WEEKEND EDITION- Advocates Try to Protect Recess for Kids, Difficult People to Work With, Alexa Replicates Dead Grandmother’s Voice

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend Edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday,
and it's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,

(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. But withholding of recess has long been a
punishment tactic for teachers when kids misbehavior misassignments. Now there's
a growing momentum to pass laws that protect recess time
and prohibit schools from taking it away to punish kids.
Research has shown that unstructured free time is important for

(00:47):
child development as it fosters good social communication and coping skills.
For more on the fight to protect recess, will speak
to Jackie Mader, early education reporter at the Hecken Jury Report.
This is a really common kindish men. It's been happening
for a long time in schools. When I was interviewing experts,
a lot of them said, oh, I remember this happening
when I was a kid. Um, So yeah, we all

(01:10):
we all have those stories, we remember it happening. But
there's been a growing understanding of both the importance of
recess and the benefits that come with that, and understanding
of the importance of free play, especially for really young children,
and at a time when you know they're sitting in
schools learning more academics than ever before, and so this
time is really important. And then at the same time,

(01:32):
pediatricians and child development experts they're starting to say, this
isn't the most appropriate punishment. There are other punishments that
may be more effective, but going a route that can
be more punitive or even stigmatize a child and doesn't
really follow a natural consequence, right like a child may
not be able to track. I didn't get my parents
to sign this form, and now I'm sitting out at recess.

(01:52):
So it's just not the most appropriate punishment, is what
child development experts are now saying, even though it is
common and it has been common for a long time,
you know, on the face of it, and just kind
of anecdotally, as I mentioned, I do remember this happening
to me as a kid, right you mess up, it's like, well,
now you gotta sit down and don't move for you know,
the half an hour time whatever it is. You know,

(02:13):
as a kid, yeah, definitely, you feel like that's my
only free time, I only outlet. It's so stressful here,
and yeah I messed up and whatnot, and but you
kind of look forward to those moments. So on the
face of it, yeah, I mean I tend to agree
that it is a great outlet for the kids and all.
But on the teacher side of things, I mean, how
do they feel, what do they do? What are some
recommendations for other things? When you know they're at their

(02:35):
limits a lot of times too, they don't know how
to discipline the kids, right, That's a great question, and
it's true. I mean, teachers need ways to manage their classrooms.
They need to be able to enforce the rules. Kids
need to learn. You know, you do have to follow
rules in school. We're trying to keep everyone safe and
we're trying to learn. Part of the problem that you know,
teachers talk to me about and schools and administrators talked

(02:57):
about is there often aren't in a works for teachers.
So if a teacher has a really challenging behavior from
a child in their classroom. You know, a lot of
schools don't have social workers or counselors to come in
and say, hey, we're going to get to the root
cause of this issue. You know, for some kids, I've
talked to plenty of family two kids have disabilities, so
they need more support. And maybe, you know, punishing a

(03:20):
kid because of a the hater that may be due
to their disability isn't the right way to go. These
parents say instead they need more support, maybe from the
special education team. But we know teachers are lacking, so
there's definitely it's a hard time for teachers. And I
know a lot of teachers are leaving the field and
many say, I mean, surveys have come out to say
classroom management is one of the main reasons why teachers leave.

(03:42):
So you know, two things can be true. Teachers need
more support, kids need more support, and we can, you know,
come up with some more effectives and what experts say
or developmentally appropriate punishments if your questions some of those punishments. Maybe,
I mean, I talked to a pediatrician who said, in general,
stigmatizing adults is inappropriate. So we don't want to do

(04:04):
that for kids, especially really young kids, something like explaining
why we have these rules so kids understand why it's
important offering positive reinforcement, So maybe even offering an extra recess, right,
and kids can work towards earning that, so they're not
losing the one recess they have, they're working towards a reward.
And I talked to us classroom management expert at a

(04:25):
teacher training program who said, you know, they really teach
their teachers to work on this kind of positive reinforcement
instead of negative reinforcement system with their students. So there
are alternatives. The problem is do teachers have the time,
you know, even the knowledge they may not know some
of these routes and the support to roll out different
methods in their classrooms. And when you're managing dirty kids

(04:47):
or whatever the number may be, it's it gets really
increasingly difficult, you know. And we you know, just hearing
stories throughout the pandemic and coming back to school, right,
kids were not as developed because they missed that time
in school and in that settings and heard stories about
fights breaking out and everything. So it's totally tough on that.
So so the movement now, right, there's lawmakers in a

(05:09):
number of states, and you know obviously a lot of
individual school districts too that are looking to either pass
laws or policies that say, well, no, we have to
have this recess time for kids. You know, you can't
use that taking it away as a punishment. Yeah, that's correct.
So right now they are about twelve states that limit
this in some way. Most of them say you can't

(05:30):
use physical activity as a punishment or withholding physical activity
at the punishment, so that includes recess. Very few outrights
say you cannot take away recess of the punishment. Illinois
is one of those states that just passed this in
one and now four other states are considering this. Oklahoma, Connecticut, Pennsylvania,
and Minnesota. They all have bills moving through the legislatures

(05:52):
right now that would specifically ban withholding recess. So there
is kind of just growing understanding of you know, like
you mentioned, you know, children are behind in their development,
that includes social development, and there's this a lot of
you know, mental health concerns for children. So this growing
understanding that hey, maybe recess is something that needs to
be protected to help with all of this, and the

(06:12):
best way to do that maybe creating this law, so
it's not an option. I think a lot of people
would argue, you know, on the flip side, you also
have to support teachers with other options. But it has
been shown that states that have laws to protect recess time,
those schools in those states are more likely to have
recess time. So there is some evidence that laws are

(06:33):
kind of the way to go if you really want
to protect recess. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a difficult conversation.
As you mentioned, it's important for the kids, but the
teachers need some resources also there. So we'll continue to
monitor this conversation see what happens with it. Jackie Mader,
early education reporter at the Heckener Report, Thank you very
much for joining us. Thank you so much for having

(06:53):
me work. They're about eight different types of differ sical
people that you can deal with. They range anywhere from
insecure bosses to office snow at alls and political operators
only looking out for themselves. But the worst people to
work with are the passive aggressive types because it's so
common and the hardest to pin down. For more on

(07:14):
how to handle difficult people, will speak to Amy Gallo,
contributing editor to the Harvard Business Review, an author of
getting along how to work with anyone. One of the
more ubiquitous too, although all of these I think will
sound familiar to people. All right, So we've got the
insecure boss, right, the person they maybe micromanage, They distrust you,
They try to keep you from interacting with other departments

(07:34):
or senior people. The pessimist. I think that's pretty self explanatory.
Someone who keeps continually shoots down ideas, has nothing positive
to say. There's a flavor of the pessimists called the victim,
which is you have to distinguish this, of course, from
someone who truly is a victim of mistreatment. But this
is someone who plays the victims, feels like everyone is
out to get them. There's been no at all person

(07:56):
who just thinks that they have all the answers can
when the lives of meeting proclaim whatever they want. There's
the tormentor, someone who you think will be a mentor,
but they end up actually being the opposite to undermine you.
It's familiar with that one. There's the biased coworkers, someone
who commits microaggressions toward you or to others. And then

(08:16):
there's the political operator, the person who's really focused on
their career, doesn't mind whose heads to have to step
on to get ahead. Now, in some of these right,
let's say your insecure boss or something, they're obviously ahead
of you and everything. That's an interesting one too. I mean,
how do you deal with positions of authority that might
be hampering you at work When the difficult person is

(08:40):
someone who has control over how much money you make,
what opportunities you get, right, it can be risky to
try to address the behavior, and you can also feel
particularly trapped. There's some interesting research though that shows if
you can shift the balance of power a little bit,
and that obviously you're not necessarily going to become their
bass as right, That's not what they're referring to. They're

(09:02):
talking about gaining a specific area of knowledge or skill
or developing a relationship inside the organization that makes you
more valuable to that boss. You can then make clear
to them that they need you and therefore need to
treat you better. That's one skill or one tactics that
will that has shown in research to work with someone

(09:22):
who's in power, you know, with the insecure boss. Unfortunately,
what a lot of the research shows, and I don't
love giving this advice because it's the last thing anyone
wants to do, but is genuine flattery, right, actually paying
them well times sincere compliments can help a suage that ego, right,
calm down their ego a little bit and position you

(09:42):
as an ally. It's not, again, not my favorite thing
to do. I'm sure it's the last thing people want
to do when they're dealing with this insecure boss. But
it has been shown to work, and you've heard it
all over the place, right, sometimes you have to play
the game and that could be part of it, right,
you know, giving them a little bit of reassurance and
then hopefully they can lay off view. Okay, let's focus
a little bit more on the passive aggressive type. As

(10:03):
you mentioned, it's probably something that most people will encounter.
It's tough to go through because you know, you might
be getting some of the work done, but they could
be talking behind your back and all this other stuff.
I mean that that's really could be a difficult one.
And one of the tips that you have for that is,
first off, don't label them as passive aggressive. Don't kind
of like publicly identify them, because that can make it

(10:25):
go all ways of wrong. Um, you know someone behaving
passive aggressively and you just say you're being passive aggressive.
It's just going to escalate things. Most of us don't
feel that we're actually behaving passive aggressively. We might think
we're being petty, or maybe we're thinking, no, I'm not
being completely straightforward or completely honest with them, but we

(10:45):
would never say, oh, I'm a passive aggressive person. That
very few people actually would say that. It's like it's
like telling an angry person calm down. That's just not
gonna work. No one in the history of arguments has
ever calmed down by being yelled at to gonda And
in fact, in my personal experience, what I see is
telling someone their passive aggressive actually makes them more passive aggressive,

(11:07):
because you're escalating the fear. Right, most of this behavior
is based on fear of failure or rejection, or fear
of conflict or not having power, and by putting them
more on edge, you're intensifying those fears, therefore intensifying the
likelihood that they will act out. And instead you kind
of suggest, you know, maybe we can call attention to

(11:30):
what's happening. Um, you know, you had an example here. Hey,
you said you want to help on a project, Well,
you're not helping out anymore. Help identify what that issue
could be and then maybe you can work around it.
That's right, And I think being clear specifically about about
what behavior or actions or lack of action are problematic
for you naming those now you may not get a

(11:51):
satisfying response because the passive aggressive person is an expert dodger. Right.
So you might say you didn't show up at the
meeting even though you said you would, and they say, oh,
I couldn't get to be there because of this, or
it wasn't clear you actually wanted me there. Right. But
even by calling out the behavior or action or in
action that you're you're dissatisfied with, you put them on

(12:12):
notice that you're paying attention and they can't get away
with that. And it doesn't mean just because they don't
acknowledge it or apologize or avow to be different, doesn't
mean they won't change. And I think that's something to
keep in mind. And it could be angry for a reason. Right.
So you also suggest, you know, find out what it
is that person cares about, you know, kind of getting
to the root of Hey, why are you being like this?

(12:33):
You know, there's this phrase called hypothesis testing, right, is
that you might say, I noticed you didn't show but
the meeting, even though you really wanted to participate in
those projects. Could it be that, and then you propose
something right? Could it be that you didn't get the invite?
Could it be that you weren't sure how you would contribute?
And just sort of put that out there and say
what do you think? Or just aft and open ended questions.

(12:56):
You know what's going on. You might presume you know
why they're doing what's they're doing, but you probably don't know.
So that gives them room to actually say, well, I
don't feel included. I feel like you only said you
wanted my help, but you don't really want myself, right Like,
it gives them a little space to actually vent whatever
fear or frustration is contributing to their path of aggression. Well,

(13:18):
just a few tips now for handling passive aggressive people.
I'm sure there's much more in the book. Amy Gallo,
author of Getting Along, How to Work with Anyone and
contributing editor at the Harvard Business Review, Thank you very
much for joining us, Thanks for having me after Earlier
this year, Amazon held an event where they debuted some

(13:38):
improvements in their text to speech technology and had an
AI mimic the voice of someone's dead grandmother. What's amazing
is that it's becoming easier to create these artificially generated
voices to sound like anyone, and in this case they
only needed about sixty seconds of audio rather than sixty hours.
For more on how it's just the beginning for voice cloning,

(13:58):
we'll speak to Adam Blues, scene contributor to Fast Company. Yeah,
it's summoning there dead. So the idea is that you're
able to take a very small sample of a person's
voice and then create what they call a generalizable synthetic
voice out of that, meaning you can get that voice
to read out any text you present it with, which

(14:23):
is pretty amazing. So the demo showed us the voice
reading a few sentences from a book, but in theory
um this could be applied to a much longer texts
as well, with a lot of implications for commercial applications
down the road, I think. And the whole point of
this is that we've been doing this for some time.
Both Google and Amazon have had you know, celebrity voices

(14:44):
on their respective smart speakers and all that, but those
were done with hours and hours of the actor or
celebrity whoever might be recording audio. I think, um there
was a minimum of like sixty hours of stuff that
they used for like Shack and Melissa McCarthy, Samuel Jackson.
But now the improvement is that they have this kind
of generalized model and now you just need about a

(15:06):
minute of audio from the voice that you want to clone,
so to speak. And to be clear, this is an
incredibly complicated technology with a lot of ways of slicing
and dicing it. So what Amatroon demonstrated here is something
that they call a voice filter. So what it's doing
is taking a synthetic voice that they've already developed, sort

(15:30):
of a generic voice, and then running it through a filter.
And it's that filter that's been trained on a very
small sample of a real person's voice. And what it
really does is as it goes through this filter, the
words are transformed into the voice of this new person.
And what's interesting is in this case it changes the

(15:52):
sound of the voice. So the tone of the voice
sounds like the person you know. But this method doesn't
capture there. It's called their prosody that the unique way
that they phrase things. That's a different level, which is
something that researchers are also really working a lot on.
At that point. Once they get that and hit that
really right, that's going it's gonna start really getting creepy.

(16:15):
But you know, in some of the experts that you
spoke to, you know, they're talking about, you know, this
evolving technology, and you think about speech recognition and how
easy it is to talk to our machines already, and
what you really want on the other side of that
is for that machine to talk to you back, and
if it could be in somebody's voice that you do
recognize even better. I mean, you know, who knows how
people are going to use it, if it will improve

(16:36):
workflow or they just want to reconnect, just hear the
voice of a past loved one, something like that. But
this is kind of where that industry seems to be heading. Absolutely.
So there's a huge demand for custom voices now across
different industries in healthcare for example, in education, and a
tech where even in sort of you know, the ordering

(16:59):
boy at the burger king drives through. Everyone wants to
have a unique artificial voice that's talking to their customers.
So this is driving you know, a lot of investment
the speech market, some project to reach what seven billion,
and every big tech company basically has a text to

(17:21):
speech division that is focused on this. And that's because
the interface to technology, many people believe and we see
it happening, is moving more and more towards things like
voice and away from interactions that are just with our
keyboard or the screen of our phones. So as we're
interacting more and more with our voices, right, we want

(17:44):
to hear better, more sort of personalized, more human voices
that are talking back to us. You know, so that
original robotic theory isn't going to cut it anymore. Yeah,
I mean this is advancing really fast. I mean I
just got an email from somebody within our company saying, hey,
we can provide you lifelike synthetic voices for radio production,

(18:05):
like stock voices for radio production, which is so interesting.
And you know, so we're talking about Google, We're talking
about Amazon's Are they the top two players in this?
What else are we looking at? Amazon's you know, working
on Alexa and they did this demo. Google bought Deep Minds,
you know, a few several years ago, and that I
was an AI organization and through deep Mind they developed

(18:28):
really some of the core neural computing technology that underlies
text to speech today. So they've been a big player
in developing at tech. Microsoft through Azure is heavily investing
in this, and they recently acquired voice company called Nuanced
by Do in China has done a lot of work

(18:49):
on voice. So, you know, at Apple obviously every every
everyone's pretty much everybody's into it. Yeah, yeah, it's super
interesting stuff. As this stuff gets really a lot better,
the technology gets a lot better. I think Amazon said,
you know, there's no word yet when it's gonna debut
this for developers or even the public, you know, this
kind of advanced voice cloning stuff, but it's coming, you know,

(19:11):
so just keep an eye out forward and maybe we'll
be talking to our machines a lot clearer in the
very near future. Adam Bluestein, contributor at Fast Company, Thank
you very much for joining us. Thank you so much,
appreciate it. Don't forget to join us on social media
at Daily Dive Pod on Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast
on Facebook. Leave us a comment, give us a rating,

(19:34):
and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Follow
us on I heard radio or subscribe wherever you get
your podcast. I'm Oscar Rameiras and this is the Daily
Dive Weekend edition.