Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How to Be Ready for Your Big Moment & Making Sense of Statistics

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, where do potholes come from and why do we have them anyway? Then, effective ways to prepare for your next big event from a renowned Jeopardy! champion. One thing that I did for Jeopardy! was I would bring my flashcards to the gym, hand them to a trainer, and then hold the top of a chin up for 30 seconds or a minute and have him or her ask me the questions. Then there are

Starting point is 00:01:01 things that can mess with your memory that are really no big deal. And understanding how data and statistics really work, because you can make data say whatever you want. I think a really straightforward example is using statistics to demonstrate that storks actually deliver babies. And actually, if you look at the data, there's pretty good evidence for that. All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad for BetterHelp.

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Starting point is 00:01:55 Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. I don't have a lot of pet peeves. I have a few of them. And one of them is potholes. I hate potholes. Because it always seems that it's that one half a second where I look at how fast I'm going, or I look in the rear view mirror during that split second is when the pothole appears and my wheel goes in it. And it's usually when I have a cup of coffee in my hand. I hate potholes.

Starting point is 00:02:47 So where do they come from? Well, it turns out that when water seeps into the rock, gravel, and soil underneath the asphalt and then freezes, that expands a little bit, and it acts like a bit of a jack that applies pressure up against the pavement. That weakens the asphalt asphalt and then it cracks, which makes it even easier for water to penetrate the surface, which leads to repeated freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw cycles,

Starting point is 00:03:14 and then more structural damage occurs. Melting ice leaves gaps and voids, and the pothole begins. With all this happening, the burden of traffic over the pavement doesn't stop. It drives the asphalt back into the gaps created by the melted ice. So, over a period of time, the entire process results in a hole that is destined to make you spill your coffee. It also turns out there's a pothole season. It's more common to happen in late winter and spring because of the freeze-thaw, freeze-thaw cycles.

Starting point is 00:03:49 By the way, the word pothole comes from pottery makers in England in the 15th and 16th centuries. What they would do is they would excavate the ruts made by wagon and coach wheels to retrieve clay out of those ruts, and when they did that, it made the holes larger. Then the larger holes would be dubbed potholes by the aggrieved travelers. And that is something you should know. I think we've all had this experience. There's a big event coming and you're going to be on the spot. Maybe you have to give a talk or a toast at a wedding or do a demonstration or go on an important job interview. Or maybe there's some sort of physical challenge. You know, the big game is coming up. And for all

Starting point is 00:04:38 of those things, you need to prepare so you can perform at your best when the time comes. So how do you prepare? What's the best way? Is it to just practice over and over again? Well, maybe. But with some real insight into how to prepare for any big event is Buzzy Cohen. Buzzy was a contestant on Jeopardy!, a very successful contestant on Jeopardy! After a nine-game winning streak and a victory in the Tournament of Champions in 2019, Buzzy says he wasn't actually the smartest contestant.

Starting point is 00:05:14 He just trained smarter. And he has some advice for all of us for the next time we have to prepare to perform for some big moment. And he also has a little behind-the of Jeopardy as well to share. Buzzy has a new audio book out called Get Ready, a champion's guide to preparing for the moments that matter. Hi, Buzzy. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, thanks for having me. Sure. So I think people have different ideas about how to prepare and what works best for them. How do you look at preparation for a big event? I think all of us have moments, big and small, throughout our life where we want to do our best. And it could be something as big as the interview,

Starting point is 00:05:59 the job interview or the sales pitch. And it could be something really small like a first date or giving a speech at someone's wedding or the sales pitch. And it could be something really small, like a first date or, you know, giving a speech at someone's wedding or something like that. And I think we all know we want to do our best. And I think we all know that preparation is part of that. And I think that we don't always know how to do that. There's got to be a better way. And I want to help people do as well as they can. And so has this been a lifelong thing for you? Or when you went on Jeopardy, you thought, geez, I better find a better way to get ready.

Starting point is 00:06:29 In looking back, it was really not my first time on Jeopardy. But when I knew I was going to come back for the Tournament of Champions, where I was like, oh, I was really unprepared for that experience. Or I wouldn't say unprepared, but I wish I'd been better prepared for the experience of appearing on Jeopardy. What can I do to improve my preparation so that I have a better chance of doing well? I want to look back at it, whatever happens and say, you know what? I was as well prepared as I could have been for that event.

Starting point is 00:07:01 And so Jeopardy is a good example of the basis for this next question, because you can say you prepare for something like Jeopardy, but you don't know what, I hope you don't know what they're going to ask. That would be cheating. So if you don't know what they're going to ask, how in the world can you prepare? There's two things to talk about. One is the content. And in terms of what the content is,

Starting point is 00:07:26 you're right that you don't know what it's going to be. However, we have 35 years of episodes to look back on and start to get an idea of the kinds of things that Jeopardy asks about. When you start to think about it like that, the volume of study material, the volume of content gets smaller. The Jeopardy writers, they're not just writing for the contestants, they're writing for the home audience. So, you know, nothing really gets past a high school or maybe like, you know, a college survey level in terms of obscurity. So when you think about it like that, the information, the content is still huge, but it's much more manageable. The thing that I really wanted to focus on my second time around was not just the content, but also the context. And that was where things started to

Starting point is 00:08:20 really open up for me. When I was on the show, I felt like, yeah, I could answer a lot of questions and stuff like that. But the things that were challenging for me was the fact that the show tapes starting at nine or 10 in the morning, and you tape five shows in a day, I was wholly unprepared for how challenging that was going to be. I had been practicing like sitting on my sofa, watching the show, you play those shows standing up and, you know, standing up for a full day, starting to get fatigued, all of these things of your physical state and your mental state and your neurochemical state at different times of the day, I think play more of a role in our abilities to perform than we often take into account when we're preparing. People are actually pretty good,

Starting point is 00:09:07 I think, at preparing for content, right? So you write a speech for a friend's wedding and you read through it a few times. You know the speech, but you probably read through it a few times, like sitting down or just saying it to your partner or a friend or whatever. It's very different when you're standing up there, you know, wearing heels or wearing a tie in front of 100 people in front of your friend, all of a sudden, it feels very different, the stakes are different. And so what I try to push people to do is to, in all these different ways, prepare for all of these other things that are going to basically get between you and the content, right? It's harder to deliver your speech smoothly and effectively when you are feeling uncomfortable. Right. Well, everybody's had that experience of you. You've nailed it in your

Starting point is 00:09:57 bedroom, but then you get up in front of people and you get really nervous and stuff starts going out the window and I forgot and all that. So then how do you prepare for that? One really great way to do this is to film yourself. Anybody who has like tried to make a video for YouTube or even just to send to a friend, like even musicians that I know who are incredibly talented, the second they're going to like record something, you make a mistake, right? So it's that idea, you become much more self conscious, once you hit record, even if it's just on your iPhone. And then the other thing is to just find ways to increase the stress of your preparation. And I found some ways with for that with jeopardy, but you know, it's different for everybody. For me, it's about you're going to be stressed in that moment, you're not going to get rid of the stress and you're going to be stressed in that moment

Starting point is 00:10:46 because it's important. Things that are important to you have high stakes and high stakes create stress. That's normal. So what I want you to do is to be able to get used to performing when you're feeling the stress, not get rid of the stress. So one thing that I did for Jeopardy was I would bring my flashcards to the gym, hand them to a trainer, and then hold the top of a chin up for 30 seconds or a minute and have him or her ask me the questions while I was hanging from the top of a chin up or holding a plank or pushing a sled with, you know, 400 pounds on it. Because I always felt like when I was in those moments, like when you're hanging, your mind goes totally blank, it's hard to spell your name, like I couldn't tell you what I had for breakfast while I'm doing

Starting point is 00:11:34 that. So to have to come up with who won, you know, the election of 1888, or what chemical has the atomic number eight, or, you know, all these other kinds of things like who wrote moon for the misbegotten. These things are much harder when you're in that place. So I got used to like figuring out how to push through it. So some advice I give to people in addition to filming is like, well, why don't you try going through whatever your performance thing is, whether it's a speech or a presentation, you know, have a movie playing right in front of you kind of loud. So you kind of have to fight through that or shuffle up

Starting point is 00:12:12 a deck of cards. And while you're doing your thing, have to sort them into like suits or put them in the right order. Things that like distract and challenge your brain and make it harder to stay focused because that's kind of the skill you need to develop. And so everybody, as you say, is different, but, but I love that idea of, you know, doing a chin up or, or doing some physical thing like that. But like how, how much of that did you have to do to feel like it really helped? Well, the first thing I had to do was actually know the content. So I had to get, I wasn't going in with flashcards I didn't know, right? So that's the first thing. You have to know

Starting point is 00:12:51 it not under stress. And then you introduce the stress. I'm just trying to think back of, I spent about between two and four months doing that a few days a week. But I started to notice it after maybe the fourth or fifth time I started to get better at, you know, not just blacking out when I was in that position. Do you think that because people often say you don't want to over prepare, do you think you can ever over prepare? I think there have been times there have been situations that I've, I wouldn't say I over prepared for but I did not adequately rest before the performance so I think I don't think you can over prepare but

Starting point is 00:13:32 you can certainly not give yourself enough rest there's a story that I read in in another book it's about how the four minute mile uh Roger Bannister cracked the four minute mile and one of the things that you know he did different was he kind of did a taper for the couple weeks beforehand so he was really well rested and that wasn't really how people had approached running you know you kind of just keep pushing and pushing you know I swam in high school and the taper is a big part of swimming so you know keeping your strength up but also letting yourself rest. I think that when I went back for the Jeopardy All-Stars, I was so, I felt so much pressure

Starting point is 00:14:11 because it was a team situation and I was the captain. I wanted to do well that I didn't really adequately rest both kind of like on a day-to-day basis, but also in the, you know, couple of days leading up to it, I think I probably could have done a better job of kind of relaxing and letting whatever was there etch into my mind and not try to squeeze the last few days of study in. Preparation is our topic today, preparing for those big events in life. And my guest is Buzzy Cohen, a Jeopardy! champion and author of the audio book, Get Ready,

Starting point is 00:14:48 a champion's guide to preparing for the moments that matter. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce.

Starting point is 00:15:00 That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of

Starting point is 00:15:25 kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

Starting point is 00:16:01 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. So, Buzzy, what other strategies do you think work besides the stress,

Starting point is 00:16:53 which I think is a great idea, is to try to incorporate the stress of the moment into the preparation. What else works, for example? Planning for failure and practicing failure. And in a way that's sort of related to practicing with stress is like building, messing up and getting messed up into your preparation. And there's all different ways to do that. But Alexander Rosenberg was on this show, Blown Away. And he, you know, he realized that part of glassblowing is that things break, right? And so he had a plan going in where instead of making one large item, he was going to make a more

Starting point is 00:17:36 modestly sized item, but he can make multiples of them. And if one broke, it wasn't a big deal. And also he would then have a choice of what he was going to present. Because part of what happens, right, is people have a plan, like, I'm going to do this, they're going to do this, I'm going to do this, whether it's a sales pitch or interview, you have an idea of what's going to happen and you plan, things don't go right all the time. And so having instead of all of your eggs in one basket of a plan, preparing is kind of about being ready for the challenges in different ways. So practicing failure, planning for failure.

Starting point is 00:18:10 Alexander talks about the fact that when you fail at glassblowing, it's a very public kind of failure. And that's really hard for people. That's something that I have challenges with. And so he has his students, when he teaches glassblowing, go sing karaoke together

Starting point is 00:18:24 to get used to kind of being embarrassed in front of other people and letting that go. So there are all of these other techniques beyond just, you know, what I specifically did, which can help inoculate you to some of the challenges or just kind of get you used to the not so fun parts of, you know, what I'll call performing, even if it's not a performance per se. Yeah. Well, I know a lot of people, myself included, you know, I can do okay if I'm prepared as long as things go exactly as I imagine they'll go, but they almost never do. And as soon as something goes wrong, it's like, oh, it's like this cascading. Now that's going to go wrong. Oh, now I'm off base. Now I'm off balance. And then everything can fall apart. What you've done is what I kind of call planning, right? You have a plan. A plan is like a recipe. And when you don't have one of the ingredients or something burns or something takes longer to brown or froth, sometimes you're okay. And

Starting point is 00:19:26 sometimes you're not right. What I preparing is, is a different task in that it's a bit like learning kitchen skills, as opposed to learning a recipe. And you learn how to work with what you have and how different things react to temperatures and times and oh, you know, this pan isn't getting hot enough. You kind of know how to recognize those things. It's a much bigger upfront investment, but it prepares you for kind of things, right? Everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. That's how a lot of us have lived our lives, right? We have all these plans and then it's like, you know, you go in for a job interview, you think it's a shoo-in and then it's like, well, you know, we originally put the listing for this, but what we really want is X, Y, and Z. And now all the kind of talking points that you've prepared are not speaking to what they want, right? That's

Starting point is 00:20:27 your punch in the mouth. So, preparing versus planning kind of builds in those punches and others so that you're not so set in essentially the fantasy of what a plan is. Planning is a fantasy. That's why we like doing it. Yeah. Well, and... Right? Right. And people, preparing is not that fun because it's like, instead of thinking like, Oh, I'll do this and they'll love it. And then they'll say this, you know, Oh, you know, this is what they're worried about, but I know exactly how to do this. Preparing is like, okay, let's pick up,

Starting point is 00:20:58 let's figure out everything that's going to go wrong and, and build in how I can recover from that. It does seem that as if a part of, a big part of being prepared is feeling confident that you're prepared, that confidence is a big piece of this puzzle. Yes? Yeah, I think so. It's confidence is part of it, but it's also, for me, it was almost about having fun. And it's much more fun. you can have more fun being prepared um and you're also it's easier to have be at peace with things going wrong because

Starting point is 00:21:36 you've kind of put in the effort and kind of poked at whatever you thought might happen in a way. And if you kind of have already come to terms with the fact that things can and will go wrong. And so you, you can relax your grip on it a little bit, right? It's like, you're not trying to, to go back to the pothole thing. You're not trying to steer your car around to avoid every obstacle. You're like, yep, there are going to be obstacles. I think I can handle it. And if one pops a tire, you're like, well, I knew that this was a possibility.

Starting point is 00:22:13 So I think confidence is certainly a part of it. But for me, I really focused on joy. I really wanted my appearance on Jeopardy to be fun and joyful. I really want, you know, when I do a pitch with a client, I want to be enjoying it. And I think the same way that the audience is rooting for you, whoever it is, the audience really connects with what your emotional state is. And people who are more prepared are more relaxed. And they tend to be enjoying themselves because being prepared and the confidence that comes with that, but also the naturalness with which you can present the material is really infectious.

Starting point is 00:22:59 And that is almost what makes the impression on people more than the argument, right? It's like, two different people could make the same case for a product or their product, you know, we can do x, y, and z, and this and that, or our service can do this or that. But there's also it's like, wow, he really did that. But man, it was you let that sense of like, we really just clicked, or I like being around them, that unconscious communication that we do to me is, is really powerful and a big part of why I like being prepared. Well, it's interesting too, that a lot of people who are really prepared are so well prepared that they

Starting point is 00:23:39 seem like they're unprepared, that they're just winging it. And that's what people like to see. Yeah. It's, it feels very effortless. It feels very, because they can relax their grip, right? When you're unprepared, you tend to be much more robotic or much more mechanical in how you're doing it. Once you've done it so many times, it just kind of emerges out of you because you've internalized it. The muscle memory starts to kick in. You know, you see it with athletes, with dancers, with musicians. When you first learn something, it's a little, you know, you're kind of pushing your body through it. And then you see real experts. I'm thinking of like Simone Biles or Messi or, you know, Herbie Hancock. And when they're just, you know, it's like, they're not even thinking about what they're doing, let alone kind of telling their body do this, this, this, this. It's kind of just, it feels emergent. But that's because of all the work they put in before they get out under the lights.

Starting point is 00:24:41 So lastly, one fun, quirky, joyful moment from Jeopardy. I mean, there are so many, I have to say like being on that stage was a deeply joyful, quirky moment in my life that I'll always be able to kind of like revisit. I had a lot of fun in the finals of the Tournament of Champions when I was playing with Austin, Rogers, Allen Lynn. And during the lunch break, we were like, like let's let's coordinate our little introduction because it's so awkward right you're standing there you're staring at the camera they announce your name so we had these coordinated intros and we had just talked about it the three of us and then alex trebek had a little monitor backstage so he sees what's going on and he came out and he joined in in our little

Starting point is 00:25:24 oh cool our little introduction so that was, it was another case of this, like we were having fun. And so we allowed him to have fun. And I think that that's like, what, what more could you, what more could you ask for, you know? Yeah. Were you able to spend any time with him, talk to him? Um, you know, on set, on set, he was a great guy. I definitely miss him a lot. And what, just refresh my memory.

Starting point is 00:25:46 When were you last on? I was on in, I think it was February of 2019 when I had the All-Stars tournament. That was the team thing that they did. I visited the studio since then. I went in when I heard a little rumor about what was going on with James Holzhauer and got to watch some of his games. And when Alex, after Alex was diagnosed, I went in to the studio just to kind of see him and let him know we were thinking of him. And my daughter made a card for him. It was really sweet. Well, that's nice. Well, great. This has been fun and interesting.

Starting point is 00:26:22 Yeah. I hope I answered your questions well. Well, you didn't phrase them in the form of a question, but... Well, you and interesting. Yeah. I hope, uh, I hope I answered your questions. Well, you didn't phrase them in the form of a question, but. Well, you didn't. Yeah. You asked them as questions. I did. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:26:31 My, my mistake. I'm sorry. Buzzy Cohen has been my guest. He was a very successful contestant on jeopardy and he has a new audio book out called get ready. A champion's guide to preparing for the moments that matter. There's a link to that at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Buzzy.

Starting point is 00:26:49 Thanks. This was a lot of fun. Good luck to all your listeners in their preparation. 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.

Starting point is 00:27:16 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.

Starting point is 00:27:54 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. Do you love Disney? show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Often when people make their case or state an argument or a position or create a policy, they back it up with statistics and data. Problem is that we've all come to know that you can pretty much make statistics and data say whatever you want, or at least interpret the numbers and facts in a way that support just about

Starting point is 00:29:00 anything. So how do we make sense of all of this? Because people are always going to use statistics and data. Should we be suspicious of them, or do we just need to understand data and statistics better? Here to weigh in on this is Tim Harford. Tim has been called the best popular economics writer in the world. He's written several books. His latest is called The Data Detective, 10 Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics. Hey, Tim, good to have you back on. Oh, it's good to be back. So I think we've all grown less trusting of data and statistics over the years because we see how people can manipulate them. What is your take on all this? What's your stance? My basic stance is that it's perfectly possible to lie with statistics, but it's pretty easy to lie without statistics as well.

Starting point is 00:29:53 So we shouldn't feel disempowered or disheartened and reflexively cynical, doubting everything. A lot of people who really want us to doubt pretty much everything, to think that it's all fake news and that all the experts are lying to us. And I actually think it's not as hard as people seem to think to make sense of the numbers and really to think clearly about the world. After all, a lot of the world, you can't possibly understand without using the data, without using statistics. And I think with the right sorts of questions, any of us can make good sense of it. So give me a specific example of how somebody could use bad data, bad statistics,

Starting point is 00:30:42 and make a perfectly plausible case? Well, I think a really straightforward example is using statistics to demonstrate that storks actually deliver babies. You know, the classic thing that you tell your kids when they ask you where babies come from, you'd say, oh, the storks bring the babies. That's where babies come from. And actually, if you look at the data, there's pretty good evidence for that. You just get data on a whole bunch of countries, the breeding populations of storks in those countries, and the number of babies born each year in those countries. And what you will find is countries with more storks also have more babies. And so that sort of thing makes you, I think, pretty reflexively cynical about the whole sort of affair.

Starting point is 00:31:36 What's going on with that claim, of course, is it's just big countries. So you've got a country like the united states or russia or poland germany there's a lot of room for babies and there's a lot of room for storks and if you're looking at a tiny country like the vatican city for example then there's there's not a lot of room for babies and there's not a lot of room for storks so that's what's really underpinning that statistical relationship that very story about storks and babies was actually used by a very well-respected statistical communicator to try to persuade Congress not to put health warnings on cigarettes. He was saying, yeah, yeah, the experts will tell you smoking cigarettes is correlated with lung cancer,

Starting point is 00:32:21 but, you know, storks are correlated correlated with babies you can't believe the numbers and so so he was taking that funny little story and using it as a weapon to try to smear the experts and to try to prevent this legislation passing congress in the in the 1960s so it's a this statistical cynicism takes you to a pretty dark place pretty quickly. As you say, you can make that case, statistically make the case that that's where babies come from and look, all the storks. And so consequently, people are very cynical about and skeptical about numbers. But there's also this other thing that happens, too, that when people say, well, 98% of people believe this or 27% of people had this experience or whatever it is, that also adds weight. I mean, it'll help almost any argument if you have some statistic, even if you make it up, it'll help your case. Well, people think that. I think that's only

Starting point is 00:33:22 partly true. So it helps your case if people are already predisposed to believe your case. But the evidence suggests that if people already doubt the kind of things that you're saying, adding extra statistics, or really adding any extra detail of any kind, simply gives people ammunition to take you down. So there's a really fascinating study I report on that basically gave people information on real hot topics. I can't remember exactly what it was. It may have been abortion rights. It may have been the death penalty. I mean, there were so many different hot topics out there. And the more information people were given, the more polarized they became on these issues. So if they were already, for

Starting point is 00:34:06 example, pro-choice, they became more pro-choice if you gave them more statistics. But if they were already pro-life, give them more statistics and they become more pro-life. So people were seizing on these numbers and grabbing the ones they liked and rejecting the ones that they didn't. Actually, our emotions, our preconceptions, our political opinions, they're incredibly strong determinants of what we feel. And before we get into the technical details of statistics, we need to calm down and ask ourselves whether we really want to know the truth. Whether we really want to know the truth? Why wouldn't we want to know the truth? It turns out that a lot of what we really want to know the truth? Why wouldn't we want to know the truth? It turns out that a lot of what we really want from the news, for example, the media, is to be reassured that we're kind of on the right side of history, that we're right,

Starting point is 00:34:58 that our friends are right, that our political party is right, and our political party is right and our political party is going to win. Clearly, when it turns into something that affects you personally, you want to get accurate data. So should I sign my child up for these particular vaccinations? I want accurate information about that. But if it's something like, I don't know, say climate change, actually the climate's going to do what the climate's going to do, regardless of what I personally believe. So my belief think clearly and understand how the world works, it's actually not as hard as you think. But you do have to have that motivation, that willingness to calm down, ask the right questions. It's really our desire to inform ourselves rather than to just wade into some political argument. There's two types of people in the world, I guess. There are people who use statistics to try to win

Starting point is 00:36:12 arguments. And there are people who use statistics to try to see the world more clearly. And I'm encouraging everybody to join me in that second group. But it's not easy because everything about the way our politics work, the way our media ecosystem works, the way the social media ecosystem works, it rewards anger and engagement and scorn and in-crowd, out-crowd kind of thinking. Well, you know what I've always found interesting is that as much as people rely on statistics and use statistics and data in their arguments, is people are very swayed by stories. You can tell a story about one person. I knew a guy who whatever. And the story and that person can carry a lot of weight, even though it's just one story about one person.

Starting point is 00:37:05 People are persuaded by that. Yeah. And the challenge is, I think, to combine the human stories with the statistics. Let me give you an example. So one of the things we're wrestling with at the moment with this pandemic is how bad is coronavirus for younger people? And the simple answer is, it's not that bad. I mean, it's killing a lot of people, but most of the people it kills are elderly. And if you're 20 years old, 30 years old, your chance that a case of COVID will kill you is very low. It's not zero. People do die, but it's very low. But then you go, okay, but there are other things that COVID could make you feel really sick for a long time. You might have extended symptoms for three months, for six months, for nine months.

Starting point is 00:37:56 You could lose your sense of taste and smell, all the joy in food and drink. you could lose all that, we don't know for how long. Now, that sort of second cut at the story, that's initially all based on personal experience. So you hear stories of people who have had these longer term symptoms, who have had this experience. We haven't got good statistics on it, we haven't got good data on it. So't got good data on it so the real challenge there is to say okay we've got a statistical perspective that's telling us how dangerous this is for different age groups and then we've got this more human perspective of this thing that's harder to measure long covid we call it here in the uk these extended symptoms how are we going to measure those how are we going to figure out whether they're they're just that one really eye-catching story that the media keep repeating?

Starting point is 00:38:46 Or is this happening to hundreds of thousands or millions of people? That's a great example of what I was just talking about. Because you said that people in their 20s rarely, rarely die from COVID. But it does happen. And so even though it is extremely rare, you could take the story of one person who died and sway the conversation and say, you know, how many people have to die? I mean, isn't one life too one too many? And the conversation gets pulled in another direction, even though the statistics are, it's extremely rare. Yeah, it's a really tricky one, because the facts are the facts, and we need to understand the

Starting point is 00:39:32 facts. And sometimes very hard for people to just accept a fact as a piece of information. We just assume it must be part of a political argument. A good friend of mine, one of the leading statisticians here in the UK, went on the evening news a couple of days ago because the news was reporting that 1,820 people had died of COVID that day. And that was a record for the UK. It's a smaller country than the US. And my friend went on the evening news and said, that's not true. That was just when the deaths were recorded. But it's artificially high because they gathered a load of deaths from Saturday and from Sunday. And by the time we actually got to today, they reported those deaths.

Starting point is 00:40:22 So the peak isn't that bad. It's more like maybe 1,200 deaths, not 1, those deaths. So the peak isn't that bad. It's more like maybe 1,200 deaths, not 1,800 deaths. And of course, people were just jumping on him saying, why are you defending this government? Why are you diminishing people's deaths? And his point, of course, was, I'm not diminishing anybody's deaths. You shouldn't need to exaggerate what's happening to see that it's a tragedy. 1,200 people is enough. You don't need to say it's 1,820. Let's stick to the truth because the truth is serious enough.

Starting point is 00:40:54 But people will always interpret claims in the light of the political argument. And it's not so easy, not so easy to get out of that loop. One of the arguments I'm making is, it's really hard to think clearly about the world when you're in that mode, when you're angry, when you're sad, when you're feeling this proves I was right all along, when you're trying to persuade someone else. You yourself are becoming stupider because you're getting stuck in that argument. But it's only human to be in that situation. So my first piece of advice is just to stop for a moment and notice your emotional reactions to the newspaper headlines, to the statistical claims that are being made. You can't think clearly if you're

Starting point is 00:41:43 feeling a strong emotional reaction of any kind. You need to calm down. It doesn't take very long. Three seconds is usually enough for me to go, oh, hang on a minute. This particular claim, this really got me going. I'm angry or I'm upset or I'm amused. Just give it three seconds and notice.

Starting point is 00:42:02 And then I'm not saying reject your emotions or suppress your emotions, but I am saying notice your emotions. The moment you notice them, you're already on the road to thinking more clearly. information bias thing that people talk about where I will hear a statistic and filter it through my beliefs and it will confirm what I already believe. People do that all the time. And then people also, when they present statistics, will couch them when they say things like only 20 percent of people or a whopping 98 percent of people. They couch it in terms that my God, how do you not see what I see? Yeah, the final chapter of the book is actually about two great economists, one of whom is completely unable to change his mind, and the other one is able to turn on a dime. And their personal stories, I think, are fascinating. I love writing about these guys and talking about these guys. Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes, these great early 20th century economists. But

Starting point is 00:43:16 what really struck me is they basically made similar mistakes, but Irving Fisher's mistake completely ruined him financially and ruined his reputation. Whereas Keynes made the same mistake and he just walked away laughing because he was able to recognise he'd made a mistake and back out of it, change his mind. And a lot of that was about how they were interpreting the new information that was coming in, whether they were just dismissing anything that didn't fit and grabbing onto anything that did fit, or whether they were willing to let new facts change their views. And I talk about some of the latest data that we've got on forecasters, and the best forecasters are not the ones who get it right first time.

Starting point is 00:44:05 The best forecasters are the ones who are constantly asking themselves, what if I'm wrong? What have I not considered? What have I missed? Whose perspective have I missed? So they are working really hard to avoid confirmation bias. And I think it is something you have to work quite hard to avoid because our brains are lazy.

Starting point is 00:44:26 So confirmation bias, very important. The joke is, of course, now I've heard about confirmation bias. I see it everywhere I look, but yeah, we need to watch out for it. There's also seemingly a problem that when, in this country anyway, where everybody's yelling at each other and no one's very polite anymore about politics, that confirmation bias, the yelling itself is confirmation bias. That because you're yelling and screaming at me, it just proves I'm right. Because all you can do is yell and scream and I'm very grounded in my beliefs. And the other side thinks the same thing. So there's got to be a language that people can talk in that puts that aside and looks at the facts,

Starting point is 00:45:13 but it just doesn't seem to be human nature to be able to do that, I guess. It is really hard and I think it's particularly hard at the moment because so many things have become polarized. One of the things I propose is to just to constantly try to maintain a spirit of curiosity. To say, I actually want to understand what's going on in the world. Not who's up and who's down, not who's right and who's wrong, but first let me understand. And then once I I've understood it's of course absolutely fine to take a side and the curious thing is if you start um you for example you're in an argument with somebody about uh I don't know a cap and trade system to fight climate change something like that if you

Starting point is 00:45:58 say just so I understand could you just explain to me exactly how a cap and trade system is supposed to work? Just run through all the mechanical details. What you find is that sort of request tends to really cool down the argument, bring people closer together. They often realize they were yelling at each other about something they didn't even understand. And if the person can't explain to you what a cap and trade scheme is, well, they may learn something by their failure to explain. And if they can explain it to you, well, you're going to learn something. So curiosity, a very, very powerful thing. And just asking why and how, rather than, you know, who's good and who's bad. People are seemingly so skeptical and distrusting of

Starting point is 00:46:44 statistics that even with the best argument, it does seem that some people just won't believe it. They just's very easy to do that because, you know, no evidence is perfect, no statistic is perfect. So you can always find a reason to reject it, you can always find a reason to doubt. So I think that's a big problem. If you can move past it and start going, ah, I want to understand this statistic a bit more and ask some genuine open-minded questions, I think you get past that reflexive cynicism very quickly. And the questions are often not super complex. They're questions like, ah, so you say that 28% of people have harbored suicidal thoughts. Okay, that sounds bad. Is that number going up or down?

Starting point is 00:47:47 Is it worse now than it was 10 years ago? Can you show me the time trend? Not prove it, not I don't believe you, but tell me more. I want to understand this. And suicidal thoughts, do we know how that was measured? That's interesting. Do we know, is it different in different countries? Those sorts of questions, like what is even the definition of a suicidal thought? Those sorts of questions give me the context, explain to me how this was gathered, rather than prove it. I don't believe it. You get a much better conversation, but you're also going to get much smarter as the person asking the questions. Because if you ask real questions and you get real answers, not only are you having a real conversation, but you're also gaining real insight about the world.

Starting point is 00:48:34 But why would I do all of this? Why would I care to go find other points of view? You know, my life goes better when I find things that confirm that I'm right. It doesn't seem to be a whole lot of fun to go find things that prove I'm wrong. And to what end? I mean, to what end does it serve? Well, I think that being wiser about the world and being calmer about the world is an end in itself. But I think it's also surprisingly addictive to try to understand where the other side are coming from, to try to really figure out why they're thinking all of

Starting point is 00:49:13 those things that seem to you to be so dumb. Are they really so stupid and so evil? And it's just a reward to that sense of curiosity. They do say that the cure for boredom is curiosity, and there is no cure for curiosity, and that's what I found. When you start asking these questions and being calmer about things, you just start to learn so much about the world. And once you've started learning stuff about the world

Starting point is 00:49:39 rather than just shouting at people, it becomes really difficult to stop. It's a habit that's hard to break, thankfully. Well, this has been one of those conversations that I think makes you really think about statistics and data and how to really get to the truth rather than just all the yelling and screaming and see I'm right and you're wrong. Tim Harford's been my guest. He has been called the best popular economics writer in the world. He's written several books and the latest is called The Data Detective, 10 Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics. There's a link to that book in the

Starting point is 00:50:16 show notes. Thanks, Tim. Thanks for coming on. Not at all. Thank you, Michael. Great to talk to you. No matter how old you are, I bet there's been a time where you thought, maybe something is wrong with your memory. And if you've ever worried that your memory isn't as sharp as you think it should be, ask yourself three questions. How much stress am I under? Am I getting enough sleep? And was I really paying attention? According to memory expert Scott Hagwood,

Starting point is 00:50:47 mental stress makes it very difficult for your memory to hold information. So the more you can reduce the stress in your life, the better your memory. Same thing with sleep. If you're tired, you can't focus or concentrate, the information doesn't stick. And you can't remember anything if you're not paying attention. So maybe you don't remember because you just aren't all that interested. One thing that really helps memory is high emotions. Anytime you get emotionally involved, your memory gets better.

Starting point is 00:51:17 That's why we remember things like exactly where we were on 9-11. It was so emotional that the memory will stay with us forever. And that is something you should know. If you enjoy this podcast and you want to show your support, simply share it with someone you know. Help us grow our audience. It means a lot. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook,

Starting point is 00:51:47 where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair

Starting point is 00:52:11 form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook 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

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Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How to Be Ready for Your Big Moment & Making Sense of Statistics

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