Something You Should Know - How to Prepare for a Big Event (From a Jeopardy Champion) & Making Sense of Statistics

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Starting point is 00:00:32 Today on Something You Should Know, where do potholes come from and why do we have them anyway? Then, effective ways to prepare for your next big event from a renowned Jeopardy! champion. One thing that I did for Jeopardy! was I would bring my flashcards to the gym, hand them to a trainer, and then hold the top of a chin up for 30 seconds or a minute and have him or her ask me the questions. Then there are things that can mess with your memory that are really no big deal.

Starting point is 00:01:06 And understanding how data and statistics really work, because you can make data say whatever you want. I think a really straightforward example is using statistics to demonstrate that storks actually deliver babies. And actually, if you look at the data, there's pretty good evidence for that. All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world.

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Starting point is 00:01:55 Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. I don't have a lot of pet peeves. I have a few of them.

Starting point is 00:02:23 And one of them is potholes. I hate potholes. Because it always seems that it's that one half a second where I look at how fast I'm going or I look in the rear view mirror during that split second is when the pothole appears and my wheel goes in it and it's usually when I have a cup of coffee in my hand. I hate potholes. So where do they come from? Well, it turns out that when water seeps into the rock, gravel, and soil underneath the asphalt and then freezes,

Starting point is 00:02:57 that expands a little bit, and it acts like a bit of a jack that applies pressure up against the pavement. That weakens the asphalt asphalt and then it cracks, which makes it even easier for water to penetrate the surface, which leads to repeated freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw cycles, and then more structural damage occurs. Melting ice leaves gaps and voids, and the pothole begins. With all this happening, the burden of traffic over the pavement doesn't stop.

Starting point is 00:03:27 It drives the asphalt back into the gaps created by the melted ice. So, over a period of time, the entire process results in a hole that is destined to make you spill your coffee. It also turns out there's a pothole season. It's more common to happen in late winter and spring because of the freeze-thaw, freeze-thaw cycles. By the way, the word pothole comes from pottery makers in England in the 15th and 16th centuries. What they would do is they would excavate the ruts made by wagon and coach wheels to retrieve clay out of those ruts, and when they did that,

Starting point is 00:04:05 it made the holes larger. Then the larger holes would be dubbed potholes by the aggrieved travelers. And that is something you should know. I think we've all had this experience. There's a big event coming and you're going to be on the spot. Maybe you have to give a talk or a toast at a wedding or do a demonstration or go on an important job interview. Or maybe there's some sort of physical challenge. You know, the big game is coming up. And for all of those things, you need to prepare so you can perform at your best when the time comes. So how do you prepare? What's the best way? Is it to just practice over and over again?

Starting point is 00:04:51 Well, maybe. But with some real insight into how to prepare for any big event is Buzzy Cohen. Buzzy was a contestant on Jeopardy!, a very successful contestant on Jeopardy! After a nine-game winning streak and a victory in the Tournament of Champions in 2019, Buzzy says he wasn't actually the smartest contestant. He just trained smarter. And he has some advice for all of us for the next time we have to prepare to perform for some big moment. And he also has a little behind-the of Jeopardy as well to share.

Starting point is 00:05:32 Buzzy has a new audio book out called Get Ready, a champion's guide to preparing for the moments that matter. Hi, Buzzy. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, thanks for having me. Sure. So I think people have different ideas about how to prepare and what works best for them. How do you look at preparation for a big event? I think all of us have moments, big and small, throughout our life where we want to do our best. And it could be something as big as like the interview, the job interview or the sales pitch. And it could be something really small like a first date or, you know, giving a speech at someone's wedding or the sales pitch. And it could be something really small, like a first date or, you know, giving a speech at someone's wedding or something like that. And I think we all know

Starting point is 00:06:10 we want to do our best. And I think we all know that preparation is part of that. And I think that we don't always know how to do that. There's got to be a better way. And I want to help people do as well as they can. And so has this been a lifelong thing for you? Or when you went on Jeopardy, you thought, geez, I better find a better way to get ready. In looking back, it was really not my first time on Jeopardy. But when I knew I was going to come back for the Tournament of Champions, where I was like, oh, I was really unprepared for that experience. Or I wouldn't say unprepared, but I wish I'd been better prepared for the experience of

Starting point is 00:06:45 appearing on Jeopardy. What can I do to improve my preparation so that I have a better chance of doing well? I want to look back at it, whatever happens and say, you know what? I was as well prepared as I could have been for that event. And so Jeopardy is a good example of the basis for this next question, because you can say you prepare for something like Jeopardy, but you don't know what, I hope you don't know what they're going to ask. That would be cheating.

Starting point is 00:07:16 So if you don't know what they're going to ask, how in the world can you prepare? There's two things to talk about. One is the content. And in terms of what the content is, you're right that you don't know what it's going to be. However, we have 35 years of episodes to look back on and start to get an idea of the kinds of things that Jeopardy asks about. When you start to think about it like that, the volume of study material, the volume of content gets smaller. The Jeopardy writers, they're not just writing for the contestants, they're writing for the home

Starting point is 00:07:51 audience. So, you know, nothing really gets past a high school or maybe like, you know, a college survey level in terms of obscurity. So when you think about it like that, the information, the content is still huge, but it's much more manageable. The thing that I really wanted to focus on my second time around was not just the content, but also the context. And that was where things started to really open up for me. When I was on the show, I felt like, yeah, I could answer a lot of questions and stuff like that. But the things that were challenging for me was the fact that the show tapes starting at nine or 10 in the morning, and you tape five shows in a day, I was wholly unprepared for how challenging that was going to be. I had been practicing like sitting on my sofa,

Starting point is 00:08:41 watching the show, you play those shows standing up and, you know, standing up for a full day, starting to get fatigued, all of these things of your physical state and your mental state and your neurochemical state at different times of the day, I think, play more of a role in our abilities to perform than we often take into account when we're preparing. People are actually pretty good, I think, at preparing for content, right? So you write a speech for a friend's wedding and you read through it a few times. You know the speech, but you probably read through it a few times, like sitting down or just saying it to your partner or a friend or whatever. It's very different when you're standing up there, you know, wearing heels or wearing a tie in front of 100 people in front of your friend,

Starting point is 00:09:29 all of a sudden, it feels very different, the stakes are different. And so what I try to push people to do is to, in all these different ways, prepare for all of these other things that are going to basically get between you and the content, right? It's harder to deliver your speech smoothly and effectively when you are feeling uncomfortable. Right. Well, everybody's had that experience of you. You've nailed it in your bedroom, but then you get up in front of people and you get really nervous and stuff starts going out the window and I forgot and all that. So then how do you prepare for that? One really great way to do this is to film yourself. Anybody who has like tried to make a video for YouTube or even just to send to a friend, like even musicians that I know who are incredibly talented, the second they're going to like record

Starting point is 00:10:22 something, you make a mistake, right? So it's that idea, you become much more self conscious, once you hit record, even if it's just on your iPhone. And then the other thing is to just find ways to increase the stress of your preparation. And I found some ways with for that with jeopardy, but you know, it's different for everybody. For me, it's about you're going to be stressed in that moment, you're not going to get rid of the stress and you're going to be stressed in that moment because it's important. Things that are important to you have high stakes and high stakes create stress. That's normal. So what I want you to do is to be able to get used to performing when you're feeling the stress, not get rid of the stress. So one thing that I did for Jeopardy was I would bring my flashcards to the gym, hand them to a trainer, and then hold the top of a chin up for

Starting point is 00:11:11 30 seconds or a minute and have him or her ask me the questions while I was hanging from the top of a chin up or holding a plank or pushing a sled with, you know, 400 pounds on it. Because I always felt like when I was in those moments, like when you're hanging, your mind goes totally blank, it's hard to spell your name, like I couldn't tell you what I had for breakfast while I'm doing that. So to have to come up with who won, you know, the election of 1888, or what chemical has the atomic number eight, or, you know, all these other kinds of things like who wrote moon for the misbegotten. These things are much harder when you're in that place. So I got used to like figuring out how to push through it.

Starting point is 00:11:53 So some advice I give to people in addition to filming is like, well, why don't you try going through whatever your performance thing is, whether it's a speech or a presentation, you know, have a movie playing right in front of you kind of loud. So you kind of have to fight through that or shuffle up a deck of cards. And while you're doing your thing, have to sort them into like suits or put them in the right order. Things that like distract and challenge your brain and make it harder to stay focused because that's kind of the skill you need to develop. And so everybody, as you say, is different, but, but I love that idea of, you know,

Starting point is 00:12:31 doing a chin up or, or doing some physical thing like that. But like, how, how much of that did you have to do to feel like it really helped? Well, the first thing I had to do was actually know the content. So I had to get, I wasn't going in with flashcards I didn't know, right? So that's the first thing. You have to know it not under stress. And then you introduce the stress. I'm just trying to think back of, I spent about between two and four months doing that a few days a week. But I started to notice it after maybe the fourth or fifth time I started to get better at, you know, not just blacking out when I was in that position. Do you think that because people often say you don't want to over prepare,

Starting point is 00:13:18 do you think you can ever over prepare? I think there have been there have been situations that I've, I wouldn't say over prepared for, but I did not adequately rest before the performance. So and one of the things that you know he did different was he kind of did a taper for the couple weeks beforehand so he was really well rested and that wasn't really how people had approached running you know you kind of just keep pushing and pushing you know I swam in high school and the taper is a big part of swimming so you know keeping your strength up but also letting yourself rest. I think that when I went back for the Jeopardy All-Stars, I was so, I felt so much pressure because it was a team situation and I was the captain.

Starting point is 00:14:14 I wanted to do well that I didn't really adequately rest both kind of like on a day-to-day basis, but also in the, you know, couple of days leading up to it, I think I probably could have done a better job of kind of relaxing and letting whatever was there etch into my mind and not try to squeeze the last few days of study in. Preparation is our topic today, preparing for those big events in life. And my guest is Buzzy Cohen, a Jeopardy champion and author of the audio book, Get Ready, a champion's guide to preparing

Starting point is 00:14:49 for the moments that matter. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick?

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Starting point is 00:15:31 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.

Starting point is 00:15:49 A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, 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

Starting point is 00:16:04 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 Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, Buzzy, what other strategies do you think work besides the stress, which I think is a great idea, is to try to incorporate the stress of the moment into the preparation. What else works, for example? Planning for failure and practicing failure. And in a way that's sort of related to practicing with stress is like building, messing up and getting messed up into your preparation. And

Starting point is 00:16:52 there's all different ways to do that. But Alexander Rosenberg was on this show blown away. And he, you know, he realized that part of glassblowing is that things break, right? And so he had a plan going in where instead of making one large item, he was going to make a more modestly sized item, but he can make multiples of them. And if one broke, it wasn't a big deal. And also, he would then have a choice of what he was going to present. Because part of what happens, right, is people have a plan, like, I'm going to do this, they're going to do this, I was going to present. Because part of what happens, right, is people have a plan, like, I'm going to do this, they're going to do this, I'm going to do this, whether it's a sales pitch or an interview, you have an idea of what's going to happen and you plan,

Starting point is 00:17:34 things don't go right all the time. And so having instead of all of your eggs in one basket of a plan, preparing is kind of about being ready for the challenges in different ways. So practicing failure, planning for failure. Alexander talks about the fact that when you fail at glass blowing, it's a very public kind of failure. And that's really hard for people. That's something that I have challenges with. And so he has his students, when he teaches glass blowing, go sing karaoke together to get used to kind of being embarrassed in front of other people and letting that go. So there are all of these other techniques beyond just, you know, what I specifically did, which can help inoculate you to some of the challenges or just kind of get you used to the not so fun parts of, you know, what I'll call performing, even if it's not

Starting point is 00:18:22 a performance per se. Yeah. Well, I know a lot of people, myself included, you know, I can do okay if I'm prepared as long as things go exactly as I imagine they'll go, but they almost never do. And as soon as something goes wrong, it's like, oh, it's like this cascading. Now that's going to go wrong. Oh, now I'm off base now i'm off balance and and then everything can fall apart what you've done is what i kind of call planning right you have a plan a plan is like a recipe and when you don't have one of the ingredients or something burns or something takes longer to brown or froth sometimes Sometimes you're okay. And sometimes you're not right. What I preparing is is a different task in that it's a bit like learning kitchen skills, as opposed to learning

Starting point is 00:19:16 a recipe. And you learn how to work with what you have and how different things react to temperatures and times and oh, you know, this pan isn't getting hot enough. You kind of know how to recognize those things. It's a much bigger upfront investment, but it prepares you for kind of things going sideways in a way that a plan doesn't. And, you know, it's like the Tyson quote, right? Everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. That's how a lot of us have lived our lives, right? We have all these plans. And then it's like, you know, you go in for a job interview, you think it's a shoo-in. And then it's like, well, you know, we originally put the listing for this, but what we really want is X, Y, and Z. And now

Starting point is 00:19:56 all the kind of talking points that you've prepared are not speaking to what they want, right? That's your punch in the mouth. So, preparing versus planning kind of builds in those punches and others so that you're not so set in essentially the fantasy of what a plan is. Planning is a fantasy. That's why we like doing it. Yeah. Well, and... Right? Right. And people... Preparing is not that fun because it's like, instead of thinking like, oh, I'll do this and they'll love it. And then they'll say this, you know, oh, you know, this is what they're worried about, but I know exactly how to

Starting point is 00:20:33 do this. Preparing is like, okay, let's pick up, let's figure out everything that's going to go wrong and, and build in how I can recover from that. It does seem that as if a part of, a big part of being prepared is feeling confident that you're prepared, that confidence is a big piece of this puzzle. Yes. Yeah, I think so. It's confidence is part of it, but it's also, for me, it was almost about having fun and it's much more fun. You can have more fun being prepared. And you're also,

Starting point is 00:21:09 it's easier to have be at peace with things going wrong because you've kind of put in the effort and kind of poked at whatever you thought might happen in a way. And if you kind of have already come to terms with the fact that things can and will go wrong. And so you can relax your grip on it a little bit, right? It's like, you're not trying to go back to the pothole thing. You're not trying to steer your car around to avoid every obstacle. You're like, yep, there are going to be obstacles. I think I can handle it. And if one pops a tire, you're like, well, I knew that this was a possibility.

Starting point is 00:21:51 So I think confidence is certainly a part of it. But for me, I really focused on joy. I really wanted it. I really wanted my appearance on Jeopardy to be fun and joyful. I really want, you know, when I do a pitch with a client, I want to be enjoying it. And I think the same way that the audience is rooting for you, whoever it is, the audience really connects with what your emotional state is. And people who are more prepared are more relaxed, and they tend to be enjoying themselves because being prepared and the confidence that comes with that, but also the naturalness with which you can present the material is really infectious. And that is almost what makes the impression on people more than the argument, right? It's like two different people could

Starting point is 00:22:45 make the same case for a product or their product. You know, we can do X, Y, and Z and this and that, or our service can do this or that. But there's also, it's like, wow, he really did that. But man, it was, you let that sense of like, we really just clicked or I like being around them. That unconscious communication that we do to me is really powerful and a big part of why I like being prepared. Well, it's interesting too that a lot of people who are really prepared are so well prepared that they seem like they're unprepared, that they're just winging it. And that's what people like to see.

Starting point is 00:23:22 Yeah, it feels very effortless. It feels very, because they can relax their grip, right? When you're unprepared, you tend to be much more robotic or much more mechanical in how you're doing it. Once you've done it so many times, it just kind of emerges out of you because because you've, you've internalized it, the muscle memory starts to kick in, you know, you see it with athletes, with dancers, with musicians, when you first learn something, it's a little, you know, you're kind of pushing your body through it. And then you see real experts, I'm thinking of like, Simone Biles, or Messi,

Starting point is 00:24:01 or, you know, Herbie Hancock. And when they're just, you know, it's like, they're not even thinking about what they're doing, let alone kind of telling their body do this, this, this, this. It's kind of just it feels emergent. But that's because of all the work they put in before they get out under the lights. So lastly, one fun, quirky, joyful moment from Jeopardy. I mean, there are so many I have to say, like being on that stage was a deeply joyful, quirky, joyful moment from Jeopardy? I mean, there are so many. I have to say like being on that stage was a deeply joyful, quirky moment in my life that I'll always be able to kind of like revisit. I had a lot of fun in the finals of the Tournament of Champions when I was playing with Austin, Rogers, Allen Lynn. And during the lunch break, we were like, let's,

Starting point is 00:24:45 let's coordinate our little introduction. Cause it's so awkward, right? You're standing there, you're staring at the camera, they announce your name. So we had these coordinated intros and we had just talked about it, the three of us. And then Alex Trebek had a little monitor backstage. So he sees what's going on and he came out and he joined in, in our little, our little introduction. So that that was like it was another case of this like we were having fun and so we allowed him to have fun and i think that that's like what what more could you what more could you ask for you know yeah were you able to spend any time with

Starting point is 00:25:15 him talk to him um you know on set on set he was a great guy i definitely missed him a lot and what just refresh my memory when When were you last on? I was on in, I think it was February of 2019 when they had the All-Stars tournament. That was the team thing that they did. I visited the studio since then. I went in when I heard a little rumor about what was going on with James Holzhauer and got to watch some of his games. And when Alex, after Alex was diagnosed, I went in to the studio just to kind of see him and let him know we were thinking of him. My daughter made a card for him. It was really sweet.

Starting point is 00:25:55 Well, that's nice. Well, great. This has been fun and interesting. Yeah. I hope I answered your questions well. Well, you didn't phrase them in the form of a question, but... Well, you didn't. Yeah, you asked them as questions. I did, yeah. My mistake. I'm sorry.

Starting point is 00:26:11 Buzzy Cohen has been my guest. He was a very successful contestant on Jeopardy! And he has a new audio book out called Get Ready, a champion's guide to preparing for the moments that matter. There's a link to that at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Buzzy. Thanks. This was a lot of fun. Good luck to all your listeners in their preparation.

Starting point is 00:26:32 Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and

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Starting point is 00:27:31 Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events.

Starting point is 00:28:03 Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Often when people make their case or state an argument or a position or create a policy, they back it up with statistics and data. Problem is that we've all come to know that you can pretty much make statistics and data say whatever you want, or at least interpret the numbers and facts in a way that support just about anything.

Starting point is 00:28:52 So how do we make sense of all of this? Because people are always going to use statistics and data. Should we be suspicious of them, or do we just need to understand data and statistics better? Here to weigh in on this is Tim Harford. Tim has been called the best popular economics writer in the world. He's written several books. His latest is called The Data Detective,

Starting point is 00:29:16 10 Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics. Hey, Tim, good to have you back on. Oh, it's good to be back. So I think we've all grown less trusting of data and statistics over the years because we see how people can manipulate them. What is your take on all this? What's your stance? My basic stance is that it's perfectly possible to lie with statistics, but it's pretty easy to lie without statistics as well. So we shouldn't feel disempowered or disheartened and reflexively cynical, doubting everything. A lot of people who really want us to doubt pretty much everything, to think that it's all fake news and that all the experts are lying to

Starting point is 00:29:59 us. And I actually think it's not as hard as people seem to think to make sense of the numbers and really to think clearly about the world. After all, a lot of the world you can't possibly understand without using the data, without using statistics. And I think with the right sorts of questions, any of us can make good sense of it. So give me a specific example of how somebody could use bad data, bad statistics, and make a perfectly plausible case. Well, I think a really straightforward example is using statistics to demonstrate that storks actually deliver babies. You know, the classic thing that you tell your kids when they ask you where babies come from, you'd say, oh, the storks bring the babies. That's where babies come from. And actually, if you look at the data, there's pretty good evidence for that. You just get data on a whole bunch of countries,

Starting point is 00:31:05 the breeding populations of storks in those countries, and the number of babies born each year in those countries. And what you will find is countries with more storks also have more babies. And so that sort of thing makes you, I think, pretty reflexively cynical about the whole sort of affair what's going on with that claim of course is it's just big countries so you've got a country like the United States or Russia or Poland Germany there's a lot of room for babies and there's a lot of room for storks and if you're looking at a tiny country like the Vatican City for example then there's there's not a lot of room for babies then there's not a lot of room for babies and there's not a lot of room for storks. So that's what's really underpinning that

Starting point is 00:31:50 statistical relationship. That very story about storks and babies was actually used by a very well-respected statistical communicator to try to persuade Congress not to put health warnings on cigarettes. He was saying, yeah, yeah, the experts will tell you smoking cigarettes is correlated with lung cancer, but yeah, storks are correlated with babies. You can't believe the numbers. And so he was taking that funny little story and using it as a weapon to try to smear the experts and to try to prevent this legislation passing Congress in the 1960s. So this statistical cynicism takes you to a pretty dark place pretty quickly.

Starting point is 00:32:32 As you say, you can make that case, statistically make the case that that's where babies come from and look, all the storks. And so consequently, people are very cynical about and skeptical about numbers. But there's also this other thing that happens, too, that when people say, well, 98% of people believe this or 27% of people had this experience or whatever it is, that also adds weight. I mean, it'll help almost any argument if you have some statistic. Even if you make it up, it'll help almost any argument if you have some statistic, even if you make it up, it'll help your case. Well, people think that. I think that's only partly true. So it helps your case if people are already predisposed to believe your case. But the evidence suggests that if people already doubt the kind of things that you're saying, adding extra statistics, or really adding any extra detail of any kind simply gives people ammunition to take you down.

Starting point is 00:33:31 So there's a really fascinating study I report on that basically gave people information on real hot topics. I can't remember exactly what it was. It may have been abortion rights. It may have been the death penalty. I mean, there are so many different hot topics out there. And the more information people were given, the more polarised they became on these issues. So if they were already, for example, pro-choice, they became more pro-choice if you gave them more statistics. But if they were already pro-life, give them more statistics and they become more pro-life. So people were seizing on these numbers and grabbing the ones they liked and rejecting the

Starting point is 00:34:10 ones that they didn't. Actually, our emotions, our preconceptions, our political opinions, they're incredibly strong determinants of what we feel. And before we get into the technical details of statistics, we need to calm down and ask ourselves whether we really want to know the truth. Whether we really want to know the truth? Why wouldn't we want to know the truth? It turns out that a lot of what we really want from the news, for example, the media, is to be reassured that we're kind of on the right side of history, that we're right, that our friends are right,

Starting point is 00:34:49 that our political party is right and our political party is going to win. Clearly, when it turns into something that affects you personally, you want to get accurate data. So should I sign my child up for these particular vaccinations? I want accurate information about that. But if it's something like, I don't know, say climate change, actually the climate's going to do what the climate's going to do, regardless of what I personally believe. So my belief about climate change is much more about do I fit in with what my friends believe? Do I fit in with what my political party believes? I realise it's a pretty disheartening message, but if you want

Starting point is 00:35:33 to know, if you're actually curious, if you want to think clearly and understand how the world works, it's actually not as hard as you think, but you do have to have that motivation, that willingness to calm down, ask the right questions. It's really our desire to inform ourselves rather than to just wade into some political argument. There's two types of people in the world, I guess. There are people who use statistics to try to win arguments, and there are people who use statistics to try to see the world more clearly. And I'm encouraging everybody to join me in that second group. But it's not easy because everything about the way our politics work, the way our media ecosystem works, the way the social media ecosystem works, it rewards anger and engagement and scorn and in-crowd, out-crowd kind of thinking.

Starting point is 00:36:28 Well, you know what I've always found interesting is that as much as people rely on statistics and use statistics and data in their arguments, is people are very swayed by stories. You can tell a story about one person. I knew a guy who whatever. And the story and that person can carry a lot of weight, even though it's just one story about one person. People are persuaded by that. Yeah. And the challenge is, I think, to combine the human stories with the statistics. Let me give you an example. So one of the things we're wrestling with at the moment with this pandemic is how bad is coronavirus for younger people? And the simple answer is, it's not that bad. I mean, it's killing a lot of people,

Starting point is 00:37:20 but most of the people it kills are elderly. And if you're 20 years old, 30 years old, your chance that a case of COVID will kill you is very low. It's not zero. People do die, but it's very low. But then you go, okay, but there are other things that COVID could make you feel really sick for a long time. You might have extended symptoms for three months, for six months, for nine months. You could lose your sense of taste and smell, all the joy in food and drink. You could lose all that. We don't know for how long.

Starting point is 00:38:02 Now, that sort of second cut at the story, that's initially all based on personal experience. So you hear stories of people who have had these longer-term symptoms, who have had this experience. We haven't got good statistics on it. We haven't got good data on it. So the real challenge there is to say, okay, we've got a statistical perspective that's telling us how dangerous this is for different age groups. And then we've got this more human perspective of this thing that's harder to measure long covid we call it here in the uk these extended symptoms how are we going to measure those how are we going to figure out whether they're they're just like one really eye-catching story that the media keep repeating or is it is this happening to hundreds of thousands or millions of people that's a great example of what I was just talking about, because you said that people in their 20s rarely, rarely die from COVID, but it does happen. died and sway the conversation and say, you know, how many people have to die? I mean, isn't one life

Starting point is 00:39:05 one too many? And the conversation gets pulled in another direction, even though the statistics are, it's extremely rare. Yeah, it's a really tricky one because the facts are the facts and we need to understand the facts. And sometimes it's very hard for people to just accept a fact as a piece of information. We just assume it must be part of a political argument. A good friend of mine, one of the leading statisticians here in the UK, went on the evening news a couple of days ago because the news was reporting that 1,820 people had died of COVID that day. And that was a record for the UK. It's a smaller country than the US. And my friend went on the evening news and said, that's not true. That was just when the deaths were recorded. But it's artificially high, because they gathered a load of deaths from Saturday and from Sunday.

Starting point is 00:40:06 And by the time we actually got to today, they reported those deaths. So the peak isn't that bad. It's more like maybe 1,200 deaths, not 1,800 deaths. And of course, people were just jumping on him saying, why are you defending this government? Why are you diminishing people's deaths? And his point, of course, was, I'm not diminishing anybody's deaths. You shouldn't need to exaggerate what's happening to see that it's a tragedy. 1,200 people is enough. You don't need to say it's 1,820. Let's stick to the truth,

Starting point is 00:40:40 because the truth is serious enough. But people will always interpret claims in the light of the political argument. And it's not so easy, not so easy to get out of that loop. One of the arguments I'm making is it's really hard to think clearly about the world when you're in that mode, when you're angry, when you're sad, when you're feeling this proves I was right all along, when you're trying to persuade someone else, you yourself are becoming stupider because you're getting stuck in that argument. But it's only human to be in that situation. So my first piece of advice is just to stop for a moment and notice your emotional reactions to the newspaper headlines,

Starting point is 00:41:26 to the statistical claims that are being made. You can't think clearly if you're feeling a strong emotional reaction of any kind. You need to calm down. It doesn't take very long. Three seconds is usually enough for me to go, Oh, hang on a minute. This particular claim, this really got me going. I'm angry or I'm upset or I'm amused.

Starting point is 00:41:49 Just give it three seconds and notice. And then I'm not saying reject your emotions or suppress your emotions, but I am saying notice your emotions. The moment you notice them, you're already on the road to thinking more clearly. There does seem to be, I'm sure there is, this confirmation bias thing that people talk about where I will hear a statistic and filter it through my beliefs and it will confirm what I already believe. People do that all the time.

Starting point is 00:42:21 And then people also, when they present statistics, will couch them when they say things like only 20% of people or a whopping 98% of people. They couch it in terms that, my God, how do you not see what I see? Yeah, the final chapter of the book is actually about two great economists, one of whom is completely unable to change his mind. And the other one is able to turn on a dime. And their personal stories, I think, are fascinating. I love writing about these guys and talking about these guys. Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes, these great early 20th century economists. But what really struck me is they basically made similar mistakes, but Irving Fisher's mistake

Starting point is 00:43:12 completely ruined him financially and ruined his reputation. Whereas Keynes made the same mistake and he just walked away laughing because he was able to recognise he'd made a mistake and back out of it and change his mind. And a lot of that was about how they were interpreting the new information that was coming in. Whether they were just dismissing anything that didn't fit and grabbing onto anything that did fit. Or whether they were willing to let new facts change their views. And I talk about some of the latest data that we've got on forecasters. And the best forecasters are not the ones who get it right first time. The best forecasters are the ones who are constantly asking themselves, what if I'm wrong? What have I not

Starting point is 00:44:00 considered? What have I missed? Whose perspective have I missed? So they are working really hard to avoid confirmation bias. And I think it is something you have to work quite hard to avoid because our brains are lazy. So confirmation bias is very important. The joke is, of course, now I've heard about confirmation bias, I see it everywhere I look. But yeah, we need to watch out for it. There's also seemingly a problem that when, in this country anyway, where everybody's yelling at each other and no one's very polite anymore about politics, that confirmation bias, the yelling itself is confirmation bias. That because you're yelling and screaming at me it just proves i'm right because you all you can do is yell and scream and and i'm very grounded in my beliefs and the other side thinks the same thing so there's got to be a language that people can talk

Starting point is 00:44:58 in that puts that aside and looks at the facts but it just doesn't seem to be human nature to be able to do that, I guess. It is really hard. And I think it's particularly hard at the moment because so many things have become polarized. One of the things I propose is to just to constantly try to maintain a spirit of curiosity, to say, I actually want to understand what's going on in the world not who's up and who's down not who's right and who's wrong but first let me understand and then once i've understood it's of course absolutely fine to take a side and the curious thing is if you start um you for example you're in an argument with somebody about uh I don't know, a cap and trade system to fight climate change, something like that. If you say, just so I understand, could you just explain to me exactly how a cap and trade system is supposed to work?

Starting point is 00:45:54 Just run through all the mechanical details. What you find is that sort of request tends to really cool down the argument, bring people closer together. They often realise they were yelling at each other about something they didn't even understand. And if the person can't explain to you what a cap and trade scheme is, well, they may learn something by their failure to explain. And if they can explain it to you, well, you're going to learn something. So curiosity, a very, very powerful thing. And just asking why and how, rather than, you know, who's good and who's bad. People are seemingly so skeptical and distrusting of statistics that even with

Starting point is 00:46:35 the best argument, it does seem that some people just won't believe it. They just, they want to believe what they want to believe. I mean, I'm worried that people believe stuff that's not true. But I'm actually more worried that people are reflexively rejecting evidence about things that are true. And it's very easy to do that because, you know, no evidence is perfect. No statistic is perfect. So you can always find a reason to reject it. You can always find a reason to doubt. So I think that's a big problem.

Starting point is 00:47:07 If you can move past it and start going, ah, I want to understand this statistic a bit more and ask some genuine open-minded questions, I think you get past that reflexive cynicism very quickly. And the questions are often not super complex. They're questions like, oh, so you say that 28% of people have harbored suicidal thoughts. Okay, that sounds bad. Is that number going up or down? Is it worse now than it was 10 years ago? Can you show me the time trend? Not prove it, not I don't believe you, but tell me more. I want to understand this. And suicidal thoughts, do we know how that was measured? That's interesting. Do we know, is it different in different countries? Those sorts of questions, like what is even the

Starting point is 00:47:58 definition of a suicidal thought? Those sorts of questions, give me the context, explain to me how this was gathered, rather than prove it. I don't believe it. You get a much better conversation, but you're also going to get much smarter as the person asking the questions. Because if you ask real questions and you get real answers, not only are you having a real conversation, but you're also gaining real insights about the world. But why would I do all of this? Why would I care to go find other points of view? You know, my life goes better when I find things that confirm that I'm right. It doesn't seem to be a whole lot of fun to go find things that prove I'm wrong.

Starting point is 00:48:40 And to what end? I mean, to what end does it serve? Well, I think that being wiser about the world and being calmer about the world is an end in itself but I think it's also it's surprisingly addictive to try to understand where the other side are coming from to try to really figure out why they're thinking all of those things that seem to you to be so dumb. Are they really so stupid and so evil?

Starting point is 00:49:12 And it's just a reward to that sense of curiosity. They do say that the cure for boredom is curiosity, and there is no cure for curiosity. And that's what I found. When you start asking these questions and being calmer about things, you just start to learn so much about the world. And once you've started learning stuff about the world, rather than just shouting at people, it becomes really difficult to stop. It's a habit that's hard to break, thankfully. Well, this has been one of those conversations that I think makes you really think about statistics and data and how to really get to the truth rather than just all the yelling

Starting point is 00:49:47 and screaming and see I'm right and you're wrong. Tim Harford's been my guest. He has been called the best popular economics writer in the world. He's written several books and the latest is called The Data Detective, 10 Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Tim. Thanks for coming on. Not at all. Thank you, Michael. Great to talk to you. No matter how old you are, I bet there's been a time where you thought, maybe something is wrong with your memory. And if you've ever worried that your memory isn't as sharp as you think it should be, ask yourself three questions. How much stress am I under? Am I getting enough

Starting point is 00:50:30 sleep? And was I really paying attention? According to memory expert Scott Hagwood, mental stress makes it very difficult for your memory to hold information. So the more you can reduce the stress in your life, the better your memory. Same thing with sleep. If you're tired, you can't focus or concentrate, the information doesn't stick. And you can't remember anything if you're not paying attention. So maybe you don't remember because you just aren't all that interested. One thing that really helps memory is high emotions. Anytime you get emotionally involved, your memory gets better. That's why we remember things like exactly where we were on 9-11. It was so emotional that the memory will

Starting point is 00:51:13 stay with us forever. And that is something you should know. If you enjoy this podcast and you want to show your support, simply share it with someone you know. Help us grow our audience. It means a lot. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown.

Starting point is 00:51:38 I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed.

Starting point is 00:51:58 I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle what insect song is typically higher pitched and hotter temperatures and lower pitched and cooler temperatures. You got this. No, I didn't. Don't believe that. About a witch coming true? Well, I didn't either. Of course, I'm just a cicada.

Starting point is 00:52:19 I'm crying. I'm so sorry. You win that one. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. 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

Starting point is 00:52:43 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.

Something You Should Know - How to Prepare for a Big Event (From a Jeopardy Champion) & Making Sense of Statistics

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