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Speaker 1: From House Stuff Works dot com. This podcast is brought
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Speaker 1: audible podcast dot com. Slash stuff today for details. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me
Speaker 1: is Chuckles Bryant. How's it going, Chuck? I was chuckling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that might have gotten caught. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: that was an afropo nickname. Yeah, Jerry's funny like then
Speaker 1: she made me laugh. I know. Let's let's let's let's
Speaker 1: do this show. Yes, where's your awesome set up? My
Speaker 1: awesome setup is as follows. Chuck, are you do you
Speaker 1: consider yourself a happy person? Yes? I do? Well, then Chuck,
Speaker 1: you may be dumb? Really yeah? How so Well? There's
Speaker 1: this longstanding question of whether or not there's a negative
Speaker 1: correlation between intelligence and happiness. Take one Ernest Hemingway. He
Speaker 1: said something along the lines of, oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: happiness and intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Speaker 1: I went up you, Oh drink buddy. Charles de gall
Speaker 1: reportedly said happy people are idiots? Did he really? And
Speaker 1: I don't know if he meant the medical classification of
Speaker 1: days gone by idiots. I think he just meant, you know,
Speaker 1: idiots mouth breathers. I've got one that's going to even
Speaker 1: top your Charles de gall One. Okay, Charlton Heston said
Speaker 1: you can pry my gun from my cold, dead hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he sure did. Was he happy? I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Happiness is a warm gun. That's what Paul
Speaker 1: McCartney said, and the Breeders man. We could just quote
Speaker 1: like song lyrics and people all day and end up
Speaker 1: with no results. So well, let's talk about this, chuck.
Speaker 1: Is there a negative correlation between intelligence and happiness? I mean,
Speaker 1: if you think about it in your own experience, you
Speaker 1: can make the case that ignorance is bliss, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing that, uh, you're you're happier when you don't
Speaker 1: know about something bad that's already happened to you than
Speaker 1: you are after you get the news. But that really
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with intellect. Well does it? Though?
Speaker 1: This when this whole thing is kind of fraught with
Speaker 1: questions for me, like is it emotional intelligence? We're talking
Speaker 1: about ignorance, Like when I think and you don't want
Speaker 1: to use the words like stupid, you know, I know
Speaker 1: Jerry says that schools don't like to use that word,
Speaker 1: and it's the word stupid. Yeah, it's a pretty negative word,
Speaker 1: I'll admit. And people that don't score well on high
Speaker 1: well on i Q testa me, and that means nothing
Speaker 1: about how smart they are. It's like, I think it
Speaker 1: has to do more emotional intelligence. And like when I
Speaker 1: think of dumb, I think and happy. I think of
Speaker 1: like the dude sitting there picking his belly button lent
Speaker 1: like laughing his head off at America's funny some video.
Speaker 1: Would you call him and elligent? I don't know. I
Speaker 1: kind of link that as one of the dummies out there.
Speaker 1: But I'm jealous of that because I watched that show
Speaker 1: in my and I just I can't sit still. It's
Speaker 1: just so awful. But some people think it's the funniest
Speaker 1: thing ever. I think it's kind of funny, and they
Speaker 1: seem really happy. You know, a guy gets kicked in
Speaker 1: the groin and everyone gets a good laugh and he
Speaker 1: falls on his face. And you know, Beavis and butt Head,
Speaker 1: they were idiots. They were always laughing and happy. And
Speaker 1: you couldn't laugh at that show either. No, it was funny,
Speaker 1: but I was laughing at their idiocy. I would consider
Speaker 1: you a pretty I don't know if intellectual is the
Speaker 1: right word, but definitely intelligent. I would considue an intelligent person.
Speaker 1: But I'm not intellectual in the least. You know that,
Speaker 1: but you're so. But I would also, I would say
Speaker 1: you're fairly happy. Yeah, but I could see you happier. Well,
Speaker 1: moods come and go, buddy. But you're saying you think
Speaker 1: you're generally a positive, happy person. Yeah, I'd say generally,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty happy person. Barring you know, I'm I'm moody
Speaker 1: as well, But that's that's in the jeans. So your
Speaker 1: questions as to this these articles are um like is intelligence,
Speaker 1: emotional intelligence or intellectual intelligence. I think what they're talking
Speaker 1: about specifically is um mental intelligence like book smarts. Sure,
Speaker 1: or I think you could make a case that street
Speaker 1: smarts comes out of intellect as well. I can. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to hear, but I could if I
Speaker 1: wanted to. Well, I think technically, they've they've done some
Speaker 1: studies that said there is no direct link between happiness
Speaker 1: and actual intelligence. Right, let's let's put some substance into
Speaker 1: this podcast so we can spiculate all day. Uh so, Yeah,
Speaker 1: officially what they say is there's no link. That's the
Speaker 1: official line on that. And thank you for coming and
Speaker 1: listening to this one. Yeah, no, there isn't any Uh.
Speaker 1: Actually that's not true because I found his study, Um,
Speaker 1: hit me. I found his study on the freakonomics blog.
Speaker 1: Actually is a couple. He drew data from a study
Speaker 1: of fourteen thousand people. That's pretty good and they were
Speaker 1: giving Yeah, it's a pretty good sample. Um. They were
Speaker 1: given a vocabulary test and then they were giving an
Speaker 1: analytical reasoning skills test. And the people in the top
Speaker 1: third consistently also reported being happiest, and they were less
Speaker 1: likely to be very unhappy people happy is and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. Not only here's here's the big problem. This
Speaker 1: is the problem with everything. Yes, this is here is
Speaker 1: our problem. No one actually knows what happiness is. It's
Speaker 1: a subjective experience, or if it even exists. I've seen
Speaker 1: a couple of people positive that the problem is. And
Speaker 1: here's the catch twenty two. All the people who are
Speaker 1: thinking about happiness are intelligent. If you're intelligent, or if
Speaker 1: you're not intelligent, you're probably not thinking about happiness. You're
Speaker 1: just happy. So the the whole field of the study
Speaker 1: of happiness shoots itself in the foot every time it
Speaker 1: opens its mouth. True, because it's all smart people trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what happiness is. And I can't think
Speaker 1: of anything that could make you unhappier than that. So
Speaker 1: let's just stop doing this medialy. We should. Well, we
Speaker 1: can talk about some little correlations here and there. I
Speaker 1: know that one researcher was talking about how our educational
Speaker 1: system doesn't really you know, they tend to separate the
Speaker 1: intelligent ones. So, in other words, early on in schooling, Uh,
Speaker 1: the really really smart kids are oftentimes segregated and uh
Speaker 1: put in special classes, betimes, even special magnet schools. They're
Speaker 1: not picked first on the kickball team. Uh. They're outcast
Speaker 1: in some ways because they're smart. And does that lead
Speaker 1: to happiness? Probably not? Yeah that Yeah, there's too many
Speaker 1: externalities that you can't really account for exogenous factors. Yes, nice, Wow,
Speaker 1: you have quite a memory of my friends. Recall from
Speaker 1: our super stuffed Guide to the Economy. Another problem with
Speaker 1: trying to define happiness is every study of happiness is
Speaker 1: a survey. It's all self reporting, and I can't remember
Speaker 1: it brings a bell that you had said like, um,
Speaker 1: we talked about this before, and you have said something
Speaker 1: along the lines of um, it depends on when you
Speaker 1: take that kind of test. Was. I mean, if if
Speaker 1: somebody tested you right now, how would you test in
Speaker 1: as far as the life satisfaction scale or happiness quotient goes, Well,
Speaker 1: she's just tough. I mean, like right this minute, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm in a pretty rotten mood today exactly, but I
Speaker 1: would have about yesterday, but I wouldn't call that. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't chart that on the life happen. Don't you think
Speaker 1: that the mood that you're in when you're taking, uh,
Speaker 1: when you're taking a look a survey on your life
Speaker 1: is going to influence everything. I would like to think
Speaker 1: that I would be able to step outside of that,
Speaker 1: but how can it not, You're right, yeah, So, so
Speaker 1: the whole fact that it's all self reported, I mean
Speaker 1: self reported data is almost always discarded in every other
Speaker 1: area of science. It's it's anecdotal Well, that's because this
Speaker 1: isn't really scientific if you think about it. No, it's not.
Speaker 1: And let's talk about something that's not scientific. It's a field,
Speaker 1: a new subdiscipline called positive psychology. Yes, that would be
Speaker 1: Um Martin us uh Seligman. Yeah. And you get the
Speaker 1: impression by the that his name is associated with something
Speaker 1: as ridiculously hippie sounding as positive psychology, that he's a
Speaker 1: crack pot. Uh, he is not. In fact, he's a
Speaker 1: PhD Uh. He runs the Center I think for Authentic
Speaker 1: Happiness or something like that at the University of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: so it is bona fide. He was the president of
Speaker 1: the Yeah, and actually he dedicated their millennial issue to
Speaker 1: positive psychology while he was president there. It was cool,
Speaker 1: but it was also pretty self serving. And uh, I'm
Speaker 1: sure he had his stocks on. I'm quite sure. Um.
Speaker 1: But the whole field of positive psychology is basically, Um,
Speaker 1: they're exploring interventions, and an intervention is any kind of
Speaker 1: treatment in the field of psychology. Right, they're exploring basically
Speaker 1: what positive psychology is saying is I read a quote
Speaker 1: in an article about it by another positive psychologist who said, uh,
Speaker 1: psychology is very good at getting people from negative eight
Speaker 1: to zero, but hasn't learned how to get people for
Speaker 1: zero to eight positive eight? Right, And that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I mean, like, are you
Speaker 1: supposed to get people to to positive eight? You know
Speaker 1: about that, there's some real ethical questions that are raised.
Speaker 1: Let's say that we develop some sort of um pharmaco
Speaker 1: psychiatric pill that can make a normal person happy. Should
Speaker 1: that person take that pill? I mean, we've already established
Speaker 1: as a society a baseline which is zero, and anybody
Speaker 1: below that is suffering from a mental illness and deserves
Speaker 1: treatment to get back to zero. Why should we accelerate
Speaker 1: our our happiness? And in doing so are we are
Speaker 1: we edging out real experiences? G the negative? I mean
Speaker 1: life is full of both, right, right, But are you
Speaker 1: gonna bring that home with the smart, intelligent or dumb
Speaker 1: stupid thing? Or is that fall into the ignorance bliss category?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know how to categorize that.
Speaker 1: Man interesting, Uh yeah, No, I was actually going to
Speaker 1: go into um another kind of contrary therapy. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know. You want to talk some more about positive psychology? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: that's good. Are you sure yeah, okay, all right, we'll
Speaker 1: continue on that. Have you heard of, uh, what is it?
Speaker 1: Acceptance and commitment therapy? I have not actually see. I
Speaker 1: have a leg up on you. I have to tell everybody.
Speaker 1: I've written a bunch of articles on happiness recently, and
Speaker 1: poor Chuck's been writing nothing but social media stuff, which
Speaker 1: is if this were about Twitter, I'd be sitting here silently.
Speaker 1: Yeah I would too, actually would you. Um. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a contrary field of therapy, uh to positive psychology.
Speaker 1: It's called acceptance and commitment therapy, and basically it says, like, look,
Speaker 1: you have good and bad experiences. You can't just focus
Speaker 1: on the happy one because you still have these negative experiences.
Speaker 1: You can't just crush him down or else you're gonna
Speaker 1: end up climbing a clock tower and shooting people. Right.
Speaker 1: So this, this therapy basically says what you do is
Speaker 1: you go back. And I've got a perfect example for you.
Speaker 1: When I was like five or six, we went to
Speaker 1: this k o A campground and I had like this
Speaker 1: awesome pac Man T shirt had like it was had
Speaker 1: the red ring around the neck and the sleeves and
Speaker 1: it was just like I think an iron on pac
Speaker 1: Man right, and Uh, I decided to stuff a pack
Speaker 1: of firecrackers down the front of my shirt stole him.
Speaker 1: I got away with it right, and my family was
Speaker 1: traveling back from this campground and we made it to
Speaker 1: uh Wendy's and stopped to eat, and I got up
Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom and the fire crackers. I
Speaker 1: was too scared to do anything with him. I just
Speaker 1: left him in my shirt for two hours. And so
Speaker 1: when I stood up, my fat stomach pressed him up
Speaker 1: against the pac Man shirt made this crickling sound. And
Speaker 1: my mom immediately looked at me, and somehow she's so intuitive.
Speaker 1: She looked at me and was like, what's in your shirt?
Speaker 1: And that was that? That was so bad, Like on
Speaker 1: my birthday. They took me home and showed me like
Speaker 1: all the he Man stuff I wasn't gonna beginning for
Speaker 1: my birthday that year. Uh, and they made me take
Speaker 1: it back and take the firecrackers to the guy. We
Speaker 1: turned around and went back. Yeah, it took the firecrackers
Speaker 1: back to the guy, and I had to apologize. I
Speaker 1: thought you were gonna say, they lit the firecrackers and
Speaker 1: under your shirt, and then yeah, push put them in
Speaker 1: my shirt and pushed me back into the store at
Speaker 1: the k A campground. Um, so that was something that
Speaker 1: definitely contributed to my outlook today. Like it's like it's
Speaker 1: still very much in my mind, and I wonder like
Speaker 1: just how much of that forms my personality, like how
Speaker 1: much guilt from that? So under acceptance and commitment therapy,
Speaker 1: basically I or anybody else would look at that and say, really, Okay,
Speaker 1: you stole a pack of firecrackers when you were six
Speaker 1: and you felt bad about it your whole life. Now
Speaker 1: that you're thirty two, is it really that bad? So
Speaker 1: you're basically becoming conscious of these experiences that are contribut
Speaker 1: beating to your outlook on life, that just accumulate all
Speaker 1: this crap. You know, I definitely subscribe more to act
Speaker 1: than to positive psychology. I guess that's what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say. Me too. For sure, my shrink is real
Speaker 1: big on that. But just from a practical standpoint, it's
Speaker 1: not I've never even heard of use those words. It
Speaker 1: just makes sense to me. It's practical as opposed. Emily
Speaker 1: is always talking about people that bliss out and that
Speaker 1: sometimes she wishes that she has has that quality to
Speaker 1: just bliss out and like, you know, leave it up
Speaker 1: to the cosmos or Christians say they'll just leave it
Speaker 1: up to God and let him take care of it.
Speaker 1: And you know that's that's awesome if you can, If
Speaker 1: you can do that, but are you dealing with it?
Speaker 1: It's a great question, Chuck. The problem is we always
Speaker 1: say on this podcast to each his own. So if
Speaker 1: that is how you deal with life and it's working
Speaker 1: for you, fantastic, Well I can't do it anymore than
Speaker 1: you or Emily can't. Right, But if that means that
Speaker 1: you end up on the couch just laughing your head off,
Speaker 1: like I said it, America is funny some videos, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think something worse than that. To be Saved
Speaker 1: by the Bell it's pretty bad. Okay, let's go with that.
Speaker 1: I find that show mortifyingly embarrassing. It is, and I
Speaker 1: still can't want I can't stop watching. It's like a
Speaker 1: train wreck. Do you remember the show Hey Dude, So
Speaker 1: Nickelodeon Show on Dude Ranch was bad. It was sort
Speaker 1: of like Saved by the Belbot on a Dude Ranch
Speaker 1: and worse if you can imagine that right there. Yeah, So, anyway,
Speaker 1: if that if that's your end result, and that's in
Speaker 1: your in your on the couch picking your boogers and
Speaker 1: eating them and you're smiling laughing. Then who are we
Speaker 1: to say, you know, whether or not ignorance is bliss
Speaker 1: or blessing out is the right way to go. Although
Speaker 1: possibly you should lay off the dope. Yeah maybe so.
Speaker 1: Doritos are in the mixer somewhere. So I guess the
Speaker 1: answer to this question chuck, our stupid people happier. The answers,
Speaker 1: we don't know, And whether you think that that's the
Speaker 1: case or not would definitely depend on whatever self reported
Speaker 1: anecdotal survey you read. Right. I think it's interesting. This
Speaker 1: is one I want people to log on to the
Speaker 1: blog when I do my Friday recap. I'd like to
Speaker 1: hear about this. I'd like to hear some opinions calling
Speaker 1: out I'm asking for it. Awesome. So, Josh, this was
Speaker 1: a cool and remember in our Body Farms podcast, how
Speaker 1: toward the end he said something about the lies perpetrated
Speaker 1: by c s I, the television show. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: this email. This is really interesting, dude. Yes, indeed, all right,
Speaker 1: here we go. Uh, here's my first hand experience of
Speaker 1: the lies perpetrated by TV in general and c s
Speaker 1: I specifically. Five years ago, my wife was carjacked, robbed,
Speaker 1: and assaulted. She escaped by her own wits and strength.
Speaker 1: Her attacker had been smoking a cigarette during the attack.
Speaker 1: They fought over a knife he had that he had
Speaker 1: to her throat, and he cut her hands deeply. She
Speaker 1: pulled the cigarette from his mouth and tried to burn
Speaker 1: him with it, but it failed, which is that's a
Speaker 1: great movie move, you know, turning on the After she
Speaker 1: escaped and the police found the car, they found the cigarette,
Speaker 1: but with her blood on the filter. Under the blood
Speaker 1: they found his saliva, pulled the DNA from it, and
Speaker 1: found him in the CODIS data bank, which is the
Speaker 1: combined DNA index system, or as they call it, the
Speaker 1: bad guy Data Bank exactly uh, which is made tamed
Speaker 1: by the FBI. She went through the lineup at the
Speaker 1: local precinct where they made the arrest. The grand jury
Speaker 1: got the indictment, The trial happened, complete with the dramatic
Speaker 1: that's a man who did at moment and sentencing. After
Speaker 1: the case was closed, it was submitted by the county
Speaker 1: forensics chief and accepted by the FBI to be featured
Speaker 1: at that year's CODIS conference in d C. During every
Speaker 1: phase of the process, we were amazed at how much
Speaker 1: TV had lied to us about the process. The actual
Speaker 1: working in the system is someone like what you see
Speaker 1: on television as to be unrecognizable. During the conference, they
Speaker 1: openly spoke of the c s I effects. So it's
Speaker 1: basically these cops and forensics guys actually talk about how
Speaker 1: that show is damaging UH, their work, their lying liars,
Speaker 1: their lying liars, and how the public has been influenced
Speaker 1: so much by these shows. So basically, he hates those
Speaker 1: shows and he found it to be a lot of bunk.
Speaker 1: I did converse with him a couple more times via email,
Speaker 1: and he felt a lot of responsibility because he left
Speaker 1: a wife in a running car with the heat on
Speaker 1: and the radio on while he ran in to get
Speaker 1: ice cream for Lord. And this is when she was
Speaker 1: attacked and he had to say that in court, and
Speaker 1: he said, which made him feel like more of a jerk.
Speaker 1: Then she was attacked and uh, he said, was just
Speaker 1: like a TV show, except all the details of how
Speaker 1: it really goes down. So it's the drama was all there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jerry Bruckheimer systematically undermining the law enforcement community. But she
Speaker 1: fought him off, and this guy turns out had a
Speaker 1: rap sheet of like rape and rape and murder and
Speaker 1: they couldn't get him on the murder charge because something
Speaker 1: had happened I can't remember. So he ended up going
Speaker 1: to prison for life in the pokey in the houscal
Speaker 1: and the family of the raped and murder girl got closure.
Speaker 1: And you know, we're at the trial at this lady strial.
Speaker 1: So thank you, Christopher for that harrowing tale. Seriously, I
Speaker 1: think they should get T shirts. You think so? Yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: that's actually you know you went through this. We'll give
Speaker 1: you a T shirt that I know. I'm just kidding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds insulting you, Yeah, exactly. You you narrowly averted
Speaker 1: death by your own wits and you we'll give you
Speaker 1: a T shirt for that. We should make a T shirt.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't need it. Well, Christopher, if you want to
Speaker 1: send us yours, UH and your wife's UM T shirt
Speaker 1: sizes and address, we will make sure that those go
Speaker 1: out to you. Again, it's the least we can do.
Speaker 1: No insult intended just to show of support for bringing
Speaker 1: us this email. And if you have a harrowing tale
Speaker 1: of survival uh near miss with death um or. If
Speaker 1: you've run into any bad guys lately, let us know
Speaker 1: and you can send that in an email to Stuff
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on
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