Something You Should Know - The Magic of Telling a Good Story & The Strange Rules of Copyrights

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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, a common and serious mistake people make when they put a child in a car seat, then telling a great story. It's an art, and a lot of us get it wrong. First thing is to recognize no one needs a story narrated. We're so inclined to say, let me tell you a story, and then at the end of the story say, the moral of this story is,

Starting point is 00:00:53 or the lesson of this story is, just say the things. When you see a comedian, they don't say, now I'm going to tell you a joke. Also, who is perceived to be more trustworthy? Someone with blue or brown eyes? And understanding how copyrights work. It's fascinating, but almost impossible to do. Millions of copyrights are created every hour of the day. Since copyright arises on creation, everything is copyright.

Starting point is 00:01:19 You scribble something down on a napkin at a dinner party, that's copyright in your name. But it's not going to make you a fortune. All this today on Something You Should Know. Metrolinks and Crosslinks 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. Something you should know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

Starting point is 00:02:11 Hi, and welcome to Something You Should Know. Recently, I was with someone and they put their child in a car seat. And it reminded me of something that I learned a long time ago when my boys were young and in car seats. And that is, it's a horrible idea to put your child in their car seat in the winter with their coat on. The problem is that a coat is so bulky, it creates too much space between the straps and your child. There have actually been reports of children being ejected from the car seat in a crash because essentially the straps are too loose because the coat is too big.

Starting point is 00:02:51 If you were to read the manual that came with the car seat, it probably tells you to never put a child in a car seat with a coat on, but who reads the manual? Always strap a child into a car seat with as few clothes as possible and no coats.

Starting point is 00:03:07 Then just put a blanket over them after they're strapped in or you can put their coat on backwards over the straps. And that is something you should know. So let me ask you something. Do you tell good stories? You probably tell a lot of stories to people, friends, co-workers, kids, as well as in meetings and formal presentations. But are you good at telling a story? It's often said that the best way to convince someone of something or to get your point across is to tell a good story.

Starting point is 00:03:42 So what is it that makes a good story and a good storyteller? Here to discuss this is Karen Eber. She's an international consultant, keynote and TED speaker, and she is the CEO and chief storyteller of Eber Leadership Group. She's also author of a book called The Perfect Story, How to Tell Stories that Inform, Influence, and Inspire. Hi, Karen. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you. So happy to be here.

Starting point is 00:04:12 So I've heard for the longest time that if you're trying to convince someone of something, that a story is always better than just raw facts and figures, that the brain is wired to hear stories. But I've never been 100% convinced of that. I mean, sometimes a good, cold, hard fact can be very convincing, and sometimes a story doesn't really tell you anything. So what do you say? Are our brains wired for story? I don't believe our brains are wired for stories. I feel like that's such a misleading statement. There's a way to tell a story that's going to engage the brain and make

Starting point is 00:04:53 it really interesting and compelling. But to say we're wired for stories means every story we hear would be captivating and exciting. And that's just not true. Boy, is that not true. I hear some really long, boring, uninteresting stories all the time. So maybe the human brain is wired for good stories, because it seems like everybody likes a good story. Exactly, right? So when you're telling a story that's engaging the brain, you're doing a few different things. One, you're going from just processing words and language to starting to engage more real estate across the brain. You're using vivid words that are engaging senses and emotions. You're having the person picture their own version of the story in their head,

Starting point is 00:05:42 and you actually create this neurochemical shift when it's a really compelling story. So a great story can not only engage the whole brain, it can leave the person changed. So when you deconstruct a good story, what does that look like? What are the pieces of the puzzle that make a great story? First is that your story always begins with your audience. Even if you know the story you want to tell, you want to think about who you're telling it to. You want to think about what do you want them to experience internally? What do you want them to feel or think as a result of your story? What do you want them to know or do externally as a result of it? What's their mindset today and what might be an obstacle? The reason a story

Starting point is 00:06:26 starts here is you're going to tell a story different to every audience. Think about when you are telling a relative about what you do for a living, you tell a really different version of that story than maybe a colleague or someone else in your profession. When you skip this step, this is when stories just feel irrelevant and not meaningful and sometimes like a bunch of inside jokes that weren't meant for you. Since you study this, you understand how story works. When you hear people tell stories, what are the things that you notice, oh, no, if you had only done this or if you left this out or what are the mistakes

Starting point is 00:07:06 that you hear that get in the way of a good story? We've all suffered from someone telling the story they want to tell and not the story we need to hear. This is like someone's greatest hits. They always tell this story because they love it. They love the attention or there's something about the story that is really interesting, but it's likely not relevant for the audience. People don't care. They're not doing anything to make it meaningful. Sometimes this is the uncle at the holiday table. Sometimes it's

Starting point is 00:07:37 the leader that's just droning on. But stories should be told for the audience and something we want them to experience, not for ourselves. And that's probably the biggest offender that we experience because we love our stories and we just naturally assume everyone else will. But you still have to make them meaningful for people. Something that really good storytellers, I've noticed anyway, are able to do, and it seems tricky because they're able to put you there in their story, not in the story, but you're experiencing it, not just hearing it. By talking about how they feel or maybe the smell of the room, they bring in emotion and other senses and things like that. But it's also easy to use those things that, and they're not necessary, and they bog the story down. So what's the art of doing that? Yeah, I have someone I'm working with that had the opportunity to give a presentation to a

Starting point is 00:08:40 CEO, and he wanted to start with a story. And he told a story like this of like, imagine it's the holidays and you're decorating your home and you are putting all the different things on your tree. And he's telling this story and it didn't work. And here's why. Because he's telling you what to think and what to visualize. And the brain says, don't tell me what to do. That feels like a lot of work. I don't want to think of that. Maybe my vision is different than what you're instructing me to. We reworked his story to describe last week, we started decorating my home for the holidays, and we were up and down the stairs seven times getting all the boxes in the different rooms.

Starting point is 00:09:20 I opened the first box to put an ornament on the tree and found the ornament for my daughter's first Christmas. And the difference in this story is that because he started describing the specific details, the listener starts picturing their own version of holidays and events and family and nostalgia. And there's a difference in inviting someone in and letting them experience what you're saying, but also create their own highlight reel versus making them do all the work. So when you're telling people, imagine this, do this, you're asking a lot of their brain. But when you start telling a story about maybe walking on the beach and we hear the seagulls overhead, the waves are crashing on shore like a symbol. You feel the warm sand between your toes

Starting point is 00:10:06 as you're walking and you can almost taste the salty air on your lips. The listener can picture that. They're invited in because they're hearing the story but also creating their own experience. So doing that, allowing for someone to create their own highlight reel is the first step. There is a point where there can be too many details where it's bogging down the story and it's not making it have any meaning. And so I encourage when people are preparing stories in advance, put all the details in and go back and make sure they earn their place. Make sure they're moving the plot forward. They're helping you understand more about characters or really helping you experience it. If you can cut it and it doesn't lose anything, then it's not needed. That is just the most brilliant advice. How many stories, how many TED Talks, or maybe not TED

Starting point is 00:10:57 Talks, but how many presentations have started with, imagine blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what you just said is you're making people work too hard to imagine your vision as opposed to what you did in recrafting that story. You know, I never thought about that. I actually always thought that imagine yourself was not a bad way to start a story, but apparently not. Well, here's the number one challenge when we are telling stories is that our brains are lazy.

Starting point is 00:11:32 Number one goal in the brain is to keep the human alive. And by the way, you did that yesterday, so just do everything the exact same way you did yesterday because it worked. The brain wants you to do things over and over. It's the broker of calories. There are some non-negotiable calories that keep your body running, breathing, running all your systems. And then there is this slush fund of calories that go to attention and focus. And so when you're in a meeting and someone starts talking, maybe they say, imagine if, or they start going through lines of Excel, or maybe it's the relative at the holiday table and they start and your brain says, nope, it's not because you're not trying to pay attention or focus.

Starting point is 00:12:12 It's because the brain naturally looks for these moments to conserve calories and step back. And so when you're telling a story or when you're communicating, you're constantly fighting this of how do you help the brain not be lazy? When you start to paint a picture so that the person can see themselves in it or have communicating you're constantly fighting this of how do you help the brain not be lazy when you start to paint a picture so that the person can see themselves in it or have their own version or just even relate to it that makes their brain pay attention and and it says like yes this is worth the calorie spend let's hang in there when you don't if you say imagine this you know if you're

Starting point is 00:12:43 tired or you're hungry or you're just not in the mood, you might be like, I'm going to go drift off and I'm going to come back in a few minutes. And so it's all about how are you harnessing the brain without making it do too much work so that it decides to take that moment and take a break. The other thing you often hear when people are talking about the importance of telling stories is that telling a story is better than giving facts and figures. And I've always thought, why is it one or the other? Because when I hear people talk, especially in these interviews, and they give me a statistic that blows me away, it's like, whoa, it's show-stopping. It's like 85% of people believe that? That statistics are really powerful.

Starting point is 00:13:33 And to say, well, you're better off telling a story, I've never believed that. What I say is that data never speaks for itself. What's probably happening when someone shares one of those really powerful statistics, it's in the context of a larger conversation and it's punctuated by the context and meaning. When someone just starts with a whole bunch of data, we often have different interpretations of it. It's almost like if I put an inkblot up and I asked 10 people in the room what they saw, there would be 10 different answers. And that's because we take in information through our senses, they get stamped

Starting point is 00:14:10 with emotions and stored in our long-term memory. So when we are trying to make sense of data or different things in front of us, we're going through this library of files in our long-term memory and trying to make predictions for, is this something we know? Do we recognize this? Does it look familiar to something we know? Can we make predictions? And you're each going to have different interpretations because we all have different experiences. So your risk in sharing a statistic or data without any context is that everyone is having a different meaning for it. When you can make sure you are helping people understand the meaning behind it, the story behind it, you're getting everyone to the same starting place for a conversation. We're talking about a very practical skill, and that is how to tell a good story.

Starting point is 00:14:58 And my guest is Karen Eber, author of the book, The Perfect Story, How to Tell Stories that Inform, influence, and inspire. 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. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please read

Starting point is 00:15:41 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. So, Karen, I think most people would agree that how good a story is isn't just the words of the story, but facial expressions, hand gestures, the tone of your voice, the inflection of your voice. There's a lot more than just the words of the story. So much of the story is how it is told. I like to say that I have a co-pilot in my stories. Her name is Paz. Paz is with me

Starting point is 00:16:34 when I am telling stories to an audience because the varying of the cadence as I'm leading up to a major point or something I really want them to take away, I'm going to speed up and then I'm going to say that takeaway sentence and I'm going to pause. And what's happening in that moment, that idea is landing in people's heads. The worst thing we can do in these moments are say, let me say that again, because you're just interrupting what's happening in their head. Pause is a big piece of this. Cadence is a big piece of this. When you're using your body to bring people into the story by reinforcing what's being said, it adds to your story. If you don't do that purposefully, it detracts it. So think of people that are graphic illustrators. Real time, they can

Starting point is 00:17:17 draw what someone is speaking. So they might do a light bulb for an idea, a barbell for strength, and I don't know, a book for knowledge. They aren't making up these images as they go. They have their own library. They have their own vocabulary. You can do something similar when you're telling a story. Intentional gestures that are reinforcing what you say, punctuate it and bring people in. If you're just randomly gesturing, you can detract from what you're saying. As with many things, you know, writing a letter or writing an article or whatever, the hardest part seems to be the beginning. How do you start it and how do you end it? And I think the same applies to stories. First thing is to recognize no one needs a story narrated. We're so inclined to say,

Starting point is 00:18:08 let me tell you a story or to try to set the context for the story. Like, well, this story is about, and then at the end of the story, say the moral of the story is, or the lesson of the story is we're doing that because we feel uncomfortable as a storyteller, but it's more powerful for the listener when you jump right in, the story and when you finish it. And the way that works best is to know your opening sentence and know your closing sentence, especially if you're planning this. Know what you're going to say to open and close because it allows for it to end more intentionally and you're not there thinking, am I done? Do I keep going? You can say your closing sentence with power, drop an inflection and have it land more meaningfully. But does the closing have to conclude or can you just end with, and the butler did it? You absolutely can.

Starting point is 00:18:59 It's going to be, this is dealer's choice. You could end on a funny note. You could end on a surprise. You could end on a message. It doesn't have to be a meaningful, profound takeaway. But what you don't want to do is just narrate what the moral is or the takeaway is. Just say the things. You know, when you see a comedian, they don't say, now I'm going to tell you a joke. They jump right in and you follow and you follow all the way through the punchline. Same thing will happen when you're telling a story. Right.

Starting point is 00:19:31 And seldom do comedians say, and the reason what I said is funny is. Exactly. And is a good way to start a story something like, and you know what happened to me? Or the other day I was walking down this, I mean, just jump in like that. Jump in like that. What is a helpful starting point sometimes is give a time and a place. So if I say it's 2015 and I'm in Paris, the audience gets to picture whatever that means to them. It allows for them to start their own highlight reel in their head. So you're immediately giving a context for when this is and who's involved there.

Starting point is 00:20:08 When you do that, that's immediately going to allow people to decide to follow along in their version of the story. You just said something that made me think, if I was going to tell that story, I wouldn't put me in the present tense. I would say, I was in Paris in 2015, and this is what happened. But when you said it in the present tense, it sounded better. It sounded more important. I don't know what the word is. But what about the tense in which you tell a story? I mean, that just had a moment of realization for me.

Starting point is 00:20:49 It's a subtle feeling, isn't it? When I am telling a story in present tense, even though it happened years ago, it allows for you to feel like it's happening and be a part of it. You can tell it in the past. You can still get there. Sometimes people struggle, and how am I doing that? But when you can tell it real time, present tense, it just invites people in a little bit more. Yeah, that's brilliant. I mean, I would have never thought to do that. But when you said that,

Starting point is 00:21:18 it felt different than if you had said, I was in Paris in 2015 and this is what happened to me. I love that. And I'd never thought of that. I would always use the correct tense, you know, that if it was something in the past, I would say it in the past, but I like your way better. So if you go back to all of this and what makes a great story, these are all really subtle choices that you make that either invite your audience into what you're saying or make it harder for them to place themselves there. So these become little things that can make it easier to get the audience on your side. Are there any other little things that jump to mind like that? Because I would have never thought of that until I heard you say it. Name your major characters. If every character in the story isn't of great importance, you don't need to give

Starting point is 00:22:06 them a name. But the reason you want to name characters is it makes it easier for us to track. You can change names. I change names all the time. But your goal is you want people to come into the story by hearing that time and place. You want them to understand the major characters. And you want them to feel what's complicated about the situation. You also want the characters to be relatable. They don't have to be likable, but we want to understand why are they doing what they're doing, even if we would make a different choice. Yeah, well, as I listen to you talk, I mean, I can imagine using the things that you're saying can really help make a story come alive. Exactly that.

Starting point is 00:22:47 You can tell a story off the cuff and not do some of these things and your audience will get it. They will enjoy it. But to the extent that you can practice and tweak and start to incorporate some of these things, people will start to be like, this person has charisma. There's something really interesting in what they're saying. Stories have a compounding effect too. So once you start doing this and people hear you tell a story, they're going to want to hear more and more and more.

Starting point is 00:23:12 Right, because there are people who you love to hear their stories. I had an uncle like that. My mother's brother was, man, every time he told a story, it was just, you couldn't wait. And then there are those people who tell stories that you could do without. And I love what you said about naming your characters, because I know when I hear people tell stories and they use pronouns. So he said, and she said, and then he did this thing.

Starting point is 00:23:38 Well, I don't know which he he's talking about. Is he talking about he, the guy that did that or the, he, the guy that. Yes, exactly. And when there's names, then that's, oh, Bob did it. Okay, got it. Move on. Yeah. This is one of those episodes you might want to go back and listen to again, because there's so much good information here about how to tell a story.

Starting point is 00:24:01 And that was very enlightening. And I certainly learned a lot. I've been speaking with Karen Eber. She is a consultant and speaker. She's the CEO and chief storyteller of Eber Leadership Group, and the name of her book is The Perfect Story, How to Tell Stories that Inform, Influence, and Inspire. And there's a link to that book in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:24:23 Thank you for being here, Karen. Delighted to be with you today. 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.

Starting point is 00:24:54 A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared is meant for.

Starting point is 00:25:29 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 00:26:00 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.

Starting point is 00:26:43 You hear the word copyright thrown around a lot, yet I suspect most people don't really understand how it works. And that is in large part because the system of copyrights is kind of a mess. When you create something, like a poem, a song, a story, a podcast episode, even a photograph, probably your shopping list. It's instantly copyrighted when you create it and you own that copyright, meaning no one else is supposed to use it without your permission. That's different from a patent or a trademark which you have to apply for and be granted by the government.

Starting point is 00:27:20 And I'm sure you've heard that people have gotten in trouble infringing on other people's copyrights. And you probably know you're not supposed to use other people's photos or songs on your website or in your videos unless you get permission from the copyright holder. Well, how do you do that? The system is messy and really kind of interesting, which is why we're going to talk about it with my guest, David Bellows. He is a professor at Princeton University and author of the book, Who Owns This Sentence? A History of Copyrights and Wrongs. Hey, David, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, Mike. So as I understand it, the idea of copywriting something started with books, which makes sense. I mean, if you go to the

Starting point is 00:28:06 trouble of writing a book, seems like you should own the rights to it. And that started in England in the 1700s. And now people claim ownership of all kinds of things, whether it's... All kinds of things. So a vast range of things have been step by step, and in a very incoherent and bizarre way, copyw has crept and crawled into almost every corner of human activity. There's copyright in wallpaper, there's copyright in computer programs, there's copyright in microchip design, and there's copyright in banana costumes. So to help understand, can you briefly explain the difference of a copyright, a patent and a trademark and whatever else there is just to help differentiate them all from each other? Yes, there are basically four forms of what's now called intellectual property.

Starting point is 00:28:58 Patents is the most ancient. Trademarks, arguably almost as ancient. Copyrights and design registrations. Patents can be taken out for inventions, but unlike copyrights, patents don't arise just by themselves. You have to apply for a patent and you have to prove that you are the inventor and that nobody else has invented it before and that it's not harmful or damaging to trade and various other things. Patents last at most for 20 years, and they're not truly international. They're valid

Starting point is 00:29:32 in the jurisdiction where you register the patent and in other countries that are tied to your country by treaty. And that's quite a large set, but it's not universal. Whereas copyright arises on creation, and it's valid in all the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization. That's 172 states. I mean, basically, it's global. And it lasts for an enormous amount of time. It lasts for your lifetime and then 70 years. So, you know, if you're in your 20s and you publish a bestseller, that's going to be copyrighted and not in the public domain. I don't know, 120 years, 130 years. It's a ridiculously long time. Patents are much more restricted. And of course, patents are public because you can find out what's been patented and it's open for inspection. I mean, people can learn what it is you patented and how to make it.

Starting point is 00:30:27 It's just that they can't do it themselves without license from you for the duration of the patent. It's not often the full 20 years because it takes quite a time to get the registration accepted. There seems to be a lot of confusion about using the copyrighted material of other people. I hear people say things like, well, you can use a photograph, someone else's photograph on your website if you credit them or if you claim fair use. And the same thing with a song. If you just use a small portion of a song, that's fair use, whatever that means, and then you're okay. But I hear that's not true. U.S. copyright law has this fair use provision, and European copyright laws also have a thing called fair dealing.

Starting point is 00:31:20 But in the U.S., it's a very vague and disputable provision. The way in which it's phrased in the laws in Title 17 at present means that you can never really be sure whether what you're doing is covered by fair use or not. And since it's very expensive to go to litigation, horribly expensive, your lawyer would always advise caution and don't do it. Ask for permission before you use it. And yet you don't really, or maybe you do, maybe you know more about this, but I don't hear a lot of people getting sued over using songs or pictures or things on the internet.

Starting point is 00:32:00 Does it happen and I just don't know about it or it doesn't happen that often? Well, it doesn't get into the news and uh no you don't hear a lot because most people are advised to be cautious and not do it or else to go through the extremely lengthy and sometimes unpredictable process of of requesting permission paying a fee on the internet i guess there's a bit more freedom than there is an actual print but even, it's a dodgy business. Many things now appear on the internet, I mean, most notably Wikipedia, under a kind of non-copyright regime called Creative Commons licenses, the CC that you sometimes see at the bottom of pictures and articles.

Starting point is 00:32:40 CCBY, for example, means that you can use it, you just have to say who it's by. And then there are other more restrictive forms of Creative Commons licenses. So that is kind of, well, it's an attempt, it's an escape from the very rigid constraints of copyright law, because you have to understand also that, you know, millions of copyrights are created every hour of the day. Since copyright arises on creation everything is copyright and most I'd say about 99.5% of copyrights are commercially worthless you know you you scribble something down on a napkin at a dinner party that's copyright in your name but it's not going to make you

Starting point is 00:33:20 a fortune or at least only one a million times. So, you know, copyright is both far more extensive than it needs to be and far more constraining than it needs to be because everybody's really rather scared of using or reusing anything that somebody else has penned or hummed. So we live in this bizarre world of an extremely rigid overarching framework that is simply inapplicable and simply pointless to apply in the overwhelming majority of cases. And is there a result, a consequence of that? Does it have some sort of chilling effect or is it just it is what it is? Oh no, it has real effects and you can see those effects. For example, you may have noticed that many TV documentaries have a modern style where the person being interviewed sits on a bar stool that you can't see against a black background and talks to camera. That's not really a sort of an influence of Scandinavian minimalism. from the owners of the rights to the poster on his wall, to the images around, to the furniture, because in Europe, furniture is copyrighted too. It's hugely constraining. So you just throw

Starting point is 00:34:54 everything out and you have a black background. So that's one example. Another example in documentary film in particular is that documentary filmmakers actually change, edit out anything like, you know, tunes overheard on a radio, whatever's on the TV in the room that they're filming. They edit that out so as not to have to pay permissions. So there's just one little domain, not insignificant domain, documentary film, that is completely shaped by the constraining effect of copyright law. Well, here's an example.

Starting point is 00:35:30 Okay, so you and I are talking and this ends up being a podcast episode for our podcast, but you're in it. It's your voice. Who owns it? You do. Or rather, whatever company employs you, the rights of the recording in this lie with the commissioner. And even though there's no contract between us, if it came to any kind of litigation, it will be held that what I'm performing is work for hire, even if you don't pay me a penny. And I don't pay you a penny. And you don't pay me a penny. More's the pity.

Starting point is 00:36:04 So sorry. So yeah, that's right. I have no control. You often see like on YouTube videos or TikTok videos, you know, people get their taking video of someone who says you have no right to film me in public. Do you? That's rather different. What those people are appealing to is something that's like an add-on to copyright law, and that's called moral rights or rights of privacy and rights of publicity. And that's really quite a recent extension of the domain of intellectual property.

Starting point is 00:36:40 And that in many countries, but especially in a country like France, which is a strong moral rights country, you do indeed own the rights to your own image, to any representation of it. So that, yes, you can object, as indeed celebrities and members of royal families object very strongly and successfully to the publication of images taken of them without their knowledge and permission. But in the United States, in general, you can film something in public and it's yours to use, yes? Not quite. It depends what you're filming. And does it depend on how you use it? Not in principle. in practice, yes. I mean, you know, if you're making a big budget movie, then you have to be very careful of what's on the screen because they're the owners of what you're filming may well sue for infringement of

Starting point is 00:37:40 their own publicity and privacy rights. There's an exemption in the US, but not in Europe, for architecture. So you can film somebody in front of a, I don't know, a Frank Gehry building, and Frank Gehry doesn't get to charge you for it. But in Europe, if you just take a snap of somebody standing in front of the Louvre, the estate of I.M. Pei, the architect of the pyramid, has a stake in that photograph and can and might possibly sue you for infringement of their image rights. Even if you don't do anything with that picture, there doesn't have to be damages, correct? There doesn't have to be damages, but there's rather, there's not much

Starting point is 00:38:25 point suing you unless you're rich. The taking of the photograph is not illegal. And you just own the photograph, nothing's going to happen. But if you use it, say to illustrate a book, then all hell breaks loose. Yes. Well, this all seems rather ridiculous and unnecessary in many ways. And yet for years, centuries, I guess, you know, things seem pretty normal in the copyright world. And you point out that things changed in the 70s, the 1970s. So what changed? The United States finally decided not to stand aside from the increasingly global regime of intellectual property because the US is a very late convert to all of this and passed

Starting point is 00:39:12 a new copyright law in 1976 and then shortly after joined at last the Berne Convention through international treaties and notably the Marrakesh Treaty of 1998. And in the wake of that and in the train of that, there's been lots of legislation about internet, about social media sites, about DVDs, about music recording. The legislation has followed almost every year since then to make the domain of copyright more and more global, more and more extensive in terms of its range of the things that it covers, longer, because the U.S. only introduced the 70 years post-mortem regime in the 1990s.

Starting point is 00:39:54 So those are the steps that have been taken in the last 50 years to really make copyright what it is today. So when you boil it all down, it seems that what copyright is trying to do is say everything belongs to someone and you have to pay to use it or get permission. But that seems to be violated all the time. Well, it's violated all the time on YouTube. YouTube is a magnificently devious and peculiar get-round of that constraint. There is a compact between the owners of YouTube and a number of major content-owning corporations like Viacom and Warner Brothers and so forth such that when you put up a clip of a copyright protected movie on youtube youtube pays to the owners of that copyrighted material some slice of the advertising revenue it gets from the ads that precede or follow the clip um so uh permissions not asked it's regular but obviously you have to register with youtube your ownership of this that or the other and you also have to register with YouTube your ownership of this, that, or the other, and you also have to monitor it to know when it's being used.

Starting point is 00:41:08 So that's open to big corporations. You've got legal departments and bots that scour and scan, et cetera. But to you and me, I mean, it's rather pointless to have that right. Not right. To have that convention is not you you or i would actually want to operate so let's say you want to use a song on your website or in a video and you want to do it the right way is there somewhere to go is there like a schedule of fees for how much it's going to cost or do you have to track somebody down the songs there is a schedule of

Starting point is 00:41:46 fees music copyright is actually rather different from the copyright in in images audiovis and uh and books obviously for other things it's negotiable but i have heard that for music it is particularly difficult because if you want to use somebody's recording of a song in a video, you not only have to get permission from the people who wrote the song, but also the performers on the recording, the musicians. And you've got to go figure out how to track them down. And that it's a difficult process. It is often a very difficult. It is normally a very difficult task. Because given the length of duration of copyright, most songs that have been recorded belong to the heirs, great nephews, second cousins of the original artists who wrote the music or performed it or to

Starting point is 00:42:47 the companies that recorded it. And those companies, of course, have either gone out of business, been bought by somebody else. And the amount of research you have to do just to find who are the rights owners is really very substantial. One of the things I don't understand is why there aren't more lawsuits flying around. Given that everything is copyrighted and everything is owned by somebody and you have to pay to use it, why people aren't suing people left and right?

Starting point is 00:43:12 Do you know how much it costs to sue somebody in the United States? Or even if you threaten to sue them. This doesn't seem to be happening a lot. No, it isn't happening a lot because litigation is uncertain, it's expensive, and the actual value of the copyright is often quite minimal. Most copyrights aren't worth anything. So litigation doesn't happen very often. But when it does happen, it's enormous. For example, a computer software company called Oracle sued Google for having used elements of its Java programming language in the Android devices in the early aughts. It sued them for billions of dollars. itself cost many millions and it took 10 years for it to reach the Supreme Court which it did just last year and the outturn was actually fairly indeterminate because Supreme Court said that

Starting point is 00:44:14 it didn't want to rule as to whether the Java programming language was a proper object of copyright but that if it were then the use that Google made of the Java language would not have infringed. So that's all that either side got out of 10 years of litigation. It does seem that because everything is copyrighted, that there's going to be a lot of inadvertent infringement on copyrights because how can you not? I mean, as the title of your book suggests, if you have a sentence, it's in your book and I put it in my book, can you say, hey, that's my sentence, it's in my book, I want money

Starting point is 00:44:58 for that. The estate of T.S. Eliot does that all the time. If you should so much as reproduce two lines of a poem by T.S. Eliot without getting permission from the estate of T.S. Eliot, which is administered by a London publisher, you will get sued, yes? What, you'll get a demand anyway. But it won't happen because your publisher won't allow you to do that. Your publisher will say, oi, get permission. Do you happen to know that when somebody uses a couple of lines of a T.S. Eliot poem, what does that cost? Like how much do they ask for that? No, I'm not a publisher, so I don't know. I haven't actually personal experience of it, but received knowledge is that it's somewhat extortionortionate and this may explain why you don't often see

Starting point is 00:45:53 someone extortionate lots and lots of authors and their representatives in publishing houses will just say fine go ahead we're delighted well the whole the whole system seems a little bizarre but i have a better understanding of it now thanks to you i've been speaking with david bellows he is a professor at princeton university and author of the book who owns this sentence a history of copyrights and wrongs and there's a link to that book in the show notes i appreciate you explaining all this thanks david thank you mike in the show notes. I appreciate you explaining all this. Thanks, David. Thank you, Mike. If you've got blue eyes, well, I've got blue eyes,

Starting point is 00:46:33 and if you too have blue eyes, we may look less trustworthy than our brown-eyed friends. That's the result of a study done at Charles University in Prague. Students were asked to look at an array of faces and indicate which ones they would trust the most. Brown eyes won for both men and women, but significantly more for men. The researchers explained that it's not actually the color of the eyes that invokes that sense of trust. Men with brown eyes typically have bigger mouths and noses, broader chins, and more

Starting point is 00:47:10 prominent brows. These larger facial features tend to convey a stronger sense of trust and have deeper evolutionary roots. And that is something you should know. It is always appreciated when you tell someone you know about this podcast and ask them to listen. You can also, if you're a little more ambitious, post something on social media with a link to an episode.

Starting point is 00:47:35 We'd appreciate that. We appreciate anything you can do to help us grow our audience. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial.

Starting point is 00:47:52 And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed. I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched in cooler temperatures.

Starting point is 00:48:23 You got this. No, I didn't. Don't believe that. About a witch coming this. No, I didn't. Don't believe that. About a witch coming true? Well, I didn't either. Of course, I'm just a cicada. I'm crying. I'm so sorry.

Starting point is 00:48:34 You win that one. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. 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

Starting point is 00:48:54 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 let's watch it all again and we can't do that alone so we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride we've got writers producers composers directors and we'll of course have some actors on as well including some certain guys that

Starting point is 00:49:16 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 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 Magic of Telling a Good Story & The Strange Rules of Copyrights

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