the years.
Speaker 1: I think what anybody would agree is the most terrifying
Speaker 1: scenario going off a bridge or you know, over a
Speaker 1: river bank in your car and then sinking slowly in
Speaker 1: and then drowning in your car on a bad traffic day.
Speaker 1: You know, like you were already upset, but if it
Speaker 1: happened on a good traffic day, you'd just be calm
Speaker 1: as a Hindu cow and just sink to your death happily.
Speaker 1: What you have to do if you're in a sinking
Speaker 1: car is immediately roll the windows down. The problem is
Speaker 1: going to be as the car sinks, the pressure pushing
Speaker 1: down on the on the doors from the outside of
Speaker 1: the car. The water pressure is going to prevent you
Speaker 1: from popping the doors open because the car is going
Speaker 1: to sink faster than the interior of the cabin fills up,
Speaker 1: so the pressure on the outside is greater than the
Speaker 1: pressure on the inside. So you're gonna be trying to
Speaker 1: open the doors and they're just too heavy. You can't
Speaker 1: get them open. But if you can roll the windows down,
Speaker 1: then you can just pop out through those. Joe is
Speaker 1: not alone in this fear. Turns out that Holly has
Speaker 1: kept the same sort of fear on her own shelf.
Speaker 1: You have accidentally stumbled on one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I am a pain in the took us when it
Speaker 1: comes to buying a car, because I'm the one person
Speaker 1: on the lot that doesn't want power windows or power locks, right,
Speaker 1: you gotta have will have manual windows for the one.
Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons for me. My anxiety comes
Speaker 1: from dwelling on a home invasion, and that's Allison's fear too.
Speaker 1: But if you look inside the jar on her shelf,
Speaker 1: her home invasion is perpetrated by the undead. If society
Speaker 1: went haywire for whatever reason, Um, you know, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I've imagined just living in the basement, like which room,
Speaker 1: which part of the basement would be? Like the bedroom,
Speaker 1: which part would be like the steady and like where
Speaker 1: we do like homeschooling and you know, have our meals
Speaker 1: totally planted out. I like her kids are still going
Speaker 1: to be educated. Yeah, I mean I think about it
Speaker 1: all the time. You know, my partner travels a lot
Speaker 1: and I'm home with the kids, and I think about
Speaker 1: I mean, our house is kind of unusual. Um, we
Speaker 1: have a ton of glass, which is really not good
Speaker 1: for a zombie attack because we will totally be you
Speaker 1: know seen. That's an interesting point that you bring up zombies,
Speaker 1: because I think I've noticed throughout the years that a
Speaker 1: lot of people use kind of fake, funny zombie scenarios
Speaker 1: to work out their actual anxieties about emergencies and societies
Speaker 1: and breakdown of law and order in society. People are
Speaker 1: it's just the general placeholder, the fictional, fantastical placeholder for
Speaker 1: what happens if everything goes wrong. Oh yeah, absolutely totally. Um.
Speaker 1: What's interesting to me about this conversation is that it's
Speaker 1: all theory. Polly's actually had to deal with a moment
Speaker 1: where things began to feel very real and very scary
Speaker 1: very fast. Have you ever been in an interesting or
Speaker 1: memorable emergency scenario and what did you do? Did you
Speaker 1: did you panic or did you did you have your
Speaker 1: wits about you? What happened? I had a very strange
Speaker 1: one that seemed very scary and turned out to be
Speaker 1: someone being a jerk, Which is that many many moons ago,
Speaker 1: I used to manage a hair salon that was inside
Speaker 1: of a um A department store, and we would have
Speaker 1: outpost days where you would actually go and set up
Speaker 1: like a table out in the store and sell product there.
Speaker 1: And it was many moons ago, so it was not
Speaker 1: the day of like being able to process square payments
Speaker 1: on a smartphone like. It was all cash in hand,
Speaker 1: and if people wanted to charge, we would have to
Speaker 1: send them directly to the salon. And at one point
Speaker 1: I was standing there doing this blah blah blah talking
Speaker 1: to people about product and I feel something in my
Speaker 1: back and a guy say, don't scream, just walk with me,
Speaker 1: and I said all right, and I did, and we
Speaker 1: got about twenty feet and then he started laughing and said,
Speaker 1: I'm just messing with you. And after I wanted to
Speaker 1: take my shoe off and shove it down his throat,
Speaker 1: I gave him a very stern and unkind lecture with
Speaker 1: a lot of swear where it's about being a poor citizen.
Speaker 1: But I was shaking in my boots and darn near
Speaker 1: urinating myself because I really didn't know what was going
Speaker 1: to happen, and you can't see what's behind you, and
Speaker 1: it was a person much larger than me, so it
Speaker 1: was just But then I was like, you're so sick?
Speaker 1: Who does that for fun? That is massed? There is
Speaker 1: a strange feeling of being afraid that you would be
Speaker 1: a coward? Do you ever have that, Like, like I
Speaker 1: would hope that I would be that I would be
Speaker 1: courageous and selfless in a in a dangerous situation, But
Speaker 1: it's hard to know what you would do, you know,
Speaker 1: So I think courageous is different than smart, though, right,
Speaker 1: it can be. I mean it can be. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean the whole thing, like you were talking about, is
Speaker 1: that like you don't like you sort of go on autopilot,
Speaker 1: And I guess what I fear is that what if
Speaker 1: my going on autopilot reveals some side of me that
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be proud of. I would hope that's not
Speaker 1: what would happen, But I guess you can't really know
Speaker 1: what happened when you go on autopilot. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's true. I mean I think we all want to
Speaker 1: think of our best selves coming out, you know, being courageous,
Speaker 1: and then I picture myself just running for that side
Speaker 1: door and be like audios, we touches, come on with
Speaker 1: me if you can't. But otherwise about I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think about who I would reach for first, you know, say,
Speaker 1: like my air like an airplane was going down, you know,
Speaker 1: my kids were not sitting next to me, Like okay,
Speaker 1: you know, go for my kids first, and then see
Speaker 1: who else is in trouble or get them off the
Speaker 1: plane and then come back in Like how would it?
Speaker 1: How would that work out? But yeah, I would like
Speaker 1: to think that I would do those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: But who knows. I mean, really, who knows. It's a
Speaker 1: strange kind of thing about how fear has this double
Speaker 1: power over us. It has the power to you know,
Speaker 1: of course frighten us, to make us coward, to change
Speaker 1: our behavior, but also the power to make us ask
Speaker 1: all these questions about ourselves and like question who we are,
Speaker 1: and not only who we are, but how much of
Speaker 1: who we are is determined by the glow contained within
Speaker 1: those jars of fears? What happens when we take them
Speaker 1: off the shelf and we unscrew the lids? Is it
Speaker 1: like Pandora's Box? Do they bombard us? Or do they
Speaker 1: float off into the ether, never to be worried over again?
Speaker 1: And can we really ever know how much fear defines us? Now?
Speaker 1: Granscribe to Night's presentation of Radio's outstanding Theater of Thrill.
Speaker 1: Not much has changed between now and that bit of
Speaker 1: audio from yesteryear. The subject the frightened City remains front
Speaker 1: and center in the American psyche, and Dr Edward Day
Speaker 1: of Chapman University can tell us why. But first let's
Speaker 1: find out what's inside the jar on his shelf. I
Speaker 1: am absolutely petrified of height. Put me on one of
Speaker 1: those swinging foot bridges and I get vertigo immediately, and
Speaker 1: there's no there's no rationale behind that. I'm at Day.
Speaker 1: I'm chair of the Department of Sociology at Chapman University
Speaker 1: and director of the Earl Babby Research Center, which is
Speaker 1: the home for the Chapman Survey of American Fears. Chapman
Speaker 1: University recently released the second wave of survey comparing results
Speaker 1: from Wave one and two thousand and fourteen, Let's find
Speaker 1: out what ranked as the number one fear on americans minds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the number one fear we had in this survey was
Speaker 1: walking alone at night. It just gets at people's fear
Speaker 1: of this idea of the country's going to hell in
Speaker 1: a handbasket, and then then the crime is out of control,
Speaker 1: and that you may not even be safe in your
Speaker 1: own neighborhood, becoming the victim of identity theft, safety on
Speaker 1: the internet, being the victim of a mass or random shooting,
Speaker 1: public speaking. These are all ranked on the top five
Speaker 1: fears of Americans, and it's easy to see why even
Speaker 1: the public speaking one can be terrifying. Right, So, were
Speaker 1: there any outliers that Dr Day didn't expect to see.
Speaker 1: I was a little surprised at nine percent said they
Speaker 1: were afraid of zombies. Um uh, one of you know,
Speaker 1: just the pop culture seems to affect people's fear, whether
Speaker 1: things are real or not. One of the things that
Speaker 1: stood out to me was it more than half of
Speaker 1: the people said they wouldn't stop to help somebody who's
Speaker 1: card broken down. Um. You know, when I when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, that was just something you did and
Speaker 1: and now we're so suspicious of each other. It's something
Speaker 1: that the people simply refused to do, and I just
Speaker 1: you know, shows a sort of lack of trust and
Speaker 1: faith in each other as people. Some call this media
Speaker 1: driven angst mean world syndrome, something George Gebner and his
Speaker 1: colleagues began studying in the nineteen sixties when they noticed
Speaker 1: that people's attitudes about their community reflected the kinds of
Speaker 1: media they consumed. For instance, the more police dramas and
Speaker 1: news people watched, well, the greater they perceived the threat
Speaker 1: of something violent happening to them. One of the things
Speaker 1: we would hope would come out of this survey is
Speaker 1: to address that sort of mean world approach or view
Speaker 1: of the world and and and get off of it.
Speaker 1: You know, whenever we talk about the fear of crime
Speaker 1: or the fear of walking alone, we try to try
Speaker 1: to emphasize the folks that crime rates have gone down
Speaker 1: dramatically since you know, over the last twenty years, really
Speaker 1: since ninety three, they've been dropping like a rock. Both
Speaker 1: violent and property crime are down, and yet two thirds
Speaker 1: of the country thinks crime is going up, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean and it's odd because it's it's such a
Speaker 1: simple thing to find out any anyone listening to the
Speaker 1: podcast could could look this up on their phone before
Speaker 1: I finished talking the sentence and see how far crime
Speaker 1: has gone down. And at this point, it's not crime
Speaker 1: so much that is affecting people's quality of life. It's
Speaker 1: the fear of crime. And we hope by talking about
Speaker 1: fear more openly, people can see, you know, which figures
Speaker 1: are maybe rational and which ones aren't, and maybe we
Speaker 1: can address that in a more logical, educated way. Chapman
Speaker 1: University survey is dizzy and its ability to drill down
Speaker 1: into fine detail, including who's most likely to be fearful.
Speaker 1: A low education, you know, having only a high school
Speaker 1: diploma or a g E ed or less was It
Speaker 1: was a very consistent predictor of fears and worries and concerns,
Speaker 1: especially on personal safety, on personal future, which is a
Speaker 1: pretty reasonable fear or concern. In that group, they tend
Speaker 1: to be more afraid of being stalked or having their
Speaker 1: identity stolen, of criminal victimization. They reported higher levels of
Speaker 1: the phobias you know of of fear of heights, fear
Speaker 1: of clowns, uh, fear of blood. They had a higher
Speaker 1: level of fear of the government and especially on things
Speaker 1: like a gun control and Obamacare. UH. TV watching was
Speaker 1: a very big factor, and especially on crime. What was
Speaker 1: interesting is that it didn't matter whether you watched true
Speaker 1: crime TV or fictional crime TV. You know, both have
Speaker 1: a big effect on your on your fear of personal victimization.
Speaker 1: People who watch a lot of Talk to you Be
Speaker 1: also had higher fears, so the television influence was big.
Speaker 1: Females are are more afraid of of personal safety and
Speaker 1: criminal victimization and had higher levels reported higher levels of
Speaker 1: fears of the phobia type things you know, the clowns
Speaker 1: and blood and Republicans were more worried about government. Democrats
Speaker 1: were more worried about personal safety and the environment and
Speaker 1: man made disasters. Christians were more worried about the government
Speaker 1: and man made disasters. And being retired was related to
Speaker 1: personal safety and fears about one's future. The survey covers
Speaker 1: a lot of ground, but if there's one thing that
Speaker 1: Dr Day wants us to take away from it, it's this,
Speaker 1: We would like people to get back to a more
Speaker 1: rational look at their life. We would like people say, yes,
Speaker 1: I've been afraid of crime, maybe because I'm watching TV,
Speaker 1: not because I'm actually uh in in in serious danger
Speaker 1: of a violent victimization. I mean like people to get
Speaker 1: outside again, you know, I sit on your front porch
Speaker 1: instead of locking yourself inside and barring the windows. Share
Speaker 1: with your neighbors, you know, avoid this self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 1: If everyone is afraid of the park at night, so
Speaker 1: that leaves the park at night to the bad guys.
Speaker 1: You know, go take it back. There's there's there's less
Speaker 1: to be afraid of that you think. So have our
Speaker 1: deepest darkest thoughts shifted from last year to this year?
Speaker 1: And does the cultural echo chamber continue to feed our
Speaker 1: collective anxiety. To find out about phase two of the survey,
Speaker 1: head over to now dot how Stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: There you'll find the article American Horror Story What do
Speaker 1: Americans fear most? For now, though, it's time to gather
Speaker 1: up our concerns, anxiety and angst and put them back
Speaker 1: on the shelf, even the jar that contains our biggest fear, death,
Speaker 1: the knowledge of which makes living that much more beautiful
Speaker 1: and strange. In the meantime, Joe has a question for you.
Speaker 1: Here's one, what would you do if we lost power
Speaker 1: like electricity and just didn't get it back? They keep
Speaker 1: telling us it will be another day or two, and
Speaker 1: maybe say it's been a week and you still don't
Speaker 1: have power. Tell us what you do, or perhaps what
Speaker 1: you have done. Email as your experience. Your plans are, hey,
Speaker 1: write a fictional story about it and send it to
Speaker 1: us at the Stuff of Life at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. The Stuff of Life is co produced by
Speaker 1: Noel Brown and me Julie Douglas. Original music and sound
Speaker 1: design is by Noel Brown. Thank you to Brock Ryan
Speaker 1: and Paul Merritt of Life Safety Solutions for sharing what
Speaker 1: you do. Thanks to Dr Edward Dave for covering some
Speaker 1: of the finer points of the Chapman University Survey of
Speaker 1: American Fears. And thanks to our How Stuff Works colleagues
Speaker 1: Alison Loudermilk, Joe McCormick, and Holly Fry. Not to mention
Speaker 1: Head of Production Jerry Rowland. I be pret Pretti