Something You Should Know - A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

How do you decide when to throw food out? If you go by the date printed on the package, you could be wasting a lot of money. Listen as this episode begins with an understanding of what those dates mean and when you can ignore them. https://www.greenvillebusinessmag.com/2024/02/01/478977/sell-by-use-by-best-by-food-experts-decipher-the-meaning-of-expiration-dates The real fascination with UFOs began with one incident in 1947. Ever since then, there have been endless sightings of objects flying in the sky and people wondering what they are and could they be alien spacecraft? The U.S. government is also very interested in UFOs and is constantly looking skyward to try and find and figure them out. So, what are the facts? What are UFOs? What is Area 51? Are we alone? Here with some thoughtful answers to these questions is Garrett Graff. He is a former editor for Politico, a contributor to Wired and CNN, and as an author was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. His latest book is titled UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here―and Out There (https://amzn.to/3NNsmMd) Grace. It’s hard to define it in a person but you know when you see it. Generally, it is an admirable quality and most of us could probably use a bit more of it. Here to explain grace and tell some wonderful stories of grace in action is Julia s Baird. She is an Australian journalist, broadcaster, and author of the book Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything (https://amzn.to/4f54EqF). Do you know what to do – and not do if your dog gets into a fight with another dog? Dog owners often make matters worse because do the exact wrong thing. Listen as I reveal the best advice if you see your dog (or any dog) get into a dogfight. https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/pets/dog-behavior/how-break-dog-fight?page=all PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! INDEED:  Get a $75 SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING  Support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.  Terms & conditions apply. SHOPIFY:  Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk . Go to SHOPIFY.com/sysk to grow your business – no matter what stage you’re in! MINT MOBILE: Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at https://MintMobile.com/something! $45 upfront payment required (equivalent to $15/mo.).  New customers on first 3 month plan only. Additional taxes, fees, & restrictions apply. HERS: Hers is changing women's healthcare by providing access to GLP-1 weekly injections with the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as oral medication kits. Start your free online visit today at https://forhers.com/sysk DELL: Dell Technologies’ Early Holiday Savings event is live and if you’ve been waiting for an AI-ready PC, this is their biggest sale of the year! Tech enthusiasts love this sale because it’s all the newest hits plus all the greatest hits all on sale at once. Shop Now at https://Dell.com/deals Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's betterhelp.com. Today on Something You Should Know... While you're throwing out food, you don't really need to. Then, a serious discussion on UFOs. Our fascination with them began in 1947. None of this starts with the idea that these are aliens invading. It starts with this fear that these are Soviet spacecraft. Popular culture Hollywood begins to pick up this idea of these flying saucers as aliens, as Martians.

Also, what to do if your dog gets into a fight with another dog? An understanding grace. It's a wonderful human quality, but it's hard to define. To me, at the heart of grace is something that is undeserved. You will be loving the unlovable, forgiving the unforgivable. You'll be showing mercy instead of measuring merit. You'll be giving people the benefit of the doubt, not judging them by their worst possible moment.

All this today on Something You Should Know. Hi, I'm Laura Cathcart-Robbins and I am the host and creator of the podcast Only One in the Room. Every week, my co-host Scott Slaughter and I invite you to join us in Lose Yourself in Someone's Only One Story. The Only One in the room has a wide variety of guests from prisoners to abuse survivors to swingers with 21 seasons and counting. We guarantee that only one in the room will have a story that you'll connect with. This podcast is for anyone who has ever felt alone in a room full of people, which is to say that this podcast is for everyone.

which is to throw that away. But what about some of the other food, the questionable food? Most of us use the date on the food label to determine whether to keep it or toss it. But experts say Americans throw out billions of pounds of perfectly good food every year because of those confusing labels. The sell by date on a package is intended for the retailer, not for you, and it winds up misleading a lot of us.

Many dates printed on the food we buy are actually meaningless when it comes to freshness or safety. Even use-by dates or best-before dates are misleading and encourage us to throw away good food before its time. One food scientist said you just cannot tie shelf life to a date. If the food looks rotten and it smells bad, sure, throw it away. But just because it's past the date on the package doesn't necessarily mean it's unsafe. And that is something you should know.

There sure are a lot of wacky conspiracy theories about UFOs flying around. And we know the U.S US government has and is investigating UFOs But what is actually known is there any evidence that any UFO has contained beings from another planet? After all you have to wonder as many people have if aliens were to come all that way from another planet or even another galaxy another planet or even another galaxy, why would they land in a swamp somewhere where only two people get to see them and those people maybe take some grainy out-of-focus picture? Why wouldn't the aliens land in the middle of Times Square? The fact is a UFO is an unidentified flying object, meaning nobody is sure what it is. And if for argument's sake we put aside the alien spacecraft idea, well then what else could it be?

And why is the government seemingly so interested yet so hush-hush about UFOs? Well, that's what Garrett Graff set out to investigate. Garrett is a former editor for Politico and contributor to Wired and CNN. He has written several books about politics, technology, and national security and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book is titled UFO, the inside story of the U.S. government's search for alien life here and out there. Hi, Garrett. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks so much for having me.

So do we have any idea when people first started looking up and going, gee, I wonder if anybody else is out there or some other creature or, ooh, what's that over there? And when people first started getting interested in what you would call a UFO. So I have to imagine that this is a question, sort of this idea, are we alone, is one of the two or three

most fundamental questions of human existence. It's right up there with the questions of what happens after death and is there a God? Three questions altogether, by the way, that I think may not be totally unrelated as we come to figure out as best we can the answers to any of them. So the focus of your book is the US government's involvement and interest in UFOs, which is interesting because the fact that the government is interested kind of gives the whole subject some credence.

But when did this all start and why is the government interested? It all begins in June, 1947. There's an Idaho businessman named Kenneth Arnold who is flying in his private plane in the Pacific Northwest near the Cascades. And he sees a series of fast moving bright objects in the sky that he likens to flying saucers and he lands, tells some buddies about it, he gets picked up by the media and very quickly kicks off this summer of the flying saucer. And you know,

week by week, summer of 47, there are now flying saucer sightings all over the United States. There are ultimately across that summer, there are sightings in 34 states up and down North America, even up into Canada. And it hits at this very specific moment in our national anxiety. That summer of 47, the government is worried about these flying saucers, not because anyone thinks that they're aliens, but because they are afraid that these are secret Soviet spacecraft being built by kidnapped Nazi rocket scientists and that these flying saucer sightings might herald a new technology

that could invade the United States in this early stage of the Cold War after the end of World War II. When they're doing that though, are they doing this in secret? Are they telling people, yeah, we got our eye on this, not to worry, or are they saying, shh, yeah, let's take a look at this?

Well, the summer of 47 is just this moment of huge upheaval for the US national security apparatus. That summer, literally within a couple of weeks of Kenneth Arnold sightings, even as these flying saucers dominate newspaper headlines across the United States, the U.S. Congress passes what we now call the National Security Act of 1947. And it creates this modern national security apparatus.

It creates the unified Department of Defense. It creates the position of the Secretary of Defense, it creates the National Security Council, it creates the CIA, creates the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and it creates the Air Force as a standalone service branch. The Air Force up until then, of course, had been part of the Army. So in that summer, sort of the Air Force's first crisis is to try to identify what these flying saucers are. And the Air Force, you know, simultaneously tries to like poo-poo that they appear to be anything threatening. But also, there's some fascinating paperwork from that era that shows that even behind closed doors that the Air Force didn't have any idea what any of this stuff actually was up

in the sky. And so you have the Air Force sort of racing to try to figure this out. They enlist J. Edgar Hoover's FBI for some help, then get into a, you know a classic bureaucratic tiff with the FBI. And the FBI basically says, we're getting out of the flying saucer business and leaves it all to the Air Force. And the Air Force, through that fall of 47 and the beginning of 48, really struggles to figure out what any of this stuff actually is. How much of any of this is being driven by popular culture? Movies, books, comic books. Is that a result of what you're talking about or is that fueling

what you're talking about? It's both. As I said, you know, sort of none of this starts with the idea that these are aliens invading. It starts with this fear that these are Soviet spacecraft. And what you see happen in the late 40s and early 50s is that popular culture, Hollywood, begins to pick up this idea of these flying saucers and imagines them a new as aliens, as invading extraterrestrials, as Martians. And that what you see created in the late 40s and the early 50s is this flywheel really that becomes

the way that our society thinks of these issues in the subsequent decades where you have sort of popular culture fueling public sightings that then fuels national security concerns and anxieties that then fuels more popular culture interest, that then fuels more public sightings and sort of on and on and on. And of course, part of the challenge of that is this idea that UFOs are real. All a UFO actually is, of course, is an unidentified flying object.

And there are obviously unidentified flying object. And there are obviously unidentified flying objects. It's just in the public mind, UFO becomes this shorthand for alien spacecraft. Right, and it's a big jump to go from, I don't know what that is, to here come creatures from another world to colonize our planet. I mean, that's a pretty big leap. It is. And it's one that the government and the national security apparatus and the intelligence community and the

Air Force all really struggle with in the years ahead, because on the one hand, the government wants to reassure the public that these UFOs, whatever they are, don't pose a threat to national security. But at the same time, it's pretty clear that the government does not know what many of these UFOs actually are. And time and time again, you see the government trying to pull together study groups or commissions or committees

to look at this phenomenon and try to put public concerns and official concern to rest, but doing so without really being able to solve what the underlying mystery actually is. In the 70 or 80 years since the government has been doing this, since 1947, is there any sense that, yeah, we really think that there are aliens or is it still we don't know what it is? Because there's this sense, and you hear about it in talks of Area 51, that the government is hiding aliens and alien creatures.

Is there any inkling that there's anything other than we just don't know what that is? One of the puzzles to me in looking at this is our government appears to be just as baffled as the ordinary public and far less interested in figuring out the answer to any of this mystery than I think it should be. To me, as a taxpayer, as a citizen, as a journalist, I want the government to be more interested So to me as a taxpayer, as a citizen, as a journalist,

I want the government to be more interested in the subject of UFOs than it appears to be. And that there's a fairly significant number of respectable credible witnesses to UAP UFO phenomenon credible witnesses to UAP UFO phenomenon that have come forward that I want the government to try to do better to answer. There has been a lot of attention since 2017 to this series of sightings by Navy pilots, Navy aviators

who have come forward to describe encounters with phenomenon in the sky that they believe represent technologies that are more advanced than anything that the US government has. Some of this has been backed up by instrument data, by infrared videos and things like that. And the thing that's just really striking to me is the government isn't more interested in figuring out what that mystery is.

And I hope that this new conversation that we're having about UFOs in the modern era helps spur more serious investigation of some of these credible sightings. We are having a down-to-earth discussion about UFOs and my guest is Garrett Graff. He is author of the book UFO, the inside story of the U.S. government's search for alien life here and out there. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure

series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to something you should know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more.

A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker, John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligent Squared is meant for.

Check out Intelligent Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, Garrett, since you focus on what the government is doing and what the government knows or doesn't know about UFOs, what is your sense? Does the government, do you think, know a lot that it's not telling us or the government is looking for things but doesn't really see anything and it's just, it's all explainable or what? I think both are true. The government certainly doesn't share everything that it does understand about UFOs and UAP sightings and that there areas of sort of day-to-day government secret keeping.

One is our own advanced technologies. actually represent classified planes, rockets, satellites, spacecraft, drones that the US has developed but doesn't talk about publicly. I mean, that's certainly some chunk of public UFO sightings that the US government doesn't like to talk about. The second layer that the government doesn't like to talk about is its own sensor technology, which is, you know, the US has enormously complex and enormously advanced sensor systems that,

you know, it doesn't really like to talk about what UFOs and UAPs it detects, because that would then give away some of that answer of what the US government is able to see, listen to, watch, hear, detect on a day-to-day basis information that would be enormously valuable for our adversaries. Is there a sense of all of the reported UFOs? What percentage of them eventually get explained,

or versus how many we never figured out? The modern Pentagon office that's in charge of this says that it's able to answer now all but about 2 to 5% of the sightings that get reported to it. That's a surprising figure, I think, for a lot of people that the Pentagon or whoever is looking at this can actually explain almost 95 to 98% of all UFO sightings as to what they are. That's pretty good batting average. And some of that is just a huge percentage of these things are very straightforward. Oh, that looked weird to you, but that was just

an obviously scheduled plane or a known satellite crossing the sky. But there are some chunk of this as a phenomenon that we just really have no idea what it is. But when those pilots see things, and sometimes there's these fuzzy videos of lights moving in a way that would be hard to imagine, do those things ever get figured out?

I mean, you often hear, oh, it was a weather balloon or something. But are there some real baffling things that like that is so incredible, we just, we couldn't possibly begin to explain it. Yes, absolutely. And that to me, you know, is the core of this whole mystery, which is, you know, is that one to two to five percent of known recorded sightings that just no one can answer. We know that those sightings exist. We know that people have investigated some chunk of them and that they remain just as puzzled as anyone. What more should we be doing to try to dive into and uncover and unravel those mysteries? Whenever there's a discussion about UFOs and the government, Area 51 comes the Air Force's and CIA's secret flight test site.

It dates back to the early stages of the Cold War. It's where the U-2 spy plane and other secret classified planes have been developed and tested over the years. You know, I think part of the lure of it in these UFO conspiracies is that the government is incredibly secretive about what flies out of there. You know, it doesn't like talking about what's being tested there. We know that that is where the government takes secret planes to be tested and evaluated, whether those are manned or unmanned systems. And I think a lot of people have imagined that that's where the government sort of would take a crashed spacecraft if the government ever managed to recover one.

But I think after looking into all of this and having covered national security for 20 years in Washington, I'm pretty dubious that the US government is capable of a sophisticated long-term coverup of a crashed alien spacecraft. You know, it just seems, as with all conspiracy theories, the reason not to believe that the government has aliens

or has captured aliens or alien spacecraft and they're keeping them somewhere, that human nature is that people aren't very good at keeping secrets. People can't keep their mouth shut. And that by now, if this would have leaked out, somebody would have taken a picture, like a real picture and, or somebody would know something and it would get out.

Yes. And that in fact is, is just my sort of most basic reasoning for why you shouldn't believe the government conspiracies about secret UFOs or bases under area 51 or bodies is the government is capable of keeping secrets, but the government is not really able to keep secrets that are really big, that are known by a large number of people for very long. And so, you know, do I believe that the government could cover up a crashed alien

spacecraft, you know, for a couple of hours, a couple of days, a couple of weeks, a month or two, maybe a year or two? Probably. But the idea that there is some massive government program, you know, that has been ongoing for 80 years where no one has accidentally emailed a budget briefing to their roommate about the UFO program, I just don't really believe. You know, and my challenge with really any government conspiracy is that they presuppose a level of competence, foresight, planning, and strategy that is just not on display in the day-to-day work that the government does.

And the day-to-day work the government does is to be out there looking for things? Or do they react to reports or are they scanning the skies or what? A little of all of the above that you see the government really studying the skies on a daily basis but what they're searching for are adversary technology. technology, Russian satellites, Chinese spacecraft, Iranian drones. The government will react to some of these sightings if they come in in certain channels or appear to threaten national security. You saw that last year, that flap over the Chinese spy balloon, which started out as a UFO sighting.

over the Chinese spy balloon, which sort of started out as a UFO sighting. But I think the core of the challenge is that, you know, whatever that percentage is, 1%, 2%, 5% of sightings, the government just really is just as baffled as the rest of us. Well, you said in the very beginning that people have this kind of human nature question of are we alone in the universe? Is there alien life out there? And I guess people have wondered that for a long time. But truly, over the last 80 years, the interest in all of this has really ramped up. And it's interesting to hear the story and the government's

involvement in all of it. I've been speaking with Garrett Graff. He is a former editor for Politico, a contributor to Wired and CNN. He's written several books and his latest is called UFO, the inside story of the US government's search for alien life here and out there. And there's a link to his book in the show notes.

Thanks for coming on and talking about this, Garrett. Well, thanks so much. It was a pleasure talking with you. Ladies and gentlemen. What are you doing? What do you mean? I'm making her. Just keep it simple. I'm making the promo.

Just keep it simple. Just say, hey, we're the Braav bros, two guys that talk about Bravo. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we're the Braav bros. No. Oh. Dude, stop with the voice. Just keep it simple. I've seen promos on TV, dude. This, oh dude stop with the voice. Just boy, but simple

I've seen promos on TV dude. This is how you get the fans and engaged This is how you get listeners. We're trying to get listeners here if we just say oh, we're two dudes that talk about Bravo People are gonna get tired of it already. We need some ump All right, then fine. Let's try to do it with your voice Rob Rose good job. I Want to tell you about a podcast? I really, and I think you'll like it too. It's called The Gist. Now The Gist is the longest running news and commentary podcast out there.

The host, Mike Peska, puts out these very interesting arguments and asks great questions of his guests, which often get him some great, interesting, and sometimes unusual answers. Just to give you a sampling, a couple of recent guests include the Pixar and Saturday Night Live writer who got an early version of AI, which convinced him that computers were going to be able to replace comedy writers within five years. He spoke with a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

who realized he was being lied to by scientists to throw him off the scent of the COVID lab leak theory, and the paleontologist who had to lose 50 pounds so he could squeeze through this narrow crevice so he could see in person the 250,000-year-old bones of a species that he discovered. If any of this sounds interesting, and trust me, it's really an interesting podcast, listen to the gist wherever you listen to podcasts. What do you think of when I say the word grace?

Someone who has grace has something. Yeah, there is graceful as in how someone moves, but as a human characteristic, grace is something maybe a little bit indefinable. You know it when you see it. And I think we tend to like people who exhibit grace. So why don't we dive into it and see if maybe we could all exhibit a little more grace in our lives. And here to help me do that is Julia Baird.

Julia is an Australian journalist, broadcaster, and author. Her latest book is called Bright Shining, How Grace Changes Everything. Hi, Julia. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you for having me. So as I said, it seems like grace is maybe a little tough to define. I know it when I see it, but how do you define grace?

What is it? Well, that's part of it. Part of it is it's great mystery and people do say exactly that. Like I'm not quite sure exactly how to define it, but the moment I see it, I know it. And really, I think it's acts of great generosity, courage, decency and so on. But to me, at the heart of grace is something that is undeserved. You will be

loving the unlovable, forgiving the unforgivable. You'll be showing mercy instead of measuring merit. You'll be giving people the benefit of the doubt, not holding them to or judging them by their worst possible moment. It's something that's expansive and in one sense, actually doesn't make sense, but it can change lives. It really is the very best of humanity, I think. When I think of graceful people, at least the people I'm thinking of,

it's hard to imagine that they sat down one day and said, you know, I'm going to be more graceful. I'm going to exhibit more grace to the world. In other words, it's not something that you decide to do. It's more who you are. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question. My mother was a great woman of grace and you do meet people like that sometimes who have a kind of light about them, who are open to people, who see the best in people, who leave you feeling better about yourself and the world in general, who just are fundamentally deeply kind. But I think in a way that lets us off the hook because grace is not something that's just inherited or just easy.

It's not, you know, Kleenex and puppies and like a simple path. To me, there is a really powerfully difficult thing about grace. I see it as requiring a lot of grit. You can decide to be that way. You can decide to live that way. If you decide to forgive someone, it's not the easiest thing to do necessarily. And often you can decide you're going to, and you still wake up the next morning with all the pain and the grief and the annoyance and the irritation with that person and you might have to decide to forgive again. You might have to decide that that's how you really want to be and you're going to work

towards it and you've got to train yourself towards it. I mean, I think it's, I just don't think it's necessarily easy or simple. I think it can really change you to live that way and I think it can change you to receive those kinds of acts to be allowed a possibility of redemption. But fundamentally, it's about opening yourself up to recognize the humanity in another person. So the difference, say, between I see the difference between grace and compassion, there'll be maybe you have a neighbor down the road who's got cancer and you've always got on well with this neighbor. You're worried about them.

You drop them off food, meals, you know, mow their lawn, whatever it is they need to have done. That's compassion and empathy and kindness. Now, what if that neighbor had always actually been a real jerk who had been rude to neighbors, you know, just hostile to the kids in the area, whatever, just not pleasant to be around and they had cancer and you still did the same thing for them. That's when someone fundamentally isn't deserving it, but you're doing it because there's a need and there's a human there. And then if you sat long enough

with that person, you might work out like, oh, he, I don't know, that's a man who lost his parents when it was orphan when he was two years old and has had chronic illness his whole life and has just, you know, suffered a lot and which has calcified around him and made him a really angry person. I don't know. So do you see that the difference there is it's not about ease necessarily

or just being that way. I think you can definitely meditate on it, train your mind on it and be more like that. When the people that you think of, that you know that do this, it's hard to imagine they sit down and go open up, make notes about, I'm going to have more grace. It's like it must be something else they say to themselves. Because you don't hear that word a lot, like I'm going to work on my grace. It's something else, isn't it? I mean, how do people

come at this? Going back to your original point, people know it when they see it, right? So if I could talk about briefly about this study, which really excited me, and that's the reason I wrote this whole book, I've done a lot of work in the area of awe, in what it means to be struck by something, be stopped in your tracks, be amazed by something that you might not understand, that you might marvel at, that makes you feel small. And yet a lot of research around awe showing that it makes you feel more connected to each other, to the world. Like it's psychologically really good for us to feel small sometimes and it makes people more altruistic. There was a study done of 2,600 people in 26 countries and it

asked them to write their accounts of awe. What were your personal experiences of awe? What is the most common way in which you experienced it? And they found across all these countries with all the different histories, dialects, you know, demographic groups and cultures, the number one, I would have said the natural world, but that was not it. The number one thing was seeing it in each other, was seeing great decency, great courage, great generosity, and also people overcoming obstacles with great abilities. I think that one of the things that the research shows is that when we see people acting in this way, we are much more likely to do it ourselves. We're much more likely to react in the same way. There was one study which showed a group of college students a series of videos and they showed some videos which were really funny and then another group

which showed people in distress but people trying to do something about it, trying to help out. Now the funny videos did absolutely nothing to their brains, which is interesting because I watch a lot of funny videos. But the second group had that fight-or-flight that kind of, oh someone's in trouble we need to do something about it and then watching that suffering be eased in some way by someone else was incredibly soothing for them and they were, after the study they were much more likely to carry out an act which was looking after other people. So I guess that's a different way of answering your question. We might not be repeating the word grace to ourselves, but when we witness it, we do it more. these, like the person who drops the meals off and mows the lawn for the jerk. Like, is it the occasional lawn mowing and meal dropping off or is this a life, a lifestyle?

Think of the impact of the children of the person who's doing that dropping off for the jerk. Like you'd be like, wow, why would you do that? Like that person's such a horrible person. And then if you begin to understand it, that there is a need there and that you're meeting it. And actually it also might crack the jerk open a little bit. You never know how he might be after being treated that way or after being shown some kind of love or care. So I think that's a different way to look at it. So what your question again was really how often do you have to do this? Is this a way of thinking all the time and a way of acting all the time or are you just dropping off the occasional meal to the occasional jerk and that's fine. I think any acts is just fine but the example, it was some of the examples which I find really inspiring

here. To me, there's so much grace in the medical system and I've spent quite a bit of time. I've had serious health issues so I've been in and out of the medical system for years and I've spent months in hospital and I've watched the doctors and the nurses care for people. And they don't say to them when they're coming in, so who do you vote for? Are you nice to your neighbors? Do you keep a tidy house?

Whatever your metric is of whatever a good person is, that person will come into a hospital and will need help. And they will give it. And when you see them doing that day in, day out, there's something actually very profoundly moving about that. It's the same with paramedics and it's the same with blood donors.

So blood donors who once every two weeks usually go to off, go off to a medical center, ask a series of very invasive questions have a needle stuck in their arm and have their actual stuff of their life drained out of them to give to someone not because that other person's done them a favor in the past or because they're impressed with them in some way they don't even know who it's going to be and again could be the jerk down the road again, it's a human that has a need. And you're affirming your own humanity by doing that and by offering that up. And I find those

quiet, often unrecognized acts really quite moving. There's a certain devotion, not just to your fellow neighbor, to like a bigger idea of who we can be in that. So this thing you call awe, which I think we've all experienced that, you know, you see something and it's wow, you have that moment of wow. What's the connection between awe and grace if there is one? Well, that study that I mentioned before, the most common way people report seeing it is in each other. And I had spent years looking at,

cause I'm a big ocean swimmer. I just went this morning and I have spent a lot of time talking to people that chase storms or run safaris in Africa or like pursue awe in different ways, although I'm very conscious that it's also in art and architecture and big sporting events they call collective effervescence and music. There's very many different ways to experience it and I think it's so psychologically healthy and wonderful for us to do. Like it is the most wonderful thing.

And it's also wonderful to share in other people's forms of awe. So when I read that actually the most common way in which people experience it is by seeing this moral beauty in each other, which I began to call grace. And I wondered why we didn't talk about that more. You know what I noticed is, well, you know, you only see awe if you're kind of looking for it.

I mean, you might see something and I might see something and you're awestruck and I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm sorry I was on my phone. I couldn't help, but I missed that. What was that? Like, you know, you've got to be present. You've got to pay attention. You've got to look for it.

And you can find it almost anywhere if you're willing to look for it. That's exactly right. It's like, it's almost a holy thing paying attention to the world and being open to it and just sitting with it. And it really will change you. Like since I decided to deliberately hunt

ore, because I think that we often think, oh, we'll just still be serendipitous. We'll stumble across it. Like, when we go on holidays, we'll go somewhere pretty. And I might catch a sunrise or a sunset on my way to or from work, or I've just seen a tree burst into bloom, or whatever. We can think that that's the way it occurs in our lives. Instead of, no, I recognize this has got this really intrinsic value of its own and I'm going to

hunt it down. There was a study of all walks and they got a group of people who went on a 15 minute all walk each day for six weeks and people who went on just a normal walk. The difference being the all walkers were being told to pay attention to the world and what really intensely and what was happening around them. They were and they were asked to take photos and write a journal. At the beginning those who went on the all walks the photos of themselves like was mainly their faces, here I am first day of my all walk blah blah blah. By the end of it their faces had actually shrunk in the frame as they were

trying to point to something behind them. Look at this tree over here. Look at this mountain. Oh, look, you can catch a bird. They themselves become less important in the story. And it struck me as a really fantastic antidote to narcissism actually, and to getting out of ourselves and that's what happens when we pay better attention. I still want to try to understand why, like, why you become the person,

what motivates the person to say, I'm going to do that thing that, you know, the meals drop off to the jerk guy. What motivates that change in behavior because usually it's something. I mean you don't just wake up one morning and go you know I'm going to go take meals down the street. Something motivates you. What is it that motivates people to show more grace? You've either seen it or you've experienced it yourself or you fundamentally have a way of looking people in which you appreciate that everyone is just dealing with their own crap, that everyone, like we can have, if we sit in other people's shoes, we're much more likely to be generous minded to those around us. Like, okay, that guy, as I said, like, who knows what's going on in his own life?

Like, but he's someone who's sad and alone. And this is something that might might kind of crack him open. This is someone who maybe hasn't been shown a lot of love by people around him. I think it's I think it's that kind of crack him open. This is someone who maybe hasn't been shown a lot of love by people around him. I think it's that kind of thing. I mean, what do you think? Like, if you've ever been motivated to do something like that, and where do you think that's come from? Yeah, it's usually, I think, because you've seen it somewhere else, or maybe you've done it before, maybe not deliberately, but when you did it, it felt so good you wanna do it again. Yeah, yeah, I was really interested when I spoke

to a lot of super donors for my book, super blood donors, and that's people who have been doing it their whole lives, sometimes for like 50 years. Some people plan their holidays around blood donation. Some Australians who go over to America because they've got family there. They'll be hopping around all the major sites and they'll be like oh this is what it was like when I gave blood in Phoenix or Miami and New York and they're so

committed to it. I was talking to researchers and they're like we don't really know why people do this. Like and on one level it doesn't really make sense. Why would you go and give blood? And they talk about an impure altruism which is when you get something from it, that warm and that fuzzy feeling that you get from thinking, oh you know I'm helping another human being. Someone might walk because of this. Someone might live longer because of this. There could be some kid who could go on to have a life because of this. And the idea of it being impure because you get something for it really kind of amused me because there is a purity to that. Like if they are the warm,

fuzzy feelings and they're impure, then I say, you know, we need a lot more of them. I think that feeling is, is a good one. Also, I mean, the converse to be constantly in combat and angry with people and not giving them the benefit of the doubt, it just kind of eats away at your own self in a way, if you can let go of hostilities and grudges and problems you have with the jerk down the road, we keep talking about them, maybe your life is better off for it. I gotta go meet that guy.

Yeah, I know. He's gonna be inundated with soup now. I'm gonna bring him a casserole and have a little chat. See how you feel. See how he feels. See if he gets some warm fuzzies. And hey, yeah, I know, it could be the start of a whole thing.

It seems like in a conversation about grace that somewhere in there is forgiveness, that that's kind of what this is about. I've been growing up being taught and really believing that forgiveness is a very important and powerful thing. You give someone another chance, you allow them to be better the next time, and you free yourself from any of the tight and horrible feeling

of resenting someone or holding on to something they did bad, some way in which they harmed you. I wanted to write about this book because I did find occasions in which forgiveness just was absolutely eye-wateringly present. I talked to a man who was almost murdered when he was 10 years old by someone who put a pick through his head, who he later, decades down the road, that man confessed and the little boy, then a man, chose to forgive him and was the only person visiting him in the final days of his life. I find stories like that incredible and he says to me, well, I had to show my kids that there was another way, that we have to break this cycle. If we don't break this cycle, then we're always hating, we've always got grudges and we

will never get out beyond it. And there was something quite beautiful in him personally, actually. His name was Chris Carrier and he's one of these gentle souls, but forgiveness is hard won, hard fought for for for him. Well, anyone who looks at the world today would likely agree that the world and the people in it could use a little more grace. And this is a great and optimistic way to approach the topic. Julia Baird has been my guest. She's an Australian journalist and broadcaster and she's author of a book called Bright Shining How Grace Changes Everything and there's a link to her book in the show notes. Thank you Julia. Thanks so much Mike. As you intuitively know getting in the middle of a dog fight can be very

dangerous. Naturally you feel an urge to intervene when dogs are fighting, especially if your dog is involved. However, the mutual roaring and snarling kind of scuffle is actually a cue to stand back. The whole thing usually seems much longer to us, but the dogs should resolve it in less than a minute. When you panic or shout at the dog, it can escalate matters and add to the frenzy. Of course, the dogs are prone to injury in a fight, but a relatively minor bite can become a much bigger tear if the dogs are pulled apart after they happen to clamp down on one another. Now you might not have known this, but in a serious dog fight, the aggressive dog is

often silent. Take this as a cue that he means business. There really is not a safe way to intervene unless you have an air horn or a water hose or something that will startle the dogs into giving up the fight. You can also try throwing a blanket or jacket over the dogs. Try to stay cool and call out for help, but trying to separate a serious dog fight could result in severe injuries to you and to your dog. And that is something you should know. Hey, we're here three times a week. We publish episodes on Monday, Thursday and Saturday

every single week, not to mention our rather extensive back catalog of hundreds and hundreds of episodes. If you know somebody who would enjoy this podcast as much as you, I invite you to share it with them and help us get some new listeners. I really appreciate that. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. What if we could disagree in a way that encouraged empathy even during an election year? With a new episode of Thread the Needle, a better way to disagree. I'm your host, Dona Shil Dugan. I use my background in journalism and draw from my life experiences to explore topics that matter to fellow feminists like you.

In this episode, activist and professor Loretta Ross charges us to try her calling-in technique. I'm always going to hold people accountable for the harm that they do. The question is, am I going to do it with anger or am I going to do it with love and grace? And I choose love and grace because it makes me feel better about myself when I walk through the world that way. You can listen to Thread the Needle on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go network.

At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride.

Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.