Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: The Science Behind Aliens and UFOs & How to Deal With Gaslighting

Episode Date: July 3, 2021

Are you neat or messy? You most likely have a preference for either a neat or a cluttered work environment. There is a general assumption that neat is better - but is it? It apparently depends on what type of work you are doing. Those two types of environments have an impact on you that affect the way you think. We begin this episode by exploring that. https://www.medicaldaily.com/clean-environment-leads-healthier-behavior-messy-desk-inspires-creativity-249383 Have you seen those videos shot by pilots that show UFOs flying around? No one is saying they are alien spacecraft but it sure makes you wonder. What are the chances that there is life on other planets? Have aliens visited earth? There is no shortage of speculation on the topic and a lot of anecdotal stories about encounters but what does the science say? Michael Wall, senior writer at Science.com and author of the book Out There: A Scientific Guide to Alien Life, Antimatter, and Human Space Travel (For the Cosmically Curious) (https://amzn.to/2S9oJl7) joins me to examine the possibilities and the evidence of other life in our galaxy. Have you ever seen someone talking to themselves on the street or in a store? Your immediate reaction is probably to think it is really weird. But in fact, you most likely talk to yourself out loud all the time. We all do. In fact there are several common behaviors we all do that we somehow think are strange when we see other people do them. We’ll explore what they are and why we think this way. http://mentalfloss.com/article/54126/6-embarrassing-things-you-do-and-why The world is full of manipulative people who try to control other people’s thoughts and/or actions. You most likely have come across some of them at work or in your personal life. These people have a name – Gaslighters. And since we all have to deal with them at some point, Stephanie Sarkis, licensed mental health counselor and author of the book Gaslighting (https://amzn.to/2S0NMXa) offers a fascinating explanation of who these people are, what they do, why they act this way and what you can do to identify and avoid them. PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Save time, money, and stress with Firstleaf – the wine club designed with you in mind! Join today and you’ll get 6 bottles of wine for $29.95 and free shipping! Just go to https://tryfirstleaf.com/SOMETHING Dell’s Semi Annual Sale is the perfect time to power up productivity and gaming victories. Now you can save what Dell employees save on high-performance tech. Save 17% on the latest XPS and Alienware computers with Intel Core processors. Plus, check out exclusive savings on Dell monitors, headsets and accessories for greater immersion in all you do. Upgrade today by calling 800 buy Dell, or you can visit https://dell.com/Semi Annual Sale Search for Home. Made., an original podcast by Rocket Mortgage that explores the meaning of home and what it can teach us about ourselves and others.  Download the five star-rated puzzle game Best Fiends FREE today on the Apple App Store or Google Play! https://bestfiends.com Discover matches all the cash back you earn on your credit card at the end of your first year automatically and is accepted at 99% of places in the U.S. that take credit cards! Learn more at https://discover.com/yes Learn about investment products and more at https://Investor.gov, your unbiased resource for valuable investment information, tools and tips. Before You Invest, https://Investor.gov. https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Look before you lock! Leaving a child in a hot vehicle can lead to their death very quickly. Set cellphone reminders or place something you’ll need in the back seat, so you don’t forget your child is in the car. Paid for by NHTSA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I want to go to Jack's place today. I'll just take the car. Don't wait up, okay? Kids go from 0 to 18 in no time, don't they? At Intact Insurance, we insure your car so you can enjoy the ride. Visit Intact.ca or talk to your broker. Conditions apply. Today on Something You Should Know, neat or cluttered? Which is a better work environment? Well, it may depend on what you're trying to accomplish.

Then, are there aliens among us? Is there life on other planets? What does the science say? There's probably 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and if 25% of them, and that's a conservative estimate, might have a habitable planet, and you're talking about 25 billion habitable planets. I mean, when you get into the numbers game, it's just overwhelming. Also, I'm sure you talk to yourself out loud. Everyone does. So why do we think it's so weird when we see other people do it?

And manipulative people. They try to make you think you're wrong and they're right. They're called gaslighters. For gaslighters, lying is like breathing. And the only way they know how to interact with people is through manipulation. So if you try to leave, the gaslighter will say, everything will be different this time. Please come back.

That's called hoovering, just like the vacuum. They're trying to suck you back in. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome?

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Hello. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Would you describe yourself as a neat person or more of a messy person? Or maybe more like me, I'm somewhere in the middle. I'm not especially neat, but I'm not a slob. I like things orderly, but I don't obsess about it. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying that if a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, then what of an empty desk? When he said that, he was defending his own habit of being less than neat. But what does science say about messiness and neatness? For an experiment, volunteers were placed in either a clean, organized room or a cluttered, messy room.

They were then asked to complete a series of tasks in these rooms, such as choosing a snack, donating money, or figuring out different uses for a ping-pong ball. Results revealed that both rooms had measurable effects on those tasks. For instance, those people placed in a neat room ended up more likely to donate to charity or choose healthy snacks. Those in the messy rooms, meanwhile, tended to outperform their neater counterparts in creative tasks. When the volunteers were asked to choose between a new product or an older well-known product, those in the cluttered room chose the new product more often while those in the orderly room went for the classic, more reliable item. According to the lead researcher, these results suggest a neat atmosphere

encourages convention and playing it safe, while messy environments seem to inspire breaking free of tradition, which can produce insight. Okay, that's fine, but being messy also has its downside. Several studies have shown that a messy environment causes stress, and an organized home has been linked to improved levels of happiness. So you can argue both sides of the issue. And that is something you should know.

I don't talk a lot about aliens and UFOs on this podcast because so much of it is speculation. We don't really know and the evidence is a little sketchy. But lately in the news, there have been stories about pilots seeing and recording what look to be like UFOs. They are spacecraft that are unidentified and they're flying in very odd ways. Maybe you've seen the videos. They aren't saying that these are alien spacecraft, but they are difficult to explain. So, could they be aliens?

Maybe. But I've always believed that if aliens are going to come all the way from whatever planet they come from, why would they come all that way and then land in a swamp in the middle of nowhere? Why not just land in Times Square and say, we're here? Still, it's an intriguing idea that there is life out there, whether or not any of these life forms have traveled to Earth.

So what does the real science say? Joining me to discuss that is Michael Wall. He's a senior writer at Space.com, whose work has appeared in Scientific American and on NBC television, and he is author of the book Out There, a scientific guide to alien life, antimatter, and human space travel for the cosmically curious. Hey, Michael, welcome. Hi, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. You bet. So since you're a science guy, where do you come down on this topic? Have we been visited by aliens? Are there aliens out there?

What's your take? There's a lot going on right now that's kind of like reshaping our own thoughts about our own place in the universe and whether we might be alone. And I mean, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't think that the US government has found aliens and is kind of hiding them away in a meat locker in Area 51 or anything like that. But what we found out over the past few years is that there are a lot of exoplanets out there that might be suitable for some form of life, probably like, I mean, little microbes and stuff like that. And there are even worlds in our own solar system that might be habitable. That's stuff that we've

just been learning in the last decade or so. So my own personal hunch is that I think that we're not alone. There's just too many stars out there with planets, too many planets that actually might be good for life. And then, I mean, based on what happened here on Earth, I mean, microbes got started here on Earth about 4 billion years ago. So that was pretty much as soon as our planet had cooled down enough after its formation to actually support life. That's when life got going. So that suggests that it's not that hard for that to happen, which further suggests that it's probably happened elsewhere, too. But it's still speculation.

Right, because just because it's possible doesn't mean we have evidence of it. Yeah. I mean, I don't think that we found evidence of a visitation or of intelligent life. I mean, people have been looking for that. And I mean, I know there, there are a lot of people out there who, who, who, who see strange things in the sky or claim to have been visited. And I'm not discounting those people and saying that they're crazy or they have ulterior motives or anything like that. just don't think that that the evidence for intelligent life is Like how meets that standard that that we can accept that it's out there I mean, we're trying to find it and I'm optimistic that it's out there somewhere

But I but I don't think that we've found any any conclusive signs of yeah of intelligent life yet. What about non intelligent life? Yeah, that's an interesting question. There are some people out there who claim that we do that we have found evidence of it. They're a group of scientists who still think that like the Viking Mars missions back in the 70s. They actually found evidence of some kind of microbial life on Mars. And I mean, most scientists don't think so. So there are reputable scientists who think that we may well have have already found evidence of some kind of alien microbes. I mean, chiefly Mars microbes. But yeah, it's just the standard of proof is so high.

And this is this is one of those finds that will go down in in human history as maybe the greatest scientific discovery ever. So there's there's a huge hurdle to sort of clear for it for that to be accepted. You know, this is one of the epical discoveries of all time that we're talking about. Scientists aren't just going to be like, yeah, that's probably right. They're going to demand something really convincing. The conversation about life elsewhere. Is there any sense of when that started? You know, I mean, is this a fairly recent phenomenon with the advent of modern science? People started to think, hey, well, maybe there's something out there. Or have people been speculating about this for, you know, thousands of years?

Or is it somewhere in the middle or what? Yeah, this goes back to the ancient Greeks, pretty much. They were looking up in the skies and kind of thinking about what might be out there. And it's been an undercurrent, I mean, throughout scientific thought ever since then. But it had always been kind of a fringe proposition or a fringe field. But that's really changed in the last 15, 20 years or so. And that's the result of some discoveries we've made. I mean, we know there's a ton of exoplanets out there.

I mean, every star that you see in the sky on average has, it has at least one star and probably 25% of those stars have, have a planet in the habitable zone. That's about like the same size as our own planet. So like a world that we think might be capable of actually supporting life as we know it. And that's just a huge number. I mean, you're talking about, there's probably a hundred billion stars in our galaxy And if 25% of them, and that's a conservative estimate, might have a habitable planet, you're talking about 25 billion habitable planets. I mean, when you get into the numbers game, it's just overwhelming. And so people have started taking this seriously. And we, I mean, this is something that's just dawned on us in the last 10 or 15 years. I mean, people always kind of suspected that there were a lot of planets out

there. But it's one thing to suspect, and it's another thing to go find them. And that, that's what scientists really started to do in the last decade or so. But just because planets have life on them, uh, and the numbers are, seem staggering that the, the chances are so likely doesn't necessarily mean they have spaceships and, you know, uh, silver suits and helmets. And, you know, it just it just means there could be plant life, there could be dinosaurs, there could be microbes. I mean, it's a big jump to go from there's life on other planets to we must have been visited. Yeah, yeah. And that's a really good point. Because I mean, if you look at our own Earth,

I mean, life got going here about probably about four billion years ago. But but it stayed microbial only for actually more than three billion years after that. So so we don't see animals in in the fossil record and multicellular organisms don't start popping up until about 600 million years ago. So there was a long stretch of like three.4 billion years where there were only microbes on earth. And that suggests that, I mean, while it might not be too hard for microbial life to get going, there is some like pretty, yeah, high hurdle that you have to cross to actually start forming animals, plants, complex organisms. And then there are all these other hurdles along the way. I mean, after that happened, it still took hundreds of millions of years for us to evolve.

We're only here... I mean, our species is probably about 200,000 years old, and only in the last 100 years have we become truly technological. Life on Earth, it took probably about four billion years from when the first microbes got going to the time when we are capable of actually reaching out to other planets. I mean, building spaceships, sending radio waves out into space, that's taken four billion years. So it seems like that's a pretty hard thing to do. Can science, do you think with its very high bar, can it just write off all of the UFO sightings and the alien contact, all the stories of, you know, I was captured by an alien. I mean, is it just human nature that people will be people

and they'll make stuff up like that or they'll be delusional and actually think that? And science can just say, uh-uh. I don't want to discount people's personal experiences. I don't claim to know what people think they saw or what happened when somebody had a traumatic experience or thought they were visited. like Navy pilots there. So there's that footage of, um, that weird light blob thing, like zooming off, off of the coast of San Diego. And it was seen by like Navy pilots and nobody knew what it was. It was on the front page of New York times. I mean, I'm not somebody who would immediately just claim that that's nothing and that we shouldn't investigate it. I mean, I don't think that that, that, that that was an alien spacecraft. I think there, there are probably other explanations

for what it could have been. But I think what people just need to keep an open mind and actually think about that as a real possibility and to investigate it. Don't just dismiss it out of hand. I think that's important and that's part of a scientific mindset is to not just dismiss one hypothesis out of hand because it seems weird or crazy. Michael Wall is my guest. He is a senior writer at

space.com and he's author of the book Out There, a scientific guide to alien life, antimatter, and human space travel for the cosmically curious. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy.

Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's Betterhelp.com. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. 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. So, Michael, it seems that every discussion about aliens and UFOs at some point always

comes back to Area 51. That this place in the desert, Area 51, is where the government has something going on. They've captured an alien and they're keeping it there. So what is Area 51 and why is it so tied to this discussion? It is a real facility and yeah, it was a military facility. I mean, I think it still is. And it's like over the years, it was pretty much like an advanced aircraft testing facility, which would explain like all the secrecy, you know, they were developing military aircraft technology there. And there were signs up for people to stay out. And it was all cryptic. And

nobody would talk about what's happening there, because they were actually developing advanced military technology there. And like when you have secrecy, that's when you can get conspiracy theories. And so that's like the kernel at the heart of the Area 51 myth. There are no alien spacecraft there. There are no alien bodies there. That also speaks to who we are as a species. We like, I mean, our brains like to connect dots that aren't necessarily there. And of course, if the dots form a very interesting picture than we seize on them, it's just more fun to actually believe that there's something crazy going on there. It just makes us happy. It makes us excited to think about. And I think that's, that's sort of part of the psychology that goes into these conspiracy theories too. Even if there is life on other planets, aren't they so far away that to go there would be, I mean, impossible because it would take hundreds and is about 4.2 light years away. I mean, it doesn't sound like a lot, but like a light year is very, very far. And it would take us about 100,000 years

if we launched like a traditional spacecraft with a chemical rocket. That's how long it would take for us to actually get there. People are trying to find, I mean, trying to invent faster technology, faster propulsion technology, but we aren't really close to anything that would be capable of like propelling humans at any kind of fraction of the speed of light, which is what we'd need. Yeah, that is one explanation for possibly why we haven't like gotten a visit. Because even if these intelligent aliens are out there, it would just be so hard to go across all the huge depths of space. And you'd have to be really motivated to actually do it to spend all that energy and all that time and it's just unclear if like the reason that we haven't like had a visit is because there's nobody out there at least nobody around in our neighborhood or if there just hasn't been

significant motivation for them to mount that kind of mission which would take so much time and so much effort i mean a lot of people who actually wonder about why we haven't been visited with all those numbers that we were talking about earlier if If it seems like there should be somebody out there, why haven't we gotten any peeps out of them or any visits? And yeah, that's just one of the possible explanations. Often in the news, I saw something not too long ago. There's always those blurry videos of people that take this thing up in the sky and it looks like lights and it disappears. And it's a UFO. It's an unidentified flying object.

And, you know, of course, just because you can't identify something doesn't mean it's an alien. It just means you can't identify something. But does anybody ever follow up with those and figure out what they were? Or are a lot of those really, we have no idea? And that's a really good point. UFOs do exist because there are things people see that they can't identify. So it's not like those are myths. People do see things and they're like, what is that? And if you can't identify it, it's a UFO. But yeah, there are astronomers out there who do sort of keep a catalog of those and try to check them out and try to figure out what people

saw. Usually it's actually a planet. It it's usually venus or something you know because because people look up in the skies and they're they aren't like astronomers and they're not like totally clued into what's up there so they see a bright light and maybe they're they're like driving down a road or something it looks like the light's moving and they hadn't noticed it before i mean it turns out a lot of times that's actually a bright planet such as like Venus or actually Saturn can get pretty bright too. Jupiter can get pretty bright. So that's what it is a lot of times. I mean, a lot of times it's an airplane or some other aircraft. That's usually what it turns out to be. But yeah, I mean, that being said, there are cases over the years that people have investigated and still don't know what they were.

I mean, it doesn't match up with the planet and it doesn't seem like it was an aircraft, but nobody really knows. And so, yeah, I mean, you can't discount everything and say we have all the answers to everything. There are still some sightings that people have actually looked into and don't really know what they were. But because they don't know what they were doesn't mean they were alien spacecraft coming to colonize and take us over right I I would agree with that very much I mean just because we don't know what something is doesn't mean you should immediately jump to the most exotic explanation that's chances are that it's something that we just hadn't thought

about here on earth that's far more likely than it was an alien spacecraft because I mean and yeah if you think about it a little bit I'm alien spacecraft they would they would have to be incredibly advanced to actually make it here far more advanced than than we are. So you would think that if they wanted to stay hidden from us, then they could easily do that. So it seems weird that they would sort of they would come here and stay hidden to most of us, but expose themselves to a few people out in the boonies. And for some strange reason, I mean, it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Yeah, right. Well, as I always said in the beginning, it's, they never land in Times Square and they're always out in a swamp or in some very rural area where hardly anybody is. And the person who's there either doesn't have a camera or manages to get some very blurry images that, yeah, sort of maybe look like, I guess that could be an alien. Yeah, yeah. And if an alien spaceship did descend on Times Square and 500,000 people got pictures of it with their cell phone, then we could talk.

Yeah, you're right. Okay, now that's what I call proof. That's really something. And it is interesting that, in popular culture anyway, that there is sort of a theme commonality of what aliens might look like. And I wonder where that comes from. Is it just somebody's creation? I mean, why do people think they would look so different than us? Or would they look different than us? Yeah, those are all really interesting questions. And I mean, I think there are a couple answers to the like, why do we think that they look like us sort of thing? I mean, first of all, because in the golden age of sci-fi, which has really started in the 50s and went through the 60s with Star Trek and all those shows, I mean, there was

no CGI back then, really. So you had to have like a human in a costume playing an alien. So it was just easier and it was a lot cheaper to just paint their faces blue or put some bumps on them or give them horns or something. But they still had like a very humanoid shape because that just was practical. So that kind of became enshrined as like as like sort of as the alien. And I mean, we relate more to creatures we can identify with in stories and film. So if we see something that's so alien, it doesn't kind of grab us. I mean, if you do a show about a sentient blob of gas or something where it's just not going to hook us as much as if, if the protagonist kind of looks like us and acts like us, and we can identify with it. Where are we now? And where are we headed with space travel in general? It does, you know, it doesn't seem like we do a whole lot of it like we used to, or at least it doesn't get the press that it used to. But I mean, there are people on the space station.

I mean, there's stuff going on. So what's the, what's it look like? Are there any big advances in space travel? There's a lot going on in the private space sector. Obviously, Elon Musk is an obvious one. I mean, SpaceX, they are working to actually get a human settlement going on Mars. Elon Musk wants to have like a million person city on Mars in the next century or so. And he's serious about that. That's not a stunt. That's why he founded SpaceX in 2002, was for that reason. So that's really exciting. I don what he that's why he founded spacex in 2002 was for that reason um so that's really exciting i don't know if it's going to happen as quickly or to the dramatic extent that that he hopes it does but i i would not like discount what they're trying to do at all

and and there are other people with very deep pockets trying to accomplish similar things i mean bezos just um like the richest man in the world has his own private spaceflight company called which is called blue origin like they don't get as much press as spacex they've been a little more under the radar but they have similar aims i mean he they've they've said that their main goal is to get millions of people living and also working in space and so they're also working to to kind of get us out there in a sustainable way. I'm not sure when all this stuff is going to happen. People have been dreaming these sort of these like utopian space dreams for a while.

But now there's people with deep pockets and advanced technology who are actually doing it. So, I mean, I'm like pretty optimistic about that as far as human settlement, going to the moon, going to Mars, getting off Earth for the first time in a real sustainable way. I think that's coming in the next generation or so. So what keeps you up at night? What's the thing that you're most excited about when you look to the skies and look up at the stars? What is it that's really pumping you up? Based on what we've learned in the past 10 years or so, with like how many exoplanets there are, how many of them might be suitable for our own type of life? I mean,

what we define life to be. And I mean, how many, there are a handful of places in our own solar system. There are these moons in the outer solar system, Jupiter moons, and it's like one moon of Saturn, two moons of Saturn, actually, that have subsurface oceans that could support life. I mean, I think that we're that that we're going to discover some sort of simple life fairly soon, maybe the next 10 years, 20 years. I mean, that's just a hunch. I'm just predicting it. But I mean, I think we're getting to the place where we can actually be optimistic about that. And like we can mount missions that will really answer one of the most fundamental questions in the universe is are we alone? And I'm that's what I'm most excited about. I like I think we're in a good spot to actually start tackling this, this amazing question that people have been thinking about for 1000s of years. One thing I meant to ask you about earlier, and because

it's one thing for people out in the swamp to say, you know, they've been visited by aliens. But we do hear sometimes airline pilots see things, military pilots see things. And theoretically, these people are more knowledgeable about what's out in the sky to see. So does anybody ever come back and say, well, yeah, we figured that out? Or no, we don't know what he saw. Yeah, yeah. And Dan, those are some of the sightings people take the most seriously, people who are used to looking at the sky and know what they're looking at most of the time. So yeah, if an airline pilot, military pilot sees something weird, then that would get a little more credence

than just some person out in the boonies who saw a weird light in the sky and wasn't sure what it was. Yeah. And so UFO investigators, people who kind of try to get to the bottom of this, they like they would probably take like an airline pilot sighting a little more seriously and investigated a little more rigorously, maybe than the average sighting, definitely. And when they do, what happens typically? by the military and moves really fast and we're not sure where it came from or like the government won't talk about it that's always like a possibility too and maybe maybe even like military fighter pilots aren't privy to what that like machine is that was being tested and wouldn't know about its movements that that's always a possibility when you're talking about like seeing sights in the sky it's just important to keep an open mind i think i don't think we

should dismiss any of these out of hand well like, like everyone else, I have looked up at the stars at night and wondered, are we alone? Will creatures come to visit us? Have they already? It kind of boggles the mind and it's fun to speculate, but it's also good to have a bit of a grounding in the science of it all. Michael Ball has been my guest. He is a senior writer at Space.com, and his book is called Out There, a scientific guide to alien life, antimatter, and human space travel for the cosmically curious. There's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Michael. No, no, I really appreciate it.

You asked really good questions, and yeah, it's really fun to talk about. From the kitchen to the laundry room, your home deserves the best. Give it the upgrade it deserves at Best Buy's Ultimate Appliance Event. Save up to $1,000 on two or more major appliances. Shop now in-store or online at BestBuy.ca. Exclusions apply. Metrolinks and Crosslx are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress.

Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. It's hard to imagine going through life and not having to deal with manipulative people. These are the people who make you think or try to make you think that there's something wrong with you if you don't do what they want or think the way they do. There's a term for this. It's called gaslighting, and it refers to a play from the 1930s that was

made into a movie in the 1940s called Gaslight, starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman, where the husband manipulates his wife to try to make her think she's going crazy by telling her that the lights that she sees flickering are not really flickering, that she is hearing and seeing things that aren't there when they clearly are, that she has somehow lost valuable items that he has purposely removed to the point where she just she can't trust herself anymore. She must trust him because she must be going crazy. Now there is a book about this called Gaslighting by Stephanie Sarkis. She's a licensed mental health counselor who says that gaslighters use your own words against you, lie to your face, deny your needs, plot against you, turn family and friends against you, and more. I suspect you've come across these type of people,

or maybe even have them in your life today. And Stephanie joins me to discuss this. Hi, Stephanie, welcome. Thank you for having me. So my first question is, where's the line? Because we're all trying to manipulate and persuade other people. I mean, we're human, and that's what we do. As we navigate through life,

we try to get people to do what we want them to do. So when does it become abusive? Because, you know, we're all manipulating others to some extent. That's an excellent point. We all use influence to get what we want. We see that in advertising. We see that in sales. Again, yes, we do that to each other too. this is where it's used deliberately to abuse people is to control and usually when we're using influence we're not trying to control or abuse people we're just trying to get them to see our way this is very different this is taking someone's reality and completely lying about it and turning it on on its head and blatantly lying to the point where you don't notice the little lies because they seem so inconsequential compared to the

huge lies you're being told. So it has a whole different flavor to it. So give me an example. Sure. Someone saying that what you saw or heard never happened. Someone hiding their stuff and then blaming you for you stealing it or hiding it on them when they in fact did it. Also pitting you against people. Saying so-and-so said something about you.

And instead of going to so-and-so, you just get mad at that person. And that's what the gaslighter wants. The gaslighter wants you to get mad at other people so you cling closer to the gaslighter. Also sabotaging you at work, taking credit for your work. But it goes beyond that. It's also going to the boss and lying to the boss about something that you didn't do. Also, telling you things would be better if only you did blank. This happens a lot, especially couples I see in therapy. One will say, well, if you just fix this person, then everything will be fine. That's a tip-off to me that there's some gaslighting going on. So why is it, and I don't know if there's any numbers or, you know,

what percentage of the people are gaslighters, but why would I do this? Why would I, other than to just be a jerk, why would I tell you something that isn't true or sabotage you? I mean, why do people do this? For gaslighters, lying is like breathing. It's essential to their well-being. And the only way they know how to interact with people is through manipulation. They do something called cognitive empathy. And what that means is they'll express to you feelings, but they aren't really feeling them. They'll express feelings the way that they think you want to hear them. So they may apologize for something, but it's not a heartfelt apology. It's an apology that's made in order to get you back into their grasp. So if you try to leave, the gaslighter will say everything will be different this time, please come back. That's called hoovering,

just like the vacuum, they're trying to suck you back in. Because when gaslighters no longer have that narcissistic attention, they will seek it out. And again, they'll try to get you back in the relationship. So I tell people, if you're leaving a gaslighter need to go no contact, no phone calls, no emails, block all of that because the person will try to get you back if they haven't already moved on. So from the perspective of the person on the receiving end of this, help me understand what that's like. What does it feel like? What does it seem like when gaslighting is happening to you? So what it looks like is that gaslighters will erode your

self-esteem. And so they will pick at you little by little. Now I'll back that up and say that at the beginning of the relationship, gaslighters will do something called love bombing. They will tell you how wonderful you are, and that feels good to anybody, but the gaslighter overdoes it. They'll push for commitment very quickly, but then you fall off that pedestal they placed you on. And then they do something called devaluing, which means you can do nothing right, no matter how hard you try. The gaslighter will tell you that you're not paying enough attention to them, that you need to quit your job and pay more attention to them. But that need will never get filled. So you're in this constant struggle

of trying to fill somebody's needs are never going to be met. And it's incredibly frustrating for people. Well, and this gets back to my first question, I guess, is to where is the line? Because the things that you just mentioned, you know, lying, I mean, people do things to try to get their way sometimes, but that doesn't make them a gaslighter. Right. We can lie just once in a while because we're human, right? But this is a pattern of behavior. So yeah, when you leave a relationship and you want to get back with that person, you say, oh, things will be different this time. And you could really mean it, but a gaslighter, it's a means to an end. There's a big difference between I'm going to work on changing this and I just want you back

so I can fulfill that need to get attention. It's a whole different scheme. And it also depends on what behaviors led up to that. So if you do have someone saying that what you saw and heard isn't real, that's a real tip-off. You're with a gaslighter rather than just someone that just occasionally tells you white lies. What about in an argument when someone says, well, that's not what I said? That sort of sounds gaslighting, but that's not really gaslighting because that could just be a legitimate difference between what I said and what you heard. That's not gaslighting. And even if you tell your partner, hey, I have an issue with this thing you did and let's talk about it, that's not

gaslighting. But telling someone, I don't like the color of your eyes or, you know, you need to lose weight, that's more gaslighting type behavior. And again, we have to look at the whole scheme of their behaviors. But if you did have a concern with your partner's weight, you say, hey, can we talk about this? I'm really concerned about your health. You don't go up to them and just make a really crass comment about their weight. And so it really depends on how it's done and also the motivation behind it. And again, when the gaslighter makes comments and criticisms, it's to control you rather than to work together to solve an issue. I don't like the color of your eyes. Really? They'll even get into that type of behavior because what they're trying to do is they're

trying to just set you off. They want to keep you off kilter because what the other thing they do is they'll criticize you and then compliment you in the next sentence. And that's really confusing because gaslighters, they may act bad, you know, 80% of the time, but 20% of the time they could be fine. And that's what gets people kind of reeled into these relationships is because the people aren't bad all the time. But my feeling is if the relationship's good 80% of the time and bad 20% and abusive, it's still an abusive relationship and it's best to get out. And one might wonder why you got into the relationship in the first place, or at least when this behavior started showing up, little sirens don't go off saying, I got to get out of this is nuts. I got to get out of here. Because these gaslighters are so good at hiding their behavior. There have even been people that

are mental health specialists have gotten into these relationships because on the first date, again, these people act completely normal. They do cognitive empathy. They look like they're completely normal. They're not sociopathic. They will act just the way you want them to. And then when they know that they've got you sucked into a relationship, then they'll start revealing these behaviors little by little because they cannot keep that mask of normalcy on for that long. You'll see it start slipping and they'll start trying to get into these behaviors. And the other interesting thing is even if you record these people saying stuff, if they've

told you that what you heard isn't real and you show them the recording and have them listen to it, they'll still deny it. Even though you have undeniable proof in front of you, they'll say, well, you just misunderstood it. Or they'll focus on the fact, why did you record me? Instead of the fact that they were blatantly lying to you. Do we have any numbers? I mean, how many people do this?

Well, people that have personality disorders, particularly sociopathy and narcissism, it's about 2% to 5% of the population. However, we don't have any solid percentages on gaslighting behaviors. It's not a diagnosis in our diagnostic manual. But out of the couples I see, I say probably about 40% of them have at least one partner that engages in gaslighting behaviors. Now, I'll add to that, though, that I primarily work with people with ADHD and anxiety. And I think they tend to be

more prey of gaslighters because they tend to be more concerned with how other people are feeling. They tend to feel like they are missing something in life. And so they're more likely to accept the behaviors of the gaslighter. And I think gaslighters on a certain level sense that and they know that and they know that that person may tolerate more than other people would. It would seem to me, and I imagine to other people listening to this, I don't think I've ever been on the receiving end of a gas lighter, but it would seem to me that I wouldn't put up with this for a minute. I mean, if someone is telling me when the lights are flickering that they're not flickering,

if someone tells me that the sky is green when I know it's blue, I'm done. I mean, it doesn't seem like this would be hard to say goodbye to. And one would think that you would know right away when someone was doing this, and that you would be tough enough or strong enough or resilient enough to know this is happening. And that's one of the reasons why people tend to stay in these relationships, because they feel like other people aren't going to believe them that this person is so terrible, especially when this person projects a pretty good image to the outside world. Image is very important to gaslighters.

And they'll also tell other people that you're crazy. So if you go to those people, they'll say, oh, well, they already told me that you're a little off so that they aren't believed. So a lot of people think they would not be subject to this, but they have been. It's interesting to me how many people are very competent, intelligent people, and yet they have become a victim of gaslighting, whether it's in a relationship or on a global scale. Because if you start believing something, you cannot be deterred from that. And that's the really tricky part about gaslighting. And again, if you're in a relationship, it becomes kind of a Stockholm syndrome where you become attached to your captor, so to speak.

But and also it's very difficult for you to leave at the same time. It doesn't make a lot of sense from the outside, but people that have experienced this, they'll tell themselves, you know, how could I have believed this stuff this person was telling me? And again, it's one of the reasons why people are afraid to seek help, because they're concerned that people aren't going to believe them, that they are subject to this. Is there any concern that maybe we're just being a little too sensitive here about some of this, that just because somebody says something to you doesn't make you a victim. People are smart, and in many cases, not all. I'm sure there are gaslighters who are very convincing and really mess with people's minds.

But just because someone attempts to try to manipulate you doesn't make you a victim. I mean, people are smart. People are tough. They can see what it is and move on. The people that are the victims of these relationships are tough. It's just they are with people that will do whatever it takes to erode them. So you have people that have been subject to years of abuse because gaslighting is emotional abuse.

So when we tell people that are victims of abuse that you're just being too sensitive, we're totally negating the fact that they are being abused. And again, it's one of the reasons why people that are in an abusive relationship tend to not leave because they're really concerned that the outside world is going to see them as weak when they are anything but weak. But you've talked about this in terms of relationships. If somebody just says something like this to someone, you know, casually at a party, that's not gaslighting. I'm not, because someone said this to me, I'm not now a victim of it. Just somebody said something, I don't know what they're talking about, and my life carries on just fine. It's a series of behaviors. I'll say that again. So it's not just one behavior. It's a series of things that you see. So if I just say to you, I don't like the shirt you're wearing. Yeah, that's not gaslighting. But if I've been telling you repeatedly that you're worthless,

or I've been telling you that, you know, you didn't see me cheat on you or see that on my phone, you just kind of you're making it up and you shouldn't have been on my phone anyway. So I'm going to focus on that. And you are hiding your stuff and blaming somebody for it. That's gaslighting behavior. But somebody going up to you at a party saying, I don't like what you're doing. That's not gaslighting. Again, it's a series of behaviors. It's within a relationship. It's anyone that has the ability to have power and control over others. So in most cases, does this just go on forever? I mean, it would just seem to me that at some point, almost everybody would say, wait a minute, enough is enough. I know what I

saw. I know what the truth is. I know I'm being manipulated. I'm out. I'm done. There's usually a watershed moment. And usually what that is, is it's a family member or a friend confronting the person saying, look, you know, we've talked about this before. This person isn't healthy. These are the behaviors I'm seeing. And we need to figure out how to get you out. That's usually what gets people out of that situation.

And again, it's really tough because in some cases, people's safety is threatened. And that's where I recommend that people are concerned about their safety to contact a domestic violence shelter for opinions or ideas about how to get out safely. Also, therapy has been found to be really helpful, particularly cognitive behavioral therapy, which is a style of counseling that, again, in research has been shown to help a lot of people that have been in these abusive relationships. Because it takes a while to build up your self-esteem and your ability to feel comfortable to trust other people again.

Does it often escalate to violence? It can quite a bit. In fact, I tell gaslighters that when they're leaving a relationship, make sure you take your pet with you. Because gaslighters will use manipulation techniques and use your pet against you and even abuse it or kill it. So it's I mean, the movie was 70 years ago. The play was 80 years ago. So obviously the concept has been around. But how has it moved?

What's the trend? It's been around for a while, but I think emotional abuse really wasn't taken as seriously as a form of abuse. Because, oh, well, you're not being hit. But it's just as much of a form of abuse as any other. So I think, though, that the fact that we're seeing this on a global scale and more attention is being brought, I think people are recognizing more that this is happening to them in the workplace and at home and with family and friends. When I imagine a relationship where this is happening, I'm imagining that the male is the gaslighter and the female is the victim. But is that always or mostly the case?

No, it's actually equal across genders. I may use the pronoun he just as a default, but it is equal across men and women equally can be gaslighters. Well, I think that's a surprise. I think that from the movie on forward, I mean, you think of men that being much more male kind of behavior. I think, yeah, that can be a stereotype of it, but definitely I've seen where it's pretty equal across the board.

Well, I remember watching the movie and watching Charles Boyer and thinking, boy, he's really good at this. I mean, he has really got her thinking she's crazy, but that it's just a movie. But as you point out, this is real life, too, and worthy of discussion. Stephanie Sarkis has been my guest. She is author of the book Gaslighting, Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People and Break Free. There's a link to her book in the show notes.

Thanks for being here, Stephanie. That was great. Thank you. Here's an interesting quirk of human beings. You do things that are embarrassing, that if you see other people do, you may laugh or judge them for doing them, but you do them too. For example, talking to yourself.

You've just done something stupid, and you're reprimanding yourself out loud or you're asking yourself a question out loud when someone walks in the room. Suddenly, you look like a crazy person, but talking to yourself is not only insanely common, in fact, we all do it at least a couple of times a day, and some people do it much more than that. But it can also be a sign of good things. Studies show that talking to yourself helps you keep more focused and alert.

Repeating a story. While you probably know if you've told a story before, it turns out that people have a very difficult time recalling who they told it to. Lying about seeing a movie. When it comes to important movies or important books, people lie about it because they want to appear smart. A surprising number of people lied about seeing the Godfather movie in a 2011 poll. Getting song lyrics wrong. Song lyrics are, as you know, hard to make out sometimes, so we make up what we think we hear.

This really irritates those people who really do know the lyrics, but those people probably get the lyrics to other songs wrong. So we shouldn't be too quick to judge. And that is something you should know. If you're a relatively new listener to this podcast, a reminder that we have a lot of really interesting episodes in our library available for you to listen to. I mean a lot, hundreds of them, actually. So when you have some time, give a listen, and I know you'll like what you hear.

And tell your friends. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? We're serving up four hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you. In Don't Blame Me, We dive deep into listeners' questions,

offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's perspective, we've got you. Then switch gears with But Am I Wrong?, which is for listeners who didn't take our advice and want to know if they are the villains in the situation. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events and present situations that we might even

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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. 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. 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

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