Something You Should Know - How to Stop Being Too Nice Without Being a Jerk & Your Relationship with Television

Episode Date: May 10, 2018

What is the stronger motivator – reward or punishment? In other words, does hurt more to lose something than it feels good to gain something? We start this episode t with a look at some interesting research into this. (https://source.wustl.edu/2015/05/carrot-or-stick-punishments-may-guide-behavior-more-effectively-than-rewards/)  Some people are just way too nice. They sacrifice their own needs for the needs of others. They are so worried about what other people think of them that always want to please rather than offend. Aziz Gazapura used to be one of those people and he is now on a mission to help people stop being too nice and start being bold and authentic and do what’s right for them – not just what’s right for everybody else. Aziz is the author of the book Not Nice: Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent, & Feeling Guilty... And Start Speaking Up, Saying No, Asking Boldly, And Unapologetically Being Yourself (https://amzn.to/2I7IW68)  When your car breaks down it is likely for one of only a couple of reasons. I’ll tell you what those reasons are and how to prevent and/or deal with them when they happen. (www.roadsidesurvival.com) Television has changed a lot of the years and the change continues according to Amanda Lotz, professor of media studies at the University of Michigan and author of the book We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All (https://amzn.to/2rwDCTC). She joins me to offer a fascinating look into how television has evolved, where it is most likely headed and how it will affect what you watch and how you watch it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, what's a better motivator, reward or punishment? I'll tell you what the science says. Then, a lot of people are just way too nice. How do you stop being too nice? That involves saying, hey, you know what? Other people and their needs and their desires matter, but so do mine. And I think the habitual nice person devalues their own needs, dismisses their own wants, and is very self-sacrificing. Also, the big three reasons your car is likely to break down while you're driving

and what to do about them. And television has been a big part of your life for a long time, but it's changing a lot. That behavior of sitting down and watching what's on, I think, is increasingly going away as viewers become more and more accustomed to seeking out technologies that give them more choice in when they view and even how they view. All this today on Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about Ted Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done Ted Talks.

Well, you see, Ted Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new Ted Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast,

Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

I started the last episode by asking for ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts because we were getting so close to a thousand and it was just, it was just bugging me that we hadn't hit a thousand yet. So I asked for your help and wow, did people respond. We're way over a thousand now. So thank you if you are one of those people who left a rating and review on iTunes or Apple Podcasts. And if you haven't left a review, feel free. We can always use more. First up today, when it comes to behavior modification, which is more effective, reward or punishment?

In an experiment at Washington University in St. Louis, students were put through a series of tests where they were given a token worth 25 cents or less if they got the right answer. And they had a similar token taken away if they got the wrong answer. But as the testing went on, what became more and more obvious was that those who were punished by losing a token were far more diligent at not repeating their mistakes

than those people who were rewarded for getting the right answer. The point is, and what this supports, is the idea that people would rather avoid loss than receive gain. In the study, it was more important to avoid losing a token than it was to gain a token. In other words, it may be better to deduct points when students are wrong than to reward points for getting the correct answer. There have also been studies of gamblers that support this idea. Those studies tend to show that gamblers feel worse about losing $100 than they feel good about winning $100. And it probably works in other areas of life.

And that is something you should know. If I were to say, think of someone who is too nice, you probably get a picture in your head of someone who is overly polite, apologizes way too much, is always worried that they're going to offend someone, and maybe you're one of those people, or maybe you do some of those things. While being nice is fine, being too nice can cause some real problems. And being too nice is something a lot of people do. Dr. Aziz Gazapura was one of those too nice people, and he made the commitment to change. He's now a leading expert on this topic, and he coaches people on how not to be so nice.

And he's author of a book called Not Nice. Stop people-pleasing, staying silent, and feeling guilty, and start speaking up, saying no, asking boldly, and unapologetically being yourself. Hi, Aziz. Welcome. Hi, Mike. thanks for having me. So let's define too nice because nice is good but too nice is maybe not so good. So where's the line? That is a really interesting question because I think most of us learned growing up that nice is good and more nice is better but as you are pointing out a lot of us realize at some point in our lives that

there is such a thing as too nice and I think it's not so much you can't look at a specific behavior and say, oh, that's too nice. Because, hey, in a certain situation, a friend needs something, your spouse needs something, your kids need something. You step up and you give a ton. So we can't look at the behavior and say, oh, that's too nice. What we got to look at is the inner state of the person, their emotional state and what they're doing and why they're doing it. And so if you are doing something because you were want to please the other person, because you're, uh, you can't handle it if they're upset with you because you need them to be okay, then that's probably going to be too

nice. Yeah. And I think of things like, you know, if somebody steps on your foot by accident and then you apologize, that maybe that's being too nice. Absolutely. And there's a lot of that. You know, you bump shoulders, two people start speaking up at the same time and you say, oh, I'm sorry. Sorry. Go ahead.

Go ahead. And a lot of people that are overly nice have a habitual over apology approach to life. Where does that come from? I mean, well, it starts with a nice training as I call it. Usually a childhood, a primary parent, grandparent is usually the primary whoever's our person is bringing us up. And we get trained very early on to be nice. And that's what parents will say to their kids, be nice. And their parents are doing the best they can. They're trying to like, you know, contain the craziness.

I get it. I have two kids myself, but what, what most of, uh, parents unconsciously are doing is saying, I want you to please me because you're easier to get along with. You're not a ruffian. You're not crazy. You're just calm and do what I want and be obedient. And on some level as parents, we want that because it's easier. And the downside though is then they get older and our kids have problems with being assertive, being really susceptible to peer pressure, not knowing who they are, not knowing what they want. And so the short answer is it comes from our upbringing.

Do you think that people who are too nice know it? Yes. Okay. That's a great question. There's like glimmers of awareness. Am I too nice? No, no. Just keep doing what I'm doing. We see that it's not working. Like something breaks down. We get burnt out. If we're honest with ourselves, we're resentful inside. Something's not working. Like something breaks down. We get burnt out. We get, if we're honest with ourselves, we're resentful inside. Something is not working. But the idea of being not nice or less nice is totally unacceptable. So we just double down, dig in, and try to be nicer. And so there's that glimmer of awareness.

And then we put it aside until we reach a breaking point. And we say, you know what, this isn't working. And sometimes that breaking point comes from a breakup or we need to break up and we've been in a relationship for years too long or a health crisis because that stuff can take a toll on our health to be suppressing and being overly nice for many years. Something happens or we just wake up one day and we're fed up and we say, okay, now I get it. I'm being too nice. So there is a moment where people don't just get into the glimmers. They actually really get it. And then, then they're ready. Then they just got to learn and change the way that they approach life. Well, I think there is this perception, you know, people will sometimes say,

well, I'd rather be nice than be a jerk, as if those are the only two options, that it's either or. You're either too nice, or if you're not too nice, you're a jerk. But it's not either or. It's a sliding scale. Absolutely right. And I think that's just, it's too simplistic. And often the idea of like, well, if I'm not nice, then I'm a jerk, right? That's kind of trying to push us back into being nice. And people often do this with themselves. They'll push themselves back into being too nice because to be other is scary. They think they're going to lose love, lose connection. But you're absolutely right. Think of it like a dial. And you want to turn the dial from all the way down on the nice side to just the middle.

And that involves saying, Hey, you know what? Other people and their needs and their desires matter, but so do mine. And I think the habitual nice person devalues their own needs, dismisses their own wants, and is very self-sacrificing. And so we want to just turn it up into the healthy range of give and take and of being able to say, well, what do I need here? And then being able to ask for what we need, say no to people when we need to say no to them. And that puts us in a healthy medium range. Does all of this, do you think all of this have its core basis in, I care too much about what other people are going to think or say or do? Yes. And I would tweak it slightly because then we think the answer is to not care at all, right? I care too much. Well, I shouldn't care. I think it's that when we say we care too

much, it's like we can't tolerate unpleasant feelings in others. It makes my skin crawl. I'm going to freak out if you're upset with me or disappointed or want something that I can't give you or don't want to give you. So yes, the short answer is we care too much. And really like we're just too, we just can't tolerate it. And so our goal is to increase our capacity to handle the discomfort of someone being upset with us or being wanting something from us. Has anyone ever surveyed the population and figured out what percentage of the population either self-report as being too nice or meet some criteria as being too nice? You know, I haven't seen anything like that. I,

that's a great question. I do not know. What's your sense though? What's your sense of the population? Is this a 5% problem or a 50% problem? It's big. It's big. And I would say, I mean, you're looking at the realm of probably 50% because it's a dominant way of being. And a lot, most of those people aren't going to identify. The issue is they're not going to identify as too nice. They're not going to say, yeah, I'm too nice. But if you study their behavior and watch them, there's going to be a lot of what they're doing is coming from caring too much what others think, pleasing others, shaping their life in a way so that no one could judge them. And that means holding back, not speaking up,

not sharing what they're interested in, not pursuing their passion or what they want to create in their life. And yeah, maybe even more than 50% as I'm saying this. I'm speaking with Aziz Ghazapura. He's author of the book, Not Nice, Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent, and Feeling Guilty. You know, I think there are two types of people, those who go to the same place every year for a vacation and those who seek out new places. And if you are the adventurous type and you're looking for a new place, I have the perfect suggestion. Portland, Oregon. And to give you just a taste of what's there, I want you to go to this website, TravelPortland.com. What I like about Portland is that it has such a variety of things to do, whether you're the outdoorsy type or the indoorsy type, and the food.

Portland is known for its farm-to-table dining, innovative food carts, acclaimed craft beers, amazing coffee, and so much more. Portland is surrounded by fertile farmland, so you're going to eat some of the freshest, tastiest, most innovative food ever. For example, there's this place called Nong's. They have two locations and a food cart, and they've perfected their only dish by boiling whole chickens in broth, sautéing the rice and mixing it all together with a special sauce, then serving the meal in a butcher block wrap. Now where else are you going to find that except in Portland?

Plus, Portland has this vibe that has attracted artists and entrepreneurs from all over. There's the Portland Saturday Market. It's the largest arts and crafts fair in the United States. And if you like the outdoors, Portland has it all. Hiking, biking, boating, and real fresh air. Rather than listen to me, go to

TravelPortland.com to get inspired and start planning your trip. You can in Portland. TravelPortland.com 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 radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker.

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. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run. 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times,

we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll, of course, have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice

in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.

So Aziz, if I'm one of those people, if I'm too nice, how do you stop being... You're doomed. Doomed. How do you stop being too nice? I mean, because again, the feeling is, well, if I'm not too nice, I'm going to be a jerk and I can't be a jerk. So it's that either or thing. So how do you back it off a little? I love that question.

And the opposite of nice is not a jerk. The opposite of nice is bold and authentic because niceness is really this like persona, this shell of like, Hey, I'm not even here. Whatever you want, I'm here for you. And that's not, that's false. So it's really to be our bold, authentic self. And that helps people dispel the idea that they have to go somehow be a jerk or something. It's like, first you have to kind of wake up from just that glimmer of like, hey, wait a minute. Being this way in the world is not working. It's not working for me.

It's not working for my relationships. I want to be less nice. So that's the first step, kind of deciding that. The next step is to do the uncomfortable stuff. And it often is uncomfortable. That means having boundaries. Saying no. When someone's like, hey, can you do this for me? And maybe you used to always do it for them, but then you resented them. Well, you say, no, I can't. I'm not available then.

You ask for what you want. You tell someone, hey, you have a difficult conversation. Like, I asked you to do this and you didn't and now I'm upset with you or whatever it is. So you go do those uncomfortable things. That's the second step. And then the third step is you work through the inner discomfort because it stirs up, it can stir up guilt or anxiety like, oh, was I too mean there? Was I too harsh? Am I a bad person? And we work through that. We calm down. We see like, hey, you know what? This is how I want to be in the world. It's okay for me to have needs or be assertive. And then we just repeat that process. And it's like a reconditioning. We have to do it again and again. It's not a one-time thing.

I remember hearing someone talk about this once and it rang true for me that, you know, when we say no to people, we think we've devastated them. But, you know, we've just, we've let them down. We've so disappointed them when actually they just cross you off the list and go to the next person to see if they'll do it because you can't. But we, we in our own mind tend to think our no is much more devastating than it is. Absolutely. And that's true with a lot of this stuff where we think with the nice patterns, we think, oh, I'll crush them if I say no, or that would destroy them if I pointed out something that they did that wasn't, you know, up to my standards or whatever. The truth is that, yeah, people aren't that fragile. They don't collapse in that way. And the only way to really

see that is to test it and to prove to ourselves again and again. And I can't tell you how many times I had it all built up in my head, how terrible it was going to be if I said this or did that. And then I go do it and the person doesn't even bat an eye. It's not like they break down and we have to rebuild them back up. They're just like, oh, okay. And then we move on. I'm like, wow, that's what i've been avoiding for a decade right right and it was no big deal that the the world still turns when you say no and that's okay yeah and and the big that what makes it this big deal is yeah rarely the other person's reaction it's the all that dust and that sediment that gets kicked up in our head afterwards and all those stories. Oh my gosh,

that was so terrible. And you know, that's where it comes back to our childhood training, our upbringing, because we're reliving all this stuff from when we were growing up. And so it's not the actual present day that we're feeling all this stuff about. That person's fine. They're an adult. They're just, as you said, they crossed you off the list, move on to the next one. It's all of our old past stuff. And so that's where we need to do that inner work and have ways to calm ourselves and see more truthfully that it's okay for us to ask for what we want. And deep down, the biggest fear we have about all of this, Mike, is that we're going to lose connection. We're going to, I'm going to, that person's going to hate me. You know, I'm going to lose my

relationship. I'm going to get dumped. I'm going to, my friends are going to hate me. I'm going to lose my relationship. I'm going to get dumped. My friends are going to leave me. My boss is going to fire me. And what we need to test out and prove to ourselves is that my attachments are more secure than that. They're different now than when I was a kid. And I can be me. It's safe to be authentically me in the world. There does seem to be some cultural element to this. I think of many Asian people as being too nice compared to more typical American behavior that the Asian cultures tend to foster that. Sure. It gets really interesting.

Yes. There in Malcolm Gladwell's book, I believe it was outliers. He talks about different cultures have a scale of like how much deference they show to authority. And, uh, it was Korea and other, um, I think it was Korea, South Korea had the highest ratio of like, we should, and they show the most deference. And it was so extreme that they had an issue cause there was a plane crash and the pilot was doing something wrong. And the co-pilot and the other person in the plane, the cockpit, did not speak up in a direct manner to that person. And they all crashed.

And everyone on the plane died. And it was like, it was so extreme. And so they had this, you know, crack team to get in there and try to figure out how to train these Korean pilots and co-pilots to be able to communicate with the person in authority. So that could be textbook too nice, right? I mean, to a detrimental degree. What's the advice, if you have some, of somebody who really has trouble saying no? What's a good way to say no and understanding that it may cause you to be uncomfortable, but at least maybe make it a little easier? I love that question. Saying no is you got to think of it like a, I don't know, a golf swing or a tennis serve. You get better at it the more you do it. And so you can get some basic tips, which I'll give you here. But then, you know, if you try to get your golf swing perfect on the first time, it's going to be a little messy. It's not going to be great, but you do it enough and eventually it looks more smooth. So same thing with saying no,

you do it more often, you'll get smoother. But a simple tip is first and foremost, before you open your mouth in your mind, remember and reinforce in yourself, I have permission to say no. It's healthy to say no. Like all that stuff you're talking about, feeling like we're going to devastate people. We got to do a little inner work ahead of time. Because if we think I'm, if I think I'm going to like crush you and you're going to hate me, it's going to be pretty hard to say no. So we got to get some of our beliefs more accurate and say, you know what? People are adults. They can take care of themselves. I have a right to say no. And that might be as simple as putting that on the background of your phone or on a post-it note. I have a right to say no. And that inner step is actually extremely important. So the words

can actually come out of your mouth. Then when you're actually communicating the no, say no. And that inner step is actually extremely important. So you can, so the words can actually come out of your mouth. Then when you're actually communicating the no, say no, be a short, you don't need to like justify your no with a long story, a very apologetic story. In fact, you don't even really want to apologize. Now, if you want to convey some like, oh, bummer, you can say something like that, or you can say, oh, unfortunately. So for example, you might say, someone's like, oh, come to this thing on Saturday. No, I'm not gonna be able to make it on Saturday. Unfortunately, I'm doing something else. But that sounds like a lot of fun, and I hope you guys have a good time. One of the reasons I think people don't speak up and ask for what they want and say what

they're really thinking is, yeah, It may be because they don't want to devastate the other person, but it's also, they just don't want to cause trouble. They don't want to make waves. They don't want to start an argument. So they, so they shut up. Yes. I have a chapter in the book called, please don't be mad at me. And it's, uh, it's that conflict avoidance. That's, that the niceness syndrome. Oh, too nice syndrome. And sometimes people hear conflict and they think like, you know, throwing chairs and yelling. I just mean disagreement, professional, business, romantic, friendship, have friction in them. If your long-going relationship with someone is frictionless, one of those two people is withholding a lot, is hiding a lot. Because two humans cannot want the same thing always to the same degree at the same times.

I mean, it just doesn't work that way. And so people are going to get disappointed. There's going to be a little friction and we want to shift from that's a bad thing that I better avoid to, oh, this is a good thing. And look, I've been doing this for years. It's never comfortable. It's not fun, but it's like, oh, I've learned to be like, oh, I'm feeling upset right now. Okay, let me see what's going on. All right, that's the person. Yeah, we had that interaction. Yep, this is what I, okay. All right, I need to have this conversation.

And going into it, there's a little bit of dread, like, oh boy. But I know it's like medicine. This is gonna clear the air. This is gonna make us closer. This is gonna help us confront the issue and solve the problem. And it does seem a lot of the time

that what we dread never happens. us, you know, confront the issue and solve the problem. And it does seem a lot of the time that what we dread never happens. It's never as bad as we think it's going to be, or well, almost never. Yes. And the key thing is that no matter how it is bad or good or easy or hard, we can handle it. And that is like the root of confidence is knowing I can handle whatever happens. And I think not only that, but when people do stand up for themselves and show that confidence that you're talking about, I think that makes them more attractive to other people. You want to be with someone who's comfortable being them. My guest has been Dr. Aziz Ghazapura, and his book is called Not Nice, Stop People-Pleasing, Staying Silent, and Feeling Guilty, and there is a link to his book in the show notes.

Thanks, Aziz. Yeah, absolutely. That was fun. Thanks so much, Mike. I don't know how many people I've already told about Care-of, not just here on the podcast, but face-to-face with people I know. Care-of is a monthly subscription vitamin service made from effective, quality ingredients personally tailored to my exact needs. Look, 90% of people fall short of FDA guidelines for at least one vitamin or nutrient. So what I did and what you can do is go online, take their short little quiz about your diet, goals, and lifestyle choices, and then Careof uses the answers to create a personalized vitamin profile just for you. Then you receive a 30-day supply shipped right to your door.

And your subscription box includes individually wrapped packets with your specific vitamins and supplements. And Care-of costs about 20% less when compared to similar brands at local drug and health food stores. And on top of that, you can get 25% off your first month of personalized Care-of vitamins when you visit TakeCareOf.com and enter the promo code SOMETHING. 25% off your first month of personalized care of vitamins. Go to takecareof.com and enter the promo code something. 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 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 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. 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. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener 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. 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. For most of us, television has been and continues to be a big part of our lives. You probably grew up watching it. It has kept you company and brought the world into your home many, many times. And from the beginning, television has evolved. From broadcast to cable to internet TV, from fuzzy black and white images to color TV to high-definition television, TV has been a consistent companion over the years,

and how the evolution has happened is pretty fascinating. Amanda Lotz is a professor of media studies at the University of Michigan and author of the book, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast, How Cable Transformed Television and the internet revolutionized it all. Hi Amanda, thanks for being here. Hi Michael, it's a pleasure to join you. So when you look at the history of television, there clearly are some big moments, some big game changers. Cable TV seemed to be a big game changer because it wired up people's homes.

Well, I think part of what's so interesting is that it really does take a while for it to become a game changer in many ways. So initially, cable was important. And so cable was very important as early as the 50s and the 60s if you lived in a place that didn't receive broadcast signals. But all that it brought you was those broadcast networks.

And then into the late 70s, early 80s, it started offering more options, so something other than those three cable channels or three broadcast networks. But I think the part that a lot of people forget is that for the most part, all those cable channels were offering until the late 1990s. And it's not a lot of cable channels, maybe just a couple dozen. Mostly they were just offering reruns of old broadcast shows. And so cable really changes profoundly at the end of the 1990s. And at that moment, we're already caught up in the digital transition and not really recognizing how much at that, cable changes the television business. Yeah, I remember, you know, my impression, my image of cable back in the early days was that it wasn't much. I remember the Superstation TBS, Ted Turner's Superstation out of Atlanta, and mostly it was like reruns of Leave it to Beaver and Gilligan's Island, and it just

didn't seem like much of a force. Right. And so one of my curiosities was, given that cable does come on so strong at the end of the 90s and the early 2000s, and all of a sudden catapults itself from being perceived as this backwater of bad programming into the source of the programs that are dominating the Emmys and dominating the cultural discussion. I was just curious about how it was that that came to be. How was it that that came to be? Well, there are a variety of technological changes, particularly the story that I tell in the book really starts in 1996. And that's the year that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is passed, which ends up being far less important than I thought it would be. But it's also the year that

satellite really breaks through in the States. And so DirecTV has probably the biggest brand. And satellite can do things that cable at that point can't. It has many more channels and it's offering a digital service, which means that in many cases, the picture and sound quality are much better. And so what happens is that cable service all of a sudden has a competitor and it's a better competitor. And that's really what is needed to push those cable systems to rebuild their infrastructure from analog systems to digital systems. And what's fascinating looking back is even though now today we mainly appreciate that rebuild in terms of providing the infrastructure that becomes home Internet.

For the most part, no one had any idea how significant the Internet was going to be. And that digital rebuild was all about being able to offer more channels. And it's that competitive environment in which a cable channel has to go from now just kind of competing among 10 or 20 other channels to potentially hundreds that the strategy of standing out emerges. And one of the ways that some of the cable channels that have deeper pockets recognize that they would be able to stand out is by not just offering programs that you've seen before in a broadcast network or buying a film that you saw five years ago at the theater, but by creating their own content. And that's really

what spurs the development in the late 1990s. And continues today. And continues today. Well, the strategy that emerges in the early 2000s is really that of distinction. You have all of these cable channels trying to make programs that will stand out. Part of it is stand out from broadcast, and then it becomes stand out from those other cable channels. And really, by the end of the first decade, you know, just as Netflix is really starting to become a streaming force, you get to a point where it's really difficult for cable channels to stand out because there is so much original programming being produced. And so

again, you have sort of a shift in competitive conditions and the arrival of a new competitor in the form of Netflix and then Hulu and Amazon. And certainly one of the big complaints about cable, and has always been a complaint about cable, is that it's just so expensive. Right. And that has everything to do with a lot of different marketplace dynamics, or frankly, places in which there's just not a marketplace operating, both in the fact that most cable service providers are monopolies. But even on the other side of that, although I'm often, you know, one who will happily blame my cable service provider for the high rates, it's actually the content owners that have been able to drive those rates up by demanding that the service providers carry their full array of channels that they have decided to launch and to carry them all on the basic tier so that they can potentially reach the most viewers.

Right, which drives up the price. But even though it's a monopoly, it's not a monopoly in the sense that there's now DirecTV, which you can get anywhere. Whether you have cable, even if there is a cable provider, you can weigh the pros and cons, but it's still very expensive. It is, and that's largely because those content providers, the companies like Disney, Time Warner, CBS, NBC, Universal, when they create the deals that allow, whether it's cable or satellite, to carry their channel, they've forced basically the have been calling the shots in terms of making it possible for cable service providers to offer us so few options. And we've seen, I mean, depending on where you live and who your cable provider is, we've seen where the cable provider in negotiations with those content providers has said no and that channel has disappeared. Right. The blackout phenomenon has become a very significant one. And you're also right to note that where you live is a big factor. For the most part, we often only hear about those blackouts when they're happening in major metropolitan areas. But really, the situation for small cable providers in rural America has become far more difficult because they don't have enough subscribers to negotiate

affordable deals. And in many cases, or in some cases, they've gone to really just providing internet service and let the video aspect go. So back in the old days, there were the three basic television networks and some independent stations, but there weren't a lot of choices. And now there's just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of channels available on cable and satellite. So what has the proliferation of all those channels done to that original network broadcast television business? Well, the broadcast television business? Well, the broadcast television business is that it's all mixed together at this point.

So the amount of the number of viewers watching broadcast has been down for multiple decades because as viewers had more options, they have spread out. They also are increasingly what we're seeing is what I would call the legacy companies, the companies that existed in television before there were companies like Amazon and Facebook and Netflix. A lot of those legacy companies are now aggressively making their content available, not just on broadcast, not just on cable, but also available by internet distribution as well. A number of the big companies make their programs available on Hulu. Others license and sell them to Netflix. Many others are striking these different kind of deals with what we think of as the cable providers so that you can watch shows on demand. And so there still

seems to be considerable interest in a lot of those programs. But what's happening is that the way people watch them, that behavior of sitting down and watching what's on, I think is increasingly going away as viewers become more and more accustomed to seeking out technologies that give them more choice in when they view and even how they view. So maybe not watching a new episode once a week, every week, over a series of months, but gravitating toward an experience of watching multiple episodes or watching all of a series in sequential order over a couple weeks. You know what I wonder about people who produce television programs? Because it used to be that if you wanted to produce a TV show, you would hopefully go to one of the three networks and

they would green light your project. But I wonder now, do producers actually bypass that and go straight to cable because that's where they want to be rather than it being kind of a consolation prize because the major networks turned them down. At first, some of the executives from the cable network that I interviewed, you know, when they were first trying to find talent, they couldn't find anyone who would come and work for them because of the perception that cable wasn't a place that was doing sophisticated storytelling. And in various ways, either by making the conditions better, such as requiring only 13 episodes for a season instead of 22, or offering, you know, more creative freedom than was typically the case on the broadcast network,

they were able to bring in some young talent that then had really good success and good experiences. And that I think changed the perception of what it meant to work on cable. And there really are, they really are different businesses and broadcast networks are in a business of attracting the most people. And as a result, there's certain kinds of stories that work better in that environment. And so in many cases, the talent that has gone to cable went because they had a more specific story to tell. It's a story that might have offended some people or, you know, it just wasn't going to gather as big of an audience. But because cable has two revenue streams, both advertisers and the money that comes from the cable service

providers, they were able to develop strong businesses even though their audiences weren't as large, which I'd say has expanded the range of stories that are being told on television in the United States. It would seem to me that advertiser-supported television is going to be or is already in trouble because people do record what they want to watch. I don't know anybody who watches a recorded program on their DVR and sits there through the commercials. Everybody fast-forwards over them. And so unless you're watching news and sports live, that whole advertiser supported model seems to be in trouble. Yes, it's certainly an area that the networks

continue to worry about and try to sort of program in ways that encourage live viewing. So whether it's the big events such as NBC has done with live musicals or the competition shows that are sort of pushing word of mouth that, you know, if you don't know who won last night, then you'll miss out in the conversation the next day at work. Part of that is affecting the first broadcast window and the role of advertising money has decreased in time as these businesses have found money in other places. So now the broadcast networks also get some money from the cable service providers. It's called retransmission fees. And so that subscriber income has become quite important to their balance sheets. And in many cases, the networks now make their own shows, which means they own that intellectual property. And it might, you know, the audience for it in

its first airing on NBC might not be as high as it was 10, 20 years ago. And advertising money might be down a little bit because of that. But they're able to then sell that show and earn more revenue by selling it to Hulu, by putting it on Netflix, by selling it around the world. And so that money is still coming back to that same conglomerated company. And that's really how they've been able to weather a lot of the shift in how people are watching. And the shift certainly keeps shifting. When you look back at the way we used to watch television, where we had a couple of channels and you had to watch what was on, when it was on, to where we are now, I mean, it has changed so much. And I imagine that we'll continue to do so.

Amanda Lotz has been my guest. She's a professor of media studies at the University of Michigan. And her book is We Now Disrupt This Broadcast, How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All. There's a link to her book in the show notes. Thanks, Amanda. Thank you. It was my pleasure. Well, nothing will ruin your day like having your car break down. And yet most of the time, it's preventable. According to Walt Brinker, author of Roadside Survival, the majority of times that cars break down, it's tire related. It's usually a flat or a blowout. And that is usually because the tires are under-inflated. Take care of your tires, and they'll take care of you.

Another reason people break down is they run out of gas, and it's also preventable. Still, it happens. And often, even if you go get a gallon of gas to put in your empty tank, it still won't start. Why? Because when you're pulled over to the shoulder, your car usually isn't level. It's probably leaning to the right, and then the gas pulls to the right of the tank, and you can't get it where it needs to go to start the engine. Walt says the solution is to rock the car while someone turns the key to try to start it. And still another reason cars break down is the car just stops working.

And Walt says, very often it's just a case of the clamp on the battery terminal becoming loose. Check that first, and it may be all you need to do to fix it. And that is something you should know. If you'd like to write to me, my email address is mike at somethingyoushouldknow.net. I read every email and respond when it is appropriate. And if you listen to this podcast on, say, iTunes or Stitcher or Google Play or wherever, you may not have seen our website, and I invite you to go see it. All the episodes are there, and also the pictures of the guests

and other information. So the website is somethingyoushouldknow.net That's the podcast today. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney?

Do you love Top Ten lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. 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. I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle, what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched in 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. 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 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.