October 12, 2022 • 36 mins
Here on the show, we say bullsh!t is the gap between word and deed - it’s what the BS scale is all about- but not everyone defines BS exactly the same way.
So we thought...let's kick off season two by diving into BS itself. What is it? Where does it come from? At what point does it become dangerous? And how can we all keep our BS detectors in fighting shape?
Show Notes:
- Watch John Petrocelli’s viral Ted Talk on detecting bullshit and buy his book here.
If you love the show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Find out more at https://callingbullshitpodcast.com/.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, this thing on, I got a light. Okay, we're
(00:10):
ready to go. Let's see here bubble bulls eye, here
we go. Bullshit exclamation now complete nonsense, crazy stuff, no accuracy,
and just nonsense. Information that makes you angry or annoyed.
(00:31):
Verb to try to persuade someone or make humor her
admire you by saying things that are not true. It's
one someone maybe has like an angle, but it's not
the full truth, like crap, like nothing makes sense, Like
they're trying my intelligence. I've got the number one miracle
in a bottle to burn your fact, and they're not
really telling you the truth. We have been an international
(00:53):
oil company for a hundred and twelve years. We want
to transform ourselves into an integrated energy company. It's like,
what the fuck are you saying? A lot of what's
on the media this bullshit. I think a lot of
the politicians are bullshit. I'll tell you what you want
to know and don't do anything about it. So many
people seem to think that bullshit only comes from certain sources,
(01:14):
you know, advertising, politicians, salesman. Not true. Bullshit is rampant.
Is bullshitting simply human nature. Everybody's a bullshit oil is
at one point or another, is there even a difference
between bullshit and straight up wise? And the thing that
I think we all need to do right now is
work to bring people closer together. That we're going to
(01:37):
change Facebook's whole mission as a company in order to
focus on this. Parents are fullish it teaches, a fullish
it clergyman, a fullish it law enforcement people are full
of shit? Why is bullshit everywhere? Welcome to Calling Bullshit
(02:00):
the podcast about purpose washing, the gap between what an
organization says they stand for and what they actually do
and what they would need to change to practice what
they preach. I'm your host, Time Montogue, and I've spent
over a decade helping organizations define what they stand for,
their purpose and then help them to use that purpose
(02:20):
to drive transformation throughout their business. Unfortunately, at a lot
of institutions today, there's still a pretty wide gap between
word and deed. That gap has a name, bullshit. But,
and this is important, bullshit is serious, but it's also
a treatable condition. So when our bullshit detector lights up,
(02:43):
we're going to explore everything the organization should do to
fix it. Hey, folks, Welcome to season two of Calling BS.
In season one, we looked at a number of bullshitting organizations,
We developed the BS index, and we worked with our
(03:06):
guests to imagine a bunch of different ways to actually
fight BS. Here on the show, we define bullshit as
the gap between word. Indeed, it's in our intro and
it's what the B S scale is all about. But
not everybody defines BS in exactly the same way, and
so we thought, let's kick off season two by dedicating
(03:26):
an entire episode to the concept of BS itself. What
is it? Where does it come from? And at what
point does it become dangerous? How can we all keep
our BS detectors in fighting shape bull detective? To begin with,
(03:49):
let's examine the origins of the phrase. The first surprise,
it doesn't have anything to do with cow boop. The
bull in bullshit may actually reference the last name of
Obadiah Bull, an Irish lawyer living in London in the
late fourteen hundreds who was famous for spouting nonsense. It
(04:12):
may also have originated back in the days when the
Pope wrote decrees on parchment and authenticated them with a
metal seal called a bulla, leading to the shorthand phrase
papal bull and shit likely comes from shite, the staff
carried by ancient Scottish warlocks. I'm kidding, Actually, shit likely
(04:34):
comes from the Old English word shitta for dung, So
no mystery there. But where there is a bit of
mystery is when bullshit actually became slang. One thing we
know for sure is that T. S. Eliot used the
two words side by side in his poem The Triumph
of Bullshit, written in the early nineteen hundreds. More recently,
(04:55):
the concept was picked up by moral philosopher Harry G.
Frankfurt in his book on Bullshit, which was published in
two thousand and five. Frankfort writes that one of the
most salient features of our culture is that there is
so much bullshit. To see how Frankfort's theory holds up today,
(05:15):
we sent our producers Hailey Pascualites and Parker Silzer out
to ask New Yorkers what they think. Would you agree
or disagree with the following statement. One of the most
common features of our culture is that there is so
much bullshit. Oh yes, no, I'm an optimist. I have
always been struck by how much people really care about
(05:39):
the truth of the matter. I think a lot of
the time people are pretty bad at seeing past the bullshit,
but they really care to the symbolism of bullshit is
all wool suit. Don't they have the bull there? That's
my case. They they are tress parents transparent in their bullshit. Um,
do you agree with the statement one of the most
(06:01):
common features in our culture is that there's so much
bullshit nowadays? Yeah? Yeah, I agree with that. The government's
definitely hiding a lot of things from us so that
we don't know about politics everyone. Yeah, it's just everywhere.
It's so common, like everyone every company is somewhat like
bullshit something the idea of bullshit and bullshit and can
(06:21):
seem harmless or even funny. But as a listener of
this show, you know that BS is often used to
deceive and confuse in ways that can cause real harm.
So why do people b s and why is it
so hard to stop it once it starts. To figure
this out, I decided to call up a real expert. Hello,
(06:42):
I'm John Petric Shelley, Professor of psychology at Wake Forest University.
My specific research has really focused on persuasion metic cognitions.
Were thinking about thoughts that we have and of course
bullshitting and bullshit detection. John runs the Bullshit Studies Lab. Yeah,
(07:04):
that's an actual thing where he designs experiments to test
how we're affected by the social world, just basic judgment
and decision making. Basically, he tries to understand what influences
people looking at external information and social environments as well
as our internal biases. But the reason I first got
in touch he wrote this book, The Life Changing Science
(07:27):
of Detecting Bullshit. When I first saw that title, I thought, well,
why would he write a book when he could just
do a podcast? But after I read it, I had
to call him up. I I gotta say, I loved
your book, not surprisingly maybe given the show, but I
noticed you draw a distinction between bullshitting and lying, which
(07:50):
seems like an important distinction. Can you just unpack that difference? Yeah? Absolutely.
Bullshitting is often confused for lying, but it's very distinct
from lying in some very important ways. So when someone
lies to us, the liar is actually concerned about the truth, right,
(08:10):
and their objective is to get us to believe something
that they don't believe is true themselves. On the other hand,
the bullshitter, it doesn't really care at all about the truth.
They're not paying attention to it at all. In fact,
they have no idea what the truth is. It's weird
to me that anybody wouldn't care about something as important
(08:32):
as the truth. But John says, there are two major
motives for bullshitting, and one of the motives is to
be consistent with our actions and what we say. And
we're also motivated to feel justified by the claims that
we make and our behaviors. And once you publicly state something,
(08:52):
you get a lot of social pressure added to those motivations.
As John explained this, my mind immediately jumped to win.
After Trump was sworn in on the National Mall, Sean
Spicer told the world this was the largest audience to
ever witness an inauguration period. It most assuredly was not,
(09:12):
but the administration wouldn't cave, and then Senior Counselor Kellyanne
Conway doubled down bigly on CNN the following day. Why
did he do that? It undermines the credibility of the
entire White House Press Office. Don't be so don't be
so overly dramatic about it. Chuckle, what you're saying it's
a falsehood, and they're giving Sean Spicer, our press secretary,
(09:35):
gave alternative facts. They definitely didn't care about the real numbers.
You sent the press secretary out there to utter us
falsehood on the smallest pettiest thing. I don't think anybody
can blame that. Look, I actually don't think that maybe
this is me as a polster chuck and you know
data well, I don't think you can prove those numbers
(09:55):
one where the others. There's no way to really quantify crowds.
We all know that you can laugh textbook bullshitting. So
whereas the liar doesn't believe what it is that they
say is true, the bullshit, it really has no idea
whether or not it's true. It's very easy today to
say something that's not very well thought out, that's not
(10:17):
very well informed, and then to feel as though you
have to support it, right, because now you're going to
sound inconsistent and you're gonna sound stupid for for communicating
something that either we know isn't true or isn't supported
by the evidence. And it's very seductive once you publicize it.
(10:39):
So it's it's much better to sort of think collect
evidence and and and see whether or not well is
is there evidence for against what what my opinion is
on the issue. But and so I think those are
sort of two major motives, especially once people start communicating
their opinions and their beliefs. But the other key distinction
(11:01):
here is that society treats liars differently than it treats bullshitters.
When people lie to us, there's often a lot of
great negative consequences. You know, we're very unhappy with liars
when we catch them, yes, exactly. But but when we
know kind of know someone's bullshitting us, we often assume
that it's harmless. We pass it off as sort of
(11:24):
a mild social offense. But this is where we can't
be more wrong. Virtually all of our problems, whether they
be personal, interpersonal, professional, or societal, they appeared to stem
from mindless bullshit reasoning and communications. So what I wanted
(11:45):
to do was to sort of put something um together
that puts the problem with bullshitting front and center, and
to call attention to it and to expose how dangerous
it can actually be. Right, and I totally agree we
underestimate the seriousness of the impact of bullshit. And you
(12:07):
list a number of ways that bs can be damaging,
in some cases life threatening. And you use a scale.
In the book which I love, John uses the fly index.
One fly is harmless, two flies is bad, and three
flies dangerous. So harmless might sound something like, you know,
(12:28):
I could throw a football over a mountain in two
you know, and you get that eye rolling. And in fact,
some examples I think of bullshit actually have some benefits.
We tell children in the summer at the pool, you know, tye,
they put a compound in that swimming pool water to
reveal the presence of urine almost immediately, you know, And
(12:50):
as every kid knows, that really isn't true. But I
think that's relatively harmless, and it's, if anything, it's potentially
useful to the extent that keeps a few is from
being in the pool. But then I contrast harmless with
the two fly example of bad bullshit. My favorite example
of this is did you see her face? Who would
(13:11):
vote for a face like that? I think that kind
of bullshit it dehumanizes, objectifies women. It suggests that they
can't be good leaders unless unless they're attractive. I mean,
what doesn't make much sense. But the three fly example
might sound something like this. You know time, I can
text while driving without any problems, and and you know what,
(13:35):
everyone does it, and so I don't see the problem. Okay.
My response that is no, no, no, but no. Not
only are these things not all true, but they are
able and likely to cause harm and injury to oneself
and others to the extent that that you actually believe
it is true. And so to say something like that
(13:57):
just completely neglects true your established knowledge and genuine evidence.
That would be the more dangerous form of bullshit. Why
are we so vulnerable to b s? Why don't we
all have better BS detectors? There are two primary reasons
for why people are not generally good at the discerning
(14:21):
bullshit from the good stuff. First, most people believe that
there somehow immune to bullshit, and actually research suggests that
the most confident people are often the most likely to
be duped by bullshit. That's why one of the reasons
I really love this new show on Netflix Bullshit The
(14:42):
game show with with Howie Mandel. Let's play so that
the main contestant is supposed to either answer questions correctly
or to convince one of the three challengers that their
incorrect answer is actually correct, and if they can either
answer correctly or convince one of the three challengers that
(15:04):
they're incorrect answers correct, then they can move on to
the next stage and ultimately win a million dollars. But
what's interesting is when they bring on each of the
three challengers, each one of them talk smack about how
good they are detecting BS. Right then the show proceeds
and you can see how miserable most people are at
(15:25):
actually detecting it. A lot of us have overconfident but
underperforming BS detectors, and John says there are a few
reasons for this. I mean, the research in in Cognitive
Psychology by Janet Metcalf has shown that people do not
study subjects they feel they've already mastered. They stopped, you know,
they go onto something else. And and then the second
(15:48):
reason is that even before we suspect we might be
exposed to bullshit, we failed to ask the right questions.
We failed to ask, well, what exactly is the claim?
And then another question that's that's hardly ever asked is
how does this person know that this claim is true?
(16:09):
So if you ask someone how how do you know
what you're saying is true ty. You know, most people
will will tend to be surprised because that's not a
common question to ask, and then they'll take a few
steps backwards and they'll already start to kind of clean
up their first answer, you know, let me give you
(16:31):
some of the qualifiers, and and then when you you
narrow back down, it's really good to ask how might
the claim be wrong? People tend to answer the how
do you know it's true? Only with confirming evidence, So
you have to directly ask people and nudge them to
consider the ways in which the claim might be wrong
(16:52):
and just to draw a line under this for the audience.
You make the distinction between why questions and how questions
in the book and your thesis is that why questions
are a little easier to slip out of than how questions.
How forces somebody to really bring evidence into the conversation. Yeah,
(17:15):
usually when you ask why questions, you kind of get
a value laden, sort of a heady, abstract response. But
when you focus people on how, it tends to elicit
a more concrete response where they, maybe even for the
very first time, take a few steps back and say, Okay, well,
(17:36):
what what are the actual reasons to have this opinion
or this belief, and then you can make a better
decision as to whether or not you're really buying what
it is that they're selling. Right in the book, you
you coined a term which I really liked, which is
bull ability. I assume it's a comparison to gullibility. Yeah,
(17:56):
this is This is a word that I made up.
So a gullible person is likely to believe something, you know,
despite the signs of dishonesty. Somebody who's especially bulletble, we
would say that, well, they tend to be a relatively
lazy thinker who doesn't even care about the signs of dishonesty.
(18:17):
And one of my favorite examples of this has to
do with a clip that sixty minutes aired in two
thousand seven of Bernie made Off kind of sitting around
and recruiting new investors and his hedge fund, and one
of the things he said was, I'm very close with
the regulators, so I'm not trying to say that they
can't you know that what they do is bad. And
(18:40):
he was talking about the sec You know, in today's
regulatory environment, it's virtually impossible to to violate rules. When
this is something that the public really doesn't understand. But
you it's impossible for you to go into for a
violation to go in detected, certainly not for a considerable
periodyt of talk it. It's impossible for a violation to
(19:02):
go undetected, you know, certainly not for a considerable period
of time. Right, Well, that clearly wasn't true. I mean,
made off proved that for eighteen years, made off truly
as a cautionary tale. Everyone was investing and made off,
so no one really thought to look at the facts.
(19:22):
And this is where things get sticky. Even people with
the most discerning minds want to belong. And when John
brought up a study done in the nineteen forties, I
realized that this desire can be even stronger than our
sense of right and wrong. The experiment was conducted by
the psychologist Solomon Ash. He brought in one participant for
(19:44):
a number of trials. This one real participant would be
joined by a handful of assistants or confederates posing as
other participants, and they would set it up such that
the actual participant always thought they were late to experiment,
and there was one seat open, and each trial in
(20:05):
the experiment just consisted of a very obvious answer to
a question. They were shown a line of a certain
length and then presented with three other lines labeled A,
B or C. And one of these lines was exactly
the same length as the original line. The other two
mismatches were completely wrong, very obvious. And what would happen
(20:29):
is the first four or five confederates working with the
experimenter would start to respond incorrectly intentionally to these trials,
and the actual participant would look dumbfounded and be like,
what in the world's checking their glasses and kind of squinting,
and and they knew that the response that was verbally
(20:52):
given by the other confederates was wrong. But what Nash
found was that people tend to feel pressure to go
along with the group. In other words, even when the
real participant clearly saw the wrong answer being given by
everyone else, they still went along with it. They did
not go along with the group when they had a
(21:14):
chance to respond privately, but when they had to respond publicly,
they tended to go along. They tended to conform to
the group. So what is that about, Well, especially when
situations are ambiguous, you can even magnify this difference. When
it's not clear what the the The answer is people
(21:34):
conform to the group. Even more so, we tend to
think that the group knows something that we don't. But
what's wilder to me is that even when the other
people in the group are complete strangers to us, our
fear of group projection can cause us to override indisputable facts.
All of the participants were complete strangers, but they were peers,
(21:55):
And you know, if you get peers together, even peers
that you don't know personally, there's that general sense of
pressure to go along with the group because there's a
fear of being rejected, a fear of being avoided. It's
much more impactful than most people would believe. So what
does this say about the proliferation of BS in our society?
(22:19):
Even when we see it, it's hard to call it out.
The Ash experiment is like the snowflake on the tip
of the iceberg of harm that can be done when
people go along with bs that they privately disagree with.
I'm guessing that this is part of why whistleblowers that
high BS companies are so few and far between. How
(22:41):
can we expect to fight the rising tide of real
BS when it's so hard for us to call BS
on the length of an arbitrary line. How can we
trust anything or anyone if this is the default setting
on our internal BS detector. Answers to these questions and
more right after the break. All right, so now we're
(23:15):
pushing into just another area of interest for us. There
have been a lot of many assertions in the media,
in particular that we're actually experiencing a crisis of trust
in the world, especially among young people. First of all,
have you have you seen any of those assertions and
do you agree, and if so, do you feel like
(23:37):
BS is one of the culprits I I do think
are late millennials and Gen zs. They I mean, they
grew up hearing about concerns with the environment. Even I
sort of our late generation exerts, you know, we grew up,
you know, concerned about greenhouse gases and aerosol spray cans
(23:58):
and things like that. And I think it's developed a
more socially conscious group than than ever before. And I
think there's a little bit of evidence that tend to
have a better memory for bullshit and lies. I mean,
this sort of the underpinnings I think of cancel culture,
um I think there are some benefits to it. I mean,
(24:19):
what we would usually call that in social psychology is accountability.
When you have to justify, you know, you have to
justify your beliefs in your opinions. People tend to uh
feel feel that social pressure and they don't bullshit as much.
You know, if if someone like Nike President and CEO
John Donahoe or Phil Knight, you know, again, if they
(24:43):
say we're gonna address the carbon footprint problem by doing this,
We're gonna address sweatshop problems by doing that. If they
don't do it, you know, there's a major base of
the consumers that are not going to be happy and
they'll cancel them. It's basic accountability, but I think it's
one of the major things that is going to combat
(25:05):
the unwanted effects of bullshit. Yeah, we completely agree. I
think that's a good segue point to some some questions
that I have that directly relate to the work that
we're trying to do on this podcast, because you know,
our show was was born out of reflections on the
attack on the US Capitol and the role that bullshit
(25:28):
as we define it played in its specifically fomented by
by our friends at Facebook. You know, they claim that
their purpose as a company is to empower all of
us to build community and bring the world closer together.
And meanwhile, what they're really doing is feeding us deceptive
and polarizing content that clearly in some cases whips us
(25:49):
into a violent frenzy. And so it's that gap between
what they say they stand for and the actions that
they're actually taking that we define as bs on a show.
So what do you think of our definition, because in
some ways it seems very much the same. I sense
a kinship with your work, but is it in some
(26:11):
ways different? I think what what you are actually hitting
on is is a special case of bullshit. In most cases,
I think you're hitting on what we call pseudo profound bullshit.
Pseudo profound bullshit or flowery, catchy language that can be
hard to decipher. Is everywhere in the marketing landscape, and
(26:33):
one a company's purpose is treated as marketing, it can
fall into this category as well. It's clever language because
it could it could actually mean all sorts of things
hard to pin down exactly. It doesn't have to mean
what you think it means, or maybe it could. Here's
where it's really clever though, if you ask for clarification,
(26:53):
and now I can gauge what you think it should mean,
you know, and I could say, yeah, you know, you
got it, that's what it means. I recall this. This
this classic conversation between the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and
Deepark Chopra, and Darkens challenged Chopra to explain the mystification
(27:16):
of quantum mechanics in aging reversal sort of theory. Where
did the quantum theory come into that? Oh, it's just
a metaphor. Just like an electron or a photon is
an indivisible unit of information and energy. Thought is an
indivisible unit of consciousness. So it's an it's a metaphor
(27:38):
for very unit and nothing to do with quantum theory
as in physics. So I think quantum theory has a
lot of things to say about observer effect. There are
a school of physicists who believe that quantum leaps, for example,
are examples of discontinuity and creativity, and consciousness is also
an example of discontinuity, and that healing may be a
(27:59):
biological phenomenon that relies on biological creativity. So it sounds
like a sort of poetic use of the word discontinuity.
It's it's actually confusion, isn't it to bring in quantum
theory other than as a metaphor. It designs that you're
both doing to a metaphor and a little tinge of
something like what physicists are talking about as well. Dark
(28:20):
And it's kind of accepted Chopra's retreat. I mean, Choper
just moved the goalposts. So this is this is the
problem with this type of language, and you see it
especially in business, in the corporate world. It's just it's
just everywhere. Yeah, And that's what we're trying to wade
into and hopefully clarify for some folks, because we have
(28:42):
our own our own scale which is slightly different. Rather
than measuring BS in flies, our scale is a hundred
point scale, zero being the best zero gap between word
indeed zero bs and one being the worst total bullshit.
So we rate all the companies that we feature on
the show. And as I read your okay, I realized
that on our scale we might be combining B s
(29:04):
ing and lying um and lying might live on the
upper end of all our scale. So what's your take
on that is knowingly b sing in that way the
same as lying, or is there a distinction to be
made there? Yeah? Well, I I think, well, there's nothing
wrong with your scale. It's perfect for expressing a social
perceiver's guestimate of lying. I think, because once it's intentional
(29:28):
and you know something isn't true, then I think you're
moving into two lying and further away from bullshitting. But yeah,
I think I think the scale of sort of like, well,
what you know based on what they say and what
they actually do. I think it's very useful scale You've got.
Thank you. I appreciate that. So do you have a daughter,
what what advice do you give her? Or would you
(29:50):
give any young people today who faced this you know
what feels like a rising tide of b s in
the world. How should they think about fighting this fight? Yeah? Well,
you much of my daughter. I mean, she's one of
my best bullshit detectors. I'm not permitted to bullshit at all.
I remember when she was four, for whatever reason, I
told her, you know, when I played high school football,
(30:12):
we won all of our games, and at age four,
she's yeah, no, come on, now, you did not win
all of your games. You know. But what I would
advise her and anyone to do now is just to
sort of take a step back. When you hear something,
you read something, you see something that may or may
(30:35):
not be true, think about the consequences that it has
if you actually believe it. What consequence would it have
for your behavior? How might it change your decisions? How
might it change your beliefs in your opinions? And then
to simply start asking questions. You could kind of flip
some of those questions onto the self and say, well,
who is telling me this, you know, how do they
(30:57):
know it, how could they possibly know it? And what
are they trying to sell me? What agenda do they have?
These are like just basic critical thinking skills. But but
I would say, just stick with the claim, you know,
don't attack the person, attack the claim and then suggest, Okay,
I used to think of it that way too, sort
of misery loves company kind of approach. Well yeah, yeah, yeah,
(31:22):
because it's just an easier pill to swallow if it's
just kind of an error and reasoning than it was like, oh,
they're just misinformed and they're guilty of bullshitting. But another
thing I think is good to admit was that we
we all contribute our own amount of bullshit, and to
not double down on the bullshit, but just kind of
admit it when we're guilty of it. Finally, be ready,
(31:46):
you know, be ready to model a better behavior, you know,
be willing to provide and offer evidence based reasoning to
counter and combat bullshit. You know, the hope and the
dream is to really reduce bullshit and it's unwanted effects.
But it's gotta have to be a collective effort. Yeah,
(32:07):
we completely agree. You know, there is a whole generation
of young people who are taking a very activist stance
on these things. They're not putting up with the bullshit anymore,
and that's one of the audiences that we most want
to provide information for on this podcast. I love the
concept of your podcast. I think it shines a lot
of sunlight on problems, and I believe that what we
(32:29):
need to advocate is treating bullshit like lies. If we
treat bullshit, even though I say, Okay, well it's bullshit,
don't assume that it doesn't have a negative effect. Don't
that it's harmless. John, this was a fantastic conversation. I
want to thank you for coming on the show today,
al Ti, thanks for having me. So this is the
(32:50):
part of the show when I would usually rate an
organization on the B S scale, But instead of giving
a score today, I want to talk a little bit
more about how the BS scale actually the works. We
define bullshit as the gap between word indeed, and we
measure that gap by looking at the evidence, talking with
experts who can help us understand the actions that companies
(33:11):
are taking to live or not their purpose. Once we've
asked as many questions as we can, we construct the
final score using these three guide posts. One action. Does
an organization's purpose exist to solve a real problem? Are
they taking concrete action to make it real in the
(33:33):
world or is it just flowery pseudo profound business speak.
Are they ignoring glaring gaps between word indeed or taking
steps to remediate them. Are they considering all of their stakeholders.
Looking at actions helps us to gauge intention. If we
find that an organization is willing to correct course or
(33:54):
engage with criticism, we can see their real intentions shining through.
To transparency, we always look to see how much information
a company discloses. Do they publish their goals as well
as track progress toward them. Are they as quick to
call out their own shortcomings as they are to claim
their victories. When an organization is truly purpose led, they
(34:18):
hold themselves accountable by showing their work. And three, harm
a gap between word indeed that threatens democracy or the
future of the entire planet will always be high BS.
In this way, we're super aligned with John and his
fly index. More harm always means a higher BS score.
(34:47):
And if you're a future or current purpose led business
leader or a conscious consumer, here are three takeaways from
John that will keep your BS detector in great shape.
Detective One, ask how, and not why. Why questions are
(35:07):
easier to answer vaguely, but how questions cut right through
the b S. How is this company making its purpose real?
How is it seeing to its stakeholder needs? Two? Don't
attack the bullshitter, attack the claim challenging b S shouldn't
feel personal. If your attack feels personal, it's more likely
(35:29):
to be ignored. B S is a treatable condition, but
only if the b s R wants to treat it,
So bring them in on it, Engage them as an ally.
And three, don't get swept up in group think. We
are social creatures, and John showed us that there is
a powerful urge within all of us to just get
(35:52):
along and go along, keep your personal BS detector sharp,
and don't assume that if it's going off, there's something
wrong with you. A lot of folks are going along
with all the BS in their lives just because they
don't want to go against the group or ruffle any feathers.
Come on, get out there and ruffle some feathers. And
(36:13):
if you want in on the fight against b s,
subscribe to the Calling Bullshit podcast on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to people
speaking to your ears. Thanks to our production team Hannah Beal,
Amanda Ginsburg, Andy Kim d s Moss Hailey, Pascalites, Parker Silzer,
(36:38):
Basil Soaper, and me jehan Zulu. Calling Bullshit was created
by co Collective and it's hosted by Me Time Monto.
You thanks for listening.
Okay, this thing on, I got a light. Okay, we're
(00:10):
ready to go. Let's see here bubble bulls eye, here
we go. Bullshit exclamation now complete nonsense, crazy stuff, no accuracy,
and just nonsense. Information that makes you angry or annoyed.
(00:31):
Verb to try to persuade someone or make humor her
admire you by saying things that are not true. It's
one someone maybe has like an angle, but it's not
the full truth, like crap, like nothing makes sense, Like
they're trying my intelligence. I've got the number one miracle
in a bottle to burn your fact, and they're not
really telling you the truth. We have been an international
(00:53):
oil company for a hundred and twelve years. We want
to transform ourselves into an integrated energy company. It's like,
what the fuck are you saying? A lot of what's
on the media this bullshit. I think a lot of
the politicians are bullshit. I'll tell you what you want
to know and don't do anything about it. So many
people seem to think that bullshit only comes from certain sources,
(01:14):
you know, advertising, politicians, salesman. Not true. Bullshit is rampant.
Is bullshitting simply human nature. Everybody's a bullshit oil is
at one point or another, is there even a difference
between bullshit and straight up wise? And the thing that
I think we all need to do right now is
work to bring people closer together. That we're going to
(01:37):
change Facebook's whole mission as a company in order to
focus on this. Parents are fullish it teaches, a fullish
it clergyman, a fullish it law enforcement people are full
of shit? Why is bullshit everywhere? Welcome to Calling Bullshit
(02:00):
the podcast about purpose washing, the gap between what an
organization says they stand for and what they actually do
and what they would need to change to practice what
they preach. I'm your host, Time Montogue, and I've spent
over a decade helping organizations define what they stand for,
their purpose and then help them to use that purpose
(02:20):
to drive transformation throughout their business. Unfortunately, at a lot
of institutions today, there's still a pretty wide gap between
word and deed. That gap has a name, bullshit. But,
and this is important, bullshit is serious, but it's also
a treatable condition. So when our bullshit detector lights up,
(02:43):
we're going to explore everything the organization should do to
fix it. Hey, folks, Welcome to season two of Calling BS.
In season one, we looked at a number of bullshitting organizations,
We developed the BS index, and we worked with our
(03:06):
guests to imagine a bunch of different ways to actually
fight BS. Here on the show, we define bullshit as
the gap between word. Indeed, it's in our intro and
it's what the B S scale is all about. But
not everybody defines BS in exactly the same way, and
so we thought, let's kick off season two by dedicating
(03:26):
an entire episode to the concept of BS itself. What
is it? Where does it come from? And at what
point does it become dangerous? How can we all keep
our BS detectors in fighting shape bull detective? To begin with,
(03:49):
let's examine the origins of the phrase. The first surprise,
it doesn't have anything to do with cow boop. The
bull in bullshit may actually reference the last name of
Obadiah Bull, an Irish lawyer living in London in the
late fourteen hundreds who was famous for spouting nonsense. It
(04:12):
may also have originated back in the days when the
Pope wrote decrees on parchment and authenticated them with a
metal seal called a bulla, leading to the shorthand phrase
papal bull and shit likely comes from shite, the staff
carried by ancient Scottish warlocks. I'm kidding, Actually, shit likely
(04:34):
comes from the Old English word shitta for dung, So
no mystery there. But where there is a bit of
mystery is when bullshit actually became slang. One thing we
know for sure is that T. S. Eliot used the
two words side by side in his poem The Triumph
of Bullshit, written in the early nineteen hundreds. More recently,
(04:55):
the concept was picked up by moral philosopher Harry G.
Frankfurt in his book on Bullshit, which was published in
two thousand and five. Frankfort writes that one of the
most salient features of our culture is that there is
so much bullshit. To see how Frankfort's theory holds up today,
(05:15):
we sent our producers Hailey Pascualites and Parker Silzer out
to ask New Yorkers what they think. Would you agree
or disagree with the following statement. One of the most
common features of our culture is that there is so
much bullshit. Oh yes, no, I'm an optimist. I have
always been struck by how much people really care about
(05:39):
the truth of the matter. I think a lot of
the time people are pretty bad at seeing past the bullshit,
but they really care to the symbolism of bullshit is
all wool suit. Don't they have the bull there? That's
my case. They they are tress parents transparent in their bullshit. Um,
do you agree with the statement one of the most
(06:01):
common features in our culture is that there's so much
bullshit nowadays? Yeah? Yeah, I agree with that. The government's
definitely hiding a lot of things from us so that
we don't know about politics everyone. Yeah, it's just everywhere.
It's so common, like everyone every company is somewhat like
bullshit something the idea of bullshit and bullshit and can
(06:21):
seem harmless or even funny. But as a listener of
this show, you know that BS is often used to
deceive and confuse in ways that can cause real harm.
So why do people b s and why is it
so hard to stop it once it starts. To figure
this out, I decided to call up a real expert. Hello,
(06:42):
I'm John Petric Shelley, Professor of psychology at Wake Forest University.
My specific research has really focused on persuasion metic cognitions.
Were thinking about thoughts that we have and of course
bullshitting and bullshit detection. John runs the Bullshit Studies Lab. Yeah,
(07:04):
that's an actual thing where he designs experiments to test
how we're affected by the social world, just basic judgment
and decision making. Basically, he tries to understand what influences
people looking at external information and social environments as well
as our internal biases. But the reason I first got
in touch he wrote this book, The Life Changing Science
(07:27):
of Detecting Bullshit. When I first saw that title, I thought, well,
why would he write a book when he could just
do a podcast? But after I read it, I had
to call him up. I I gotta say, I loved
your book, not surprisingly maybe given the show, but I
noticed you draw a distinction between bullshitting and lying, which
(07:50):
seems like an important distinction. Can you just unpack that difference? Yeah? Absolutely.
Bullshitting is often confused for lying, but it's very distinct
from lying in some very important ways. So when someone
lies to us, the liar is actually concerned about the truth, right,
(08:10):
and their objective is to get us to believe something
that they don't believe is true themselves. On the other hand,
the bullshitter, it doesn't really care at all about the truth.
They're not paying attention to it at all. In fact,
they have no idea what the truth is. It's weird
to me that anybody wouldn't care about something as important
(08:32):
as the truth. But John says, there are two major
motives for bullshitting, and one of the motives is to
be consistent with our actions and what we say. And
we're also motivated to feel justified by the claims that
we make and our behaviors. And once you publicly state something,
(08:52):
you get a lot of social pressure added to those motivations.
As John explained this, my mind immediately jumped to win.
After Trump was sworn in on the National Mall, Sean
Spicer told the world this was the largest audience to
ever witness an inauguration period. It most assuredly was not,
(09:12):
but the administration wouldn't cave, and then Senior Counselor Kellyanne
Conway doubled down bigly on CNN the following day. Why
did he do that? It undermines the credibility of the
entire White House Press Office. Don't be so don't be
so overly dramatic about it. Chuckle, what you're saying it's
a falsehood, and they're giving Sean Spicer, our press secretary,
(09:35):
gave alternative facts. They definitely didn't care about the real numbers.
You sent the press secretary out there to utter us
falsehood on the smallest pettiest thing. I don't think anybody
can blame that. Look, I actually don't think that maybe
this is me as a polster chuck and you know
data well, I don't think you can prove those numbers
(09:55):
one where the others. There's no way to really quantify crowds.
We all know that you can laugh textbook bullshitting. So
whereas the liar doesn't believe what it is that they
say is true, the bullshit, it really has no idea
whether or not it's true. It's very easy today to
say something that's not very well thought out, that's not
(10:17):
very well informed, and then to feel as though you
have to support it, right, because now you're going to
sound inconsistent and you're gonna sound stupid for for communicating
something that either we know isn't true or isn't supported
by the evidence. And it's very seductive once you publicize it.
(10:39):
So it's it's much better to sort of think collect
evidence and and and see whether or not well is
is there evidence for against what what my opinion is
on the issue. But and so I think those are
sort of two major motives, especially once people start communicating
their opinions and their beliefs. But the other key distinction
(11:01):
here is that society treats liars differently than it treats bullshitters.
When people lie to us, there's often a lot of
great negative consequences. You know, we're very unhappy with liars
when we catch them, yes, exactly. But but when we
know kind of know someone's bullshitting us, we often assume
that it's harmless. We pass it off as sort of
(11:24):
a mild social offense. But this is where we can't
be more wrong. Virtually all of our problems, whether they
be personal, interpersonal, professional, or societal, they appeared to stem
from mindless bullshit reasoning and communications. So what I wanted
(11:45):
to do was to sort of put something um together
that puts the problem with bullshitting front and center, and
to call attention to it and to expose how dangerous
it can actually be. Right, and I totally agree we
underestimate the seriousness of the impact of bullshit. And you
(12:07):
list a number of ways that bs can be damaging,
in some cases life threatening. And you use a scale.
In the book which I love, John uses the fly index.
One fly is harmless, two flies is bad, and three
flies dangerous. So harmless might sound something like, you know,
(12:28):
I could throw a football over a mountain in two
you know, and you get that eye rolling. And in fact,
some examples I think of bullshit actually have some benefits.
We tell children in the summer at the pool, you know, tye,
they put a compound in that swimming pool water to
reveal the presence of urine almost immediately, you know, And
(12:50):
as every kid knows, that really isn't true. But I
think that's relatively harmless, and it's, if anything, it's potentially
useful to the extent that keeps a few is from
being in the pool. But then I contrast harmless with
the two fly example of bad bullshit. My favorite example
of this is did you see her face? Who would
(13:11):
vote for a face like that? I think that kind
of bullshit it dehumanizes, objectifies women. It suggests that they
can't be good leaders unless unless they're attractive. I mean,
what doesn't make much sense. But the three fly example
might sound something like this. You know time, I can
text while driving without any problems, and and you know what,
(13:35):
everyone does it, and so I don't see the problem. Okay.
My response that is no, no, no, but no. Not
only are these things not all true, but they are
able and likely to cause harm and injury to oneself
and others to the extent that that you actually believe
it is true. And so to say something like that
(13:57):
just completely neglects true your established knowledge and genuine evidence.
That would be the more dangerous form of bullshit. Why
are we so vulnerable to b s? Why don't we
all have better BS detectors? There are two primary reasons
for why people are not generally good at the discerning
(14:21):
bullshit from the good stuff. First, most people believe that
there somehow immune to bullshit, and actually research suggests that
the most confident people are often the most likely to
be duped by bullshit. That's why one of the reasons
I really love this new show on Netflix Bullshit The
(14:42):
game show with with Howie Mandel. Let's play so that
the main contestant is supposed to either answer questions correctly
or to convince one of the three challengers that their
incorrect answer is actually correct, and if they can either
answer correctly or convince one of the three challengers that
(15:04):
they're incorrect answers correct, then they can move on to
the next stage and ultimately win a million dollars. But
what's interesting is when they bring on each of the
three challengers, each one of them talk smack about how
good they are detecting BS. Right then the show proceeds
and you can see how miserable most people are at
(15:25):
actually detecting it. A lot of us have overconfident but
underperforming BS detectors, and John says there are a few
reasons for this. I mean, the research in in Cognitive
Psychology by Janet Metcalf has shown that people do not
study subjects they feel they've already mastered. They stopped, you know,
they go onto something else. And and then the second
(15:48):
reason is that even before we suspect we might be
exposed to bullshit, we failed to ask the right questions.
We failed to ask, well, what exactly is the claim?
And then another question that's that's hardly ever asked is
how does this person know that this claim is true?
(16:09):
So if you ask someone how how do you know
what you're saying is true ty. You know, most people
will will tend to be surprised because that's not a
common question to ask, and then they'll take a few
steps backwards and they'll already start to kind of clean
up their first answer, you know, let me give you
(16:31):
some of the qualifiers, and and then when you you
narrow back down, it's really good to ask how might
the claim be wrong? People tend to answer the how
do you know it's true? Only with confirming evidence, So
you have to directly ask people and nudge them to
consider the ways in which the claim might be wrong
(16:52):
and just to draw a line under this for the audience.
You make the distinction between why questions and how questions
in the book and your thesis is that why questions
are a little easier to slip out of than how questions.
How forces somebody to really bring evidence into the conversation. Yeah,
(17:15):
usually when you ask why questions, you kind of get
a value laden, sort of a heady, abstract response. But
when you focus people on how, it tends to elicit
a more concrete response where they, maybe even for the
very first time, take a few steps back and say, Okay, well,
(17:36):
what what are the actual reasons to have this opinion
or this belief, and then you can make a better
decision as to whether or not you're really buying what
it is that they're selling. Right in the book, you
you coined a term which I really liked, which is
bull ability. I assume it's a comparison to gullibility. Yeah,
(17:56):
this is This is a word that I made up.
So a gullible person is likely to believe something, you know,
despite the signs of dishonesty. Somebody who's especially bulletble, we
would say that, well, they tend to be a relatively
lazy thinker who doesn't even care about the signs of dishonesty.
(18:17):
And one of my favorite examples of this has to
do with a clip that sixty minutes aired in two
thousand seven of Bernie made Off kind of sitting around
and recruiting new investors and his hedge fund, and one
of the things he said was, I'm very close with
the regulators, so I'm not trying to say that they
can't you know that what they do is bad. And
(18:40):
he was talking about the sec You know, in today's
regulatory environment, it's virtually impossible to to violate rules. When
this is something that the public really doesn't understand. But
you it's impossible for you to go into for a
violation to go in detected, certainly not for a considerable
periodyt of talk it. It's impossible for a violation to
(19:02):
go undetected, you know, certainly not for a considerable period
of time. Right, Well, that clearly wasn't true. I mean,
made off proved that for eighteen years, made off truly
as a cautionary tale. Everyone was investing and made off,
so no one really thought to look at the facts.
(19:22):
And this is where things get sticky. Even people with
the most discerning minds want to belong. And when John
brought up a study done in the nineteen forties, I
realized that this desire can be even stronger than our
sense of right and wrong. The experiment was conducted by
the psychologist Solomon Ash. He brought in one participant for
(19:44):
a number of trials. This one real participant would be
joined by a handful of assistants or confederates posing as
other participants, and they would set it up such that
the actual participant always thought they were late to experiment,
and there was one seat open, and each trial in
(20:05):
the experiment just consisted of a very obvious answer to
a question. They were shown a line of a certain
length and then presented with three other lines labeled A,
B or C. And one of these lines was exactly
the same length as the original line. The other two
mismatches were completely wrong, very obvious. And what would happen
(20:29):
is the first four or five confederates working with the
experimenter would start to respond incorrectly intentionally to these trials,
and the actual participant would look dumbfounded and be like,
what in the world's checking their glasses and kind of squinting,
and and they knew that the response that was verbally
(20:52):
given by the other confederates was wrong. But what Nash
found was that people tend to feel pressure to go
along with the group. In other words, even when the
real participant clearly saw the wrong answer being given by
everyone else, they still went along with it. They did
not go along with the group when they had a
(21:14):
chance to respond privately, but when they had to respond publicly,
they tended to go along. They tended to conform to
the group. So what is that about, Well, especially when
situations are ambiguous, you can even magnify this difference. When
it's not clear what the the The answer is people
(21:34):
conform to the group. Even more so, we tend to
think that the group knows something that we don't. But
what's wilder to me is that even when the other
people in the group are complete strangers to us, our
fear of group projection can cause us to override indisputable facts.
All of the participants were complete strangers, but they were peers,
(21:55):
And you know, if you get peers together, even peers
that you don't know personally, there's that general sense of
pressure to go along with the group because there's a
fear of being rejected, a fear of being avoided. It's
much more impactful than most people would believe. So what
does this say about the proliferation of BS in our society?
(22:19):
Even when we see it, it's hard to call it out.
The Ash experiment is like the snowflake on the tip
of the iceberg of harm that can be done when
people go along with bs that they privately disagree with.
I'm guessing that this is part of why whistleblowers that
high BS companies are so few and far between. How
(22:41):
can we expect to fight the rising tide of real
BS when it's so hard for us to call BS
on the length of an arbitrary line. How can we
trust anything or anyone if this is the default setting
on our internal BS detector. Answers to these questions and
more right after the break. All right, so now we're
(23:15):
pushing into just another area of interest for us. There
have been a lot of many assertions in the media,
in particular that we're actually experiencing a crisis of trust
in the world, especially among young people. First of all,
have you have you seen any of those assertions and
do you agree, and if so, do you feel like
(23:37):
BS is one of the culprits I I do think
are late millennials and Gen zs. They I mean, they
grew up hearing about concerns with the environment. Even I
sort of our late generation exerts, you know, we grew up,
you know, concerned about greenhouse gases and aerosol spray cans
(23:58):
and things like that. And I think it's developed a
more socially conscious group than than ever before. And I
think there's a little bit of evidence that tend to
have a better memory for bullshit and lies. I mean,
this sort of the underpinnings I think of cancel culture,
um I think there are some benefits to it. I mean,
(24:19):
what we would usually call that in social psychology is accountability.
When you have to justify, you know, you have to
justify your beliefs in your opinions. People tend to uh
feel feel that social pressure and they don't bullshit as much.
You know, if if someone like Nike President and CEO
John Donahoe or Phil Knight, you know, again, if they
(24:43):
say we're gonna address the carbon footprint problem by doing this,
We're gonna address sweatshop problems by doing that. If they
don't do it, you know, there's a major base of
the consumers that are not going to be happy and
they'll cancel them. It's basic accountability, but I think it's
one of the major things that is going to combat
(25:05):
the unwanted effects of bullshit. Yeah, we completely agree. I
think that's a good segue point to some some questions
that I have that directly relate to the work that
we're trying to do on this podcast, because you know,
our show was was born out of reflections on the
attack on the US Capitol and the role that bullshit
(25:28):
as we define it played in its specifically fomented by
by our friends at Facebook. You know, they claim that
their purpose as a company is to empower all of
us to build community and bring the world closer together.
And meanwhile, what they're really doing is feeding us deceptive
and polarizing content that clearly in some cases whips us
(25:49):
into a violent frenzy. And so it's that gap between
what they say they stand for and the actions that
they're actually taking that we define as bs on a show.
So what do you think of our definition, because in
some ways it seems very much the same. I sense
a kinship with your work, but is it in some
(26:11):
ways different? I think what what you are actually hitting
on is is a special case of bullshit. In most cases,
I think you're hitting on what we call pseudo profound bullshit.
Pseudo profound bullshit or flowery, catchy language that can be
hard to decipher. Is everywhere in the marketing landscape, and
(26:33):
one a company's purpose is treated as marketing, it can
fall into this category as well. It's clever language because
it could it could actually mean all sorts of things
hard to pin down exactly. It doesn't have to mean
what you think it means, or maybe it could. Here's
where it's really clever though, if you ask for clarification,
(26:53):
and now I can gauge what you think it should mean,
you know, and I could say, yeah, you know, you
got it, that's what it means. I recall this. This
this classic conversation between the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and
Deepark Chopra, and Darkens challenged Chopra to explain the mystification
(27:16):
of quantum mechanics in aging reversal sort of theory. Where
did the quantum theory come into that? Oh, it's just
a metaphor. Just like an electron or a photon is
an indivisible unit of information and energy. Thought is an
indivisible unit of consciousness. So it's an it's a metaphor
(27:38):
for very unit and nothing to do with quantum theory
as in physics. So I think quantum theory has a
lot of things to say about observer effect. There are
a school of physicists who believe that quantum leaps, for example,
are examples of discontinuity and creativity, and consciousness is also
an example of discontinuity, and that healing may be a
(27:59):
biological phenomenon that relies on biological creativity. So it sounds
like a sort of poetic use of the word discontinuity.
It's it's actually confusion, isn't it to bring in quantum
theory other than as a metaphor. It designs that you're
both doing to a metaphor and a little tinge of
something like what physicists are talking about as well. Dark
(28:20):
And it's kind of accepted Chopra's retreat. I mean, Choper
just moved the goalposts. So this is this is the
problem with this type of language, and you see it
especially in business, in the corporate world. It's just it's
just everywhere. Yeah, And that's what we're trying to wade
into and hopefully clarify for some folks, because we have
(28:42):
our own our own scale which is slightly different. Rather
than measuring BS in flies, our scale is a hundred
point scale, zero being the best zero gap between word
indeed zero bs and one being the worst total bullshit.
So we rate all the companies that we feature on
the show. And as I read your okay, I realized
that on our scale we might be combining B s
(29:04):
ing and lying um and lying might live on the
upper end of all our scale. So what's your take
on that is knowingly b sing in that way the
same as lying, or is there a distinction to be
made there? Yeah? Well, I I think, well, there's nothing
wrong with your scale. It's perfect for expressing a social
perceiver's guestimate of lying. I think, because once it's intentional
(29:28):
and you know something isn't true, then I think you're
moving into two lying and further away from bullshitting. But yeah,
I think I think the scale of sort of like, well,
what you know based on what they say and what
they actually do. I think it's very useful scale You've got.
Thank you. I appreciate that. So do you have a daughter,
what what advice do you give her? Or would you
(29:50):
give any young people today who faced this you know
what feels like a rising tide of b s in
the world. How should they think about fighting this fight? Yeah? Well,
you much of my daughter. I mean, she's one of
my best bullshit detectors. I'm not permitted to bullshit at all.
I remember when she was four, for whatever reason, I
told her, you know, when I played high school football,
(30:12):
we won all of our games, and at age four,
she's yeah, no, come on, now, you did not win
all of your games. You know. But what I would
advise her and anyone to do now is just to
sort of take a step back. When you hear something,
you read something, you see something that may or may
(30:35):
not be true, think about the consequences that it has
if you actually believe it. What consequence would it have
for your behavior? How might it change your decisions? How
might it change your beliefs in your opinions? And then
to simply start asking questions. You could kind of flip
some of those questions onto the self and say, well,
who is telling me this, you know, how do they
(30:57):
know it, how could they possibly know it? And what
are they trying to sell me? What agenda do they have?
These are like just basic critical thinking skills. But but
I would say, just stick with the claim, you know,
don't attack the person, attack the claim and then suggest, Okay,
I used to think of it that way too, sort
of misery loves company kind of approach. Well yeah, yeah, yeah,
(31:22):
because it's just an easier pill to swallow if it's
just kind of an error and reasoning than it was like, oh,
they're just misinformed and they're guilty of bullshitting. But another
thing I think is good to admit was that we
we all contribute our own amount of bullshit, and to
not double down on the bullshit, but just kind of
admit it when we're guilty of it. Finally, be ready,
(31:46):
you know, be ready to model a better behavior, you know,
be willing to provide and offer evidence based reasoning to
counter and combat bullshit. You know, the hope and the
dream is to really reduce bullshit and it's unwanted effects.
But it's gotta have to be a collective effort. Yeah,
(32:07):
we completely agree. You know, there is a whole generation
of young people who are taking a very activist stance
on these things. They're not putting up with the bullshit anymore,
and that's one of the audiences that we most want
to provide information for on this podcast. I love the
concept of your podcast. I think it shines a lot
of sunlight on problems, and I believe that what we
(32:29):
need to advocate is treating bullshit like lies. If we
treat bullshit, even though I say, Okay, well it's bullshit,
don't assume that it doesn't have a negative effect. Don't
that it's harmless. John, this was a fantastic conversation. I
want to thank you for coming on the show today,
al Ti, thanks for having me. So this is the
(32:50):
part of the show when I would usually rate an
organization on the B S scale, But instead of giving
a score today, I want to talk a little bit
more about how the BS scale actually the works. We
define bullshit as the gap between word indeed, and we
measure that gap by looking at the evidence, talking with
experts who can help us understand the actions that companies
(33:11):
are taking to live or not their purpose. Once we've
asked as many questions as we can, we construct the
final score using these three guide posts. One action. Does
an organization's purpose exist to solve a real problem? Are
they taking concrete action to make it real in the
(33:33):
world or is it just flowery pseudo profound business speak.
Are they ignoring glaring gaps between word indeed or taking
steps to remediate them. Are they considering all of their stakeholders.
Looking at actions helps us to gauge intention. If we
find that an organization is willing to correct course or
(33:54):
engage with criticism, we can see their real intentions shining through.
To transparency, we always look to see how much information
a company discloses. Do they publish their goals as well
as track progress toward them. Are they as quick to
call out their own shortcomings as they are to claim
their victories. When an organization is truly purpose led, they
(34:18):
hold themselves accountable by showing their work. And three, harm
a gap between word indeed that threatens democracy or the
future of the entire planet will always be high BS.
In this way, we're super aligned with John and his
fly index. More harm always means a higher BS score.
(34:47):
And if you're a future or current purpose led business
leader or a conscious consumer, here are three takeaways from
John that will keep your BS detector in great shape.
Detective One, ask how, and not why. Why questions are
(35:07):
easier to answer vaguely, but how questions cut right through
the b S. How is this company making its purpose real?
How is it seeing to its stakeholder needs? Two? Don't
attack the bullshitter, attack the claim challenging b S shouldn't
feel personal. If your attack feels personal, it's more likely
(35:29):
to be ignored. B S is a treatable condition, but
only if the b s R wants to treat it,
So bring them in on it, Engage them as an ally.
And three, don't get swept up in group think. We
are social creatures, and John showed us that there is
a powerful urge within all of us to just get
(35:52):
along and go along, keep your personal BS detector sharp,
and don't assume that if it's going off, there's something
wrong with you. A lot of folks are going along
with all the BS in their lives just because they
don't want to go against the group or ruffle any feathers.
Come on, get out there and ruffle some feathers. And
(36:13):
if you want in on the fight against b s,
subscribe to the Calling Bullshit podcast on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to people
speaking to your ears. Thanks to our production team Hannah Beal,
Amanda Ginsburg, Andy Kim d s Moss Hailey, Pascalites, Parker Silzer,
(36:38):
Basil Soaper, and me jehan Zulu. Calling Bullshit was created
by co Collective and it's hosted by Me Time Monto.
You thanks for listening.
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