Dr. Rebecca Heiss (6:55)

Thanks so much for having me, Mike.

Mike Carruthers (6:57)

So there is a whole industry wrapped around the idea that you need to reduce your stress or get rid of your stress. Your stress is killing you and it needs to go away.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (7:08)

I gotta say, I think, you know, it's probably the worst strategy that we can, we can adopt because the only people with no stress are dead people. And I don't think that should be our goal. Right. The idea of getting rid of stress is really flawed because stress is part of life. So instead of trying to get rid of it, I think the challenge should be to use it differently, to recognize it's just our body preparing ourselves to perform.

Mike Carruthers (7:31)

Yeah, but my experience is that when I'm stressed, that is the worst time to prepare for anything because I'm stressed.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (7:40)

Yeah, and yet your body is actually giving you and delivering to you the exact things that it needs in that moment. So when you feel stress, what's happening in your body is your body is producing all of these hormones and neurotransmitters that are actually preparing you to rise to the occasion. So while our brain is saying, oh my gosh, I'm stressed, this is really negative. In fact, we have control over that. We can change the label on it and say, instead of, man, this is really awful, and I'm anxious and this is, this is scary. We can say, oh, I'm excited. This is my body preparing me to actually rise to the occasion. Because, you know, you think about Olympic athletes, they're breaking world records when the pressure and the stress is at its absolute peak. And that's when we all can do the same thing. We may not be breaking Olympic records, but we can still perform at our very best, even under high levels of pressure.

Mike Carruthers (8:36)

Here's my thinking about this, is that I wonder how stressed people really are. In other words, it's very cool to say how stressed you are because that means you're a very busy person and all that. But I wonder if people are really stressed or this is just life. I mean, there's no. The bar has been lowered to what stress actually is so that we can say we're stressed.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (9:03)

Absolutely. Life. Life is kind of one giant trauma, right? It is a whole bunch of series of stressors and that is what our body is built for. So this isn't a bug, this is a feature. The trouble I think comes in and that humans are weird, right? We're the only animal that creates our own stress. So, you know, a lion, we'll think of lions for a second because they're, they're great hunters. I think everybody would argue they're pretty good hunters, but they fail 80% of the time that they, that they hunt. And what they do immediately afterwards is they lay down and they take a nap, right? They, they don't get in their heads and say, oh my gosh, I'm such a lousy hunter. I can't believe I missed that gazelle. You know, they're not creating more problems from this response. And yet that's exactly what humans do. We get into our heads about all of the ways that even trying to get rid of stress. So like our research has shown that people stress out even more trying to get rid of stress, because what happens is they try and meditate or they try and do some yoga and they're still stressed and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm a failure. I can't even get rid of stress. And we create more stress as a result. So it's a really negative cycle I.

Mike Carruthers (10:12)

Have witnessed, and I'm probably guilty of it too, is something goes on in your life that you have now determined is stressful. So now the problem isn't even the problem anymore. Now the problem is the stress. And it's going to suck you down into this whirlpool that there's no way out.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (10:32)

And we have worse outcomes as a result of trying to get rid of it to begin with. So instead of trying to be rid of the stress, I think we need to have a whole mind shift, a little mindset, shift in, in the way we treat it and recognize, listen, this is part of life. Right. It's not going anywhere. And our response to it, instead of treating it like it's this life and death situation, which is how our body typically responds, it's like getting chased by a tiger. Every time we have an right. Instead of treating it like life and death, we can say, okay, invite that tiger in for a cup of tea. Right? Sit it down. Have a little. Have a little chat with it. We can begin to get curious with our stress and say, wow, I wonder why this means so much to me. Because really, that's what stress is about. It's a barometer for how much we care about something. Yeah.

Mike Carruthers (11:18)

Well, we'll take an example. All right? You go in for a job interview, and it's very stressful. You know why it's stressful? Because a lot is on the line here. There's no reason to have a real long discussion with yourself about, why do you think this is important? You know why it's important. The problem is, how do you handle that stress that can sometimes flub you up in that interview, make you say something stupid or you freeze up. That becomes the issue.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (11:46)

And it turns out that the issue is all in our heads. And I'm not saying that to be Pollyanna ish or say, you know, stress is really good for you, but in fact, it's not necessarily bad for you. And that shift the research around. Just thinking about stress differently is tremendous. So there was a. A Harvard Business School research project where they looked at people who were.

Mike Carruthers (12:12)

Can you start that again?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (12:13)

I would love to. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. There was research that came out of Harvard Business School looking at two groups that they used. Gosh, man. Now I'm just going to flub this next left and right. I'm under stress, Mike. I'm under stress.

Mike Carruthers (12:25)

What do we do? What? You're under stress? What do we do?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (12:29)

So there was this research that came out of Harvard Business School where they looked at people under high pressure situations. One of the situations they set up was having people give an impromptu speech, and they recorded it, and then observers would watch it and rate the speeches. And before the speech, they'd had one group say, I'm excited, and the other group tried to calm down, which is the advice we typically give ourselves. Right. Try to calm down. The results were really spectacular. The group that simply engaged with the stress said, I'm excited. This means I'm excited, actually were rated as being more competent, more confident. They had higher scores all around on their performance, Whereas those that tried to calm down had the exact opposite. So trying to calm down, trying to get rid of the stress doesn't work. And the difference is not trying to get rid of the stress, but trying to use that. That state of excitement in a different way.

Mike Carruthers (13:27)

So a moment ago, you flubbed your answer to a question, and I asked you again, and you flubbed it again. So I assume there was some stress there, that you were starting to get pretty stressed by the fact that you weren't answering it the way you wanted to. But what I noticed you did was you didn't go down very far into that drain where you start beating yourself up. Oh, my God, this is going to. You laughed it off, and you came back and nailed it.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (13:56)

I mean, I think, again, this is just an example of when we get stressed and we create more stress by thinking about it. You know, I sat there for a second. I was like, oh, my gosh, Rebecca, you're a professional speaker, and you can't get this sentence out. This is so embarrassing. And then I was like, wait a second. I'm hearing myself say that. Stop. This is not. This is not a tiger. This is not a life and death situation. Pause. Recognize that you're excited about this because this is meaningful and you want to communicate clearly and do it again. And that's where we ended up.

Mike Carruthers (14:26)

Mike, everybody who just heard that explanation has been in that position where you start talking to yourself, oh, my God, this is horrible. I'm gonna die. And the more you do that, the harder it is to come out of it because you're sinking deeper and deeper and deeper.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (14:43)

That's it. And your stress response is working against you then rather than for you. And it really is as simple as saying, okay, I'm excited about this. Let's get curious about why this means something to me. And then shifting that energy to serve you rather than have it hold you back.

Mike Carruthers (15:02)

Well, but that's, you know, almost like saying the way to be a millionaire is to get a million dollars. It like, how do you. How do you do that in the moment when you've never been able to do it before? So it seems like that is the tricky part.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (15:19)

It is a little tricky, but our body does actually help us with this because our brain is looking to our body to understand what is happening. So I want you to think about a situation where you should be scared, you should be defensive, like a tiger is actually coming at you. What's going to happen to your body? Well, you're going to clench down. You're going to sort of cross Your arms, you're going to furrow your brow, your muscles are going to be very tense, right? And your brain then reads this response and says, oh, adrenaline is surging and my body is tense. This is an emergency. Whereas what just happened now? When I flubbed my answer, I could feel my body getting into that space. And so instead what I did was I took a moment, I unclenched my fist, I put a smile on my face, and I opened my shoulders up as if I was confident and excited. And then I tried again. And what this does is it actually signals to the brain. It's called somatic feedback, where our brain is looking to our body to understand what's happening. So all of these chemicals are being released into our body and our brain goes, what's going on here? How do I read this emotion? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? And if our body is open and relaxed and curious, then our brain goes, huh? Okay, we must be excited here rather than anxious or scared.

Mike Carruthers (16:32)

We're talking about stress with my guest, Dr. Rebecca Heiss. She's author of the book Transforms Stress to Work for you. You know, I remember the first time I had to hire someone and I thought it would be quick and easy. But posting on random job boards and sorting through applications and waiting for the right person, it took forever. And I never thought I was very good at it. I really wish I'd had Indeed back then because they make hiring fast and simple. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Instead of struggling to get your job post noticed, Indeed's sponsored Jobs helps you stand out. See, your post jumps right to the top for candidates you're looking for so you reach the right people faster. And it works. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs get 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. That's a big difference. What I love is how fast it is. In fact, in just the time I've been Talking to you, 23 hires were made on Indeed According to Indeed data worldwide. And with sponsored Jobs. There's no monthly subscription, no long term contracts. You only pay for results. It's no Wonder more than 3 1/2 million employers worldwide use Indeed to hire great talent fast. 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 something you should know indeed.com something terms and conditions apply. Hiring indeed is all you need. You know, it usually takes a lot for me to get excited about clothes shopping, but with fall and cooler weather coming, I'm actually looking forward to stocking up at Quint's. See, they've become my go to for fall staples that actually last. Cashmere, denim boots, you name it. The quality really holds up and the prices are a lot lower than you'd expect. You see, here's the thing. Shopping online, my biggest worry is always is it really gonna look and feel as good when it shows up as it did online? Well, with Quince, it always does. I've got a couple of their 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters. They just start at 60 bucks and they are unbelievably soft. Their denim fits great and wears really well. And their leather jackets, I haven't bought one yet. But that clean, classic look without the big price tag is very enticing. And what I love is that Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen. So you're getting top quality fabrics and craftsmanship for about half the price of the fancy brands. I've got polo shirts from them I practically live in and people ask me all the time where I got them. And I just ordered a new dress shirt look. If you want to keep it classic and cool this fall upgrade with long lasting staples from Quince, go to quince.comsysk for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince.comsysk free shipping and 365 day returns at quince.comsysk so Rebecca, one might argue that the example that we're using where you flubbed your answer a few minutes ago, that's a pretty small. In the scheme of things, in the scheme of your life, this will not be one of your big. As I look back on my life, one of the most stressful moments was in this interview. It isn't. But life has different levels of situations where sometimes stress is really, really severe. And seems like the degree of stress has something to do with how you respond.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (20:40)

Yeah, I mean, yes. And to that, Mike, I would argue that if people look at their stressors in the moment, everything feels really big. In the moment, everything feels like it's life and death because we have a singular stress response and it responds to, you know, flubbing an answer on a podcast the exact same way as it, as it does to, you know, blowing an interview for, for the job that you really need in order to pay the rent And I'm not here trying to be Pol Pollyanna ish and saying we have to feel good about all of these stressors. So this is maybe the major difference here is that there are massive stressors. Those are things that are causing the stress in our bodies. But the stress response itself, that's something that's neither good nor bad. It's just energy that our body is getting. And we get that energy from flubbing, flubbing an answer on the podcast, and horrible diagnoses that are going to affect us for years. But when we recognize that neither of those is an actual life and death situation, and what I mean by that is in the next three minutes, we're not dead. Because that's what our stress response is built for. It's built for three minutes of screaming terror through the savannah, right? Getting chased by some lion, tiger or bear. Oh my. It's not built for these long term, you know, lots of little interruptions throughout the day. And so when we recognize that it's not an actual tiger, we can begin to utilize that energy differently. And I'm not saying that this is simple or easy or that our brain accepts that this is just all good. What I am saying is that stressor can cause a response that we can utilize in a new way.

Mike Carruthers (22:16)

When I think about times that I have been stressed, it's because I care about the outcome. You know, that job interview or you want to buy a house, or you want to buy a house and it looks like the deal's not going to go through. It's big things that, that you really care about and you can't not care about something you care about. So how do you deal with that when you're trying to do what you're talking about?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (22:45)

Yeah, I think you actually just nailed it. So our research, we looked at meaning, stress and purpose and it turns out to have a meaningful, purposeful life. You also must have a lot of stress. So stress was one of the most high correlates to a meaningful purposeful life. Past stressful events, current state of stress, even future worry and anxiety are highly correlated to a meaningful, purposeful life. So one of the questions that I asked in my follow up research was to think of a project or an accomplishment that you're most proud of and then go back in time to when you were in the middle of that project and figure out, you know, how stressed were you on a scale of 0 to 100. And most people are saying like 5492, like we're stressed out of our gourds when something that's meaningful. And you really nailed it there, Mike. It is recognizing stress as a barometer for how much we care. And rather than running away from what is ultimately going to bring us meaning and purpose, we need to run at the roar, run towards that stressor and recognize that we may not be able to control the outcome, but we can take action within it toward the thing that is going to provide us the best possible outcome that we can control in the moment.

Mike Carruthers (24:02)

Well, you said a couple of things back in the beginning about how people will meditate or they'll try to calm down. Well, what about that? I mean, it seems like maybe not in the moment when you're stressed, but do you dismiss the idea of meditation and those kind of relaxing things? Are they unnecessary?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (24:25)

Unnecessary? No. I don't want to be dismissive of those things. It's not that meditation or yoga or getting a massage or any of those things are bad. It's just they're not actually going to mitigate your stress. And this, this comes from research in 2013 where we looked at 90 different workplace interventions, and those included things like meditation, massage, coaching, good night's sleep, you name it. And of those 90 workplace interventions, zero of them, with the exception of one, with the exception of them, of one, zero of them actually made stress better. In fact, a lot of them made it worse. And that comes back to the thing that I was saying at the beginning. When we try to calm down and we, we can't, we physiologically can't. We get in our heads and we're like, oh, gosh, this isn't working for me. I am just, I'm broken in some way. The one intervention that actually does mitigate stress is surprising to most people, its service to others. And I love this so much because while we're all familiar with the number one stress hormone, right, Cortisol, one of the other major stress hormones in the stress response is oxytocin, and that's the cuddle hormone, the love hormone, the connectedness hormone. It's the hormone of courage that forces us to reach out in times of stress, to connect with others and ask for help or offer help. And it's really powerful to recognize that in stress it can actually bring people closer together.

Mike Carruthers (26:00)

Wow. Good answer. That's a great answer.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (26:03)

Thanks.

Mike Carruthers (26:03)

Well, I've always thought that just because you calm down today, you meditate or go get a massage doesn't mean that on Thursday when things all go to hell, that that's going to have any effect on the stress. In that moment, it felt good on Tuesday. But this is Thursday and everything's hitting the fan.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (26:25)

Yeah, exactly. And so training our stress response and recognizing how we treat stress I think is a longer term solution.

Mike Carruthers (26:35)

I'm sorry. Yeah, but what about this idea that if you participate in those activities, meditation, yoga, that you bring down your resting heart rate, that you exercise does this, that that will help in those moments? I mean, I think that's a theory. People believe that doing these things preventatively will help in the moments when the stress hits. Are you saying that that is not true?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (27:04)

I'm saying there's a lot of science that will support doing meditation. Doing yoga increases the pause. Right. Increases the break between the stressor hit and your response to it. What I am also saying is that it's not going to prevent the stressor from coming into your life and you having a physiological response to it. So yes, your resting heart rate may be lower if you meditate and do yoga, but when that stressor hits, you should have a stress response. It's not a bad thing to have a stress response. And that's the thing that I really want to, to bring into people's minds. I think stress needs a better PR agent because instead of us thinking, oh, it's bad for me to have a response, no, that's actually brilliant. Your body is getting prepped to do the thing it needs to do in that moment in order to seek a solution to the problem.

Mike Carruthers (27:58)

What's something, if we haven't talked about it already, what is something that would really surprise me to know about stress?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (28:06)

Yeah, I think probably the most important thing is the study in 2013 that looked at 30,000Americans across eight years time. And the questions that the researchers were interested in were, do you believe that stress is harmful to your health and does that affect your health based on how much stress you have? And so people that have very high levels of stress who believed that stress were, was bad for their health, they had the highest mortality rate of the entire study. So 43% higher mortality rate than the rest of the study. That's, that's massive. And this is bad news for most of us who have very high levels of stress and believe stress is bad for us. But here's the good news. The good news is in the same study, people who had the same very high levels of stress, but simply believed that that stress response or that stress wasn't bad for them, maybe as maybe it was good, maybe it was just energy, just not bad for them, they had the lowest mortality rate of the entire study lower, in fact, than people who had very little stress in their life. So over the course of the eight year study, 182,000 people died not because they had very high levels of stress, but because they believed that that high level of stress was bad for them. And that is so powerful to recognize how much the way we interpret our stress response affects our health outcomes.

Mike Carruthers (29:32)

Well, this was fun and a very different conversation than I thought it was going to be about stress. And I like this conversation better than the one I thought it was going to be. I've been talking with Dr. Rebecca Heiss. She's author of the book Transform Stress to Work for your and there's a link to that book in the show notes. Rebecca, thanks. You're a very good interviewee. I appreciate your time.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss (29:56)

Oh goodness. Well, you're a great interviewer. I listen to your podcast quite frequently. In fact, it kept me awake last night on my drive from Charlotte, so I really appreciate it.

Mike Carruthers (30:05)

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Mike Carruthers (32:28)

You may not have thought about this much, but the way we watch movies has changed a lot over the last several years. It used to be that to see a movie you had to go to a theater or a drive in. Then television started showing movies so we could watch some movies there. Then services like HBO showed up and then videotape rentals of movies where if you're old enough to remember, you'd head to the video store to see what you could rent. Then DVDs got added to the mix and there were laserdiscs and now there are streaming services that tell you what movies they think you will like and then allow you to pick a movie and watch it instantly on your big screen tv. The experience of watching movies has really changed and that change has also changed the way movies are made and distributed. Here to discuss all this is Jeff Rossio, who has researched this topic thoroughly and written a book about it called Lost in the Stream. How Algorithms Redefine the Way Movies Are Made and and Watched. Hey Jeff, welcome to Something youg Should Know.

Jeff Rossio (33:36)

Hey Mike, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Mike Carruthers (33:38)

Well, I just gave my brief history from my point of view of watching movies and you focus primarily on the more recent history because that's where things.

Jeff Rossio (33:48)

Really have changed over the last five years. I mean it has just the explosion of digital platforms and the streaming revolution and every studio has their own streaming service. That's all changed. Like you don't need to go to the theaters anymore. Movies come out on rental platforms within three or four weeks. A lot of movies go right to streaming. So it's really shifted and there are so many more options now that personally I feel almost overwhelmed compared to the options I used to have. And you used to make more of kind of an intentional choice. You know, you had to sit down and and watch that movie on cable or go to the video store and pick something and make a choice or buy a ticket. And now it's just sort of scroll, scroll, scroll until you find something that looks decent from an algorithm and you go, okay, I'll watch that.

Mike Carruthers (34:39)

Well, the thought process in the mind of the movie watcher has changed in this way. Used to be if there was a movie on television, like the ABC Sunday Night Movie, and it's Sunday night, and you sit down and you watch the movie because it's on now, there are so many choices, and you can watch them whenever you want. You don't know what to watch or when.

Jeff Rossio (35:05)

It's true, you probably watched a lot of those movies start to finish, because that's what you had, right? And now, you know, you could get half an hour in and say, ah, forget it. You know, sometimes people don't even give the movies a chance. You flip to something else. But I think there used to be that commitment and that kind of allowed people to really figure out what they liked and what they didn't like. And you let a movie kind of tell its story because, hey, I mean, how many movies have you watched? For the first 30 minutes you're like, I'm not sure. And then by the end, you're like, oh, wow. Like, glad I stuck through it.

Mike Carruthers (35:36)

Yeah. Well, it does seem odd that not that many years ago, your options were limited. It's whatever movie you rented or whatever movie was on television or whatever HBO was showing, those were your options. Now there are so many options. You've got Netflix and Amazon prime and all the other streaming services. And yet how many times have you thought, God, there's nothing on. There's nothing to watch, and there's millions of things to watch, but nothing strikes your fancy?

Jeff Rossio (36:08)

Yeah, no, it's true. And it's a sort of. I call it an illusion of choice sometimes, because there is. There are so many choices. But at the same time, it feels like whenever you go to look for a specific movie, it's not where you expect it to be or you can't find it. And it's just a totally different ball game now because you're truly missing. You know, I have some numbers in the book, but, like, even if you add up all the streaming platforms, all the major streamers, you get about 25,000 movies on those platforms. It sounds like a lot, but there's Scarecrow Video in Seattle, who's the world's largest video store, that have 150,000 movies on their shelf. So streaming is really just this tiny portion of the total movie history. Like, you are truly missing out on 80% of movies out there. And I think that's the frustration people have, is there seems to be so much, and at the same time, there. There isn't. It's a strange world to live in to have that much Choice without what you're looking for.

Mike Carruthers (37:11)

Well, something I'd like to get you to comment on is that when you have access to all these movies, thousands and thousands of movies on these streaming services, so you start to watch them, and you watch the big blockbusters first, and you get through all of those, and then you start to go down the list. There are a lot of mediocre and frankly, lousy movies out there.

Jeff Rossio (37:35)

This is true because. So there's sort of a. There's pros and cons, right? With streaming and with the way everything is, distribution is easier. It's easier to make a movie now. Cameras are cheaper. You know, you could. You could shoot a movie with your iPhone. They shot 28 years later on an iPhone. You know what I mean? Like Hollywood movies. So it's easier to make a movie, it's easier to get it distributed, put out on a platform, but at the same time, yeah, it kind of floods the market and it becomes really hard to find the good, the diamond in the rough. How do you find something that's actually worth watching and not just. I don't want to call it streaming slop, but, you know, some people are like, ah, that's just, you know, that was made in two days just to have something else for the service. Because they are content machines. That's what they are, and they need constant content.

Mike Carruthers (38:22)

I think it's significant, though, that even though there have been so many changes, as we've already been talking about, so many changes in the way people watch movies, people still go to the theater and they like to go to the theater.

Jeff Rossio (38:37)

They do. I will say, though, if you look at ticket sales by number, they are actually down quite a bit, which is sad. Now, people, there's still that dedicated audience that goes to theaters, and the revenue looks okay because the ticket prices keep going up every year, but the amount of tickets being sold every year has been decreasing. And I would. It's one of the things I'm worried about is I want more people to go to theaters because I think there's. That there's the movie fan, there's the movie nerd like me who's always going to go to a theater to watch something. But I think there's a lot of those casual viewers who would have gone to theaters 15 years ago who now just are trained to know, oh, this is gonna be on streaming in a month or two. I'll watch it at home. And you're missing out on that community experience, seeing it on a big screen, seeing it with an audience well, and.

Mike Carruthers (39:29)

There are some movies that really lend themselves to a theater experience. The Mission Impossible movies. And Tom Cruise has always said he wants to make movies for theaters. But you see that on an IMAX screen with that audio and even watching it at home on a big screen tv, it's very different. It is. A movie in the theater is much more spectacular.

Jeff Rossio (39:55)

You can't match that even as far as technology is common. Hey, I'm a home theater nerd too. I've got a 85 inch TV, I've got 11 speakers, two subwoofers. Right. I invested in it because I want my movies to look great at home. But you can't watch Mission Impossible or Top Gun Maverick and then watch it at home and go, oh yeah, that was just as good. I mean, even, even older movies, you know, I tried watching. I remember the first time I tried watching 2001 A Space Odyssey at home and I was like, I couldn't get into it. And then I went to a theater a few years back and saw a 70 millimeter screening of it and I was like, I get it now. I understand. Like, this was the experience. So people are missing that. And I think it does take away a little bit from the art form.

Mike Carruthers (40:44)

So knowing what you know, do you have advice for people like me who have that there's nothing on. I've seen it all before. The same stuff keeps coming up. They keep offering me the same things I don't want. Like, is there a way around it?

Jeff Rossio (41:00)

There's a few things you can do. You know, I wrote in the book about getting more involved and, you know, not to say social media, because that's going to be full of algorithms, but tighter communities in places like, you know, I really like Reddit for that kind of thing where you can have these, these dialogues and these forums and it feels a little bit like old school Internet before social media. But you have a real dialogue with people. You can find those deeper cuts you get from a group mind rather than just one person, an influencer. I mean, I do this on social media, so I'm going to criticize myself. But you shouldn't just watch me. Watch everybody get recommendations from more people, go to the theaters, talk to people, talk to your friends about movies. You have to bring back that, that conversation that used to happen at a video store, at a movie theater. These conversations don't happen as often anymore. And people don't even know. You could have a best friend who has a movie you've never seen. And you guys probably don't Even talk about it because it's whatever's latest on streaming. So that's a big piece of it. It's just like bringing back the community aspect. But I'm also a huge advocate for physical media. And that's not just because, oh, it's better quality and all this stuff. Sure. I'm also a huge proponent of it because of the selection and because of the work that there are a lot of great independent, we call them boutique labels out there who are reviving movies and remastering movies from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, putting them out in beautiful new restored editions, really diving into deeper catalogs that you're not going to see on streaming. And there are great films out there. You, you know, there's 100 years plus of movies out there. There's a lot that you probably like and just don't know about because when you live in that sort of, you know, the bubble of just what streaming has, and they're always going to be about what's the most popular, what's going to get the most view time, and they're not going to challenge you with something different.

Mike Carruthers (43:06)

What has streaming done to the film business? I mean, certainly it hasn't helped the theater business, but it has brought a lot of movies that, you know, before streaming, it would have been impossible to find most of these movies unless you spent hours and hours in a video store. So it's bringing video, it's bringing movies to people's lives. But what is it doing to the business of movies?

Jeff Rossio (43:33)

For the business side of it, what it's kind of done has. It's turned all of the movie studios into. They've had to become tech companies essentially. They need to now run a streaming platform. Like, you can't just be Paramount, you need to run Paramount plus and you need to be selling software subscriptions. You know, you need, you're. You're now a software tech company as much as you are a movie studio. And you need that to continue to be profitable and have that kind of infinite growth in order to please everybody and please the, the investors. So what it ends up doing is you see a lot more content that just kind of gets cranked out, thrown on there. You see stuff just. The theatrical experience has definitely been devalued. The movie theaters, they make their Money on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th week sales opening weekend studios take a big chunk. Well now by the third or fourth week, those movies are already on a streaming service or on a rental platform. So movie theaters are hurting because they're not Getting used to have movies in theaters for three, four months. They're not getting that anymore. They're getting two weeks. And then people know it's coming out soon. I'm not going to buy a ticket. So the movie theaters hurt. I think the studios are hurting, trying to find a way to make running a massive tech platform profitable. And the ones who are doing it best are probably the tech companies. Netflix is a tech company. They knew how to run the tech first, content second. Apple tv, same thing. Amazon Prime. Like, they're probably doing the best because they understand the technology and they are tech companies. The ones who are struggling. I think you see it with like a little bit of Warner and Discovery and what they've been juggling around with hbo, you see it with Paramount, you even see it to a certain degree with Disney. And Disney, they've kind of told filmmakers, hey, we're not going to have the budgets we had a couple years ago for you to make these big shows and movies. This isn't the reality. We can't keep this up. So it's dramatically changed, just the kinds of movies that can get made, because you need guarantees now. There's not a lot of risks being taken. They're literally running movie scripts. I've had filmmakers tell me they're running stuff through algorithms and AI machines to say, is this going to play well or not? The human element's kind of been taken out and it's all run through these, these algorithms. In the software side of the business.

Mike Carruthers (46:00)

Are DVDs still a thing? Do people still buy them? I always like having them, like the, you know, Christmas DVDs, like, you can just pull them out and play them, but it seems like nobody's really buying them much anymore.

Jeff Rossio (46:13)

It's definitely not ever going to get back to its peak, you know, like the 80s and the 90s. But there are still a lot of companies and even the major studios still cranking out. You have DVD, you have Blu Ray, you have 4K UHD Blu Ray now for 4K TVs. And there are a lot of people. It's more limited. I compare it to, like the vinyl record resurgence a few years back where, you know, that was dead, that was at zero, and now all of a sudden people are buying vinyl. There's always going to be this dedicated group of enthusiasts who want to own it, and there's always going to be someone out there, whether it's an independent label or someone that the studios contract to make these things. I don't see them going anywhere, but I Mean, you're right, the average person doesn't have them. Just like they don't have CDs or cassette tapes or vinyl records. But I think that there's still a place for it. It's still nearly a billion dollar industry in the US And a lot of recent releases that have come out have actually sold out and people are having a hard time finding them. So there's been a little bit of excitement lately. Interestingly enough, even with like Gen Z and the younger generations who kind of grew up in this world and never knew anything different of getting back to CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes have made a huge resurgence.

Mike Carruthers (47:37)

Wait, VHS has made a resurgence? I mean, that is the poorest quality video it is man has ever made.

Jeff Rossio (47:45)

It is. But if you. Yeah, I mean, if VHS tapes are very hot right now, if you go on ebay, they do VHS tape swaps, movie theaters are doing events with them, local indie theaters. It's become, you know, there's people making reproductions of modern movies on VHS tapes. And even some of the studios, you know, 20th Century Studios put out Alien Romulus on a VHS tape as sort of a collector's piece, but, but it's playable and those sold out. So there's been this kind of resurgence. There's this nostalgia factor and clearly the quality is not there. But there are a lot of people who are, I guess, pushing back against it. And you'll see even the old tv, VCR combos that we all used to have selling on ebay now for 100, $200. I mean, those used to be free on the side of the curb.

Mike Carruthers (48:38)

Well, as you were talking, I just pulled, just went on Amazon and looked, and there's a lot of VHS players for sale. So, you know, a lot of them are reconditioned players. But I mean, there doesn't seem to be any shortage. If you wanted to get one and didn't have one anymore, you could get one pretty easy.

Jeff Rossio (48:57)

Yeah, and they do sell. They sell a lot. You'd be surprised. A lot of them sell. A lot of people are looking for them. And there's. Yeah, there's been this weird resurgence to that format. And just getting back to it, it's. If you look it up online, they're everywhere.

Mike Carruthers (49:13)

So you would know the answer to this. So you have a pretty fancy schmancy home theater system. If you rent a movie on a fancy format, like a disc format and watch it on your theater, is it going to look a lot different than if you streamed it on Netflix?

Jeff Rossio (49:37)

Depending on the movie. Yes. I would say there are a lot of older movies that. So. So when you're streaming something, it's pretty heavily compressed because they need to send all that data over the Internet to you, to your streaming device, to your tv. And so there are, you know, we can get really technical and there's bit rates and things of how. How the quality is, but it's typically like five to six times less quality than a disk, if. If not more. And that's just because they have to compress files in order to get them to you. Our, you know, our Internet infrastructure isn't there yet, so you'll see it a lot. You know, there's a. A good example I always bring up is like, people who watched Game of Thrones on hbo and a couple of the last episodes in the final season got very, very dark. And people complained they couldn't see what was happening. Their TVs looked. It looked like a mess. You know, there was. It looked like it was blocky and, you know, it looked like a VHS tape almost. And that's because the streaming service couldn't handle what they were sending through. I have the 4K disk. If you put that same episode in, it's nearly perfect.

Mike Carruthers (50:51)

One real fundamental problem I've always had with home movies, watching commercial movies at home is the audio. Because if they leave the theater mix with the home version, it's either too loud at points and then you turn it down, and then you can't hear the soft dialogue. It works in a theater because it works in the theater, but if it's just coming through a couple of speakers in your living room, it's hard to adjust. And I'm surprised they haven't fixed that.

Jeff Rossio (51:28)

Yeah, that is the problem is that they're mixed for a theater. And then when you get home, if you have a sound bar or even if you're just watching through the TV speakers, everything kind of has to come through that one source. And so I'm sure, yeah, the music will get super loud, but you can't hear the dialogue. And then the dialogue's too quiet. You turn it up, and then your speakers get blown when the explosion happens. It's very common. So they've actually started. There's been a bit of a debate in the home theater community because they've started to sort of mix things. I've noticed they're mixing things differently for at home viewing. And there are the people who invested all their money in their home theater say, well, now you're taking away from my experience, because I invested all this to have that. And I get that. But 99% of people don't have that. And so that's why they're kind of. They're changing the mixes a little bit.

Mike Carruthers (52:18)

I'm glad to hear.

Jeff Rossio (52:18)

I'm glad to hear. It's a hot debate, though, for sure. And really, the only way around it is, yeah, you have to get more speakers if you're watching movies or you're pretty much gonna be stuck with that problem. Just, that's. That's what a movie is. Right. You just can't get around it.

Mike Carruthers (52:32)

Well, this is fun to talk about because, you know, I like movies. Everybody likes movies. Clearly you like movies. And yet, you know, I have never really stopped and talked about it like this and looked at the evolution of how we watch movies. So I appreciate you sharing your insight. I've been talking with Jeff Rossio and the name of his book is Lost in the how algorithms redefine the way movies are made and Watched. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. And Jeff, I appreciate you coming on. Thanks.

Jeff Rossio (53:02)

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Mike Carruthers (53:07)

Bananas are an amazing fruit. They're chock full of nutrients. They're easy peel and eat, but you're probably peeling them all wrong. If you watch a monkey, you'll see the way the monkey peels bananas is from the bottom up. That way the white stringy stuff stays with the skin. So start at the other end of the banana, the end of the banana, where the bananas are not connected together, pinch the end of the skin and they should split open and you just peel and enjoy. And another tip for a better banana, take them apart when you get them home from the store to slow down the ripening process. They'll ripen faster when they're all connected. And that is something you should know. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate all the support that we get from listeners. And one great way to help support this show is to spread the word, tell people about it, share it, get them to listen. It's easy to do with the share function on whatever player you're listening on right now. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. I love to recommend a great podcast when I find one. And I found one. It's called all the hacks with Chris Hutchins. And it is so good. I even had Chris on something you should know as a guest recently. Chris Hutchins is what you'd call a financial optimizer. He has sold two companies. He's a master of credit cards, reward points, and travel miles. I mean, if there's a way to stretch your dollars further, he's probably already figured it out. But the show isn't just about points and miles. Chris dives into all kinds of smart strategies to upgrade your life. He recently did an episode on the top 50 ways to optimize your Life, Money and Travel. And he did an episode with Ben Carlson about how different generations approach wealth. And every single episode has at least one tactic you can immediately put to work, whether it's growing your net worth, boosting your productivity, or just traveling better for less. And what you'll notice right away when you listen is Chris does his homework. There's no fluff in this podcast, just proven playbooks for spending smarter, living better, and designing a life you're excited about. So do yourself a favor. Search for all the hacks. That's all the hacks in your podcast app, hit follow and start upgrading your life today.

Grim Grimmer Grimmest Narrator (55:39)

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 going to go for Grimmest. Trust me on this one. Tune in to Grim, Grimmer Grimmest and our new season available now.