Something You Should Know - Why You Should Do Hard Things & Sneaky Ways Companies Get Your Personal Data

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Starting point is 00:00:58 Also, there are a lot of things that taste good cooked on the grill that you really should try. And your personal privacy is being invaded. One of the things that I worry about is that people don't realize just how much data is being collected about them and just how sensitive it is. Like, how well do you sleep at night? Whether you're searching for something related to a loan or a disease. Whether you're being faithful to your partner. It's incredibly sensitive information.

Starting point is 00:01:26 All this today on Something You Should Know. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like Something You Should Know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and

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Starting point is 00:02:31 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. 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. As you've probably noticed noticed when two dogs meet for the first time, there's usually a lot of sniffing going on. Dogs size up other dogs in large part by their smell. And that might seem a little gross, but it turns out that we do it too, according to the Wiseman Institute of Science in Israel. They say that there's some evidence to suggest that human beings are subconsciously sniffing themselves constantly. And secondly, there's evidence that we are

Starting point is 00:03:32 subconsciously sniffing other people almost constantly. And well, we know that people tend to become friends with other people who are similar to themselves in appearance, background, values, even in measures such as brain activity. So the hypothesis was that when we sniff other people, we're making subliminal comparisons to ourselves and making judgments about other people based on how much they smell or don't smell like we do. The researchers were even able to predict the quality of social interactions between complete strangers by first smelling them with a device known as an electronic nose or an e-nose.

Starting point is 00:04:18 These findings suggest that the sense of smell may play a larger role in human social interactions than previously thought. Now, this is not to say that smell is at the top of the list of factors, as it is for dogs in sizing up other people, but it does seem that other people's scent is part of the mix of factors that we use in determining what we think of someone. And that is something you should know. Some people just seem to be more resilient than others.

Starting point is 00:04:53 They're tougher. They get knocked down and it doesn't seem to bother them as much. They just get back up and carry on. Is it just part of who they are, or is resilience something you learn? Maybe we could all be more resilient in the face of challenges that life throws our way if we understood how it works better, which is why Stephen Magnus is here. He knows a thing or two about resilience. Steve has worked as a consultant and speaker for NASA, the Houston Rockets, and several other organizations. He's written for Runner's World, Sports Illustrated, and has been featured in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Men's Health.

Starting point is 00:05:35 He's the host of a couple of podcasts, and he has a book out called Do Hard Things, Why We Get Resilience Wrong, and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness. Hey Steve, welcome. Hi, thanks for having me. So I look at resilience as the ability to bounce back after something difficult. So is that a fair definition or maybe it's something more than that. Yeah. So resilience is the ability to do something difficult and then bounce back and either come back to normal or grow afterwards. And I think we get it wrong in the sense that often we think the pathway to go through that difficult thing is to essentially put our head down, grit our teeth, and just push through or bulldoze

Starting point is 00:06:28 through whatever it is. And instead, that often backfires. So pushing through means that we ignore everything else. We ignore our feelings. We ignore our emotions. We push away that doubt in our head. And what the reality is, is that those feelings, emotions, doubts, insecurities that pop up, they're essentially our brain's protective mechanism, and they're messengers trying to communicate something. Yeah, well, that's my sense of resilience is that you push everything else aside and, yeah, put your head down and get through it. That's being resilient. So what is it we get wrong?

Starting point is 00:07:11 What is it that we're not doing right? Yeah, so I think one of the things that we get wrong is that we see it as an innate ability. And the reality is it's a skill. So if you look at, for instance, some of the toughest people on the planet, Navy SEALs, special say, survival training or something really difficult, 96% of them experience disassociation, which is essentially your brain kind of freaks out and you don't realize where you are in that moment. Now, that's not exactly the place you want someone doing something that difficult to be able to perform. But what that tells me is that

Starting point is 00:08:06 everybody faces stress. Everybody has the same kind of stress response, that fight or flight, that wanting to escape. But research shows us and practice shows us is that we all have the ability to improve upon that. I think a general impression that people who are resilient are tough, and toughness has an image of the football coach, the person who's really not necessarily really nice and soft and sensitive, but, you know, kind of tough, rough around the edges. Yeah, absolutely. I went out and surveyed over 100 people. And I asked them, hey, what is your image of toughness? And that exact same description came back over and over and over again. It's that a lot of people pointed to their, you know,

Starting point is 00:09:01 junior high or high school football coach or sports coach said, hey, this guy just kept me in line. And that is our image of what it means to be tough. But if you look at the research, and then those who actually go through really difficult things and can come through in the clutch and handle, you know, challenges, it's the exact opposite that allows us to do that. So it's not the demandingness. In fact, there's some brilliant research out of a parenting and coaching that says when all you have is that demandingness, your discipline, performance in the clutch, your ability to persist through challenges all go down. What's key is you accompany that demandingness with what we call

Starting point is 00:09:49 responsiveness, which is essentially you care, you're there for support. The athlete, child, adult knows that if they fail, it's not the end of the world that their team, their parent, their coach will be there to support them and allow them to, you know, bounce back and get on the other side of this, you know, difficult thing. But how do you be soft and hard at the same time? So that's where this nuance is, right? When we say soft and hard at the same time, it's the appropriate kind of being soft and hard. So when

Starting point is 00:10:25 we say, hey, don't be a hard ass, but have some demandingness, what we actually mean is have high expectations of both yourself and those that you're leading or coaching or whatever have you. Because it's not setting impossible expectations. It's saying, I know you can do this. So I'm putting you in this position. I know you can tackle difficult things. So I expect you to be able to. Well, at the same time, giving them the freedom to understand that even if maybe they have those capabilities, they're not always going to be able to handle that moment.

Starting point is 00:11:04 So you have to have that responsiveness or that softness that creates that environment where it's, again, you're secure enough to be able to take on a challenge and potentially fail. And you see this actually in the workplace. There was a wonderful study done by Google that found that the one thing that was related to performance over the long haul and sticking with the job was what's called psychological safety, which is essentially, I can take risks, calculated risks, but I can take risks and know that my place is secure and that my company, my bosses, my organization will have my back and, you know, support me through it. Many people's impression of a resilient person is that tough person and that they got that way because they've been through a lot, that it's the experience of going through tough circumstances that makes you resilient,

Starting point is 00:12:07 not any kind of preparation beforehand. It's really the hard knocks of life. So there is some truth to that in the sense that going through difficult moments provides an opportunity for you to train that mental muscle. But what I would say is it doesn't take extreme moments to train that mental muscle. Again, there's all sorts of research and data behind this that shows that even simple things can train that muscle for you to be able to take on challenges and almost have like this kind of quiet confidence in this keeping your mind steady under stress, uncertainty and fatigue. So simple things like mindfulness, there's all sorts of work that shows that when you practice mindfulness, even for just,

Starting point is 00:12:58 you know, 10 minutes a day for a couple of weeks, you see changes actually in the brain for your reactivity to the stress of these difficult challenges. You essentially don't freak out as much. Your brain says, you know what? I see this difficult moment, but I'm not going to spiral out of control because I've learned to sit with my thoughts and feelings and emotions. The same thing goes with, again, doing moderate exercise shows the same benefit. Why? Because you're in a situation where you might feel a little bit of fatigue or a little bit of pain when you're going out for a jog or you're riding the bike. But what your brain's really learning how to do is just say, hey, here's this voice telling me to stop, to, you know, quit, whatever have you. And I've just got to deal with it and navigate it and learn to like sit with that and learn that.

Starting point is 00:13:53 And my brain kind of learns, hey, like even though you feel these things, you're okay. So very simple, you know, interventions go a very long way for training this mental skill. And those interventions include things like what? Yeah. So everything from essentially what I would say is anything that puts your mind in a space where it is uncomfortable, uncertain, and almost pulls you towards like taking what i call that easy route and whenever you face those situations how do you train your brain to do these things simple it's you learn to sit with it and not react to it because if you react to it you're essentially saying hey this thing is really powerful i should hit hit the escape eject button um We all know this, right? If you tell someone to relax, they don't actually relax.

Starting point is 00:14:48 They get the signal that, hey, I look really stressed and they freak out more. So if we resist things, it's almost like it comes back more. So training is about just learning not to resist, but just kind of sit with it. The topic on the table today is resilience, toughness, how well you bounce back. And my guest is Stephen Magnus, author of the book, Do Hard Things, Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children.

Starting point is 00:15:40 The heresies of Redolph Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI,

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Starting point is 00:16:54 So Stephen, it seems to me that a lot of how resilient you are has to do with what you say to yourself in those moments when things are tough. That self-talk is really important. And one of the things that really works with self-talk is really important. And one of the things that really works with self-talk is if instead of talking to yourself in first person, you change it to second or third person. What the science and psychology shows us is that that creates what we call psychological distance. And it's almost as if your brain interprets it as like oh hey this is a friend telling me everything's okay like don't freak out you're okay well it also seems that what people say to themselves the self-talk and and the level of confidence that they have that they can get

Starting point is 00:17:39 through whatever they're trying to get through has a lot to do with this. A lot of this, in other words, is self-generated, that the stress of the fear of failure or whatever it is, you make it yourself. Absolutely. What it is, is it's almost self-generated in the sense that we don't react to the actual stress of the situation. What we're reacting to is our brain and body's interpretation of that. In other words, the amount of, let's say, stress hormones that go through our body aren't correlated or aren't directly correlated with the amount of actual

Starting point is 00:18:20 pain, fatigue, suffering, discomfort we're experiencing. It's with our perception of it. I wonder, too, if there are things that you think you need to do and that you need to be resilient for that maybe you don't really want to do, that maybe you're doing it because somebody else wants you to do it, or maybe you're doing it because you think you should do it, but maybe you really shouldn't bother. Again, I think you're spot on on this. And what we know is that if you're doing the difficult thing for some external reason, which could be because, you know, a friend wants you to do it, a boss says to do this,

Starting point is 00:19:01 a parent suggests to do it, or it could be for, you know, an external reward. Whenever you're doing something for others in this external sense, we don't have the same level of persistence. We tend to give up before, you know, maybe we reach our full potential. And the reason behind that is just because the purpose and meaning behind this goal or this thing that we're doing that is difficult isn't there. So again, it's like our brain is protective and says, well, is this really worth it? Should we really go through all of this anxiety and stress for something that we really don't care about. And I think that's completely legitimate. So that's why, again, with the people I work with, if you're going to take on a challenge, it has to come from inside. And if it doesn't, if there's not this kind of deep driver,

Starting point is 00:19:57 this intrinsic motivation behind it, then you should ask yourself, do I really want to go through this? Is this really something that aligns with my values and that I want to pursue? And if the answer is no, then it's completely fine to, you know, quit or not go through it. Well, I've always thought that sometimes, and I guess this goes back to that self-talk thing, that a lot of people create their own anxiety over this, that if you tell yourself something's going to be hard and I don't want to do this and this is going to be so

Starting point is 00:20:31 tough, that you're creating that expectation versus someone who goes through it and goes into it thinking, I got this, this is okay, no problem, We'll get it done. There's a lot of nuance here. It's about finding that Goldilocks zone. And for this, I think the marathon, running a marathon is a perfect example. If you go into running a marathon and you think, this is going to be the most difficult thing in the world. I don't know if I can do this. What happens is that's going to spiral out of control. You're not going to perform up to your abilities and you're going to feel worse doing it and likely quit. But if you don't quit, you're going to be in this like worried protective mode where you're running a lot slower than you could possibly, you know, perform at or run at.

Starting point is 00:21:26 Because again, you're going in with this is going to be the hardest thing in the world. But on the flip side, if you go in and you say, I got this, this is a piece of cake. I've done all the work. I'm okay. This isn't going to be that difficult. Well, the moment that in the race that it actually gets difficult, because it will, it's a marathon, it's hard, your brain's going to freak out a little bit. It's going to say, hey, wait a minute.

Starting point is 00:21:52 We expected this to be easy. You told us you had this. This isn't a problem. So what we want is we want that middle zone where it's almost like you understand the reality of the challenge, which is it's going to be difficult, but you also understand the reality of your capabilities if you've done the work to be able to do it, if you can handle this. An elite soldier in the military put it very succinctly for me. He said, you need a humble confidence, which is you need a little bit of

Starting point is 00:22:26 doubt because that doubt keeps you sharp. If you have zero doubt, then you almost go through unprepared and your mind isn't looking for the difficult challenges that you're inevitably going to face. So it's surprised when it gets them. So I like that. It's almost like this quiet confidence, this humble confidence where a little bit of doubt can propel you forward. But it's a realistic doubt. And then what about what happens when you go through something and you fail? It doesn't work. You tried. You tried to be resilient. You tried to get through it, and you did not. So this is inevitable. We're all going to experience failure.

Starting point is 00:23:10 And what the research clearly shows is how we embrace and interpret that failure goes a long way for setting us up to either bounce back and be able to do it again or not. So if you fail and you spiral out of control in the sense that you think, oh, this is the worst thing ever. I can't succeed. I need to find something else to do. You feel all the emotions and you let it kind of linger. The longer you let that linger, it's almost like you're ingraining the message to your brain that says, hey, we can't do this. Hey, in the future, let's avoid situations like this because this failure sucks. It's not enjoyable. And you see this in sport a lot.

Starting point is 00:24:00 After a very tough loss, sometimes athletes don't bounce back because they internalize and let that failure linger, you know, too long. What the research clearly shows is, yes, we need to process that failure. Yes, it's okay to experience the emotions, but we need to understand process and then move on from it. And again, there's some brilliant work in sport that says after a tough loss in a game with professional athletes, if you allow those athletes to essentially chat with their friends, their teammates afterwards, and just kind of go over it with their teammates, they'll process it a lot better. And then leading up to the next game, they'll have lower stress hormones and more positive hormones that allow them or put them in a place to perform.

Starting point is 00:24:50 If instead of letting them debrief with their teammates and friends, if you stick them in a room with a coach who's a hard ass and says, here are all the things that you did wrong. Why did you screw this up? Like, what were you doing? You see a huge spike in cortisol, one of the main stress hormones. And then a week later, when they play the next game, they perform worse. But a lot of times when you surround yourself with people after you've failed, they'll say,

Starting point is 00:25:22 oh, no, it was great. You did great. Well, maybe if you did great great you wouldn't have failed so so that kind of rings hollow and it doesn't do much you're spot on and that's why again if you look at the research and then you talk with athletes or in my work we're coaching elite athletes is the fake stuff doesn't doesn't work? We can see through that. If someone says, oh, you did great, and you know you did not, like all that does is you just shrug that off. It almost creates a negative spiral. And I think this is why it's important,

Starting point is 00:25:55 why the research shows a lot of times it's with teammates that this works best. Why? Because those teammates were in the arena, and they understand that, hey, it didn't go well. With elite professional sports teams I work with, they often institute what I call the 24-hour rule, which is essentially you got 24 hours to be upset and frustrated and do whatever you need to know, process and feel the tough loss. But after 24 hours, it's like, I don't want to hear about the game. We got to move on. We got to go on to the next one. We've got to, you know, get on the other side of this so that we can get back to doing the work and putting us in a place that we can perform. Well, we're all going to face tough times in our life. And it's really good to get some insight into how resilience works, how you bounce back, how you stay tough during those tough times.

Starting point is 00:26:52 Stephen Magnus has been my guest. The name of his book is Do Hard Things, Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. This is real interesting, Stephen. Thanks. Thanks so much for the conversation. It's really been a pleasure. Do you love Disney? 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.

Starting point is 00:27:26 There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone.

Starting point is 00:27:41 Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday,

Starting point is 00:28:09 where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. We've talked about privacy before on Something You Should Know, and I always worry a little about discussing that topic because it seems like a lot of people just don't really care too much. A lot of us, I think, think that as long as somebody doesn't get a hold of your social security number or your account numbers or passwords,

Starting point is 00:28:45 that your privacy is pretty secure. I used to think that. But now I understand, and you are about to understand, that it is so much more than that. And it's really something to be concerned about. Because companies, government agencies, organizations can purchase data about you from the music you like, your religious beliefs, your hobbies, the organizations you belong to, even your peculiarities and foibles. And then they can use that data to target you, or maybe use it against you. This is according to Carissa Valise. She is associate professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in the Institute for Ethics in AI,

Starting point is 00:29:30 as well as a tutorial fellow at Hertford College at the University of Oxford. She's the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics and author of the book Privacy is Power, Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data. Hi, Carissa. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, Mike. Thanks for inviting me. So, I guess the word privacy means different things to different people. So, let's start there with what do you mean by privacy?

Starting point is 00:30:00 What's that word mean to you? It means being able to keep to ourselves certain kinds of information from most other people. And privacy is important because it protects us from possible abuses of power. So the more other people know about you, the more vulnerable you are to them and the more they can influence your life. Which sounds horrible, but it seems that people generally don't care that much or they certainly don't care as much as you care because I guess because they just don't really see the harm. Yeah there's this interesting phenomenon called the privacy paradox according to which

Starting point is 00:30:41 people claim that they really care about it, but they don't act in a way that shows that they care about it. And there are all kinds of hypotheses as to why that might be the case. Well, don't you think a lot of it has to do with what it is we need to keep private? I think most people think that, you know, if I keep my social security number and my address and my passwords, that all of that I if I keep that private I'm okay but there's more to it than that right there's there are more there are more losses potential losses from other information that has nothing to do with that kind of password social security number information and

Starting point is 00:31:23 the privacy losses don't seem all that tangible. It's only a long time after the privacy losses when the bad consequences really hit us, like we get extorted or our identity gets stolen or we get denied a job or a loan or an apartment that we can see that that privacy loss was actually really bad. And even then, it's not clear that we will ever realize that that bad consequence was the result of a privacy loss, because the connection between the privacy laws and the bad consequence can be very far, far apart. Well, you know, we've talked about this topic before. And in fact, a while ago, I had someone on and listeners wrote to me and said, I was being too tough on the person because I kept saying, I kept saying, but what's the harm? What is the harm if I buy something and I'm one of 7 million people that bought something. So I'm now part of that group. I'm in that data and that data gets sold. What harm does it do? It doesn't do me any harm. But I didn't understand, and I'm sure I

Starting point is 00:32:33 still don't understand, how much more subtle this is, the kind of information that gets collected and how much information gets collected that can be used against you. So one of the dangers with this amount of data collection is that it's very invisible. It doesn't feel like anything to have your data collected. But if, say, in a year's time you apply for a job, and there are two candidates that are equally well suited for that job, but it turns out that you have maybe a religious affiliation that the boss doesn't like,

Starting point is 00:33:09 or maybe a political tendency that the boss disagrees with, or maybe you have some genes that suggest you might get sick in the near future, and the other candidate gets hired, you will never realize that you've been the victim of discrimination because of that privacy loss. And it doesn't matter whether someone shows up in your house or not, that consequence can seriously harm your life. There are a lot of people, I know some of the people who have a very

Starting point is 00:33:38 minimal, if any, online presence, just because of this issue, because they fear that if they're online, that people can find out things about them. But I mean, they're giving up, they're giving up the convenience of online shopping, online banking, in order to protect themselves from this kind of data collection. Do you think that's being paranoid? Is that unreasonable? I don't think it's unreasonable in the sense that they might save themselves from a case of identity theft or discrimination. And it depends a lot on who you are and where you live. So say you're a journalist and living in an authoritarian country, then it's a very good idea to do absolutely everything you can to protect yourself because your life might be on the line.

Starting point is 00:34:29 So it partly depends on your risk appetite and who you are, but it's unreasonable in the long term. Citizens shouldn't have to bear that burden. So just like when you go onto an airplane, it's not your job to check that the engine is okay. In the same way, we shouldn't be the law and still get what you want to get. So it seems like just laws can't be the whole answer. It isn't the whole answer. Part of it will be technology. Part of it will be interesting companies that see that privacy can be a competitive advantage and standards becoming better overall.

Starting point is 00:35:22 And we've already seen that with encryption, for instance, five years ago, and certainly 10 years ago, encryption was not common at all. And today, it's becoming more and more a minimum standard for any company that is serious about what it does. But let's not underestimate laws. Because if you say like, well, there's always a way to go around the law, that seems to suggest that it's the same to not have laws at all. Like we're just as good without having any laws. And that is probably false. I mean, of course, there are ways to try to avoid the law. But say laws around the regulation of cars have saved millions of lives. From seatbelts to airbags, these regulations have had very tangible effects.

Starting point is 00:36:08 So this state that we're in where companies are collecting data about us and selling it, and people are doing what they can to protect that data and keep companies from getting it, this is like a constant state of tension. Is that it? Is this going to just go on forever? I think it's an intermediate state. So people protecting themselves, asking for companies to do the right thing and resisting the data economy is going to be necessary and very important to come up with the right rules and to incentivize companies to do the right thing. But it's not what is most important in the long run, although it is a very important and necessary step there. But if you want to just kind of do what people do,

Starting point is 00:36:53 shop on Amazon, bank online, it seems hard to do that without having to give up some information. Of course, and there's a balance to be struck. But it's not black or white. It's not like, oh, you know, because it's difficult, or I can't do this, then I'm not gonna worry at all about my privacy. So what we each should do is worry and do what we can. So for instance, instead of using WhatsApp, use Signal. It's just as good and it's free and it doesn't collect your data. So why would you use WhatsApp when you have Signal?

Starting point is 00:37:29 Instead of using Google Search, use DuckDuckGo. It's free. It doesn't collect your data. Instead of using something like Gmail, use something like ProtonMail. Whenever you're in a public space like an airport, use a VPN if you connect to Wi-Fi. Whenever you leave your home, turn off your Wi-Fi signal and your Bluetooth signal if you can. Contact companies and tell them that you want to see the data they have on you and ask them to delete your data. Even when you fail to protect your privacy, and in many cases you will succeed. But even when you fail, you will have created two things. One is an expressive act of companies realizing how much

Starting point is 00:38:10 customers care about it and incentivizing companies to see privacy as a competitive advantage. And the second thing you've done is that you've created a paper trail, such that in a year's time or two years time, when a regulator looks at that company, and the company says, yeah, we've done these awful things with data, but our customers were perfectly happy to give us our data, you are providing evidence that shows that we are not happy having our privacy violated, that we are asking for better policies. I can't even imagine, if I were to start to contact the companies that probably have information, I wouldn't even know where to begin. I mean, who doesn't have information? Everybody I shop for or any company I've done business with online has information. And if for me, for example, to keep shopping on Amazon, they're going to keep that information. Well, you might start with very sensitive information or information that

Starting point is 00:39:06 you're not using anymore or that you don't want to use anymore. Say, for instance, I don't know, a few years ago, you use the dating app and you find a partner and you're not on the app anymore. That would be a good place to start because it's very sensitive data and it's something that you don't need anymore. With Amazon, one of the things I find most questionable about that company is that you cannot delete your history. And that is something that I expect will come back to bite them. But you might also start with something like your healthcare providers. That's very sensitive information that could be used against you what

Starting point is 00:39:46 do you mean you can't delete your history with Amazon yeah just try it out go to Amazon and try to delete your purchase history and you won't be able to do it the best you can do is hide it from yourself, which is quite ridiculous. So talk about the kinds of things, the kind of data that companies collect on people above and beyond what we've talked about already, and what people might be surprised to hear is being collected about them. Absolutely. So one of the things that I worry about is that people don't realize just how much data is being collected about them and just how sensitive it is. It includes things like how well do you sleep at night, whether you're searching for something related to a loan or a disease, whether you're being faithful to your partner, what kind of sexual tendencies you

Starting point is 00:40:42 have. It's incredibly sensitive information. But it's information that you must have put out there, right? Not all of it. A lot of it is inferences. So say somebody is looking for the music they like, and they might think, well, I don't care that these companies know that I like this or that artist. The problem is that many times that information gets used to infer things like sexual orientation. And they didn't volunteer that information. And they're not aware that they are actually giving that information indirectly.

Starting point is 00:41:16 Well, see, I would have never thought that. Because what value would that be to them? What would guessing what my sexual orientation do for them based on the music I listen to? Because they might just be dead wrong because that's a lousy inference to make. Well, as long as they're right most of the time, even if it's like 60% of the time and that makes them money,

Starting point is 00:41:42 that's good enough for them and they will be treating you accordingly. So it can have all kinds of consequences from the kinds of ads you might see. And that might be sensitive, say, if you're at work, and suddenly you start getting certain kinds of ads that may be not reflective of you, or that you don't want your co workers to see you that way. You know, that's one of the things that creeps me out is when I like look at something on my phone or look at something online and then I start getting ads for it. And that just creeps me out a lot. Like how do they, how do they know why, what, how did that happen? Yeah, it's incredibly creepy and many times it's very invasive. There's a lot that happens with targeted ads that is actually smoke and mirrors. These ads get sold for very high prices with the belief that or on the things that they would buy anyway or have already bought. And other times they don't even get the ad. So there's a lot of fraud within the market for targeted ads because they're targeted. So in the 1950s, if you bought an ad in the newspaper, you could actually go out, buy the newspaper and verify whether your ad was there. And that was an easy way to know whether people were seeing it.

Starting point is 00:43:07 But today, say you are a company in one side of the world and you're buying an ad in the other side of the world for, say, people who are between 22 and 32 years old. And you're a 50-year-old person who lives on the other side of the world. You're never going to see that ad. And it's very hard to verify that the people you want to see that ad are actually seeing it. Are there other examples like the one you gave of not being able to delete your history on Amazon, other things like that, that people have no idea is going on specific things like at specific

Starting point is 00:43:42 places or types of industries or whatever? Oh, plenty. Let me give you some examples. So if you have a smart car, it's not only that your car is recording where do you go, which can already be incredibly sensitive because it can include like whether you're getting an abortion or whether you're seeing a psychiatrist or whether you're being unfaithful. But it also records what kind of music you're listening to, which can clue people in as to how you're feeling. Are you feeling blue? Are you feeling cheerful? And it even records your weights. The seat on your car is recording your weight. And you can imagine how that information could be valuable to an insurance company who wants to know whether maybe you're losing too

Starting point is 00:44:21 much weight or gaining too much weight and what that says about your health. Another example is when you go into a store and you listen to music and chances are in that music there are going to be audio beacons that you can't hear but that your phone records and that helps the company triangulate between your phone, your laptop and your actual purchases. So if in the morning you heard, say, a radio ad, your phone picked that up and then you look up the product on your laptop and that also tags you as one and the same person. And then you go to the store and actually buy the product. Then the company can know that the ad worked. But of course, it means that they're tracking you throughout your day. If you have, say, a Samsung TV, smart TV, and you turn it on in the morning and you're watching it for 15 minutes,

Starting point is 00:45:10 in those 15 minutes it will have sent your data to 700 companies. What? 700? I know. And what data are they sending? Just what you watched, right? What else could they send? Well, that is a very good question. If you read the privacy policy, they warn not to have very private conversations in front of the TV because your conversations could be sent to third parties. But people have TVs in their bedroom. I know. Very disturbing. What once used to be absolutely unacceptable and wiretapping or spying or being a peeping tom has become the bedrock of the Internet economy. And that's outrageous.

Starting point is 00:45:58 But have there been any instances where, you know, people's private conversations on their smart TV has been used against them? Do we know? I mean, not that it couldn't happen, but has it ever happened? Well, all of this happens underground. So we don't know what data is being sold to whom. So it's very hard to track how that data is being used. But here and there we have glimpses of misuse from mistakes to proper misuse. So I'll give you a few examples. One example was Alexa once sent by mistake a very private

Starting point is 00:46:35 conversation to a person's co-worker. And the explanation that Amazon gave was that it was probably a mistake that the person was talking and that Alexa thought it was asking it to send that conversation to someone else. So that's a mistake. And then proper misuse includes, for instance, a data broker selling very personal information to fraudsters. A data broker actually sold credit card numbers to criminals. Or cases in which, for instance, air tags have been used to stalk people and so on. In general, having so much personal data sloshing around makes us incredibly vulnerable to whoever wants to abuse their power. And it seems as if, just from listening to your examples, it seems as if there's so much going on in so many different ways I couldn't imagine, like my TV, listening to my private conversations, that you wouldn't know where to start. Like, you know, you're not going to throw your TV away, but well, maybe you should. Yeah. And next time you buy a TV, be very careful with the TV that you buy.

Starting point is 00:47:47 Try to not connect it ever to the Internet. Try to do what you can, knowing that it won't be perfect, but it might save you from a case of extortion or identity theft, and it will put pressure on companies to do better, and it will put pressure on policymakers to protect us better. Well, but who's going to buy a TV and not hook it up to the internet? I mean, why would you buy a TV if you didn't hook it up to Netflix or Hulu? I mean, that's why people buy TVs. So what would be the point?

Starting point is 00:48:16 Well, there are ways to do it, right? So I mean, you could plug in your laptop to the TV rather than connect the TV directly. So say if I have a Samsung TV, but I never connected to the internet and I just connect my laptop, you know, I've already gotten rid of those 700 companies that Samsung would send my data to. So it won't make it perfect, but it will make it better. So it just shows that you have to do what you can. It's not going to be perfect, but not because it's not perfect, you shouldn't do it. So it's like saying, well, you know, because I can't recycle everything and I have to use my car and I have to travel, I might as well not do anything to avoid climate change. Well, no, you do what you can

Starting point is 00:49:00 and it makes a difference. Well, I think this is so important for people to hear that protecting your privacy goes a lot farther than protecting your social security number or your account numbers or your passwords. There's a lot to this. Carissa Valiz has been my guest. She is an associate professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI, as well as a tutorial fellow at Hertford College at the University of Oxford. The name of her book is Privacy is Power, Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Carissa. Thank you so much, Mike. In the summer, it seems like everyone likes to cook outside on the grill,

Starting point is 00:49:48 but things can get a little monotonous. Hot dogs, hamburgers, barbecued chicken, that kind of thing. So Reader's Digest came up with a list of foods that actually work pretty well on the grill that you probably have never thought of before. For example, watermelon. You cover one inch slices of watermelon with olive oil, salt, and pepper, grill for about five minutes per side until they start to dry out, and you'll love them. Romaine lettuce. Grilling leaves of romaine lettuce gives them a smoky flavor. What you do

Starting point is 00:50:22 is you slice the head in half, brush with olive oil, add some spices, and grill them cut side down for a minute or two. Finish them off with some parmesan and red wine vinegar. Avocados. You can cut avocados in half, grill them face down with the skin on, then scoop out the flesh for delicious guacamole or burger toppings. Cake. Just cut one-inch slices of angel food cake or pound cake, butter both sides, and then grill until golden brown. And pineapple tastes great on the grill.

Starting point is 00:51:00 Slice up a pineapple, throw it right on the grill. When you cook pineapple on the grill, it takes away some of the acidity, so it tastes much sweeter. And that is something you should know. There are a lot of podcasts out there that people can choose to listen to, and we always need help steering people towards this one. So if you know someone who you think would like this podcast, please recommend it. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community.

Starting point is 00:51:37 Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:52:19 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. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as

Starting point is 00:52:49 well including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.

Something You Should Know - Why You Should Do Hard Things & Sneaky Ways Companies Get Your Personal Data

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