Something You Should Know - The Fascinating World of Boredom & The Origins of Halloween Customs

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, you've probably heard of placebo medicine. And today you're going to hear about placebo sleep. Then, boredom. We've all felt that feeling, and it's actually fascinating. There's two words that I think are most commonly expressed by people when they report being bored, and that's agitation and restlessness. That gets back to this idea that when you're bored, you want something.

Starting point is 00:00:54 It's not at all like being apathetic or lazy. You want something, but you just can't figure out what that is. Then, Halloween stories and myths. Like the story that someone was putting razor blades or poison in kids' candy. How did that start? There's a case in Texas of a man who poisons his own son's pixie stick in an insurance scam that fed the whole idea of the anonymous psycho who is tampering with your children's candy. All this today on Something You Should Know.

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Starting point is 00:02:02 Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. So have you ever had trouble sleeping or maybe you stayed out late the night before and felt really tired the next day. And as a result, you didn't perform very well at work or whatever it is you were doing. Well, you should know about something called placebo sleep. According to a research study, people who were basically tricked into believing they got plenty of sleep

Starting point is 00:02:41 even when they didn't, performed just fine on cognitive tests and tasks. And people who thought they didn't get much sleep, even though they did, perform poorly. In other words, just like a placebo pill, if you believe you got enough sleep, you should do fine. Your mind and body will perform as if you did. And if you keep telling yourself you didn't sleep well and you're really tired and you can't do your work, you probably won't do very well. And that is something

Starting point is 00:03:10 you should know. I can imagine you might be thinking, just how interesting can a discussion on boredom be? Well, very interesting as it turns out. Boredom is a universal experience. Everyone gets bored. Is that a good thing? Does boredom serve a purpose? What's boredom trying to tell you, if anything? What's the difference between being bored and just having some downtime where you're really not doing anything? And you know how people say they're bored to death? Can you really be bored to death? Well, to address all this is James Dankert. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo, and he's an expert in the psychology

Starting point is 00:03:59 of boredom. James is the author of a book called Out of My Skull, The Psychology of Boredom. Hey, James, welcome. Hi, Mike. It's great to be here. So here's a question I've wondered about. Is boredom a thing or is boredom a lack of something? It's a great question. Boredom is kind of both in some sense.

Starting point is 00:04:21 It's a motivational signal. Boredom is something that's sort of telling us that we want something, but it's the lack of something because it's also sort of making evident to us that we don't know what we want. So the quote I love the most comes from Leo Tolstoy, that is that boredom is the desire for desires. When we're bored, we really want to be engaged with something that matters to us, that's meaningful to us, but we don't like any of the options in front of us and we don't know how to move forward. Now, I know you say that some people claim to never be bored, but how can that be? Because those people are probably doing the same things, having the same experiences that the rest of us have that we consider boring,

Starting point is 00:05:02 you know, waiting in line, waiting at the doctor's office. I mean, objectively, these are pretty boring things. So how is it that some people are bored and other people are not bored? It's boring for most of us to contemplate those kinds of things. But for the people who claim never to be bored, they can do a range of different things. So they might just reframe what it is that they're doing. For example, people who are doing assembly line work, which many of us might think is kind of boring. can do a range of different things. So they might just reframe what it is that they're doing. For example, people who are doing assembly line work, which many of us might think is kind of boring. You know, you're watching the widgets go by and doing your quality control or whatever you

Starting point is 00:05:34 have to do, but it's the same thing moment by moment, hour by hour. But there is evidence that people in those sorts of jobs will challenge themselves to better their personal best. Let's say, you know, last hour I did eight widgets. Let's see if I can do nine this hour. So now something that seems to the outside to most of us to be boring has become reframed as a personal challenge. And so it isn't as boring to the person when they do that reframing. And there's a range of other things that people can do.

Starting point is 00:06:03 Just sort of let your mind wander while you're in those kind of boring situations. And maybe as your mind is wandering and the task that you're doing is easy enough for you to do it without too much concentration, the mind wandering can help you be less bored. When people are bored, is there something similar going on in everybody who's bored's head that makes it boring? Is there some thought process or something that puts them in the state of boredom? The first thing I'd say about that is that boredom is a little like happiness in that way, in that the content that makes us happy is unique to us. What makes me happy won't make you happy. And the same thing is true for boredom you know what makes me bored what makes me you know feel like i'm i'm uh you know in a really

Starting point is 00:06:50 tedious situation might actually be something you find quite interesting so the content is kind of irrelevant if you're asking what's the kind of thought process i think that for most of us when we're in the middle of being bored in the middle of an episode of boredom, it's very self-focused. It's I'm bored, but then it's also at the same time directed outwardly. It's like, there's nothing in the world that'll work for me. So the world itself is boring too. But I think that's the only commonality I can really come up with, that what situations, what circumstances lead you to those feelings and those thoughts is probably going to be unique to each person. So it is, it's subjective. I mean, you're bored because you say so. It's not because what you're doing is necessarily objectively boring. It's just you've decided it's boring,

Starting point is 00:07:38 and therefore you're bored. And then it seems like it kind of becomes a self-fulfilling and self-propelling prophecy. It can become very much a self-fulfilling and self-propelling problem, a circular sort of problem, if you like, that you need to break out of that cycle of I'm bored, this is boring, it's not working for me, and I'm still bored, what am I going to do, I'm bored, and it becomes very sort of a vicious cycle that's hard to break out of. But that doesn't mean that there aren't commonalities.

Starting point is 00:08:11 The feeling itself, I think, is quite similar for everybody when they feel it. So there's two words that I think are most commonly expressed by people when they report being bored, and that's agitation and restlessness. And that gets back to this idea that when you're bored, you want something, you want to be doing something. It's not at all like a couch potato or being apathetic or lazy. You want something, but you just can't figure out what that is. And so it leads to those feelings of agitation and restlessness. Why? Because boredom seems to be just part of the human experience for most of us, you know, we're bored and then, you know, all of a sudden we're not bored anymore.

Starting point is 00:08:49 Why study this? Why write a book about it? Why is this important? Well, I think it's important for lots of different reasons. The why I study it has sort of personal reasons I'm happy to chat about. But why it's important to study more generally is because it has consequences. It's not just part of the furniture of life. It's a non-trivial problem to be bored a lot. So what are the kinds of consequences that I'm talking about? There are consequences for education purposes. So we know that people who are bored a lot in school don't do as well.

Starting point is 00:09:22 And that's from studies in high school students, particularly in math classes, and also from studies in university students. If you're bored a lot, you're disengaged from the material you're trying to learn. And so it becomes harder to learn it. We know also that there are strong associations with boredom and challenges for people's mental health. This has been known for decades. So people who are bored a lot also tend to have higher rates of depression and anxiety. There are other sort of challenges like increased rates of aggression that are commonly associated with people being bored.

Starting point is 00:09:57 We know also that people who are bored a lot tend to have struggles with drugs and alcohol. And more recently, there's been work showing what we call problematic smartphone use. And when you describe this, it's very much like an addictive behaviour. People who are anxious when they're not by their phone and people who ramp up how much they use their phone on a day-to-day basis. We know that boredom is actually one of the drivers of that problem.

Starting point is 00:10:24 So it's not inconsequential. It might seem like it, particularly when a parent tells their child, you know, there's a million things out there, go, don't tell me you're bored, or only boring people get bored, but it's not trivial. It has a lot of these consequences that we'd rather not have. And so if we can understand boredom and understand how it leads to those consequences, then we'll be better off. So when somebody, let's take that example you gave of the student who's in math class and they're bored because they just, for whatever reason, they're bored. What's the solution to that? The $64,000 question, how do we fix boredom?

Starting point is 00:11:03 There aren't great answers to that at this time because we haven't really done the studies. But there are a couple of things that I think are important. And this comes from that work by a guy called Reinhard Peckrun who did that work in Germany with students in math classes. So there's two things that they suggest that are really critical to keep a student engaged. And they're sort of control and value. What he means by those things is the control idea is we need to give students some autonomy over their learning, right? You need to feel like you are in control of how the activity is progressing and how you're engaging with it.

Starting point is 00:11:38 And then we need to show them the value of what it is that they're learning. So if a student feels like the thing that they're being taught at any given moment is kind of pointless, then they'll disengage and become bored and then struggle to learn. And this is sort of true outside of a math class, that what boredom often is showing us is that we are not being very agentic. We're not demonstrating to ourselves that we are in control of our goals and that we're in control of what it is that we decide to do on a moment-to-moment basis. So that threat, you know, you're not being the author of your own life,

Starting point is 00:12:11 that boredom sort of lays bare, is true in a range of different circumstances. And what we need to re-establish is that sense of agency that we are in control. And then we also need to figure out, well, what's the meaning behind this thing that we're doing? Does it matter to me? Because if it doesn't, it's likely that you're going to feel bored by it eventually. Our topic today is, it's boredom, but it's actually pretty interesting. And my guest is James Dankert. He is author of the book, Out of My Skull, The Psychology of Boredom. Metro links and cross links are reminding everyone to be careful

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Starting point is 00:13:58 But the bulk of the research from our lab and many others shows that boredom is a negative experience. It's not one that anybody voluntarily reports as liking or engaging in. I have had a couple of occasions where people have told me that they do like boredom just in conversation with friends and that kind of thing. But if you probe it, it's exactly as you say. It's not boredom that they like. What they're actually liking is some downtime. And I think most of us like some downtime. But to call that boredom is to misunderstand what boredom really is, I think.

Starting point is 00:14:34 You hear the phrase bored to death. Can you be bored to death? Can it kill you? No, boredom is not going to kill you. That's going to be an exaggeration. But there was a study out of the UK by Brittain and Shipley in 2011, and they did some epidemiological work. They had data from UK civil servants from a number of decades. And in that data were questions of, are you bored by your work? And what they were able to do was to follow up decades later on

Starting point is 00:15:06 health outcomes for some of those people that said they were really, really bored at work. And it turned out in their study that you were more likely to die of heart disease if you reported being bored at work decades earlier. And I think that just ties into this notion that boredom is unpleasant and stressful. And so if you're in a constant state of stress and anxiety and agitation, that's not going to be good for your physical health. But it's not like a smoking causes cancer sort of link. It's not that big. Are people more bored today than in the past?

Starting point is 00:15:39 Or I guess people have always been bored. It's not as though it's a modern phenomenon. It's something that's been with us for a long, long time. And there's two other things I'd say about it. One is that that's not surprising if you think that boredom serves a purpose. If it plays a role in our lives, if it has a function, and I believe it does, then it should be with us throughout evolution. So that is that the function is to push us to act. It's to get us out of one situation and into another that we deem better somehow.

Starting point is 00:16:10 So I don't think that it's somehow a modern phenomena. Whether or not, the question I think that your listeners might be more interested in is, you know, is it getting worse over the last two or three decades as we've seen the explosion of the internet and social media and so on. People often assume, I think, that boredom might be getting either better because we've got the world at our fingertips on our phones, or worse, because we get sucked into the vortex of social media and so on. As I said before, there is that notion that our attachment to our phones and to social

Starting point is 00:16:43 media is sometimes driven by boredom because it's a kind of passive form of engagement. It fills your time. It occupies your time and your mind, but it's not really that active, and you're not really being a very sort of proactive agent when you're just going down the Twitter rabbit hole. But there is one study at least from Elizabeth Weybright and her colleagues that shows in high school students that over the last decade, boredom has been increasing and they were able to track the same students over a decade to show that indeed boredom has been getting

Starting point is 00:17:16 worse over that decade. I think it was from 2007 to 2017. Now they couldn't say anything about the causes of that, why that might be happening, but I think it's a very interesting data point and something that we clearly need to do more research on. Well, there does seem to be something about a connection between boredom and attention. We hear that people's attention spans have decreased and that they get easily bored for something that maybe prior to that people wouldn't be so bored. There really is a strong connection between boredom and attention on a lot of different fronts. So when we just ask people questions like how often do you mind wander, we find that people who are highly prone to boredom also mind wander a lot. When we do tasks, so we bring them into the

Starting point is 00:18:01 lab and we ask them to do what we call sort of sustained attention or vigilance tasks. These are tasks where you have to focus really hard to detect something that doesn't happen very often. Think about something like an air traffic controller's job where you're paying attention to things fairly constantly and so you have to be vigilant but things are not changing dramatically from one moment to the next. And we find that the boredom prone people do perform poorly on those kinds of tasks. They make more errors and they don't actually correct their performance after having made an error very well.

Starting point is 00:18:35 So there's those associations. And we also know that people who are diagnosed with ADHD tend to be higher in boredom proneness as well. Now this is, again, these are relations, they're correlations, they're not causal things. No one would suggest that boredom causes ADHD. But the association is there that if you're struggling to focus your attention on whatever it is that you want to focus it on, whatever is right in front of you right now, if you struggle to focus attention, then you are more susceptible to being bored. There is a bit of a challenge of the chicken and egg here is that

Starting point is 00:19:09 our attention wanes and so we get bored or we get bored and then our attention wanes. And we don't really know the answer to that yet. That's also something that we're doing more research on right now. Well, when I look at boredom, I see it as basically a self-described condition. You're bored if you say you're bored. You're bored if you feel you're bored. And the only way not to be bored is to fix it yourself. I mean, if you're bored, only you can unbore yourself. We do have that kind of judgment of it, don't we? That it is your fault. If you're bored're bored then it's on you to fix it and the truth of the matter is that's absolutely true you you are the person that needs to solve your own boredom and i think for many of people who are boredom prone who experience it a lot and when they experience it they experience it intensely

Starting point is 00:20:00 it's that that they struggle with, that failure to launch into action. They kind of want the world to come to them. And that's a much more passive way of trying to engage with the world and doesn't really work to solve your boredom. All of those problems I talked about earlier, things like problem gambling, drug and alcohol use, problematic use of your smartphone, that's passively letting the world take your attention and occupy your attention.

Starting point is 00:20:26 And ultimately, it doesn't work and can be harmful for things like gambling, obviously. So yeah, we do, when we're bored and in the middle of that, in the throes of it, we are responsible. We do have to be the authors of our own path out of that boredom. And every parent has heard their kids say, I'm bored, there's nothing to do. And to tell them to go do something, it doesn't seem to work very well. So what about that?

Starting point is 00:20:55 What about when kids are bored? It's the common experience of people with young kids in particular, that the child says, I'm bored. And what they're really saying is, I'm bored and I want you to fix it for me. It comes back to being the author of your own goals and actions. And so a lot of us as parents will churn out these different ideas for things that they could do. You just said one yourself, go read a book, go ride your bike somewhere, go play with

Starting point is 00:21:24 your Legos. Go play basketball at the front with your brother or whatever. The problem with doing that is that the child has probably thought of all those things too. That is the nature of them being bored. They've looked at the options available to them and said, nah, I don't want any of those. And so the response, you know, I'm not in the business of giving parenting advice, but the response that might work better is when your child says I'm bored to say, oh, well, and just let them try and figure it out themselves. Because once they do, then they will have that in their arsenal. They'll have those tools to be able to figure out, okay, when this arises, I can go ahead and try X, Y, and Z, and maybe that will get me engaged again.

Starting point is 00:22:12 Another thing to do, particularly with teenagers and maybe younger kids as well, is in a moment when they're not bored, to sit down and talk to them about boredom and talk about a boredom plan. There was some work that came out recently in the pandemic that said that people who had a plan for their boredom actually coped a lot better during the pandemic and had better mental health outcomes. And that ought to work for your teenage kids as well and for younger kids. So sit down and say, what things can we plan out for you to go to the next time that you're bored? And they have to buy into the plan. They have to drive the plan. They have to think of the ideas of things that they could do because it can't be you solving the problem for them. Well, I have to admit that the ideas of things that they could do because it can't be you solving the problem for them.

Starting point is 00:22:47 Well, I have to admit that I never would have thought of boredom as a topic to discuss on this podcast. I guess because my very first question to you was, you know, is boredom something or a lack of something? I've always kind of considered boredom as like a lack of something to do and not much to discuss. But obviously, based on our last 20-minute discussion here, boredom is something that we all need to understand. James Dankert has been my guest. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo. And the name of his book is Out of My Skull, The Psychology of Boredom. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the

Starting point is 00:23:25 show notes. Thank you for being here, James. Appreciate it. No, thanks, Mike. It's been my pleasure. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars.

Starting point is 00:24:16 Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years.

Starting point is 00:25:06 She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. A few years ago, we had Lisa Morton on as a guest around this time of year because she is one of the foremost authorities on Halloween.

Starting point is 00:25:58 And she's back again today to talk about this holiday because, well, it's an interesting and kind of strange holiday. Lisa is the author of a book called Trick or Treat, The History of Halloween. Hey, Lisa, welcome back. Hey, thank you so much for having me, Mike. Happy to be here. So when you were here last time, we dug into the early history of Halloween, and people can hear that episode. Just go to the website something you should know

Starting point is 00:26:25 dot net and go to the search function and type in Lisa Morton and that episode will come right up. So today I want to focus more on the traditions and the more recent history and evolution of Halloween and I think of Halloween or at least the way we celebrate it today, I think of it as primarily American. Is it? It is now. It came to this country with the Irish and the Scottish, who were kind of the descendants of the Celts. And they came to America in droves in the 1840s to escape famine,

Starting point is 00:27:01 and they brought this holiday with them. For the Irish, it was a day when they loved to play pranks. They would hold parties. The Scottish also liked to hold parties and to tell fortunes on that day. And that prank playing became very popular in America. Halloween kind of spread throughout American society. And by the turn of the 20th century, prank playing was huge in America and eventually led to trick or treat because these kids were playing so many pranks. And when they moved into the cities, it became destructive and expensive. And cities were looking for some alternative to offer these kids.

Starting point is 00:27:45 And they came up with the idea of holding these little costume parties and giving them treats. And it worked. So really, trick or treat isn't so much a custom or a tradition as it is a diversion. It was invented to get people to stop destroying things and give them something else to distract them. Yeah, exactly. And I hear a lot this misconception that trick-or-treat is some ancient ritual

Starting point is 00:28:08 that goes back to the Druids dressing in bear skins and so forth. No, as lovely as that sounds, it really is a fairly modern custom, and it really is strictly American. Yeah. And I lived in England many years ago and as a kid and Halloween at that time was not something they celebrated. They had, I think, Guy Fawkes night or something around that time. But Halloween was nothing. And I think now it is something. In the mid 17th century, the British Parliament actually banned all Catholic celebrations. And so at that point, yes, Halloween kind of vanished from England and was replaced by Guy Fox, which is celebrated on November 5th. So it was fairly close to Halloween. But it has been, it's like the UK and the British Isles exported it.

Starting point is 00:29:06 We got it in America and then we sent it back to them. Just within the last 20 years or so, Halloween has become huge all over the world and especially in the UK and Europe. And celebrated much the same way? Much the same way with some interesting differences. For example, in parts of Europe, All Saints Day was well established and was quite beloved. And All Saints Day is very different. That is celebrated on November 1st by actually going to cemeteries and cleaning and decorating the graves or the tombstones of your loved ones. There are parts of Europe now that are actually doing both. So they're partying, dressing up in costume, trick-or-treating on the 31st, and then the next day having that very somber celebration of All Saints Day. The idea of costumes, dressing up at Halloween as a ghost or a goblin or a superhero,

Starting point is 00:30:04 where is that from? Yeah, and here again, this is a little bit of a misconception. I hear all the time that costuming goes back centuries. Well, yes, I mean, there were people who were costuming for things like All Souls Day, which the Catholic Church added to the celebration of All Saints Day. All Souls Day is November 2nd. And there were some costuming rituals for that, where you would dress as a beggar and go house to house. And the people at the houses would give you these little cakes in exchange for you saying prayers for their loved ones. Guy Fawkes Day had a little bit of costuming as well. But

Starting point is 00:30:41 the whole costuming thing in terms of trick or treat and Halloween, again, fairly recent. One of the things that people don't realize about the early 20th century was that people just love to dress in costume. In fact, just yesterday, I was showing friends a 1924 photo of a Valentine's Day party where everyone was in costume. It was a huge deal. So when it came time to buy off these kids in the 1930s, costuming was an obvious suggestion. It does not have a huge lengthy tradition in terms of Halloween. And yes, in the 1950s, when trick-or-treating really exploded in popularity, those costuming retailers came in and said, hey, you know, why do you want to be that hobo with your mom's old clothes from the attic when you can be your

Starting point is 00:31:32 favorite superhero or television character? That came in about the same time that candy companies realized that they could help mom out for trick or treatreating she wouldn't have to spend all day making popcorn balls anymore so let's talk about because I pop culture because I imagine that movies and TV or it had a lot to do with the promotion of Halloween yes well there were a few early films from the 40s that showed Halloween in a sort of peripheral way arsenicic and Old Lace actually moved the setting of the play very specifically to Halloween for the film version. Meet Me in St. Louis has a famous sequence that is set on Halloween and shows prank playing and so forth. But I think the earliest things that really popularized the holiday were in the 50s, like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, which had a Halloween episode. And then in 1952, Disney put out a cartoon called Trick or Treat, which was humongously popular and, again, helped really popularize trick-or-treating.

Starting point is 00:32:39 And then, of course, in the 60s, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown became huge and had an interesting spinoff as well. The book of that is really kind of the first gigantically popular bestselling children's Halloween book. There had been a few before, but they weren't nearly the kind of sales that that accrued. And that book kind of popularized the whole idea of Halloween books for kids, which of course is now its own cottage industry. And then I think the next huge thing comes in 1978 with John Carpenter's Halloween, which to me kind of remakes the holiday. It says this holiday is scary. It is very adult. It kind of was part of the reason that trick-or-treat diminished a little bit in popularity and the holiday became more of an adult celebration. also have things like werewolves and vampires, Dracula, the mummy, that don't seem to have anything to do with the kind of celebrations that you're talking about. So where did they come from? Yeah, you know where that came from was in, I think it's 55, Universal took all of their

Starting point is 00:34:02 classic monster movies and they put them out in a big syndicated package to television. And this is about the same time that Trick or Treat is catching on gigantically. And so you get this combination of what the author David Scowl has called monster culture because you also get like the monster magazines and monster toys coming in. And it just kind of is a natural mesh with the growing Halloween celebration at that point. So that gives us the universal monsters, Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the werewolf, the creature from the Black Lagoon. And the idea of trick-or-treating I know has taken hits now and again because of these stories of razor blades and whatnot. So talk about that because it seems like those are more myth than real.

Starting point is 00:34:51 Yeah, they absolutely are urban legends. The whole idea of the razor blade and the apple came from a housewife in, I think, 1962. Her name was Helen Helen File. She was somebody who was irritated that there were older kids trick-or-treating and she actually gave them like ant buttons with their candy, which of course was bad and harmful and she got caught, thank goodness. But that perpetuated that idea of the treats that were tampered with. But it really got going in, I think it's 72, 10 years later. There's a case in Texas of a man named Ronald O'Brien who poisons his own son's pixie stick, puts arsenic in it, in an insurance scam. And yet that fed the whole idea of the anonymous psycho who is tampering with your children's candy and led to that. There was a surge for a while in the idea of x-raying the

Starting point is 00:35:53 kid's candy. Oh, yeah. I remember that. Yeah. And that was all, almost all had very little basis. In fact, there were not anonymous psychos who were out trying to get kids candy. Well, it does seem just by casual observation that there are fewer trick-or-treaters, there are more parties and more grown-up organized celebrations, and less kids just running over the neighborhood trying to get as much candy as they possibly can. That is somewhat true, although what seems to have happened over the last 15 or 20 years is that trick-or-treat has become very strictly regionalized. I know even here, I'm in L.A., even here in L.A. there are these certain pockets,

Starting point is 00:36:42 which are usually more fluent neighborhoods, where everybody goes. I mean, you cannot move like six feet in a car in these areas on Halloween night. They're just jam-packed. And people come from all over the Southland to bring their kids to these little pockets to trick-or-treat. And I've heard of that being the case almost all over the country. So i think that's one thing that seems to be happening but yes it absolutely has also moved to much more of an adult celebration and um one of the things that we have to thank for that is the haunted attractions industry which became gigantic beginning in the late 90s and of course is now like a they claim to be a billion dollar a year industry that probably is not far off from the truth. Is there any big misunderstanding or

Starting point is 00:37:33 myth about Halloween that people seem to buy into that I guess that just isn't true? One of my favorite misconceptions surrounding Halloween is this idea that it is somehow satanic in nature, that this goes back to the Celts worshiping a lord of death. And there is a precise moment in history when that comes into play. It is in the 18th century. It is when a surveyor named Charles Valancy gets sent from the UK over to Ireland to just put together maps, but he becomes obsessed with Celtic culture and lore. He compiles hundreds of thousands of words of language and history and art and so forth. But the problem with this is that Valancy was a bit of a whack job and just arbitrarily decided that what everyone else had already researched was wrong. And he made a very bizarre connection and just out of nowhere decided that

Starting point is 00:38:33 the Celts were worshiping this Lord of Death. It was complete nonsense. It was completely derided by every other scholar at the time, but his books found their way into libraries all over the world and created what I think of as the weird alternate history of Halloween. So what about pumpkins? I mean, of all the things about this festival and death and ghosts and goblins, how do pumpkins fit in? Carving pumpkins goes back to the Irish. One of the things that they love to trick people with on Halloween night was they didn't have pumpkins because those are indigenous to the New World, but they had gigantic turnips. And they had a famous folktale of Jack the Trickster. And Jack was this blacksmith who had outwitted the devil three

Starting point is 00:39:25 times. And so when Jack finally died, the devil wouldn't let him into hell, but he gave him this glowing hell ember that Jack carried around in this carved out turnip to light his way as he wandered the earth forever. And so the Irish would carve these turnips to look like Jack's lantern and would set them out on Halloween night in some shadowy place to scare the unwary farmer or traveler or whatever. And they brought that tradition with them when they came to America. And, of course, as soon as they saw these huge, gorgeous orange pumpkins, those replaced the turnips. And that was another one of those things that caught on with Americans because, I mean, how can you not love that huge carved orange pumpkin? And it's interesting that jack-o'-lanterns were not strictly associated with pumpkins until about 1900.

Starting point is 00:40:16 If you look at some of the early party guides for Halloween, they will talk about carving all kinds of things into jack-o'-lanterns. And I have absolutely no idea how they did it with an apple, but they indicate that they would carve an apple into a jack-o'-lantern. What about that term, jack-o'-lantern? It's so odd. It is odd. And it goes back to the Jack the Trickster stories. In some versions of the story, he was called Jack of the Lantern because he was this soul who wandered the earth carrying this lantern. And at some point that gets abbreviated to just Jack O' Lantern. What about the economics of Halloween? Do you know any statistics, any dollar amounts of how much money people spend or is it going up or is it going down?

Starting point is 00:41:08 I've heard a few early retail reports indicating that this year is phenomenal in terms of sales. I think some of the stores are reporting some of their biggest sales ever. Now, certainly that's probably due to the fact that we're coming out of two years of Halloween being almost shut down because of a pandemic. But I think it also speaks to how much people continue to love this holiday. It's also interesting how much it is expanding in popularity all over the world. And sometimes in places I would never have expected to see it. There is, for example, a battle going on in Russia where the Russian Orthodox Church has banned the holiday. And yet people love to celebrate it. They love the creativity of it there. So they make elaborate costumes and makeups.

Starting point is 00:41:58 And the last place that we are kind of seeing it go now is the southern hemisphere, because under the equator, the seasons are reversed and you don't get the sort of harvest and autumnal associations that go with the holiday. But it is starting to really catch on in places like Australia in particular, and I suspect we will see it continue to expand around the globe. Well, you know what's interesting about it to me is that unlike other holidays, like, you know, Christmas is, ask most people, they'll know that it's the celebration of the birth of Christ and that Easter is the resurrection and they celebrate that. I think a lot of people celebrate Halloween and have no idea why. And they don't, it's just a, not an excuse, but it's a reason to have a party, go trick-or-treating, get with your friends, dress up in a costume, but nobody's really celebrating the dead or, you know, you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I doubt that there are, if you could ask one in a hundred kids, I mean, ask a hundred kids to name what trick or treat means. I doubt that any of them will be able to answer it. I think part of the appeal of Halloween

Starting point is 00:43:12 is that it gives us a sort of safe, controlled environment to test our fears in. It's the same reason we love horror books and horror movies. And going to a haunted attraction gives you the opportunity to test that within this fully immersive atmosphere. That's very appealing. For kids, there's also that empowerment side of it. You get to dress up as a character you love. And for that one night, you feel really different and special and empowered. Well, the phrase trick-or-treat comes,

Starting point is 00:43:46 are you able to source the origin of that? The first reported instance of it being used that I was able to track down was actually from Nova Scotia, of all things. It was Canadian. It was 1927. And that newspaper article that mentions it does not mention it in the context of costuming. It's just something that pranking kids are kind of yelling at houses as they're, you know, tipping over their outhouses or something. But it isn't until 1939 that we get a very particular mention of it in a national American magazine. The November 1939 issue of this magazine called The American Home has an article called A Victim of the Windows Soaping Brigade, in which the writer is talking about having the kids come up to her house in costume and giving them treats and inviting them in, which of course we don't do now. But

Starting point is 00:44:45 that is really kind of the real first massive media mention of trick or treat. So we get these isolated mentions of it earlier than that, but that's kind of the real birth right there. But no one really tricks anymore. I mean, if you run out of candy, people just walk to the next house. No one's, you know, well, I guess occasionally you see a house the next day that's been TP'd or something, but I suspect it had nothing to do with trick or treat. Right, and I think you're absolutely right about that. What about, I remember as a kid that in addition to Halloween, like the nights before were like doorbell night and chalk night, and that seems to have all gone away.

Starting point is 00:45:31 Yeah, well, what happened with that was, you know, the kids kind of wanted their cake and eat it too. So they would do on the 31st, the trick or treat, and they would not play the pranks, but they decided to play them on the night before quite often. And yes, that was very regionalized. Again, we get dozens of names for that night. Devil's Night, Goosey Night, Mischief Night. It went by all kinds of different names depending on the area. And of course, most people know it as Devil's Night from Detroit, which had terrible, terrible problems with that night for decades with huge parts of the city being set on fire and destroyed and so forth. And they finally got that under control, thank goodness. But yeah, it's definitely its own sort of distinct thing that does seem to have been fading now for

Starting point is 00:46:17 the last couple of decades. Well, as I said, people celebrate Halloween without really knowing exactly what it means or what the traditions are about or where they come from. They just celebrate. But it is interesting to hear the stories. I appreciate you coming on and explaining it. Lisa Morton has been my guest. The name of her book is Trick or Treat, The History of Halloween. And you will find the link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Lisa. Okay, thanks a lot, Mike. Bye-bye. As I'm sure you've heard many times, nobody's perfect. But a lot of people keep trying to be.

Starting point is 00:46:56 According to sociologist and former perfectionist Dr. Christine Carter, perfectionists really need to lighten up. Paying too much attention to detail and success will take a significant toll on your life. Perfectionists tend to have much higher levels of stress and frustration, which lowers your immunity and can leave you prone to illness and depression. Those who strive for perfection in their professional lives often have little time left to care for themselves, and that can be a fatal mistake. Perfectionists have a significantly increased risk of death than non-perfectionists, and that is something you should know. You know, on most podcast platforms, we're on the charts. We're a fairly highly rated podcast. And nobody really knows how those charts are created. It's all a little bit mysterious. But one thing that does

Starting point is 00:47:52 seem clear is reviews do help. And so if you would please leave a review of this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, it would be appreciated. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. entertain, and engage, and, you know, possibly enrage you. And 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

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Starting point is 00:49:10 or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride.

Starting point is 00:49:42 We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes, so please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.

Something You Should Know - The Fascinating World of Boredom & The Origins of Halloween Customs

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