Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie
Speaker 1: takes back to nine. We're we're picking up a newspaper.
Speaker 1: What's going to be the big big news, like, what's captivating?
Speaker 1: What's what's the juicy story that everyone is outraged about. Well,
Speaker 1: there is a woman named Kitty Genovese and this New
Speaker 1: York City, this is in It was actually in Queen's
Speaker 1: and she is a twenty eight year old bar manager
Speaker 1: and she's coming back from her job something like three
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning, and she gets out of her
Speaker 1: car and she's walking and she is all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: she's in hot pursuit by this guy wielding a knife,
Speaker 1: and she happens to be in a neighborhood right um,
Speaker 1: and she calls out for help. He begins to stab her,
Speaker 1: and the story goes like this that for thirty five
Speaker 1: in it's during three different attacks because this guy like
Speaker 1: attacks her and then he realizes that his cars in
Speaker 1: the open and people will I d his car, so
Speaker 1: he goes and he moves his car and he comes back,
Speaker 1: and he starts attacking her, and then so on and
Speaker 1: so forth, three different attacks. Her cries were heard by
Speaker 1: an estimated thirty eight people, and all of this unprovoked,
Speaker 1: just out of the blue, random attack, and and she dies. Um.
Speaker 1: Finally the one person telephones the police. One person out
Speaker 1: of the thirty eight. This is the story, and it
Speaker 1: absolutely shocks the United States. Um, the people in the
Speaker 1: United States, they're just horrified that we could let this
Speaker 1: happen to a fellow human, particularly when they say that
Speaker 1: the people who overheard this, Yeah, I heard of this
Speaker 1: lady screaming and I didn't know what was going on
Speaker 1: or I didn't want to get involved. That was something
Speaker 1: that they heard. Um, And you know, it's it's just
Speaker 1: awful to think that we could allow something like this
Speaker 1: to happen to another person. Yeah, I mean it is.
Speaker 1: It is a really um to hear this story, as
Speaker 1: it was popularized in the New York Times that year
Speaker 1: and has since. This is and has since become a
Speaker 1: popularized version of this story. Um. Yeah, it's really it's
Speaker 1: really damning information because the ideas, hey, I could be
Speaker 1: that one that one person you know, and then and
Speaker 1: then you feel shameful to think, But then am I
Speaker 1: one of those thirty people that in any other situation
Speaker 1: would do nothing right? Yeah, people really took it um
Speaker 1: to heart, and it became known as the genevase syndrome,
Speaker 1: but also known as the bystander effect, which is something
Speaker 1: that's probably know that term is known better now or
Speaker 1: just bystander apathy, right by standard apathy. Yeah. This, and
Speaker 1: but what we found out though, is that this story
Speaker 1: was actually greatly exaggerated. Yes, Kitty Genevase A was killed
Speaker 1: by a man who went out that night and decided
Speaker 1: that he was going to kill a woman. Um, and
Speaker 1: and and he was very open about this, Like there
Speaker 1: this guy was was mentally disturbed and was very open
Speaker 1: about I went out to kill somebody that night. And
Speaker 1: he's still in prison h to this day. Um yeah.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that there weren't as many bystanders
Speaker 1: as previously thought. There was something around the order of
Speaker 1: six people. And in fact, she was at one point
Speaker 1: dragged to this one part of the building I think
Speaker 1: it was in maybe like the portico, and one guy
Speaker 1: could hear her essentially being finished off, so to speak.
Speaker 1: But he, you know, he still didn't contact the police.
Speaker 1: He was inebriated. He didn't want to um get involved,
Speaker 1: so he did ask his neighbor to call the police. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's an American psychologist paper from two thousand seven where
Speaker 1: they went back and they were they were going beyond
Speaker 1: the New York Times article and looking at legal documents,
Speaker 1: court transcripts, and some recent historical research into the the event,
Speaker 1: into the attack, and they had found that there were
Speaker 1: two attacks, not three, that the kind of the way
Speaker 1: that the crime scene was configured would have made it
Speaker 1: impossible for all but one of the known witnesses to
Speaker 1: have seen the crime in its entirety. Yeah, and the people, uh,
Speaker 1: the police may have been called him much earlier than thought,
Speaker 1: and she may have been alive when the cops arrived.
Speaker 1: So okay, And the reason why we're bringing all this
Speaker 1: up is because you know, whether or not the story
Speaker 1: was exaggerated, what it did is it actually helped people
Speaker 1: to put a term to to something that actually is
Speaker 1: a real condition, the bystander effect. You kicked off enough
Speaker 1: outrage and public interest that we named it, and a
Speaker 1: lot of really solid research went into why this kind
Speaker 1: of behavior exists in the crowd. Yeah, and we've seen
Speaker 1: this again and again, And in fact, Joseph DeMay, who
Speaker 1: who talks about the story and how it's exaggerated, was
Speaker 1: asked on the show on the Media NPR show, it's
Speaker 1: really great if you checked it out. Um. He was asked, well, so, okay,
Speaker 1: if that story was exaggerated, that doesn't really exist, and
Speaker 1: he said, well, of course, the bystandard effect exists. Just
Speaker 1: look around you. You know, there was that incident where
Speaker 1: poor worker was trampled at the Green Acres shopping center
Speaker 1: by shoppers anxious to get an electronic sale. We've seen
Speaker 1: this again and again, I think just most recently there
Speaker 1: was a pregnant woman who was trampled and lost her baby.
Speaker 1: Um with this same sort of excitement that was happening
Speaker 1: around around a sale. Yeah, and you don't even really
Speaker 1: have You don't even have to go to outrageous newspaper
Speaker 1: stories to to get examples of it. Just any time
Speaker 1: you've ever driven down the highway and passed that that
Speaker 1: poor guy, that poor family that has a flat tire,
Speaker 1: because you you just keep going and you probably don't
Speaker 1: even really think anything about it. Well you think someone
Speaker 1: else will help. Well, yeah, even if you if you
Speaker 1: even consciously, uh, you know, turn the wheels like maybe
Speaker 1: you know it's having a subconscious level a lot of
Speaker 1: the time, but but you know, you might think, oh,
Speaker 1: well someone else will help them, or oh they probably
Speaker 1: called triple away or they got it well. And even
Speaker 1: even in the circumstance like this, DeMay points out like, okay,
Speaker 1: there was a woman in the King's County psychiatric ward
Speaker 1: who collapsed on the floor there where where she's being
Speaker 1: taken care of, right in theory. So basically the staff
Speaker 1: just left her there to die, you know, four hours
Speaker 1: later she died. Um. And then he also said, you
Speaker 1: know there that you can look in the newspaper on
Speaker 1: any given da and see something that is reflective of
Speaker 1: the bystander effect. Um. And he says that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's this diffusion of responsibility, and it's impossible
Speaker 1: to say that such a phenomenon of some sort does
Speaker 1: not exist. Yeah, So there are four key components in
Speaker 1: the bystander effect, like you said, one of them is
Speaker 1: diffuse responsibility. That's just the simple idea that if thirty
Speaker 1: people were witnessing something, that if I'm one of thirty
Speaker 1: people witnessing an event, well, they're twenty nine other people
Speaker 1: that could do something. It's like if I'm driving down
Speaker 1: an interstate and I see somebody with a flat tire,
Speaker 1: they're countless cars. Like, there are plenty of other people.
Speaker 1: I'm just one of many. Somebody will do something about that.
Speaker 1: But if I am on a like say a deserted
Speaker 1: road in the middle of nowhere, that and I know
Speaker 1: that I'm probably one of the only people that are
Speaker 1: going to go down that road today, and I see
Speaker 1: somebody with a flat tire, well, then there's not really
Speaker 1: much in the way of diffused responsibility unless I have
Speaker 1: some sort of mistaken idea that a woodchuck is going
Speaker 1: to help this guy with his tire. A woodchuck could,
Speaker 1: if a witch could, that's true. That's that's to saying.
Speaker 1: Another one is self awareness. All right. This is the
Speaker 1: perceived or actual presence of an audience to your actions
Speaker 1: that inhibits you from acting all right, you don't want
Speaker 1: to appear foolish or inappropriate. An example of this um
Speaker 1: takes me back to this weekend when I was at
Speaker 1: the dentist office and I go in. I'm sitting down
Speaker 1: at the Nednist office, and they always have you know,
Speaker 1: the TVs on it's playing something annoying. I was the
Speaker 1: only person in there, and they were playing an episode
Speaker 1: of UM Law and Order of Special Victims Unit, and
Speaker 1: it was like this whole thing like some it all
Speaker 1: has to do with like sexual assault, like very much
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that we covered, The kind of
Speaker 1: story we covered with at the beginning's not necessarily something
Speaker 1: you want to watch while you are in a dentist chair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm kind of like, all right, I don't feel
Speaker 1: like like complaining about it. But then a mother and
Speaker 1: two kids comes in come into the dnist dopice and
Speaker 1: they sat down, they like start feeling out the paperwork.
Speaker 1: But it's like two little kids and they're they're reading
Speaker 1: their little children's books, and the mom sitting there looking
Speaker 1: at a magazine and the TV is Special Victims Unit
Speaker 1: with you know, in in investigators looking into like sexual
Speaker 1: offenses and and some pretty graphic discussion of what these uh,
Speaker 1: these these crimes consisted of. And so I'm sitting there
Speaker 1: and part of me is like I should get up
Speaker 1: and go tell the lady the front desk, Hey, there
Speaker 1: are kids here. Why don't you change to Disney Channel
Speaker 1: or something um, you know, or something less um potentially traumatic.
Speaker 1: But the other voice was saying, no, the mom setting
Speaker 1: right there, I'm gonna come off looking like a total
Speaker 1: jerk because I'm gonna be implying that she doesn't know
Speaker 1: what she's doing, or she, you know, isn't exerting enough
Speaker 1: responsibility for these kids. So that's a self awareness factor
Speaker 1: of it. We're afraid, you know, somebody needs help, but
Speaker 1: are we gonna look stupid getting up and going to
Speaker 1: help them? So we're afraid of being judged right right?
Speaker 1: Then the next one is social clues. All right, Individuals
Speaker 1: actively look to one another for for queues about how
Speaker 1: to behave in the situation. The pluralistic ignorance. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so this is like you say, you're on on
Speaker 1: the on the subway train and there's some by the acting,
Speaker 1: there's somebody acting strange there. You sort of look to
Speaker 1: everybody else to say, hey, we should we be concerned
Speaker 1: about this? Is this? Is this for real? Is this
Speaker 1: a deal? You know? And uh? And if nobody everyone
Speaker 1: else is ignoring it, you're kind of like, all right,
Speaker 1: I guess this is nothing. I'm just gonna you know,
Speaker 1: I straight ahead right back to my book or something.
Speaker 1: But if everyone else is looking a little weird, then
Speaker 1: you're like, all right, this is something serious. Some one
Speaker 1: of us is gonna pick it up and go push
Speaker 1: the alert button. That kind of situations, and then there's blocking.
Speaker 1: This is a realization that if somebody needs help, all
Speaker 1: thirty of us cannot help in this particular situation. Like
Speaker 1: if if it's a situation where do you just need
Speaker 1: one person maybe to to help this individual with their situation,
Speaker 1: thirty people is just gonna overwhelm them and possibly make
Speaker 1: a situation worse. So is that that same idea of
Speaker 1: just shirking off the responsibility because you figure that someone
Speaker 1: else is going to help, or like like you're they're
Speaker 1: thirty people. And then there's another person who has a
Speaker 1: cut on their finger. If if we all go and
Speaker 1: put a band aid on it, that's the person doesn't
Speaker 1: need thirty band needs. They need one, maybe two band aids,
Speaker 1: you know, if they want to do the cross thing.
Speaker 1: But um, that would be kind of awesome in that
Speaker 1: and and horrible too, crushed by thirty people just trying
Speaker 1: to get your hand bandaged. Um yeah, I mean this again,
Speaker 1: this diffusion of responsibility. I think is really interesting. And um,
Speaker 1: there are two rules that we usually operate in under
Speaker 1: when we're in society, one that we ought to help
Speaker 1: right and too that we ought to do what everyone
Speaker 1: else is doing. So these temporary rules bubble up that
Speaker 1: we inadvertently create when we're a group, which we have,
Speaker 1: we're not even communicating to one another, you know, with language, right,
Speaker 1: we're not even saying, hey, let's not do this because
Speaker 1: we all feel okay with it. But somehow we all
Speaker 1: know that, you know, we're all bouncing off of each
Speaker 1: other and somehow are thinking to ourselves, okay, well if
Speaker 1: you're not concerned about it, that I'm not concerned about
Speaker 1: And I think that's fascinating. And there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of BBC shorts um that were experiences that you can
Speaker 1: go on YouTube and see them where they show us
Speaker 1: in action and I thought it was pretty fascinating. They
Speaker 1: did one UM set of videos at the Liverpool Street
Speaker 1: station in London and there was an actor dressed in
Speaker 1: jeans and overcoat and sneakers and he's crumpled up at
Speaker 1: the foot of the stairs and he's sanging to people
Speaker 1: as they passed by, please help me, Please help me.
Speaker 1: And he lays there for twenty minutes, twenty minutes without
Speaker 1: anybody helping him, which I think in and of itself
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting. But then they have a female actor
Speaker 1: do the same thing. She's dressed in a skirt and
Speaker 1: a jacket, she has a purse on, and she's not
Speaker 1: saying help me, but she actually she kind of looks
Speaker 1: dead actually, but she sprawled out on the stairs and
Speaker 1: thirty four people pass in four minutes and they don't
Speaker 1: help her. And finally there's a woman who is uh.
Speaker 1: You see her behavior, it's very interesting. She starts to
Speaker 1: pass by, and then she starts, she stops, and she
Speaker 1: kind of looks around at other people like, Hey, isn't
Speaker 1: this weird? And then she kind of circles and hangs out,
Speaker 1: but she's not quite going to do anything yet. Out
Speaker 1: of nowhere, this guy comes directly to the woman and says,
Speaker 1: are you okay? And then all of a sudden she's
Speaker 1: right by his side and she's saying, you know, can
Speaker 1: I help you? You know, she needed that guy to
Speaker 1: come to to corroborate her concern. Yeah, And you see
Speaker 1: that happen a lot, a lot. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: the first person to actually come forward and try to
Speaker 1: help somebody. Then suddenly there are a few other people
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, maybe not all thirty, but suddenly it'll
Speaker 1: go from you know, from nothing to five or six
Speaker 1: just like that. Yeah. Well, and this was the most
Speaker 1: interesting one. This is the the third person in this experiment.
Speaker 1: It was the same actor from the from the first
Speaker 1: that was crumpled on the stairs with his jeans on.
Speaker 1: But um, now he comes back and he's dressed in
Speaker 1: like an impeccable expensive suit and he's crumpled up at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the stairs, and it takes just six
Speaker 1: seconds for one person to help him, which then attracts
Speaker 1: this crowd of people who are now around him saying yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: can you can I help you? So there is this
Speaker 1: one element where where yeah, we're we're sort of seating
Speaker 1: our decisions to other people. But then it's sort of like, well,
Speaker 1: if you're if you look socially like in in the
Speaker 1: most correct role, then you're probably going to get more help,
Speaker 1: right right, because he looked important. All right, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: gonna look at some of that hard research that that
Speaker 1: popped up following this, uh, the geneviec case. This podcast
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow
Speaker 1: and the Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity is
Speaker 1: the spark which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot
Speaker 1: com and explore the answers to life's questions. All right,
Speaker 1: and we're back. So, like we said, the Genovic case, Uh,
Speaker 1: some of the details are kind of contested, were not contested,
Speaker 1: but it is proven today and the version of the
Speaker 1: story that is sometimes um referenced in papers and textbooks, etcetera,
Speaker 1: is is maybe not the true version of what happened.
Speaker 1: It's kind of kind of has become a parable. But
Speaker 1: the research, as we said, is still pretty solid. Like
Speaker 1: people were outraged enough by this they were like, let's
Speaker 1: do some studies and uh. And the first big study
Speaker 1: was this one by um Darley and Latine, Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: John Darlie and Biblitaine that this whole Jenevase syndrome or
Speaker 1: by sing or effect really inspired them to to try
Speaker 1: to look at this in multiple models and really ferret
Speaker 1: out what was going on. Um And I think one
Speaker 1: of the ones that I think is most interesting to
Speaker 1: me is the lady in distress, and this experiment, subjects
Speaker 1: either waited alone with a friend or with a passive
Speaker 1: confederate meaning an actor who was acting passively right, or
Speaker 1: with a stranger in a room. And the room was
Speaker 1: separate from another room by a curtain which they would
Speaker 1: pass on their way to their waiting room, and the
Speaker 1: experiment or who led them there returned to the other
Speaker 1: room and left, turning on a tape recording um of
Speaker 1: of what sounded like someone falling and then moaning in
Speaker 1: that other room. So they couldn't see that person, but
Speaker 1: for hundred and thirty seconds, they could hear this person
Speaker 1: in some sort of distress. And they measured the percent
Speaker 1: of people who took action and how long it took
Speaker 1: for them to act. And overall, sixty one percent of
Speaker 1: people pulled back the curtain to check on the experiment or,
Speaker 1: because they assumed it was the experimenter who fell right,
Speaker 1: entered via another door to check on the experiment simply
Speaker 1: called out to say hey, are you okay, But nobody
Speaker 1: went to actually report the accident okay, to say, hey,
Speaker 1: there's someone hurt in the other room. Um. And this
Speaker 1: is where the data gets really interesting. Sevent of alone
Speaker 1: subjects reacted, but only seven percent of those with another
Speaker 1: person in the in the room the passive confederate, the
Speaker 1: actor who just sat there and pretending like everything was okay,
Speaker 1: only seven percent of them reacted. So it means if
Speaker 1: you're if you're by yourself, you're probably going to be
Speaker 1: a lot more responsible, right, But if someone else is
Speaker 1: in the room, they don't seem concerned. Boom, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: The subjects with confederates became confused and they frequently looked
Speaker 1: over at the person. And when they were paired with
Speaker 1: a stranger, only um of those people in the room
Speaker 1: with a stranger actually acted out or said hey, are
Speaker 1: you okay? So when they had their friends in the room,
Speaker 1: seventy of the time they helped um, which shows you
Speaker 1: know that they felt responsibility with someone that they knew okay.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting about that is that that's the same
Speaker 1: percent as if they were alone. So you would think,
Speaker 1: and this is this is what the researchers say, that
Speaker 1: you would think that if they were alone, like of
Speaker 1: the time, they would have reacted. So based on the
Speaker 1: findings of that study, if I am also say I'm
Speaker 1: feeling like like, let's say I've been stabbed. No, no,
Speaker 1: that's what it's said. Let me let's say I have,
Speaker 1: UM I'm feeling really sick, and I'm I'm about to puke,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm on the market train taking the train
Speaker 1: to work, and I get to choose which car I'm
Speaker 1: going to throw up in. Um, and and after I
Speaker 1: throw up, I'm really going to hope somebody helps me
Speaker 1: and gets me to a hospital. What is the appropriate
Speaker 1: number of people on the train? Oh my goodness, is
Speaker 1: this like a test? Yeah, this is the test? Or
Speaker 1: you know, just asking your learning opinion? Oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, even even better. I'm just gonna say that
Speaker 1: maybe one or two other people in the train with
Speaker 1: you is greatly going to increase your chances of getting aid.
Speaker 1: But not one, it's just one person. If it's one,
Speaker 1: even better. That's my opinion, right, just from what we've
Speaker 1: seen that the lower the amount of people around you,
Speaker 1: the more app they are to help you. Correct. But
Speaker 1: if you're if you're about to puke all over the
Speaker 1: place and thirty people are in the train with you,
Speaker 1: they're all going to back away. Yeah, or I've already
Speaker 1: changed cars. What's it's it? Definitely provides a lot of
Speaker 1: insight into how crowds think. I mean, there's more to
Speaker 1: health crowds think. We have believe we've covered some of
Speaker 1: this in the past, talking about the group think and
Speaker 1: and how crowds are respond h on a on a
Speaker 1: mental level. In in our very very recent episode, we
Speaker 1: discussed uh sort of the physics of crowds and how
Speaker 1: a large number of people can can quickly spiral out
Speaker 1: of control and then become this like the movement, the
Speaker 1: physical movement of the crowd becomes something that cannot be
Speaker 1: predicted or control well. In the psychology is so interesting
Speaker 1: because going back to the Lady in distress um experiments
Speaker 1: that Lobott did UM, is that the interveners, the people
Speaker 1: who did something, they claimed that they acted that way
Speaker 1: because the fall seems serious and it was the right
Speaker 1: thing to do. But the non interveners who were with
Speaker 1: the other people said that they were unsure what happened, UM,
Speaker 1: and they decided it wasn't serious, and some felt that
Speaker 1: they didn't want to embarrass the researcher, which was that
Speaker 1: whole judgment part right, UM. So they were really influenced
Speaker 1: by the people that were in the room with them,
Speaker 1: and you don't think that when when you're you're making
Speaker 1: individual decisions, you don't even realize that on that level,
Speaker 1: you're sitting there calculating whether or not the person next
Speaker 1: to you is unless you're highly self aware, right right,
Speaker 1: usually don't realize that that person is having an effect
Speaker 1: on your decision making processes, which again brings into the
Speaker 1: whole question of free will about whether or not it
Speaker 1: really exists. And this the study is especially interesting given
Speaker 1: the way our lives have been affected by social media
Speaker 1: and the internet, because you you everyone has seen stories
Speaker 1: in the past year or two where somebody, um, you know,
Speaker 1: basically put out a cry for help on Facebook on
Speaker 1: their Facebook profile and then in and in some of
Speaker 1: these cases, nobody really did anything and then the person
Speaker 1: dies or you know, it ends up trying to take
Speaker 1: their own life or something to this effect. And uh,
Speaker 1: and people are like, why didn't we do anything? Why
Speaker 1: did we just sit there and just scan over there?
Speaker 1: They're they're depressing Facebook status update or why did we
Speaker 1: even maybe us ignore you know, why didn't we do something? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that too, that that when we
Speaker 1: talk about crowds these days, we really need to probably
Speaker 1: redefine what a crowd is because it's not doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be a bunch of people in a physical room together.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have a crowd action via the internet
Speaker 1: these days with just as many community ties. Yeah, I saw.
Speaker 1: I was looking at a paper earlier UM from Georgian
Speaker 1: Student of Technology Georgia Tech here in town, and they
Speaker 1: were actually using the bystander effect UM as a as
Speaker 1: a way to try and understand patterns of participation in
Speaker 1: online classrooms. So I found that interesting, Like they were
Speaker 1: kind of you know, taking it slightly out of its
Speaker 1: context because bystander effect deals more specifically with people responding
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, a bad situation, someone that's injured,
Speaker 1: somebody that's endanger, more of a life and death type
Speaker 1: of a thing, rather than are you paying attention to
Speaker 1: the lecture or not? Or are you participating in class?
Speaker 1: But but but it did supply some insight into how
Speaker 1: these classrooms behave and to what degree they're going to
Speaker 1: interact with the class That makes total sense to me.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's you know, being in a classroom. I'm
Speaker 1: sure everybody knows that. Um. You know, whether or not
Speaker 1: you are eight years old at the time or twenty
Speaker 1: years old. When someone says something or something happens, don't
Speaker 1: you all look at each other to see how you're
Speaker 1: going to react, right, And it's a classic case of
Speaker 1: how a crowd affects one another. Yeah, and you know
Speaker 1: it's one of those things too. If you're in a
Speaker 1: classroom where most people just do not care, I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of times you're gonna be less likely
Speaker 1: to be the brainy egghead who's going to interact with
Speaker 1: the teacher. You could have an amazing lecturer, but if
Speaker 1: most of the people in there are sleeping or just
Speaker 1: kind of you know, shooting evilize at each other then
Speaker 1: drawing unicorns, drawing unicorns, then then you get it feels
Speaker 1: like you're gonna be less less likely to interact. Whereas
Speaker 1: if the class, the class as a whole is really engaged,
Speaker 1: is going to be this energy of engagement and you're
Speaker 1: gonna want to be like, yeah, these are my thoughts
Speaker 1: on you know, fall Byzantium. Speaking of unicorns and doodling,
Speaker 1: didn't you just post something recently on Facebook about how
Speaker 1: that actually helps you retain information in a meeting? Yes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was really uh yeah that was just came out
Speaker 1: the other day, I put it on the Facebook um
Speaker 1: profile for stuff to blow your mind, and uh and yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah that it was a ted talk Actually yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to check that out because I was
Speaker 1: pretty excited about that. Yeah. Yeah, I headed on, but
Speaker 1: I was doling, so I didn't really of course. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: but you retained everything. Yeah, but you don't know that
Speaker 1: makes sense because I I doodle a lot, and and
Speaker 1: some of my note taking is borderline doodling. It's just
Speaker 1: kind of well, I've noticed just when you and I
Speaker 1: talked about podcast subjects sometimes, um, when we meet beforehand
Speaker 1: just to say, hey, we're going to talk about that,
Speaker 1: you draw a lot of pictures when when you're talking
Speaker 1: about this up to you you want to explain, you're
Speaker 1: illustrating it. It's pretty great. We should post those actually
Speaker 1: sometimes well sometimes it's about like you know, I do
Speaker 1: a lot of talking with my hands sometimes, but that's
Speaker 1: that's that's sometimes instead of doing that, I'll just you know,
Speaker 1: you just sort of doodle and sort of draw the
Speaker 1: motions on the paper. I don't know why, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. There you go. So I actually do not
Speaker 1: have any listener mail because I forgot to get some
Speaker 1: because there's there's a similarly endless supply of it. But
Speaker 1: I forgot to dip the ladle into the bucket. Um.
Speaker 1: I can't believe you forgot your ladle. Yeah, you didn't
Speaker 1: hear the scream on the inside, did you on the
Speaker 1: inside of the Yeah, when you said that we'll survive
Speaker 1: that I spose gut. The name of Brandon did come
Speaker 1: up to me at a campfire this weekend because you
Speaker 1: were out of camp fire? Okay, yeah, well it was
Speaker 1: in the backyard. I don't know IF's really a camp
Speaker 1: fires in the backyard. Nobody's camping, but you know there's
Speaker 1: a fire and uh. And so he came up and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: this show is really great, you know. So thanks Brandon.
Speaker 1: So if you know me and you would like to
Speaker 1: approach me and tell me the show is great, do so.
Speaker 1: It will not be awkward at all. It'll be it'll
Speaker 1: be kind of awesome, and we'll we'll grow closer for
Speaker 1: the experience. I heard too that if someone does that
Speaker 1: to you, that you'll start crooning stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind song to them. Is that true? We have a
Speaker 1: song for a pleasant train. You mean the secret lyrics
Speaker 1: to the intro song play every time. Oh, yeah, it's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's only available if you approach me in person, though, UM,
Speaker 1: try not to do it at a funeral because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm oath bound to break into song and I would
Speaker 1: prefer not to do it in front of an open casket. Yeah,
Speaker 1: awkward places where you probably shouldn't do it. All right,
Speaker 1: So there you go. UM. I hope that you guys
Speaker 1: have all enjoyed, UM some interesting facts about the by
Speaker 1: Center effect, and it certainly made me think about my
Speaker 1: own reactions to circumstances in my life. Um, and whether
Speaker 1: or not I was unknowingly under the power of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I should I should also add that the at
Speaker 1: the didneral office, they eventually did change the TV to
Speaker 1: Disney Channel, but it was more. It was more it
Speaker 1: was a situation where the lady we're working the front
Speaker 1: desk kind of figured out it's like, oh, maybe I
Speaker 1: should change off of um a special Victims unit and
Speaker 1: maybe go to like Donald Tuck or something. That's all
Speaker 1: right because they just went home and played Grand Auto
Speaker 1: Theft and killed a couple of hookers. Anyway, Grand Theft Auto.
Speaker 1: But it's adorable that you thought it was Grand Auto.
Speaker 1: I always say it that way, so there you can anyway.
Speaker 1: So if you have anything you would like to share
Speaker 1: with us, be it about Grand Auto, theft, or uh
Speaker 1: your own encounters with the apathy of the crowds, then
Speaker 1: let us know about it. For starters, you can find
Speaker 1: us on Facebook and Twitter. We are blow the Mind
Speaker 1: on both of those, and you can always drop us
Speaker 1: a line at blow the Mind at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Speaker 1: Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
Speaker 1: we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.