Speaker 1: Guess what will? What's that? Mango? So? I know Portlandia
Speaker 1: has kind of mocked Portlands and the stereotypes mercilessly, but
Speaker 1: can I just tell you about one thing that made
Speaker 1: me fall in love with the city? Yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: what's that? So the first time I was visiting, we
Speaker 1: were staying at a friend's place in the city and
Speaker 1: we decided to go downtown and Lizzie is big on
Speaker 1: public transportation, so she made me take the bus. It
Speaker 1: was the super rainy day and gray, but we got
Speaker 1: on and we had this really long bus ride, so
Speaker 1: we watched a lot of people get on and off
Speaker 1: and here's what's amazing to me. Every single person who
Speaker 1: got on the bus thanked the bus driver as they
Speaker 1: got off. It like it was really amazing and so civil.
Speaker 1: And that day was so gray and everyone could have
Speaker 1: been miserable, but the fact that everyone, like this whole
Speaker 1: group of people one by one, where each telling the
Speaker 1: bus driver thank you for doing his job, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it just made me so happy and it made me
Speaker 1: want to thank the bus driver too. But it also
Speaker 1: made me wonder, like, why isn't every other place in
Speaker 1: the US like this? Why isn't this just the expected
Speaker 1: behavior across the US? And of course, as you and
Speaker 1: I both know, as full as the world is of
Speaker 1: good people were also played with horrible internet commenters and
Speaker 1: surly reality show judges and politicians who are anything but decent,
Speaker 1: and it makes you wonder is the world getting ruder?
Speaker 1: Do scientists really believe that rudeness spreads like an affection?
Speaker 1: And what can we do to change this tide? And
Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about today. Let's dive in a
Speaker 1: their podcast. Listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Speaker 1: Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Speaker 1: man guest Ticketer and sitting on the soundproof booth sporting
Speaker 1: his what's it say? I'm Bart Simpson. Who the heck
Speaker 1: are you? T? Shirt? That's our pal and producer Christen McNeil.
Speaker 1: That is one rude T shirt. You know, when when
Speaker 1: The Simpsons first came out on the air and that
Speaker 1: shirt came out in fifth grade, kids in my school
Speaker 1: either had to turn their shirts around or put duct
Speaker 1: tape over the word heck and uh, and then the
Speaker 1: shirts got banned. Yeah, I remember parents thinking like these
Speaker 1: kids today and shaking their heads but you know, actually
Speaker 1: that's always been the case. Kids have always been rude,
Speaker 1: and parents have always complained about it. And in fact,
Speaker 1: we have the perfect person to chat with about that
Speaker 1: and all things rude, the author of a new book.
Speaker 1: F you very much understanding the culture of rudeness and
Speaker 1: what we can do about it, Danny Wallace. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius. Thank you very much, pleased to be here. So, Danny,
Speaker 1: one of the most amazing things to me about the book,
Speaker 1: and it is truly, truly wonderful. I'm just amazed that
Speaker 1: it was inspired by a hot dog. Would you mind
Speaker 1: telling us a little bit about that story? Of course? Um, yes,
Speaker 1: it was. It was inspired by by hot dog. I
Speaker 1: like hot dogs. There's no crime in that, um, and
Speaker 1: there was. There was one day where I really fancied
Speaker 1: the hot dog, and my son wanted a hot dog
Speaker 1: as well, and we found a place that sold hot
Speaker 1: dogs advertised, you know, the hot dogs that it was selling.
Speaker 1: So so really this should have been very, very easy,
Speaker 1: and this is as long as the story should ever
Speaker 1: have been. But I went inside to get the hot dog. Again,
Speaker 1: I've done it before. I know what I'm doing. Um,
Speaker 1: I go in and I asked for the hot dog.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if you've ever walked in, it's
Speaker 1: too I don't know, well anywhere really where it just
Speaker 1: feels like the person behind the counter has already taken
Speaker 1: against you somehow, And that's really how it felt. There
Speaker 1: was something in the air, some sort of vibe, and
Speaker 1: she made me pay up front, which I thought was unusual.
Speaker 1: But you know, it wasn't just like a fast food thing.
Speaker 1: It was a proper kind of little diner style restaurant
Speaker 1: down by the seaside um. But you know, I did
Speaker 1: everything that was required of me, and then I was
Speaker 1: standing waiting for it, and she made us kind of
Speaker 1: stand outside and kind of fifteen minutes passed, and that
Speaker 1: seemed like the right amount of time to pass for
Speaker 1: what should be a very quick meal to make for
Speaker 1: me to go in and ask where it was. She
Speaker 1: kept going, you don't understand how it works, and I
Speaker 1: kept going, well, I do understand how it works. You know,
Speaker 1: I had a hotdog, and you give me the hot dog,
Speaker 1: and she keeps she keeps going, they're cooked to order.
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, I ordered one and you
Speaker 1: haven't cooked it. You know, I've been to restaurance before that,
Speaker 1: that's how every restaurant works. And at one point she
Speaker 1: ended up saying something very insulting, or at least it
Speaker 1: sounded insulting. She she said, you're probably the sort of
Speaker 1: people who'd queue up for forty minutes for fish and chips. Wow,
Speaker 1: I I still be done. If they don't know what
Speaker 1: that means. It struck to the very core of me
Speaker 1: um and maybe question who I would I use forty
Speaker 1: minutes official chips? I don't know. I don't know worry
Speaker 1: em anymore. The reason I realized that I was kind
Speaker 1: of going a bit mad with this and I was
Speaker 1: obsessing over it because for a couple of days, like
Speaker 1: when someone's been truly rude to you and they've broken
Speaker 1: those rules, it's very confusing you and up quite bewildered.
Speaker 1: It's why people can't often come up with something witty
Speaker 1: to say in the moment. And because they disrespected you
Speaker 1: or made you feel kind of publicly disrespected, you are
Speaker 1: trying to claw back some of that respect somehow, And
Speaker 1: so it kept going over and over in my head,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'll be driving around and they'd be
Speaker 1: like a lull in the conversation between me and my
Speaker 1: wife and me and my son, and then out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: I would just immediately go that woman was unbelievable, and
Speaker 1: just start talking about her again. And the next night
Speaker 1: I drove past the diner and it was completely dark
Speaker 1: and it was empty, and I found myself, as a
Speaker 1: grown man, flipping off a diner and with no one
Speaker 1: in it. There was nothing to be gained by doing it,
Speaker 1: apart from my own sort of sanity. And that's when
Speaker 1: I realized, you know, these these rude things that happened
Speaker 1: to us, they they send us temporarily insane, I think,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to find out why. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think one of the amazing things about it is that
Speaker 1: you actually write that rudeness is airborne and the passes
Speaker 1: from person to person like a yarn. And I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear you talk a little bit more about that. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: science has shown that that really rudeness does spread. It
Speaker 1: is kind of contagious, and it kind of spreads throughout
Speaker 1: an office or a school or a workplace or wherever
Speaker 1: um in much the same way as the common cold.
Speaker 1: So those people who were sitting there, shiny eyed, gleeful, watching,
Speaker 1: you know, an altercation between a hot dog less man
Speaker 1: and the keeper of the hot dogs. When they saw
Speaker 1: people being rude to each other without realizing it, they
Speaker 1: will now sort of be infected. It will be much
Speaker 1: easier for them to be rude later on in their day.
Speaker 1: And when someone's being directly rude to you, and again
Speaker 1: those unwritten rules kind of have been broken. Um. If
Speaker 1: they've been rude to you, you're going to feel much
Speaker 1: worse in yourself. It can affect um how you were
Speaker 1: lacks after work. You won't be able to switch off
Speaker 1: in quite the same way you might be snapp here
Speaker 1: with your partner. Your downtime won't be as as downtimey
Speaker 1: as you as you'd like it. Your rest period won't
Speaker 1: be as RESTful as you'd like it. If you snap
Speaker 1: at your partner, they now being infected and they'll then
Speaker 1: take that rudeness elsewhere. Um. But anyone who even just
Speaker 1: witnesses the rudeness will become primed for more rudeness. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if you've seen someone you know in the
Speaker 1: line for coffee this morning, be rude to the barista
Speaker 1: even though it had nothing to do with you. Later
Speaker 1: on in the day, because you've experienced that moment, and
Speaker 1: it may have dredged up some kind of you memories
Speaker 1: of rudeness for you, and feelings of being slightly on edge.
Speaker 1: You're much more likely to now see rudeness where none
Speaker 1: was intended. So you might get an email which is
Speaker 1: perfectly neutral in tone, and yet you will be more
Speaker 1: likely to read sarcasm into it or maybe passive aggression. Um,
Speaker 1: and that person is completely oblivious. They just they put
Speaker 1: a smiley there just to be nice. But you're like,
Speaker 1: what is this smiley really me? So it kind of
Speaker 1: puts us all on edge even just seeing it. So
Speaker 1: I was recently on a train and I paid extra
Speaker 1: to be on a quiet car, and this person came
Speaker 1: in with their cell phone and just chatted the whole time.
Speaker 1: And I just could not ignore the person, and uh,
Speaker 1: personally because they were bragging about themselves continuously, but also
Speaker 1: just because I couldn't avoid listening in. And you actually
Speaker 1: have a section about half of ARDSCA. Can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about cell phones and why they're so annoying? Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, Well, on one level, when we got onto
Speaker 1: a train and we're in public space, UM, certainly I understand, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, my part, my rules. If I got a table,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to spread my stuff all over the table.
Speaker 1: I understand I've got a little bit of the table.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna, you know, shove my legs out right
Speaker 1: in front of me, because I understand that person's got
Speaker 1: their space. We all have these little instinctive moments of
Speaker 1: respect that we pay to one another so that we
Speaker 1: can all, you know, get along. And when someone stands
Speaker 1: up and starts chatting away loudly on their phone and
Speaker 1: knows that everyone else must be able to hear it,
Speaker 1: they're sort of removing themselves from the group that they're saying,
Speaker 1: you're a group. You you're all the group, but I'm special.
Speaker 1: I'm having my phone call and they have their phone call.
Speaker 1: And why it's so annoying for other people. If you have,
Speaker 1: you know, two old ladies sitting, you know, in the
Speaker 1: row behind you and they're just chatting away and laughing,
Speaker 1: it's sort of fine because they're they're chatting and you
Speaker 1: can hear the whole conversation. It might be annoying, but
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily rude. Why someone chatting on their phone
Speaker 1: is impossible to ignore? Um and is is rude is
Speaker 1: because you can only hear that half of the conversation
Speaker 1: that you're talking about behalf a log um. And the
Speaker 1: human brain, no matter what you're trying to do, it's
Speaker 1: always hungry for a story. It's always trying to solve,
Speaker 1: you know, problems, it's trying to work stuff out. So
Speaker 1: even if you're trying your best to ignore this person
Speaker 1: having their chat, your brain is trying to fill in
Speaker 1: the blanks. And and there's also the kind of the
Speaker 1: staccato nature of a conversation. You're trying to get into
Speaker 1: your flow, your rhythm wherever you do. When you're driving
Speaker 1: and someone cuts you up, they disturb your flow. If
Speaker 1: you're on a train and you're reading a book and
Speaker 1: you have to read the same sentence nineteen times because
Speaker 1: of the person having the chat, your flow has been interrupted.
Speaker 1: And we feel that on some level that is always
Speaker 1: quite a rude thing. But the random nature of replies
Speaker 1: on a one sided conversation, because you don't know how
Speaker 1: long the other guy is gonna talk for. You know,
Speaker 1: you might do a one word answer, you might you
Speaker 1: might you talk for ten minutes and you'll just here
Speaker 1: a man going hard the whole time. So because it's
Speaker 1: completely unpredictable, it's another reason that we find it impossible
Speaker 1: to ignore and hugely annoying. But the rudeness certainly comes
Speaker 1: from removing yourself from the group and going no one
Speaker 1: here matters. I'm talking to Nigel. He's had a hair transplant.
Speaker 1: Stay right there, more with Danny Wallace right after this break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Part Time Genius. We're talking to Danny Wallace.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the most amazing stories in your
Speaker 1: book is about a politician in Colombia who decided to
Speaker 1: fight rudeness, and to fight rudeness with mimes of all things,
Speaker 1: and I was hoping you could talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, this is a guy stumbled across named
Speaker 1: Anthonys Marcus who is either the craziest politician in the
Speaker 1: world or some kind of genius. And I think he's
Speaker 1: some kind of genius because he takes problems and he's
Speaker 1: sort of he comes up with what seem on paper
Speaker 1: to be insane ideas, insane solutions, and yet they seem
Speaker 1: to work. And this is a guy who had been
Speaker 1: kind of in charge like the chancellor thing or directorally university.
Speaker 1: At Bogata University, Um, and there was like there was
Speaker 1: kind of some student unrest one day and there were
Speaker 1: hundreds and hund of the students all shouting, and he
Speaker 1: was on the stage and he was trying to calm
Speaker 1: them down, and they would not be calm him. They
Speaker 1: would not listen, they would not give him the time
Speaker 1: of day, and no matter what he did on that microphone,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't shut up. And so he very calmly walked
Speaker 1: to the front of the stage, undid his belt, turned around,
Speaker 1: pulled down his trousers, and showed the world his ass,
Speaker 1: at which point every student was kind of silent and
Speaker 1: slacked George. No one knew why he was doing this.
Speaker 1: Had he gone mad, you know? Was he protesting their
Speaker 1: rudeness or was he being rude himself? And it was
Speaker 1: a massive scandal and every sort of newspaper was talking
Speaker 1: about it. Everyone was disgusted at his behavior. How could
Speaker 1: he act that way? It was so rude, Um, And
Speaker 1: he ended up having to leave his job. But because
Speaker 1: he had done this current crazy thing, he was now
Speaker 1: in the public kind of consciousness. So when he then
Speaker 1: ran for there at a time when Bogutar was seen
Speaker 1: as pretty much the most um chaotic, let's stay city
Speaker 1: in the world, and there was corruption left right and center.
Speaker 1: They felt that this was a guy they could trust.
Speaker 1: So he was, you know, put into power. But crucially,
Speaker 1: because he didn't owe anyone any favors, he could get
Speaker 1: rid of everyone that he felt was potentially corrupt and
Speaker 1: instead bring in a bunch of his friends, all of
Speaker 1: whom had crazy ideas like him. And they looked at
Speaker 1: the city and they saw what was going on, and
Speaker 1: they saw that people were driving in considerately, They were
Speaker 1: mounting the sidewalks, they were jaywalking left right and center.
Speaker 1: They were being incredibly loud when when they shouldn't have been,
Speaker 1: you know, um, And he just thought, right, what do
Speaker 1: we do here? And just as you say, he did
Speaker 1: something a bit crazy, which was that he got rid
Speaker 1: of the vast majority of the notoriously corrupt traffic police
Speaker 1: and he replaced them with minds, so actual minds. So
Speaker 1: people dressed in black, the traditional white gloves, their faces
Speaker 1: painted white. And he just unleashed this army of minds
Speaker 1: onto the streets and said, find rude behavior, find bad behavior,
Speaker 1: and call it out. So if you were someone who
Speaker 1: was saying jaywalking and there was traffic. You know, you're
Speaker 1: putting people in danger and you're doing what you shouldn't
Speaker 1: be doing. You might look behind you and find five
Speaker 1: or six mins who are copying you and mocking your walk,
Speaker 1: completely in front of the whole world, and it would
Speaker 1: make you think twice about doing that again. Or if
Speaker 1: you'd part your car somewhere where you weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: park your car, you might suddenly find loads and loads
Speaker 1: of minds surrounding your car, just pointing at you and
Speaker 1: shaking their heads. And what it did was it made
Speaker 1: people accountable for their actions, but it also showed everybody
Speaker 1: else that, look, there's people on your side. So these
Speaker 1: rude people they're not being because you know, we're just
Speaker 1: letting them anymore. They're breaking the rules, and we are
Speaker 1: sort of shaming them, but in a playful but powerful way.
Speaker 1: And the public started to join in, and he had
Speaker 1: more and more schemes that didn't just involve minds. I
Speaker 1: mentioned people being loud. You know, there might be playing
Speaker 1: there I guess back then their boom boxes and their
Speaker 1: disco music or whatever it was about. Then, you know,
Speaker 1: loudly on the train, and suddenly a bunch of fellows
Speaker 1: dressed up as benedicting monks would get on um, you
Speaker 1: know and just put their fingers to their lips just
Speaker 1: to sort of highlights you know, their their their vow
Speaker 1: of silence and how you were impinging upon it. So
Speaker 1: there's all these kind of it was almost like almost
Speaker 1: like kind of weird hidden camera moments, except no one
Speaker 1: was really filming it. It was just there to show
Speaker 1: the public. Look, we understand there's a way to behave
Speaker 1: and we're going to help you, and we're gonna puncture
Speaker 1: the kind of the aggression underneath it that it normally
Speaker 1: goes to and and we're going to show that that
Speaker 1: you've got people on your side. And it worked to
Speaker 1: an astounding degree. You know, even homicides went down, um,
Speaker 1: just thanks to a series of kind of quite playful
Speaker 1: things and and and crucially um people offered to pay
Speaker 1: more tax just because the mayor said, listen to be
Speaker 1: really lovely if you would offer to pay more tax.
Speaker 1: So it just showed that people were hungry for a
Speaker 1: non rude world. But it felt like that chance had
Speaker 1: been lost at a time when Bogitar had gone crazy,
Speaker 1: and it just took one crazy guy to turn this around.
Speaker 1: That's really such an incredible story. So I do want
Speaker 1: to get back to a little bit of how rudeness
Speaker 1: affects us. And I know in one part you talk
Speaker 1: about how, um, rudeness can sort of curb people's creativity,
Speaker 1: But I was also curious how rudeness can actually be
Speaker 1: dangerous in a medical context. When you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about that. Yeah, of course, UM, well, when someone
Speaker 1: has been unnecessarily rude to you, UM, it really does
Speaker 1: affect your brain, affects the frontal loads, which is responi
Speaker 1: was responsible for kind of working memory and whatever the
Speaker 1: task at hand is um, And studies were done that
Speaker 1: showed that, yes, absolutely, it doesn't make people less creative.
Speaker 1: So people were kind of surprised by rudeness um, and
Speaker 1: then set simple tasks. They didn't realize that the rudeness
Speaker 1: was kind of part of it, so it would happen
Speaker 1: on the way into the experiment. But the people who
Speaker 1: had experienced rudeness found themselves far less able to, for example,
Speaker 1: come up with very simple anagrams or creative uses for
Speaker 1: a brick that was my favorite. Um. So they just
Speaker 1: couldn't come up with as many ideas as other people could.
Speaker 1: The people who hadn't experienced any rudeness whatsoever. And it's
Speaker 1: been sort of shown time and time again just how
Speaker 1: much this affects us. I mean, there were studies done,
Speaker 1: I think in the seventies that showed that even just
Speaker 1: a loud noise changes we are and how much empathy
Speaker 1: we have. So if you had an old woman at
Speaker 1: the top of some stairs and to have shopping bag
Speaker 1: is broken and all her shopping is tumbling down the
Speaker 1: stairs and oranges and tin cans, but our instinct is
Speaker 1: to run to her and to help her. But the
Speaker 1: science has shown that if someone nearby, and this is
Speaker 1: the crazy bit, if someone nearby is doing some gardening
Speaker 1: and has quite a lowed lawnmower, it affects us in
Speaker 1: such a way that we are much less likely to
Speaker 1: go and run to that woman's aid, because part of
Speaker 1: our brain is dealing with what's going on over here.
Speaker 1: So it's much the same when it comes to rudeness.
Speaker 1: Part of your brain is coping with that. And where
Speaker 1: it becomes very dangerous isn't when you're like a rioter
Speaker 1: who hasn't been served the hot dog. It's much more
Speaker 1: when you have a position of you know, real authority
Speaker 1: or responsibility over other people's lives. So there were studies
Speaker 1: done in Tel Aviv with a bunch of surgeons, three
Speaker 1: groups of surgeons, and one of the groups in particular
Speaker 1: was told that while they were doing their simulated surgery
Speaker 1: on a on a on an infant um, they were
Speaker 1: going to be observed by a medical professional from America.
Speaker 1: And when that medical professional came over on Skype to
Speaker 1: say hello to them, he was just very rude. He
Speaker 1: was very dismissive. He said he had no real respect
Speaker 1: for the medicinal community in the in Tel Aviv, and
Speaker 1: that you know, he wishes them well. Nonetheless, and when
Speaker 1: they went and did their surgery um, it was shown
Speaker 1: afterwards by an independent group that that team, in particular,
Speaker 1: those bunch of surgeons who had experienced rudeness, became less
Speaker 1: effective at the surgery they were doing. They didn't communicate well,
Speaker 1: they picked up the wrong instruments. They would become fixated
Speaker 1: on the original diagnosis, so that if something changed that
Speaker 1: was really obvious, they would kind of ignore it because
Speaker 1: they couldn't deal with it at that time. They didn't
Speaker 1: resascitate properly, and essentially, the infant in the simulation would
Speaker 1: have died had it been an actual of surgery. So
Speaker 1: that's when you start to see that, you know, rudeness
Speaker 1: which cuts to the very core of who we are
Speaker 1: and makes us feel disrespected and confuses us and bewilders
Speaker 1: us in those situations, and that's when big accidents can happen,
Speaker 1: medical errors can happen. It's been shown that truck drivers
Speaker 1: with rude dispatches miss more stop science. Um so anyone,
Speaker 1: you know, if you have an airline pilot, you know,
Speaker 1: at least when they've had a drink, you know, you
Speaker 1: can you can sort of see their glassy eyes or
Speaker 1: see them sway around. But there's there are no clues
Speaker 1: when it comes to rudeness and what someone may have
Speaker 1: just experienced. And and that's when when I was writing
Speaker 1: the book, I started to realize just how dark this
Speaker 1: can kind of get. Because we've always found rudeness to
Speaker 1: be quite amusing and we love, you know, rude people
Speaker 1: in sitcoms, whether it's Basil Faulty or the Supernancy or whatever,
Speaker 1: and we love changing stories, you know, about rudeness, but
Speaker 1: we don't really appreciate that it is genuinely a silent killer.
Speaker 1: If if someone's been rude to a doctor in the morning,
Speaker 1: it can affect the next five patients. So suddenly you
Speaker 1: start to see how it can affect all of us.
Speaker 1: And when you've got the world's rudist man in the
Speaker 1: in the world's most powerful position, um, then you start
Speaker 1: to have problems. Yeah, it's a well, those are all
Speaker 1: scary situations. Though I don't think you should minimize the
Speaker 1: hot dog thing. I still can't get over that you
Speaker 1: didn't get a hot dog for an hour in a minute,
Speaker 1: but it will stay with you for quite some time
Speaker 1: gractually of that day. You know. There there is a
Speaker 1: great story in the beginning of the book about someone
Speaker 1: who joins ISIS and is put off by the rudeness
Speaker 1: of that movement. And now obviously ISIS isn't something that
Speaker 1: we laugh about. But but honestly, that story was so funny.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: This was This was a fellow who who decided to
Speaker 1: flee Britain Omar's saying, and he left his job as
Speaker 1: a I think he was a security gardener's supermarket, and
Speaker 1: he fled for the for the deserts where he could
Speaker 1: train with with isis and and really I put the
Speaker 1: story in to show that, you know, we all have
Speaker 1: different standards, were all quite different people, um, and yet
Speaker 1: there are some things that unite almost everyone. Because he
Speaker 1: had gone he fled to the desert in order to
Speaker 1: essentially help bring down the very sort of tenets of
Speaker 1: Western civilization UM and do kind of unspeakable things and
Speaker 1: train for atrocities. But when he got there, he just
Speaker 1: found himself constantly annoyed because this this great brotherhood that
Speaker 1: he'd expected of people that thought like him and wanted
Speaker 1: to attack the West. Sometimes would just unplug his phone
Speaker 1: and steal his phone charger for a while, which he
Speaker 1: thought was one step too far even for Ices. Or
Speaker 1: sometimes they'd sort of he'd take his shoes off to
Speaker 1: have a prey and then he'd be like, wearing my
Speaker 1: shoes and he'd look up and there'd be another this
Speaker 1: member who just taking his shoes, and he was like,
Speaker 1: this is this is not what I joined Ices for.
Speaker 1: You know, we've got to standards here. And he would
Speaker 1: make dinner for them sometimes and he'd just be like,
Speaker 1: can you all just pipe down because all like grabbing
Speaker 1: at the food, and he's like, we're gonna have a
Speaker 1: system here, and he was just basically he was very
Speaker 1: disappointed at how immature, um, and how bad he brought
Speaker 1: up a lot of terrorists seemed to be these days. Um.
Speaker 1: And it just made me think that, you know, even
Speaker 1: a man in this situation who has turned his back
Speaker 1: on all sorts of Western conventions and all sorts of
Speaker 1: standards of treating each other, even he can find himself
Speaker 1: annoyed at the kind of the minor injustices and sort
Speaker 1: of everyday monsters of polite society. You got it. You
Speaker 1: gotta do other lines somewhere, you know, Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't last five minutes. And iis I'll tell you
Speaker 1: you do talk a little bit about a rudeness vaccine
Speaker 1: that they were testing on doctors, and what exactly would
Speaker 1: that involved. Well, it was great because this was just
Speaker 1: like a passing comment that one of the scientists that
Speaker 1: I talked to said. And his name is a mere Errors,
Speaker 1: and I think he's great. And there's a bunch of them.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of these sort of like me, rudeness nerds,
Speaker 1: kind of like sculpting about the shadows, sort of stemp
Speaker 1: in their little feet and going, why can't everything be better? Um?
Speaker 1: And Amir entered into sort of rudeness studies, if you like,
Speaker 1: um by thinking it was nonsense. He he just thought,
Speaker 1: you know, rudeness doesn't have an effect on anybody. It's
Speaker 1: just just a thing. It's just a thing that happens
Speaker 1: in your day. And he started to look into it,
Speaker 1: almost like just as a bet with one of his colleagues.
Speaker 1: And he told me, he said, every time I look
Speaker 1: into it, I find something else. And what I usually
Speaker 1: find is shocking. Um. And we were talking about the
Speaker 1: doctor's thing and the idea that you know, like I say,
Speaker 1: someone being rude to a doctor doesn't just affect you know,
Speaker 1: the next person the doctor sees, but five people, um,
Speaker 1: you know, in in a in a in a row
Speaker 1: can be affected, according to the studies, by a moment
Speaker 1: of rudeness. And I said to him, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a silent killer. It's a sort of you know, we
Speaker 1: we we need to be taking this a bit more seriously. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and he just sort of threw it away, this
Speaker 1: this idea that he said, you know, we're sort of
Speaker 1: working in a vaccine and I was like, what were
Speaker 1: you talking about? A vaccine, And it's kind of a
Speaker 1: video game that doctors can play at the very start
Speaker 1: of their day before anyone has even thought about being
Speaker 1: rude to them. So it's almost like and the Inoculation
Speaker 1: and they play this game and they're still working on it.
Speaker 1: But however, it works and whatever it does helps to
Speaker 1: sort of free up those frontal lobes that often, like
Speaker 1: I say, get bogged down in the rudeness of things.
Speaker 1: So I suppose it just protects them, and whatever mental
Speaker 1: exercises it puts these doctors through just helps them too.
Speaker 1: I suppose take a breath or perhaps take a step
Speaker 1: back from the situation. Um. So I can't wait to
Speaker 1: find out more about it. That they're going to be
Speaker 1: starting more studies. But it does show that a rudeness
Speaker 1: is being taken seriously and be steps are being made
Speaker 1: to to help us all deal with it. Um. Because
Speaker 1: you know when every time you get in a car,
Speaker 1: you know you're a dangerous a situation escalating. Well, we've
Speaker 1: got several more questions for you, Danny, but we'll be
Speaker 1: right back with Part Time Genius after the break. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Part Time Genius. We're talking to Danny Wallace
Speaker 1: the author of f you very much understanding the culture
Speaker 1: of rudeness and what we can do about it. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you about Internet urals because we
Speaker 1: started a blog very early, uh at our former jobs
Speaker 1: and and it was sort of this warm and welcoming
Speaker 1: culture of people who read the posts and stuff, and
Speaker 1: it slowly grew into more of an aggressive community and
Speaker 1: more people who are more liberated to be trolley. And
Speaker 1: so our explanation was always it really is the anonymity
Speaker 1: of this that that people are just you know, at
Speaker 1: home behind their screens. But you have a bit of
Speaker 1: a tweaked reason for it. Could you explain that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we've always traditionally said, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: the anonymity of the Internet that is that is the problem.
Speaker 1: And certainly, um it is quite free. UM it allows um,
Speaker 1: you know, the anonymity, and in a sense it is
Speaker 1: a beautiful thing because in the early days it meant
Speaker 1: that people who, for example, UM, felt uncomfortable coming out
Speaker 1: could could find other people like them but didn't feel
Speaker 1: that they were risking anything at that at that point,
Speaker 1: and they could they could find other people like them
Speaker 1: who were at the same point in time and encourage
Speaker 1: at each other, and it was seen as quite you know,
Speaker 1: it was a great thing. And then of course the
Speaker 1: rise of of the of the trolls, it just made
Speaker 1: us immediately think, well, actually, anonymity is a terrible thing.
Speaker 1: What studies have shown is really it's a lack of
Speaker 1: eye contact that is the huge problem. Um. I was
Speaker 1: talking earlier about how difficult it is to have, you know,
Speaker 1: the looking glass held up to you if you're a
Speaker 1: rude person, because you you see yourself through the eyes
Speaker 1: of others. That's why it's also very difficult for people
Speaker 1: to be certainly as rude to each other faces, because
Speaker 1: you're there's something called the looking glass self, which is
Speaker 1: we are always looking into the eyes of others for
Speaker 1: how we are coming across. Does this person like me?
Speaker 1: Have I offended them? How am I doing you know
Speaker 1: in life in their eyes? Um And a lack of
Speaker 1: eye contact with with the internet means that people can
Speaker 1: be free to be as rude as they want. Again,
Speaker 1: tests were done in hyper I think in Israel, where
Speaker 1: they had an office full of people and some of
Speaker 1: them were made to just sit opposite the person they
Speaker 1: had to kind of work with, and some had to
Speaker 1: use like instant messenger or something to to to work
Speaker 1: together with people. And they found far and away that
Speaker 1: the people who would be much more aggressive with each
Speaker 1: other were the ones who simply couldn't see each other.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's there is a certain freedom
Speaker 1: in in the anonymity, but I would say there's much
Speaker 1: more freedom and in knowing that person just can't see you.
Speaker 1: I know that you referred to a certain politician and
Speaker 1: some celebrity judges and Basil Faulty. And why do you
Speaker 1: think it is that we are so attracted to rudeness. Well,
Speaker 1: I think we're at a point where rudeness it's sort
Speaker 1: of helping people achieve strange ambitions. Rudeness more than ever
Speaker 1: is everywhere, and it's getting worse, and it tumbles from
Speaker 1: our phones. And every time we switch on the TV, um,
Speaker 1: two people who are pretending to be journalists having a fight, um, uh,
Speaker 1: you know about whatever has just happened on cable news,
Speaker 1: and then they bring in another person, uh, and and
Speaker 1: it just feels angrier and narrower and coarser, And everyone's
Speaker 1: got to have an opinion on everything all the time,
Speaker 1: even if they know nothing about the thing they're trying
Speaker 1: to say, they've got the opinion on, and the opinion
Speaker 1: has to be put in in a very short and
Speaker 1: forthright way to cut through the noise of everyone else's
Speaker 1: opinions and must then be broadcast to everybody else because
Speaker 1: we're all so important. Um, the people on reality TV shows,
Speaker 1: it's just taught us that meanness should be rewarded because
Speaker 1: they're the people who make the edit. Um, the highest
Speaker 1: paid talent judges are always the mean ones. Um. So
Speaker 1: everywhere we turn, we're being kind of tall that that
Speaker 1: to be rude, to be to lack empathy in a
Speaker 1: in a sense, um, it is a good thing. You know,
Speaker 1: journalists find they get more clicks if if if they
Speaker 1: if they write the horrible thing in a horrible way. Um.
Speaker 1: So so it I sort of felt this kind of
Speaker 1: this ground swell, and it came at a time where
Speaker 1: you know, like Trump for example, UM yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of what he ran on was this this kind of
Speaker 1: mavericks sort of. I tell it like it is. I'm
Speaker 1: only being honest. I'm just saying what everyone else is thinking.
Speaker 1: And and those are all things that came from reality
Speaker 1: TV as well. You know, all these people are going,
Speaker 1: I just tell it like it is. I'm a truth teller.
Speaker 1: You know, it's refreshing. You can't argue with it. And really,
Speaker 1: when these people say they're being honest, they're not being
Speaker 1: honest at all. They're just putting forward an opinion, but
Speaker 1: saying it's just honest. It's like it's get out clause,
Speaker 1: because we're suddenly not allowed to argue with you if
Speaker 1: you're being honest, and in fact, we've got to all
Speaker 1: stand around and applaud you for being so brave as
Speaker 1: to be honest. And so, for whatever reason, Reality TV
Speaker 1: Online personas the rise of powerful rude people. Um, we're
Speaker 1: kind of being taught again and again that rudeness works
Speaker 1: and politeness is weak. I think that's the thing now
Speaker 1: thinking about it, I think that's what I'm getting at,
Speaker 1: is that we see manners as weakness, and we see
Speaker 1: empathy as weakness, and we see rudeness of strength. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: along those lines, you talk about the possibility of empathy
Speaker 1: training in schools and how it could help teenagers at
Speaker 1: that stage in their lives. I mean, what would that
Speaker 1: look like? Do you think, well, yeah, it's a strange one.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, part of me kind of books
Speaker 1: at phrases like that kind of empathy training because it
Speaker 1: just sounds so wishy washy and sort of a bit nonsensical.
Speaker 1: It's like, how can you train for empathy? Um And
Speaker 1: Yet people have sort of shown in in in studies
Speaker 1: that it sort of can be taught, and it can
Speaker 1: be exercised like a muscle, you know, it can be
Speaker 1: grown in people. And I suppose it's just highlighting um.
Speaker 1: You know here basically it boils down to this rudeness
Speaker 1: is just kind of ignoring how another person feels and
Speaker 1: just doing what you feel, no matter who gets hurt.
Speaker 1: And politeness tends to be a system I've sort of
Speaker 1: shared empathy. You know, I think etiquette is so outdated,
Speaker 1: but politeness is really the main thing. And that just means,
Speaker 1: you know, you're slightly happier when someone says please you,
Speaker 1: You feel seen when someone says thank you. If you
Speaker 1: hold a door open just for a couple of seconds
Speaker 1: for someone who's you know, struggling with some bags, you
Speaker 1: both feel better for it. Um and And these are
Speaker 1: things that we learn instinctively and we have used for millennia,
Speaker 1: and it's a system that works. Um And you know,
Speaker 1: I think that that turning our back on that empathy
Speaker 1: is is a bad thing. I'm not sure I would,
Speaker 1: you know, I we would need empathy training in schools.
Speaker 1: But but for the kids. But perhaps m I don't know,
Speaker 1: perhaps perhaps just highlighting how people are seen through the
Speaker 1: eyes of others as a good thing, which essentially is
Speaker 1: what the guy in Columbia was doing. You know, he
Speaker 1: was holding a looking glass up to those people like
Speaker 1: almost sort of you know it sort of isn't the
Speaker 1: looking glass of mime, isn't it? Because the mind was
Speaker 1: mimicking them and showing them what they were doing, So
Speaker 1: it was kind of a mobile mirror. And when you
Speaker 1: see your own actions through the eyes of others and
Speaker 1: how you're coming across, that's when you tend to change
Speaker 1: your behavior. But it's such a strange but but interesting idea.
Speaker 1: And honestly, even the idea that a mime or god forbid,
Speaker 1: multiple mimes might show up if I do something rude,
Speaker 1: would probably influence my behavior anyway. Yeah, well, we all
Speaker 1: know what we're getting you for your birthdays. Well, Danny,
Speaker 1: this has been a ton of fun, not it all.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy about how polite we've all been to
Speaker 1: one another today. You've you've been, You've been absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1: We should be very proud. Thank you very much, and
Speaker 1: I hope all of our listeners will check out the book.
Speaker 1: It's f you very much understanding the culture of rudeness
Speaker 1: and what we can do about it. But Danny, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for being on the program. Thanks thanks again
Speaker 1: for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of how
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