Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How to Learn Anything Better and Faster & Are People Inherently Good or Evil?

Episode Date: May 2, 2020

Have you ever heard of misophonia? It’s a real thing. If you have it, that means that certain sounds – like someone chewing their food with their mouth open or slurping their soup – drive you crazy. But people who have misaphonia also have something else going for them that is actually pretty good. I’ll explain what that is. http://www.newsy.com/videos/hate-chewing-sounds-call-yourself-creative-then-just-deal/ Have you ever wanted to learn something new like a foreign language or a musical instrument? Maybe you didn’t bother because it would just take too long to get proficient at it. Well, maybe according to Josh Kaufman, author of the book The First 20 Hours (http://amzn.to/2ix9SUN). According to Josh, what you do in those early hours of learning can really accelerate you learning curve. If you ever stay at hotels you need to be aware of a scam that is amazingly easy to fall for if you don’t know what it is. So, I’ll fill you in. http://www.thedailyberries.com/beware-new-hotel-scam-checking-hotel/ Are people inherently good – or not? That is a question that has been debated by philosophers for centuries. And it is something explored in the book, The Fear Factor (http://amzn.to/2gEDvzm). Researcher Abigail March is the author and she is also an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Georgetown University. She explores what makes some of us altruistic and others callous and uncaring. It’s a fascinating discussion with a silver lining. This Week’s Sponsors  -Best Fiends. Download this fun mobile game for free on the Apple App Store or Google Play. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, if the sound of people chewing their food drives you crazy, that could be really good news for you. Then, if you want to learn something new, it may not take as long as you might think. You can go from knowing absolutely nothing to be very, very good at something in a very short period of time. The threshold that I recommend is about 20 hours of practice.

And so it really is easier than it feels. Then, if you ever stay in hotels, you need to be aware of a new scam that's really easy to fall for if you don't know about it. And are people inherently good or evil? Well, sort of depends on the person. I think that's a really important message that there's no one human nature, but it's rare for people to have no capacity to care about others. For most people, care for other people's welfare is something that's legitimate and real and very much part of what motivates them. All this today on Something You Should Know.

Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy,

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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 the program. I appreciate you listening and being part of our ever-growing audience to this podcast. And if you know someone who might enjoy some of the things we talk about here, I hope you'll consider sharing it with them. First up today, do you hate the sound of someone chewing their food or crunching on potato chips or slurping their drink? If so, you may be suffering from something called misophonia.

It's a heightened sensitivity to certain noises. It's estimated that about 20% of the population has some degree of misophonia. Interestingly, researchers at Northwestern University found that those who are hypersensitive to particular sounds also tend to be more creative than people who are not sensitive to those sounds. The study showed that the more affected people were by sounds, the higher their likelihood that they would score well on tests that gauge creativity. In other words, the more someone's loud chewing drives you nuts,

the more of a genius you may be. The recommendation to deal with misophonia is to learn to deal with it. Experts say that putting on headphones or leaving the room every time somebody chews their food or crunches on a potato chip requires that you stop engaging in that relationship, which is oftentimes not a good thing. So it is better to learn to tolerate the noise, irritating though it may be.

And that is something you should know. You've probably heard of Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers and the theory that it takes 10,000 hours to master something. Which is great, except who has 10,000 hours to master something? That's 8 hours a day for 3 and a half years. So what if you could get good at something in just 20 hours? You might not be a master at it, but you could at least master the basics. It turns out that the first 20 hours are critical, according to Josh Kaufman, whether you're learning a new language or photography or a musical instrument or anything.

Josh Kaufman is the author of a book called The First 20 Hours, in which he talks about what he calls rapid skill acquisition and the research that proves it works. Hey Josh, you know, I think a lot of people would like to learn something new, but figure, you know, it's just going to take too long. I don't have the time. So how did you come up with this idea of learning something in 20 hours? I run a business. My wife runs a business. And so I decided if I could only put in half an hour or 45 minutes every day, I wanted to know how to practice in a way that helped me improve as effectively and efficiently as possible. And the research behind that process became the first 20 hours of my new book.

So I would think that how someone learns and their ability to learn at a certain speed has more to do with personality, style, and that kind of personal style, and that kind of thing thing rather than any kind of technique? You'd be surprised. There's actually quite a bit of research on this topic. It's usually what a person believes about learning itself. So there's a great set of research by Dr. Carol Dwecker of Stanford University, and it talks about what she calls two mindsets, a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. So if you believe you have to be naturally talented at something in order to do it, you're

not going to improve very quickly, if at all, because you might just skip that skill because you believe you're not good at it. If you believe that your mind is a muscle, and the more you use it, the more it grows, and the more you practice, the better you become at something. You tend to improve very, very quickly. And the research says that the latter interpretation is the true one. If you sit down and practice anything, no matter who you are or what you're currently capable of doing, you will be much better at it, regardless of what it is or who you are. So in a sense, it's somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, yes. And what's interesting is some of this research

involves taking school children and priming them with either interpretation, right? So they'll split a class in half and tell half of them one thing and tell half of them the other. And the children who are taught that if you practice something, you will always improve at it, outperform the group who are primed with natural talent every single time. It really is a matter of a belief, and it's a matter of sitting down and doing work in a way

that's designed to help you improve. Which brings up the issue of, and one of the reasons perhaps that people don't do things, is even if what you say is so, that you could do better at anything, if you're not interested particularly in it, you're not going to do it. Absolutely. So being fascinated about something in particular will always help you learn it much faster. Now, there are certain circumstances, like, for example, learning something in a business context. So my first book, The Personal MBA, is all about what you need to know about business in order to do well. And topics like, for example, finance and accounting and bookkeeping are not always the most intrinsically fascinating things to study, right? But they're very important.

It's important to be able to use numbers to make better decisions. And so in those cases, it's much better to focus on the instrumental result. What are you going to get from it? What is that going to be able to help you do? So if you're able to learn finance in a way that helps you improve your business to make more money to build a fantastic new house, for example, it's much easier to get interested in the process of learning how to generate that particular result. I've talked to many an entrepreneur and business person who said, you know, coming up, I learned how to do all this stuff and now I don't have to do it, but it was important for me to learn it.

Well, if you're not going to do it, why was it important to learn it? Because don't you have to do something to stay proficient at it? Not necessarily. So in a business context, it's helpful to know all of the different parts of the business. So for example, if you're hiring an accountant or you're hiring a bookkeeper, knowing enough about the topic to ask good questions can help you find a really great bookkeeper or help you weed out the folks who are not going to be so good. This is actually a really big issue as software becomes a more important part of business. People want to hire programmers. But if you don't know enough about programming to ask good questions, you don't know who to look for, and you don't know who to hire. So I'm a big fan of developing skills in many different areas, and then either using that knowledge yourself or using it to find people who are really good

and can help you get the results that you're looking for. So now understanding that if I believe I can do it and I practice doing it, I'll do it. Is there a technique to do it quicker and better? There is. And most of the technique revolves around doing the things that help you improve most directly and getting rid of all of the things that are wastes of time or distractions or frustrations. So the method is very simple. The first step is just to decide what you want. What do you want to be able to do? Why are you doing this in the first place?

What is it going to look like when you're done? That's called a target performance level. So make that very specific. What do you want to be able to do? Then you deconstruct that into the smallest possible sub-skills. So instead of trying to practice everything at once, you break it down into very small parts that you can focus on individually. And if you want to improve the fastest, you focus on improving the most important subskills first, the things that you're going to use all the time. And to do that, you do just a little bit of research. So pick up a bunch of books or pick up some different resources. And you're not digging deep into those. You're previewing them. You're skimming them.

And what you're looking for are the ideas and the concepts and the techniques that come up over and over and over again. Because that's a good indication that there's something fundamentally important there. You should probably focus on learning that first. I'm speaking with Josh Kaufman. He is author of the best-selling book, The First 20 Hours. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared.

It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for.

Check out Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, 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. So Josh, since it's the title of your book, what is it that is so special about those first 20 hours? You know, it's funny. There's been about seven decades of research in cognitive psychology about the process of skill acquisition. And either doing things physically with your body or picking up cognitive skills, certain ways of thinking or looking at the world. And what every single study has found is that the rate of learning or the rate of improvement

is fastest during those first critical early hours. So if you can get yourself to sit down and practice, every bit of research that we have about this topic says, if we can get ourselves to practice, we improve really quickly. The trick is getting ourselves to sit down and practice in the first place. And if we can get ourselves to sit down and practice, getting through those first few hours, which are always intimidating and frustrating, if we can get ourselves to practice long enough, we improve dramatically in a very short period of time. That's what our brains are optimized to do in a very real sense. And by not doing it or being intimidated by doing it,

is that what turns a lot of people off or keeps them from trying? Is it that it just seems so monumental, it seems so different than what I know, maybe I'll just go do the dishes. Yeah, exactly. Or watch TV or surf the internet, right? That's easy. Yeah, so what holds people back are a couple of things. The first is feeling like the skill is too big. I'm not sure where to start. I don't know where to begin. This looks complicated. This looks scary. I'm not sure if it's worth it. That's a big, big barrier. The second is, let's say you get to the point where you start to dabble around in it. You may put an hour or two in. Usually, in the early parts, those first few hours, you're terrible, and you know you're

terrible. And that's, you know, none of us like the feeling of feeling stupid. And so that's what I call the frustration barrier. It's being so frustrated about your inability to do something that it's more comfortable to stop doing it and go watch TV or surf the internet. And so this process is really designed to overcome those barriers as much as possible, so to make it not intimidating, to make those early hours that are typically frustrating as non-frustrating as possible. Because if you can persist long enough, and the threshold that I recommend is about 20 hours of practice, you can go from knowing absolutely nothing to be very, very good at

something in a very short period of time. And so it really is easier than it feels at the beginning. How important, though, is aptitude? I mean, I've learned a few new things. I just started, you know, doing some videos and started playing on video editing software, and it turns out I'm pretty good at it, and I picked it up pretty quick compared to other people, but if we were to sit down and do accounting, I don't have it. I don't have the aptitude I never have,

and maybe that's my self-fulfilling prophecy there, but I probably wouldn't be very interested in it either. Yeah, that is definitely the self-fulfilling prophecy. So what basically all of the research literature says is that aptitude is entirely unconsequential, doesn't have any impact in the first hours of practice. So certain things you may pick up more quickly than others out of personal interest or because you have past experience that helps you. So video editing sounds like that was that for you. For things like finance or accounting,

our brains are weird in a certain respect in how they estimate time. So if something is complex or intimidating or frustrating, we tend to think we're actually spending more time on that thing than we actually are if you were to look at a clock as you're practicing. And so it's important when you're going into the process of learning something new, it's important to pre-commit to spending a certain amount of time on it. And the reason you do that is it becomes much easier to actually sit down and do enough work that the process becomes non-frustrating. Lastly, and maybe this is two questions in one, but this does seem something like a spectrum, and on one extreme side of the spectrum,

you've got people who think, well, you know, it's not that important to learn a lot of things, because you've got websites now like Fiverr, where you can hire somebody to do just about anything. So you don't really need to learn how to do it yourself because somebody else knows how to do it. And that's one end of the spectrum. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you've got people who are always learning new things. They're always learning, but they're never doing. They're just constantly learning things. And so how does that fit into this discussion? Yeah, so I think either end of the spectrum is not super functional in a lot of ways. So, you know, it's picking up new skills in a very real sense is a fundamental part of what it

is to be human. It's what we do. We're doing it from the time we're born to the day we die. And so there are a lot of very interesting and rewarding experiences in life that require a certain level of skill to appreciate or be able to enjoy. And so having the ability to pick up something new, be interested in something, and actually be able to perform at a certain level, it opens up so many opportunities that you otherwise wouldn't have access to. But likewise, it's important to go through this process with an idea of what you want to get out of it. So what's the point? Is it a satisfaction of a curiosity? Is it being able to build a business that gets you money or helps

you grow in your career? What's the purpose of doing this? And when you're really clear about what it is you want to get out of the process, it becomes much easier to find ways to practice long enough to get that thing. And if it's a curiosity, that period of time may be relatively short. If it's your life's work, that period of time may be decades. But regardless, it's always best when you're picking up something new to approach the early hours of learning in a very deliberate, very systematic way. That's how you can learn as quickly as you're capable of learning. But is there a point where, I mean, I can remember in high school, organic chemistry,

I didn't get the first words out of his mouth from the first day of the semester to the last day of the semester, and it wouldn't seem to have mattered a whole lot. And I didn't have any big preconceived ideas that I wasn't good at it. I just didn't get it, and at some point I said, you know what, that is not a direction I'm going to go. Yeah. How much did, out of curiosity, how much time did you spend struggling with the text on your own time, or struggling with the material on your own time? Well, that was so many years ago, I have no idea. But probably a lot.

My dad was pretty good at it, and so he would try to help me, and he was a pretty good teacher, but it just like A plus B just didn't equal C in that subject in my head. It just didn't. Yeah. I had the same experience going through school with physics, actually. And it was one of those things that, you know, I didn't understand what was going on, and that was really intensely frustrating. But one of the things that I wish I knew then, that I know now, is that that frustration was an active barrier in keeping me from sitting down

and figuring out how it worked. And if I was willing to put in the time and energy and approach it in a smart way at that point, I could have been much better at it than it turned out that I actually was. And so that's part of the core message here is if there's something that's important for you to learn, there's a way of approaching that learning process in a way that can really make your life easier in a lot of ways. But it involves resisting that impulse to run away from something that you're not good at at first, which is not the most intuitive thing in the world for us. Right. Well, I guess, and I'm sure if I really thought about it,

that frustration would lead me to close the book and go do something else because that's just much easier to do. Yeah. A little persistence and grit goes a very long way when it comes to learning something new. Too late now for organic chemistry, I'm afraid. Hey, it's never too late. I just, fun story. I just heard from a lady.

She's 90 years old, and she's learning how to play the piano. And, you know, the thought there was it's never too late. She's always wanted to learn how to do it, and there's no time like the present. So some things are more important to learn or have higher value than others, but it's never too late to learn something new. Well, that brings up another question, which is how often have we heard that whenever you're going to learn anything, whether it's skiing or playing a musical instrument or a foreign language, it's better to learn it young than to learn it old. It's better to learn it when you're seven instead of 90.

True? Completely false. Persistent myth that children pick up things faster than adults. They just pick up things differently. And the fundamental differences are children tend to have a lot more unstructured free time, so they have more time to experiment and explore. They're also way less self-conscious about not being good at something at first, right? So a toddler learning to walk when they fall down, they don't curse themselves and say, I am not talented

at walking, right? They just get up and try it again. So as adults, we tend to be way more self-conscious about the process and not being good at something at first. But the advantage is we can approach learning in a more deliberate and systematic way. And we have a lot more life experience that makes it easier to figure things out and break things down and figure out a smart way to practice to get a result we want. And that's a huge advantage. So we don't learn slower. We just learn differently. Well, that's reassuring,

especially for those of us who aren't 17 anymore. Josh Kaufman has been my guest. He's the author of the book, The First 20 Hours. There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes for this episode of the podcast. Thanks, Josh. Hey, everyone, join me, Megan Rinks, and me, Melissa Demonts, don't blame me but am i wrong each week we deliver four fun-filled shows and don't blame me we tackle our listeners dilemmas with hilariously honest advice then we have but am i wrong which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice plus we share our hot takes on current events then tune in to see you next tuesday for our lister poll results from But Am I Wrong?

And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. People often look at me with confusion when I ask them what their only one in the room story is. They think it has to be like mine, where I went to a 600 person event and discovered that I was

the only black person there. I know. Horrifying, right? Hi, I'm Laura Cathcart Robbins, and I'm the host and creator of the podcast Only One in the Room. Every week, my co-host Scott Slaughter and I invite you to join us for an hour and lose yourself in someone's only one story. This podcast is for anyone who's ever felt alone in a room full of people, which is to say that this podcast is for everyone. I remember in college taking a philosophy class that discussed human nature. Are humans inherently good, or if left to their own devices, will they act only in their own self-interest without regard to others and their welfare? It's certainly an interesting question to ponder,

and someone who's taken an interesting look at this is Abigail Marsh. Abigail Marsh is a researcher and associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Georgetown University, and she's author of the book, The Fear Factor, How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone in Between. Hi, Abby. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. So start by explaining how you approach this topic and why this is important to discuss. So my research on the brains of people who are both extremely altruistic and extremely callous suggests that one of the things that unites them is that they have unusual ways of responding to

other people's fear. With extremely altruistic people seeming to be very sensitive to it, they are good at recognizing when other people are afraid and their brains are more responsive to it than average, whereas people who are extremely callous, like people who have psychopathic traits, seem to be under-responsive to other people's fear. And why is this important? It's important if we want to understand why people do things to or for other people that are extremely good or extremely cruel. I think that's one of the central questions of human nature and trying to understand what lies at the origins, or at least close to the origins,

of people's capacity to care about each other's welfare or to not at all care about each other's welfare, I think is essential for a lot of things. Well, and you know, there's that age-old question of are people inherently good or are inherently bad? And from what you've discovered, it depends on the people. That's exactly right. I think that's a really important message that there's no one human nature, but it's rare for people to have no capacity to care about others. True psychopaths make up maybe one or two percent of the population, and most people aren't like them. That's the whole point of having a category of people we call psychopaths, which means that for most people, care for other people's welfare is something that's legitimate and real and very much part

of what motivates them. But it's not either or. There's a sliding scale, yes? Exactly. So it seems like, as is true for a lot of other human traits, the capacity and tendency to care about other people lies on a continuum with some people at the very low end, like psychopaths, and some people at the very high end, like the extraordinary altruist that I have studied. And most of us are in the middle, where we have the capacity to care about other people, but when we express that tendency and how strongly we feel, it varies a lot from person to person. But just as being a psychopath is clearly a problem, Can you be too the other way?

Can you be too altruistic? Because I know people, and I've even thought this to myself sometimes, that I wish I wasn't so empathetic. I wish I didn't care that much about what other people are feeling and thinking. I wish I could be more like that other guy who doesn't seem to give a crap. Yeah, you know, the compassion fatigue is a real thing. In particular, people who are first responders or who work in medicine often experience sort of a burnout after a while from dealing with other people suffering.

But there's a lot of good research now to suggest that caring about other people and feeling compassionate for them needn't be depleting necessarily. There is a difference between caring about other people's welfare and not being able to sort of separate your own pain and suffering from theirs. Are people who are more towards the psychopathic end of the scale and don't really see fear in other people, do they not have fear themselves? And are people who are very altruistic and sensitive to people's fears, are they more fearful than others? So there's pretty good evidence now that people who are psychopathic are less fearful than average.

Reduced fear responsiveness, so, for example, reduced sensitivity to punishment. The way that punishment works is through fear. That's, you know, in theory why, for example, prison is supposed to deter crime because people fear being in prison, and so then they will not engage in the crimes that might end up causing them to go there. If you don't have a normal fear-responding system, that approach doesn't work.

And in fact, we know that in general, you know, punishment is one of the least effective ways to change people's behavior. But that's especially true for people who are psychopathic and who have sort of minimally responsive fear systems. So as interesting as this is, what do we do with this? So now we know this, so what? I think it's important to understand the reality of human nature, for one thing, especially today, I feel like, and I don't know if this is because of social media or what exactly, it could just be the reach of media in general has grown so much that we are privy to an unbelievable number of stories about horrible things

that people do to each other every day. And, you know, obviously people do sometimes do terrible things to each other around the world. And it can lead people to be incredibly cynical about human nature. And that becomes a downward spiral really quickly, right? If you believe that other people are inherently untrustworthy, then you don't behave in a trusting way towards them and then they don't behave in a trusting way towards you and, you know, modern society is built on the belief that most people are trustworthy.

And when you don't have that, things fall apart fast. But if you look at the average person's daily life, there's actually very little evidence of untrustworthy behavior between people. If you actually, as you go through's daily life, there's actually very little evidence of untrustworthy behavior between people. If you actually, as you go through your daily life, for the most part, people respond in a trustworthy way to each other and are kind. That's the norm. And so I just, I hope that the research that I do highlights that the fact that most people truly do care about others, that's just part of our makeup as humans, with a huge range such that there are people who are even incredibly altruistic out there, and then that's real.

That's not, as far as we can tell, the result of a desire for fame or notoriety or anything like that, which people sometimes ask me about. What's interesting to me is that, you know, if you watch the news, if you look at social media, if you look at news sources on the internet, you see horrible things being done by people to other people, that we're seemingly becoming this horrible society that just doesn't care and is cruel and mean, and yet you say as a society we're're going the other way. We're becoming nicer. We're becoming more altruistic. So why is that?

What's the reason for that? Well, this is a great question, and we don't know for sure. Again, it's a hard thing to run an experiment on. But there's, I think, some pretty good suggestions out there. One thing seems to be just general prosperity and well-being in general as people are doing better in their own lives in terms of all sorts of variables, wealth, health, education. We know that antisocial behavior tends to go down,

so violence and all kinds of other cruelty declines. But in addition, it seems like you see an increase in altruism as well. In one study that I did with my student, Kristen Bethel Horwitz, we found that as you look across the 50 United States, the states where people are doing better and better over time, so economic indicators are going up, health indicators are going up. Those are the states that produce the highest proportion of altruistic kidney donors. So something about just doing well in general seems to increase people's propensity to care,

particularly about strangers. Was that the bar, basically? If you were willing to give a kidney, that pretty much puts you in that top percentile of altruism? It certainly puts you in a very small proportion of people who have ever done something that altruistic. But is that because people aren't asked? I mean, if your brother needs a kidney, you know, I think a lot of people would say, yes, it's just that my brother doesn't need a kidney. Absolutely. When people hear about the fact that you can donate a kidney to somebody in kidney failure, that's a critical step in the decision to want to donate a kidney.

And it's true that there's a lot of people out there who don't know that you can donate a kidney to a stranger. And some proportion of those, when they learn how many people out there are dying for need of a kidney, it's the ninth leading cause of death in the U.S. right now, and there are over 100,000 people on the waiting list for a kidney. And I think a lot of people believe incorrectly that most of those people will get a kidney from the deceased kidney supply, and that's not true. That supply is never enough to give everybody a kidney who needs one. And then most people, in addition, don't know that you don't have to be related

to somebody to give a kidney to them. Anybody can do that. I didn't know that. Yeah, you don't. I mean, there have to be some basic matches in terms of blood type and things, although even that, people are sort of pushing the boundaries on that. Is there any understanding of people who are in that psychopathic tendency group there? Where that comes from? Is it developmental? Is it pre-wired? Is it trauma in their life? Where does it come from? Or is there just no understanding of that? We're getting there. So the research on psychopathy and where it comes from and how it develops has been growing in the last couple of decades. And most of the research that's been done looking at where it comes from suggests that it's in some part heritable. So

maybe as much as 60% of the variation in psychopathy can be attributed to genes, which is a pretty substantial amount, but it's nowhere near 100%. The rest of it seems to be accounted for primarily by sort of idiosyncratic things that happen in life. There's no parenting approach that causes children to become psychopathic, thank goodness. And it doesn't seem to be anything as simple as abuse, for example. Obviously, abusing children is awful, but it's not because it seems to make them psychopathic. It leads to tons of other problems, but not that one. And so there seems to be a genetic predisposition to having an unusually callous and also fearless temperament.

And then children seem to, even if they have those risk factors, turn out more or less typical if their mothers are extremely warm and responsive. And there have been some nice studies of early childhood that have looked at this recently. But then for the other children whose mothers are not extremely warm and responsive, if they have these initial risk factors, it really increases the risk that they'll go on to become callous and aggressive. And we think of it as a developmental disorder, meaning that early childhood risk factors seem to lead to progressive problems along the way. So you're saying that if a child exhibits those personality

traits of looking like he could be a psychopath, you can kind of love it out of him? Well, um... Is that what you just said, or did I misunderstand? No, no, that's pretty close to I mean, you know how scientists are. We never speak in terms as clear as that,

which I know is wildly frustrating. But, yeah, the children who are at the most risk, if they have mothers who are really warm and responsive, which I guess is a good way to summarize that as loving, it seems to really reduce their risk. So I say that just with the caveat that having worked with kids with these traits for a long time, I know how quickly people blame parents when their kids turn out badly. And I think the flip side is not the case that if your child ends up with these traits,

it was because you weren't loving enough. That is, I don't think, a message that holds equally well. Because if your child had really extreme levels of these traits or sort of really high risk factors to begin with, maybe there was nothing you could do. We just know on average you can affect kids for the better with warm, responsive parenting. And the nice thing is there's no downside to that. Warm, responsive parenting is good for every kid. Yeah, well, sure.

Here's a question I think a lot of people would like to know the answer to. Do psychopaths know they are one? That's a great question. I think insight varies. Some of the adolescents that I've worked with seem to recognize that they are a little more cold-blooded than the average person. They seem to recognize that they're willing to more cold-blooded than the average person. They seem to recognize that they're willing to do things that make other people uncomfortable. Other people, I think, believe that they're more normal than they are. So, for example, they believe that other people

who seem to really care about others are mostly play-acting, that that's just pretend, and everybody underneath is more or's just pretend. And everybody underneath is more or less like themselves. And this is a blind spot that really everybody has to some degree. We usually anchor our beliefs about what human beings are like from our own experiences. And so most of us who are caring or have at least some capacity for care for other people just assume that that's true of everybody else. And for most people it is. That's a pretty good yardstick to use for most people.

But for a small proportion of people, it's a very bad yardstick. They really don't. And then the people who are psychopathic are the same, right? They tend to believe that other people's internal experiences are like their own when they're really not. And I wonder if when those people who have that ability to self-reflect and realize that maybe something's wrong, if that helps them in some way move down the scale. Well, it might at least help with their behavior.

You know, I don't know for sure if simple knowledge that you're different than other people in this way would motivate you to change. Because one of the features of psychopathy is a sort of narcissistic, grandiose personality where you believe you're better than other people. So to the extent you perceive you're different from other people, it's more likely you perceive them as inferior and yourself as the one to emulate. Oh, well, there goes that idea. I mean, this is the problem with treating psychopathy is that, you know, unlike people with disorders like depression or anxiety, they're not motivated to change because they believe themselves to be amazing as is. I've interviewed adolescents who are having terrible problems in their lives

and asked them to rate themselves on a scale from 1 to 10 of, you know, how great they think they are with 1 being, I don't think I'm great at all, and 10 being great. And most kids rate themselves a 7 or an 8. That's pretty typical. But for the children that we've interviewed who have these psychopathic traits, they'll routinely say 10, 11, 20, you know, and if that's how you feel about yourself, you're not going to be very motivated to change.

Well, what I like about what you said is that, you know, you've done all this research, and you come away with the belief that people in general are good, they're altruistic, they care about other people. And, you know, that debate goes on and on. But it's good to know that when you look at the research, that that's what you come away with. Yeah, I don't know how the economists managed to win this argument about human nature, about the idea that self-interest is at the root of all human motivation. Because there are just too many kinds of behaviors out there that cannot be explained that way. And I think it's perfectly reasonable for humans to have both selfish and selfless motivations that are lying underneath. Yeah, right. Well, that's important.

It's not either or. I mean, you can be selfish right now because you want to be, and you can be the most giving person in an hour from now because you want to be, and they're not mutually exclusive. Exactly. The existence of one doesn't make the other one any less real or any less important. My guest has been Abigail Marsh. She is a researcher and associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Georgetown, and she is author of the book The Fear Factor,

How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone in Between. There's a link to her book in the show notes for this episode. Thanks, Abigail. It's been a pleasure. I really enjoyed talking. At some point, when life gets back to normal and we all start moving around again, you may find yourself staying at a hotel. And there is a scam going around at hotels that you really need to be aware of. Here's how it works.

You check into a hotel, you give the front desk your credit card, they do what they do with it, they give it back, you go to your room, and then at some point during your stay, you get a phone call. And it's someone who says, this is the front desk. When you were checking in, there was a problem with your charge card information. Could you please reread me your credit card number and verify the three-digit security code on the back? And, you know, you don't think anything's wrong. Sounds legit.

So you happily oblige, and you read your credit card number and your three-digit security code. But what's really going on is it's a scam. It's someone calling from outside the hotel. They've asked for a random room number and that call gets put through. And then they claim to be calling from the front desk saying, is this room 1170? And you say yes. And now they've got your credit card, your three-digit security code,

and they start charging stuff on your credit card. So if that happens to you, you can just tell the caller, you'll go down to the front desk later and clear up any problems and avoid getting taken by some credit card scam. And that is something you should know. And that's the podcast today. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. And that's the podcast today. 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. 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. 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.