The Psychology of Picky Eating, the Secret Service's Services, and a Self-Driving Car Kit

Researchers are working to improve the lives of adult picky eaters. We break down who the Secret Service protects, and at what costs to taxpayers. Plus, there's a $700 kit that turns certain cars into self-driving cars -- and it works.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to hostaff Works. Now, I'm your host, Lauren Vogelbaum,
a researcher and writer. Here at hostuff Works. Every week
I'm bringing you three stories from our team about the
weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology, and culture.
This week, a college kid turned a standard Honda Civic
into a self driving vehicle for seven hundred bucks. And unrelated,

(00:24):
picky eating in adults is now a diagnosable disorder. But
first staff editor Eves jeff Coat and our freelance writer
Dave Rouse explore topical political question who does the United
States Secret Service protect and why? For how long and
at what cost. Between January and the end of February,

(00:47):
Donald Trump Jr. And his brother Eric visited Uruguay, the
Dominican Republic Dubai in Canada to celebrate the opening of
Nude Trump Brandy hotels and golf courses, anti tech, on
other Trump organization projects and potential investments. Secret Service officers
trailed the brothers on these trips, with the U S
taxpayers covering the bodyguards, airfare, hotel rooms, and meals. The

(01:10):
Secret Service won't release its travel expenses, but the hotel
tap in Uruguay alone was estimated at nearly one hundred
thousand dollars, according to the Washington Post. According to federal law,
the Secret Service is authorized to protect the sitting US
President and vice president or the next in line for
the presidency, their immediate families, and all former U S

(01:32):
presidents and their spouses, as well as their children under
age sixteen while in office. Neither the president nor the
vice president can decline Secret Service protection, but their spouses
and adult children can. Almost all presidential families have accepted
full Secret Service protection for as long as the law allows.

(01:52):
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush even asked for extensions
to cover their college age children for a period after
they left office. The few exceptions are Ronald Reagan's youngest son,
ron who declined Secret Service protection during his father's second term,
and Richard and Pat Nixon, who cancel their lifetime protection
in nineteen eighty five to save the government money they

(02:14):
hired their own security detail. In Congress limited protection of
future presidents to just ten years after leaving office to
cut costs, but inten it reinstated lifetime protection studying concerns
over terrorism. Not every congress person wasn't favored, though some
thought former presidents should pay for the long term security themselves.

(02:37):
Despite the cost, the Trump family is doing nothing unusual
by accepting Secret Service protection at home and while traveling abroad.
In fact, there is a legitimate reason for extending that protection.
If anything were to happen to a family member, it
would have a huge psychological impact on the president. However,
never in the history of the American presidency has the

(02:58):
commander in chief been an for national business mogul, and
never has a multibillion dollar global brand been so closely
tied to an American president, So there is an ethical
concern when the family appears to use public money to
fund private interests. When Donald Junior and Eric Trump traveled
to make international business deals flanked by serious looking dudes

(03:19):
with earpieces and lapel pins, it sends a message that
the presidency and the Trump organization are intertwined. The overall
cost of Secret Service protection for the Trump family will
likely be millions more than it was for Obama's family
over four years. In addition to the son's trips abroad,
Trump spends almost every weekend in Palm Beach and Melania.

(03:40):
Trump lives full time in New York at least for
the rest of their sun Baron school year. Some people
think Donald Junr And Eric Trump should pay for their
own security detail to lessen the financial burden to US
taxpayers and to signal a deeper commitment to separating business
from politics, but that's not likely to happen, and eagally
it doesn't happen. Next up, staff editor Christopher Hassiotis and

(04:08):
our freelance writer Jescelyn Shields dig into the psychology behind
picky eating and what some doctors are trying to do
about it. Many of us know at least one picky eater,
that person who only eats French fries, cheese, pizza, chicken nuggets,
or cereal, and for many of us, this person is
also five years old. But it's very possible for adults

(04:31):
to be especially picky as well. These highly selected food
preferences among adults might have begun in childhood, but while
friends went on to learn to enjoy sushi and kale salads,
some found it tough to move beyond the basics among
adult subjects. Picky eating, also given the abbreviation PE, is
a relatively new area of research for psychologists, and at

(04:53):
this point, there's no way to say with any certainty
where it comes from, or even if it's worth worrying about.
In many adult picky eaters, their pickiness is fairly benign.
They eat only from a limited range of foods, with
no physical health or psychosocial problems. But as with all things,
when a habit starts to negatively affect the quality of
life for an individual or those around them, well that's

(05:15):
when things get trickier. For some picky eaters, both adults
and children alike. Behaviors can include neophobia or not wanting
to try new foods. They can also involve not being
able to tolerate different foods, touching on a plate, or
being super specific only eating French fries from a certain restaurant,
for instance. These habits can turn into a diagnosable eating disorder,

(05:35):
like avoidant restrictive food intake disorder also known as aar FID,
which is generally accompanied by nutritional deficiency and weight loss,
or in children, the inability to gain weight. Ar FID
can even develop into another eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia,
and the condition can also emerge from problems with low
appetite and low food enjoyment, or from fears of negative

(05:56):
consequences associated with eating, like choking or having to go
to the bathroom. Because the study of picky eating adults
is relatively new, it's hard to say how common it is,
at what point it becomes a problem, how to diagnose it,
and how to treat it if it needs treating at all.
But it's gotten to a point where a support group
called Picky Eating Adult Support exists for those with different tastes.

(06:19):
According to the organization's motto, However, picky eating doesn't usually
just sneak up on somebody one day. Studies show that
most adult picky eaters report experiencing pet in childhood. Take
fifty seven year old real estate broker Marla Lopez, who
also goes by the name French Fry Lady. According to
her blog focusing on a lifelong pe condition, she has

(06:39):
only ever tasted a handful of foods, most of them
the color white. She has never even tasted a vegetable
other than a potato, and after cooking scrambled eggs for
her son for twenty years, she finally became inured to
the smell of them to the point of being able
to try them. In two thousand and twelve. These days,
she will occasionally eat scrambled eggs, but only if they're
cooked very, very well done. Now, Lopez is an outspoken

(07:03):
adult picky eater, but the condition can be difficult to
diagnose because not everybody is vocal about their habits like
she is, and there doesn't yet exist an objective and
reliable way to measure pickiness or to parse preference from affliction.
So how would someone get diagnosed with PE to begin with?
Jordan Ellis, a doctoral student in clinical health psychology at

(07:24):
East Carolina University, studies PE and has co written a
study that does propose a way to measure these behaviors.
According to Ellis, most past research has relied on simply
asking an individual whether or not they consider themselves to
be a picky eater. The new measurement tool Ellis developed,
called the Adult Picky Eating Questionnaire or APEC, looks at

(07:45):
multiple aspects of picky eating behavior, including rigid food preferences,
lack of food variety, meal disengagement and avoidance, and aversion
to bitter and sour tastes. Says Ellis, we hope to
start to understand which of these aspects are most related
to problems and which could best be targeted through treatment.
Although treatment might not be necessary for all picky eaters

(08:07):
on the severe end of the PE spectrum, they're eating
habits can cause real psychosocial distress. Diagnosed picky eaters can
experience anxiety around eating situations, they get depressed, experienced obsessive
compulsive symptoms, or just a general lower quality of life.
At this point, researchers can't say for sure whether it's
the embarrassment around their limited eating habits that causes psychosocial

(08:28):
distress in PE adults or the other way around, but
it's possible it goes both ways regardless. No recommended treatment
for severe PE or our fit in adults currently exists,
although some researchers are having some success using cognitive behavior
therapy and exposure therapy techniques with more extreme PE and
our fit adults in their clinics. However, no large clinical

(08:51):
trials have yet been conducted. Jordan Ellis tells How Stuff
Works that there's a real lack of research in PE adults.
But we know not all PE behaviors path logical, not
even close. We would really like to learn more about
people who truly struggle with these eating difficulties, he says,
and learn how to help improve their psycho social functioning. Finally,

(09:17):
this week, senior writer and tech Stuff host Jonathan Strickland,
along with our freelance writer Alia Hoyt, explains how the
incredible future of self driving cars maybe a little bit
closer than we thought. How's this for a d I
Y project? Brevin Jorgenson, a student at the University of Nebraska,
used some software and a few pieces of gear to

(09:39):
turn his normal Honda Civic into a semi autonomous vehicle. Yeah,
it's a do it yourself driverless car. Jorgenson used software
developed by a startup company called Comma dot Ai, which
offers a software kit as a free download. There are
exactly two types of cars that are compatible with this software,

(10:01):
the two thousand sixteen Acura I l X and the
two thousand sixteen Honda Civic. Jorgenson has a Civic. In
addition to the software, the enterprising hacker needed a couple
of pieces of technology to kick the AI into gear.
One of those is a computer device. In this case,
it's a smartphone, the Android one plus three smartphones. Specifically,

(10:24):
Comma suggests this hardware for its relatively low price and
high performance processors to connect the smartphone to the vehicle.
Jorgenson also needed a CAN interface. CAN stands for Controller
Area Network. It's what lets a computer communicate with the
cars on board systems, including stuff like the brakes, steering,

(10:46):
and acceleration. This wouldn't work with classic cars, which relied
less on computerized subsystems in a vehicle. Jorgenson setup also
included a three D printed case to keep everything neat
and tidy, and cables to connect every thing together. Now
this isn't your typical plug in play technology, so he
also needed a soldering iron to make connections. Once he

(11:07):
finished the alterations, he took his car for a test drive,
or I guess you could say it took him for one.
The system isn't completely self dependent. In fact, every few
minutes it requires a driver to take hold of the
steering wheel or it will shut the vehicle down. It
also records video to document any possible problems that may arise.

(11:28):
But it did allow Jorgenson's car to steer itself, to
accelerate to a specific speed, and to break on its own.
It's another example of how the world is moving towards
a system of autonomous vehicles. We're probably at least a
decade away from it becoming the norm, but stories like
this indicate we're on a road because self driving cars.

(11:52):
That's a show for this week. Thank you so much
for tuning in. Further thanks to our audio producer Dylan
Figin and our entorial legas on Alison louder Knock. Subscribe
to now now for more of a lated science news
and send us links to anything you'd like to hear
his cover, plus, would you install a self driving kit
in your car? Let us know? As always, you can
send us an email at now podcast at how stuff

(12:13):
works dot com, and for lots more stories like these,
head on over to our home planet now dot how
stuff works dot com