February 11, 2014 • 34 mins
Since Sartre classified things that make us happy into the categories of having and doing, science took up the investigation into materialism and experientialism. The results have been in for a while: experiences win by a wide margin, but why exactly?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from House stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's here,
and uh, stuff you should know. We've got the eighteen
Yeah in the house, not the Chuck Holograham. It's not
(00:24):
guest producers mad or Noel. It's not pocket Josh, not
pocket Josh, although I did have a pocket Josh on me.
So he's here, He's always here. That's a voodoo doll. No,
it's not. It's clearly a voodoo doll. That's my hair.
I recognize. How's that back pain treating you? Hurt so bad? Uh?
(00:45):
How's it going pretty good except for the back pain. Well,
let me just massize your little pocket Josh. I think
the touch me, Chuck. I'm excited about this one. Our
ongoing series on happiness. Yeah, we've covered it with the
Bhutan Yeah, a Gross National Happiness, and then we did
our audiobook All about Happiness, super Stuff Guide to Happiness,
(01:09):
and all that was I guess a hold over from
was it right before or right after the financial global
financial collapse? M I feel like it was sort of
in the midst of okay, because I think what it
was was the world got cocky, especially the developed world.
Sure like, hey, things are going so well, We're all rich,
(01:30):
everybody's pretty happy. We're we're at war with not one
but two countries at once. Look at us, go um,
let's start talking about happiness and what makes us happy.
Let's start blogs about how we try to be happy
and enter it in once a day every day and
then get a book deal out of it. Let's just
think about happiness, happiness, happiness, happiness. Well, a few years on,
(01:54):
there's been some changes over time. Everybody said, people don't
talk about happiness anymore. Like there is a little while
where there was a period basically from my impression about
two thousand five to two thousand nine, where you could
get substantial grants to conduct research into the nature of happiness,
(02:14):
to quantify happiness, what makes people happy, what makes people unhappy,
how to make people happier? Um. And there was an
offshoot of psychology called positive psychology that we talked about,
the super stub guided happiness that said, we're good at
diagnosing um maladies, which physical maladies, no like problems, psychological problems,
(02:42):
but we're terrible at um how to make people happier.
So hence now we're going to have something called positive psychology,
which appears to have fallen by the wayside um. Yeah,
it's all negative psychology. Well, psychology itself as a field
is under tremendous amount of attack, and positive psychology. I
think they gave the chance to retreat. They're like, look,
(03:04):
you're you're pretty easy target. You should probably go. This
isn't even a real thing. I don't know. Maybe it
was a valiant attempt. I think it just came in
at the wrong time. But the the the point is,
if you look up happiness now, you will notice, like
just about everything cuts off. In two thousand nine, I
(03:24):
did notice that actually American doesn't care about being happy anymore,
or maybe they just hanging on studied and learned everything
they need to know, and we're like, all right, here
we are. Well, you know what, it's funny that you
say that, because if that's true and you're you could
be right, that represents them possibly the shortest amount of
time any subject has ever been studied. No, really, because
(03:46):
it started and what makes people happy? And maybe I
think two thousand three I read I read a study,
and it was about how this was one of the
first studies to ever try to figure out what makes
people happy. So then this field of study existed from
like two thousand three to two thousand nine, and they
(04:06):
were saying that the reason that this would be the
first studies because it's been so accepted for so many
years ever since. Hume the philosopher Hume, David Hume, Robert Hume,
the Scottish philosopher is one of my favorites. Just if
you're on Jeopardy, you could just say hum hum, We'll
go with hum um. Who is hum if you're on
Jeopardy he was the Scottish philosopher. No, I'm just had
(04:29):
to phrase it, Okay, I'm just teasing um, he said.
He was one of the first people to mention this
concept of what makes people happy insofar as what we're
talking about today, which is does an object make you happier?
Or does an experience make you happier? Yeah, I think
they've done like the lottery studies before two thousand four,
(04:52):
like if lottery winners, But um, that's a pretty specialized study. Yes,
So to my point is to try to honify happiness,
that kind of thing and really investigated. But it started
in the early two thousands, that ended by the mid
two thousand, the first decade of the tea. Well, while
I'm reading all these studies, I'm looking oh seven oh
(05:13):
eight oh four, Yeah, very keen observation, and I can't
quite figure out. I mean, obviously, I think the Great
Recession is almost entirely responsible for that falling to the wayside.
But if you look still today, there's there are still
related studies. It's just not happiness studies. Yeah, I found
(05:34):
when I was reading this, I disagreed with a lot
of these findings and studies. They didn't seem fully fleshed out,
did they. Well, for instance, we'll go ahead and start
with this supposed fact. Researchers have done some studying and
they have pinned down how long a material object can
will make you happy, and they say between six and
(05:55):
twelve weeks, then you get bored with it. Basically, I
just don't know about that because it wholly to me,
it wholly depends on what the object is. That's something
that gives you ongoing pleasure, like a guitar, let's say, yeah,
because that is also an experience an object. But like
I will love my guitars until I die because I
(06:17):
play them and enjoy it and play them with my friends.
You know. Yeah, And what you're talking about the gift
that keeps giving right exactly, that's called um uh, active engagement.
It is a It is a purchase. And when we
say purchase, we're not talking about necessarily just an object,
which we'll talk about in a little bit. You can
(06:38):
also you purchase experiences as well. In fact, they say
that's the way to go, right. So there's a happiness purchase,
is what we're saying. And your guitar that you purchased,
that's an object, but you purchased it, but it's making
you happy, you know, over and over and over again.
The reason why is because you become actively engaged in
an active engagement in anything that is positive or that
(06:59):
makes you happy can continue to make you happy for
longer than say another object that doesn't actively engage you,
Like a pair of shoes that you wanted really really
bad and then got and then like sit in your closets,
you don't wear them anymore because after well, you may
still wear them, but you're wearing them as shoes. You're
not wearing them like I'm I'm the King of Rotterdamn
(07:19):
here and check out my shoes. You know that that
kind of thing that lacks active engagement, that lacks social interaction,
and that lacks exercise. And those are the three, the
big three things that you can buy objects wise that
kind of sit outside of that six to twelve week Um,
(07:40):
happiness adaptation is what it's called. Um. So, yeah, you
kind of nailed it right there with the guitar. It's
not just guitar. Video games are another good example. Yeah,
like you buy your PS three and you may get
sick of some of the games, but they're always releasing
new games, right. Um, if you bought a um, a
(08:00):
language module, you learn a language or something, you know,
I mean like it's you're something that actively engage you,
something that that you use for exercise, or something that
leads to social interaction. Are the three object types that
make you happier longer? Well, that makes me feel better
than and um the whole six or twelve weeks though,
whether that's a an accurate number not the chuck um.
(08:24):
Remember we talked about the hedonic treadmill. It's evidence of
the hedonic treadmill. That's just a thing called um hedonic adaptation,
and that is that something that makes you happy isn't
gonna make you happy forever. Something you've purchased pretty much,
whatever it is, you're going to eventually subsume it into
(08:45):
your everyday life. You're gonna end up taking it for granted, basically,
is another way to put it. How long, how short
that happens, or how long that happens is um. It
definitely differs depending on the type, and we'll talk about
the type in the minute. But what people end up
getting on once once an object stop making stops making
(09:06):
them happy, they still want to be happy. So they
end up on the hedonic treadmill and buy another pair
of shoes, and then another, and then another and then another.
And you end up just trying to keep pace, buying
all this stuff, accumulating all of this material stuff, and
it's just kind of keeping you at a a steady
(09:26):
pace of happiness without any kind of real enrichment. And
that's the hedonic treadmill. Yeah, and that's materialism UM. Which
they've done studies on materialism. There was one by these
dudes Chaplain and John in two thousand seven where they
linked it to low self esteem generally from childhood, Like
(09:46):
you're sort of always trying to gain your self esteem
through material objects. Uh. They've linked it to narcissism. Yeah,
people who try to build themselves like up through having
you know, fancy things and showing them off. Yeah. And
there's the I mean, that's that is a real um
technique that people use to establish their identities, established their
(10:10):
worth to others. And it's a ironically, it's a cheap
and easy way to do it. It may be very
expensive dollar wise, but you don't have to put a
tremendous amount of thought or effort into it. You just
go by the most expensive, most obvious, uh obviously expensive
item you can and wear it out and broadcast it
(10:31):
and get your sense of self worth from that. So
it is very shallow thing materialism. I think everybody kind
of knows that intuitively, but it's been studied, you know,
like it it is linked to all these kind of
um personality disorders. There's a guy named Russ Belk who's
a marketing researcher, and he was the first one to
really research materialism on the Belk Chain of Stars, I wonder,
(10:52):
and he uh, he found it to be a character
trait marked by envy, non generosity, and possessiveness. Yeah, materialism
is so hard to define for me though, because it's
like a guitar is a material object and a nice
guitar is. I don't know. I definitely not materialistic, I
(11:14):
don't think, but I want a nice guitar because it
sounds awesome, it looks cool. But I think that that's
why like Belk and Chaplain and John went to the
trouble of like kind of investigating it. It's like, do
you do you have like a clinically flawed personality? Uh,
that's based on your desire for material objects. Yeah, but
(11:36):
see that, like it's all personal. Like I might think
it's material to go out and buy a pair of
eight hundred dollar shoes, but the person might get a
lot of joy out of those shoes, and say, I
think it's stupid to go pay a thousand dollars for
a guitar. You know, Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know what I'm saying. You don't know. I mean,
I think you raise a good point, and it's it's
(11:58):
valid because there that the research isn't that deep. I mean,
you could be exactly right, and I think it's subject yes.
And not only is this whole you know, the finding subjective,
the reportings are subjective to Like there's a study in
in San Francisco, UM in two thousand nine. The last
year that happiness was ever studied, the last year of
(12:20):
happiness mattered m and basically this uh, this group had
a hundred and fifty four college students, it's pretty small
fill out a survey. They said that we want you
to pick um. We want you to write down a
little bit about an object that you purchased to make
you happy in the last three months, or an experience
(12:42):
that made you happy in the last three months that
you purchased. Yes, which is important to distinguish that, right,
because you think you're gonna have free experiences too, you can, yeah,
and we'll get to that. But the college students um
self reported that the at the time of the purchase,
the experiences made them happier, and the happiness lasted longer
(13:06):
than the ones who reported an object made them happy. Yeah.
I mean every study pretty much confirms experiences over material objects. Yes.
My point is it was self reported, so it's subjective
right out of the gate, and that's the problem with
studying things like happiness. It's it's an emotion which is subjective.
And then it was also a small sample of college students, um,
(13:30):
homogeneous group and what do they know? Not they'ren't money
for anything now there, But there's this UM acronym for
college for studies like that. It's weird. It's Western educated,
uh something rich and democratic. Yeah, I can't remember what
the eye but weird it's it's and it's saying like
(13:53):
there's a lot of studies out there that people rely
on that are weird that the population sample are like
eighteen to twenty one year old, right, you know, fairly
well off western kids, right, Like, what does that really
tell us? Yeah? Yeah, so um, this is an example
of that. I saw another study that thought was interesting.
As far as objects go, um, Like, like we said,
(14:14):
across the board, it's they pretty much have said experiences
purchased or free mean more to someone in the long
run than an object. But um, when it comes to
spending on objects, this one study did find that spending
on others across the board, even on an object, is
brings more happiness than spending on yourself for an object. Yeah. Um,
(14:36):
And in fact, uh, people were assigned to spend money
and one of these studies, and they experienced greater happiness.
And people assigned to spend money on themselves, like here's
a hundred dollars go by yourself something nice, or here's
a hundred bucks go by someone else something nice. People
were happier that bought something for someone else, which was interesting.
And that's you're saying, that's like the case with objects
(14:56):
and experiences as well. I think that was just objects,
but I would say it probably holds true for experience,
Like you takes someone out to dinner, you feel good
about it. So what you what you have there is
you're spending on another person. It's there. It's fostering social interaction,
which is another key huge and it's an experience. Yeah,
pretty much like you couldn't get happier than that. Yeah,
(15:17):
the social thing is kind of the key to all
of this, they say, because generally your experience happiness is
usually not alone, like you'll go to a concert with
someone or to dinner with someone. But um, but not
always right and not always is a pretty good little
buzz term for this part of the podcast, because um,
(15:40):
there's also research that shows that objects can bring more
happiness than experiences, depending on the experience. Like for a
long time, the literature just basically said experiences make you
happier than objects. It's exactly. And these researchers found that
um a an unhappy experience, Yeah, especially one that was
(16:01):
meant to be happy. Like let's say you want on
a cruise or you went on a vacation and it
just sucked like that. That compared to an object that's
supposed to make you happy, that object is gonna beat
that experience and you're gonna have that bad memory of
the experience longer too. Yeah. You know what else I
think I haven't seen pointed out is you can't you
(16:23):
can't get your money back on a bad dinner and play. Yeah,
that's true. But if you get an object, you know,
like this thinks you can usually return that unless you
took a bite out of it already. Yeah, this is
a good way to say it. But you can't, you
know what I'm saying, Like you take a vacation that
ends up being a disaster, I would be more upset
about that because it's like you've lost your money, You're
(16:45):
gonna have this bad memory. But if you buy some
stupid thing. You can like just resell it or on
Craig Lester send it back, right. And um, so that's
that's one distinction between materials, I guess objects and experiences. Yeah. Um,
and we should give a shout out to start here.
Who start sart Oh? Yeah, John Paul Sartra, the philosopher
(17:08):
um who is kind of credited with really introducing this
concept or codifying it into the mainstream. To start, there
were three paths to happiness, are three types of happiness.
There was um, having, doing and being and being we're
not even talking about in this one, but having and doing, um,
materialism and experientialism um start in the fifties. I think,
(17:33):
uh just kind of introduce us into the literature, and
that ultimately is what kicked off the this kind of
study into which one is better, which one makes you happier? Yeah?
And I like how you you wrote this, right. I
like how you point out about Buddhism, how they feel
that material objects actually get in the way of happiness.
Not only may they not bring you happiness, but they
(17:54):
will prevent it. Sure. And it's not just Buddhism, it's
UM for centuries. It's just basically been accepted that an
object is less desirable if you're seeking happiness than an experience,
and it's that's why the researchers were saying, Um, you know,
we're one of the first studies to to conduct and
(18:17):
an investigation into this because it's just been generally accepted
that that's the case, but no one knew exactly why.
So now we've kind of reached the why parts. And
one of the things you said is, um, you can't
take an experience back. All right, hold on to that thought.
Let's take a quick message break and we'll get back
with the why. Chuck. I don't know if you've heard
(18:40):
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dot Com enter stuff. Okay, So why well, um, you
(19:49):
mentioned that objects. Uh, you can take an object back,
you can't take an experience back. One of the big
differences that researchers came up with is that with experiences
you can because you can't take them back. They're kind
of esoteric. They're also more subject to revision. Right, so
(20:13):
you can you can think back to an experience and
over time, but stopped pump it up, alter it slightly, um,
make it more meaningful, whatever. Um, you're just kind of
adding to it. You remember when we did that thing
on memory, We research memory, and it's like every time
you bring up memory, you kind of add to it.
When you store it away, it's different, it's altered in
(20:35):
one way. Well, what you're remembering an experience, you're not
remembering an object because you have the object in your
hand and you're shaking it and you're like, why don't
you make me happy anymore? What happened to you? I
wanted this this object so bad, and you know, and
and now it's whatever. And the reason why is because
it's part of your present, and experience is part of
(20:57):
your past. It can be your immediate pastor just past whatever,
and that is subject to revisionism, which is one of
the reasons why they think that when you especially self
report what makes you happier, you're probably going to go
with an experience. Yeah, and I'm kind of that way.
I think a lot of people, even with bad experiences,
later on you might think, uh, oh, you know it
(21:19):
was bad at the time, but we also we laugh
about it now, or you know, how you can reframe
bad experiences or if you're like super on the ball.
In the moment, you can say, you know, maybe we'll
be laughing at this in ten minutes, like you know,
some terrible vacation, Like I have fun memories about bad experiences,
and I don't think it's revisionism. I think it's uh,
(21:42):
just time. And maybe at the time you're not looking
at the positives, you know, right, because your genes are
expressing all sorts of horrific things that are making you
so mad, you know. Um, But once the genes go
back to normal, Yeah, things kind of take on a
different cast. Like, for instance, Uh, we went on a
(22:02):
big group camping trip like five or six years ago,
a bunch of us, Um, my dog got in a
fight with my friend Justin's dog, poured down rain and
it was the worst camping trip I've ever been on.
But now we look back at it and we laugh,
and we remember the midnight dance party we had in
the rain and we made the best of it. But
at the time we're all like, man, I gotta get
(22:24):
out of here. This is miserable, do you know what
I'm saying? Like I look back on certain miserable experiences
and kind of laugh about him. There aren't many awful
experiences unless it's involved, like, you know, something really bad
and like life changing. Like I don't look back at
like the death of a relative and say, you know,
that was really pretty fun. Now I thought that that
(22:46):
dress they buried her and was horrible, but now it's hilarious. Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah,
you can't do that with an object. No, you can't
do that. And even if you stay well, I remember
when I was eight, I got this awesome um Castle
Gray school place and it was the bomb and I
was so happy. Um, what you're doing right there is
(23:08):
remembering an object, which is significant, but sort of the
experience of having it thought. Yeah, that's the big distinction.
And I don't think anybody in the literature has done
a very good job or did a very good job
over that six year period when happiness was studied of
explaining that that. When you're talking about materialism versus experientialism,
(23:32):
objects versus experiences, like you're talking about the object itself
and not your propensity to generate memories and experiences through
the object, which is kind of confusing and cluttering frankly,
but it's an important point. Uh. There's a book out
people love writing books about this stuff too, telling them
(23:54):
for you know online. Elizabe Dunna. Michael Norton wrote one
called Happy Money. The science is Smarter Spending. Uh. And
they track down some key principles. Um. They they obviously
say experiences are more valuable than objects, but they break
it down further and give you some advice, like you
(24:15):
should buy an experience. First of all, you should make
it a treat, which means, you know, it makes it
more special if you limit your access to these things. Uh.
And I get that if you go to like some
really fancy restaurant, it's great, but if you go like
every week, you're kind of like, all right, I'm kind
of sick of sick of this place. They say you
should buy time, which I'm not fully sure to understand
(24:39):
what that means. You go to another human being and
say I would like to purchase one to two years
of your life. Um, and you just put it onto
my little watch here. I'm gonna take it from your watch.
How much do you want? And then they give you
some of their life o. Uh. And then they say
to invest in others, which goes back to that original
study I was talking about. And then pay now and
(25:01):
consume later, and that delayed consumption leads to increased enjoyment.
Oh yeah, which is the opposite of one of the
tenants of materialism, like exactly, and then you pay now. Apparently,
people who are um um, I guess registered materialists. I
don't remember how they quantified at r MS figured it
(25:21):
out in the UM in the study, but people who
are materialistic have UM more credit cards, typically have at
least one loan of a thousand dollars and more outstanding. Um.
It's just kind of a not only does it lead
to or is it associated with character flaws, it also
(25:41):
has other pitfalls and pathfalls associated with it too, like debt. Yeah,
that's the exact opposite that's consumed now, pay later exactly,
whereas the other is like cantra and this is like
whatever the opposite of tantra is. I don't know, um,
but the the there's this kind of unspoken or very
rarely spoken indictment of material culture um and that well,
(26:09):
I ran across this one quote. It's called it's a
consumer Materialism is a degrading outcome of untrammeled marketing power.
That it's kind of like you have people who possibly
have low self esteem, low self worth, and are looking
for a way to generate their own identity. Who are
more highly susceptible, maybe too being marketed to like, if
you drink this liquor, you're going to turn into a
(26:33):
lion and own the barrier. And no matter what your
salary is, as long as you can afford a bottle
of this, no matter how much it puts you out,
you're gonna You're gonna be awesome. Your friends are gonna
be awesome. And some people say, like, I need to
feel awesome right now, and I'm willing to shell out
fifty bucks for that, and I'm gonna do it. And
(26:54):
who knows, maybe it does pump them up a little bit,
hopefully though ideally, if it does pump them up, pump
them up to a level where they realize that materialism
isn't going to make them happy. What about a facelift?
That's neither an object nor I guess the experience is
having the new face. Apparently, plastic surgery um people are
(27:14):
reported to have surgery people they they are reported to
have longer lasting happiness. That hedonic adaptation takes way longer
for plastic surgery than other I guess purchases interesting. Uh, well,
going back to the whole lottery thing, I think everyone
knows that all the studies generally point to it's like
(27:34):
a baseline happiness. Objects can make you happy in the moment,
But with lottery winners, they did find out repeatedly that
they generally go back to their baseline happiness from before
they had the dough. And I would say that's the
case for most of these studies. It's not about how
happy you are in a moment or even in a
given experience or holding an object, but eventually you're going
to return to the schmuck that you are. You're either
(27:57):
happy or you're not. You know, we're remember when we
did our super Stuff Guide to Happiness, there was that um,
one of the founders of trans humanism, who was saying, like,
we need to figure out how to ratchet up everybody's
base level happiness. Yeah, like even with pills and things right,
or genetic um manipulation or whatever. He's like, whatever it takes,
that's one of the things that should be a pursuit
(28:18):
of humanity is making everyone happier by nature. I don't
like that. Yeah, I think you said the same thing
in the stuff. Yeah, because I think pathos is valuable.
You know, yeah, I'm pretty sure we made that point.
It seems like something you would say and I'd be like, yeah,
I do. I think it's valuable to the human experience.
(28:39):
I think it's I can do a lot of good
to be uh, briefly depressed. And well here's an example
of that. Um, this the Great Recession. Since the Great Recession,
teenagers have been reporting um less desire for material objects
than the teenagers for a decade before. Um, They're like,
(29:02):
but you're not talking about my smartphone, right, everything? But
that right, Well, they were saying like they're there. Um,
they were scoring on like materialism surveys as less materialistic
than their counterparts a decade before, and they were more
likely to say things like I want a job that
benefits society. They were they were becoming less materialistic and
more pro social, and they were saying that that's a
(29:24):
direct result of this Great Recession. So lessons learned. Yeah,
your point that, um, that depression of one way or
one sort or another can be beneficial. It's on a
social societal level that's true too. Apparently, Yeah, I did it.
Happiness objects or or experiences. What do you think I
think objects super shiny, golden, golden, sparkly objects. Yeah, which
(29:50):
is one last thing. I think you made a really
good point, like wanting a guitar is doesn't make you
a materialist. You don't have to reject all possession to
be a good, grounded, normal, happy person. Yeah. Listen to
our podcasts on freegans, yeah, dumpster diving. I think those
people are happy. I think I say yes, yeah, and
(30:12):
go check out our super Stuff Guide to Happiness. It
was very, very good. It's on iTunes. It's available on iTunes. Yeah,
just blow the dust off of it. It's still relevant
because everything stopped in two thousand nine. It was so
interesting too. Yeah, it was a good one. Uh. And
if you want to learn more about objects or um experiences,
you can type those words in the search bar at
(30:33):
how stuff works dot com and it will bring up
this article that we were working off of. And since
I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. All right,
I'm gonna call this grocery waste. We did our podcast
on de fridging, and we got a surprisingly a lot
of responses from people. Yeah, I was kind of surprised.
(30:54):
It really hit home. Uh. So this is from a
former grocery store employee when he was in high school.
He said, part of my job at the store was
to find all the eggs, bread and milk that had
a cell by date within the next three days. Uh.
And it's really terrible because cell by dates are designed
with some wiggle room just to make sure nothing is
spoiling before the date on the cart. And when I
(31:14):
had the cart loaded up with perfectly good food, I
had to throw the bread and eggs into the garbage
compactor and pour all the milk down the drain dozens
of gallons a night. M It's just like maddening. And
I got with the local f f a teacher whatever
that is, and asked if yeah, look at you, okay,
(31:36):
whatever that is, I don't remember for you remember. Um?
They asked if all this wasted food? Um. I asked
if all the wasted food could be used to slap
the pigs that the students were raising, and he said
that'd be a great idea. So I went to the
manager of the grocery store, said we should do this
and it might even be good pr for us. It
turns out the grocery store got back partial store credit
(31:58):
from their suppliers for expired food that they threw away.
And here's the hitch. They would not get any credit
if any of the expired food was put to any use.
Isn't that awful. Some suppliers would even refuse credit if
they decided the store wasn't doing enough to prevent dumpster
divers from retrieving food. What's worse, many foods that don't
actually spoil for years and years, but they have arbitrarily
(32:21):
short sell by dates because they found that people don't
trust foods to have an expiration date too far into
the future. Can you remember didn't we talk about, Oh,
I did a brain stuff on water going bad, and
it's like, there's no reason for it to have an
expiration date. Yeah? Uh so, he says. Thus, I spent
one memorable evening throwaway throwing out hundreds of dollars worth
of cheese that was a known danger of spoiling anytime soon.
(32:45):
Even asked if I could take some home, and they
said that that would be considered shoplifting. Wow. So I
don't see food waste being addressed until it becomes a
matter of public outrage. On the level of sweatshop labor.
There are just too many economic barriers in the way.
That is from Todd from Okay. See thanks Todd, And
that is just his store. We heard from other people
(33:05):
some stores have different policies where they can actually put
some of that food to use, but I don't think
that's the norm. No. And we heard from another guy
too who was fired because he got so tired of
throwing stuff where he took a bunch of baguettes to
a homeless shelter and they found out about it and
he was fired because of it. Um, but he said
he didn't regret. It's still his day. Good good for him. Yeah, Um,
(33:27):
thanks Todd from Okay. See I would say go thunder,
but go heat instead. Uh. If you want to get
in touch with Chuck or Me or Jerry, UM, you
can send us a tweet. Our handle is s y
s K Podcast with the little at symbol ahead of that.
We're on Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know
check us out there. UM. You can check out our
(33:48):
YouTube channel Josh and Chuck that's the name of it.
You'll love it. Um. You can also send us a
regular old email Stuff podcast at discovery dot com and
want to st at home on the web. It is
awesome stuff dot com for more on this and thousands
(34:11):
of other topics. Does it How stuff works dot com
with over a hundred thousand titles to choose from. Audible
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(34:33):
f F to get a free audio book download of
your choice when you sign up today.
Welcome to you stuff you should know from House stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's here,
and uh, stuff you should know. We've got the eighteen
Yeah in the house, not the Chuck Holograham. It's not
(00:24):
guest producers mad or Noel. It's not pocket Josh, not
pocket Josh, although I did have a pocket Josh on me.
So he's here, He's always here. That's a voodoo doll. No,
it's not. It's clearly a voodoo doll. That's my hair.
I recognize. How's that back pain treating you? Hurt so bad? Uh?
(00:45):
How's it going pretty good except for the back pain. Well,
let me just massize your little pocket Josh. I think
the touch me, Chuck. I'm excited about this one. Our
ongoing series on happiness. Yeah, we've covered it with the
Bhutan Yeah, a Gross National Happiness, and then we did
our audiobook All about Happiness, super Stuff Guide to Happiness,
(01:09):
and all that was I guess a hold over from
was it right before or right after the financial global
financial collapse? M I feel like it was sort of
in the midst of okay, because I think what it
was was the world got cocky, especially the developed world.
Sure like, hey, things are going so well, We're all rich,
(01:30):
everybody's pretty happy. We're we're at war with not one
but two countries at once. Look at us, go um,
let's start talking about happiness and what makes us happy.
Let's start blogs about how we try to be happy
and enter it in once a day every day and
then get a book deal out of it. Let's just
think about happiness, happiness, happiness, happiness. Well, a few years on,
(01:54):
there's been some changes over time. Everybody said, people don't
talk about happiness anymore. Like there is a little while
where there was a period basically from my impression about
two thousand five to two thousand nine, where you could
get substantial grants to conduct research into the nature of happiness,
(02:14):
to quantify happiness, what makes people happy, what makes people unhappy,
how to make people happier? Um. And there was an
offshoot of psychology called positive psychology that we talked about,
the super stub guided happiness that said, we're good at
diagnosing um maladies, which physical maladies, no like problems, psychological problems,
(02:42):
but we're terrible at um how to make people happier.
So hence now we're going to have something called positive psychology,
which appears to have fallen by the wayside um. Yeah,
it's all negative psychology. Well, psychology itself as a field
is under tremendous amount of attack, and positive psychology. I
think they gave the chance to retreat. They're like, look,
(03:04):
you're you're pretty easy target. You should probably go. This
isn't even a real thing. I don't know. Maybe it
was a valiant attempt. I think it just came in
at the wrong time. But the the the point is,
if you look up happiness now, you will notice, like
just about everything cuts off. In two thousand nine, I
(03:24):
did notice that actually American doesn't care about being happy anymore,
or maybe they just hanging on studied and learned everything
they need to know, and we're like, all right, here
we are. Well, you know what, it's funny that you
say that, because if that's true and you're you could
be right, that represents them possibly the shortest amount of
time any subject has ever been studied. No, really, because
(03:46):
it started and what makes people happy? And maybe I
think two thousand three I read I read a study,
and it was about how this was one of the
first studies to ever try to figure out what makes
people happy. So then this field of study existed from
like two thousand three to two thousand nine, and they
(04:06):
were saying that the reason that this would be the
first studies because it's been so accepted for so many
years ever since. Hume the philosopher Hume, David Hume, Robert Hume,
the Scottish philosopher is one of my favorites. Just if
you're on Jeopardy, you could just say hum hum, We'll
go with hum um. Who is hum if you're on
Jeopardy he was the Scottish philosopher. No, I'm just had
(04:29):
to phrase it, Okay, I'm just teasing um, he said.
He was one of the first people to mention this
concept of what makes people happy insofar as what we're
talking about today, which is does an object make you happier?
Or does an experience make you happier? Yeah, I think
they've done like the lottery studies before two thousand four,
(04:52):
like if lottery winners, But um, that's a pretty specialized study. Yes,
So to my point is to try to honify happiness,
that kind of thing and really investigated. But it started
in the early two thousands, that ended by the mid
two thousand, the first decade of the tea. Well, while
I'm reading all these studies, I'm looking oh seven oh
(05:13):
eight oh four, Yeah, very keen observation, and I can't
quite figure out. I mean, obviously, I think the Great
Recession is almost entirely responsible for that falling to the wayside.
But if you look still today, there's there are still
related studies. It's just not happiness studies. Yeah, I found
(05:34):
when I was reading this, I disagreed with a lot
of these findings and studies. They didn't seem fully fleshed out,
did they. Well, for instance, we'll go ahead and start
with this supposed fact. Researchers have done some studying and
they have pinned down how long a material object can
will make you happy, and they say between six and
(05:55):
twelve weeks, then you get bored with it. Basically, I
just don't know about that because it wholly to me,
it wholly depends on what the object is. That's something
that gives you ongoing pleasure, like a guitar, let's say, yeah,
because that is also an experience an object. But like
I will love my guitars until I die because I
(06:17):
play them and enjoy it and play them with my friends.
You know. Yeah, And what you're talking about the gift
that keeps giving right exactly, that's called um uh, active engagement.
It is a It is a purchase. And when we
say purchase, we're not talking about necessarily just an object,
which we'll talk about in a little bit. You can
(06:38):
also you purchase experiences as well. In fact, they say
that's the way to go, right. So there's a happiness purchase,
is what we're saying. And your guitar that you purchased,
that's an object, but you purchased it, but it's making
you happy, you know, over and over and over again.
The reason why is because you become actively engaged in
an active engagement in anything that is positive or that
(06:59):
makes you happy can continue to make you happy for
longer than say another object that doesn't actively engage you,
Like a pair of shoes that you wanted really really
bad and then got and then like sit in your closets,
you don't wear them anymore because after well, you may
still wear them, but you're wearing them as shoes. You're
not wearing them like I'm I'm the King of Rotterdamn
(07:19):
here and check out my shoes. You know that that
kind of thing that lacks active engagement, that lacks social interaction,
and that lacks exercise. And those are the three, the
big three things that you can buy objects wise that
kind of sit outside of that six to twelve week Um,
(07:40):
happiness adaptation is what it's called. Um. So, yeah, you
kind of nailed it right there with the guitar. It's
not just guitar. Video games are another good example. Yeah,
like you buy your PS three and you may get
sick of some of the games, but they're always releasing
new games, right. Um, if you bought a um, a
(08:00):
language module, you learn a language or something, you know,
I mean like it's you're something that actively engage you,
something that that you use for exercise, or something that
leads to social interaction. Are the three object types that
make you happier longer? Well, that makes me feel better
than and um the whole six or twelve weeks though,
whether that's a an accurate number not the chuck um.
(08:24):
Remember we talked about the hedonic treadmill. It's evidence of
the hedonic treadmill. That's just a thing called um hedonic adaptation,
and that is that something that makes you happy isn't
gonna make you happy forever. Something you've purchased pretty much,
whatever it is, you're going to eventually subsume it into
(08:45):
your everyday life. You're gonna end up taking it for granted, basically,
is another way to put it. How long, how short
that happens, or how long that happens is um. It
definitely differs depending on the type, and we'll talk about
the type in the minute. But what people end up
getting on once once an object stop making stops making
(09:06):
them happy, they still want to be happy. So they
end up on the hedonic treadmill and buy another pair
of shoes, and then another, and then another and then another.
And you end up just trying to keep pace, buying
all this stuff, accumulating all of this material stuff, and
it's just kind of keeping you at a a steady
(09:26):
pace of happiness without any kind of real enrichment. And
that's the hedonic treadmill. Yeah, and that's materialism UM. Which
they've done studies on materialism. There was one by these
dudes Chaplain and John in two thousand seven where they
linked it to low self esteem generally from childhood, Like
(09:46):
you're sort of always trying to gain your self esteem
through material objects. Uh. They've linked it to narcissism. Yeah,
people who try to build themselves like up through having
you know, fancy things and showing them off. Yeah. And
there's the I mean, that's that is a real um
technique that people use to establish their identities, established their
(10:10):
worth to others. And it's a ironically, it's a cheap
and easy way to do it. It may be very
expensive dollar wise, but you don't have to put a
tremendous amount of thought or effort into it. You just
go by the most expensive, most obvious, uh obviously expensive
item you can and wear it out and broadcast it
(10:31):
and get your sense of self worth from that. So
it is very shallow thing materialism. I think everybody kind
of knows that intuitively, but it's been studied, you know,
like it it is linked to all these kind of
um personality disorders. There's a guy named Russ Belk who's
a marketing researcher, and he was the first one to
really research materialism on the Belk Chain of Stars, I wonder,
(10:52):
and he uh, he found it to be a character
trait marked by envy, non generosity, and possessiveness. Yeah, materialism
is so hard to define for me though, because it's
like a guitar is a material object and a nice
guitar is. I don't know. I definitely not materialistic, I
(11:14):
don't think, but I want a nice guitar because it
sounds awesome, it looks cool. But I think that that's
why like Belk and Chaplain and John went to the
trouble of like kind of investigating it. It's like, do
you do you have like a clinically flawed personality? Uh,
that's based on your desire for material objects. Yeah, but
(11:36):
see that, like it's all personal. Like I might think
it's material to go out and buy a pair of
eight hundred dollar shoes, but the person might get a
lot of joy out of those shoes, and say, I
think it's stupid to go pay a thousand dollars for
a guitar. You know, Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know what I'm saying. You don't know. I mean,
I think you raise a good point, and it's it's
(11:58):
valid because there that the research isn't that deep. I mean,
you could be exactly right, and I think it's subject yes.
And not only is this whole you know, the finding subjective,
the reportings are subjective to Like there's a study in
in San Francisco, UM in two thousand nine. The last
year that happiness was ever studied, the last year of
(12:20):
happiness mattered m and basically this uh, this group had
a hundred and fifty four college students, it's pretty small
fill out a survey. They said that we want you
to pick um. We want you to write down a
little bit about an object that you purchased to make
you happy in the last three months, or an experience
(12:42):
that made you happy in the last three months that
you purchased. Yes, which is important to distinguish that, right,
because you think you're gonna have free experiences too, you can, yeah,
and we'll get to that. But the college students um
self reported that the at the time of the purchase,
the experiences made them happier, and the happiness lasted longer
(13:06):
than the ones who reported an object made them happy. Yeah.
I mean every study pretty much confirms experiences over material objects. Yes.
My point is it was self reported, so it's subjective
right out of the gate, and that's the problem with
studying things like happiness. It's it's an emotion which is subjective.
And then it was also a small sample of college students, um,
(13:30):
homogeneous group and what do they know? Not they'ren't money
for anything now there, But there's this UM acronym for
college for studies like that. It's weird. It's Western educated,
uh something rich and democratic. Yeah, I can't remember what
the eye but weird it's it's and it's saying like
(13:53):
there's a lot of studies out there that people rely
on that are weird that the population sample are like
eighteen to twenty one year old, right, you know, fairly
well off western kids, right, Like, what does that really
tell us? Yeah? Yeah, so um, this is an example
of that. I saw another study that thought was interesting.
As far as objects go, um, Like, like we said,
(14:14):
across the board, it's they pretty much have said experiences
purchased or free mean more to someone in the long
run than an object. But um, when it comes to
spending on objects, this one study did find that spending
on others across the board, even on an object, is
brings more happiness than spending on yourself for an object. Yeah. Um,
(14:36):
And in fact, uh, people were assigned to spend money
and one of these studies, and they experienced greater happiness.
And people assigned to spend money on themselves, like here's
a hundred dollars go by yourself something nice, or here's
a hundred bucks go by someone else something nice. People
were happier that bought something for someone else, which was interesting.
And that's you're saying, that's like the case with objects
(14:56):
and experiences as well. I think that was just objects,
but I would say it probably holds true for experience,
Like you takes someone out to dinner, you feel good
about it. So what you what you have there is
you're spending on another person. It's there. It's fostering social interaction,
which is another key huge and it's an experience. Yeah,
pretty much like you couldn't get happier than that. Yeah,
(15:17):
the social thing is kind of the key to all
of this, they say, because generally your experience happiness is
usually not alone, like you'll go to a concert with
someone or to dinner with someone. But um, but not
always right and not always is a pretty good little
buzz term for this part of the podcast, because um,
(15:40):
there's also research that shows that objects can bring more
happiness than experiences, depending on the experience. Like for a
long time, the literature just basically said experiences make you
happier than objects. It's exactly. And these researchers found that
um a an unhappy experience, Yeah, especially one that was
(16:01):
meant to be happy. Like let's say you want on
a cruise or you went on a vacation and it
just sucked like that. That compared to an object that's
supposed to make you happy, that object is gonna beat
that experience and you're gonna have that bad memory of
the experience longer too. Yeah. You know what else I
think I haven't seen pointed out is you can't you
(16:23):
can't get your money back on a bad dinner and play. Yeah,
that's true. But if you get an object, you know,
like this thinks you can usually return that unless you
took a bite out of it already. Yeah, this is
a good way to say it. But you can't, you
know what I'm saying, Like you take a vacation that
ends up being a disaster, I would be more upset
about that because it's like you've lost your money, You're
(16:45):
gonna have this bad memory. But if you buy some
stupid thing. You can like just resell it or on
Craig Lester send it back, right. And um, so that's
that's one distinction between materials, I guess objects and experiences. Yeah. Um,
and we should give a shout out to start here.
Who start sart Oh? Yeah, John Paul Sartra, the philosopher
(17:08):
um who is kind of credited with really introducing this
concept or codifying it into the mainstream. To start, there
were three paths to happiness, are three types of happiness.
There was um, having, doing and being and being we're
not even talking about in this one, but having and doing, um,
materialism and experientialism um start in the fifties. I think,
(17:33):
uh just kind of introduce us into the literature, and
that ultimately is what kicked off the this kind of
study into which one is better, which one makes you happier? Yeah?
And I like how you you wrote this, right. I
like how you point out about Buddhism, how they feel
that material objects actually get in the way of happiness.
Not only may they not bring you happiness, but they
(17:54):
will prevent it. Sure. And it's not just Buddhism, it's
UM for centuries. It's just basically been accepted that an
object is less desirable if you're seeking happiness than an experience,
and it's that's why the researchers were saying, Um, you know,
we're one of the first studies to to conduct and
(18:17):
an investigation into this because it's just been generally accepted
that that's the case, but no one knew exactly why.
So now we've kind of reached the why parts. And
one of the things you said is, um, you can't
take an experience back. All right, hold on to that thought.
Let's take a quick message break and we'll get back
with the why. Chuck. I don't know if you've heard
(18:40):
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Click on the microphone at the top of the homepage
and type an S t U F F that Stamps
dot Com enter stuff. Okay, So why well, um, you
(19:49):
mentioned that objects. Uh, you can take an object back,
you can't take an experience back. One of the big
differences that researchers came up with is that with experiences
you can because you can't take them back. They're kind
of esoteric. They're also more subject to revision. Right, so
(20:13):
you can you can think back to an experience and
over time, but stopped pump it up, alter it slightly, um,
make it more meaningful, whatever. Um, you're just kind of
adding to it. You remember when we did that thing
on memory, We research memory, and it's like every time
you bring up memory, you kind of add to it.
When you store it away, it's different, it's altered in
(20:35):
one way. Well, what you're remembering an experience, you're not
remembering an object because you have the object in your
hand and you're shaking it and you're like, why don't
you make me happy anymore? What happened to you? I
wanted this this object so bad, and you know, and
and now it's whatever. And the reason why is because
it's part of your present, and experience is part of
(20:57):
your past. It can be your immediate pastor just past whatever,
and that is subject to revisionism, which is one of
the reasons why they think that when you especially self
report what makes you happier, you're probably going to go
with an experience. Yeah, and I'm kind of that way.
I think a lot of people, even with bad experiences,
later on you might think, uh, oh, you know it
(21:19):
was bad at the time, but we also we laugh
about it now, or you know, how you can reframe
bad experiences or if you're like super on the ball.
In the moment, you can say, you know, maybe we'll
be laughing at this in ten minutes, like you know,
some terrible vacation, Like I have fun memories about bad experiences,
and I don't think it's revisionism. I think it's uh,
(21:42):
just time. And maybe at the time you're not looking
at the positives, you know, right, because your genes are
expressing all sorts of horrific things that are making you
so mad, you know. Um, But once the genes go
back to normal, Yeah, things kind of take on a
different cast. Like, for instance, Uh, we went on a
(22:02):
big group camping trip like five or six years ago,
a bunch of us, Um, my dog got in a
fight with my friend Justin's dog, poured down rain and
it was the worst camping trip I've ever been on.
But now we look back at it and we laugh,
and we remember the midnight dance party we had in
the rain and we made the best of it. But
at the time we're all like, man, I gotta get
(22:24):
out of here. This is miserable, do you know what
I'm saying? Like I look back on certain miserable experiences
and kind of laugh about him. There aren't many awful
experiences unless it's involved, like, you know, something really bad
and like life changing. Like I don't look back at
like the death of a relative and say, you know,
that was really pretty fun. Now I thought that that
(22:46):
dress they buried her and was horrible, but now it's hilarious. Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah,
you can't do that with an object. No, you can't
do that. And even if you stay well, I remember
when I was eight, I got this awesome um Castle
Gray school place and it was the bomb and I
was so happy. Um, what you're doing right there is
(23:08):
remembering an object, which is significant, but sort of the
experience of having it thought. Yeah, that's the big distinction.
And I don't think anybody in the literature has done
a very good job or did a very good job
over that six year period when happiness was studied of
explaining that that. When you're talking about materialism versus experientialism,
(23:32):
objects versus experiences, like you're talking about the object itself
and not your propensity to generate memories and experiences through
the object, which is kind of confusing and cluttering frankly,
but it's an important point. Uh. There's a book out
people love writing books about this stuff too, telling them
(23:54):
for you know online. Elizabe Dunna. Michael Norton wrote one
called Happy Money. The science is Smarter Spending. Uh. And
they track down some key principles. Um. They they obviously
say experiences are more valuable than objects, but they break
it down further and give you some advice, like you
(24:15):
should buy an experience. First of all, you should make
it a treat, which means, you know, it makes it
more special if you limit your access to these things. Uh.
And I get that if you go to like some
really fancy restaurant, it's great, but if you go like
every week, you're kind of like, all right, I'm kind
of sick of sick of this place. They say you
should buy time, which I'm not fully sure to understand
(24:39):
what that means. You go to another human being and
say I would like to purchase one to two years
of your life. Um, and you just put it onto
my little watch here. I'm gonna take it from your watch.
How much do you want? And then they give you
some of their life o. Uh. And then they say
to invest in others, which goes back to that original
study I was talking about. And then pay now and
(25:01):
consume later, and that delayed consumption leads to increased enjoyment.
Oh yeah, which is the opposite of one of the
tenants of materialism, like exactly, and then you pay now. Apparently,
people who are um um, I guess registered materialists. I
don't remember how they quantified at r MS figured it
(25:21):
out in the UM in the study, but people who
are materialistic have UM more credit cards, typically have at
least one loan of a thousand dollars and more outstanding. Um.
It's just kind of a not only does it lead
to or is it associated with character flaws, it also
(25:41):
has other pitfalls and pathfalls associated with it too, like debt. Yeah,
that's the exact opposite that's consumed now, pay later exactly,
whereas the other is like cantra and this is like
whatever the opposite of tantra is. I don't know, um,
but the the there's this kind of unspoken or very
rarely spoken indictment of material culture um and that well,
(26:09):
I ran across this one quote. It's called it's a
consumer Materialism is a degrading outcome of untrammeled marketing power.
That it's kind of like you have people who possibly
have low self esteem, low self worth, and are looking
for a way to generate their own identity. Who are
more highly susceptible, maybe too being marketed to like, if
you drink this liquor, you're going to turn into a
(26:33):
lion and own the barrier. And no matter what your
salary is, as long as you can afford a bottle
of this, no matter how much it puts you out,
you're gonna You're gonna be awesome. Your friends are gonna
be awesome. And some people say, like, I need to
feel awesome right now, and I'm willing to shell out
fifty bucks for that, and I'm gonna do it. And
(26:54):
who knows, maybe it does pump them up a little bit,
hopefully though ideally, if it does pump them up, pump
them up to a level where they realize that materialism
isn't going to make them happy. What about a facelift?
That's neither an object nor I guess the experience is
having the new face. Apparently, plastic surgery um people are
(27:14):
reported to have surgery people they they are reported to
have longer lasting happiness. That hedonic adaptation takes way longer
for plastic surgery than other I guess purchases interesting. Uh, well,
going back to the whole lottery thing, I think everyone
knows that all the studies generally point to it's like
(27:34):
a baseline happiness. Objects can make you happy in the moment,
But with lottery winners, they did find out repeatedly that
they generally go back to their baseline happiness from before
they had the dough. And I would say that's the
case for most of these studies. It's not about how
happy you are in a moment or even in a
given experience or holding an object, but eventually you're going
to return to the schmuck that you are. You're either
(27:57):
happy or you're not. You know, we're remember when we
did our super Stuff Guide to Happiness, there was that um,
one of the founders of trans humanism, who was saying, like,
we need to figure out how to ratchet up everybody's
base level happiness. Yeah, like even with pills and things right,
or genetic um manipulation or whatever. He's like, whatever it takes,
that's one of the things that should be a pursuit
(28:18):
of humanity is making everyone happier by nature. I don't
like that. Yeah, I think you said the same thing
in the stuff. Yeah, because I think pathos is valuable.
You know, yeah, I'm pretty sure we made that point.
It seems like something you would say and I'd be like, yeah,
I do. I think it's valuable to the human experience.
(28:39):
I think it's I can do a lot of good
to be uh, briefly depressed. And well here's an example
of that. Um, this the Great Recession. Since the Great Recession,
teenagers have been reporting um less desire for material objects
than the teenagers for a decade before. Um, They're like,
(29:02):
but you're not talking about my smartphone, right, everything? But
that right, Well, they were saying like they're there. Um,
they were scoring on like materialism surveys as less materialistic
than their counterparts a decade before, and they were more
likely to say things like I want a job that
benefits society. They were they were becoming less materialistic and
more pro social, and they were saying that that's a
(29:24):
direct result of this Great Recession. So lessons learned. Yeah,
your point that, um, that depression of one way or
one sort or another can be beneficial. It's on a
social societal level that's true too. Apparently, Yeah, I did it.
Happiness objects or or experiences. What do you think I
think objects super shiny, golden, golden, sparkly objects. Yeah, which
(29:50):
is one last thing. I think you made a really
good point, like wanting a guitar is doesn't make you
a materialist. You don't have to reject all possession to
be a good, grounded, normal, happy person. Yeah. Listen to
our podcasts on freegans, yeah, dumpster diving. I think those
people are happy. I think I say yes, yeah, and
(30:12):
go check out our super Stuff Guide to Happiness. It
was very, very good. It's on iTunes. It's available on iTunes. Yeah,
just blow the dust off of it. It's still relevant
because everything stopped in two thousand nine. It was so
interesting too. Yeah, it was a good one. Uh. And
if you want to learn more about objects or um experiences,
you can type those words in the search bar at
(30:33):
how stuff works dot com and it will bring up
this article that we were working off of. And since
I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. All right,
I'm gonna call this grocery waste. We did our podcast
on de fridging, and we got a surprisingly a lot
of responses from people. Yeah, I was kind of surprised.
(30:54):
It really hit home. Uh. So this is from a
former grocery store employee when he was in high school.
He said, part of my job at the store was
to find all the eggs, bread and milk that had
a cell by date within the next three days. Uh.
And it's really terrible because cell by dates are designed
with some wiggle room just to make sure nothing is
spoiling before the date on the cart. And when I
(31:14):
had the cart loaded up with perfectly good food, I
had to throw the bread and eggs into the garbage
compactor and pour all the milk down the drain dozens
of gallons a night. M It's just like maddening. And
I got with the local f f a teacher whatever
that is, and asked if yeah, look at you, okay,
(31:36):
whatever that is, I don't remember for you remember. Um?
They asked if all this wasted food? Um. I asked
if all the wasted food could be used to slap
the pigs that the students were raising, and he said
that'd be a great idea. So I went to the
manager of the grocery store, said we should do this
and it might even be good pr for us. It
turns out the grocery store got back partial store credit
(31:58):
from their suppliers for expired food that they threw away.
And here's the hitch. They would not get any credit
if any of the expired food was put to any use.
Isn't that awful. Some suppliers would even refuse credit if
they decided the store wasn't doing enough to prevent dumpster
divers from retrieving food. What's worse, many foods that don't
actually spoil for years and years, but they have arbitrarily
(32:21):
short sell by dates because they found that people don't
trust foods to have an expiration date too far into
the future. Can you remember didn't we talk about, Oh,
I did a brain stuff on water going bad, and
it's like, there's no reason for it to have an
expiration date. Yeah? Uh so, he says. Thus, I spent
one memorable evening throwaway throwing out hundreds of dollars worth
of cheese that was a known danger of spoiling anytime soon.
(32:45):
Even asked if I could take some home, and they
said that that would be considered shoplifting. Wow. So I
don't see food waste being addressed until it becomes a
matter of public outrage. On the level of sweatshop labor.
There are just too many economic barriers in the way.
That is from Todd from Okay. See thanks Todd, And
that is just his store. We heard from other people
(33:05):
some stores have different policies where they can actually put
some of that food to use, but I don't think
that's the norm. No. And we heard from another guy
too who was fired because he got so tired of
throwing stuff where he took a bunch of baguettes to
a homeless shelter and they found out about it and
he was fired because of it. Um, but he said
he didn't regret. It's still his day. Good good for him. Yeah, Um,
(33:27):
thanks Todd from Okay. See I would say go thunder,
but go heat instead. Uh. If you want to get
in touch with Chuck or Me or Jerry, UM, you
can send us a tweet. Our handle is s y
s K Podcast with the little at symbol ahead of that.
We're on Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know
check us out there. UM. You can check out our
(33:48):
YouTube channel Josh and Chuck that's the name of it.
You'll love it. Um. You can also send us a
regular old email Stuff podcast at discovery dot com and
want to st at home on the web. It is
awesome stuff dot com for more on this and thousands
(34:11):
of other topics. Does it How stuff works dot com
with over a hundred thousand titles to choose from. Audible
dot com as a leading provider of downloadable digital audio
books and spoken word entertainment. Go to Audible podcast dot com,
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(34:33):
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