Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How to Fix Negative Behaviors In 4 Seconds & The Fascinating History of Halloween

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Starting point is 00:00:17 You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Today on Something You Should Know, when you go to the movies, what's the best seat in the house? I'll tell you that. Plus, we often avoid taking the blame when things go wrong. But maybe we should. We try to avoid blame because we believe that we will be more credible and reliable and trustworthy if we didn't make these mistakes.

Starting point is 00:00:53 But the truth is, not owning the mistakes is what makes us untrustworthy and unreliable and uncredible. Also, are you more likely to get struck by lightning if you're holding an umbrella? And where do our Halloween customs come from, like trick-or-treating? People think that trick-or-treat is very old. I hear this misconception a lot that it goes back to ancient Celtic practices, that the Druids dressed up. No, it really is less than 100 years old. It began as an American custom. All this today on Something You Should Know. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines.

Starting point is 00:01:36 Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter 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 hi welcome to something you should know so i just got finished moving which has been

Starting point is 00:02:21 which has been a sometimes grueling event over the past month, and I'm sure if you've ever moved, you know what I mean about the stress of moving. But now I finally feel like I'm in my new home and feel like it is home and things are getting back to normal again, so much so that I went out to the movies the other night, and it got me to thinking, is there really a best seat in the house in the movie theater? I know people have preferences. Some people like to sit close. Some people like to sit back.

Starting point is 00:02:49 But is there objectively a best seat in the house? Well, yes, according to the THX director of global technology. While a theater is being built, the sound is calibrated by taking microphone measurements. And while the goal is to make the experience the best for every seat in the house, the closer you can get to where they tested, the better your seat will be. And the seat where the microphones are placed is typically in the center of the row, about two-thirds of the way back from the screen. This is, essentially, the best seat in the house. If that seat's taken, you're advised to fan out to a center seat closer to the screen.

Starting point is 00:03:32 In other words, move forward in the theater, not back. The closer you are, the more you increase your horizontal viewing angle. In other words, the screen fills up your field of vision the closer you get. Of course, you can get too close, and you know that if you've ever had to sit in the front row because all the other seats were sold out, that the front row, it fills up so much of your field of vision that it can be hard to watch. And that is something you should know. My first guest today is someone I spoke with some years ago, and many of the things that he said to me back then I remembered and found fascinating, useful, and liberating.

Starting point is 00:04:13 One of the things he talks about is that so often we do things or we don't do things because we fear the feeling it will create inside us. It will make us uncomfortable, which is in many cases not a good reason to do something or not do something. This is really powerful stuff, and it's really hard to explain in the abstract. So let's get specific with my guest, Peter Bregman. Peter is a consultant and highly sought-after speaker. He's the CEO of a consulting firm called Bregman Partners, and he's author of several books, one of which is called

Starting point is 00:04:49 Four Seconds, All the Time You Need to Replace Counterproductive Habits with Ones That Really Work. Hi, Peter. Welcome. It's great to have you on Something You Should Know. Thanks so much. It's really nice to be here, Mike. So let me ask you to start by talking about what I was saying in the intro about how we do things or don't do things for fear of the way it might make us feel. One of the ways I like to think about this is think about a conversation that you're not having, an important conversation you know you should have, right? But you're not having. Can you

Starting point is 00:05:23 think of one? Sure. You don't have to tell me what it is. Now consider why you're not having it. And I am willing to bet that you know everything you need to know in order to have this conversation. I bet you're perfectly skilled at having the conversation. And I bet you have had time and opportunity. And those are the things that we usually solve for when we're trying to act, right? As we solve for knowledge, I need to know something, I need to develop a skill. But those are not the things that get in our way. The things that stop us from moving forward,

Starting point is 00:05:53 what's preventing you from having this difficult conversation is there's something you don't want to feel. That if you have that hard conversation, you might have to feel shame or anger, or you might have to feel that you're hurting someone, or they might come back at you and you might feel their defensiveness or your own defensiveness or that weird passive aggressiveness that comes, you know, after a difficult conversation. And because you don't want to feel all of that stuff, you don't want to feel it, then you don't do the thing that would make you feel it. So you don't have the hard conversation. And if you are willing to feel everything, and this is what emotional courage is, the courage to feel, if you're willing to feel the anger and the hurt

Starting point is 00:06:35 and the passive aggressiveness and the defensiveness, and if you're willing to feel everything, then you can do anything. Then nothing stops you from moving forward so leading with emotional courage is about starting off with emotional courage you know like what's your well you know you're you're jumping off the first foot of i am willing to feel everything and then nothing can stop you well the the reason people typically don't want to feel those things yes we don't want to feel those things but we also we don't want to feel those things, but we also don't necessarily want the outcome that comes from feeling those things that, you know, the relationship may end, you might get fired, you, it's not just the feeling, it's the outcome from the conversation.

Starting point is 00:07:18 Well, and what I would say is our fear is not the outcome, but how we will feel if we have that outcome. And here's the problem. The problem is that we make ourselves very small because we are so afraid of any number of things that we might feel. And almost anybody who goes through all of the things you're afraid of will tell you it's worth it on the other side. But because we're afraid of those things, we get smaller and smaller and smaller and we take fewer and fewer actions. So because I'm afraid of what it might feel like to fail, I don't take a risk because I'm afraid

Starting point is 00:07:54 of what it might feel like to be rejected. Then I don't reach out and try to connect with you. And as a result, I'm getting smaller and smaller. And so, yeah, I'm afraid of the consequence. The consequence of my reaching out and connecting with you is that you might reject me and that would feel terrible. The consequence of my reaching out to you is you might actually accept me and then I might have to show up and I don't know how that would feel. Or you might connect with me and then abandon me and I don't want to feel that. And so there's all these reasons to not reach out and connect, all of them having to do with things I don't want to feel. But ultimately what I long for

Starting point is 00:08:29 is the feeling of connection. And I'm not going to get that unless I risk feeling rejection and abandonment. And it's why we often don't get the things that we most long for, because we long for things that are risky for us. Because on the other side of getting the feeling that we want is the risk of getting a ton of feelings we don't want. Does that make sense? Sure. One of the things I remember you talking about, it's also the title of one of your books, is about four seconds. And I think this is some of the best advice people could ever get. So talk about four seconds and four seconds that really could change your life. Yeah, that we act habitually in our lives. We are often moving very fast and we are responding or reacting out of our amygdala, the emotional center of our brain,

Starting point is 00:09:20 as opposed to the neocortex, which is the sort of thinking part of our brain. And so we react. So you yell at me and I yell back. And we have often very counterproductive habitual responses. And they don't work. Like if you yell at me, yelling back is probably in at least 80% of the cases the wrong thing to do. But it might be what I'm habitually responding to do, because by the way, there's a reason, like given the conversation we just had about feeling, which is if you yell at me, I feel small and vulnerable and at risk. And if I yell back, I feel strong and powerful and in control. And so I'm going to do

Starting point is 00:10:00 that as a gut reaction, even though it might get me the exact opposite outcome that I'm trying to get to. And four seconds is about slowing down your response just by a moment, literally by four seconds. In fact, you really only need a second or two to subvert an unproductive reaction. And it's four seconds to breathe and to subvert our immediate response and to ask one particular question, which is what I think is really important, is what is the outcome I want in this situation? It's very counterintuitive because I wouldn't be reacting if not for the past, right? But I'm suggesting that we ask the question about the future and react to the past by invoking a future that we want to create. So it's counterproductive, it's counterintuitive because again, I wouldn't have to react if not for the past, uh, the catalyze my action, but I'm in effect asking us to react to the future instead of react to the past, right? And to ask the question, what is the outcome I want? And then to make

Starting point is 00:11:05 a choice about how to act based on that outcome, based on the future you want to create. Why is that so hard to do? Well, because we're in the heat of the moment. I mean, Dan Ariely, who wrote Predictably Irrational and a bunch of other books, and he's done some super interesting research. And the bottom line of that research is in the heat of the moment, we do things we would rather not have done. And here's one way that I think about it. If you go to a buffet and you're in the moment at the buffet and there's a ton of great food there, what is the likelihood that you're going to overeat? And for most of us, it's pretty high, right? And that is because in the face of unlimited options, we often make poor choices. And here's the big difference, which is the food I want to eat in

Starting point is 00:12:00 the moment is different than the food I want to have eaten by the end of the day. So I look back at the end of the day and go, wow, I wish I really didn't have that brownie ice cream cake. But in the moment, I really wanted it. So that's why we often make poor choices is because in the moment, I want to regain my ground. And if you yell at me, I'm going to yell back. Or in the moment, I might want to watch a YouTube video of a kitten instead of working on this hard writing problem I have. So in the moment, I want to do something that is different than what I want to have done by the end of the day. And I tend to prioritize my present self over my future self. So that's natural. And it's why we often make poor choices in the heat of the moment. And we need to subvert those choices. We need to create just a little bit, just enough distance between

Starting point is 00:12:55 ourselves and the moment in order to say, what is the choice that would really serve me in the long term? Yeah. Peter Bregman is my guest. He is a consultant and he's author of the book Four Seconds, all the time you need to replace counterproductive habits with ones that really work. 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

Starting point is 00:13:43 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. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world,

Starting point is 00:14:16 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.

Starting point is 00:14:56 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 Peter, another thing I remember you saying some time ago that stuck with me that's very counterintuitive, and that is this idea of the benefits of assuming the blame, because we so often don't want to take the blame for fear that if we're blamed for something that that will have dire consequences, depending on the situation, when in fact, that tends not to happen. So talk

Starting point is 00:15:39 about that. It's a very intuitive thing to avoid the blame. I walked into the kitchen and I saw my son who was 10 at the time and he had chocolate literally all over his face. I don't know how he got it on his forehead, but it was all over. It was really all over his face. And I walk into the kitchen and he looks at me and I don't say anything. He just looks at me and he says, I didn't eat any chocolate. And, and it's like, it's that intuitive. And I said to him, you know, go to the bathroom, look in the mirror, look at your face and then come back and tell me the same thing. And he goes in to the bathroom, comes back out, you know, 30 seconds later, sparkling clean face. And he said, I didn't eat any chocolate. And, and, you know, the truth is like, I didn't blame him for eating chocolate, but he knew

Starting point is 00:16:30 he had done something that he believed I would not want him to do. And the immediate response to that is to try to avoid blame. And here's the thing about avoiding blame. You are the only one who you think you're fooling because everybody else knows when I sit in a meeting and everybody's going around blaming everybody else for problems that they think they're doing that because they think it will make them more trustworthy and reliable if they are not at fault. Right. So we try to avoid blame because we believe that we will be more credible and reliable and trustworthy if we didn't make these mistakes. But the truth is not owning the mistakes is what makes us

Starting point is 00:17:13 untrustworthy and unreliable and uncredible. And as soon as we say, hey, I did this, let me tell you what I'm going to do to fix it. That is the moment that we become trustworthy, incredible and reliable. But we're afraid of that moment. And we're afraid of that moment from like the time when we were three years old, and we got in trouble for, you know, our hand in the cookie jar. So it's actually a very human response and fear and very ineffective. To the point you think where maybe even taking the blame for something that wasn't your fault is a good idea? I think you should know. I don't think you should make stuff up. I think what you should do is own everything you can possibly own. So almost always,

Starting point is 00:18:04 you know, nothing's all your fault. And probably there are ways in which you contributed. I don't know. I mean, I, I, I, I, I mean, I don't know what examples to use here, but, but I would say that, you know, oftentimes we err on the side of not owning things if we can get away with it. And what I would say is you're almost better off. You're almost always better off saying, hey, you know what? I played a part in that. Let me tell you the part that I can see that I played in and how I would do it differently. Everything you talk about seems so counterintuitive than what we believe or what we've somehow come to believe or we've been taught or we've experienced. And what else falls into that category of things you talk about that really kind of gets you to think, well, wait a minute.

Starting point is 00:18:56 Maybe I need to rethink how I'm approaching everything. You know, it's sort of an interesting question, because I don't think of, I mean, I think a lot of the stuff I talk about turns out to be counterintuitive. But I don't think of it in those terms so much. I think, I think we tend to act in ways that we are habitually trained to act that have worked for us in the past. You know, a friend of mine, and I don't know if he's been on your show or not, but Marshall Goldsmith, who I like a lot, uh, who wrote what got you here, won't get you there. I love the title of that book because it's very, very true. There are so many things that have actually helped us

Starting point is 00:19:40 to get to where we are. And I mean this like big picture and little picture. Like there's a way in which I continue to act as if I'm trying to survive the Holocaust, right? And my mother was in the Holocaust, a family that was in the Holocaust beyond her. And there's a way in which that's ingrained in me. And there's ways in which I continue to act in that way. So I'm not as generous as I could be, or I hold on to things a little bit tighter, and I don't trust as much as I'd like to trust, either myself or other people. And I could see that. And those things actually served us as a family, you know, 70 years ago. But now it doesn't really serve me so much, but it's very hard to let it go. And that's everything from, you know, a certain scrappiness

Starting point is 00:20:34 I might feel like I have to have in order to succeed to, you know, to these bigger things. Like, you know, like what, like, I'll give you another example. I see this all the time. People succeed in organizations when they're more junior as individual contributors. That's how we get really successful because you asked me to do something and I deliver and I do it and I'm capable and I deliver it. And, you know, I might not do it totally on my own because people talk a lot about teams, but ultimately I need to know what I'm responsible for and I need to be able to deliver on it. And that makes me successful as a junior person. It makes every one of us successful as a junior person. Suddenly, we're in leadership roles and it's like continuing to do everything ourselves, even to an excellent degree, to an excellent standard, will lead us to fail. So we have to shift how we're approaching the way we show up in the world. And we have to literally move away from what has made us incredibly successful in the past

Starting point is 00:21:39 in order to meet the particular needs of the time right now. And that's challenging. It's counterintuitive. But it's counterintuitive because the intuition is to do what's been successful for us in the past. What I try to do, to the extent that I tend to be counterintuitive in some of the suggestions that I make. It's because I really try to look at saying not what has worked for me in the past, but I tend to be wary of what has worked for me in the past in order to look towards what might work for me in the future and what might work for my future me as opposed to my past me.

Starting point is 00:22:29 And that's not a particularly intuitive way of acting, but it's one that works much more successfully. So you came up with a strategy and a book called 18 Minutes that deals with the problem of not getting the things done that you want to get done. And so talk about that strategy. 18 Minutes is a process. And I wrote 18 minutes because I was having a hard time getting my most important work done. And I would have these days where I worked nonstop. And then at the end of the day, I would say I was busy all day, but I didn't get my most important work done.

Starting point is 00:22:59 And I think a lot of people were having the same feeling. And I read a whole bunch of books on time management to try to address that. And what I found is that they all were based on the same myth of time management, which is that if I only follow someone's process or label files a certain way, or, you know, follow this timeline, I would get everything done. And the truth is, I'm not going to get everything done. And that myth leads us to sort of overwhelm and counter productivity. The truth is, I have to be strategic and intentional about what I do and what I don't do. And the don't do part is really important, meaning I've got to make decisions. I've got to use my calendar as my working to-do list, not my to-do list that serves to intake

Starting point is 00:23:43 everything that has to be done and I've got stuff on there that's been on there for six months. That's not my working document. My working document is my calendar because my calendar has limited time and space in it and it forces me to make choices about where I'm going to spend my time. So the 18-minute process itself is actually kind of riffing off of everything we've been talking about. The first five minutes of the day is to look at, I keep a certain kind of to-do list. It's called

Starting point is 00:24:09 the six box to-do list, but to look at it and ask myself the question, what are the most important things to achieve today that are on this list? And I've got to then, the first five minutes of my day, take things off of my to-do list and literally put them on my calendar. And if I've got no space on my calendar because everything's already filled up, I still have to ask that question, is this where I should be spending my time? Am I going to get my most important work done if I follow through on everything that's on my calendar? And it's about transferring things on my calendar and then using my calendar as that working document. So that's five minutes in the morning. And then I set my watch to beep every hour for a minute. And in that minute, I pause and I breathe and I ask myself two questions. What do I most need to be doing right now? And who do I most want to be right now?

Starting point is 00:25:01 Or I might ask it in the other way. I might ask, am I doing what I most need to be doing right now? Am I being who I most want to be right now? And it's because it's so easy to get derailed throughout the day. So this is a way of pausing and asking ourselves the questions that can get us back intact, back on track from the tangents we may have allowed ourselves to go on to. I mean, you know, talking about a YouTube video of a kitten, you, you, you, you know, you set out to do something in the beginning of the hour and your watch beeps, and that's what you're looking at, uh, uh, at the end of the hour. And you're like, wow, how did I get there? Don't even try to figure it out. Just get back on track.

Starting point is 00:25:36 And then the last five minutes of the day is to sum it up and to ask yourself what worked and what didn't work. What do I want to do differently tomorrow? Is there anybody that I want to thank or give feedback to or connect with at the end of the day? So it sort of wraps up your day in a bow. It allows you to leave your work so that you can, you know, be freed up to be with family or be the kind of human being you want to be after work. And the whole thing takes about 18 minutes across the whole day. Well, it's always fun talking to you, I guess, because I always like counterintuitive advice, and your advice makes so much sense, and yet it flies in the face of so much other advice that we hear. Thanks for coming on. Peter Bregman has been my guest. He is a consultant and speaker and

Starting point is 00:26:22 author of several books, including Four Seconds, All the Time You Need to Replace the Counterproductive Habits with Ones That Really Work. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Peter. Excellent. Thanks so much. It was really fun doing this with you. 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.

Starting point is 00:26:54 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.

Starting point is 00:27:27 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. with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong.

Starting point is 00:28:14 And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. I always think of Halloween as the beginning of the holiday season in the sense that once Halloween is over, then the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season can begin. But Halloween itself is a real holiday. People dress up, they celebrate, they spend money. And in some places,

Starting point is 00:28:52 Halloween is a really big deal. Where I live in California, there's a street about a mile away from where I live that the people go all out. I mean, the houses are decorated incredibly, and people come from all over the place to see this. And the street is packed. This one block of the street is packed, wall-to-wall people every Halloween. So where did this all come from? What are the origins of Halloween, and how did it evolve into what it is now? Lisa Morton has been fascinated with Halloween for some time. She's written several books on the subject of Halloween and related topics, including the Halloween Encyclopedia. Hi, Lisa. Thanks for coming on. Hey, hi. It's great to be here. So where did Halloween begin? I've heard there are several things that influence what we now call Halloween.

Starting point is 00:29:43 You wrote the Encyclopedia on Halloween. So where did this all start? I think the real beginning of it is an ancient Celtic holiday called Samhain. And that was the Celts' New Year's celebration. So it was a day that they thought the veil between worlds was at its thinnest. And they thought all kinds of things could cross over that through that veil on that night. And they believed in evil fairies called the she and they thought that the dead could cross over. And so that's kind of where the holiday, I think, gets its sort of more macabre side. And then when the Catholic Church came along and wanted to convert those Celts, so the holiday also has a little bit of the All Saints and All Souls Day, which the Catholic Church added later on because they hadn't been completely successful in converting the Celts with November 1st. And All Souls Day is a little bit spooky, too, because it was a day that people would pray for the souls of their loved ones

Starting point is 00:30:45 trapped in purgatory. So the beginning of what we think of when we think of Halloween, when did that start? Probably around the 16th century. That, I think, is the earliest references that I have found to it in terms of it being Halloween and not Samhain. And the first few references that you can find to it are with parties, people celebrating. Bobbing for apples was a ritual that was in there right from the beginning. And then a little bit later on, you get a lot of the sort of telling ghost stories and fortune telling, that kind of thing. And when did the idea of trick-or-treat and the phrase trick-or-treat, when did that all start? Oh, you know, this is funny because people think that trick-or-treat is very old. I hear this misconception a lot that it goes back to ancient

Starting point is 00:31:39 Celtic practices, that the Druids dressed up. No, it really is less than 100 years old. It began as an American custom. It came about in the late 1930s because up until that point in America, Halloween was being celebrated mainly by young boys who would go out and play pranks on that night. And the pranks had become so destructive by the 1930s that a lot of cities were considering banning Halloween. And fortunately, some of them were smart enough to realize that they would have more success by buying off those prank players. So they created this idea of parties and costuming and rewarding the kids with treats for not going out and committing those tricks. And the idea of going door to door and

Starting point is 00:32:26 saying trick or treat and expecting candy, that came when? We get the phrase trick or treat about 1927, and it actually started in Canada. But we don't get it combined with the whole you dress up in a costume, you go from door to door until really the late 30s. And even then it took a while to spread all the way across the country. It kind of got interrupted by World War II because of sugar rationing. And there just weren't a lot of treats to hand out. And then it really picks up and goes full throttle right after World War II. And that's when you get the companies coming in and saying,

Starting point is 00:33:08 hey, mom, you don't have to bake treats for these kids anymore. Here's prepackaged candy. And you don't have to make their costumes anymore. Here are pre-made costumes. So I would imagine that Halloween was a big boon to the candy industry. Oh, yeah. Gigantic. Before Trick or Treat, it was mainly in terms of candy, candy corn, which was invented around the turn of the last century. And there were some custom made candy containers, which are now major collectibles. But the candy element didn't really come in until till trick or treat. And then the companies like Hershey's and these guys came in and just realized that this was a fortune to be made. Although my favorite story about Halloween retailing is beer, not candy. Because back in the early 1980s, the Coors Beer Company was looking around and going, gosh, we wish we had our own Super Bowl Sunday. They

Starting point is 00:34:04 were lagging behind some of the other companies in beer sales. And they hit on the idea of Halloween. And up until then, Halloween hadn't really been promoted as like a major holiday for partying and beer consumption. And their first campaign did not do well. And then somebody was smart enough to say, hey, let's hire Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. And I think they hired her in something like 1986, and their sales went insane. And now Halloween is one of the biggest days of the year for beer consumption. And the idea of dressing up in costumes and masks and things, when did that really take hold? Yeah, the whole idea of costumings kind of goes back again to when people had to buy off these destructive pranksters who were costing cities

Starting point is 00:34:51 a lot of money because they had moved into the cities, they were breaking light fixtures, they were starting fires. And so this was the height of the Great Depression. People didn't have a lot of money to spend. So they would get together and they would do these things called house to house parties. And the idea was that each house would contribute something different to the overall party. And the first house would usually give the kids a really simple costume. It would be like a sheet over their head to be a ghost, or maybe just even some suit, smear it on their face, give them an old coat. They could be a hobo, that kind of thing. So that really is where the costuming part comes in. It was just something that kids always loved to do at parties. And the first costumes were not necessarily always

Starting point is 00:35:35 spooky. Like I said, they might be a pirate, they might be a hobo. They were occasionally a ghost. And sometimes they would even put on like a head toto-toe black leotard and be like a demon kind of character. One thing I've always thought is interesting is that characters like Dracula and Frankenstein, they have their own very specific origins. They were books and movies, and yet somehow they've gotten all swept up into the whole Halloween thing. So how did that happen? Well, I think it's probably a little bit fortunate coincidence that about the same time that Trick or Treat was starting to catch on was the heyday of the Universal Monsters. So you kind of had the monsters coming into it a little bit from the 30s, but it really took off in the early 60s when they syndicated all of the Universal Monster films to television. And kids were seeing these things just playing

Starting point is 00:36:32 endlessly on their television screens, and they started to merchandise the monsters more too. There's a whole thing that happens about that time that the author David Scow called monster culture, which was famous monsters of Filmland magazine and monster toys and monster costumes. So it really hit big in the 60s with the universal monsters. It does seem that Halloween has changed over the years, that if you talk to people who were trick-or-treating in the 60s and the 70s, I mean, trick-or-treating in the 60s and the 70s, I mean, trick-or-treating was a big deal.

Starting point is 00:37:05 And I think some people would argue that Halloween has lost some of its magic. Would you agree? Well, I would argue that it isn't so much that it's lost, it is that it's moved it to different areas. Around the 1970s is when we start to see adults reclaiming the holiday. I think maybe a lot of the baby boomers who grew up loving trick-or-treat decided to get much more interested in things like haunted attractions and decorating their yards and so forth. And so now we have this gigantic haunted attractions industry, which is a multi-billion dollar a year thing. And also we have people who are doing extravagant things with their yards. And Trick or Treat has moved into a little bit more of a localized thing, I think you'd say. Like, for example,

Starting point is 00:37:59 here in my part of Southern California, we have a couple of neighborhoods that are just unbelievably packed on Halloween night. All of the kids, their parents drive them to these neighborhoods. And, I mean, you can barely make your way down a street walking and forget driving through some of these neighborhoods on Halloween night. So it seems like it's become the kind of thing where not everybody participates as they used to, which is too bad. But I think it still happens. It's just, like I said, it has shifted a little bit more to the adult part of the consumer business, and it's shifted a little bit more to these regionalized areas. you've done on Halloween, are there things that you find particularly interesting or that other people find particularly interesting when you tell them about the holiday that maybe we don't know? I always like to talk about some of the contemporary urban legends. You know, the notion,

Starting point is 00:38:57 for example, of poison candy or razor blades in the apples is really an urban legend the truth is that there are almost no recorded incidents of anonymous psychos poisoning kids candy um the that particular urban legend dates back to a guy in the 70s named o'brien who was trying to kill his own kid and put arsenic in a pixie stick. So while it's probably a good idea to make sure that your kids' candies and so forth are safe on Halloween night, the truth is that that really is not a widespread problem. And yet you would think that probably has something to do with why fewer and fewer kids go trick-or-treating because of this scare of razor blades and poison, which, as you point out, virtually doesn't even exist.

Starting point is 00:39:50 Oh, I'm sure that plays into it, yeah. I always think of Halloween as a very American holiday or North American holiday. Or is Halloween something that's celebrated around the world, at least in some form or another? Well, that's a really good question to close on because I have seen it evolve gigantically just in the 15 years or so that I've been really researching it. Fifteen years ago, it was almost exclusively American with a little bit in Canada and the UK. It is now spread all over the world. I mean, just that fast, it is celebrated in almost every country in the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere, of course, the seasons are reversed, so they don't have this sort of seasonal association of pumpkins and harvest and all that. But it is catching on there now as well. And it's been amazing to watch it spread to places like mainland China. And one of the stories I read that I just loved about why it was popular in mainland China was that they have a celebration there called the Hungry Ghost Festival, which honors the spirits of their deceased loved ones who return home for

Starting point is 00:41:08 a few days, and usually it's July. And a lot of the young people are genuinely frightened by the Hungry Ghost Festival. I mean, they don't like the idea that, you know, Grandpa Ed is now coming in the front door. So they really loved Halloween because it represents the sort of fun side of being scared without this sort of literal, oh, the ghosts are coming home thing. It's always interesting and fun to hear the backstory of, well, of any holiday, because now knowing what you've explained, I think it makes celebrating the holiday more interesting and more fun. Lisa Morton has been my guest. She is a Halloween expert of sorts. She's written several books on

Starting point is 00:41:51 the subject and related topics, and one of her books is called The Halloween Encyclopedia, and you will find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you for coming on, Lisa. Hey, thanks a lot. This was really fun. While Halloween is the time of year to be scared of lots of things, there are some things that people are afraid of that you shouldn't be. And here are just a couple. For example, that big, hairy spider on the wall is going to jump on you. Well, it's not. Spiders don't jump, they crawl, except for one or two species that live in the forest. Spiders are never inclined to come after people. People are often afraid that some crazy person will push them onto the train tracks at a railroad station. Well, in 2009, out of 34 million passenger trips, only 17 people died, including those people who fell on the tracks by accident.

Starting point is 00:42:50 A train platform is actually a very safe place to be. People are afraid that they'll be struck by lightning if they carry an umbrella or a smartphone in their hand during a storm. Well, metal does not attract lightning, despite what people think. So if you get struck, it's because you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But it has nothing to do with what you're holding in your hand. And people are often afraid of elevators. For example, if it bounces when it stops at your floor, people think there's something wrong and it's going to plummet. Well, it won't. Elevators don't fail. There are too many fail-safes in place.

Starting point is 00:43:28 And that is something you should know. You can reach me anytime at my email address with questions or comments or whatever you like. My email address is mike at somethingyoushouldknow.net. And do me a favor, share this podcast with a friend. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, 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.

Starting point is 00:44:06 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 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.

Starting point is 00:44:31 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, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How to Fix Negative Behaviors In 4 Seconds & The Fascinating History of Halloween

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