July 21, 2009 • 19 mins
Is there a negative correlation between happiness and intelligence? Is ignorance truly bliss? Josh and Chuck attempt to answer this age-old question by exploring the "science" of happiness in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot com. This podcast is brought
to you by audible dot com, the Internet's leading provider
of spoken word entertainment. Get a free audio book download
of your choice when you sign up today. Welcome to
(00:22):
audible podcast dot com. Slash stuff today for details. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me
is Chuckles Bryant. How's it going, Chuck? I was chuckling. Yeah,
I think that might have gotten caught. Yeah. I think
that was an afropo nickname. Yeah, Jerry's funny like then
she made me laugh. I know. Let's let's let's let's
(00:46):
do this show. Yes, where's your awesome set up? My
awesome setup is as follows. Chuck, are you do you
consider yourself a happy person? Yes? I do? Well, then Chuck,
you may be dumb? Really yeah? How so Well? There's
this longstanding question of whether or not there's a negative
correlation between intelligence and happiness. Take one Ernest Hemingway. He
(01:10):
said something along the lines of, oh, I don't know,
happiness and intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
I went up you, Oh drink buddy. Charles de gall
reportedly said happy people are idiots? Did he really? And
I don't know if he meant the medical classification of
days gone by idiots. I think he just meant, you know,
(01:30):
idiots mouth breathers. I've got one that's going to even
top your Charles de gall One. Okay, Charlton Heston said
you can pry my gun from my cold, dead hand. Yeah,
he sure did. Was he happy? I don't know. I
don't know. Happiness is a warm gun. That's what Paul
McCartney said, and the Breeders man. We could just quote
(01:53):
like song lyrics and people all day and end up
with no results. So well, let's talk about this, chuck.
Is there a negative correlation between intelligence and happiness? I mean,
if you think about it in your own experience, you
can make the case that ignorance is bliss, that kind
of thing that, uh, you're you're happier when you don't
know about something bad that's already happened to you than
(02:16):
you are after you get the news. But that really
has nothing to do with intellect. Well does it? Though?
This when this whole thing is kind of fraught with
questions for me, like is it emotional intelligence? We're talking
about ignorance, Like when I think and you don't want
to use the words like stupid, you know, I know
Jerry says that schools don't like to use that word,
and it's the word stupid. Yeah, it's a pretty negative word,
(02:38):
I'll admit. And people that don't score well on high
well on i Q testa me, and that means nothing
about how smart they are. It's like, I think it
has to do more emotional intelligence. And like when I
think of dumb, I think and happy. I think of
like the dude sitting there picking his belly button lent
like laughing his head off at America's funny some video.
(02:59):
Would you call him and elligent? I don't know. I
kind of link that as one of the dummies out there.
But I'm jealous of that because I watched that show
in my and I just I can't sit still. It's
just so awful. But some people think it's the funniest
thing ever. I think it's kind of funny, and they
seem really happy. You know, a guy gets kicked in
the groin and everyone gets a good laugh and he
falls on his face. And you know, Beavis and butt Head,
(03:20):
they were idiots. They were always laughing and happy. And
you couldn't laugh at that show either. No, it was funny,
but I was laughing at their idiocy. I would consider
you a pretty I don't know if intellectual is the
right word, but definitely intelligent. I would considue an intelligent person.
But I'm not intellectual in the least. You know that,
but you're so. But I would also, I would say
(03:42):
you're fairly happy. Yeah, but I could see you happier. Well,
moods come and go, buddy. But you're saying you think
you're generally a positive, happy person. Yeah, I'd say generally,
I'm pretty happy person. Barring you know, I'm I'm moody
as well, But that's that's in the jeans. So your
questions as to this these articles are um like is intelligence,
(04:05):
emotional intelligence or intellectual intelligence. I think what they're talking
about specifically is um mental intelligence like book smarts. Sure,
or I think you could make a case that street
smarts comes out of intellect as well. I can. Okay,
I'm not going to hear, but I could if I
wanted to. Well, I think technically, they've they've done some
(04:26):
studies that said there is no direct link between happiness
and actual intelligence. Right, let's let's put some substance into
this podcast so we can spiculate all day. Uh so, Yeah,
officially what they say is there's no link. That's the
official line on that. And thank you for coming and
listening to this one. Yeah, no, there isn't any Uh.
Actually that's not true because I found his study, Um,
(04:48):
hit me. I found his study on the freakonomics blog.
Actually is a couple. He drew data from a study
of fourteen thousand people. That's pretty good and they were
giving Yeah, it's a pretty good sample. Um. They were
given a vocabulary test and then they were giving an
analytical reasoning skills test. And the people in the top
third consistently also reported being happiest, and they were less
(05:14):
likely to be very unhappy people happy is and all
that stuff. Not only here's here's the big problem. This
is the problem with everything. Yes, this is here is
our problem. No one actually knows what happiness is. It's
a subjective experience, or if it even exists. I've seen
a couple of people positive that the problem is. And
(05:35):
here's the catch twenty two. All the people who are
thinking about happiness are intelligent. If you're intelligent, or if
you're not intelligent, you're probably not thinking about happiness. You're
just happy. So the the whole field of the study
of happiness shoots itself in the foot every time it
opens its mouth. True, because it's all smart people trying
to figure out what happiness is. And I can't think
(05:55):
of anything that could make you unhappier than that. So
let's just stop doing this medialy. We should. Well, we
can talk about some little correlations here and there. I
know that one researcher was talking about how our educational
system doesn't really you know, they tend to separate the
intelligent ones. So, in other words, early on in schooling, Uh,
the really really smart kids are oftentimes segregated and uh
(06:19):
put in special classes, betimes, even special magnet schools. They're
not picked first on the kickball team. Uh. They're outcast
in some ways because they're smart. And does that lead
to happiness? Probably not? Yeah that Yeah, there's too many
externalities that you can't really account for exogenous factors. Yes, nice, Wow,
you have quite a memory of my friends. Recall from
(06:42):
our super stuffed Guide to the Economy. Another problem with
trying to define happiness is every study of happiness is
a survey. It's all self reporting, and I can't remember
it brings a bell that you had said like, um,
we talked about this before, and you have said something
along the lines of um, it depends on when you
(07:02):
take that kind of test. Was. I mean, if if
somebody tested you right now, how would you test in
as far as the life satisfaction scale or happiness quotient goes, Well,
she's just tough. I mean, like right this minute, Well,
I'm in a pretty rotten mood today exactly, but I
would have about yesterday, but I wouldn't call that. I
wouldn't chart that on the life happen. Don't you think
(07:22):
that the mood that you're in when you're taking, uh,
when you're taking a look a survey on your life
is going to influence everything. I would like to think
that I would be able to step outside of that,
but how can it not, You're right, yeah, So, so
the whole fact that it's all self reported, I mean
self reported data is almost always discarded in every other
area of science. It's it's anecdotal Well, that's because this
(07:44):
isn't really scientific if you think about it. No, it's not.
And let's talk about something that's not scientific. It's a field,
a new subdiscipline called positive psychology. Yes, that would be
Um Martin us uh Seligman. Yeah. And you get the
impression by the that his name is associated with something
as ridiculously hippie sounding as positive psychology, that he's a
(08:07):
crack pot. Uh, he is not. In fact, he's a
PhD Uh. He runs the Center I think for Authentic
Happiness or something like that at the University of Pennsylvania,
so it is bona fide. He was the president of
the Yeah, and actually he dedicated their millennial issue to
positive psychology while he was president there. It was cool,
(08:29):
but it was also pretty self serving. And uh, I'm
sure he had his stocks on. I'm quite sure. Um.
But the whole field of positive psychology is basically, Um,
they're exploring interventions, and an intervention is any kind of
treatment in the field of psychology. Right, they're exploring basically
what positive psychology is saying is I read a quote
(08:50):
in an article about it by another positive psychologist who said, uh,
psychology is very good at getting people from negative eight
to zero, but hasn't learned how to get people for
zero to eight positive eight? Right, And that's absolutely true.
But at the same time, I mean, like, are you
supposed to get people to to positive eight? You know
(09:10):
about that, there's some real ethical questions that are raised.
Let's say that we develop some sort of um pharmaco
psychiatric pill that can make a normal person happy. Should
that person take that pill? I mean, we've already established
as a society a baseline which is zero, and anybody
(09:31):
below that is suffering from a mental illness and deserves
treatment to get back to zero. Why should we accelerate
our our happiness? And in doing so are we are
we edging out real experiences? G the negative? I mean
life is full of both, right, right, But are you
(09:52):
gonna bring that home with the smart, intelligent or dumb
stupid thing? Or is that fall into the ignorance bliss category?
I don't know, I don't know how to categorize that.
Man interesting, Uh yeah, No, I was actually going to
go into um another kind of contrary therapy. Well, I
(10:13):
don't know. You want to talk some more about positive psychology? No? No, no,
that's good. Are you sure yeah, okay, all right, we'll
continue on that. Have you heard of, uh, what is it?
Acceptance and commitment therapy? I have not actually see. I
have a leg up on you. I have to tell everybody.
I've written a bunch of articles on happiness recently, and
poor Chuck's been writing nothing but social media stuff, which
(10:33):
is if this were about Twitter, I'd be sitting here silently.
Yeah I would too, actually would you. Um. There's a
there's a contrary field of therapy, uh to positive psychology.
It's called acceptance and commitment therapy, and basically it says, like, look,
you have good and bad experiences. You can't just focus
(10:55):
on the happy one because you still have these negative experiences.
You can't just crush him down or else you're gonna
end up climbing a clock tower and shooting people. Right.
So this, this therapy basically says what you do is
you go back. And I've got a perfect example for you.
When I was like five or six, we went to
(11:15):
this k o A campground and I had like this
awesome pac Man T shirt had like it was had
the red ring around the neck and the sleeves and
it was just like I think an iron on pac
Man right, and Uh, I decided to stuff a pack
of firecrackers down the front of my shirt stole him.
I got away with it right, and my family was
(11:36):
traveling back from this campground and we made it to
uh Wendy's and stopped to eat, and I got up
to go to the bathroom and the fire crackers. I
was too scared to do anything with him. I just
left him in my shirt for two hours. And so
when I stood up, my fat stomach pressed him up
against the pac Man shirt made this crickling sound. And
my mom immediately looked at me, and somehow she's so intuitive.
(11:59):
She looked at me and was like, what's in your shirt?
And that was that? That was so bad, Like on
my birthday. They took me home and showed me like
all the he Man stuff I wasn't gonna beginning for
my birthday that year. Uh, and they made me take
it back and take the firecrackers to the guy. We
turned around and went back. Yeah, it took the firecrackers
back to the guy, and I had to apologize. I
(12:20):
thought you were gonna say, they lit the firecrackers and
under your shirt, and then yeah, push put them in
my shirt and pushed me back into the store at
the k A campground. Um, so that was something that
definitely contributed to my outlook today. Like it's like it's
still very much in my mind, and I wonder like
just how much of that forms my personality, like how
much guilt from that? So under acceptance and commitment therapy,
(12:43):
basically I or anybody else would look at that and say, really, Okay,
you stole a pack of firecrackers when you were six
and you felt bad about it your whole life. Now
that you're thirty two, is it really that bad? So
you're basically becoming conscious of these experiences that are contribut
beating to your outlook on life, that just accumulate all
this crap. You know, I definitely subscribe more to act
(13:05):
than to positive psychology. I guess that's what I'm trying
to say. Me too. For sure, my shrink is real
big on that. But just from a practical standpoint, it's
not I've never even heard of use those words. It
just makes sense to me. It's practical as opposed. Emily
is always talking about people that bliss out and that
sometimes she wishes that she has has that quality to
just bliss out and like, you know, leave it up
(13:26):
to the cosmos or Christians say they'll just leave it
up to God and let him take care of it.
And you know that's that's awesome if you can, If
you can do that, but are you dealing with it?
It's a great question, Chuck. The problem is we always
say on this podcast to each his own. So if
that is how you deal with life and it's working
for you, fantastic, Well I can't do it anymore than
(13:47):
you or Emily can't. Right, But if that means that
you end up on the couch just laughing your head off,
like I said it, America is funny some videos, I'm
trying to think something worse than that. To be Saved
by the Bell it's pretty bad. Okay, let's go with that.
I find that show mortifyingly embarrassing. It is, and I
still can't want I can't stop watching. It's like a
train wreck. Do you remember the show Hey Dude, So
(14:09):
Nickelodeon Show on Dude Ranch was bad. It was sort
of like Saved by the Belbot on a Dude Ranch
and worse if you can imagine that right there. Yeah, So, anyway,
if that if that's your end result, and that's in
your in your on the couch picking your boogers and
eating them and you're smiling laughing. Then who are we
to say, you know, whether or not ignorance is bliss
or blessing out is the right way to go. Although
(14:30):
possibly you should lay off the dope. Yeah maybe so.
Doritos are in the mixer somewhere. So I guess the
answer to this question chuck, our stupid people happier. The answers,
we don't know, And whether you think that that's the
case or not would definitely depend on whatever self reported
anecdotal survey you read. Right. I think it's interesting. This
is one I want people to log on to the
(14:52):
blog when I do my Friday recap. I'd like to
hear about this. I'd like to hear some opinions calling
out I'm asking for it. Awesome. So, Josh, this was
a cool and remember in our Body Farms podcast, how
toward the end he said something about the lies perpetrated
by c s I, the television show. Yeah, I love
this email. This is really interesting, dude. Yes, indeed, all right,
(15:14):
here we go. Uh, here's my first hand experience of
the lies perpetrated by TV in general and c s
I specifically. Five years ago, my wife was carjacked, robbed,
and assaulted. She escaped by her own wits and strength.
Her attacker had been smoking a cigarette during the attack.
They fought over a knife he had that he had
to her throat, and he cut her hands deeply. She
(15:36):
pulled the cigarette from his mouth and tried to burn
him with it, but it failed, which is that's a
great movie move, you know, turning on the After she
escaped and the police found the car, they found the cigarette,
but with her blood on the filter. Under the blood
they found his saliva, pulled the DNA from it, and
found him in the CODIS data bank, which is the
combined DNA index system, or as they call it, the
(15:56):
bad guy Data Bank exactly uh, which is made tamed
by the FBI. She went through the lineup at the
local precinct where they made the arrest. The grand jury
got the indictment, The trial happened, complete with the dramatic
that's a man who did at moment and sentencing. After
the case was closed, it was submitted by the county
forensics chief and accepted by the FBI to be featured
(16:18):
at that year's CODIS conference in d C. During every
phase of the process, we were amazed at how much
TV had lied to us about the process. The actual
working in the system is someone like what you see
on television as to be unrecognizable. During the conference, they
openly spoke of the c s I effects. So it's
basically these cops and forensics guys actually talk about how
(16:39):
that show is damaging UH, their work, their lying liars,
their lying liars, and how the public has been influenced
so much by these shows. So basically, he hates those
shows and he found it to be a lot of bunk.
I did converse with him a couple more times via email,
and he felt a lot of responsibility because he left
(16:59):
a wife in a running car with the heat on
and the radio on while he ran in to get
ice cream for Lord. And this is when she was
attacked and he had to say that in court, and
he said, which made him feel like more of a jerk.
Then she was attacked and uh, he said, was just
like a TV show, except all the details of how
it really goes down. So it's the drama was all there. Yeah,
(17:20):
Jerry Bruckheimer systematically undermining the law enforcement community. But she
fought him off, and this guy turns out had a
rap sheet of like rape and rape and murder and
they couldn't get him on the murder charge because something
had happened I can't remember. So he ended up going
to prison for life in the pokey in the houscal
and the family of the raped and murder girl got closure.
(17:43):
And you know, we're at the trial at this lady strial.
So thank you, Christopher for that harrowing tale. Seriously, I
think they should get T shirts. You think so? Yeah, dude,
that's actually you know you went through this. We'll give
you a T shirt that I know. I'm just kidding. Yeah,
it sounds insulting you, Yeah, exactly. You you narrowly averted
(18:05):
death by your own wits and you we'll give you
a T shirt for that. We should make a T shirt.
We shouldn't need it. Well, Christopher, if you want to
send us yours, UH and your wife's UM T shirt
sizes and address, we will make sure that those go
out to you. Again, it's the least we can do.
No insult intended just to show of support for bringing
us this email. And if you have a harrowing tale
(18:27):
of survival uh near miss with death um or. If
you've run into any bad guys lately, let us know
and you can send that in an email to Stuff
Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff
(18:49):
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot Com home page.
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand and twelve Camry.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot com. This podcast is brought
to you by audible dot com, the Internet's leading provider
of spoken word entertainment. Get a free audio book download
of your choice when you sign up today. Welcome to
(00:22):
audible podcast dot com. Slash stuff today for details. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me
is Chuckles Bryant. How's it going, Chuck? I was chuckling. Yeah,
I think that might have gotten caught. Yeah. I think
that was an afropo nickname. Yeah, Jerry's funny like then
she made me laugh. I know. Let's let's let's let's
(00:46):
do this show. Yes, where's your awesome set up? My
awesome setup is as follows. Chuck, are you do you
consider yourself a happy person? Yes? I do? Well, then Chuck,
you may be dumb? Really yeah? How so Well? There's
this longstanding question of whether or not there's a negative
correlation between intelligence and happiness. Take one Ernest Hemingway. He
(01:10):
said something along the lines of, oh, I don't know,
happiness and intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
I went up you, Oh drink buddy. Charles de gall
reportedly said happy people are idiots? Did he really? And
I don't know if he meant the medical classification of
days gone by idiots. I think he just meant, you know,
(01:30):
idiots mouth breathers. I've got one that's going to even
top your Charles de gall One. Okay, Charlton Heston said
you can pry my gun from my cold, dead hand. Yeah,
he sure did. Was he happy? I don't know. I
don't know. Happiness is a warm gun. That's what Paul
McCartney said, and the Breeders man. We could just quote
(01:53):
like song lyrics and people all day and end up
with no results. So well, let's talk about this, chuck.
Is there a negative correlation between intelligence and happiness? I mean,
if you think about it in your own experience, you
can make the case that ignorance is bliss, that kind
of thing that, uh, you're you're happier when you don't
know about something bad that's already happened to you than
(02:16):
you are after you get the news. But that really
has nothing to do with intellect. Well does it? Though?
This when this whole thing is kind of fraught with
questions for me, like is it emotional intelligence? We're talking
about ignorance, Like when I think and you don't want
to use the words like stupid, you know, I know
Jerry says that schools don't like to use that word,
and it's the word stupid. Yeah, it's a pretty negative word,
(02:38):
I'll admit. And people that don't score well on high
well on i Q testa me, and that means nothing
about how smart they are. It's like, I think it
has to do more emotional intelligence. And like when I
think of dumb, I think and happy. I think of
like the dude sitting there picking his belly button lent
like laughing his head off at America's funny some video.
(02:59):
Would you call him and elligent? I don't know. I
kind of link that as one of the dummies out there.
But I'm jealous of that because I watched that show
in my and I just I can't sit still. It's
just so awful. But some people think it's the funniest
thing ever. I think it's kind of funny, and they
seem really happy. You know, a guy gets kicked in
the groin and everyone gets a good laugh and he
falls on his face. And you know, Beavis and butt Head,
(03:20):
they were idiots. They were always laughing and happy. And
you couldn't laugh at that show either. No, it was funny,
but I was laughing at their idiocy. I would consider
you a pretty I don't know if intellectual is the
right word, but definitely intelligent. I would considue an intelligent person.
But I'm not intellectual in the least. You know that,
but you're so. But I would also, I would say
(03:42):
you're fairly happy. Yeah, but I could see you happier. Well,
moods come and go, buddy. But you're saying you think
you're generally a positive, happy person. Yeah, I'd say generally,
I'm pretty happy person. Barring you know, I'm I'm moody
as well, But that's that's in the jeans. So your
questions as to this these articles are um like is intelligence,
(04:05):
emotional intelligence or intellectual intelligence. I think what they're talking
about specifically is um mental intelligence like book smarts. Sure,
or I think you could make a case that street
smarts comes out of intellect as well. I can. Okay,
I'm not going to hear, but I could if I
wanted to. Well, I think technically, they've they've done some
(04:26):
studies that said there is no direct link between happiness
and actual intelligence. Right, let's let's put some substance into
this podcast so we can spiculate all day. Uh so, Yeah,
officially what they say is there's no link. That's the
official line on that. And thank you for coming and
listening to this one. Yeah, no, there isn't any Uh.
Actually that's not true because I found his study, Um,
(04:48):
hit me. I found his study on the freakonomics blog.
Actually is a couple. He drew data from a study
of fourteen thousand people. That's pretty good and they were
giving Yeah, it's a pretty good sample. Um. They were
given a vocabulary test and then they were giving an
analytical reasoning skills test. And the people in the top
third consistently also reported being happiest, and they were less
(05:14):
likely to be very unhappy people happy is and all
that stuff. Not only here's here's the big problem. This
is the problem with everything. Yes, this is here is
our problem. No one actually knows what happiness is. It's
a subjective experience, or if it even exists. I've seen
a couple of people positive that the problem is. And
(05:35):
here's the catch twenty two. All the people who are
thinking about happiness are intelligent. If you're intelligent, or if
you're not intelligent, you're probably not thinking about happiness. You're
just happy. So the the whole field of the study
of happiness shoots itself in the foot every time it
opens its mouth. True, because it's all smart people trying
to figure out what happiness is. And I can't think
(05:55):
of anything that could make you unhappier than that. So
let's just stop doing this medialy. We should. Well, we
can talk about some little correlations here and there. I
know that one researcher was talking about how our educational
system doesn't really you know, they tend to separate the
intelligent ones. So, in other words, early on in schooling, Uh,
the really really smart kids are oftentimes segregated and uh
(06:19):
put in special classes, betimes, even special magnet schools. They're
not picked first on the kickball team. Uh. They're outcast
in some ways because they're smart. And does that lead
to happiness? Probably not? Yeah that Yeah, there's too many
externalities that you can't really account for exogenous factors. Yes, nice, Wow,
you have quite a memory of my friends. Recall from
(06:42):
our super stuffed Guide to the Economy. Another problem with
trying to define happiness is every study of happiness is
a survey. It's all self reporting, and I can't remember
it brings a bell that you had said like, um,
we talked about this before, and you have said something
along the lines of um, it depends on when you
(07:02):
take that kind of test. Was. I mean, if if
somebody tested you right now, how would you test in
as far as the life satisfaction scale or happiness quotient goes, Well,
she's just tough. I mean, like right this minute, Well,
I'm in a pretty rotten mood today exactly, but I
would have about yesterday, but I wouldn't call that. I
wouldn't chart that on the life happen. Don't you think
(07:22):
that the mood that you're in when you're taking, uh,
when you're taking a look a survey on your life
is going to influence everything. I would like to think
that I would be able to step outside of that,
but how can it not, You're right, yeah, So, so
the whole fact that it's all self reported, I mean
self reported data is almost always discarded in every other
area of science. It's it's anecdotal Well, that's because this
(07:44):
isn't really scientific if you think about it. No, it's not.
And let's talk about something that's not scientific. It's a field,
a new subdiscipline called positive psychology. Yes, that would be
Um Martin us uh Seligman. Yeah. And you get the
impression by the that his name is associated with something
as ridiculously hippie sounding as positive psychology, that he's a
(08:07):
crack pot. Uh, he is not. In fact, he's a
PhD Uh. He runs the Center I think for Authentic
Happiness or something like that at the University of Pennsylvania,
so it is bona fide. He was the president of
the Yeah, and actually he dedicated their millennial issue to
positive psychology while he was president there. It was cool,
(08:29):
but it was also pretty self serving. And uh, I'm
sure he had his stocks on. I'm quite sure. Um.
But the whole field of positive psychology is basically, Um,
they're exploring interventions, and an intervention is any kind of
treatment in the field of psychology. Right, they're exploring basically
what positive psychology is saying is I read a quote
(08:50):
in an article about it by another positive psychologist who said, uh,
psychology is very good at getting people from negative eight
to zero, but hasn't learned how to get people for
zero to eight positive eight? Right, And that's absolutely true.
But at the same time, I mean, like, are you
supposed to get people to to positive eight? You know
(09:10):
about that, there's some real ethical questions that are raised.
Let's say that we develop some sort of um pharmaco
psychiatric pill that can make a normal person happy. Should
that person take that pill? I mean, we've already established
as a society a baseline which is zero, and anybody
(09:31):
below that is suffering from a mental illness and deserves
treatment to get back to zero. Why should we accelerate
our our happiness? And in doing so are we are
we edging out real experiences? G the negative? I mean
life is full of both, right, right, But are you
(09:52):
gonna bring that home with the smart, intelligent or dumb
stupid thing? Or is that fall into the ignorance bliss category?
I don't know, I don't know how to categorize that.
Man interesting, Uh yeah, No, I was actually going to
go into um another kind of contrary therapy. Well, I
(10:13):
don't know. You want to talk some more about positive psychology? No? No, no,
that's good. Are you sure yeah, okay, all right, we'll
continue on that. Have you heard of, uh, what is it?
Acceptance and commitment therapy? I have not actually see. I
have a leg up on you. I have to tell everybody.
I've written a bunch of articles on happiness recently, and
poor Chuck's been writing nothing but social media stuff, which
(10:33):
is if this were about Twitter, I'd be sitting here silently.
Yeah I would too, actually would you. Um. There's a
there's a contrary field of therapy, uh to positive psychology.
It's called acceptance and commitment therapy, and basically it says, like, look,
you have good and bad experiences. You can't just focus
(10:55):
on the happy one because you still have these negative experiences.
You can't just crush him down or else you're gonna
end up climbing a clock tower and shooting people. Right.
So this, this therapy basically says what you do is
you go back. And I've got a perfect example for you.
When I was like five or six, we went to
(11:15):
this k o A campground and I had like this
awesome pac Man T shirt had like it was had
the red ring around the neck and the sleeves and
it was just like I think an iron on pac
Man right, and Uh, I decided to stuff a pack
of firecrackers down the front of my shirt stole him.
I got away with it right, and my family was
(11:36):
traveling back from this campground and we made it to
uh Wendy's and stopped to eat, and I got up
to go to the bathroom and the fire crackers. I
was too scared to do anything with him. I just
left him in my shirt for two hours. And so
when I stood up, my fat stomach pressed him up
against the pac Man shirt made this crickling sound. And
my mom immediately looked at me, and somehow she's so intuitive.
(11:59):
She looked at me and was like, what's in your shirt?
And that was that? That was so bad, Like on
my birthday. They took me home and showed me like
all the he Man stuff I wasn't gonna beginning for
my birthday that year. Uh, and they made me take
it back and take the firecrackers to the guy. We
turned around and went back. Yeah, it took the firecrackers
back to the guy, and I had to apologize. I
(12:20):
thought you were gonna say, they lit the firecrackers and
under your shirt, and then yeah, push put them in
my shirt and pushed me back into the store at
the k A campground. Um, so that was something that
definitely contributed to my outlook today. Like it's like it's
still very much in my mind, and I wonder like
just how much of that forms my personality, like how
much guilt from that? So under acceptance and commitment therapy,
(12:43):
basically I or anybody else would look at that and say, really, Okay,
you stole a pack of firecrackers when you were six
and you felt bad about it your whole life. Now
that you're thirty two, is it really that bad? So
you're basically becoming conscious of these experiences that are contribut
beating to your outlook on life, that just accumulate all
this crap. You know, I definitely subscribe more to act
(13:05):
than to positive psychology. I guess that's what I'm trying
to say. Me too. For sure, my shrink is real
big on that. But just from a practical standpoint, it's
not I've never even heard of use those words. It
just makes sense to me. It's practical as opposed. Emily
is always talking about people that bliss out and that
sometimes she wishes that she has has that quality to
just bliss out and like, you know, leave it up
(13:26):
to the cosmos or Christians say they'll just leave it
up to God and let him take care of it.
And you know that's that's awesome if you can, If
you can do that, but are you dealing with it?
It's a great question, Chuck. The problem is we always
say on this podcast to each his own. So if
that is how you deal with life and it's working
for you, fantastic, Well I can't do it anymore than
(13:47):
you or Emily can't. Right, But if that means that
you end up on the couch just laughing your head off,
like I said it, America is funny some videos, I'm
trying to think something worse than that. To be Saved
by the Bell it's pretty bad. Okay, let's go with that.
I find that show mortifyingly embarrassing. It is, and I
still can't want I can't stop watching. It's like a
train wreck. Do you remember the show Hey Dude, So
(14:09):
Nickelodeon Show on Dude Ranch was bad. It was sort
of like Saved by the Belbot on a Dude Ranch
and worse if you can imagine that right there. Yeah, So, anyway,
if that if that's your end result, and that's in
your in your on the couch picking your boogers and
eating them and you're smiling laughing. Then who are we
to say, you know, whether or not ignorance is bliss
or blessing out is the right way to go. Although
(14:30):
possibly you should lay off the dope. Yeah maybe so.
Doritos are in the mixer somewhere. So I guess the
answer to this question chuck, our stupid people happier. The answers,
we don't know, And whether you think that that's the
case or not would definitely depend on whatever self reported
anecdotal survey you read. Right. I think it's interesting. This
is one I want people to log on to the
(14:52):
blog when I do my Friday recap. I'd like to
hear about this. I'd like to hear some opinions calling
out I'm asking for it. Awesome. So, Josh, this was
a cool and remember in our Body Farms podcast, how
toward the end he said something about the lies perpetrated
by c s I, the television show. Yeah, I love
this email. This is really interesting, dude. Yes, indeed, all right,
(15:14):
here we go. Uh, here's my first hand experience of
the lies perpetrated by TV in general and c s
I specifically. Five years ago, my wife was carjacked, robbed,
and assaulted. She escaped by her own wits and strength.
Her attacker had been smoking a cigarette during the attack.
They fought over a knife he had that he had
to her throat, and he cut her hands deeply. She
(15:36):
pulled the cigarette from his mouth and tried to burn
him with it, but it failed, which is that's a
great movie move, you know, turning on the After she
escaped and the police found the car, they found the cigarette,
but with her blood on the filter. Under the blood
they found his saliva, pulled the DNA from it, and
found him in the CODIS data bank, which is the
combined DNA index system, or as they call it, the
(15:56):
bad guy Data Bank exactly uh, which is made tamed
by the FBI. She went through the lineup at the
local precinct where they made the arrest. The grand jury
got the indictment, The trial happened, complete with the dramatic
that's a man who did at moment and sentencing. After
the case was closed, it was submitted by the county
forensics chief and accepted by the FBI to be featured
(16:18):
at that year's CODIS conference in d C. During every
phase of the process, we were amazed at how much
TV had lied to us about the process. The actual
working in the system is someone like what you see
on television as to be unrecognizable. During the conference, they
openly spoke of the c s I effects. So it's
basically these cops and forensics guys actually talk about how
(16:39):
that show is damaging UH, their work, their lying liars,
their lying liars, and how the public has been influenced
so much by these shows. So basically, he hates those
shows and he found it to be a lot of bunk.
I did converse with him a couple more times via email,
and he felt a lot of responsibility because he left
(16:59):
a wife in a running car with the heat on
and the radio on while he ran in to get
ice cream for Lord. And this is when she was
attacked and he had to say that in court, and
he said, which made him feel like more of a jerk.
Then she was attacked and uh, he said, was just
like a TV show, except all the details of how
it really goes down. So it's the drama was all there. Yeah,
(17:20):
Jerry Bruckheimer systematically undermining the law enforcement community. But she
fought him off, and this guy turns out had a
rap sheet of like rape and rape and murder and
they couldn't get him on the murder charge because something
had happened I can't remember. So he ended up going
to prison for life in the pokey in the houscal
and the family of the raped and murder girl got closure.
(17:43):
And you know, we're at the trial at this lady strial.
So thank you, Christopher for that harrowing tale. Seriously, I
think they should get T shirts. You think so? Yeah, dude,
that's actually you know you went through this. We'll give
you a T shirt that I know. I'm just kidding. Yeah,
it sounds insulting you, Yeah, exactly. You you narrowly averted
(18:05):
death by your own wits and you we'll give you
a T shirt for that. We should make a T shirt.
We shouldn't need it. Well, Christopher, if you want to
send us yours, UH and your wife's UM T shirt
sizes and address, we will make sure that those go
out to you. Again, it's the least we can do.
No insult intended just to show of support for bringing
us this email. And if you have a harrowing tale
(18:27):
of survival uh near miss with death um or. If
you've run into any bad guys lately, let us know
and you can send that in an email to Stuff
Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff
(18:49):
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot Com home page.
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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