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Something You Should Know
Surprising Backstories of Everyday Expressions & The Benefits of Connecting With Your Future Self - SYSK Choice
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- [00:01]
Mike Carruthers
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- [01:53]
Erin McCarthy
People hate the word amazing I guess because it's overused. They hate the word panties because it seems like both sexual and juvenile. They're not fans of it. Blog, which is a word that I personally hate. People hate the word phlegm. It's gross.
- [02:08]
Mike Carruthers
Also, what you may not know about honey as medicine and do you ever think about who you will be in the future? It's very hard to plan for your future self.
- [02:18]
Hal Hirschfeld
We all think of our future selves as if they are other people. I've run some research where we find that the brain activity that comes about when I think of my future self looks more like the brain activity that comes about when I think of another person.
- [02:33]
Mike Carruthers
All this today on something you should know. I know a lot of business people listen to this podcast because I hear from them on LinkedIn or in emails and if you're one of those people, there always comes that day when you have to hire someone which I've had to do as well. And it's tough. Usually you need someone right away. You want to hire the right person, but how do you determine that? Which is why I've come to discover that when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Indeed has something called Sponsor Jobs. With Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps right to the top of the page for your relevant candidates who so you can reach the people you want faster. And it makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. And that's what you want. More applications from relevant qualified candidates. Indeed works. In fact, in the minute I've been Talking to you, 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed data worldwide. Look, there's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com something just go to Indeed.com something right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com something terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Something you should know Fascinating intel, the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you Should Know with Mike Carruthers Hi, welcome to Something you Should Know. If you've ever tried to lose weight or read anything about weight loss, you've probably heard that how much sleep you get can affect your body weight and you may have wondered why. Well, why would that be? Other than the fact that I guess if you're asleep you can't be eating and that would be helpful. But there must be more to it than that. Well, in a study, and this was reported in WebMD, in a study, people who were deprived of sleep not only ate more the next day, they actually had the desire to eat food they didn't even like. Some of the sleep deprived participants also reported still not feeling full or satisfied after they ate. The researchers explained that because sleep has a big impact on the part of the brain that governs behavior and choices, lack of sleep interferes with reasoning and stimulates the appetite, leaving us more vulnerable to some weird edible impulses. And that is something you should know. Every day you use words and phrases to communicate, and some of those words and phrases are just plain weird and hard to figure out. Where they came from, for example? Close but no cigar. Where did that come from? Or made from scratch? You know what made from scratch means, but it doesn't make literal sense. Why is a big Hollywood movie called a blockbuster. And when it comes to words, individual words, there are several that people really don't like, like moist. And there are other universally hated words that we still use all the time. Here to discuss this is Erin McCarthy. She is Vice President, Editor in Chief at MentalFloss.com, which is a great website if you're the curious type. And she is author of a book called Mental Floss, the Curious Compendium of Wonderful Words. Hi, Erin. Welcome to Something youg Should Know.
- [06:28]
Erin McCarthy
Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
- [06:30]
Mike Carruthers
Sure. So let's dive right in here. Let me ask you about one that I just mentioned in my introduction there, and that is close but no cigar. I mean, people know what it means or at least what it's conveying, that you were close at what you were trying to do, but you didn't win. You didn't come in first. You didn't hit the bullseye. Close but no cigar. But where in the world did that come from? And how do cigars fit into that?
- [06:58]
Erin McCarthy
I love this. Essentially, back in the day before, you know, amusement parks were giving out stuffed animals. They were giving out cigars as prizes for winning games. And if you didn't win, you know, the guy behind the counter or whatever next to the game would say, close but no cigar. And so then by the 1920s, it's a great phrase, you know. So by the 1920s, it had become a part of the vernacular even outside of carnivals. But it's really cool to know that that's where it started, you know, in carnival games.
- [07:32]
Mike Carruthers
Well, but it's interesting that it. That doesn't happen anymore, I don't think, in carnival games. And certainly the phrase is not used as much as maybe it used to, but it's still around. And you would think that the reference point is gone, that the phrase would disappear.
- [07:50]
Erin McCarthy
Yeah, maybe. But also, I think sometimes phrases are so evocative, they're just so fun that they stick around on their own merit. And I don't know, I use close but no cigar all the time. So it's still kicking.
- [08:05]
Mike Carruthers
Yeah. So there are words in English that seemingly seem the same, like mistrust and distrust, or British versus English or insure, ensure. Why does that happen?
- [08:22]
Erin McCarthy
I think it happens for different reasons. You know, sometimes it's because a word sounds really similar. Other times it's maybe because the two words are very closely linked in our minds. So, for example, British versus English, if you're an American, you might use those two words interchangeably. But they're actually not the same thing. You know, England is one country on the Isle of Great Britain, and the others are Wales and Scotland, and then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is those countries plus Northern Ireland. So England is part of Great Britain. So everything English is also British, but not everything that's British is English. Same with the other ones. You know, mistrust versus distrust. Technically you can use them interchangeably, but they've kind of evolved to have their own connotations. You know, distrust implies a lack of trust based on knowledge, your own knowledge or experience. And then mistrust is kind of a term that implies a broader lack of confidence.
- [09:24]
Mike Carruthers
So why is a hit movie called a blockbuster? It seems such an odd. Such an odd word, and yet it's, you know, I mean, no one questions it. That movie's a blockbuster. The Godfather was a blockbuster. But. But why a blockbuster?
- [09:39]
Erin McCarthy
Yeah, the term initially was used, and this blew my mind when I found this out to describe bombs in World War II, which I guess kind of makes sense. They were bombs that were so powerful that they could literally destroy an entire city block. And then, you know, it became something, you know, a term that meant anything. Incredibly shocking. You know, it was blockbuster. And then eventually Hollywood co opted it to refer to a movie that was a huge success. I guess Hollywood knows a good term when it hears one.
- [10:15]
Mike Carruthers
So this is weird. You say that people hate to use the word moist, and I've never. I've never thought of that. I mean, I think of like, Betty Crocker's moist cake and, you know, you know, I didn't. So what. What's that all about?
- [10:32]
Erin McCarthy
Yeah, it's funny that you haven't heard about this before because I feel like moist is an infamously hated word. Like, there have been polls and surveys, and it's always up at the top there as one of the most hated words in the English language. And there were actually researchers who studied this. They wanted to find out why. And what they determined through their study was that it has to do with the words association to bodily fluids and also the way that it sounds. But that's only really true when it accompanies positive words like paradise and sexual words. Then people are like, moist. It's gross. But if you say that a cake is moist, that doesn't seem to have the same gross effect as it does when you're talking about sexual words. I guess it's really interesting. And there are a lot of words that rub people the wrong way.
- [11:21]
Mike Carruthers
Like what?
- [11:22]
Erin McCarthy
Like what people Hate the word amazing, I guess because it's overused. They hate the word panties again, because it seems like both sexual and juvenile. They're not fans of it.
- [11:34]
Mike Carruthers
Plus people hate the word amazing. Well, it is used overused, but it's overused, I figure because people liked it, not because they don't like it. And panties, I mean.
- [11:48]
Erin McCarthy
Yeah, yeah. I mean, listen, you get the same kind of reaction when people use literally figuratively. But people have used literally figuratively for hundreds of years. Like some of our most famous writers have done it. James Joyce did it. You know, it was only when English usage guides were being created, it became reviled, essentially. You know, the people who were writing those guides were very cranky about the figurative use of literally. And then when the Internet came about, people really picked that up and it became a big deal.
- [12:24]
Mike Carruthers
When you say the figurative use of literally, like literally, my head's gonna explode kind of. Is that what you mean? Yep.
- [12:30]
Erin McCarthy
Mm. Yeah. Your head's not literally gonna explode. You're using it as an intensifier. And people hate that.
- [12:37]
Mike Carruthers
Yeah, I've always hated that. But people do it all the time. What are some other words that people don't like? Like amazing. And panties.
- [12:45]
Erin McCarthy
Blog, which is a word that I personally hate. That one's on my list. There's just something about it, just the way it sounds. I just, I don't like it. It's not even a logical thing. I just hate it. Phlegm. People hate the word phlegm. It's gross. You know, again, pus. So one thing that we did, we came up with words that you can use instead, you know, so if you don't want to use blog, you can just say website. You don't have to call it a blog, you know, if you don't want to say the word amazing, because again, if you call everything amazing, then nothing's actually amazing. You could say something like, oh, it's tizzy. Wizzy, which is an old fashioned slang term that I really like for panties. You could call them underbodies. That's another really fun old fashioned slang term we found that just sounds better.
- [13:40]
Mike Carruthers
Talk about some of your favorite slang words and where they came from and what they mean.
- [13:45]
Erin McCarthy
One of my top 10 slang terms is got the morbs, which is a 19th century word for temporary melancholy. I'm, I'm obsessed with it. It's just very, very colorful and delightful. Besmodered is a very old word coined by Chaucer, meaning something spattered with mud. So, you know, if you're covered in mud. You don't. You don't have to say that. You can say that. You're besmodered. Another one of my personal favorites is Slugabed, which is an insult for someone who stays in bed late. But personally, I'm quite the slug a bed, and I wear that badge with pride. Another one of my absolute favorite terms that's gotten a lot of play recently is dumpster fire. And so, of course, it's been used for quite some time to refer to a literal fire in a dumpster. But the Oxford English Dictionary traced the first non literal usage to a place. And I swear I'm not making this up. To a wrestling Usenet group. And it was in reference to the movie Shrek the Third. The person said Shrek 3 was a dumpster fire. Don't get me started. A total disaster. Just a total dumpster fire.
- [15:02]
Mike Carruthers
Why do ghosts say boo?
- [15:04]
Erin McCarthy
So this is a complicated one, so I'm going to give you a little bit of the CliffsNotes version of it. But way back in the day when it was first being used, boo was actually just a way to kind of announce your presence to be like, hey, I'm here, boo. But by 1738, it began to be attached to kind of scary things. People were saying it to scare kids and. And whatnot. And then during the era of spiritualism in the 19th century, you know, which was a time when people, many people believed that they could communicate with, you know, the dead in a world beyond our own, it got attached to ghosts. So they had their own word. So, yeah, there's a lot more to it. You know, there's, like, roots in Latin and Greek and things like that. But that's the CliffsNotes version.
- [16:01]
Mike Carruthers
But it used to be just like a greeting. Like you would say, hi. Hi, boo.
- [16:06]
Erin McCarthy
You just be like, boo. Like, I'm here. That was how it was used.
- [16:10]
Mike Carruthers
So one I have always wondered about, but never enough to go look it up, was why some liquors are called spirits.
- [16:19]
Erin McCarthy
This is one of those words that has a few different etymologies, but there are a couple of theories that are prevailing. One of them is that it has to do with the word alcohol, which is believed to come from either one of two Arabic words, which I will probably butcher the pronunciation of, so I apologize in advance. One of them is al Gwahal. Nope. Al GH Wall. Yeah, which literally means spirit. And the other is al kohl, and that's spelled A L hyphen, K, O H, apostrophe L. And that initially described an eyeliner that was made from this kind of powdery material. And transforming that powder into the eyeliner was similar to how alcohol was distilled. So it's believed that then alcohol came to mean anything that was distilled. And when it was absorbed into the English language in the 16th century, it was actually used to describe a powder before it eventually came to mean the distilled essence of something. So, you know, it's, it's complex but fascinating.
- [17:28]
Mike Carruthers
Does spirits have a definition as it is separate from other liquors or is it just kind of this genericy term that applies to alcoholic drinks?
- [17:40]
Erin McCarthy
Yeah, so I mean, I think technically when we're talking about spirits, we're talking about specifically like liquor, you know, like your whiskeys and your ryes and things like that. And not necessarily like beer. At least that's how I think of it. But again, other people might have different definitions. That's kind of the beauty of language.
- [18:01]
Mike Carruthers
We're talking about interesting, loved, hated, and bizarre words and phrases of the English language. And my guest is Erin McCarthy. She's author of the book Mental the Curious Compendium of Wonderful Words. I am hardly what you would call a trendy clothes shopper. I know what I like. I buy things that last and that I will wear for a long time. And so now I, I shop almost exclusively@quince.com and I've come to discover that a lot of people, men and women, shop there too because they have quality, well made clothes for summer that you are going to love. Like organic cotton silk polos. I've got a couple of those European linen beach shorts, comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard parties to nice summer dinners out. Here's the best part about Quince. Everything with quints is half the cost of similar brands. And how they do that is they work directly with top artisans. They cut out the middlemen. So you get luxury clothes without the big markups. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices with premium fabrics and finishes. Quince is all about really great clothes at a very reasonable price. If you saw my closet, what you would see are the Quince clothes hanging right in the center. And my other clothes, they keep getting pushed to the sides. And the same thing will happen to your closet. Oh, and you're going to love their website. Stick to the staples that last with elevated essentials from Quince. Go to quince.comsysk for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince.comsysk to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comsysk.
- [19:59]
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- [20:32]
Mike Carruthers
So Aaron, another phrase you hear a lot is cut to the chase. When you want someone to get to the point, cut to the chase. Everybody knows what it means. Where did that come from?
- [20:44]
Erin McCarthy
This is also really fun. Cut to the chase comes from the silent film industry. Obviously, at that time, directors couldn't rely on dialogue to move the action forward, so they'd literally cut to a chase sequence just to give their film momentum. Very, very literal, very funny. And then in the 1950s, it kind of became a part of our regular vernacular because again, people really know an evocative phrase when they hear one. I think it really does speak to how much we just love a catchy phrase. And I think cut to the chase qualifies as that, and it really gets the point across.
- [21:26]
Mike Carruthers
And what about scapegoat? What is a scapegoat?
- [21:30]
Erin McCarthy
This is a fascinating one. So the word scapegoat comes to us from an English Protestant scholar named William Tyndale, and he coined it in 1530. At the time, he was translating some of the books of the Torah, and he was reading about Yom Kippur rituals featured in Leviticus. And as part of one of the rituals, there was a ceremony where a priest would confess people's sins with his hands on the head of a goat. So by doing that, he was transferring the sins of the people to the animal, and then the animal was then sacrificed to God. So Tyndale called that creature a scapegoat.
- [22:11]
Mike Carruthers
What's a word or phrase that you came across in your research that you found really interesting or surprising or weird or unusual that you like?
- [22:20]
Erin McCarthy
Piggyback ride. Yeah, because I think it's one of those phrases that starts in one place and then ends up as something completely different. There's not necessarily one origin, but one explanation for why we call, you know, someone riding on your back a piggyback ride is that it maybe came from the 16th century phrase pick pack, which may have referred to like a bag Put on your back for easy transporting. And then there was this kind of like whisper down the lane situation where the phrase became pickback and pigback and pick a pack, pick a back, pigeback. And so the last one sounds a lot like piggyback. So it's an example of how we hear things and how that changes language and the words that we use. That I just think is fascinating.
- [23:15]
Mike Carruthers
Why does the word doughnut have two different spellings? One d o u g h and the other just d o nut?
- [23:23]
Erin McCarthy
It has a lot to do with Dunkin Donuts. It was definitely spelled one way, way back in the day. And then the D o u g h version of it, because they are obviously made of dough. And then when Dunkin Donuts came on the scene, they kind of made the other spelling, the alternate spelling, more popular.
- [23:50]
Mike Carruthers
So everybody knows what the placebo effect is. But that word placebo, it doesn't sound like any other word. Where does it come from?
- [23:58]
Erin McCarthy
Placebo means I will please in Latin. And so at one point in time, it was used in Catholic prayers for people who had died. So the prayer was translated as I will please the Lord in the land of the living. And eventually the word came to be used to refer to the entire prayer. Prayer. And then it went through this sort of linguistic change. You know, a meaning got added. So by the 14th century, placebo had come to mean, you know, flattery that was intended to make a person feel good, even if it wasn't exactly true. And then eventually. But it took. It took quite some time. It wasn't until the 18th century, it ended up in medicine, and it came to refer to a drug or treatment that would make someone feel good, even if there was no actual medicinal effect.
- [24:47]
Mike Carruthers
Another one I've wondered about is made from scratch. Everybody, as soon as they hear it, knows what that means. It means, you know, make from original ingredients. But made from scratch. Where did that come from?
- [25:00]
Erin McCarthy
Yeah, so it comes from sports. Funnily enough, scratch was the word for the starting line in things like running and in cricket. And then eventually it came to be used in a whole bunch of expressions that meant essentially, you know, meet the standard. We don't know exactly when it became a term for food, but the earliest evidence that has been unearthed points to a 1946 New York Times article that was talking about how cooking from scratch was a fading fad. So really, really interesting stuff, a little bit of an etymological mystery. But, yeah, it came from sports, which is weird.
- [25:43]
Mike Carruthers
Lastly, tell the story about McDonald's going to war with the dictionary. It's an interesting story.
- [25:50]
Erin McCarthy
So in the 2000s, both the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam Webster's collegiate dictionaries included the word McJob in their pages as kind of like a disparaging word for a low paid job. And McDonald's really did not like that. They actually wrote an open letter about it. And in the UK they even considered legal action. But the dictionaries were like, we're not budging. And so McDonald's actually launched their own campaign to flip the term from a negative to a positive. So they had this advertising campaign that used words like McFlexable and McDiscount. And then, you know, they topped it off with the tagline not bad for a McJob. So, yeah, they really, they went on a campaign when they realized that the dictionaries were not going to take McJob out.
- [26:40]
Mike Carruthers
But I don't hear that word. I don't ever hear that word.
- [26:43]
Erin McCarthy
Maybe it's one of those words that's faded. But, you know, in the 2000s, I guess it was very much a thing, enough of a thing that the Oxford English Dictionary added it.
- [26:53]
Mike Carruthers
Generation names, baby boomers, millennials, Gen X. Where do those labels come from?
- [27:02]
Erin McCarthy
So the fun thing about generation names is that there's no one way that they get their names. For example, Generation X was coined by an author, Douglas Coupland. And at Least once the U.S. census Bureau gave us a generation name. Their phrase post war baby boom gave us baby boomers. But I think that was the last time that the Census Bureau ever named a generation. And ever since then, it's been the media and advertisers and authors.
- [27:31]
Mike Carruthers
But do we know Y, Z and X and what that refers to in terms of millennials?
- [27:38]
Erin McCarthy
People actually wanted to call Millennials Generation Y because millennials come after Generation X, but that just did not stick. Was not catchy enough. So millennials was actually coined by authors and then Gen Z, the Pew Research center initially tried to call Gen Z post Millennials, and again, it just did not stick. We decided that Gen Z was, was better. And sometimes they're also called zoomers. You know, again, it just really speaks to the how important it is for language to be catchy, for things to stick around, I guess.
- [28:13]
Mike Carruthers
Well, it's certainly fun to hear the stories behind so many of the words and phrases that we use all the time without really thinking about, you know, what they mean literally or where they came from. They. Erin McCarthy has been my guest. She's the vice president, editor in Chief, @mentalfloss.com and the name of her book is Mental Floss, the Curious Compendium of Wonderful Words. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. This was fun. Aaron, thanks for coming on.
- [28:38]
Erin McCarthy
Thank you so much, Mike. It's been great chatting with you.
- [28:42]
Mike Carruthers
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- [32:48]
Hal Hirschfeld
It's great to be here. I'm looking forward to this.
- [32:51]
Mike Carruthers
So when you look at the future, when I look at my future, I mean, there are so many unknowns that could happen. There could be chance encounters, unpredictable events could occur that could alter my future drastically, and I have no control over that. So I think it's hard for people to think that they have a lot of control over their future self because so much can and likely will happen that is out of our control.
- [33:19]
Hal Hirschfeld
This kind of goes back. There's just some great old research. Al Bandora, one of the sort of giants in psychology in the 20th century, he sort of talks about the fact that we do have many chance encounters in our lives that we can't fully plan for. But what we can plan for is to be open to the possibility that different meetings and connections will lead to something and we don't fully know what that is and we have to be okay with that.
- [33:48]
Mike Carruthers
Is your future self or maybe when you get to be your future self, whenever you get to be your future self and you look back, are you, do you think, are you the same person who's just evolved or are you somebody new? And maybe another way to ask it is if I met my 10 year old self, would I really have anything in common to talk about or would I do better to talk about people with people my own age?
- [34:21]
Hal Hirschfeld
Yeah, that's a what? A what A what an interesting thought experiment. The question you're asking is, it's such a deep question and it's, it's really hard to answer because you know, you, you first. If I was a philosopher, I would say, well, what do we mean by the same? You know. And so I think the way that I think about this is that in many ways were you to communicate with yourself at age 10 or, or your, you know, yourself at age 85, there'd be many, many things different. You may look different, you may live in a different city, your friends may be different, you may even have different interests. What I would push on is to say, well, what sort of deep seated values and traits might be the same? Some will have changed. People do change in terms of their personality over time in some ways. In other ways they don't. So if you were the most talkative kid in your class, you may become less talkative over time, but you might still be among the more talkative of your group of adult friends. One thing that I would sort of ask in these sorts of thought experiments that you're raising is what are the core things that you could point to and say, even though I've changed on the surface, I still at the core am a person who enjoys sarcastic humor or at the core I'm still somebody who is kind hearted or maybe I'm still biting or you know, whatever it is. That is what's known as a moral trait, a core moral trait, whatever those are. I think you could point to and say that that is what makes me still the same me.
- [35:58]
Mike Carruthers
Why do you suppose it is that we have trouble? Many of us have trouble providing for our future self. You know, we don't save enough for retirement, we maybe don't take good care of our health and then suffer for it later in life. What gets in the way? What blocks us from seeing that these are worthwhile things to do and that.
- [36:20]
Hal Hirschfeld
We should do them to some extent, and what my own research has been circling around, to some extent we all think of our future selves as if they are other people. And that's an analogy. But as an example, I've run some research where we find that in the brain, the brain activity that comes about when I think of my future self looks more like the brain activity that comes about when I think of another person that matters because of the way that we treat other people, or rather because of the way that we treat other people, we don't know all that well. In other words, if a perfect Stranger were to stop you on the street and ask you to, I don't know, help them move this weekend, you would probably have a number of reasons why you couldn't do that. I'm guessing you already have plans going on. If you think about it, if you consider your future self as if it's a stranger to you, then in some ways, saving for retirement or eating healthy or exercising, all of those sorts of decisions that have sacrifices that need to be made right now for benefits later, well, the benefits don't come to you. They come to some other guy you'd almost be forgiven to just do what you want to do today. Now, the catch here, Mike, is that we don't only interact with strangers in our lives. Right. You know, I said if a stranger came up to you and asked you to move, you would say no. Well, if your adult kid asked you to help, you know, for help this weekend, if your aging parent did, if your best friend asked you for help this weekend, you would probably shift some things around if you could and. And make it happen. And so one of the sort of big ideas that I've been playing around with is whether or not the relationships that we have with our future selves, whether those are what matter for the decisions that we make. So if I feel like my future self is someone I need to take care of, like my adult kid or my aging parent or my best friend, well, then I'll probably be a little bit more likely to do things that will benefit them later on.
- [38:43]
Mike Carruthers
So how do you develop and nurture that relationship? If it isn't a real person, how do you. How do you get to know them?
- [38:53]
Hal Hirschfeld
Yeah, I love the way that you said that. Right. Because it's not a real person. That's where. That's where this conversation becomes, I think, even more interesting. Right? Because if, you know, if we're thinking about the actual relationships in our lives, I mentioned your kids, your parents, your friends. Those people exist right now. I can reach out and touch them. I can call them. I can talk to them. My future self, he never exists. He's just sort of an imagination. Right. And so then how do you get to know them? I think is how you asked it. And I would sort of flip that around and say, well, you know, you can't. You can't ever fully know them. Right? Because we can't know the things that will change over our lives and the ways that we ourselves will sort of morph and alter and become new people. So you can't fully know them. But what you can do is become closer to them. You can feel more of a sense of connection. In my own research with my collaborators, we've tried a variety of things. One thing that we've tried to do is to make that future self more vivid and with a beating emotional core. And that may sound abstract, but what I mean by that is one thing we've tried to do is show people what their future selves look like. We've literally used age progression technology to show people images of their future self. Another thing we've been doing, we've had people write letters to their future selves and then other people have had people write letters from their future selves. And again, the beauty there is it really starts connecting you to that future self. So those are just two ways that we can think of to try to get that relationship to be, to be stronger.
- [40:41]
Mike Carruthers
And have you worked with anybody who's done that? And if so, what's the reward for doing it?
- [40:49]
Hal Hirschfeld
Yeah, so we've partnered with different organizations. Most recently we partnered with a bank in Mexico. They sent out your standard message about the need to save more. They sent us to 50,000 of their customers. Half of them got that message, half of them, I'm glossing over the details, half of them got the sort of all the important points about why you need to save more for retirement and so on. The other half got that same messaging. But they also got the opportunity to see themselves when they were older in retirement. And the folks who did were 16% more likely to make a contribution to their personal pension, which is basically like a 401k in the US other research groups have used these sorts of techniques, not with actual age progression images, but with a visualization exercise. With women in rural Kenya, for instance. This is a recent paper that just came out and found that relative to a control condition, women who went through these visualization exercises were more likely to chlorinate their water, which is hugely important for preventing bowel issues for their kids. And they were more likely to save their wages over time. They followed them over a 10 week period. So, you know, I think there's a lot more work to be done on this and looking at sort of, you know, for whom do these sort of visualization and vividness exercises work better and for whom do they work worse? But you know, one of the things that we're finding early on is that there's some promise to these as interventions.
- [42:24]
Mike Carruthers
Have you looked at like when people look back who they're now, they have become their future self, they're Older, they're in their 80s, 90s. They look back. Do they look back with regret? Do they look back with, I wish I had done this A, B, C and D when I was younger, I kept saying I would, but I never did? Or do they think, well, things kind of worked out?
- [42:49]
Hal Hirschfeld
You know, one of the things that we know from that literature is that the things that people regret as they get older are the things that they didn't do rather than the things that they did do. So immediately in the moment, we regret the thing we just did because we're like, oh, my God, I'm so embarrassed by that. But over time, what we end up regretting is the things we didn't do, because we can spin out all sorts of tales of how our lives might have been different. If I'd done this one little thing, if I'd asked this person out, where would I be? And so on and so on. So those are the flavor of regrets that come about. Now, your question is a fascinating one. And there's differences between people. We do know that as people get older, they actually become more positive. They experience more positive emotions, fewer negative emotions than their younger counterparts, in part because, you know what, they're facing a limited time horizon, and so they focus on what's meaningful right then and there rather than trying to change things for a relatively short and uncertain future.
- [43:55]
Mike Carruthers
Is this a cultural thing? And are there cultures where there is much more emphasis on your future self and making sure your future self is well provided for, or is this more of a human nature thing?
- [44:10]
Hal Hirschfeld
Yeah, it is a fascinating question you're asking. So there's a couple things going on here. So one, on the human nature side. Well, from an evolutionary standpoint, we're just not that well equipped to think about a future that's as long as it is right now for us. In other words, our lifespans, our life expectancies are much longer now than they were even 150, 200 years ago. And from an evolutionary standpoint, that's in a blink of an eye. We've been adding a huge amount of extra life that we now have to grapple with. So I think that is a universal. But then your question goes deeper, because we can look at different cultures now. This is an area where I still need to do the work. We don't know for sure how different cultures experience different levels of connection to their future selves. That said, different societies, different cultures and countries have different practices in place. So if you're in some countries, there's much more of A robust social safety net, a Social Security net. In the US we used to have a much stronger sort of employer mandated, government mandated system. And now saving for the future in that particular space, just in terms of savings that often falls on individuals, individual workers, whereas in other countries, sure, you give up so much more of your paycheck to taxes, but then you have a pension and you're set when you retire. Now that's just one aspect we can ask. Does that happen because of some sort of cultural norms around future selves? Does it happen because of cultural norms around the ways that we treat and respect the elderly? These are questions that I don't really have the answers to, but I think they're, they're great ones to ask and I'd love to continue to explore them, but I just don't know right now. I can only sort of speculate that there are differences, but exactly what they are is not yet known.
- [46:19]
Mike Carruthers
Doesn't it seem like it's something that. Well, you're doing the research, but it seems like something we ought to pay more attention to. And people probably have been saying, yeah, we really need to save for the future, we need to do this stuff for the future, but we don't. We just don't.
- [46:38]
Hal Hirschfeld
I think we could be forgiven. Right? You think about all the sort of pulls and temptations in the present. You know, if we're getting the messaging that we really need to save for the future, we're also getting the messaging that credit is easily available. Gosh, with, you know, buy now, pay later schemes, it almost seems like everything right now can be paid for later. And of course the danger there is that we're just going to get into even more and more debt. Right? So the, the idea is there, but it can be really hard. I mean, let's, let's just acknowledge first and foremost it can be hard for many swaths of society who feel as if there's no discretionary income to save. I need it all right now. There's other swaths that may feel that way, but then when push comes to shove, you can look at your spending and say, well, probably could cut back there. I could probably cut back there. To me, it boils down to the series of individual decisions. I'm in the market for a new car. There's a more sensible one, but it doesn't seem as fun or as cool or has many features. Or I could stretch and buy a slightly more expensive one. Well, maybe that makes sense to do. Maybe you're going to get a lot of pleasure out of the nicer features of that higher end car. The problem arises when I make that sort of rationalization for every one of my purchases. I'm tired, so I should order out. Okay, fine. This house, it's a little bit more house in a slightly neighbor, a nicer neighborhood. Sure, my property taxes will be higher, or this rent, whatever it is. Each of those decisions make sense in isolation. But then when they add up, you can all of a sudden say, oh yeah, that's why I have no leftover money to save.
- [48:38]
Mike Carruthers
Well, I wonder if this kind of positive psychology things have a way of working out attitude that people seem to have, that I don't really need to really worry too much about that because things have a way of working out. And many people's experience is that is true.
- [48:58]
Hal Hirschfeld
Yeah, I have no problem with that. And I think that's very healthy in a way. We know that we have what researchers call the healthy psychological immune system. We kind of get used to bad things quicker than we thought. We also sort of get used to good things quicker than we thought. The only problem that I have, I think, where things, things become really difficult is when somebody says, I want to be saving more, I want to be exercising more, and I just can't do it. When there's the gap there, that's when I'd say, okay, then, then what can we do to try to, you know, quote, unquote, fix that? If, if somebody says, look, I don't want to be saving, I'm okay with it. All right, fine. You know, my sort of caveat would be if, you know, this is, let's just take the narrow example of saving and working in retirement. If I say, look, I'm not saving that much, but I'm spending all this money now, you know what I'll do? I'll just keep working forever. My real worry there is that what is underestimated is the likelihood that you experience a negative health event that takes you out of the workforce, the likelihood that you experience some sort of macroeconomic shock that takes you out of the workforce, that whatever it is, changes in your life. And now you can't just work until you drop dead. Right. And then now that laissez faire attitude of it'll work out well, that may not be necessarily the case. So there's nuance here. I'm not saying everybody should abandon that attitude, nor should I say everybody should have it. It's just more like, I think we need to be careful with what we're planning for or not planning for. When we make these sorts of decisions.
- [50:47]
Mike Carruthers
Well, it's a rather thought provoking experiment. Anyone can try to imagine what they will be like or who they will be in the future in very specific ways. Because that person, he or she is coming. They will be here. What will they need? What will they want? I've been speaking with Hal Hirschfeld. He is a professor of Marketing, Behavioral Decision Making and Psychology at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA and author of the book youk Future how to Make Tomorrow Better Today. And if you would like to grab a copy, there is a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you for being here. Hal.
- [51:28]
Hal Hirschfeld
Thanks so much. It was great to talk to you. Mike.
- [51:33]
Mike Carruthers
Many a grandmother has used honey to treat a burrow or a wound, and that practice of using honey dates back at least to the ancient Egyptians. They not only used honey for wounds, they harnessed its antimicrobial properties to help embalm and preserve the dead. But if you're tempted to reach for that jar of honey in your pantry to rub on a burn or a wound, you might want to hold off. Your honey is probably not sterilized and won't likely do very much. However, there is something called Medical grade honey. It's a sterile product that has been formulated and processed for safety and efficacy and is less likely to cause an immune system reaction. The specific type of honey also matters. A variety known as Manuka honey contains antibacterial agents in greater concentrations as well as other several distinct compounds that make it well suited for healing. You can find medical grade honey online. Amazon sells it as do other retailers, and that is something you should know. We could really use a review from you. If you've been listening to this podcast and you like it, I would invite you to leave a rating and review on whatever platform you listen. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.
- [52:54]
Grim Grimmer Grimmest Ad
You might think you know fairy tales and you might think that they are cute and sweet and boring. But the real Grimm fairy tales were not cute at all. They were very dark and they were often very grim. On Grim Grimmer Grimmest, we tell a grim fairy tale to a bunch of kids. Perfect for car rides or screen free entertainment. Grim Grimmer Grimmest activates kids imaginations and instigates fun conversations because fairy tales speak to all of us at a very deep primal level and they raise interesting topics and questions that are worth chewing over together as a family. Every episode is rated Grim, Grimmer or Grimmest. So you, your kids, your whole family can choose. What is the right level of Grim for you, though, if you're listening with Grandma, she's just gonna go for Grimmest. Trust me on this one. Tune in to Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest and our new season.
- [53:46]
Cruising Beyond the Bars Ad
Available now from the podcast that brought you to each of the last lesbian bars in the country and back in time, through the sapphic history that shaped them, comes a brand new season of Cruising beyond the Bars. This is your host, Sarah Gabrielli, and I've spent the past year interviewing history making lesbians and queer folks about all kinds of queer spaces, from bookstores to farms to line dancing and much more.
- [54:13]
Mike Carruthers
For 11 years, every night women slept.
- [54:16]
Erin McCarthy
Illegally on the Common.
- [54:18]
Hal Hirschfeld
We would move down to the West Indies to form a lesbian Meg.
- [54:23]
Mike Carruthers
Kristen coined the phrase women's music, but she would have liked to say it was lesbian music. And that's kind of the origins of the Combaheever Collective.
- [54:32]
Cruising Beyond the Bars Ad
You can listen to Cruising on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes air every other Tuesday, starting February 4th.