Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How Movement Improves Your Mind & Why Privacy is Not Dead

Episode Date: December 30, 2023

When the sun hits it just right, you can sometimes see just how dirty your computer screen gets. And it can get pretty filthy. So, what’s the best way to clean it? Not with window cleaner, that’s for sure. Listen as this episode begins with the right way to clean your monitor so you don’t cause damage https://www.rd.com/article/how-to-clean-a-computer-screen/ We all know exercise is good for you. Any exercise is good whether it is cardio or lifting weights - it’s all great! But it doesn’t have to be formal, strenuous exercise. In this episode, you’ll hear how simply moving your body can do wonders. Your body is designed to move – not sit around. And when you move it in the right way, the benefits are spectacular, according to Caroline Williams, a science journalist who is a regular contributor to New Scientist and author of the book Move: How the New Science of Body Movement Can Set Your Mind Free (https://amzn.to/3Jsjlot). Is privacy dead? After all, you hear a lot of people talking about how so much of our information is floating around, it is impossible to expect much in the way of privacy. Not true, according to Neil Richards. Neil is a leading expert in privacy law. He is Professor of Law at Washington University School of Law, and author of the book, Why Privacy Matters (https://amzn.to/32xsxaG). Listen as he discusses how privacy works, how the laws must change and how privacy is not dead – yet. But it is definitely in need of repair.  Are you one of those people who eats lunch at their desk? A lot of people like to keep working as they eat lunch – particularly if you work from home. While it may seem like an efficient thing to do, it’s actually a terrible idea. Listen as I explain why. https://www.businessinsider.in/heres-why-you-should-stop-eating-lunch-at-your-desk-every-day/articleshow/45464205.cms PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! MasterClass makes a meaningful gift this season! .Right now you can get two Memberships for the price of one at https://MasterClass.com/SOMETHING PrizePicks is a skill-based, real-money Daily Fantasy Sports game that's super easy to play. Go to https://prizepicks.com/sysk and use code sysk for a first deposit match up to $100 Dell Technologies and Intel are pushing what technology can do, so great ideas can happen! Find out how to bring your ideas to life at https://Dell.com/WelcomeToNow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, your computer screen can get very dirty and how you clean it really matters. Then the new science of why moving is so good for you and being sedentary, it's just awful. Even antisocial behavior has been linked to our increasingly sedentary lifestyle. So I think the idea that moving our bodies to make our minds function better and ourselves feel better is the big news that I want to share. Also, why it really matters that you take a lunch break and not eat while you're working. And understanding your right to privacy.

Is privacy dead? Privacy is not dead. And I think a lot of the fatalism around privacy stems from the fallacy that privacy ends when information about us is being collected. As a privacy lawyer, I've got to say that's actually when the interesting questions begin. All this today on Something You Should Know. hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy.

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 carothers hello welcome to something you should know i'll bet you there's been a time when you've looked at your computer monitor or your laptop screen at a certain angle and saw like dust and dirt and thought, ew, I should probably clean that. Well, if you decide to clean that, resist the urge to grab some household cleaner or glass cleaning product like Windex, which may work wonders on Windows, but glass cleaner and household products can be very damaging to computer monitors. In fact, even plain tap water can contain minerals that can leave a residue on your screen.

According to Reader's Digest, which did an exhaustive article on this, the best thing to do is, first of all, power down the computer. Then, just use a dry microfiber cloth and wipe that dust off. Now, if it still needs more cleaning than that, you can dab some distilled water or spray it onto the cloth and then wipe the cloth in a circular motion on the screen. Now, that should do it. But if the screen still requires more cleaning than that, well, then you really need to do some research

and see what the manufacturer recommends. Oh, and the number one rule of cleaning computer screens is to never, ever apply any liquid or aerosol cleaner directly to the screen. Spraying directly onto the screen risks liquid dripping down into the cracks of the display and potentially damaging internal components. And you don't want to do that. And that is something you should know. Human beings are designed and built to move. And I'm sure you've heard that before.

Most likely it was during a discussion about the importance of exercise. But it's more than the idea of exercise, getting your heart pumping or building muscle by moving. Movement, as in simply not sitting still, moving, has some important benefits beyond exercise that you probably haven't heard about before. But you're about't heard about before. But you're about to from Caroline Williams. Caroline is a science journalist and editor. She is a consultant for and a regular contributor to New Scientist. And she is also author of a book called Move,

How the New Science of Body Movement Can Set Your Mind Free. Hi, Caroline, welcome. Hi, thanks for having me. So help me understand this, because moving the body to me has always meant exercise. That's where the benefits lie in really exercising. But it sounds like what you're saying, it's more subtle than that, or it's different than that. So explain that, if you would, please. Yeah, well, I think we've all known forever, I mean, in modern society that we're not really moving anywhere near as much as we could for our health and our well-being and, you know, all these other things that we feel we should be doing. But I think a lot of the time

that's been aimed at physical fitness or weight loss or getting better at sport or you know there's some physical reason for for being more physically active but what I've been really interested in is what movement does for your mind and there's a lot of research coming through that actually suggests that our sedentary lives are as bad, if not worse, for our minds as they are for our bodies. So there's research thinking things like a drop in IQ sort of individually and at the population level, a loss of creativity, mental health, even antisocial behavior has been linked to our increasingly sedgmentary lifestyle. So I think the idea that moving our bodies to make our minds function better and ourselves feel better is the big news that I want to share because it really does make you feel better and change the way you think and feel. Well, focus that a little bit for me. Like, moving is good for your mind by how much? I mean, like, what's it going to, if I started moving a

lot, what would I notice would be different? There are some quite stark statistics that sort of I came across, which things like something like 13% of Alzheimer's cases can be traced back to a sedentary lifestyle, which is quite scary. So, I mean, some of these things you might not find immediate gratification for, but a sedentary lifestyle sort of chips away at the health of your brain because our brains are designed to move. You know, there's quite a few scientists that believe that whole reason we have brains is to move our bodies. And so there's all these feedback loops that are built into our bodies and minds that mean

that if we don't move, we do lose our edge so um everything from focus to creativity to um to making us age more healthily in cognitive terms can be improved by being more movement into your life but importantly we're not talking about exercise per se it's not it's not okay you know i'm not trying to sell gym memberships here or get people to join clubs and go and take up a sport or anything movement is more than exercise and it's more than going to the gym. It's just about spending less time sedentary. So there are research studies that have followed people long term and have found that the degree of cognitive decline

and decline of the brain over long periods of time is linked not to the amount of exercise you do, but to the amount of time you spend sedentary. So in a way, you could sit at your desk all day and then go out for a quick burn at lunchtime and then go back to your desk. And that may not counteract the effects of all that sitting around. So it almost sounds like you're saying that it's not that moving is so good for you. It's that not moving is so bad for you and that the only way to not move is to move. So in that way, moving is good for you.

Right. Or is there more to it? So even in my family, we're quite an active get outdoors family. In that lockdown period, when we had two people working at home and my son homeschooling, you know, we felt completely enclosed in these four walls and just getting out. It was a perfect before and after. We always felt better when we got back. You know, we were always talking and laughing and feeling like life was manageable. And there's some really interesting psychological research that sort of suggests why that is, which is to do with the way we perceive forward on a bike or a kayak or whatever,

as you're walking forward or moving forward through space, it makes the past feel further behind you and brings a future closer to you, which sort of explains why going for a walk can sort of clear your head and make you feel hopeful. And I definitely felt that in those sort of dark days of lockdown. And it's really interesting and important for things like depression, which is, you know, a real problem of getting stuck and ruminating on things and just going round and round in circles and never feeling like you can move forward. So physically moving forward is a way of sort of allowing you to mentally and emotionally move forward as well. So I thought I found that was really interesting. Well, I love that explanation, because it's such an elegant explanation. But is there real science there that moving forward in space is like moving forward in time and putting the past behind you and that that's a good thing for your mind?

Is that really something? Well, I mean, they've done studies in the lab that, you know, they have got people to walk from A to B. They've also got people to walk backwards. And they said when you're moving backwards through space, you seem to be better at remembering things from the past. But, you know, psychology is always one of those things that, you know, people can criticize it and say it's, you know, it's the science of the stuff you already knew. But it does back up the idea that, you know, going forward through space. And, you know, through my research, I did meet an ultra marathoner, ultra marathon runner who suffered from depression and had addiction issues through his whole life. And, you know, he he sort of said that completely unprompted to me.

When you're when you're moving forward, it feels like you're getting somewhere. And, you know, rather than being tied to the chair with depression, as long as you can get the motivation to get up out of the chair and move forward, it kind of gives you that impetus to move on forwards. Is the idea, though, that you just want to not be sitting still, so moving is moving and it doesn't really matter what, or are different types of movements good for different types of movements good for different types of things? Movements do do different things. So one of the really fascinating things that I could have, I mean, I got completely over

excited about when I was researching and could have written a whole book about just dance, dance and rhythmic movements, and other people have. But it's really, really interesting. There are many, many ways in which dance is good for the way we think and feel and why it makes us feel good. And one of the things that really struck me, and possibly this is again, because of the times we're living through, was that when we move in synchrony with other people, what's happening is so our brains know where our bodies are in space.

So, you know, we have this sense of proprioception. And as we're moving, we know where we are in space. If we're moving in synchrony with other people, then the information that's coming in from our senses about how they are moving sort of gets a little bit mixed up with our sense of what's happening with our bodies to the point where it sort of feels like we're more, you know, we're connected to each other. And so this is one of the theories about why dance evolved in the first place is that it's a bonding ritual that gets people wanting to work together. And when they've done experiments on everything from little, little children being bounced on

somebody's knees, and then they, the experimental will drop something and the child is far more likely to help them and pick it up and pass it back if they've been bounced in time with some music on their knee than if they bounce them out of time. So there's this idea that moving to music or moving rhythmically with other people is something really fundamental to how we tick. And given the problems that we have in the whole of society with loneliness, you know, and people just feeling disconnected, even though superficially we're connected all the time these days. You know, dance is a really easy way to feel like you're part of something bigger than yourself. So that was one of the things that really came out. So dance is definitely something that we all need to get over ourselves and do more of, I think. Is there any kind of prescription in the sense that,

you know, you've got to move at least this much or this is enough or is there ever too much or like, so like if I were to buy into the idea that yes, movement is good for your brain, well, how much movement? What kind of movement? When do I do it? The kind of the nuts and bolts of it. Yeah. I mean, I think the average adult now spends like 70% of our time sedentary. So most of us, almost all of us could do more, the more the better. But I mean, if as you say, we're stuck to a desk, which many people are, then a sort of vague rule of thumb is if you can get up every 20 minutes and do something, if it's a stretch, if it's, you know, running up and down the stairs, if it's going for a quick walk around the block,

just something to break up the sitting, then that can do wonders. But it's kind of trying to hit all the buttons really. So things like, so for example, doing some rhythmic movement to feel connected to other people, if that's something that you feel is missing from your life. Strength training has been shown really conclusively to reduce anxiety, to increase self-esteem and confidence. And that's something that people often neglect and can be done really easily at home. You know, sitting on the floor, getting up again, that strengthens your legs. Carrying your shopping home, that strengthens your arms. You know, bodyweight exercises, it doesn't have to involve putting on trainers, but just trying to trying to build into your life,

some something that improves your strength will almost certainly make you feel more capable in all walks of life. So yeah, it's kind of trying to hit all these kind of things, go somewhere, dance, be stronger, stretch out a little bit, things like just using your body as they're supposed to be used. So there are these connections that are becoming clear through research now. So our bone is an endocrine organ, which as we put stress on our bones by any form of weight-bearing movement, it releases a hormone called osteocalcin, which then travels to the brain and affects things like improves memory and seems to reduce anxiety as well. And so it's just kind of keeping in mind, really, that we've got to do something to tax our bodies because that's what our bodies were designed for we were designed for walking and running a bit on the savannah as hunter gatherers

and if we take those people as a rough guide people that are still hunting and gathering today of which there are a few um they tend to walk about 15 000 steps per day that's not a bad place to to aim for so walking a bit, running a bit, carrying stuff, basically just putting your body through some kind of physical activity as much as you possibly can. And almost everyone should be doing more, I think is the short answer. I'm speaking with Caroline Williams. She is a science journalist and author of the book Move, How the New Science of Body Movement Can Set Your Mind Free. and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy.

Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful, as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals.

Be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. So, Caroline, everybody's heard that you're not supposed to sit around all day, that sitting around is not good for you. And yet, the way we've designed our life, we sit around. We sit at work, or we sit at home, or we sit in the car, or we sit in a car or we sit in a restaurant or a great deal of our time seemingly has to be spent sitting. Yeah, it is true. We do spend a lot of time sitting, but there are ways of sitting that aren't as harmful as other ways. So there have been studies done of, I mentioned the hunter-gatherer populations. There's a group called the hadza in in tanzania and and studies of them have shown that they actually spend as much time

resting as we do so they're you know what they do all these steps every day but they also spend quite a lot of time sort of hanging out and resting but when they sit they are sitting on the floor they're kneeling they may be sort of squatting on their haunches. They're not, so any way that's sort of engaging your muscles. So I guess if you were sitting, you could sit on one of those medicine balls or sit in a way that you've got your core engaged and you're upright. You know, any way that's not flopping down and completely giving into gravity is better than giving into gravity. So I mean, there's ways of sitting that are less harmful than other ways. What else did you find in this research that was interesting to you? I mean, you've mentioned a few things that I've never heard before about this,

you know, walking towards the future kind of thing. What else did you find that people might be surprised to hear? Well, the thing that surprised me most was, so I've been doing yoga for over 10 years. And part of this is what started me off on this journey of trying to find out what it is about movement. I used to think, why is it that I feel so much calmer and more focused and in control after yoga? What is it? Is it the rhythmic movement? Is it the strength? Is it the breathing? Is it the stretching? What is it? And, you know, to some extent, it's all of those things. But the thing that surprised me the most was the stretching element.

So there's some really, really interesting research that's quite an early stage at the moment. But it's looking into stretching and its effects not on the muscles, but on the fascia, which is sort of the sticky sort of surroundings to our muscles. And it sort of wraps our muscles up and allows them to slide across each other when we move. And it's everywhere throughout the body. But not that much is known about it or hasn't been until fairly recently. Because when the early anatomists looked at the stuff, they were like, well, this is kind of gloopy, white, horrible stuff. And they sort of scraped it off to look at the muscles and what was underneath. But what we're now learning is that when we move and specifically stretch,

that there are cellular changes that happen in this tissue. So the cells that make it up, they flatten, they secrete sort of anti-inflammatory molecules that sort of has a relaxing effect on the surrounding tissue. But also it's linked into the lymphatic system so that it's sort of it's like a fluid soaked sponge that when we're sort of moving and squeezing and sort of stretching this stuff, it sort of squidges all the fluid out and kind of moves things along. So it sort of seems to be a really important part of the immune system, cleaning out the muscles and the joints and the body's tissues and moving things along to where the immune system can deal with it. And that really surprised me because I'd spent years going to yoga classes and sort of rolling my eyes when they said,

wring the toxins out of your body and, you know, give your organs a massage. And I thought, for goodness sake, you know, you don't need to wring out your muscles and you don't need to massage your organs because if you did, why would your body put them in great big bony cages to protect them? You know, this is silly. But actually, when the research that's coming through suggests that there is something about not necessarily getting your leg behind your head but just taking your body through the natural range of movement that does sort of allow the body's fluids to move along and you know the immune system just to flush everything out and keep things moving which to me all sounded like mumbo jumbo not long ago, but now is starting to seem a little bit more evidence-based. So, and that was really surprising to me. And I think it's really exciting research to watch for the

future. Well, all the things you're saying, many of which I've not heard before, but the things you're saying all add to the pile of evidence that we're built to move. And that in fact, as I mentioned earlier, not only are we built to move, but the fact that when we don't move, that's when the trouble starts. That moving just kind of keeps us where we should be. It's the not moving that really causes problems. That's right. Basically, we've forgotten that we are made to move. And because of that, we're starting to see some of causes problems. That's right. Basically, we've forgotten that we are made to move.

And because of that, we're starting to see some of these problems. And so I guess what my real passion is, is to try and just say, look, this is what we were built for. And if we do all these things, look how much better we can feel. And there's lots of kind of groups of people who can benefit. In particular, we've got kids who aren't moving as much as as they used to and we've got this you know i mean there's no not a straight line to be drawn but there's an epidemic of anxiety and and in sort of mental health issues in our young people

and they're going through school coming out the other end and and you know physical education's being cut they're spending more time on screens. We're not giving them the physical tools they need to manage their emotions maybe and get the best thing out of their minds. We're sitting them down and we're trying to make them focus by staring straight ahead. So children, I think we could do a lot with. We could really take this information and change things for the better. The other area I think is really important is mental health, because we talk a lot about, oh, well, exercise is good for your mental health, but that hasn't really been put into practice in treatments or, you know, they're starting to happen, at least in the UK, people are

starting to be prescribed walking groups or, you know, gym memberships and things like that. But that's something that I think could be really, really improved. And then we finally got the elderly people who aren't moving for very good reason, but within what they can physically do in later life, there's a lot that can be done to bring movement and dance and strength and all the benefits that it can bring into people's lives. So you're absolutely right. You know, it's not that we're going to suddenly become geniuses by doing a few press-ups, but we are missing out because we're just not doing what our bodies are asking for and what our brains are asking for. And when you look at the human body, it just looks like it's built to move.

And in fact, you know, a big part of the reason that we're still here after all these years is that humans have had to move to get out of the way of predators, to hunt, to do all the things we have to do to stay alive required we be pretty good at moving. Absolutely. So we evolved as hunter-gatherers and hunting and gathering is not easy it's not like you just can't wander around on the on the plains and hope that an antelope just sort of falls over dead in front of you you have to you have sort of evolutionarily what you're what you needed to survive was to have a body that could move um and be an endurance athlete and keep going for as long as it took to find your dinner but also you needed to have the mental capacity to think you know to track an animal to predict where it was going to go to work together as a team to remember where you'd been and find your way home and so this

researchers um david reichlin is the guy who's done a lot of this work who who says that we evolved to be cognitively engaged endurance athletes so we're not just to be we're just not to you know brainless you know machines running through the savannah we we were thinking athletes and so at that point in our evolution he argues that we got the the physical part of the equation got tied to the brain part of the equation and that's why when we exercise we've known this for a long time that when we physically exercise the brain invests in capacity increases the number of brain cells the number of connections the number of blood vessels to support better thinking and so if we don't do it the brain quite sensibly makes savings by sort of cutting back on all those things. And so this

is why moving and thinking are so connected and they have been through our whole evolutionary history. So we can kind of blame our ancestors on this one that we're sort of stuck with that lifestyle. So it's not really negotiable anymore. When did this lack of movement, do you think, really start to become a problem? Yeah, I think it's crept up on us slightly. I mean, we've sort of moved, I think it's something like 30% less now than the people in the 60s did, adults in the 60s did. So I mean, it may be that they were not moving much either, but it seems to have been getting steadily worse. And we've sort of engineered a society for ourselves where you don't have to move. We're the only species on earth that doesn't have to move to survive. So maybe we've come to a crunch point where it's just becoming obvious

that while we can do it, it's maybe not the best idea for our mental well-being or physical well-being for that matter. Well, I think this is a really important topic because, as I said in the beginning, when people hear movement, they think exercise, and exercise is good for your physical health. But you're talking about really something very different, and that is movement for your mind and how it helps that. And it's really interesting to hear the evidence. My guest has been Caroline Williams. She is a science journalist and editor, and the name of her book is Move! How the New Science of Body Movement Can Set Your Mind Free.

And you'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you for being here, Caroline. Thanks very much for having me. It's been a real pleasure. 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. 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. You've probably heard people talk about how privacy is dead, that we've all given up our right to privacy, that somewhere out there in cyberspace all of our information is floating around, and that emails aren't private,

what you do on social media isn't private, what you buy at the store or where you buy it isn't private. It's all being tracked and cataloged and sold, that there is no privacy. Well, let's take a little deeper look at this, because the topic isn't as simple as all that, according to Neil Richards. Neil is one of the leading experts in privacy law. He is professor of law at Washington University School of Law, where he co-directs the Cordell Institute for Policy in Medicine and Law, and he is author of a book called Why Privacy Matters. Hi, Neil. Welcome.

Thanks for having me. So as somebody who studies the law as it relates to privacy, is privacy dead? Would you agree or disagree with that statement? I would disagree with that. In fact, it's funny that you mentioned that. I kept having this conversation over and over again with hairdressers and bartenders, people in line for the metal detector at airports, people who were unfortunate enough to sit next to me on flights and ask me what I did. basic argument is privacy is not dead because information is power and human information confers power over people. That's why there's so much information collection by governments

and by companies. They want to control us or influence us, whether it's to get us to follow the law, to keep us in line, or to buy brand X of socks over brand Y of socks. We have a choice about what rules are going to govern human information in our information society. And so from that perspective, privacy rules of some sort are inevitable. And I think if we're going to have to craft these rules, we should craft them instrumentally to promote human values like identity, political freedom, and consumer protection. So when you say privacy isn't dead, what do you mean? Because the perception is that if you're online, that people can find things out about you, and so it's not

private. Let me strengthen your question a little more. It's not just online, right, that all sorts of organizations from bricks and mortar department stores to Starbucks to other entities are collecting information about us. That's why I think it's worth thinking about the fact that it's not just whether information is collected, but how that information is used. We've had, for example, a federal law that deals with credit reporting for decades. And that law basically allows companies, credit bureaus, to collect information about us for eligibility for credit cards or insurance or employment. But it strictly limits the uses to which that information can be put. And I think a lot of the fatalism around privacy stems from the fallacy that privacy ends when information about us is being collected. And as a privacy lawyer, I've got to say that's actually when the interesting questions begin. If you think about a privacy policy, a privacy policy governs not just what information is collected, but what a company can do with that information. that intermediate area that I think most of the interesting conversations, most of the

interesting fights and struggles over what privacy will mean in the digital society are going to take place. On more of an individual level, though, what's the risk here to me? What is the problem that requires that we have these discussions? Because what could happen? What's the big deal? At the most basic level, exposure of our information can affect our identities. So for example, I read an article that a colleague sent me today about the lead singer of Blink-182, who was getting chemotherapy and meant to share a picture of himself getting chemo with a few close friends. Instead, he shared it to something like a million Instagram followers,

which caused great, great problems. Beyond our identities, privacy matters to our political freedom. The reason that governments collect information is so that they can influence our behavior. Beyond politics and our identities, we have to ask as consumers, why are these companies collecting so much information? And the reason they're doing it is to control it. Remember, I said that privacy is about power. Privacy and human information can be exploited to market products, to manipulate consumers, to get us to act in ways that are not in our best interest, but in the interest of whoever can deploy the data against us. There was a great example a few years ago that Target

was able to figure out based upon how its customers' purchases were changing, based upon their credit card identifiers or their phone numbers when women were pregnant. And it used that to market coupons for formula to them. And so a lot of people then said, well, what's the harm there? Yeah, it's a bit creepy that Target knows we're pregnant, but they just sent us a coupon. And coupons are amazing. Well, the real reason had nothing to do with creepiness. It had to do with control. Target knew that when people become pregnant, particularly for the first time, they reach one of these inflection points as consumers, where their buying habits change. And if you can habituate somebody or just get somebody

to become a Target customer at that moment, right before they have a baby. When the child comes and they're running around changing diapers and trying to stop the little one from injuring themselves, they'll be locked in to those buying habits, habituated into those buying habits for 10, 15, 18 or more years. That's what this information is about. It's not about coupons. It's not about creepiness. It's about control. And it's about manipulation. And that's why this information is being collected. But it sounds like you're implying some sort of evilness to what Target's doing by tracking this information and then

offering people coupons for formula, which, and maybe what you said is true about inflection points and whatnot, but people might want coupons for formula if they're going to buy formula and they can get it cheaper with a coupon. It's just, it's capitalism, it's companies collecting information and using that information. But I don't necessarily see why that's so evil. Absolutely. And as long as we have a legal system that not only allows this kind of information-based manipulation, but actually encourages it through corporate law, which requires target or requires privately traded companies to maximize shareholder value. There's actually an economic incentive the law creates to engage in these kinds of practices. But we dealt with this in the 1970s, right? This idea of subliminal advertising that I think there's a

longstanding understanding. As consumers, a free market means that we get to have choice, that we do get to choose what we want. But we're not really choosing what we want if we're being tricked by coupons that are precisely targeted to influence us based upon information we didn't even know was being collected. Well, see, this is where I think when you use the term like tricked, it seems a little strong. Is sending someone a coupon in the mail for a better price on formula tricking them or just giving them a coupon that lowers the price of formula that if they're going to go to Target and shop for formula anyway, well, it's kind of a nice thing to do.

Now, it's not going to cost them as much money. But just in general, sending someone a coupon doesn't put blinders on you that you're unable to make your own choice and to look at other options and aha, you've been tricked. Don't you think we have the ability to make our own decisions? I'm not sure that we do have the ability to understand all of the back-end data analytics that a large company is using to influence us. And particularly in the digital environment where interfaces are are created

and and refined through a b testing so a great example would be if you've ever tried to unsubscribe from an annoying email so you you go down to the bottom of the email and you you find a very very tiny uh link that says unsubscribe and then you go to the page and you have to go through several steps in order to, I don't want to have marketing emails. I don't want to have weekly marketing emails. I don't want to have monthly marketing emails, unsubscribe from all. Of course, the boxes come ticked the way the companies want us to choose rather than our own free choice. And so then you hit the button and then what's going to happen is, are you sure you don't want to give up these valuable, potentially valuable emails and

miss out on exciting offers, right? Designed to, not just to, designed around what the social science research says about how consumers behave in the aggregate, but designed around known cognitive biases that the behavioral science literature has been pointing out for the past two decades. And of course, then on top of all of that, the way the interface is designed, the button to keep getting the ads, to keep the data collection going is a big shiny button. And the button to unsubscribe is an unattractive button. So yes, you can exert effort and you can go through this rigmarole on one of the hundreds of junk emails you might receive in a given week. But the effort that you have to expand makes it difficult. And the companies

know this when they design their interfaces. Consumers don't want to spend their time tweaking privacy settings and doing all of this unnecessary privacy work. They just want to buy the socks. They just want to buy the baby formula. They just want to exercise actual choice over the things in their lives. And so what's the prescription then? What are we to do as the consumers to deal with this? That's a great question. Every few months, it seems, there's an article or a book that says something like 10 things you can do to reclaim your privacy. But I think the reality of the matter is the level of power that human information and design and the deployment of the behavioral sciences against consumers, the level of power all of that enables, it's impossible for individual consumers acting by themselves to take reasonable

steps to reclaim their identity, their political and their consumer power. So what we need to do in the United States is to do what every other advanced democracy has done in the world, which is to pass a baseline privacy law that protects consumers and regulates the processing of these huge swaths of human information. Well, how do you do that? I mean, isn't a lot of the concern about privacy and hacking and things like that coming from other countries where a law in the United States would have absolutely no effect. Actually, it's the other way around that, that Europe passed, Europe has had comprehensive privacy law for 25 years now. And they, they have a new law called the GDPR, which is more robust. And actually one of the things that we're seeing is other countries

around the world are passing privacy laws so they can engage in the information trade with Europe. This information is valuable. And I'm not saying we should eliminate it altogether, but we need, just as when we had cars, they were great, but they were dangerous. We need to have rules of the road for human information. And unfortunately, because our Congress has failed for a quarter of a century to pass meaningful privacy legislation, the Europeans are dictating the rules of the road. And actually, you're actually seeing technology companies saying, please regulate us because we need rules to enable us to participate in the information economy of the world. But aren't there rules? I mean, as I understand it, people aren't supposed to email me junk email, marketing emails. It's against the law, but I get them anyway. Part of the problem there is that there's a,

there's a fairly awful federal law called the can spam act. And it was intended to can I throw away spam, but, but actually the way it was written was in such a poor and business friendly way. The joke is after the can spam act, I can spam. So the law is, is law is unprotective there, but I'm actually

much less interested in the kinds of privacy violations that we're aware of, the kind of intrusions from junk email, and much more in the undercurrent of largely unknown information about consumers and citizens that is being used to manipulate us. And we have no ability to control that. We're never given choices about it. We often don't know that it exists, but it is there and it is being used to nudge us, to influence us, often to manipulate us, often without us knowing that it's there. And to talk before about isn't this part of the deal? Something that we don't know about that is being used to manipulate us cannot be part of the deal because we can never have agreed to that. And that's what I think we need to do. We need to build a set of rules to protect the information economy,

the way we built a comprehensive set of rules to protect the information economy, the way we built a comprehensive set of rules to protect workers in the industrial economy. What's an example or two of something that I'm not aware of that could be manipulating me? Well, the Cambridge Analytica scandal is a great example of that. So briefly, people went on Facebook and they took a quote, fun personality test, and maybe they were paid a dollar to do that. What happened then was the permissions on Facebook through the test, this is what Cambridge Analytica was running, enabled them to use the test to identify your personality traits and maybe some psychological vulnerabilities that you might have. But also, it used it to scrape

everything that it could see from all of your friends on the social network. And it learned from your psychological test you took and your behavior, how to infer personality traits from everybody else that you could see. And they did this for tens and tens of millions of consumers linked to their real name, because Facebook has a real name policy. And then they used it to serve targeted ads to all of these people. I think 87 million altogether. About politics, about the presidential election, whether it's to change somebody's vote or whether it's to suppress somebody's vote. So if there were people they thought could be switched from, let's say, from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump, they would target them ads that said horrible things about Hillary or about issues,

say immigration or other sorts of values that they think could manipulate those voters. And if they couldn't, if they decided they probably couldn't bring somebody over to their side, they would just direct really horrible misinformation about their candidate to get them to stay home. It's not as good as switching a vote, but voter suppression at least takes one vote off the other side's tally. And besides that, what are some other, if you could just in more of a quick shopping list way, what are some of the other ways people are maybe manipulated in ways they don't know? Well, besides the Cambridge Analytica and the Target example, the whole use of interfaces. Anytime you see an interface that has one button that is bright and shiny

and another button that is not quite as big, or maybe it's a little harder to click, that's a way that people are manipulated. We know from the social sciences that people behave in predictably irrational ways. So we tend to not want to give up things that we already have. So you see this with, and this is slightly to the side of privacy, but you see this with free subscription services. So try Netflix for a month. And if you like it, we'll keep renewing it for you for your convenience. They know that people don't like change. And so you give your credit card details the first time and they know that people have inertia because they're busy. But we forget to do this maintenance, this level of burden that is placed upon us, this informational maintenance.

And that's another way in which we're manipulated. But it seems like you know you're being manipulated because you're the one who has to give them your credit card information and you're the one who has to decide not to stop it. So one of the interesting things that we've learned from the behavioral sciences is that we humans are optimistic. We tend to overstate the value of things that are free and we tend to understate the benefits of things that are free. We're really good at committing our future selves to doing the right thing, whether that is exercise, whether that is a good diet, or whether that is remembering 29 days from today to cancel the free subscription before I get charged $9.99 a month. And I think as consumers, we are overloaded. Well, it almost seems, based on what you're saying, is that we're kind of in the wild west of privacy, that there aren't a lot of laws protecting us. There's a lot of data manipulation going on. And I think, as you pointed out, Europe has taken more of a lead on this than the U.S., but it'll certainly be interesting to see how things roll out.

Neil Richards has been my guest. He is one of the leading experts in privacy law. He's professor of law at Washington University School of Law, and the name of his book is Why Privacy Matters. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Neil, and explaining all this. Thank you for having me. Do you take a break at work to eat lunch, or do you just keep working while you eat? It turns out that taking a break for lunch is much better. One survey found that North American employees who take a lunch break every day report higher engagement based on metrics including job satisfaction, productivity,

and the likelihood that they would recommend working there to other people. Research also found that firefighters who ate lunch together reported that it was a central component of keeping their teams operating effectively. There's also evidence that shows that when you eat mindlessly, meaning you're sitting in front of your computer working and not really focusing on or enjoying the food you're eating, you'll tend to eat more food and gain weight. So for all of those reasons and probably more when it's lunchtime it's a good idea to take a break and enjoy your lunch. And that is something you should know. So here's a really easy New Year's resolution for you to consider. Just in the New Year

in the first week of the New Year resolve to maybe tell one, two, let's say three people about this podcast and recommend they give a listen. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong?

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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.