Something You Should Know - What If You Could Live a Lot Longer & Why We Believe Things That Just Aren’t True

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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, the top 10 Halloween candies this year. Then what science is learning from animals to help humans live longer. Because some animals live a very long time. What's the longest? It's a clam called the ocean quahog. They live at least 507 years because we know of one that lived that long. It was born in 1499 and died in 2006. Also why you shouldn't throw away your empty prescription bottles and the terrible consequences of misbelief, believing things that just Also, why you shouldn't throw away your empty prescription bottles.

Starting point is 00:01:09 And the terrible consequences of misbelief, believing things that just aren't true. My guest Dan Ariely is a victim of it. Because people were very much convinced that I conspired to bring about COVID. And that was the reason for me to join Bill Gates and the Illuminati in trying to kill as many healthy people as possible. All this today on Something You Should Know. 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,

Starting point is 00:01:52 relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. Something you should know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. One list that doesn't change much year to year is the list of the most popular Halloween candies. Now, it does vary from region to region and state to state, well, and person to person, for that matter. But CandyStore.com has compiled a list of the top 10 Halloween candies in the U.S.

Starting point is 00:02:40 according to their data that they put together over the last 16 years. At number 10 is Snickers, which surprises me a little bit, because it's my number one, or maybe number two. So number 10 is Snickers. Number nine is Hershey's Mini Bars. Number eight, Candy Corn. Never been a big fan of Candy Corn, but it is one of the only candies that you see only at Halloween.

Starting point is 00:03:07 Number seven is Hershey's Kisses. Starburst comes in at number six. Sour Patch Kids at number five. The fourth most popular Halloween candy is Skittles. At number three, Hot Tamales. Number two is M&M's. And the number one Halloween candy, can you guess? Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

Starting point is 00:03:31 Hard to argue with that one. And that is something you should know. Human beings live to be somewhere around 80 years old, on average. And that's a lot longer than it used to be. And of course, you occasionally hear of people living well over 100. But that's pretty rare. Clearly, age, or aging, is a killer. Still, there are other species that live a lot longer than we do.

Starting point is 00:04:01 So what if we could learn from or even extract from those animals, whatever the magic is, to keep us alive a lot longer? Or what if we could somehow use the whatever it is that, say, keeps birds healthy? Because birds tend to stay healthy right up until when they die, and they don't get those long, slow illnesses that often painfully kill people. It may sound a little science fiction-y, but there's actually some serious research going on to see if we can live longer the way other species do. And it starts by understanding what it is and how it is that these animals live for decades longer

Starting point is 00:04:44 and sometimes, literally, centuries longer than we do. Right in the middle of this research is Stephen Austad. Stephen is a distinguished professor of biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and author of a couple of books. His latest is Methuselah Zoo, What Nature Can Teach Us About Living Longer, Healthier Lives. Hi, Stephen, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks, it's nice to be here. So this idea, this whole notion of looking at other animals that live longer and somehow tying

Starting point is 00:05:19 it to human longevity and improving human longevity, how does this all work? How does this research, this all work? How does this research explain all this? Well, our fundamental biology is very similar between animals and humans. And in fact, some people study aging in single-celled animals even. But the thing is that we're quite successful at aging. So life itself is a damaging process and gradually it kills organisms. But some animals are very good at resisting that damage and some are not so good. Humans happen to be quite good. We're the longest lived of any of the terrestrial mammals. But there are animals that combat the destructive processes of aging better than we do. And I think that we can

Starting point is 00:06:06 learn something from their biology that could turn into, let's say, pharmaceuticals that address some of our key vulnerabilities inside our bodies. Well, I've often wondered, you hear about animals like turtles, you know, tortoises that live, you know, I don't know, they live forever. And you wonder, well, you know, we hear that our body parts, our organs and things wear out at a certain point. Why don't theirs wear out too? What's the difference? Well, turtles are an interesting case because one of the reasons that they probably wear out more slowly is that they live much more slowly than we do. They have a heart rate that's seven or eight beats a minute, you know, a tenth of ours.

Starting point is 00:06:52 And pretty much everything they do is in slow motion. They even, of course, move in slow motion, as everyone knows. And it turns out that a major contributor to what goes on with our aging is the damage due to our metabolism. And they have a very slow metabolism. So even though they're long lives, and they live somewhere between 150 and 200 years, we're certain about that range, but we're not certain about the specifics of that. If you calculate, let's say, how many times their heart beats in a lifetime, it's actually only about a third of the number of heartbeats that we get in a lifetime. So it's interesting that part of their longevity is because they're slow and that they don't move

Starting point is 00:07:40 a lot. And yet we're told, and our experience is that for humans to live a long time you need to move that movement is essential to good health and longevity that's exactly right and um you know for for the turtles um whether they're moving or not it's kind of hard to tell the difference it does it doesn't change that much uh charles darwin Darwin, when he first discovered these giant tortoises on the Galapagos Island, actually walked along them and timed how fast that they walked. You know, a turtle that's going top speed can cover about four miles in a 24-hour time period. Now, that wouldn't be much for us. But surprisingly enough, this link between metabolism and longevity is so strong,

Starting point is 00:08:27 if you look across animal species, that one of the early aging researchers even wrote an article called Why Lazy People Live the Longest, making the case that really exercise is bad for you. Now, we know now that he was very, very wrong, but he lived by and died by his words. He died at 62 of a massive heart attack. And one of the reasons that we think that activity is good for us is that, you know, our muscles are very, very important to our health. Our muscles are even important to our brain health as we're learning now. So metabolism plays a role in how long we live and how healthily we live, but it's not the whole story. Exercise is clearly one of the miracle drugs for staying healthy longer.

Starting point is 00:09:19 So what is the longest living animal on earth, either on average or the longest living animal on earth either on average or the longest living animal that we actually know lived uh the longest living animal that that we would perceive as as an animal uh actually have spent some time studying it's a it's a clam called the ocean quahog and they live at least 507 years. And I can say at least 507 years because we know of one that lived that long, and it was killed by a scientist, actually, by a researcher who had no idea how long-lived it was. When he killed it, we found that out later. He must have felt terrible. Well, it was actually a daughter. And his daughter was helping him with the research, and he was just collecting all these clams.

Starting point is 00:10:08 And he was interested in the shells because he was using the shells to try to understand ancient climates. And his daughter was just scooping the insides out of these shells and throwing it over the side of the boat. So that's what happened to what we call Ming the mollusk. Oh, man. Whoops. And I'm sure he was horrified when he discovered this because we don't even know what sex it was. So could have been a male, could have been a female. We do know, though, that it was born in 1499 and died in 2006 when this young girl scooped it out of its shell. How could you possibly know that a clam was born in 1499?

Starting point is 00:10:52 Because they have growth rings in their shells that if you know what you're doing, you can section this. You have to section the shell. You have to polish it. You have to etch it. But if you do all this and then you study it very carefully under a microscope, you can count the growth rings. So that's how we know precisely how long ago it was born. That's incredible. And I would imagine that a clam

Starting point is 00:11:18 too, like the tortoise, lives a very slow existence. That is true. But clams, most people don't realize this, but clams have a beating heart. And this clam's heart beats about as fast as the tortoise's heart. But what that means is that there's somewhere out there, there's hearts that have been beating for over 500 years, which I find pretty remarkable. In fact, I used to have cardiology residents come by my lab and I'd say, here, hold find pretty remarkable. In fact, I used to have cardiology residents come by my lab and I'd say, here, hold this clam here. I said, you're holding an older heart than you will ever hold in your lifetime again. So I know birds or some birds like the parrot family of birds that live a long time, right? And birds are long lived animal. I mean, I have a parrot that may be the longest-lived parrot of its species.

Starting point is 00:12:09 If I can believe, and this is always a problem with these longevity records, is that there tends to be exaggeration, particularly in the lack of knowledge. But if I can believe the people who gave me this parrot some 40 years ago. This parrot's now 73 years old. But there are really good records of parrots living into their 80s and less good records of them living longer than that. The longest live bird in the wild, these are all pets, but the longest live bird in the wild that we know of is actually an albatross that's at least 72 years old and just had a baby last year. The other thing that makes it remarkable, and this is one of the things that makes birds remarkable, is they seem to maintain their physical fitness right up to the very end. I mean, albatrosses have to fly thousands of miles to feed their chicks when they're raising them. And to be able to do that when they're, you know,

Starting point is 00:13:11 in their 70s, it's really quite remarkable. And even veterinarians say about pet birds, you know, they're fine, they're fine, they're fine, they're dead, which is kind of like what we'd like the humans to do. Of course, we'd like that to happen as late as possible. But if we could stay healthy right up till the end of our lives, that's kind of a goal of the kind of research that I do. We're talking about how many other animals live a long, long time. And what can we learn from that to help humans live a long, long time? My guest is Stephen Austad. He is a professor of biology

Starting point is 00:13:51 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. And his book is Methuselah Zoo, What Nature Can Teach Us About Living Longer, Healthier Lives. 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.

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Starting point is 00:14:49 therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com. So, Stephen, as fascinating as this is about how other animals live a long, long time, how does this intersect with human longevity? We're working very actively on this, and we haven't got anything that's quite ready for humans yet, but just recently there was a paper where they took a gene out of a very long animal called a naked mole rat. A naked mole rat is roughly the size of a mouse, and a mouse will live two or three years, and a naked mole rat will live up to 40 years. And so they took a gene that they thought was responsible

Starting point is 00:15:34 for some of this naked mole rat's longevity, and they put it into the mouse genome, and the mouse lived a bit longer and stayed healthy substantially longer. So this is the first example of taking a gene from a long-lived animal, putting it in a short-lived animal, keeping it healthy longer. And I think that's probably the first of a slew of these kinds of things that we're going to come up with.

Starting point is 00:16:00 Now, we're not going to take the genes from long live animals and put them into people, probably. People are not going to go for that. But we might put it into some parts of people. We might take a gene, for instance, that keeps proteins from clumping in your brain, and we might inject it into your brain in a virus, and that might keep people from getting Alzheimer's disease, which is caused by clumps of protein in the brain. Well, that'd be pretty cool. Yeah, it's one of the things that we discovered about the really long live clams is they seem to have something in their bodies that keeps proteins from clumping together. And it would be very nice even the protein that causes Alzheimer's disease is a beta protein it

Starting point is 00:16:46 prevents it from clumping so if we can figure out what that is that's a good example of how we might use knowledge that we get from long-lived animals to keep people healthy longer but generally when you look at animals in the wild that live a long time do they eventually start to suffer the same things that people who live a long time, you know, aches and pains and arthritis and things like that? Does that happen? Yeah, the things that degrade the quality of later life. Yeah, you can see that. And I mean, I've spent, you know, unlike most of the researchers in this field that came up through medical laboratories, I came through field biology, and I have spent years and years watching animals of various ages in the wild. And yes,

Starting point is 00:17:32 you can see them with cataracts. You can see them with arthritis. You can see them with many of the same maladies that they get. They don't tend to live very long once they get those maladies, because if your vision is compromised and you're living in the wild, something bad is going to happen to you quickly. You tell the story of the, was it the vampire bat? And I think you use the phrase that it's constantly teetering on the edge of starvation. Explain that and why that's part of this conversation. Yeah. So vampire bats exclusively live on blood. And blood, they don't have the ability to store a lot of energy as fat.

Starting point is 00:18:20 Blood is pretty much all protein. So they're on a protein-only diet. and their body does not store energy very well. So they're always a couple of days away from starving. And that's why they have this unique system where they actually share blood. So in these colonies that they live in, if one individual has not been successful at finding anything to bite and drink its blood in a day or so, they'll actually share blood. The ones that are successful will share it with the ones that are unsuccessful. Now, they're pretty unique in that their window to starvation

Starting point is 00:19:00 is so short. But one of the things that we know from a lot of other animals is if you reduce the amount that they want to eat, you give them less than they prefer to eat, actually increases their health quite substantially. So what's another example of an animal that lives a ridiculously long time and what we learn from that? Sure, one of the animals that I'm most fascinated by, well, a group of animals are the bats. And in particular, there's one species of bat called Brant's bat, which is very similar. It's an old world bat. It lives in Europe and Asia, but it's very similar to bats that we have here. And it weighs about as much as a quarter and a nickel put together so it's very very tiny

Starting point is 00:19:48 they live up to 40 years in the wild and if you think of all the dangers of something that small faces dangers of predators dangers of diseases because they live in dense colonies and you know that's why they you know that's why they have so many viruses that sometimes spread to humans. But the remarkable thing about them is not just that they live so long, but the fact that they maintain their health so long. So, for instance, bats that eat insects hear their prey. They don't see their prey. They yell and they listen for the echo, and that's how they track down their prey. They don't see their prey. They yell and they listen for the echo and that's how

Starting point is 00:20:27 they track down their prey. And they yell in these very high-pitched screams, basically. Well, one of the first things to go in humans is our high-frequency hearing. So these bats live decade after decade and maintain their high-frequency hearing. Otherwise, they wouldn't survive. The other thing is if we are forced to undergo bed rest for a period of time, say we had some surgery or something else, our muscles shrink, and after really just a couple of weeks, people have a tough time even getting out of bed and walking around. Well, bats can hibernate for six or eight or nine months and wake up and fly off. Now, how do they do that? How do they maintain their hearing? The other thing is they have this incredible

Starting point is 00:21:16 memory for space and geography. One of the first things to go and are is our spatial memory as they call it. These bats will fly 50 to 100 miles a night in the dark. And then they'll go back and they'll find the cave that they were living in and they'll find their pup that might be there among a million other bats in that cave. And I feel if we could if we could transfer any of these capabilities to humans, it would be quite remarkable. Is there a creature that people probably have not heard of that really just is off the charts on longevity and health and all that, that you've studied that we just we haven't we don't know anything about? Yeah, well, it's interesting. So some animals you'd never think of are pretty amazing. There's a

Starting point is 00:22:05 very small animal called a hydra that lives in freshwater. And basically, it looks like a little tube with a bunch of tentacles around its top, and that's its mouth. So far as we can tell, that animal does not age at all, at least in the laboratory, it doesn't age. That is as long as anybody has had the patients to follow them. They don't die. Their death rate doesn't increase the older they get, and their reproductive rate doesn't decrease. Now, this is no doubt not true in the wild because they live in a very seasonal environment, but at least in the laboratory, we know they don't age. So we might learn something critical about aging for them. The other group of animals that's pretty interesting in this regard are the mole rats. I mentioned the naked mole rat before, and that lives underground in colonies. They virtually never come above ground. They live on the equator

Starting point is 00:23:03 in East Africa, and about the only thing you ever see of them is them kicking dirt out of their underground tunnels. So you'll see these little things that look like volcanoes, little mounds of dirt with dirt coming out of it. That's as close as you come. And like I say, in the laboratory, at least they live 10 times as long as a mouse, which is the same size. So they live up to about 40 years. Now, the interesting thing is there's a number of other rodents that live their entire lives underground. And those also tend to be long-lived.

Starting point is 00:23:36 And we're not really sure why that is. I think it may have to do with their ability to exist on very low levels of oxygen and very high levels of carbon dioxide. Because if you're in a tunnel that doesn't have good ventilation and you're breathing a lot, you're going to reduce the oxygen that's in the atmosphere there. And you're also going to be increasing the carbon dioxide. And there really is this remarkable relationship between animals that can get by on very little oxygen, but yet live a long time. Whales live a long time, right? They live like, what, hundreds of years? That's a very interesting story because the bowhead whale, which is the one that lives over 200 years, lives in the Arctic. And unlike cold-blooded animals, whose metabolic rate is really determined by the temperature that they're in, mammals like whales have to maintain a high body temperature.

Starting point is 00:24:39 You know, we have a body temperature of 98.6, whales have a body temperature is roughly the same. Well, they've got to do that in the face of the fact that they're living in water that's only a couple of degrees above freezing. And one way to do that is to make your metabolism faster, not slower. So these whales are really interesting because they're living that fast. I mean, they have a metabolism that's that fast, but despite that, they're living that fast. I mean, they have a metabolism that's that fast, but despite that, they're living quite a long time. And they're also extremely resistant to cancer. And here's another thing, just a thought experiment about the world, so about cancer susceptibility. So virtually every animal that we know of gets cancer, although some of them get it very rarely and some of it get it

Starting point is 00:25:26 quite commonly. But if you think of the fact that any cell in your body has the potential to have out-of-control growth and then potentially kill you, well, then animals with a lot of cells should be very susceptible to cancer because there's more chances for any single cell to undergo this kind of transformation. But yet, animals like elephants and animals like whales that have thousands, you know, hundreds of thousands of times the number of cells that mice do or birds do or humans do somehow can survive for decade after decade or century after century without getting cancer. And that's, again, that's something we'd like very much to be able to understand and find some way to mimic with pharmaceuticals or with diets

Starting point is 00:26:22 or somehow. Well, it seems so amazing that there's like these secrets of longevity locked in to these animals. And wouldn't it be great if we could unlock those secrets and apply them to humans? I mean, that's so exciting. I've been speaking with Stephen Austad. He is a professor of biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the author of several books, and his latest book is called Methuselah's Zoo, What Nature Can Teach Us About Living Longer, Healthier Lives. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, Stephen.

Starting point is 00:26:57 This was really, really interesting. Thanks, Mike. It's been a lot of fun talking to you. I've enjoyed it, and I hope we can do it again sometime This episode is brought to you by Melissa & Doug Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving And arts and crafts for creative thinking Melissa & Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world

Starting point is 00:27:17 Because the way they play today Shapes who they become tomorrow Melissa & Doug, the play is pretend The skills are real Look for Melissa & Doug wherever you shop for toys 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,

Starting point is 00:27:50 but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named the Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts

Starting point is 00:28:23 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. So this is a segment, a discussion about misbelief, which you'll understand better in just a moment. But essentially, misbelief is believing something that is not true or generally accepted to be not true. And we are about to have this discussion about misbelief with Dan Ariely, who was, and maybe still is, the subject of misbelief. It's kind of a weird and interesting story that's about to unfold here. So meet Dan Ariely. He's been here before.

Starting point is 00:29:16 And Dan is a well-regarded professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. He's co-founder of several companies and author of several best-selling books. His latest is titled, Misbelief, What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things. Hi, Dan. Thanks for coming back on. Wonderful to be back. So let's start with an example. Give me an example of misbelief. Think about the question of diets. People have all kinds of beliefs in diets, and some of them are actually harmful. People have all kinds of beliefs about cancer treatment. People have beliefs about end of life.

Starting point is 00:29:58 Almost everything we have beliefs on, and many of those are wrong. I'm not saying that your beliefs specifically are misbeliefs, but I'm saying that if you think about something incredibly basic, like educating our kids, the reality is that we have very strong beliefs about what is the best way to raise our kids, but we haven't really tested those. We haven't looked really at the data, and many people do things that are actually not in the best interest of their kids. According to who? According to science.

Starting point is 00:30:32 But many times, science is proven to be wrong. That's right. That's right. What's the difference between misbelief and being wrong the the idea is that if we have the consensus scientific notion pointing to one direction and then we have a few people who are holding a they're not just wrong and they're not ignorant and they're not unaware of what the establishment is saying, but they're saying the establishment is wrong and we have it right. That, in the current context, is defined for me as a misbelief. All right, I get that. I believe that.

Starting point is 00:31:14 Yeah, that certainly seems correct. That if in the face of a lot of evidence and convention and what most people believe, you believe something else, that's probably a misbelief. Yeah. And not, and not just, um, in a way that you, you're unaware of it because then it could be just a mistake, right? But it's, it's something that you believe in a strong, in a strong way. But there's another part to this. You talk about that misbelief is not just believing something that is proven to be not true. It's believing something that you think or that you know is right when there isn't any evidence at all, one way or the other. So give me an example of that. I have a notion, for example, of what's the

Starting point is 00:31:59 right way to give allowances to kids. But it's just my opinion. There's almost no research on this topic. The few papers that there are are not that good. And I'm realizing I'm basing it in a lot of confidence, but very little actual data. So that, of course, opens the door for misbeliefs. If you don't have people who misbelieve, it seems like you would never make progress on

Starting point is 00:32:26 anything because if somebody doesn't say the conventional wisdom is wrong nothing ever changes so so there's a there's a difference between being convinced that that it's wrong and a willingness to ask the question. So I think one of the nice things about science is that people are able to hold multiple hypothesis at the same time. Is to say, everybody's saying that X is correct, but nobody has really shown that that's correct

Starting point is 00:32:59 and maybe B is correct. And I don't have to be convinced that B is correct. I can just create an idea of how b might be correct what would be the mechanism by which b would be correct and then i would test it but i don't think for progress we need we necessarily need the conviction that everybody is wrong we just need to have the open-mindedness and and actually this open mindness is incredibly important sometimes it's called intellectual humility, this ability to hold multiple hypotheses at the same time, not to be overly convinced in any one of them, and basically saying, okay, I'm looking

Starting point is 00:33:37 for evidence. And not only am I looking for evidence, I'm going to enjoy the process of looking for evidence until I can find out what is correct and what is wrong. This seems like a really interesting academic exercise, but it seems that in most things in life, this doesn't really matter. When you say this, you mean what? This whole idea of what's a misbelief versus what's a belief. It seems, I mean, there are, I'm sure, big things that this is important to, but if I spent my whole day trying to decide, is this a misbelief or is this the truth about allowances or everything, it would be exhausting.

Starting point is 00:34:16 Yes, that's right. But other misbeliefs can have more dire consequences. For example, let's just take the question of health. Imagine that some people decide that they don't believe in conventional medicine and they don't believe in cancer treatment and therefore they're going to go for alternative medications. I saw some institution not too long ago that um takes people's urine and gives it back to them these people end up you know first of all it doesn't seem like it's working they end up spending lots of money there's a lot of wasted hope and also they eventually cost a lot

Starting point is 00:35:01 of money to the healthcare system we did did an interview not long ago. We were talking about, you know, kind of great breakthrough moments in history. And one of the discussions that we had was talking about how there was a time when somebody, I don't remember the details, suggested that germs could be causing a lot of problems. Because up until that point, doctors, surgeons didn't clean things. They didn't wash their hands. And when this person came out and said, no, these things are creating problems because it's causing infections, the conventional wisdom is you can't see it.

Starting point is 00:35:40 It's not true. They poo-pooed it. They ostracized this guy because convention was if you can't see it,'s not true they poo-pooed it they pushed they ostracized this guy because convention was if you can't see it it's not a problem and they convention was dead wrong and now we don't believe that anymore that's right so so there are two ways to think about your statement one is to say that misbeliefs are not 100% bad, that there are occasions in which they're useful, maybe even incredibly useful.

Starting point is 00:36:17 And another way to think about it is that maybe this was not a misbelief as I define it, but that really depends on the person. If the person in question, right, this was in England a long time ago, but if the, and I remember the name of the person who discovered that, but if that person basically said, I reject everybody's notion and I'm 100% correct, and that's it, that I would have called it misbelief, and it would fall into the category of, yes, sometimes misbeliefs are correct. But if it falls into the category of that person saying, you know what, everybody believes that, I'm not so sure that that's true. I have another alternative, and let me see whether my alternative is a better explanation to reality. That for me would not be a misbelief. That would just mean that the person has what we call, again, high intellectual humility.

Starting point is 00:37:07 And they're basically open to the possibility that there are other alternatives. And that's always good. And instead of saying, I know it for sure, they say, let me look for data to support it. I mean, one of the things with misbeliefs is that people are not looking for that much data, that they are quite confident in what much data, that they are quite confident in what they have, and they're not even looking for a lot of evidence. So we've been talking about how misbeliefs happen, but talk about why they happen and the purpose they serve, because they must serve a purpose. I also say that these misbeliefs that people have

Starting point is 00:37:47 are actually a reasonable response to some real need. They don't just happen. The story is that people basically start with a stressful situation. And I don't mean the stress of being too much at work or having too much to do. It's the stress of feeling that I'm kind of hard done by. The world has done something bad to me. I don't understand the world. I don't understand why I'm not successful.

Starting point is 00:38:14 I don't understand why I got sick, why I lost my job, something like that. And now I have a need for an explanation. And that need for an explanation is a need to fulfill something. And what do I want? I want to understand the world. I want to find the villain that I could blame them. It would not be my fault. And I want an explanation that would make me feel in control,

Starting point is 00:38:42 that I'm smart and I know more things and so on. So the way that misbeliefs end up being shaped is into stories about why I'm not doing so well and why it's somebody else's fault, a villain, and the story has to give the person telling the story to themselves that they are actually knowledgeable and smart and know something that I when you think of just think about all the conspiracy theories that people have There's always a villain. It's the government. It's Russia it's you know, there's we need a villain we it it it serves a purpose doesn it, to have a villain because then they're wrong and we're right. So my story with the misbeliever started with a video. Yeah, and this is what I wanted to get to because you, being a fairly high profile guy, were the subject of a big misbelief that started with this video.

Starting point is 00:39:44 So go ahead with the story. So there was one video that showed how because of my injury, because I got badly burned, I started hating healthy people. And that was the reason for me to join Bill Gates and the Illuminati in trying to kill as many healthy people as possible i don't know if you know these some of those theories but there's theories about the the cabal of people who are trying to reduce the world's population you were accused of trying to kill as many people as possible as many healthy people as possible presumably out of resentment to people who were not badly injured. Well, that, I mean, I can't really get my head around that, that people would actually believe that someone like you,

Starting point is 00:40:29 that anybody would be out to kill as many healthy people as possible. It seems absurd. So, you know, I don't think it's, well, you know, I wish it didn't happen. It was very painful. I also got lots of death threats in the first few years of COVID. But in the beginning- Why were you getting death threats? Because people were very much convinced that I conspired to bring about COVID. They thought that I was part of the COVID plot. I was part of the vaccination plot.

Starting point is 00:41:04 So we can say, oh, you know, this is just a shame and this is crazy and this is sick and so on. But for me, I want to understand that psychology and I want to understand what were the causes that got people to go down that path. And then also what can we do next time to hopefully fix it or reduce it or improve on it? Why do you think? I mean, this is so fascinating to me. Why? Because you were right in the eye of the storm.

Starting point is 00:41:36 Why you? Why would people attach on you that you started COVID and that you wanted to kill healthy people? Why you? So I think that kind of two reasons, two main reasons. One is that I did try to help lots of governments early in COVID. There were questions about giving fines and not giving fines. There were questions about reducing domestic violence, distant education. There were questions about giving fines and not giving fines. There were questions about reducing domestic violence, distant education. There were lots of questions in the beginning about all kinds of things, and I try to help as much as I can. But the second thing is I don't know if you've seen how I look in the last few years.

Starting point is 00:42:22 Yes. But I have this very strange half a beard because of my injury, right? I don't have hair on the right side of my face and I don't shave. So I have something that looks like, it is a half a beard, it's almost symmetrical. And there are lots of comments about devilish look, not in a good way. So I think the combination of looking strange, seeming odd, basically created that. And once it's created, I became a social currency, and people kind of made up more facts about me and more information and attacked me. By the way, at some point there was a post about me that described kind of my crimes against humanity. And the guy wondered whether I should get life in prison or public hanging when they do the

Starting point is 00:43:19 Nuremberg 2.0 trials for all the people who did crimes against humanity during COVID. And there were about a thousand comments to his post. And if you didn't read his post, you would just see love and support for this guy. People told him what a clever writer he is and how insightful and so on. And if you just looked at the comments, you would think, oh, what a kind, wonderful group of people. But of course they were not. But they did give each other tremendous support, right?

Starting point is 00:43:57 And they needed that support. Again, the psychological perspective here is to look at that behavior and to try and understand what it is fulfilling and and those people were basically you know ostracized from society I'm sure their friends and family didn't understand them anymore probably wouldn't talk to them and and and they found a great group of people who supported each other and helped each other. And that was incredibly important.

Starting point is 00:44:28 Some at my expense, but incredibly important for them to manage these complex times. So you were the villain. I was the villain, yeah, yeah. And does it... I was the villain. Can I ask you, I mean, I don't want to get too personal here, but what is that when you when you're in bed at night and you think about all that, what does that feel like that there's like this hatred for you when you know in your heart that it's not deserved? Yeah, so so, you know, when it started, I thought that I could just explain to them that they were wrong. I thought, okay, this must be a simple matter of misunderstanding.

Starting point is 00:45:13 Let me just fix it. And I called some of them. I joined some online discussion group. I joined some podcasts with them. And I only did myself damage. I couldn't convince them of anything. They were not there to be convinced. They were not there after data.

Starting point is 00:45:34 Going back to how we talked about misbelief, they were not there to find out the truth. They've decided what the truth was, and nothing changed. So I spent a few weeks trying to persuade them and failed miserably, maybe even a month. And during that time, during the day, I was kind of okay. But then at night, I would have terrible nightmares. It's terrible to feel so hated. I know that, and I find this remarkable, that you actually spoke to some of these people who hate you, who want you dead, who attacked you. And I'd like to get your comment on what that was like. And also, if it changed their thinking about you, seeing you as a person as opposed to a monster.

Starting point is 00:46:29 I know there were a couple of people, but that one woman that you talked to, what was that experience like? As I was describing it, you know, it was the combination of the emotional state from being attacked plus the emotion of reminding myself about those very, very tough days on being on the ventilator. And I just started crying, just started crying uncontrollably. And that influenced her. I met her for beer at some point. But yeah, I met her for, you know, as I told you, like my coping strategy is to try and understand. I did meet her for beer at some point, but she made sure that she was always with her back towards the other people

Starting point is 00:47:09 so nobody could take a picture of her meeting me. So her reputation would not be hurt. Just because you've mentioned it, can you just quickly in 30 seconds explain, if you wish to, your burns, how you got them so when i was in my late teens i was next to a magnesium flare one of these things that the military set sends to the sky to light up a battlefield and one of those things got burned exploded next to me and i was burning about 70 of my body and i stayed for almost three years in hospital.

Starting point is 00:47:46 And that, you know, life in hospital is very tough, and life with burns after it is very complex. It's certainly the biggest event of my life. It gives me perspective on everything else and lots of lessons, but very, very tough still. Still very, very tough still, still very, very tough. Well, it's certainly a shame that you went through all you went through and being hated the way you were, but it certainly gives you this unique perspective from being right at the, as the target of it, to understand this whole idea of misbelief. I've been talking to Dan Ariely.

Starting point is 00:48:24 He is a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. He's the author of several best-selling books. The latest is called Misbelief, What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. It's an honor to talk to you. Thanks. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. It's an honor to talk to you. Thanks. Thank you very much. You probably, when you're done with a prescription pill bottle, you probably just throw the bottle in the trash.

Starting point is 00:48:55 What harm could that do? Well, it could put you at risk. You see, there's a lot of important information on the label, and it really needs to be removed before you toss out the bottle. Your name, prescription number, pharmacy, and doctor are all usually listed. That could give some unauthorized access to any number of people. Family members, friends, someone working in your house, to the person recycling or sifting through your trash. So what could they do with that sensitive information? Well, for starters, there's a chance they could use the pharmacy's automated refill line or find a drive-thru pharmacy that doesn't require ID.

Starting point is 00:49:36 Not only could they end up with your medication, you could have a big problem with your next refill. And that is something you should know. If you enjoyed this episode of Something You Should Know, I hope you'll spread the word and tell someone you know about it and suggest they give a listen. I'm Mike Kerr Brothers. Thanks for listening today to

Starting point is 00:49:55 Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love Top Ten lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. 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

Starting point is 00:50:20 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? No, I didn't.

Starting point is 00:50:38 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 just a... Cicada. I'm crying. I'm so sorry. 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.

Starting point is 00:50:58 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 00:51:23 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

Starting point is 00:51:43 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 - What If You Could Live a Lot Longer & Why We Believe Things That Just Aren’t True

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