October 1, 2009 • 33 mins
How do you measure happiness? How do you measure it on a national scale? Tune in as Josh and Chuck discuss Bhutan's Gross National Happiness index in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Luscious Bryant. How's it going, Chuck? Sounding funny
(00:23):
the second time around? Josh actually had to do two
takes there, and to hear your name as luscious twice
in a row, he was very special. What did it
do to you? Made me feeluscious? I guess I'm doing well, sir.
How are you? I'm pretty good? What are happen to?
Luscious Jackson? Remember them? Yeah? They were good. They were
around the same time as uh Good Beast you boys. Yeah,
(00:46):
because they're all buddies. Yeah yeah, I think one of
them produced their album or something. She Loving Special Sauce.
That's who I was thinking. I was a huge fan
of them early on you Yeah, and then they got
picked up and you're like, just I think just kind
of lost interest after the third seed or something. Gotcha anyway, Okay, Um,
Chuck equals luxious Jackson fan just just in. Also, I'm
(01:11):
thick tongued case you had People always ask if Josh
eats things while we podcast, and that is not true.
It has a real effect on my happiness. Yes, good
lead in. No, that's not the lead in. I was
just trying to psych you out. The seemingly uniquely American
tradition of killing census bureau workers has begun again in
(01:35):
the just ahead of the two thousand ten census. Chuck,
are they are they doing that now? Yeah, it's about
that time. No one's ever knocked on my door. There
was a guy named Bill Sparkman, aft one year old
Census Bureau employee. Um, I think it's just a worker,
like he was just getting work as a census taker. Uh.
They found his body hanging from a tree in her cemetery, Kentucky,
(01:58):
and the word fed was growled across it. Yeah, that's
a new kind of hate crime. Yes, well, no, it's
not a new Census Bureau workers get killed every everything census. Yeah, yeah,
no idea. Yeah, it's weird. It's a weird thing to do,
but I hope they get paid. Well. Some people don't
like their privacy being invaded or their land being stepped on.
(02:20):
You don't want to knock on my door, brother, Um,
I can tell you a place where there are census
takers that probably will not be strung up in trees.
Bu Bhutan. You know, they had their first census just
like four years ago. Is that right? Bhutan has been
undergoing a lot of changes lately, there, chuckers Um. In
(02:40):
two thousand and eight, the king abdicated his throne in
favor of a parliamentary democracy. Very popular, huge, Yeah, beloved,
you could say. Actually, he was the beloved son of
a beloved king Um and he abdicated his throne in
favor of a democracy because they determined the democracies make
(03:01):
people happier than kingdoms do. So he wanted to make
his small I think the census was six nine thousand people,
Is that it? Yeah, he wanted to make them happy.
He did, and uh, he did so much so that
they've also at the same time when they adopted a
new constitution in a new form of government, they also
adopted a pretty much a guiding principle for the country
(03:25):
called gross national happiness. Awesome. That sounds familiar, doesn't remember that, listener, Male,
I'm the girl who was clearly headed to Yale that
this fall. Yeah, that she did the survey at her
own school to find out how happy the fellow students were. Yeah. Cool,
the the Butanies are into the same thing. You're gonna
try and pronounce his name, Yes, the King Jigmai Singhay
(03:47):
wang Chuck. I got the whang chuck part, definitely. They
said you could call him dragon King. Okay, they meaning
they called me up, the Boutinees did. They said you
can just call him dragon King. They heard that we
were doing this podcast. Indeed, okay, well, the Dragon King,
thank you for that. By the thing, um, back in
ninety two, he came up with the idea of gross
(04:08):
national happiness. Um, that's probably sounds a lot like gross
domestic product or gross national product. Right, And I'm we've
talked about before. I'm glad you pointed out in the
article too that this isn't just uh, it wasn't just
a fluffy little happy thing they decided to do. They
were really serious about it. Nor is it tongue in
cheek like the five day weekend, which we've also talked about. Right,
(04:30):
This is that they've taken well, we'll we'll break this down, yes, okay. Basically,
what the Boutanies have done is come to a collective
agreement that number one, happiness is not just a response
to external stimuli like a new car or something like that.
They've taken the decidedly more Buddhist approach to happiness that
(04:52):
it comes from within, right, which is a lovely sentiment.
I think that's that's step one. It's easy for Boutan
to do it because there a Buddhist country right right, um, peaceful.
So step one was to say, all right, happiness comes
from with him. Step two is to say, okay, how
do you achieve this happiness? Key? They actually did this
(05:16):
survey over three months. I think it was a hundred
and eight questions, and that was the second version. The
first one was determined to be just way too long. Yes,
also those questions too. It's pretty cool, Like what buddy well,
I mean I went to that. Uh what was the
website gross National Happiness dot Com? I think actually, or
or one of the two was it. I can't remember
it an organ it may be. I can't remember what
(05:37):
the questions where you didn't know you're gonna put me
on the spot like this, but there were things like
how do you feel about or how much rest do
you get when you perform certain tasks and how does
this make you feel about your family? Just things like that.
So what they came up with, Chuck, was a basically
nine guiding principles toward happiness. Right, Yes, I actually have
(05:58):
them here? I do too. Oh real, Yes, that means
touch and french. Um what are they, chuck, because I
can't find my cherry loves that joke? Uh? Time use,
living standards, good governance, psychological well being, community fatality, culture, health,
and education ecology okay, or those are two, I think
(06:23):
education and ecology. So basically they've figured out that these
are the nine things combined that make a happy life. Right,
I could dig that, and I mean some of them
sound a little obtuse, like psychological well being? What is that? Right? Um? Basically,
what they've they've come up with is you can't just say, hey,
(06:43):
how how happy are you? Scale a one to ten?
Or would you say seven it's not bad? Um? Would
you say that you're more happy, less happy, or just
as happy as you were last year? Like the Butanees
pretty much immediately threw this out the window. They said
that this is just it's too imprecise, and we have
(07:04):
to turn this into a metric system a system of metrices,
is that, right? Metrices? Okay, they wanted to quantify it
very much so because they're, like you said, they're very
very serious about this. Right. So, Um, let's say, let's
take psychological well being. They they took these guiding principles
(07:25):
and then they broke them down by indicators. Right, So
you have an indicator like the prevalence of UM negative
emotions like jealousy or frustration or selfishness, the prevalence of
positive emotions like UM, generosity, compassion, calmness. Right, and um
that those right there are indicators that when you compile
(07:47):
them all together in a survey, you have an impression
of the psychological well being of the household that's being
taken in the census. Right. Could you imagine our country
ever doing anything remotely close to this? Know? And the
reason why is because we just like the Boutaneese recently said,
we're going to collectively agree that we want to focus
(08:08):
our our national focus on happiness the the US A
long time ago, actually around World War two, when the
g MP was first introduced. Um, we made a collective
agreement that we want to focus on materialism, money stuff
(08:32):
that's how we measure our um our well being in
this country. And that's not to say that it's any
worse or better, um than Bhutan's idea. It's just radically different.
And one of the reasons it is radically different is
because in this country we don't tech, We don't we
don't tend to think of happiness as coming from within.
(08:53):
It is like behavioral psychologists believe, or a lot of
them do. It's the spons of physiological response to an
external stimuli. Right. So we've said, yeah, so we've said
we're going to go for the materialism route, and this
is what's going to dictate our policies. How much money
do you have. If you've got a bunch of money,
you can go get your car and all that stuff.
(09:15):
So let's figure out how to make a bunch of
money for everybody in this country. Right. Um. And even
if you on a an individual level don't agree with
the concept of materialism, if you're in the US, you
tacitly agree with it just by going to work every day.
The whole, the whole point of most of your waking
life is accumulation of money, right, or you're looked at
(09:36):
as a freak of nature. If you are one of
those people who decided to drop out and go live
off the grid and so they're on seed in the mountains. Sure,
you're a weirdo in this country if you do that,
or if you die after three months, they make a
movie about you and a book The bear guy. Who
I thought you talk about Timothy Treadwell, the grizzly Bear. No,
(09:57):
I was talking about Christopher McCandless. Okay, Sure, from into
the Wild thing similar, similar thing the bear. I thought
that was actually about a bear. No, Timothy Treadwell was
as a bear enthusiast who went to live among the
bears and was killed by a bear. Was killed Neaton
by bear. What a way to go. So, Chuck, let's
(10:17):
get back to how how Bhutan has made this quantified? Right? Yes,
so you've got uh. We were talking about psychological well
being and then all these different indicators. One of the
other things that they've decided to do is to take
um objective data as well as subjective data to evaluate
(10:39):
just how much worth something has. Right um. I was
reading pretty much a breakdown of the gross national happiness
system that Bhutan has by the the Center for Boutan
Studies it's pretty impressive. It is um and what they've
what they've said is so you've got like crime. Right
in the US, we have time statistics, and then the
(11:01):
FBI issues the uniform Crime Report every year, right, and
it gets kind of granular, like um, crime perpetrated by race,
by gender, by age, what kind of crime? It's real granular,
it does. But really, if you think about it, it's
just a statistic like I shoot you you die. That's
one homicide, right, right, So what the botanis do is
(11:24):
they still have these crime statistics. They use crime data,
but they take it a step further through these surveys
and say how safe do you feel? Okay, I guess
that's one of the perks of having a country of
six people. Sure, I guess the census goes a lot
faster um. But but so that one, right, So the
crime statistics taken with how safe the population self reports feeling,
(11:49):
that would be part of community vitality. Right. Yeah, it
makes sense, it does, doesn't it. It's weird that it
makes sense because really it's the op is it of
the premise behind gross domestic product or gross national product,
which is all material but it uses a lot of
the same UM model, but rather than money, it's going
(12:13):
for happiness. You know, I think that boggling. Actually, I
think it's the only way they could have pulled this
off is if if they did use like a GDP
model instead of just kind of willing really throwing some
questions out there about happiness. Right, they actually said that
in this breakdown of Gross National Happiness that like, you know,
it's a great idea, but we had to quantify it
or else it was just going to be useless. So
(12:34):
they really went to town on it. Right. So what
they've done is take these nine guiding principles, right and
dimensions dimensions that's rights, and they they've they've broken them
down into all these different indicators, right that can be
UM subjectively reported on. And they've established a threshold, just
(12:58):
like we use for poverty lines. Right, So in the US,
what is it If you're an individual and you make
like some some ridiculously low amount, like thirteen thousand dollars
a year, you're you're below the poverty line. But if
you make thirteen thousand and one dollars, you're above the
poverty line. Um. They they created thresholds UM for achievement
(13:20):
is how they put it UM to where let's say, uh,
we'll go back to a scale just to make it easier.
On a scale of one to ten. UM four is
the is the threshold for UM general psycho psychological well being? Right, Okay,
So if you have if you say yes to X
(13:43):
number of questions on these indicators and then they add
them all up and your score is five, you've surpassed
the threshold, but you're not put down as a five,
put down as a four. Do you understand what I'm saying?
What they're what they're doing in that is that they
have chosen to focus on building up any deficits that
(14:05):
turn up in gross national happiness, uh, as opposed to
UM touting how happy that the happiest people actually are. Yeah,
their goal is to to be a happier country, right,
So have a lot of poor people there too, Like
they're really being hard on themselves here, Like their gross
national happiness the most it could ever possibly be. If
(14:25):
every single person in the country is happy at the
same time, is one. Everything else is negative. Okay, So
then they go focus on why it's negative and they
break it down much the same way like the FBI
breaks down crime like by gender, by region, by um,
by age, and then they can say, all right, what
can we do to make these people happier? What's lacking?
(14:48):
You see what I'm saying. It's it's I don't I hate.
I hesitate to use the word crazy because I don't
want anyone to get the impression that I'm I'm casting
any doubt or dispersion on it. This is crazy, is yeah, Well,
especially considering where they are. I mentioned the poverty line
or you did of their country lives below the poverty line, right,
(15:12):
but in a Buddhist country, that doesn't necessarily mean these
people are unhappy. Well no, because they only have an
unemployment rate of two point five, so the material is
not that important. They're working, and I saw there They're
big exports are there in Their industrial exports are cement,
that's like their biggest industrial exports, and then wood products
(15:33):
and then agriculture is their big deal with rice and
corn and stuff like that. Okay, so what we've just
talked about is that they have a thirties something percent
live below the poverty line. But it's a Buddhist country,
so they're big into the rejection of materialism, so that
doesn't really matter or does it. One of the other
things that the Gross National Happiness model that they've come
(15:54):
up with serves as is a is a a framework
for accountability for the government, right for the government's like, well,
we just all reject materialism, so um, you know, it
doesn't matter if you're below the poverty line. If they
enough people start self reporting that they're actually unhappy, and
all these people happen to be falling below the poverty
line that's published for you know, Buddha and everybody to see,
(16:18):
and then all of a sudden you can point to
the government like, you guys are wrong, you're making some
incorrect assumptions, and we need to fix this over here
by making more money. If that's yeah, yeah, because if
you're dedicated to the happiness collectively and individually of your population,
then yes, it's going to turn up on this gross
National Happiness um economic indicator or indicator, and uh, it's
(16:41):
gonna need to be fixed or else you've just been
blowing smoke up everybody's Uh, you know what their real
GDP was? Actually I checked that out per capita. What
would you guess if America is forty six and change,
what would you think it would be there in Bhuddan
three dollars per year, Yeah, five thousand two d okay
(17:03):
per capita GDP. I can see that. So they still
I guess that's a world fact that you have to have.
They still have the GDP. Right, that's an excellent point, Chuck.
The reason that they they instituted gross national Happiness is
because they I think the leaders kind of saw the
writing on the wall, like, you you can only remain
shut off for so long. And this is very much
(17:23):
a shut off kingdom. It's high up in the mountains
between China and India, and they have yes very much,
so they've isolated themselves. But the internet came in two
thousand one, TV showed up in and it brought with
it these Western influences. So what the leaders said, rather
than you can't have TV, you can't have internet, they said, okay,
(17:44):
we'll we'll enter the world stage, but we're gonna do
it on our own terms. And this is this is
how we're going to applaud it. So let's get to
the point there, chuckers as to whether or not Bhutan's
actually onto something like there there's this is an age
old question like is money more important than happiness. Can
(18:04):
money buy happiness? Let's talk about some some studies, not
necessarily once conducted in Bhutan, but just in general, like
does money provide happiness? I think if you were just
to talk about Bhutan now, you'd be uh, you'd find
out pretty quick that five thousand, two hundred dollars a
year that they is their GDP. They're probably pretty happy.
(18:26):
And if you talk to your average American they might
not be as happy. That's just a guess, agreed. But
the g n H will turn that up sure eventually, right,
they'll they'll turn the frown upside down. Right, Actually, check
the boutanies. Census takers aren't the only people who go
around asking people if they're happy. I know you're talking
about who am I talking about? The World Value Survey?
(18:47):
That's right. Um, they ask people how happy they are,
and they've been doing it for a long time since actually,
and they usually ask about three fifty thousand people, uh
in ninety seven countries. And they asked too much country.
They asked that many their whole um survey populations. Um.
They they asked two questions. You ready, taking all things together,
(19:11):
would you say you are very happy? Rather happy, not
very happy, not at all happy. That's one question. And
then secondly, all things considered, how satisfied are you with
your life as a whole these days? And that's it
to two questions survey, right, and then they ranked countries.
In two thousand and eight, the happiest country on the
planet was Denmark. I could, I could believe that the
(19:32):
US ranks six, right, but if you look according at
the CIA, if you look at um per capita g
d P, the US was I think number eight, number five,
and another number eight in two thousand and eight, and
then Denmark was number thirty. So they're the happiest country,
but they don't make nearly as much money as the US.
(19:53):
No correlation there, but not necessarily. There's a lot of
criticism of the World Value Survey um number one. Somebody
pointed out number one, uh that you how do you
translate happiness from we? We? You and I can't even
describe what real happiness is? Necessarily we could possibly anecdotally,
(20:16):
but it's so subjective. Number one, How can you and I,
who have so much in common, not established what happiness is?
That that you can also spread it out over ninety
seven countries and all these different societies and groups within it.
So that's that's number one. Um number two. I read
an article that pointed out that, yeah, Denmark um is
(20:37):
the happiest country in the world. It also leads the
world in per capita alcoholism and suicide. Really, yeah, I
understand the alcohol part. Yeah, suicide, No, it doesn't, So, Chuck,
it's becoming evident. Just what a responsibility, what a task
Bhutan is taking on its own shoulders, isn't it. I mean, like,
(21:00):
happiness is really tough to quantify, and they've done a
great job trying to figure that out. But yeah, I
know they do the studies, and you pointed one in
your article, your fine, fine article about didn't I thought
it was okay? Uh about um? They always study lottery winners. Yes,
I love this, and they always compare them to amputees,
which I just I find odds. No, it was just
(21:22):
a very famous one that started it. Is that what
it is, it's like, is happiness relative? Well, and then
what do they find out that after the initial joy
of the lottery war off the people kind of generally,
and the same with the ampute they generally go back
to where they were before. Yeah, if you look at
it as like a line of horizontal line. Uh, and
the event happens at the same time. Somebody loses their
(21:44):
leg and another person loses their wins the lottery. The
lottery winner goes up, the ampute goes down. But after
three years they both go back to that same line,
which is kind of startling if you think about it. Yeah,
and you also made the point about money, which I
thought was a really good point. Is dichotomous. So money
can bring many things. Money can bring happiness and cool
(22:06):
stuff and security, and it can also, uh be the
the evil in your life. It can be I mean
that that security. You've got financial security, but maybe you're
a little more worried that you're you know, house is
going to be invaded, right for during a robbery or something. Yeah.
The point with pursuing happiness that I think the Boutanees
are hip on is that happiness only brings happiness. Good point. Um.
(22:31):
There was another study by a couple of guys from
Princeton at all um and Uh they basically use something
called day reconstruction method, which is self reporting. But you know,
self reporting it flies in the soft social sciences. But
that's about it. Um. But basically they asked people to,
um write down their experiences that from the previous day.
(22:55):
I can do that over a set period of time, right,
I'd love to see mine from like yesterday, that'd be great.
Oh yeah, we're in a bad mood yesterday. No, just
were you drunk? No, they wanted their charting your mood
or what you did and how it correspondents. I think both. Yeah,
i'd left. We should do that. You want there, No,
I don't either. Um. What these guys found was that
(23:16):
when you when you ask people to report on their
mood right as it happens or the day after it's happened,
and then you evaluated by income, they found that actually
money did, indeed, um bring happiness to a certain extent, right, Right.
So the point is is, I think people who made
under twenty thousand dollars a year are actually less happy
(23:40):
than people who make a hundred thousand or more. Okay,
that's kind of a no brainer to think about it.
It rans in the strife and struggle you're you have
in your daily life. If you're making that's what it lasts. Right. Yeah.
Even happy people, I think can be beaten down by finances.
Generally happy people. Sure, yeah, um, but the the uh,
(24:01):
what they did find was that when you get to
a fifty thousand to eighty nine thousand, that segment was
virtually identical people who made over a hundred thousand, which
is kind of significant because there's a there's a substantial
difference between fifty thousand and a hundred thousand. So what
what they've concluded is that money does bring happiness to
(24:22):
a certain extent by possibly by satisfying um our needs.
But after that it loses a lot of its value
or a lot of the happiness that can bring once
it reaches a certain point, once those needs are satisfied. Yeah.
You know, when I worked in l A, I worked
with a lot of rich people, obviously in the film industry,
and it never really hit home to me until I
(24:43):
left that I was always jealous of the amount of money,
Like these commercial directors have make insane amounts of money,
like twenty tho dollars a day for their stupid TV commercials.
I'm unimpressed because you've already told me that. Yeah, it's
just amazing how much money they make. But you you
grow your lifestyle to fit your salary to a large degree.
(25:04):
Not always, my friend, you were talking about the hedonic treadmill.
So basically, they're uh, come on, have you heard those
two words put together before? Yeah, all the time. Don't
you see my T shirt? It's so yeah, that's right there,
silly drawing. I thought so too. Um. You grow to
fit your your your your lifestyle grows to fit your salary.
(25:27):
So if you make twenty dollars a day, your expenses,
or let's say thirty dollars a month, your expenses are
gonna be you know, they're gonna match that. I'm not
saying this, Well, no, I know what you mean. Let's
say uh, let's say an example. I've read in an
article from the San Diego Union Tribune, a sterling article
actually on happiness. It's called pursuing happiness. Um. This guy
(25:51):
makes the example of um winning the lottery and moving
to uh Rancho Santa Fe, which I take is one
of the nicer suburbs in San Diego. I guess okay. Uh.
He says that when you do that, you go from
the how did I get this lucky type of happiness
to living among similar wealth, so it becomes your normal
everyday life wears off another argumentum against money bringing happiness
(26:15):
is that a lot of times it leads to um
poor choices. Apparently about forty of our happiness if you
look at it in a pie graph. Um ten percent
is life circumstances, fifty is um jenes genetic, they believe,
And then is our our choices that the happiness or
(26:36):
unhappiness or choices bring us. And one of the points
is like, okay, let's say, um, commuting is almost across
the board like one of our least favorite things to
do as human beings. Right, Um, But you make a
bunch more money, so you move out to the suburbs
in a into a bigger house. But you've also just
doubled or tripled your commute. But then you buy the
(26:58):
BMW seven series, see your drive as a lot sweeter.
But then it costs for the tune up. Sure, it's all,
it's all. It's all comes out in the wash. You know.
The point I think that you and I are inevitably
going towards stumbling, towards faltering um is that you just
(27:19):
shouldn't take money quite so seriously, that's good. I find
it interesting. And we've set up a thing in this
country where you can never go backward. It's all about
going forward with the Peter principle. Yeah, well with money
though too, Like when um like in a divorce case,
you always hear the whether it's a husband or the
wife that's rich and the one that's asking for the
(27:41):
spousal support. The point has always made while I've got
this lifestyle now and then I need to get the
forty dollars a month from you to to stay at
this lifestyle. The thought of going back is just unthinkable
in this country. It is money wise, if you think
about it. Stockbrokers don't don't um tend to throw themselves
out of windows when they make a bunch of money.
(28:03):
It's only when they lose it. Right. But I'm I mean,
that's that's drastic. But you think why, I mean, why
can't you just you know, all right, I'm gonna take
a job that pays less and I'm gonna have a
little less. Some people make this choice, you know what
I think some people do, and I would like to
hear from them, anybody who's made that decision right us
and tell us are you happy and what you did?
(28:26):
But the courts support it with that divorce thing. They think, well,
now you've got this lifestyle and you must stay at
that level. You cannot drop your lifestyle whatsoever. Right, And
that is that definitely does UM underscore or that social
agreement that materialism is what we're into. Yeah, yeah, well, uh,
let's see, since I said materialism is what we're into,
(28:48):
that means that I should tell you to go to
how stuff works dot com. You can type in gross
national happiness in our handy search bar, and you might
also want to read another article on the site. UM
can any by happiness, right, which means what chuck? Actually,
I got just one more quick thing. You know, there
was an earthquake totally. There was an earthquake in Bhutan
(29:09):
on Monday. Did you know that. I didn't. Yeah, everybody, okay,
six point three they've twelve people at least are dead
and wrecked a bunch of you know, ancient monasteries and yeah,
which are like built on the mountain side. Yeah, so
I imagine they came tumbling down. Just very sad. Yeah,
that is sad. So I just want to say, hello,
if we have any fans in Bhuton. We might have
one fan of Bhutan. Yeah, the internet, it is all right?
(29:33):
Well with that sad news. I guess it's time for
a listener mail. It is listener mail Josh. And this
is uh just a couple of quick shoutouts. This came
from Amelia and Jerry thought it was a good idea
to plug it, so we will. Um. It's a website
called free rice dot com. And apparently what you do
(29:53):
there is you go online at this website and you
answer vocabulary questions and it's like a game. You play
these games where you answer tribute questions and uh participate
and when you get these questions right, they donate rice
to the needy around the world. So it's like a
little interactive way I guess of getting people involved and uh,
ten grains of rice per correct answer. And um, the
(30:17):
website today said over sixty eight billion grains of rice
have been donated today. Do you imagine the poor slob
whose job it is to count out every single one
of those grains? May be symbolic, maybe not, do you
think now you're you're staring blankly. So thanks Amelia for that,
and that is a worthy cause indeed. And then I
wanted to give a special shout out to Ben, our
(30:40):
listener from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Ben and
I've been writing. He, at the age of twenty, was
diagnosed with a form of lukemi that I cannot pronounce.
He said, it's evidently the good kind, even though after
hearing what he's been going through, it didn't sound like it. Uh.
They were gonna have a bone marrow transplant for Ben,
(31:00):
but they could not find a match in eleven million
person database, and so he has been approved. His chemotherapy
um sorry, radiation worked and he's going to have an
umbilical cord blood transplant. And he's been traveling I think
he said something like eighty miles each way every day
for like a two minute radiation. And he's been listening
(31:22):
to our podcast, which is why he wrote in and
that's been helping him out. And we just and Ben's
a really cool guy, dude. His attitude is like leaps
and bounds ahead of ours. His outlook on life isn't. Yeah.
It was one of those perspective shots where Ben is
just and he's like, oh, man, don't feel bad for me,
because I told him I felt really awful about it.
He said, you know, I didn't picture this is my life,
(31:42):
but it's what I've been dealt and I'm dealing with
it and everything's everything's gonna be okay. And uh so
he was a proof for the Uh he was admitted
last Wednesday for the transplant and it's a six week
hospital stay and then a two year recovery period. And
and he said that, uh, the one thing that he's
loved as our podcast and hydromorphone he's become fond of,
(32:06):
which is uh what the pain killer they've been giving him? Okay,
And he said that he found out later heroin addics
use it as a substitute because has similar effects. Heroin
addicts will use anything as a substitute. Sure, and so Ben,
we hope you're well. I hope you're listening. Our thoughts
are with you obviously and calling for you. Please keep
us posted. Huh yeah, he will cool. Will you keep
(32:27):
me posted? Will you? I will? You kind of have
a lockdown on the information that comes in. I do
I control the information. Remember, we want to hear from
you if you decided to take a giant step backward
out of the rat race and um, how your life's going.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
how stuff works dot com For more on this and
(32:54):
thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff works dot Com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Luscious Bryant. How's it going, Chuck? Sounding funny
(00:23):
the second time around? Josh actually had to do two
takes there, and to hear your name as luscious twice
in a row, he was very special. What did it
do to you? Made me feeluscious? I guess I'm doing well, sir.
How are you? I'm pretty good? What are happen to?
Luscious Jackson? Remember them? Yeah? They were good. They were
around the same time as uh Good Beast you boys. Yeah,
(00:46):
because they're all buddies. Yeah yeah, I think one of
them produced their album or something. She Loving Special Sauce.
That's who I was thinking. I was a huge fan
of them early on you Yeah, and then they got
picked up and you're like, just I think just kind
of lost interest after the third seed or something. Gotcha anyway, Okay, Um,
Chuck equals luxious Jackson fan just just in. Also, I'm
(01:11):
thick tongued case you had People always ask if Josh
eats things while we podcast, and that is not true.
It has a real effect on my happiness. Yes, good
lead in. No, that's not the lead in. I was
just trying to psych you out. The seemingly uniquely American
tradition of killing census bureau workers has begun again in
(01:35):
the just ahead of the two thousand ten census. Chuck,
are they are they doing that now? Yeah, it's about
that time. No one's ever knocked on my door. There
was a guy named Bill Sparkman, aft one year old
Census Bureau employee. Um, I think it's just a worker,
like he was just getting work as a census taker. Uh.
They found his body hanging from a tree in her cemetery, Kentucky,
(01:58):
and the word fed was growled across it. Yeah, that's
a new kind of hate crime. Yes, well, no, it's
not a new Census Bureau workers get killed every everything census. Yeah, yeah,
no idea. Yeah, it's weird. It's a weird thing to do,
but I hope they get paid. Well. Some people don't
like their privacy being invaded or their land being stepped on.
(02:20):
You don't want to knock on my door, brother, Um,
I can tell you a place where there are census
takers that probably will not be strung up in trees.
Bu Bhutan. You know, they had their first census just
like four years ago. Is that right? Bhutan has been
undergoing a lot of changes lately, there, chuckers Um. In
(02:40):
two thousand and eight, the king abdicated his throne in
favor of a parliamentary democracy. Very popular, huge, Yeah, beloved,
you could say. Actually, he was the beloved son of
a beloved king Um and he abdicated his throne in
favor of a democracy because they determined the democracies make
(03:01):
people happier than kingdoms do. So he wanted to make
his small I think the census was six nine thousand people,
Is that it? Yeah, he wanted to make them happy.
He did, and uh, he did so much so that
they've also at the same time when they adopted a
new constitution in a new form of government, they also
adopted a pretty much a guiding principle for the country
(03:25):
called gross national happiness. Awesome. That sounds familiar, doesn't remember that, listener, Male,
I'm the girl who was clearly headed to Yale that
this fall. Yeah, that she did the survey at her
own school to find out how happy the fellow students were. Yeah. Cool,
the the Butanies are into the same thing. You're gonna
try and pronounce his name, Yes, the King Jigmai Singhay
(03:47):
wang Chuck. I got the whang chuck part, definitely. They
said you could call him dragon King. Okay, they meaning
they called me up, the Boutinees did. They said you
can just call him dragon King. They heard that we
were doing this podcast. Indeed, okay, well, the Dragon King,
thank you for that. By the thing, um, back in
ninety two, he came up with the idea of gross
(04:08):
national happiness. Um, that's probably sounds a lot like gross
domestic product or gross national product. Right, And I'm we've
talked about before. I'm glad you pointed out in the
article too that this isn't just uh, it wasn't just
a fluffy little happy thing they decided to do. They
were really serious about it. Nor is it tongue in
cheek like the five day weekend, which we've also talked about. Right,
(04:30):
This is that they've taken well, we'll we'll break this down, yes, okay. Basically,
what the Boutanies have done is come to a collective
agreement that number one, happiness is not just a response
to external stimuli like a new car or something like that.
They've taken the decidedly more Buddhist approach to happiness that
(04:52):
it comes from within, right, which is a lovely sentiment.
I think that's that's step one. It's easy for Boutan
to do it because there a Buddhist country right right, um, peaceful.
So step one was to say, all right, happiness comes
from with him. Step two is to say, okay, how
do you achieve this happiness? Key? They actually did this
(05:16):
survey over three months. I think it was a hundred
and eight questions, and that was the second version. The
first one was determined to be just way too long. Yes,
also those questions too. It's pretty cool, Like what buddy well,
I mean I went to that. Uh what was the
website gross National Happiness dot Com? I think actually, or
or one of the two was it. I can't remember
it an organ it may be. I can't remember what
(05:37):
the questions where you didn't know you're gonna put me
on the spot like this, but there were things like
how do you feel about or how much rest do
you get when you perform certain tasks and how does
this make you feel about your family? Just things like that.
So what they came up with, Chuck, was a basically
nine guiding principles toward happiness. Right, Yes, I actually have
(05:58):
them here? I do too. Oh real, Yes, that means
touch and french. Um what are they, chuck, because I
can't find my cherry loves that joke? Uh? Time use,
living standards, good governance, psychological well being, community fatality, culture, health,
and education ecology okay, or those are two, I think
(06:23):
education and ecology. So basically they've figured out that these
are the nine things combined that make a happy life. Right,
I could dig that, and I mean some of them
sound a little obtuse, like psychological well being? What is that? Right? Um? Basically,
what they've they've come up with is you can't just say, hey,
(06:43):
how how happy are you? Scale a one to ten?
Or would you say seven it's not bad? Um? Would
you say that you're more happy, less happy, or just
as happy as you were last year? Like the Butanees
pretty much immediately threw this out the window. They said
that this is just it's too imprecise, and we have
(07:04):
to turn this into a metric system a system of metrices,
is that, right? Metrices? Okay, they wanted to quantify it
very much so because they're, like you said, they're very
very serious about this. Right. So, Um, let's say, let's
take psychological well being. They they took these guiding principles
(07:25):
and then they broke them down by indicators. Right, So
you have an indicator like the prevalence of UM negative
emotions like jealousy or frustration or selfishness, the prevalence of
positive emotions like UM, generosity, compassion, calmness. Right, and um
that those right there are indicators that when you compile
(07:47):
them all together in a survey, you have an impression
of the psychological well being of the household that's being
taken in the census. Right. Could you imagine our country
ever doing anything remotely close to this? Know? And the
reason why is because we just like the Boutaneese recently said,
we're going to collectively agree that we want to focus
(08:08):
our our national focus on happiness the the US A
long time ago, actually around World War two, when the
g MP was first introduced. Um, we made a collective
agreement that we want to focus on materialism, money stuff
(08:32):
that's how we measure our um our well being in
this country. And that's not to say that it's any
worse or better, um than Bhutan's idea. It's just radically different.
And one of the reasons it is radically different is
because in this country we don't tech, We don't we
don't tend to think of happiness as coming from within.
(08:53):
It is like behavioral psychologists believe, or a lot of
them do. It's the spons of physiological response to an
external stimuli. Right. So we've said, yeah, so we've said
we're going to go for the materialism route, and this
is what's going to dictate our policies. How much money
do you have. If you've got a bunch of money,
you can go get your car and all that stuff.
(09:15):
So let's figure out how to make a bunch of
money for everybody in this country. Right. Um. And even
if you on a an individual level don't agree with
the concept of materialism, if you're in the US, you
tacitly agree with it just by going to work every day.
The whole, the whole point of most of your waking
life is accumulation of money, right, or you're looked at
(09:36):
as a freak of nature. If you are one of
those people who decided to drop out and go live
off the grid and so they're on seed in the mountains. Sure,
you're a weirdo in this country if you do that,
or if you die after three months, they make a
movie about you and a book The bear guy. Who
I thought you talk about Timothy Treadwell, the grizzly Bear. No,
(09:57):
I was talking about Christopher McCandless. Okay, Sure, from into
the Wild thing similar, similar thing the bear. I thought
that was actually about a bear. No, Timothy Treadwell was
as a bear enthusiast who went to live among the
bears and was killed by a bear. Was killed Neaton
by bear. What a way to go. So, Chuck, let's
(10:17):
get back to how how Bhutan has made this quantified? Right? Yes,
so you've got uh. We were talking about psychological well
being and then all these different indicators. One of the
other things that they've decided to do is to take
um objective data as well as subjective data to evaluate
(10:39):
just how much worth something has. Right um. I was
reading pretty much a breakdown of the gross national happiness
system that Bhutan has by the the Center for Boutan
Studies it's pretty impressive. It is um and what they've
what they've said is so you've got like crime. Right
in the US, we have time statistics, and then the
(11:01):
FBI issues the uniform Crime Report every year, right, and
it gets kind of granular, like um, crime perpetrated by race,
by gender, by age, what kind of crime? It's real granular,
it does. But really, if you think about it, it's
just a statistic like I shoot you you die. That's
one homicide, right, right, So what the botanis do is
(11:24):
they still have these crime statistics. They use crime data,
but they take it a step further through these surveys
and say how safe do you feel? Okay, I guess
that's one of the perks of having a country of
six people. Sure, I guess the census goes a lot
faster um. But but so that one, right, So the
crime statistics taken with how safe the population self reports feeling,
(11:49):
that would be part of community vitality. Right. Yeah, it
makes sense, it does, doesn't it. It's weird that it
makes sense because really it's the op is it of
the premise behind gross domestic product or gross national product,
which is all material but it uses a lot of
the same UM model, but rather than money, it's going
(12:13):
for happiness. You know, I think that boggling. Actually, I
think it's the only way they could have pulled this
off is if if they did use like a GDP
model instead of just kind of willing really throwing some
questions out there about happiness. Right, they actually said that
in this breakdown of Gross National Happiness that like, you know,
it's a great idea, but we had to quantify it
or else it was just going to be useless. So
(12:34):
they really went to town on it. Right. So what
they've done is take these nine guiding principles, right and
dimensions dimensions that's rights, and they they've they've broken them
down into all these different indicators, right that can be
UM subjectively reported on. And they've established a threshold, just
(12:58):
like we use for poverty lines. Right, So in the US,
what is it If you're an individual and you make
like some some ridiculously low amount, like thirteen thousand dollars
a year, you're you're below the poverty line. But if
you make thirteen thousand and one dollars, you're above the
poverty line. Um. They they created thresholds UM for achievement
(13:20):
is how they put it UM to where let's say, uh,
we'll go back to a scale just to make it easier.
On a scale of one to ten. UM four is
the is the threshold for UM general psycho psychological well being? Right, Okay,
So if you have if you say yes to X
(13:43):
number of questions on these indicators and then they add
them all up and your score is five, you've surpassed
the threshold, but you're not put down as a five,
put down as a four. Do you understand what I'm saying?
What they're what they're doing in that is that they
have chosen to focus on building up any deficits that
(14:05):
turn up in gross national happiness, uh, as opposed to
UM touting how happy that the happiest people actually are. Yeah,
their goal is to to be a happier country, right,
So have a lot of poor people there too, Like
they're really being hard on themselves here, Like their gross
national happiness the most it could ever possibly be. If
(14:25):
every single person in the country is happy at the
same time, is one. Everything else is negative. Okay, So
then they go focus on why it's negative and they
break it down much the same way like the FBI
breaks down crime like by gender, by region, by um,
by age, and then they can say, all right, what
can we do to make these people happier? What's lacking?
(14:48):
You see what I'm saying. It's it's I don't I hate.
I hesitate to use the word crazy because I don't
want anyone to get the impression that I'm I'm casting
any doubt or dispersion on it. This is crazy, is yeah, Well,
especially considering where they are. I mentioned the poverty line
or you did of their country lives below the poverty line, right,
(15:12):
but in a Buddhist country, that doesn't necessarily mean these
people are unhappy. Well no, because they only have an
unemployment rate of two point five, so the material is
not that important. They're working, and I saw there They're
big exports are there in Their industrial exports are cement,
that's like their biggest industrial exports, and then wood products
(15:33):
and then agriculture is their big deal with rice and
corn and stuff like that. Okay, so what we've just
talked about is that they have a thirties something percent
live below the poverty line. But it's a Buddhist country,
so they're big into the rejection of materialism, so that
doesn't really matter or does it. One of the other
things that the Gross National Happiness model that they've come
(15:54):
up with serves as is a is a a framework
for accountability for the government, right for the government's like, well,
we just all reject materialism, so um, you know, it
doesn't matter if you're below the poverty line. If they
enough people start self reporting that they're actually unhappy, and
all these people happen to be falling below the poverty
line that's published for you know, Buddha and everybody to see,
(16:18):
and then all of a sudden you can point to
the government like, you guys are wrong, you're making some
incorrect assumptions, and we need to fix this over here
by making more money. If that's yeah, yeah, because if
you're dedicated to the happiness collectively and individually of your population,
then yes, it's going to turn up on this gross
National Happiness um economic indicator or indicator, and uh, it's
(16:41):
gonna need to be fixed or else you've just been
blowing smoke up everybody's Uh, you know what their real
GDP was? Actually I checked that out per capita. What
would you guess if America is forty six and change,
what would you think it would be there in Bhuddan
three dollars per year, Yeah, five thousand two d okay
(17:03):
per capita GDP. I can see that. So they still
I guess that's a world fact that you have to have.
They still have the GDP. Right, that's an excellent point, Chuck.
The reason that they they instituted gross national Happiness is
because they I think the leaders kind of saw the
writing on the wall, like, you you can only remain
shut off for so long. And this is very much
(17:23):
a shut off kingdom. It's high up in the mountains
between China and India, and they have yes very much,
so they've isolated themselves. But the internet came in two
thousand one, TV showed up in and it brought with
it these Western influences. So what the leaders said, rather
than you can't have TV, you can't have internet, they said, okay,
(17:44):
we'll we'll enter the world stage, but we're gonna do
it on our own terms. And this is this is
how we're going to applaud it. So let's get to
the point there, chuckers as to whether or not Bhutan's
actually onto something like there there's this is an age
old question like is money more important than happiness. Can
(18:04):
money buy happiness? Let's talk about some some studies, not
necessarily once conducted in Bhutan, but just in general, like
does money provide happiness? I think if you were just
to talk about Bhutan now, you'd be uh, you'd find
out pretty quick that five thousand, two hundred dollars a
year that they is their GDP. They're probably pretty happy.
(18:26):
And if you talk to your average American they might
not be as happy. That's just a guess, agreed. But
the g n H will turn that up sure eventually, right,
they'll they'll turn the frown upside down. Right, Actually, check
the boutanies. Census takers aren't the only people who go
around asking people if they're happy. I know you're talking
about who am I talking about? The World Value Survey?
(18:47):
That's right. Um, they ask people how happy they are,
and they've been doing it for a long time since actually,
and they usually ask about three fifty thousand people, uh
in ninety seven countries. And they asked too much country.
They asked that many their whole um survey populations. Um.
They they asked two questions. You ready, taking all things together,
(19:11):
would you say you are very happy? Rather happy, not
very happy, not at all happy. That's one question. And
then secondly, all things considered, how satisfied are you with
your life as a whole these days? And that's it
to two questions survey, right, and then they ranked countries.
In two thousand and eight, the happiest country on the
planet was Denmark. I could, I could believe that the
(19:32):
US ranks six, right, but if you look according at
the CIA, if you look at um per capita g
d P, the US was I think number eight, number five,
and another number eight in two thousand and eight, and
then Denmark was number thirty. So they're the happiest country,
but they don't make nearly as much money as the US.
(19:53):
No correlation there, but not necessarily. There's a lot of
criticism of the World Value Survey um number one. Somebody
pointed out number one, uh that you how do you
translate happiness from we? We? You and I can't even
describe what real happiness is? Necessarily we could possibly anecdotally,
(20:16):
but it's so subjective. Number one, How can you and I,
who have so much in common, not established what happiness is?
That that you can also spread it out over ninety
seven countries and all these different societies and groups within it.
So that's that's number one. Um number two. I read
an article that pointed out that, yeah, Denmark um is
(20:37):
the happiest country in the world. It also leads the
world in per capita alcoholism and suicide. Really, yeah, I
understand the alcohol part. Yeah, suicide, No, it doesn't, So, Chuck,
it's becoming evident. Just what a responsibility, what a task
Bhutan is taking on its own shoulders, isn't it. I mean, like,
(21:00):
happiness is really tough to quantify, and they've done a
great job trying to figure that out. But yeah, I
know they do the studies, and you pointed one in
your article, your fine, fine article about didn't I thought
it was okay? Uh about um? They always study lottery winners. Yes,
I love this, and they always compare them to amputees,
which I just I find odds. No, it was just
(21:22):
a very famous one that started it. Is that what
it is, it's like, is happiness relative? Well, and then
what do they find out that after the initial joy
of the lottery war off the people kind of generally,
and the same with the ampute they generally go back
to where they were before. Yeah, if you look at
it as like a line of horizontal line. Uh, and
the event happens at the same time. Somebody loses their
(21:44):
leg and another person loses their wins the lottery. The
lottery winner goes up, the ampute goes down. But after
three years they both go back to that same line,
which is kind of startling if you think about it. Yeah,
and you also made the point about money, which I
thought was a really good point. Is dichotomous. So money
can bring many things. Money can bring happiness and cool
(22:06):
stuff and security, and it can also, uh be the
the evil in your life. It can be I mean
that that security. You've got financial security, but maybe you're
a little more worried that you're you know, house is
going to be invaded, right for during a robbery or something. Yeah.
The point with pursuing happiness that I think the Boutanees
are hip on is that happiness only brings happiness. Good point. Um.
(22:31):
There was another study by a couple of guys from
Princeton at all um and Uh they basically use something
called day reconstruction method, which is self reporting. But you know,
self reporting it flies in the soft social sciences. But
that's about it. Um. But basically they asked people to,
um write down their experiences that from the previous day.
(22:55):
I can do that over a set period of time, right,
I'd love to see mine from like yesterday, that'd be great.
Oh yeah, we're in a bad mood yesterday. No, just
were you drunk? No, they wanted their charting your mood
or what you did and how it correspondents. I think both. Yeah,
i'd left. We should do that. You want there, No,
I don't either. Um. What these guys found was that
(23:16):
when you when you ask people to report on their
mood right as it happens or the day after it's happened,
and then you evaluated by income, they found that actually
money did, indeed, um bring happiness to a certain extent, right, Right.
So the point is is, I think people who made
under twenty thousand dollars a year are actually less happy
(23:40):
than people who make a hundred thousand or more. Okay,
that's kind of a no brainer to think about it.
It rans in the strife and struggle you're you have
in your daily life. If you're making that's what it lasts. Right. Yeah.
Even happy people, I think can be beaten down by finances.
Generally happy people. Sure, yeah, um, but the the uh,
(24:01):
what they did find was that when you get to
a fifty thousand to eighty nine thousand, that segment was
virtually identical people who made over a hundred thousand, which
is kind of significant because there's a there's a substantial
difference between fifty thousand and a hundred thousand. So what
what they've concluded is that money does bring happiness to
(24:22):
a certain extent by possibly by satisfying um our needs.
But after that it loses a lot of its value
or a lot of the happiness that can bring once
it reaches a certain point, once those needs are satisfied. Yeah.
You know, when I worked in l A, I worked
with a lot of rich people, obviously in the film industry,
and it never really hit home to me until I
(24:43):
left that I was always jealous of the amount of money,
Like these commercial directors have make insane amounts of money,
like twenty tho dollars a day for their stupid TV commercials.
I'm unimpressed because you've already told me that. Yeah, it's
just amazing how much money they make. But you you
grow your lifestyle to fit your salary to a large degree.
(25:04):
Not always, my friend, you were talking about the hedonic treadmill.
So basically, they're uh, come on, have you heard those
two words put together before? Yeah, all the time. Don't
you see my T shirt? It's so yeah, that's right there,
silly drawing. I thought so too. Um. You grow to
fit your your your your lifestyle grows to fit your salary.
(25:27):
So if you make twenty dollars a day, your expenses,
or let's say thirty dollars a month, your expenses are
gonna be you know, they're gonna match that. I'm not
saying this, Well, no, I know what you mean. Let's
say uh, let's say an example. I've read in an
article from the San Diego Union Tribune, a sterling article
actually on happiness. It's called pursuing happiness. Um. This guy
(25:51):
makes the example of um winning the lottery and moving
to uh Rancho Santa Fe, which I take is one
of the nicer suburbs in San Diego. I guess okay. Uh.
He says that when you do that, you go from
the how did I get this lucky type of happiness
to living among similar wealth, so it becomes your normal
everyday life wears off another argumentum against money bringing happiness
(26:15):
is that a lot of times it leads to um
poor choices. Apparently about forty of our happiness if you
look at it in a pie graph. Um ten percent
is life circumstances, fifty is um jenes genetic, they believe,
And then is our our choices that the happiness or
(26:36):
unhappiness or choices bring us. And one of the points
is like, okay, let's say, um, commuting is almost across
the board like one of our least favorite things to
do as human beings. Right, Um, But you make a
bunch more money, so you move out to the suburbs
in a into a bigger house. But you've also just
doubled or tripled your commute. But then you buy the
(26:58):
BMW seven series, see your drive as a lot sweeter.
But then it costs for the tune up. Sure, it's all,
it's all. It's all comes out in the wash. You know.
The point I think that you and I are inevitably
going towards stumbling, towards faltering um is that you just
(27:19):
shouldn't take money quite so seriously, that's good. I find
it interesting. And we've set up a thing in this
country where you can never go backward. It's all about
going forward with the Peter principle. Yeah, well with money
though too, Like when um like in a divorce case,
you always hear the whether it's a husband or the
wife that's rich and the one that's asking for the
(27:41):
spousal support. The point has always made while I've got
this lifestyle now and then I need to get the
forty dollars a month from you to to stay at
this lifestyle. The thought of going back is just unthinkable
in this country. It is money wise, if you think
about it. Stockbrokers don't don't um tend to throw themselves
out of windows when they make a bunch of money.
(28:03):
It's only when they lose it. Right. But I'm I mean,
that's that's drastic. But you think why, I mean, why
can't you just you know, all right, I'm gonna take
a job that pays less and I'm gonna have a
little less. Some people make this choice, you know what
I think some people do, and I would like to
hear from them, anybody who's made that decision right us
and tell us are you happy and what you did?
(28:26):
But the courts support it with that divorce thing. They think, well,
now you've got this lifestyle and you must stay at
that level. You cannot drop your lifestyle whatsoever. Right, And
that is that definitely does UM underscore or that social
agreement that materialism is what we're into. Yeah, yeah, well, uh,
let's see, since I said materialism is what we're into,
(28:48):
that means that I should tell you to go to
how stuff works dot com. You can type in gross
national happiness in our handy search bar, and you might
also want to read another article on the site. UM
can any by happiness, right, which means what chuck? Actually,
I got just one more quick thing. You know, there
was an earthquake totally. There was an earthquake in Bhutan
(29:09):
on Monday. Did you know that. I didn't. Yeah, everybody, okay,
six point three they've twelve people at least are dead
and wrecked a bunch of you know, ancient monasteries and yeah,
which are like built on the mountain side. Yeah, so
I imagine they came tumbling down. Just very sad. Yeah,
that is sad. So I just want to say, hello,
if we have any fans in Bhuton. We might have
one fan of Bhutan. Yeah, the internet, it is all right?
(29:33):
Well with that sad news. I guess it's time for
a listener mail. It is listener mail Josh. And this
is uh just a couple of quick shoutouts. This came
from Amelia and Jerry thought it was a good idea
to plug it, so we will. Um. It's a website
called free rice dot com. And apparently what you do
(29:53):
there is you go online at this website and you
answer vocabulary questions and it's like a game. You play
these games where you answer tribute questions and uh participate
and when you get these questions right, they donate rice
to the needy around the world. So it's like a
little interactive way I guess of getting people involved and uh,
ten grains of rice per correct answer. And um, the
(30:17):
website today said over sixty eight billion grains of rice
have been donated today. Do you imagine the poor slob
whose job it is to count out every single one
of those grains? May be symbolic, maybe not, do you
think now you're you're staring blankly. So thanks Amelia for that,
and that is a worthy cause indeed. And then I
wanted to give a special shout out to Ben, our
(30:40):
listener from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Ben and
I've been writing. He, at the age of twenty, was
diagnosed with a form of lukemi that I cannot pronounce.
He said, it's evidently the good kind, even though after
hearing what he's been going through, it didn't sound like it. Uh.
They were gonna have a bone marrow transplant for Ben,
(31:00):
but they could not find a match in eleven million
person database, and so he has been approved. His chemotherapy
um sorry, radiation worked and he's going to have an
umbilical cord blood transplant. And he's been traveling I think
he said something like eighty miles each way every day
for like a two minute radiation. And he's been listening
(31:22):
to our podcast, which is why he wrote in and
that's been helping him out. And we just and Ben's
a really cool guy, dude. His attitude is like leaps
and bounds ahead of ours. His outlook on life isn't. Yeah.
It was one of those perspective shots where Ben is
just and he's like, oh, man, don't feel bad for me,
because I told him I felt really awful about it.
He said, you know, I didn't picture this is my life,
(31:42):
but it's what I've been dealt and I'm dealing with
it and everything's everything's gonna be okay. And uh so
he was a proof for the Uh he was admitted
last Wednesday for the transplant and it's a six week
hospital stay and then a two year recovery period. And
and he said that, uh, the one thing that he's
loved as our podcast and hydromorphone he's become fond of,
(32:06):
which is uh what the pain killer they've been giving him? Okay,
And he said that he found out later heroin addics
use it as a substitute because has similar effects. Heroin
addicts will use anything as a substitute. Sure, and so Ben,
we hope you're well. I hope you're listening. Our thoughts
are with you obviously and calling for you. Please keep
us posted. Huh yeah, he will cool. Will you keep
(32:27):
me posted? Will you? I will? You kind of have
a lockdown on the information that comes in. I do
I control the information. Remember, we want to hear from
you if you decided to take a giant step backward
out of the rat race and um, how your life's going.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
how stuff works dot com For more on this and
(32:54):
thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff works dot Com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the House of works dot com home page. Brought to
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
are you
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