September 27, 2022 • 55 mins
Ellen Ruppel Shell tells us why you "Should rise above your assumptions", why we should "Question received wisdom" and " Don’t take business matters personally " hosted by Duff Watkins.
About Ellen Ruppel ShellEllen Ruppel Shell is an author, investigative journalist and Prof. of Journalism at Boston University where she co-directs the Graduate Program in Science Journalism. She conducts research, teaches, and writes on issues relating to science and economic policy and social justice. Prof. Ruppel Shell is the author of hundreds of published articles, reviews and essays. She’s a long-time contributing editor for The Atlantic, writes on issues of science, social justice, economics and public policy for Science, Scientific American, the New York Times opinion and book pages, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Discover, The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe and the Washington Post. She has served as an editor for a wide range of national publications and for public broadcasting and is sought frequently as a commentator on issues of science and the press.
Prof. Ruppel Shell has authored four books translated into more than a dozen languages, The Job: Work and Its Future in a Time of Radical Change (Crown, October, 2018); Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture (Penguin, 2009), The Hungry Gene (Grove, 2002), and A Child’s Place (Little Brown, 1992).
Prof. Ruppel Shell has been a Vannevar Bush Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Fellow in Occupational Health and Safety at Harvard University Medical School. She lectures widely on topics in science communication and public policy, as well as economic and social justice. She has served both as a Bush Fellow at MIT and as a Fellow in Occupational Health and Safety at Harvard University.
Episode Notes
Lesson 1: Trust yourself (but not too much) 05:09 Lesson 2: Don’t take business matters personally. 08:14 Lesson 3: Demand evidence and extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.12:23 Lesson 4: Question received wisdom. 19:01 Lesson 5: Rise above your assumptions.27:39 Lesson 6: Be self-confidant enough to give others the benefit of the doubt.31:25 Lesson 7: Feelings trump facts in many matters, “rational” can be overrated.24:14 Lesson 8: You’re bored because you’re not paying attention. 37:10 Lesson 9: Don’t mistake hurt and guilt for anger. 42:22 Lesson 10: Empathy is not compassion. 45:56
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
We make assumptions about people.
Let me tell you a great story.
guy.
I have a colleague he's,he's another writer.
And one day he passed me.
He was going past a restaurant and I waseating lunch alone in the restaurant.
And he came in the restaurantand he looked at me.
He said, Ellen, You don't eat hamburgers.
And I was sitting thereeating a hamburger.
(00:22):
I'm eating a hamburger.
And he said you're not the type
in it's it's false because what hewas seeing in front of his eyes,
Was me eating a hamburger and, Ithought this is such a great example
of assumptions you make about people.
(00:43):
They're wrong.
And then when, when they showyou to be wrong by the behavior,
it's that doesn't matter.
You, you kind of made theseassumptions about them.
Hello.
Welcome to the podcast.
10 lessons that took me 50 years to learn.
Where we dispense wisdomfor a career in life.
That's wisdom for your career and life.
(01:05):
My name is Duff Watkins and I'm your host.
Our guest today is Ellen RuppelShell, who is an author writer,
investigative journalist.
In fact, she's a professor ofjournalism at Boston university
and she's with us here today.
Hi Ellen, how are you?
Good.
Thank you.
Thanks for inviting me Duff.
I have to say this journey startedwhen I read your book 'Cheap, The
High Cost of Discount Culture'.
(01:26):
Now I'm a guy that's been ininternational business for 30 years.
And I can tell you, after readingyour book, I will never look at
Walmart in quite the same way.
It was such a, a tour force workat explaining, exposing really
how those everyday low pricesthat Westerners are so used to.
And in fact feel they're entitledto how that actually comes about.
(01:47):
And in other words, who really bearsthe cost, I thought that was just
a very important book for business.
Thank you.
The other, and I've finishedalso, um, another more recent book
called 'The Job, The Future OfWork In A Time Of Radical Change'.
And, ah, boy, that too was really goodtalking about the evolving nature of a
job, um, the evolution of a job, and infact, the evolving nature of work itself.
(02:12):
So those are two books I wish to recommendto, uh, to our, our listeners and our
viewers now, which leads me to ask how,how do you write about a lot of things?
Your articles are published in theNew York times, Washington post
Los Angeles times, and I see themfrequently in the Atlantic magazine.
How do you choose what to write about?
Oh, I think like, uh, many writers,um, my topics kind of choose me.
(02:37):
it's generally something that, getsin my head and I can't get it out.
You know, something that has reallybother me a question that's knowing
away at me something that I find,either surprising or perplexing and.
In terms of a book, it gives me a verylarge platform and a lot of time to
work out the answers to that question.
And when I write shorter things, um,either I'm offering an opinion or a
(03:00):
more condensed, um, opportunity toreally investigate, topics of concern.
My background is in science . AndI started as a science journalist,
um, and I teach science journalismat Boston university, but, using the,
being, having some training in science,um, has been very, very helpful in
my life as a journalist because, youuse this a similar, uh, approach to
(03:24):
investigating topics and consideringtopics forming a thesis that you
challenge, what we call the in science,you call it the null hypothesis.
You sort of form a thesis.
This is what I think, but thenyou do everything possible to
kind of, Disprove this theory.
Okay.
Mm-hmm so mm-hmm, generally speaking.
I, I often go in with, withassumptions that turn out to be wrong.
(03:46):
And that's oftentimes rewardingbecause the assumptions that we
go in with as, as lay people,um, uninformed, are often wrong.
And what's most rewarding to meis when I find out that everything
I thought to be true was not.
So when these various topics, thethings that I've written on, that's
oftentimes what their commonality.
So when you mentioned Cheap, The High CostOf Discount Culture, I'm a bargain hunter.
(04:11):
I love shopping for bargains.
Um, I find it kind of atreasure hunt uh, and I love it.
But then one day, um, when I wasthinking about this, I looked in my
closet and I saw all these garmentswith the price tags, still on them,
you know, things, my trophies, right.
That I thought, my gosh, I gotthese at a very good price, but
I, but I'll never wear them.
(04:32):
Right?
And it started, I, I looking at theirrationality of that, led me down
that path to, to really investigatingthe externalities of low price.
So when you're talking about cheap,that's, that's literally how that
started was my own experience.
And with my last book, The Job, whatwas really troubling me was what
was happening in the United States.
(04:53):
I, I saw the tremors of what was to come.
This is pre-Trump.
I was quite concerned about, uh,what was going on and the notion that
everyone in the United States andin the world, in fact, Could just
educate themselves into a good job.
This was kind of the rhetoric,the prevalent rhetoric out there.
And that really worried me.
(05:14):
Um, and I didn't know what that meant.
And so that led me into this investigationthat lasted over seven years.
I looked into that question for aboutseven years, of what is, what is a job?
What does it mean?
How does it differ from work?
Why is it so central to our livesin the United States that it tends
to eclipse almost everything elsein our life and, uh, what are
(05:35):
the limitations in that thinking?
So that's a very longanswer to your question.
But oftentimes it's, uh, another altern.
Another reason I might, uh, tripover a story that's just too
good to not share with people.
So that's another reason, um,some of the things I'm working
on now fall that category.
That's a necessarily a longanswer, but a good answer.
(05:56):
And so that takes us to the 10lessons, uh, 10 life lessons, I
guess let's start with number one.
And this one surprises me.
I must say number one, trust yourself.
Hmm.
Did I say that?
well, I'll tell you why thatsurprises me is because, okay.
(06:17):
You're a science journalist, RichardFineman, the famous, uh, physicist.
He said that in science, you must bevery careful not to fool yourself and you
are the easiest person of all to fool.
And so when I think of trustingmyself, which sounds good, sounds
wise, but, and there's always abut to it is what I'm thinking.
(06:41):
So that's why I'm interested inyour version of trust yourself.
Well, I think that was a prettyflip comment, um, because
I always challenged myself.
I'm really surprised thatI, that I wrote that.
now again, Duff, let's tell the audiencethat it's been a while we've had many
aborted attempts to, uh, to connect.
And, uh, so it's been months sinceI, I think I sent you that list.
(07:04):
I guess the only reason I wouldeven think that such a thing
could possibly be true is.
That sometimes, casting aside, theopinions of others can be very useful.
Right?
And that's happened to me, um,several times in my career.
I won't go into it, uh, but often, uh,I, some of the things I've written,
especially about science, uh, andpublic health are quite controversial.
(07:28):
But over the test of time, they'veturned out to be largely true.
And, um, again, part of the reason Ithink for that is because I, I go in, with
assumptions that I'm willing to discard.
Okay.
Based on evidence and again, that comesback to this training I've had in science.
You know, you, you go in again withan hypothesis, uh, but you don't,
(07:50):
you're not married to that hypothesis.
And too often in journalism, whichis my, my field, um, people go
in with a, a foregone conclusionand stick with it, and it's very
important to them to stick with it.
And they, they have to contort,themselves into, you know, into
knots to, to stick with it.
I've been liberated bybeing okay with being wrong.
(08:14):
So I guess, overall, I trustmy instincts, but that like
Fineman he's absolutely right.
Um, he put it beautifully,uh, I'm often wrong.
Okay.
But I expect I will be wrongand I'm prepared to be wrong.
I think that's my experience too.
I've written articles whereI, that were tendentious.
I had a point to make when I started, thenwhen I started interviewing everybody,
(08:37):
I found that I was completely wrong.
And because I, because the people I weretalking to were doing it so well, as well
as anything that I could have predicted,or, suggested or prescribed to them that
it changed my whole, uh, conclusion.
Well, it changed the whole article,but for the better . And I started
out opinionated and, and learned alot in the process, which I think is
both good writing and good scienceand good living come to think of it.
(09:01):
All right.
Lesson number two, don't takebusiness matters personally.
Now I know how I learned this lesson.
Ellen, I'm curious how you learned it.
Well, um, I'm pretty thin skinned.
I'm not a, a hardcharging business person.
I'm, I'm not a business person at all.
Um, and as a writer, as you probablyknow, writers tend to be, thin
(09:24):
skinned and, and a little neurotic.
So, , it was a lesson for me to learnthat, uh, and I had a very good friend,
a very successful, well known writer.
I was calling him at one point and, askingfor pity for what I considered to be abuse
by an editor who we both had at the time.
(09:44):
And I thought I was being singledout for abuse by this editor.
And my friend said to me,oh, no, you're not special.
, he's, uh, he's just as abusiveto me and it's not personal.
And I often think about thatbecause I think a lot of the
times we feel singled out.
(10:05):
That we're getting special treatment,uh, especially bad treatment.
Right.
And in fact, it's, it's simplythe way that person operates.
And right now in the time, you know, with,with COVID, I've heard this, uh, very,
very frequently from, um, colleagues and,and friends that, their responses have
been very slow and people are not givingthem the time that they think they should.
(10:29):
And they think, again, that it'sbecause of them it's personal.
And of course it's not, and it's ofteneasy to forget, you know, the kind of,
um, complexity of other people's lives.
Right.
The kinds of things.
And I'll give you an example.
Um, I was talking to aneditor a couple of weeks ago.
(10:50):
At a, at a publishing house in New York.
And, he said, I really apologize,for getting, you know, having
taken so long to get back to you.
But today, my middle schooleris, is starting his first
day of school post COVID.
My wife has, been through allthis, my uncle had COVID, you
know, it was one thing afteranother that he's going through.
(11:11):
And of of course I was very, understandingand sympathetic, but to be perfectly
honest, I was worried that , there wassomething, it was something about me.
So I think the best, policy isalways to, to start by assuming,
that the other person, that you'redealing with, does not have anything
against you is it's not personal.
(11:32):
Uh, they may be confused.
They may be incompetent.
But it's not, it's not about you.
Right.
So I think that's especiallyimportant for women.
Women tend to take it on quite quickly.
I know my husband very rarelythinks, uh, he's done anything wrong.
(11:53):
but my kind of guy.
Right, right.
But many women assume no matter whatthey say that, that it is, it is them.
And, and so I, I think that's justsomething for women to keep in mind and
it's not, it's not, um, it's somethingyou have to constantly remind yourself of.
It's not one and done.
You always have to remind yourself.
(12:14):
It, it is, it's a lesson that isdifficult to learn that what the world
doesn't revolve around me and everything.
And you like to think thatwe graduate from that around
somewhere between 14 to 18.
But no, no.
It has a legacy it's in there.
And it's hard not totake things personally.
It requires a bit of discipline.
And as you say, a lot of practicenow that's for your husband.
(12:35):
I'm with him.
Just remind him of the famous saying.
Never attribute to malice that whichcan be explained by incompetence.
And, you know, that's kind of mylife it's often live my life by that.
It's not me it's them.
So there is some utility aboutthat, but, uh, But, you know, you're
(12:56):
talking about editors and I, um, a bigbreakthrough in, in, in my writing was
when I realized, just do what they want.
Just give them what they want,give them copy, you know, start,
stop getting stop arguing.
And,
Lesson number three.
And this is the beauty.
Demand evidence and extraordinaryclaims require extraordinary evidence.
(13:18):
Right.
Right.
So again, this is the, this is a,you know, from science and, you know,
if you make extraordinary claims, ifyou, uh, for example, if you say that
broccoli causes cancer, you, you needto, provide extraordinary evidence.
Right.
Or if you're going to say, I've now,uh, created fusion energy, which has been
(13:42):
something as you know, scientists havebeen trying to do for, for decades, you
have to provide extraordinary evidencethat you've actually been able to do
it, you know, something that's on, um,a continuum, a small step, uh, that
everyone anticipated was going to happen.
you know, the evidence for it wouldbe less demanding than something
that is, really, sort of what pushesagainst, common wisdom, common thinking.
(14:08):
Um, common sense.
so let me give an example, something,uh, that maybe some of your listeners.
I'm familiar with, you know, dietingadvice, weight, loss, advice, uh,
you know, it's all over the place.
Right?
And, um, I actually wrote a bookabout obesity called the hungry gene.
It was about the obesity gene.
I I'm going to find that bookand I'm going to read it.
(14:32):
Well, it's old now it's 20 years old.
And, uh, you know, um, what interestedme in that was the, I got interested
in that because I was interested inthe biological basis of behavior.
You know, what, what biologicallycan direct our behavior.
And, this was evidence thateating behavior could be to some
degree, uh, driven by genetics.
(14:55):
And so I was very interested in that,in that topic, but in the course
of researching that book, Which washeavy on the genetics and the science
I have obviously encountered a lotof, articles and, and researchers.
Who'd worked in obesity researchand dieting research, and it's
plagued plagued by bad science,bad reporting, bad, everything.
(15:16):
It's just a mess.
So, you know, obviously if there's acase in which if, if someone said to
you, well, look, if you take this, um,you know, pill, if you eat this food,
if you do this, your weight will dropoff instantly, or you can lose weight
without exercising, or you can do these.
You'd have to demandextraordinary evidence.
(15:37):
You'd have to say, okay, I wannaknow how is, how this works, why it
works, what the, you know, scientific,what the mechanism is of it.
What the evidence of it is.
What's the, what theepidemiology of it is.
You'd want all those layers of proofso that's why I say demand evidence.
Um, these days when people are, forexample, unwilling to take, vaccines
(15:59):
oftentimes they're, they're doingthat, without evidence, without good
evidence that they should avoid them.
Now I, I think one of the other lessonsI mentioned later on is that sometimes
people simply can't be dissuaded.
Uh, you know, facts are not what matter,but if people are open to the argument,
then you would wanna lead them to, um,an evidence based argument whenever
(16:23):
possible, as opposed to a, an emotionbased argument, which is hard to do
our egos, get tied into everything.
Well, I was thinking on that.
You're talking about vaccines and I wasthinking about people in my hometown.
I come from a rural town in NorthCarolina, although I haven't
lived there for half a century.
(16:43):
And, uh, but when I , I go onFacebook and see how my high school
friends, they, a lot of them areanti-vaccine and I, and I think, you
know, what's wrong with you people.
And then I realize that part of the answeris it, it takes the, there is a high cost.
You have to exert yourself tofind out accurate information.
(17:07):
And so, for example, when you're talkedabout extraordinary evidence requires,
um, for extraordinary claims, a, alot of people just don't know how to
go about acquiring that information.
Um, I, I like to think that, that I do.
And, and I guess you do,but I guess a lot of people.
Uh, I, I don't know.
You tell me they either don't wantto, or they don't know how to,
(17:28):
or, or they're not open to it.
I, I haven't decided that yet.
Well, I think we living to usethe word extraordinary again.
I think we're, we're living inextraordinary times in which we
used to, depend on and trustexperts to tell us, right.
The whole idea.
When I tell, you know, peopleextraordinary evidence, um, I wouldn't
(17:49):
suggest that a lay person, you know, tryto find the, you know, evidence for black
holes, for example, you know, or thesevery difficult, uh, concepts in physics
or, um, or even, uh, whether a vaccinationis necessarily safe or effective.
I mean, this is where we generallydepend on experts to help us understand
(18:09):
and, and to explain to us, and, uh,the challenge of expertise, thanks to
the internet and Facebook, and other,places, um, that, you know, some of the,
um, in our, our country, some of the,uh, cable news networks, tabloids, the
challenge of expertise, kind of tellsus we all, we all must be experts.
We must all do our own research.
(18:31):
And, uh, that's really impossible.
First of all, many of us are waytoo busy, to do our own research.
You know, a single mother with,with two kids and two jobs, is in
no position, to do her own research.
You know, nor is, a very busy surgeonor, many other people, whatever their
field, you know, a teacher that's, um,you know, working very hard, uh, to teach
(18:55):
his students right in the public schools.
These folks probably don't havethe time, uh, or the energy.
But most importantly, the time, to,to get on the internet and do their
own research, because when people talkabout doing their own research, now
it's usually internet research right.
Of course.
They're not, they're not goingaround interviewing experts.
(19:17):
They're not even going to a library.
They're, they're getting on theinternet and they're looking and the
internet is a very fickle source.
It's all over the place andtrying to figure out what's
true and what's not true.
That's a hell of a job.
It is.
So I don't, I don't blame people.
If they've lost faith, in authorities,the fact that they don't want to,
(19:38):
or, you know, do their own research,I I'm very sympathetic to that.
Yes, it does require a lot of exertionand that takes us to, well, not quite,
it takes us to point number four.
Question received wisdom,
Right.
So again, as a journalist, sometimesthat my, the best and most surprising,
(20:01):
Stories that I've run into.
Let, let me, let me give you an example.
So years ago I had a, a graduate student.
Um, one of my graduate students, uh,came to the United States from, from
Portugal and he had three children thathe brought with him and his and his
wife, and they were moving to the Bostonarea and they couldn't get an apartment.
(20:23):
And the reason they couldn't getan apartment was cuz we, um, have
laws in Boston about lead paint.
Okay.
So lead paint is toxic.
It's a neurotoxin.
Yeah.
And you cannot rent apartments to,to, um, children under the age of six.
If you have lead paint in your apartment.
(20:43):
Now Boston's a very old city.
Much of the housing stock is, is veryold and many, many apartments have
had lead paint in them over the years.
Right?
So this, this young.
Scholar was unable to find an apartment.
And he came to me andtalked to me about it.
So that led me into lookinginto the question of lead paint.
(21:06):
Okay.
I was, I was very interested in this.
I said, wow, that's terrible.
And paint is, you know, lead is terrible,well, anyway, after a few months of,
of researching and talking to expertsall over the world, I found that lead
paint, is, is not necessarily, uh, themain culprit, for our, the high levels
(21:27):
of lead Americans had in their blood.
In the 1970s, the 1960s, it wasactually led in the gasoline
which still in the soil.
Of many, many places around the country.
So this lead settled on, on the soil.
And if you're living in an areawhere there's no grass, uh, and
(21:48):
it's, uh, it's eroded your childrenmight be exposed to lead in the soil
as opposed to lead in the paint.
And in fact, the actual poisoning ofkids through lead paint, uh, in the two
thousands, was actually really quite rare.
And, so I did, you know, a piece on thisfor, magazine we have in the us called
(22:10):
the Atlantic . And, I have to say thatpeople in the public health community,
were quite alarmed by this story because.
They had a campaign about, you know,lead and, you know, the, the, I certainly
do not approve of children consuming,lead, or being exposed to lead.
But what I did challenge was the commonwisdom that lead paint in houses now
(22:32):
in the two thousands, was the primaryculprit of lead exposure in kids.
So again, this came from a personalexperience, and then really interrogating,
uh, the question of what were, what werethe issues, what were the real issues?
and what were the agendas of,of the various parties involved?
We certainly knew the agenda of thelead paint industry but there was also
(22:56):
an agenda on the part of the publichealth community, because they've been
invested in this for a very long timein this theory, it was very, very hard
for them to step back from that theory.
Okay.
So even the good guys, what we thinkof the good guys are often very
vested in a certain point of view.
You, you took on an entrenched interest.
(23:17):
You're not the first guest onthis show to have done that and
to have pay it a price for it.
Two other examples, one examplefrom your book in your book, The
Job, The Changing Nature Of Work,you talked about, you quoted, um, a
researcher, a professor Malrow andI've been in an open office plan.
Everybody I know has been in an openoffice plan, open office plans have
(23:37):
been popular for decades, but accordingto Malro, and in your book, there
is zero evidence that they enhanceproductivity or that they are in any
way better than any other office plan.
But I didn't know thatuntil I read your book.
Right.
So that's Charles Malro.
, he is a ergonomics expert, a designer,um, a engineer, and, exactly right.
(23:59):
You know, that is something that wasput out there, for obvious reasons.
I mean, and there's all sorts of reasonswhy you might wanna have an open office.
If you are a manager or a CEO oran executive, I mean it's cheaper
and it allows surveillance.
Of your employees and itcertainly, um, makes it a lot
easier to surveil your employees.
(24:20):
If you have an open office.
And in fact, Malro, told me thatit can, it can actually have a very
negative effect on, on productivity.
And I think what's interesting.
We've had almost a, um, what we call a,a natural experiment here in the United
States, because what we found in officeworkers working from home, the assumption
(24:41):
is their productivity would crash.
And of course, what we foundin this last year and a half is
people are actually more productivethan they are in the office.
So that gives a little credenceto Malro's theory or his
observation, that productivity isnot enhanced by the open office.
Another revelation, according toEd Zitron, is that the, um, Remote
(25:04):
work has revealed, makes you wonderwhat is the purpose of managers?
I mean, you can no longer, uh, appearto be busy being on the phone, looking
stressed and, uh, when, when the workersare simply doing the work and now
the question is, do we need managers?
That's an interesting question.
That's an interesting question, butyou have to be very careful with
(25:26):
that because these so-called flathierarchies, which I write about in
The Job are also problematic, right?
This, this idea that there wouldn't,there's not a hierarchy that we're all,
we're all on the same page, that canbe very problematic, cuz it can lead
to, ganging up on employees, you know?
spying on your fellow, on yourcolleagues, who has the real authority?
(25:50):
because ultimately therealways is an authority right.
Even if you don't have a manager, theexecutive suite are the authorities but
I think that's a very, I think that'sa very interesting question of, of do
we need as many managers as we have?
I, I, I don't have theanswer to that question.
Well Zitron does.
And the answer is no because thenumber of managers has exploded.
(26:13):
He gives the stats for it.
I don't recall, although I have mentionedit at one time in the past, um, I
have a scientific question for you.
This talks about received wisdom.
How many chromosomesdoes a human body have?
How many pairs of chromosomes?
There's 23 pairs of chromosomes
but you know the story for manyyears, it was thought to be 24 because
(26:34):
the university of Texas scientists,Theophilus Painter counted, and he
came up with 24 and for 30 years itwas maintained to be 24 and then an
Indonesian researcher working in Sweden.
Gotta be a story there.
Um, who was an amateur photographer?
Did the research.
Found out that it was 24, photographed it.
(26:54):
And then ever since then,it's been, we know, sorry.
It is 23.
The actual number is 23.
Ever since then, we know it's 23.
Yet you go onto Google right now,today you type in how many chromosomes
does you be have, and you willfind page after page, after page
asserting without equivocation thatit's 24, which is the wrong number.
It's 23.
(27:15):
And, and, and I, to me, thisillustrated the, um, the potency
of, of that lesson, um, questionreceived wisdom because it just.
It just, ain't always right.
Just because it's been broadcastfor 30 years and all the, I, I don't
remember the Indonesian scientist name,but all he did was go back and count.
figure pairs in the photographs.
(27:37):
You just double check.
Yeah.
And it's arithmetic, right?
yeah.
And that's the danger of the internetbecause one of those little mistakes
gets magnified and amplified, youknow, infinite numbers of not infinite,
but very large numbers of times.
And so it becomes, it becomes true.
We know if we, you repeat a,and we know this from our,
(28:00):
our former president, right.
That if you repeat a falsehoodenough times, it becomes true.
well, yeah, we know it from JosephGoebbels, actually back in world
war II, but it reminds me of PaulKrugman , calls them zombie ideas.
They just go shambling along brain dead.
Nothing can seem to kill them.
(28:20):
So they, so that's right.
Good movies, but poor politic.
Exactly.
All right.
Lesson, number five, or up torise above your assumptions.
Yeah.
I seem to be saying the same.
I'm so boring.
I say the same thing again andagain, I, again, I rise above your
assumptions is we, we make assumptions.
(28:41):
We make assumptions about people.
How many, let me tell you a great story.
There's a, a guy.
I have a colleague he's,he's another writer.
And one day he passed me.
He was going past a restaurant and I waseating lunch alone in the restaurant.
And he came in the restaurantand he looked at me.
He said, Ellen, You don't eat hamburgers.
(29:04):
And I was sitting thereeating a hamburger.
I'm eating a hamburger.
And he said you're not the type
in it's it's false because what he wasseeing in front of his eyes, Was me eating
a hamburger and, um, I, I thought thisis such a great example of assumptions
(29:27):
you make about people they're wrong.
And then, and then when, whenthey show you to be wrong by the
behavior, it's that doesn't matter.
You, you kind of made theseassumptions about them.
So, um, I guess I, I I'm hopeful thatpeople are more flexible in their
thinking, uh, this guy's name was Markand I, and I, I just, it, it was, it was
(29:48):
such a funny experience and I'll, and I'llnever forget it because it did make me
question his writing, uh, what he wroteabout others, because he comes in with
assumptions about who the person is andthen projects them, uh, on onto reality.
So I think we have to bereally careful about that.
As Kierkegaard said, once you label me,you negate me, but I do have to wonder
(30:12):
exactly what is a hamburger type person.
I've got my mind racing now.
Well, you, you know that most people'sattitudes, durable attitudes form between
the ages of checks notes 18 to 25.
And I would like to think that they'remodified substantially in the next
(30:32):
quarter century, because I mean, if you,if you're hanging onto the same beliefs,
opinions, attitudes that you pickedup in high school, well, that, that
doesn't, that doesn't say a lot aboutyour, um, spiritual, emotional evolution.
Does it?
Yeah, it sounds like a boringlife, but I, I it's comfortable.
(30:54):
Right.
So you settle in, uh, you know, between18 and 25 and you got your way of
thinking and that's the way it is.
It doesn't sound like a lotof fun, but it's comfortable.
So some people, I guess,seek comfort over fun.
Uh, yes.
security over stimulation.
Yes.
I mean, I I'm continually amazed athow stupid I was two weeks ago or, or
(31:17):
even 48 hours ago of truth be known.
But, but therein they'rein lies the adventure.
I think software engineers have aphrase that may your, your, your
lesson made me think about this.
They call it, update yourpriors when they're trying
to solve a technical problem.
What are your prior assumptions youwalked into when you faced this problem?
You need to update them.
(31:38):
Because there and will probably bethe key to why you're not solving it.
So I remember that phraseupdate your prior assumptions,
you know, good for software.
Good for everything.
Yeah.
I would use a different word, I wouldsay, um, challenge and have other
people help you because it's, it'spretty hard to update your priors.
You know, you're an, you'rea closed circuit, right?
(31:59):
so you need input from outside, right?
okay.
Lesson number closed circuit.
Yeah.
I'm I'm gonna tell my wife thatshe will appreciate she, she
will say Ellen knows you so well.
lesson number six, be selfconfident enough to give others
the benefit of the doubt.
(32:19):
Now that's a well crafted sentence Ellenare you a, are you a writer or something?
yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I like, like, like so many peopleI can be defensive and sometimes think
the worst be suspicious of others.
And that's usually reflectionof my own insecurity.
So I would suggest, I mean,that's, that was a less, that
(32:41):
was a hard learned lesson.
You know, how insecure , you know,so many of us are including me.
I never think of myself as insecure.
And I think people who know me don't thinkI am, but I am . And part, part of that
then is judging others too quickly, makingassumption about others, uh, and not
giving people the benefit, of the doubt.
(33:03):
Yeah.
so it's, it makes your life a loteasier if you do give people the
benefit of the doubt, it makes it a lotmore pleasant and it makes it easier.
And it also, I think isusually, um, correct.
At vis Avi, the kinds of things wewere talking about before you know,
let's face the vast majority of peopleare not mean spirited, are not, liars
(33:26):
are not, con men and women, you know,they, they do wanna do the right thing.
And if you go in with that assumptionor work hard on, on going in with a,
you know, make making that your, yourbottom line assumption, your starting
assumption you'll usually be right.
And it also makes, makes your lifea lot easier and more pleasant.
(33:46):
It reduces the friction and, uh,transactions in life I I've observed.
And, uh, like you, I mean, it's a lesson.
I have to keep practicing, practicing,practicing, but the, the, the statistics,
the numbers are actually with you on that.
I mean, I was, uh, reading StevenPinker's book on, on enlightenment,
and he was talking about the decliningrates of homicide in the world.
(34:09):
Now you, you watch TV and yourealize, or you think that God we're
living in the most violent age ever.
It's not even close Pinker'sor he's quoting research,
um, all around the world.
The most violent places in theworld are very few and it's not
in a country, it's in a state.
It's not in a state, it's in a particulararea, a particular neighborhood.
(34:31):
It's not the whole neighborhood.
It's a couple of blocks on the, butit's not everybody on the block.
It's a few people on the blockthat are causing all the, all
the violence and, and these, and,and I was reflecting upon that.
That's pretty much life.
It's just what you said.
You know, most people justwant to get on, get on with it.
Get along with everybody and enjoy lifeand trusting others may be difficult, but
(34:55):
ultimately, uh, the stats are with you.
You're going with the flow,
right?
Right.
Lesson number seven, feelings,trump facts on many matters and
the rational can be overrated.
Right.
So that was what I was talkingabout earlier about vaccines.
People's feelings, theiremotional response to things
(35:17):
can be very, very powerful.
And, um, if you're an empiricist, orhyper rational, which I tend to be, you
can, under, estimate the, the importance,uh, to other people of their feeling
of maybe their spiritual life or theiremotional life or their, or their personal
history and in how it can color, theirviews and just throwing facts at them
(35:43):
is, is not going to persuade them.
You know, that's, that's not whatthey're about, they're not with you.
the way, uh, and maybe my joband, and your job is not to
go around persuading people.
Um, I see my job, not as persuadingpeople, but as on shining a light
on things So if people wanna look,they can look, but I can't force
(36:04):
them to look and that's not my job.
I don't see it that way.
I think too often, you know,we're screaming at the top of our
lungs, you know, you're an idiot.
You don't understand, you don'tget the facts, but that's not even.
On the table for the other person.
That's, that's not whatthey're talking about.
And so you are the idiot because you're,you're throwing facts at someone who's,
(36:25):
who's not in, in that frame of mind.
That's not where they're where they are.
So you have to respond to, you know,emotional, emotional temperature.
I read a book on decision making andit was talk about the composition
of a decision has a rationaland an emotional component.
And in fact, they were arguing withsome neuropsychological research to
(36:46):
it that you cannot make a decisionwithout the emotional component.
And it made me think about I'mone of those guys who looks at
the election results and say, whyare those stupid people voting
against their own self-interest?
And then I, it finally,it didn't Dawn upon me.
I read it somewhere, nobody votes againsttheir self-interest, everybody votes
(37:06):
for their perceived self-interests.
And, and most recently I, Iread something somewhere that.
People there's talking about theus, but I'll just use as an example.
So many voters in the us, it assertedfeel so powerless feel so, um, that
their vote doesn't count that when theyvote, it's not a political exercise.
(37:31):
It's an emotional exercise, sortof like a cry out, maybe a shout.
And I've been thinking aboutthat the last few days.
That makes a lot of senseto me because it's so human.
It is so very, very human.
Exactly.
No, I, I agree with you entirely.
And I think later I'm gonna touch uponwhat you just said about voting and
(37:53):
self interest, but I'll, I'll save that.
Okay.
Okay.
Lesson number eight.
You're bored because you'renot paying attention.
Right.
So, um, I learned this lesson a long timeago, so my first book, What was built
around a AR another article I'd writtenfor the Atlantic, about the, the daycare
(38:16):
crisis childcare crisis in the UnitedStates, it was called A Child's Place.
And it's, it was written in aform that's called narrative
nonfiction, where you kind ofimmersed yourself in the experience.
So what I was doing at the time, Ihad a two year old myself, two year
old daughter, and, um, I would goevery week and spend a day at the
(38:37):
daycare center and I was going bonkers.
I mean, completely B it was themost boring experience of my life.
I just, I just didn't.
How was I going to do this?
And how could these people stand workingwith these little children all day long?
Now I adore children, right?
But nonetheless, they are not the mostfascinating thing after an hour or two.
(38:58):
And then I realized the problem was me.
Right because I wasn'treally paying attention.
I was watching the clock.
I was, you know, wantedto get out of there.
I was, I wanted to talk to adults.
I, you know, and I decided I'm gonnareally do what the teachers do,
which is really watch the childrenand, and engage with the children.
(39:21):
And the day, I won't say itflew by, but so much better.
so oftentimes when we're bored, it'sbecause we really aren't paying attention.
We're not, experiencing the experienceand this is, and this sounds very,
you know, Buddhist, which I'm not, butbeing, being in the moment and really,
(39:42):
um, enjoying and, and trying to enjoyand learn from the moment, as opposed to
thinking about the next thing we wanna do.
As you know, we, you know, boredomhas, has almost become, it's almost an
artifact of a, of a previous centurybecause now we, we, we don't need to
be bored because we can pull our phoneout and entertain ourselves and, and
(40:03):
any moment , but of course, we've,we, we've lost so much by not being
bored enough to really pay attention.
I think a lot of us, intuited, thislearned this, I mean, it wasn't just me
who learned this at the daycare center.
I think many people learnedthis by paying close attention.
Um, the boredom lifts.
(40:25):
And, and we can become engrossed,which is the opposite of boredom.
Right?
So I just, I just sort of feelthat, um, all of us need to step
back from our devices if we canand, and, and pay attention.
And we'll find that we won't be astwitchy and looking for the next thing,
um, all the time, which I think manyof us realize we're doing and are very
(40:49):
unhappy with ourselves for doing it.
Your, um, comment reminds me ofOliver Berkman, who is a, was
a columnist in the, um, for theguardian in the UK and an author.
Now living in the us, he was a gueston this show and he tells the story.
I don't know if he told it onour show or in his book, but
he went to a Harvard art class.
(41:12):
He he's a British guy andthe, the, the teacher, she
assigns her students the same.
Project, same assignment.
Every time go to a museum, finda work of art that you like
and observe it for three hours.
You cannot take your phone, youcannot take paper and pencil.
You can't take anything to distract you.
And so he did this and, uh, , you know,you're gonna imagine, so the first
(41:37):
seven minutes are okay, then, then hereckons he's been there for an hour.
He looks at his watch.
It's 17 minutes more.
And he just thought, you know,I, I, I, I just don't know
if I can do this, but he did.
And he said, the more he lookedat this work of art, the more he
saw, wait, wait, wait, is thatthe vestige of a ghost image?
Wait, is that image areplication of this one?
(41:58):
What?
That color that matches that.
And it went on then after a whilehe thought, what, what time's.
And, and what a delightful story and whata wonderful experience it is to have that.
And that is the antithesis of whatyou were describing and what I
experience and everyone who's listeningto this experiences every day.
(42:18):
I need some stimulation.
I gotta, I gotta, there'sthe ping of my email.
There's, you know, and, and geez,what a life, which is the subject of
his book of 4,000 weeks, by the way.
Yes, that's fascinating.
I, I, three, three hours is a long time.
I wonder what the painting was.
He did say of course, butit can be, um, any painting.
(42:42):
yeah, he did say, and it's probablywell known it affect it's in Boston.
So, so you would.
I don't, I don't have a hard copy ofthe book, so I can't tell you, but, uh,
okay.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna check it out.
I'm I'm interested because I've,I've had the experience of, being
at the, at the Harvard, art museumsand actually standing in front of
a painting for a very long time.
It's, it's really funny.
I, I completely identify with that.
(43:04):
Yeah, he's so right.
Although three hours is too long.
even for me.
All right.
Lesson number nine.
Don't mistake hurt and guilt for anger.
Yeah, well, right.
So, , people, you know, again, ifwe're talking about work situations,
(43:24):
I recall early in my career.
I got, I got a, again, acolleague, uh, who was my boss,
very, very, very angry at me.
And, um, he was so angry, thatI ended up crying in his office
he was yelling at me so much.
And now looking back at it froma distance, I realize I had, I
(43:47):
had actually hurt his feelings.
and I didn't mean to obviously,um, I was in my twenties and, um,
foolish and impetuous, and, uh,had, had done something that I
think he felt was threatening to himand, , you know, for whatever reason.
Um, and, and I mistook it, it was anger.
(44:07):
He was shouting at me, but it, he,he was hurt and, I think, Sometimes
people, uh, are reacting in that way.
And of course you, if you, I would nevershout back at my boss, but if you did,
you'd be missing the whole point, right?
You're missing the whole point.
He's shouting at you.
Not because he's really mad, butbecause he cannot express his
(44:28):
hurt in a business, uh, situation.
To tell someone you're hurt oryour feelings have been hurt.
Again, I, I hate to say this,but especially a man to say that?
That's true.
It's true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I agree.
It's very, very hard.
Right.
So, so it come it sometimesit's sometimes anger.
Uh, so I think it's reallyhelpful to keep that in mind.
(44:49):
I mean, sometimes it, it, you know,it is anger, but oftentimes it's not.
So it's better to sort thosetwo things out if you can.
It it's so true.
What you said, especiallyabout the male bit.
I do a lot of executive coaching in mywork and, and one of the things I say.
To the person that's hiring me, I willwork with him or her doesn't matter.
And they will tell me things.
(45:10):
They won't tell you simply becauseyou're their boss and they won't.
I mean, they might tell me that youare a dickhead or that you are, you
know, you offend them or et cetera,cetera, but they won't say that to
you because they feel they can't.
And so, and it's good to beable to express that and I
might help them explore ways toexpress it to, uh, their boss.
(45:31):
I'm just saying, amen, Iguess to what you just said.
I think it's changing.
I think, I know when my childrenwere little, my husband was very
reluctant, to say, that he needed tosay to stay home with a sick child.
Okay.
This was something that was really,you know, not, uh, not in his.
You know, portfolio hewas not gonna say that.
(45:54):
And of course for me, you know, I thought,you know, if I had the something I ne I
needed to do, I needed to be on a plane orI needed to, um, if we had a, a sick child
at home and, and he was not on a plane,I was hoping he would tell his employer.
I've got a sick child at home.
But that was, that wasnot something he could do.
(46:15):
Now, um, my, I, my children aregrown, my daughters are grown, and
one of my daughters is a parent andher husband, uh, is perfectly open to
saying that I think it's generational.
I think it's, I think it's wonderful that,um, millennials and generated generation
Z, uh, are able to, to, you know, menare able to do that, uh, a lot more.
(46:38):
And so maybe this will change.
Maybe it's all changing.
lesson number 10.
Empathy is not compassion.
Right.
Right.
So empathizing and, and anybody, andany of your listeners who have training
in psychology probably already knowthis, but it, it took me, I don't.
(46:59):
And so it took me a long time.
I tend to be very empathic.
A lot of writers are, you know, butthat's very different from compassion.
Empathy oftentimes is when you identifywith, the difficulties, someone
else is going through the challengessomeone else is going through, and
that's good for writer because youcan, then you can write it, right.
(47:20):
But it doesn't make you necessarilya good friend or a good boss, because
really you don't really need toreally feel it, or really deeply
understand it to have compassion.
Right.
So compassion is to forgive the personor be a good listener or be supportive.
It doesn't mean that you're feeling it.
(47:42):
Those are very, very different things.
And I think as a, in fact,as a manager, I, I think that
empathy can get in your way.
I think it's, you're, you're feeling it.
You're, you're maybe even relating abouthow you've been there too, you know, um,
that doesn't really help the other personit's not really being compassionate.
And I'd say that took me a very longtime to learn, because I do have
(48:06):
this empathic nature, which againis not, I'm not flattering myself.
I don't think that'snecessarily a positive thing.
Being compassionate is a positive thing.
And I've had to work very, veryhard on that and I fail a lot.
Well, you're not the onlyone that the Dai Lama says.
Um, we must practice itbecause it doesn't come easily.
(48:29):
Doesn't come naturally.
In fact, he goes through and hesays, you need all those dickhead
and Jack asses in your life.
And I say, why Dai Lama?
And he says, because you need to practice.
You're not very good at it.
And it's kind of hard to refute thatlogic because, so, you know, you get
so many opportunities to practiceand that's how you get better at it.
I guess that's how youbecome the Dai Lama.
(48:49):
And he, he makes it very clear that, andI think as you, as you said, you you've,
well, you haven't said it in so many ways.
What you've revealed is that, youknow, you have the same emotions
and feelings as everybody else.
As the Dai Lama has, we all have thesame feelings and sets of emotions.
There's no difference in sort of the rawingredients that go into our personality.
(49:11):
It's just the, the salad that getstossed, um, taste a bit different.
I guess that's how I would put that.
Well, I have a long way to goto reach the Dai Lama's level of
compassion, but we can all aspire.
it's like I say, I ain't running for DaiLama, so don't hold me to that standard.
(49:31):
You know, I said I'm aday by day kind of guy.
I never, I never claimedenlightenment, but you know, that's
why we're doing this podcast.
Speaking.
We've been talking about a lotof things that you've learned.
Can you we'll finish up with this,Ellen, can you think of something
that you have unlearned lately?
Something that you absolutelypositive knew to be true?
(49:54):
Uh, very recently, but, and now you'vediscovered it's just not the case.
Yes, and I think it's greatDuff, you brought it up.
And, that is, what I used to think,which was that, uh, this, this sort
of this idea among progressivesin the United States that people
vote against their best interests.
(50:14):
And this idea's been outthere, uh, for a long time.
Uh, there was a book called, um,What's The Matter With Kansas
.And it's written by a gentleman.
I think Tom Frank, um, I think that'shis name and, and I, when I read
that book must have been, oh my God.
It must have been 15 years ago.
oh, I, I thought it was wonderfuland I, I thought it was so insightful
(50:34):
and his, his premise is that peoplevote against their best interests.
But you're absolutely right.
people don't vote against theirbest, what they perceive to
be their best interests and.
I think the arrogance on the part ofpeople like me who say that is we think
(50:55):
we know what their best interests are.
And they're voting against them.
And let me give you an example ofhow this was really hit home for me.
When I was doing my last book,The Job I went to Kentucky.
And I spent an evening witha family in Appalachia.
And I don't know if all your listenerswill know about Appalachia, but it can
(51:18):
be a very poor part of the United States.
The mountains of Appalachia and thisfamily, was a father, a mom and, their
kids were mostly grown up, but the fatherwho was 49 years old, he worked in a
glass factory and he made $16 an hourand, he worked in a, a glass factory
(51:40):
that was not unionized so he anti-union.
and so well to the average person thatsounds like he's voting against his
vast interest so I was, I, you know,I was drinking coffee in his kitchen
with his, him and his wife, and Isaid, so you're anti-union and he said,
you better believe I'm anti-union.
And I said, well, why?
(52:00):
And he said, because if we unionizethis glass factory, the work
is gonna go straight to Mexico.
if we have to, if they have to pay usmore, they're gonna close my plant.
And he said, I've got, I don'tknow how many years I've got left
working in this glass factory.
I'm 49 years old.
I hope I have a few more years.
(52:21):
but I won't have anything else.
This is my last job.
This is it.
I can't afford.
To have this glass factory move.
So that, that was areal eye opener for me.
Um, that's his reality and he'sprobably, he's probably right.
There's, there's no law against thiscompany closing and moving to Mexico.
(52:42):
There's no law against it at all.
And after, you know, since I'd writtenthat book Cheap, The High Cost Of
Discount Culture I'd had, I'd seenthis happen over and over again.
And so this guy was right.
So simple unionization wasnot the answer for him.
And so we assume he was votingagainst his best interest.
(53:04):
He absolutely was not.
Okay.
So, uh, that was a real lesson to me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I, I would, uh, having consultedthe boardroom for 30 years, I would
question the received wisdom of hislogic that it would move to, you
know, Offshore, but what do I know?
I mean, I've been in thoseboardrooms and I've seen the
way they make those decisions.
(53:24):
And you know, somebody in Londonmakes a decision to close a, an
office in Sydney and they have,and they, and they've done it.
I've been in meetings where they decidedthe one company bought another company.
They just, so they closed all theirwineries or they took 'em over.
So they don't need wine makers.
They don't need the generalmanagers cuz they got their own.
(53:45):
, and this is something that I havelearned suffering can be visited
upon you has nothing to do with you.
Kind of goes back to your point,about don't take it personally.
It's not about you.
It's about the causes a risingin the world to, to use a Buddhist
phrase and over which you havezero control anyway, that aside.
So, but I guess the point is.
(54:06):
It's not up to us to be telling themwhat to think or to feel, or, or
how to vote or what's best for them.
Cuz as you say, thatis just so patronizing.
It is.
Yes, it is.
Well, can I ask you, do you have,are you working on another book?
What's next for you?
I am.
I, I actually am working on another book.
I just sent out the proposal,last week or had my agent do
(54:30):
it, so I can't talk about it.
right now.
Okay.
Yeah.
Um, I can tell you, uh, so the bookI cannot talk about, but, uh, but
I'm working on, , some other I'm I'mdoing some magazine work as well.
And, uh, it ha most of it's builtaround environmental issues, um,
aquaculture, and, seascapes, thingslike that, which is very appropriate.
(54:53):
Cuz I, I spend about half my yearnow in Maine, which is a seafaring
state and I'm immersed in, um, thequestions of commercial fisheries and
their decline in, in things like that.
So I've been runningabout that quite a bit.
Well, it gives me something tolook forward to the next book.
(55:14):
We'll finish here on that note, you'vebeen listening to the podcast, 10
lessons that took me 50 years to learn.
Our guest today has been Ellen RuppelShell, who is author investigative
journalist and professor ofjournalism at Boston university.
You've heard from us.
We'd like to hear from you.
You can contact us, email us atpodcast@10lessonslearned.com.
That's podcast 10 to numberone, zero lessons, learn.com.
(55:38):
Tell us what you thinkand why you're at it.
Go ahead and hit that subscribe button,because this is the podcast that's making
the world a wiser place lesson by lesson.
Thanks for listen.
We make assumptions about people.
Let me tell you a great story.
guy.
I have a colleague he's,he's another writer.
And one day he passed me.
He was going past a restaurant and I waseating lunch alone in the restaurant.
And he came in the restaurantand he looked at me.
He said, Ellen, You don't eat hamburgers.
And I was sitting thereeating a hamburger.
(00:22):
I'm eating a hamburger.
And he said you're not the type
in it's it's false because what hewas seeing in front of his eyes,
Was me eating a hamburger and, Ithought this is such a great example
of assumptions you make about people.
(00:43):
They're wrong.
And then when, when they showyou to be wrong by the behavior,
it's that doesn't matter.
You, you kind of made theseassumptions about them.
Hello.
Welcome to the podcast.
10 lessons that took me 50 years to learn.
Where we dispense wisdomfor a career in life.
That's wisdom for your career and life.
(01:05):
My name is Duff Watkins and I'm your host.
Our guest today is Ellen RuppelShell, who is an author writer,
investigative journalist.
In fact, she's a professor ofjournalism at Boston university
and she's with us here today.
Hi Ellen, how are you?
Good.
Thank you.
Thanks for inviting me Duff.
I have to say this journey startedwhen I read your book 'Cheap, The
High Cost of Discount Culture'.
(01:26):
Now I'm a guy that's been ininternational business for 30 years.
And I can tell you, after readingyour book, I will never look at
Walmart in quite the same way.
It was such a, a tour force workat explaining, exposing really
how those everyday low pricesthat Westerners are so used to.
And in fact feel they're entitledto how that actually comes about.
(01:47):
And in other words, who really bearsthe cost, I thought that was just
a very important book for business.
Thank you.
The other, and I've finishedalso, um, another more recent book
called 'The Job, The Future OfWork In A Time Of Radical Change'.
And, ah, boy, that too was really goodtalking about the evolving nature of a
job, um, the evolution of a job, and infact, the evolving nature of work itself.
(02:12):
So those are two books I wish to recommendto, uh, to our, our listeners and our
viewers now, which leads me to ask how,how do you write about a lot of things?
Your articles are published in theNew York times, Washington post
Los Angeles times, and I see themfrequently in the Atlantic magazine.
How do you choose what to write about?
Oh, I think like, uh, many writers,um, my topics kind of choose me.
(02:37):
it's generally something that, getsin my head and I can't get it out.
You know, something that has reallybother me a question that's knowing
away at me something that I find,either surprising or perplexing and.
In terms of a book, it gives me a verylarge platform and a lot of time to
work out the answers to that question.
And when I write shorter things, um,either I'm offering an opinion or a
(03:00):
more condensed, um, opportunity toreally investigate, topics of concern.
My background is in science . AndI started as a science journalist,
um, and I teach science journalismat Boston university, but, using the,
being, having some training in science,um, has been very, very helpful in
my life as a journalist because, youuse this a similar, uh, approach to
(03:24):
investigating topics and consideringtopics forming a thesis that you
challenge, what we call the in science,you call it the null hypothesis.
You sort of form a thesis.
This is what I think, but thenyou do everything possible to
kind of, Disprove this theory.
Okay.
Mm-hmm so mm-hmm, generally speaking.
I, I often go in with, withassumptions that turn out to be wrong.
(03:46):
And that's oftentimes rewardingbecause the assumptions that we
go in with as, as lay people,um, uninformed, are often wrong.
And what's most rewarding to meis when I find out that everything
I thought to be true was not.
So when these various topics, thethings that I've written on, that's
oftentimes what their commonality.
So when you mentioned Cheap, The High CostOf Discount Culture, I'm a bargain hunter.
(04:11):
I love shopping for bargains.
Um, I find it kind of atreasure hunt uh, and I love it.
But then one day, um, when I wasthinking about this, I looked in my
closet and I saw all these garmentswith the price tags, still on them,
you know, things, my trophies, right.
That I thought, my gosh, I gotthese at a very good price, but
I, but I'll never wear them.
(04:32):
Right?
And it started, I, I looking at theirrationality of that, led me down
that path to, to really investigatingthe externalities of low price.
So when you're talking about cheap,that's, that's literally how that
started was my own experience.
And with my last book, The Job, whatwas really troubling me was what
was happening in the United States.
(04:53):
I, I saw the tremors of what was to come.
This is pre-Trump.
I was quite concerned about, uh,what was going on and the notion that
everyone in the United States andin the world, in fact, Could just
educate themselves into a good job.
This was kind of the rhetoric,the prevalent rhetoric out there.
And that really worried me.
(05:14):
Um, and I didn't know what that meant.
And so that led me into this investigationthat lasted over seven years.
I looked into that question for aboutseven years, of what is, what is a job?
What does it mean?
How does it differ from work?
Why is it so central to our livesin the United States that it tends
to eclipse almost everything elsein our life and, uh, what are
(05:35):
the limitations in that thinking?
So that's a very longanswer to your question.
But oftentimes it's, uh, another altern.
Another reason I might, uh, tripover a story that's just too
good to not share with people.
So that's another reason, um,some of the things I'm working
on now fall that category.
That's a necessarily a longanswer, but a good answer.
(05:56):
And so that takes us to the 10lessons, uh, 10 life lessons, I
guess let's start with number one.
And this one surprises me.
I must say number one, trust yourself.
Hmm.
Did I say that?
well, I'll tell you why thatsurprises me is because, okay.
(06:17):
You're a science journalist, RichardFineman, the famous, uh, physicist.
He said that in science, you must bevery careful not to fool yourself and you
are the easiest person of all to fool.
And so when I think of trustingmyself, which sounds good, sounds
wise, but, and there's always abut to it is what I'm thinking.
(06:41):
So that's why I'm interested inyour version of trust yourself.
Well, I think that was a prettyflip comment, um, because
I always challenged myself.
I'm really surprised thatI, that I wrote that.
now again, Duff, let's tell the audiencethat it's been a while we've had many
aborted attempts to, uh, to connect.
And, uh, so it's been months sinceI, I think I sent you that list.
(07:04):
I guess the only reason I wouldeven think that such a thing
could possibly be true is.
That sometimes, casting aside, theopinions of others can be very useful.
Right?
And that's happened to me, um,several times in my career.
I won't go into it, uh, but often, uh,I, some of the things I've written,
especially about science, uh, andpublic health are quite controversial.
(07:28):
But over the test of time, they'veturned out to be largely true.
And, um, again, part of the reason Ithink for that is because I, I go in, with
assumptions that I'm willing to discard.
Okay.
Based on evidence and again, that comesback to this training I've had in science.
You know, you, you go in again withan hypothesis, uh, but you don't,
(07:50):
you're not married to that hypothesis.
And too often in journalism, whichis my, my field, um, people go
in with a, a foregone conclusionand stick with it, and it's very
important to them to stick with it.
And they, they have to contort,themselves into, you know, into
knots to, to stick with it.
I've been liberated bybeing okay with being wrong.
(08:14):
So I guess, overall, I trustmy instincts, but that like
Fineman he's absolutely right.
Um, he put it beautifully,uh, I'm often wrong.
Okay.
But I expect I will be wrongand I'm prepared to be wrong.
I think that's my experience too.
I've written articles whereI, that were tendentious.
I had a point to make when I started, thenwhen I started interviewing everybody,
(08:37):
I found that I was completely wrong.
And because I, because the people I weretalking to were doing it so well, as well
as anything that I could have predicted,or, suggested or prescribed to them that
it changed my whole, uh, conclusion.
Well, it changed the whole article,but for the better . And I started
out opinionated and, and learned alot in the process, which I think is
both good writing and good scienceand good living come to think of it.
(09:01):
All right.
Lesson number two, don't takebusiness matters personally.
Now I know how I learned this lesson.
Ellen, I'm curious how you learned it.
Well, um, I'm pretty thin skinned.
I'm not a, a hardcharging business person.
I'm, I'm not a business person at all.
Um, and as a writer, as you probablyknow, writers tend to be, thin
(09:24):
skinned and, and a little neurotic.
So, , it was a lesson for me to learnthat, uh, and I had a very good friend,
a very successful, well known writer.
I was calling him at one point and, askingfor pity for what I considered to be abuse
by an editor who we both had at the time.
(09:44):
And I thought I was being singledout for abuse by this editor.
And my friend said to me,oh, no, you're not special.
, he's, uh, he's just as abusiveto me and it's not personal.
And I often think about thatbecause I think a lot of the
times we feel singled out.
(10:05):
That we're getting special treatment,uh, especially bad treatment.
Right.
And in fact, it's, it's simplythe way that person operates.
And right now in the time, you know, with,with COVID, I've heard this, uh, very,
very frequently from, um, colleagues and,and friends that, their responses have
been very slow and people are not givingthem the time that they think they should.
(10:29):
And they think, again, that it'sbecause of them it's personal.
And of course it's not, and it's ofteneasy to forget, you know, the kind of,
um, complexity of other people's lives.
Right.
The kinds of things.
And I'll give you an example.
Um, I was talking to aneditor a couple of weeks ago.
(10:50):
At a, at a publishing house in New York.
And, he said, I really apologize,for getting, you know, having
taken so long to get back to you.
But today, my middle schooleris, is starting his first
day of school post COVID.
My wife has, been through allthis, my uncle had COVID, you
know, it was one thing afteranother that he's going through.
(11:11):
And of of course I was very, understandingand sympathetic, but to be perfectly
honest, I was worried that , there wassomething, it was something about me.
So I think the best, policy isalways to, to start by assuming,
that the other person, that you'redealing with, does not have anything
against you is it's not personal.
(11:32):
Uh, they may be confused.
They may be incompetent.
But it's not, it's not about you.
Right.
So I think that's especiallyimportant for women.
Women tend to take it on quite quickly.
I know my husband very rarelythinks, uh, he's done anything wrong.
(11:53):
but my kind of guy.
Right, right.
But many women assume no matter whatthey say that, that it is, it is them.
And, and so I, I think that's justsomething for women to keep in mind and
it's not, it's not, um, it's somethingyou have to constantly remind yourself of.
It's not one and done.
You always have to remind yourself.
(12:14):
It, it is, it's a lesson that isdifficult to learn that what the world
doesn't revolve around me and everything.
And you like to think thatwe graduate from that around
somewhere between 14 to 18.
But no, no.
It has a legacy it's in there.
And it's hard not totake things personally.
It requires a bit of discipline.
And as you say, a lot of practicenow that's for your husband.
(12:35):
I'm with him.
Just remind him of the famous saying.
Never attribute to malice that whichcan be explained by incompetence.
And, you know, that's kind of mylife it's often live my life by that.
It's not me it's them.
So there is some utility aboutthat, but, uh, But, you know, you're
(12:56):
talking about editors and I, um, a bigbreakthrough in, in, in my writing was
when I realized, just do what they want.
Just give them what they want,give them copy, you know, start,
stop getting stop arguing.
And,
Lesson number three.
And this is the beauty.
Demand evidence and extraordinaryclaims require extraordinary evidence.
(13:18):
Right.
Right.
So again, this is the, this is a,you know, from science and, you know,
if you make extraordinary claims, ifyou, uh, for example, if you say that
broccoli causes cancer, you, you needto, provide extraordinary evidence.
Right.
Or if you're going to say, I've now,uh, created fusion energy, which has been
(13:42):
something as you know, scientists havebeen trying to do for, for decades, you
have to provide extraordinary evidencethat you've actually been able to do
it, you know, something that's on, um,a continuum, a small step, uh, that
everyone anticipated was going to happen.
you know, the evidence for it wouldbe less demanding than something
that is, really, sort of what pushesagainst, common wisdom, common thinking.
(14:08):
Um, common sense.
so let me give an example, something,uh, that maybe some of your listeners.
I'm familiar with, you know, dietingadvice, weight, loss, advice, uh,
you know, it's all over the place.
Right?
And, um, I actually wrote a bookabout obesity called the hungry gene.
It was about the obesity gene.
I I'm going to find that bookand I'm going to read it.
(14:32):
Well, it's old now it's 20 years old.
And, uh, you know, um, what interestedme in that was the, I got interested
in that because I was interested inthe biological basis of behavior.
You know, what, what biologicallycan direct our behavior.
And, this was evidence thateating behavior could be to some
degree, uh, driven by genetics.
(14:55):
And so I was very interested in that,in that topic, but in the course
of researching that book, Which washeavy on the genetics and the science
I have obviously encountered a lotof, articles and, and researchers.
Who'd worked in obesity researchand dieting research, and it's
plagued plagued by bad science,bad reporting, bad, everything.
(15:16):
It's just a mess.
So, you know, obviously if there's acase in which if, if someone said to
you, well, look, if you take this, um,you know, pill, if you eat this food,
if you do this, your weight will dropoff instantly, or you can lose weight
without exercising, or you can do these.
You'd have to demandextraordinary evidence.
(15:37):
You'd have to say, okay, I wannaknow how is, how this works, why it
works, what the, you know, scientific,what the mechanism is of it.
What the evidence of it is.
What's the, what theepidemiology of it is.
You'd want all those layers of proofso that's why I say demand evidence.
Um, these days when people are, forexample, unwilling to take, vaccines
(15:59):
oftentimes they're, they're doingthat, without evidence, without good
evidence that they should avoid them.
Now I, I think one of the other lessonsI mentioned later on is that sometimes
people simply can't be dissuaded.
Uh, you know, facts are not what matter,but if people are open to the argument,
then you would wanna lead them to, um,an evidence based argument whenever
(16:23):
possible, as opposed to a, an emotionbased argument, which is hard to do
our egos, get tied into everything.
Well, I was thinking on that.
You're talking about vaccines and I wasthinking about people in my hometown.
I come from a rural town in NorthCarolina, although I haven't
lived there for half a century.
(16:43):
And, uh, but when I , I go onFacebook and see how my high school
friends, they, a lot of them areanti-vaccine and I, and I think, you
know, what's wrong with you people.
And then I realize that part of the answeris it, it takes the, there is a high cost.
You have to exert yourself tofind out accurate information.
(17:07):
And so, for example, when you're talkedabout extraordinary evidence requires,
um, for extraordinary claims, a, alot of people just don't know how to
go about acquiring that information.
Um, I, I like to think that, that I do.
And, and I guess you do,but I guess a lot of people.
Uh, I, I don't know.
You tell me they either don't wantto, or they don't know how to,
(17:28):
or, or they're not open to it.
I, I haven't decided that yet.
Well, I think we living to usethe word extraordinary again.
I think we're, we're living inextraordinary times in which we
used to, depend on and trustexperts to tell us, right.
The whole idea.
When I tell, you know, peopleextraordinary evidence, um, I wouldn't
(17:49):
suggest that a lay person, you know, tryto find the, you know, evidence for black
holes, for example, you know, or thesevery difficult, uh, concepts in physics
or, um, or even, uh, whether a vaccinationis necessarily safe or effective.
I mean, this is where we generallydepend on experts to help us understand
(18:09):
and, and to explain to us, and, uh,the challenge of expertise, thanks to
the internet and Facebook, and other,places, um, that, you know, some of the,
um, in our, our country, some of the,uh, cable news networks, tabloids, the
challenge of expertise, kind of tellsus we all, we all must be experts.
We must all do our own research.
(18:31):
And, uh, that's really impossible.
First of all, many of us are waytoo busy, to do our own research.
You know, a single mother with,with two kids and two jobs, is in
no position, to do her own research.
You know, nor is, a very busy surgeonor, many other people, whatever their
field, you know, a teacher that's, um,you know, working very hard, uh, to teach
(18:55):
his students right in the public schools.
These folks probably don't havethe time, uh, or the energy.
But most importantly, the time, to,to get on the internet and do their
own research, because when people talkabout doing their own research, now
it's usually internet research right.
Of course.
They're not, they're not goingaround interviewing experts.
(19:17):
They're not even going to a library.
They're, they're getting on theinternet and they're looking and the
internet is a very fickle source.
It's all over the place andtrying to figure out what's
true and what's not true.
That's a hell of a job.
It is.
So I don't, I don't blame people.
If they've lost faith, in authorities,the fact that they don't want to,
(19:38):
or, you know, do their own research,I I'm very sympathetic to that.
Yes, it does require a lot of exertionand that takes us to, well, not quite,
it takes us to point number four.
Question received wisdom,
Right.
So again, as a journalist, sometimesthat my, the best and most surprising,
(20:01):
Stories that I've run into.
Let, let me, let me give you an example.
So years ago I had a, a graduate student.
Um, one of my graduate students, uh,came to the United States from, from
Portugal and he had three children thathe brought with him and his and his
wife, and they were moving to the Bostonarea and they couldn't get an apartment.
(20:23):
And the reason they couldn't getan apartment was cuz we, um, have
laws in Boston about lead paint.
Okay.
So lead paint is toxic.
It's a neurotoxin.
Yeah.
And you cannot rent apartments to,to, um, children under the age of six.
If you have lead paint in your apartment.
(20:43):
Now Boston's a very old city.
Much of the housing stock is, is veryold and many, many apartments have
had lead paint in them over the years.
Right?
So this, this young.
Scholar was unable to find an apartment.
And he came to me andtalked to me about it.
So that led me into lookinginto the question of lead paint.
(21:06):
Okay.
I was, I was very interested in this.
I said, wow, that's terrible.
And paint is, you know, lead is terrible,well, anyway, after a few months of,
of researching and talking to expertsall over the world, I found that lead
paint, is, is not necessarily, uh, themain culprit, for our, the high levels
(21:27):
of lead Americans had in their blood.
In the 1970s, the 1960s, it wasactually led in the gasoline
which still in the soil.
Of many, many places around the country.
So this lead settled on, on the soil.
And if you're living in an areawhere there's no grass, uh, and
(21:48):
it's, uh, it's eroded your childrenmight be exposed to lead in the soil
as opposed to lead in the paint.
And in fact, the actual poisoning ofkids through lead paint, uh, in the two
thousands, was actually really quite rare.
And, so I did, you know, a piece on thisfor, magazine we have in the us called
(22:10):
the Atlantic . And, I have to say thatpeople in the public health community,
were quite alarmed by this story because.
They had a campaign about, you know,lead and, you know, the, the, I certainly
do not approve of children consuming,lead, or being exposed to lead.
But what I did challenge was the commonwisdom that lead paint in houses now
(22:32):
in the two thousands, was the primaryculprit of lead exposure in kids.
So again, this came from a personalexperience, and then really interrogating,
uh, the question of what were, what werethe issues, what were the real issues?
and what were the agendas of,of the various parties involved?
We certainly knew the agenda of thelead paint industry but there was also
(22:56):
an agenda on the part of the publichealth community, because they've been
invested in this for a very long timein this theory, it was very, very hard
for them to step back from that theory.
Okay.
So even the good guys, what we thinkof the good guys are often very
vested in a certain point of view.
You, you took on an entrenched interest.
(23:17):
You're not the first guest onthis show to have done that and
to have pay it a price for it.
Two other examples, one examplefrom your book in your book, The
Job, The Changing Nature Of Work,you talked about, you quoted, um, a
researcher, a professor Malrow andI've been in an open office plan.
Everybody I know has been in an openoffice plan, open office plans have
(23:37):
been popular for decades, but accordingto Malro, and in your book, there
is zero evidence that they enhanceproductivity or that they are in any
way better than any other office plan.
But I didn't know thatuntil I read your book.
Right.
So that's Charles Malro.
, he is a ergonomics expert, a designer,um, a engineer, and, exactly right.
(23:59):
You know, that is something that wasput out there, for obvious reasons.
I mean, and there's all sorts of reasonswhy you might wanna have an open office.
If you are a manager or a CEO oran executive, I mean it's cheaper
and it allows surveillance.
Of your employees and itcertainly, um, makes it a lot
easier to surveil your employees.
(24:20):
If you have an open office.
And in fact, Malro, told me thatit can, it can actually have a very
negative effect on, on productivity.
And I think what's interesting.
We've had almost a, um, what we call a,a natural experiment here in the United
States, because what we found in officeworkers working from home, the assumption
(24:41):
is their productivity would crash.
And of course, what we foundin this last year and a half is
people are actually more productivethan they are in the office.
So that gives a little credenceto Malro's theory or his
observation, that productivity isnot enhanced by the open office.
Another revelation, according toEd Zitron, is that the, um, Remote
(25:04):
work has revealed, makes you wonderwhat is the purpose of managers?
I mean, you can no longer, uh, appearto be busy being on the phone, looking
stressed and, uh, when, when the workersare simply doing the work and now
the question is, do we need managers?
That's an interesting question.
That's an interesting question, butyou have to be very careful with
(25:26):
that because these so-called flathierarchies, which I write about in
The Job are also problematic, right?
This, this idea that there wouldn't,there's not a hierarchy that we're all,
we're all on the same page, that canbe very problematic, cuz it can lead
to, ganging up on employees, you know?
spying on your fellow, on yourcolleagues, who has the real authority?
(25:50):
because ultimately therealways is an authority right.
Even if you don't have a manager, theexecutive suite are the authorities but
I think that's a very, I think that'sa very interesting question of, of do
we need as many managers as we have?
I, I, I don't have theanswer to that question.
Well Zitron does.
And the answer is no because thenumber of managers has exploded.
(26:13):
He gives the stats for it.
I don't recall, although I have mentionedit at one time in the past, um, I
have a scientific question for you.
This talks about received wisdom.
How many chromosomesdoes a human body have?
How many pairs of chromosomes?
There's 23 pairs of chromosomes
but you know the story for manyyears, it was thought to be 24 because
(26:34):
the university of Texas scientists,Theophilus Painter counted, and he
came up with 24 and for 30 years itwas maintained to be 24 and then an
Indonesian researcher working in Sweden.
Gotta be a story there.
Um, who was an amateur photographer?
Did the research.
Found out that it was 24, photographed it.
(26:54):
And then ever since then,it's been, we know, sorry.
It is 23.
The actual number is 23.
Ever since then, we know it's 23.
Yet you go onto Google right now,today you type in how many chromosomes
does you be have, and you willfind page after page, after page
asserting without equivocation thatit's 24, which is the wrong number.
It's 23.
(27:15):
And, and, and I, to me, thisillustrated the, um, the potency
of, of that lesson, um, questionreceived wisdom because it just.
It just, ain't always right.
Just because it's been broadcastfor 30 years and all the, I, I don't
remember the Indonesian scientist name,but all he did was go back and count.
figure pairs in the photographs.
(27:37):
You just double check.
Yeah.
And it's arithmetic, right?
yeah.
And that's the danger of the internetbecause one of those little mistakes
gets magnified and amplified, youknow, infinite numbers of not infinite,
but very large numbers of times.
And so it becomes, it becomes true.
We know if we, you repeat a,and we know this from our,
(28:00):
our former president, right.
That if you repeat a falsehoodenough times, it becomes true.
well, yeah, we know it from JosephGoebbels, actually back in world
war II, but it reminds me of PaulKrugman , calls them zombie ideas.
They just go shambling along brain dead.
Nothing can seem to kill them.
(28:20):
So they, so that's right.
Good movies, but poor politic.
Exactly.
All right.
Lesson, number five, or up torise above your assumptions.
Yeah.
I seem to be saying the same.
I'm so boring.
I say the same thing again andagain, I, again, I rise above your
assumptions is we, we make assumptions.
(28:41):
We make assumptions about people.
How many, let me tell you a great story.
There's a, a guy.
I have a colleague he's,he's another writer.
And one day he passed me.
He was going past a restaurant and I waseating lunch alone in the restaurant.
And he came in the restaurantand he looked at me.
He said, Ellen, You don't eat hamburgers.
(29:04):
And I was sitting thereeating a hamburger.
I'm eating a hamburger.
And he said you're not the type
in it's it's false because what he wasseeing in front of his eyes, Was me eating
a hamburger and, um, I, I thought thisis such a great example of assumptions
(29:27):
you make about people they're wrong.
And then, and then when, whenthey show you to be wrong by the
behavior, it's that doesn't matter.
You, you kind of made theseassumptions about them.
So, um, I guess I, I I'm hopeful thatpeople are more flexible in their
thinking, uh, this guy's name was Markand I, and I, I just, it, it was, it was
(29:48):
such a funny experience and I'll, and I'llnever forget it because it did make me
question his writing, uh, what he wroteabout others, because he comes in with
assumptions about who the person is andthen projects them, uh, on onto reality.
So I think we have to bereally careful about that.
As Kierkegaard said, once you label me,you negate me, but I do have to wonder
(30:12):
exactly what is a hamburger type person.
I've got my mind racing now.
Well, you, you know that most people'sattitudes, durable attitudes form between
the ages of checks notes 18 to 25.
And I would like to think that they'remodified substantially in the next
(30:32):
quarter century, because I mean, if you,if you're hanging onto the same beliefs,
opinions, attitudes that you pickedup in high school, well, that, that
doesn't, that doesn't say a lot aboutyour, um, spiritual, emotional evolution.
Does it?
Yeah, it sounds like a boringlife, but I, I it's comfortable.
(30:54):
Right.
So you settle in, uh, you know, between18 and 25 and you got your way of
thinking and that's the way it is.
It doesn't sound like a lotof fun, but it's comfortable.
So some people, I guess,seek comfort over fun.
Uh, yes.
security over stimulation.
Yes.
I mean, I I'm continually amazed athow stupid I was two weeks ago or, or
(31:17):
even 48 hours ago of truth be known.
But, but therein they'rein lies the adventure.
I think software engineers have aphrase that may your, your, your
lesson made me think about this.
They call it, update yourpriors when they're trying
to solve a technical problem.
What are your prior assumptions youwalked into when you faced this problem?
You need to update them.
(31:38):
Because there and will probably bethe key to why you're not solving it.
So I remember that phraseupdate your prior assumptions,
you know, good for software.
Good for everything.
Yeah.
I would use a different word, I wouldsay, um, challenge and have other
people help you because it's, it'spretty hard to update your priors.
You know, you're an, you'rea closed circuit, right?
(31:59):
so you need input from outside, right?
okay.
Lesson number closed circuit.
Yeah.
I'm I'm gonna tell my wife thatshe will appreciate she, she
will say Ellen knows you so well.
lesson number six, be selfconfident enough to give others
the benefit of the doubt.
(32:19):
Now that's a well crafted sentence Ellenare you a, are you a writer or something?
yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I like, like, like so many peopleI can be defensive and sometimes think
the worst be suspicious of others.
And that's usually reflectionof my own insecurity.
So I would suggest, I mean,that's, that was a less, that
(32:41):
was a hard learned lesson.
You know, how insecure , you know,so many of us are including me.
I never think of myself as insecure.
And I think people who know me don't thinkI am, but I am . And part, part of that
then is judging others too quickly, makingassumption about others, uh, and not
giving people the benefit, of the doubt.
(33:03):
Yeah.
so it's, it makes your life a loteasier if you do give people the
benefit of the doubt, it makes it a lotmore pleasant and it makes it easier.
And it also, I think isusually, um, correct.
At vis Avi, the kinds of things wewere talking about before you know,
let's face the vast majority of peopleare not mean spirited, are not, liars
(33:26):
are not, con men and women, you know,they, they do wanna do the right thing.
And if you go in with that assumptionor work hard on, on going in with a,
you know, make making that your, yourbottom line assumption, your starting
assumption you'll usually be right.
And it also makes, makes your lifea lot easier and more pleasant.
(33:46):
It reduces the friction and, uh,transactions in life I I've observed.
And, uh, like you, I mean, it's a lesson.
I have to keep practicing, practicing,practicing, but the, the, the statistics,
the numbers are actually with you on that.
I mean, I was, uh, reading StevenPinker's book on, on enlightenment,
and he was talking about the decliningrates of homicide in the world.
(34:09):
Now you, you watch TV and yourealize, or you think that God we're
living in the most violent age ever.
It's not even close Pinker'sor he's quoting research,
um, all around the world.
The most violent places in theworld are very few and it's not
in a country, it's in a state.
It's not in a state, it's in a particulararea, a particular neighborhood.
(34:31):
It's not the whole neighborhood.
It's a couple of blocks on the, butit's not everybody on the block.
It's a few people on the blockthat are causing all the, all
the violence and, and these, and,and I was reflecting upon that.
That's pretty much life.
It's just what you said.
You know, most people justwant to get on, get on with it.
Get along with everybody and enjoy lifeand trusting others may be difficult, but
(34:55):
ultimately, uh, the stats are with you.
You're going with the flow,
right?
Right.
Lesson number seven, feelings,trump facts on many matters and
the rational can be overrated.
Right.
So that was what I was talkingabout earlier about vaccines.
People's feelings, theiremotional response to things
(35:17):
can be very, very powerful.
And, um, if you're an empiricist, orhyper rational, which I tend to be, you
can, under, estimate the, the importance,uh, to other people of their feeling
of maybe their spiritual life or theiremotional life or their, or their personal
history and in how it can color, theirviews and just throwing facts at them
(35:43):
is, is not going to persuade them.
You know, that's, that's not whatthey're about, they're not with you.
the way, uh, and maybe my joband, and your job is not to
go around persuading people.
Um, I see my job, not as persuadingpeople, but as on shining a light
on things So if people wanna look,they can look, but I can't force
(36:04):
them to look and that's not my job.
I don't see it that way.
I think too often, you know,we're screaming at the top of our
lungs, you know, you're an idiot.
You don't understand, you don'tget the facts, but that's not even.
On the table for the other person.
That's, that's not whatthey're talking about.
And so you are the idiot because you're,you're throwing facts at someone who's,
(36:25):
who's not in, in that frame of mind.
That's not where they're where they are.
So you have to respond to, you know,emotional, emotional temperature.
I read a book on decision making andit was talk about the composition
of a decision has a rationaland an emotional component.
And in fact, they were arguing withsome neuropsychological research to
(36:46):
it that you cannot make a decisionwithout the emotional component.
And it made me think about I'mone of those guys who looks at
the election results and say, whyare those stupid people voting
against their own self-interest?
And then I, it finally,it didn't Dawn upon me.
I read it somewhere, nobody votes againsttheir self-interest, everybody votes
(37:06):
for their perceived self-interests.
And, and most recently I, Iread something somewhere that.
People there's talking about theus, but I'll just use as an example.
So many voters in the us, it assertedfeel so powerless feel so, um, that
their vote doesn't count that when theyvote, it's not a political exercise.
(37:31):
It's an emotional exercise, sortof like a cry out, maybe a shout.
And I've been thinking aboutthat the last few days.
That makes a lot of senseto me because it's so human.
It is so very, very human.
Exactly.
No, I, I agree with you entirely.
And I think later I'm gonna touch uponwhat you just said about voting and
(37:53):
self interest, but I'll, I'll save that.
Okay.
Okay.
Lesson number eight.
You're bored because you'renot paying attention.
Right.
So, um, I learned this lesson a long timeago, so my first book, What was built
around a AR another article I'd writtenfor the Atlantic, about the, the daycare
(38:16):
crisis childcare crisis in the UnitedStates, it was called A Child's Place.
And it's, it was written in aform that's called narrative
nonfiction, where you kind ofimmersed yourself in the experience.
So what I was doing at the time, Ihad a two year old myself, two year
old daughter, and, um, I would goevery week and spend a day at the
(38:37):
daycare center and I was going bonkers.
I mean, completely B it was themost boring experience of my life.
I just, I just didn't.
How was I going to do this?
And how could these people stand workingwith these little children all day long?
Now I adore children, right?
But nonetheless, they are not the mostfascinating thing after an hour or two.
(38:58):
And then I realized the problem was me.
Right because I wasn'treally paying attention.
I was watching the clock.
I was, you know, wantedto get out of there.
I was, I wanted to talk to adults.
I, you know, and I decided I'm gonnareally do what the teachers do,
which is really watch the childrenand, and engage with the children.
(39:21):
And the day, I won't say itflew by, but so much better.
so oftentimes when we're bored, it'sbecause we really aren't paying attention.
We're not, experiencing the experienceand this is, and this sounds very,
you know, Buddhist, which I'm not, butbeing, being in the moment and really,
(39:42):
um, enjoying and, and trying to enjoyand learn from the moment, as opposed to
thinking about the next thing we wanna do.
As you know, we, you know, boredomhas, has almost become, it's almost an
artifact of a, of a previous centurybecause now we, we, we don't need to
be bored because we can pull our phoneout and entertain ourselves and, and
(40:03):
any moment , but of course, we've,we, we've lost so much by not being
bored enough to really pay attention.
I think a lot of us, intuited, thislearned this, I mean, it wasn't just me
who learned this at the daycare center.
I think many people learnedthis by paying close attention.
Um, the boredom lifts.
(40:25):
And, and we can become engrossed,which is the opposite of boredom.
Right?
So I just, I just sort of feelthat, um, all of us need to step
back from our devices if we canand, and, and pay attention.
And we'll find that we won't be astwitchy and looking for the next thing,
um, all the time, which I think manyof us realize we're doing and are very
(40:49):
unhappy with ourselves for doing it.
Your, um, comment reminds me ofOliver Berkman, who is a, was
a columnist in the, um, for theguardian in the UK and an author.
Now living in the us, he was a gueston this show and he tells the story.
I don't know if he told it onour show or in his book, but
he went to a Harvard art class.
(41:12):
He he's a British guy andthe, the, the teacher, she
assigns her students the same.
Project, same assignment.
Every time go to a museum, finda work of art that you like
and observe it for three hours.
You cannot take your phone, youcannot take paper and pencil.
You can't take anything to distract you.
And so he did this and, uh, , you know,you're gonna imagine, so the first
(41:37):
seven minutes are okay, then, then hereckons he's been there for an hour.
He looks at his watch.
It's 17 minutes more.
And he just thought, you know,I, I, I, I just don't know
if I can do this, but he did.
And he said, the more he lookedat this work of art, the more he
saw, wait, wait, wait, is thatthe vestige of a ghost image?
Wait, is that image areplication of this one?
(41:58):
What?
That color that matches that.
And it went on then after a whilehe thought, what, what time's.
And, and what a delightful story and whata wonderful experience it is to have that.
And that is the antithesis of whatyou were describing and what I
experience and everyone who's listeningto this experiences every day.
(42:18):
I need some stimulation.
I gotta, I gotta, there'sthe ping of my email.
There's, you know, and, and geez,what a life, which is the subject of
his book of 4,000 weeks, by the way.
Yes, that's fascinating.
I, I, three, three hours is a long time.
I wonder what the painting was.
He did say of course, butit can be, um, any painting.
(42:42):
yeah, he did say, and it's probablywell known it affect it's in Boston.
So, so you would.
I don't, I don't have a hard copy ofthe book, so I can't tell you, but, uh,
okay.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna check it out.
I'm I'm interested because I've,I've had the experience of, being
at the, at the Harvard, art museumsand actually standing in front of
a painting for a very long time.
It's, it's really funny.
I, I completely identify with that.
(43:04):
Yeah, he's so right.
Although three hours is too long.
even for me.
All right.
Lesson number nine.
Don't mistake hurt and guilt for anger.
Yeah, well, right.
So, , people, you know, again, ifwe're talking about work situations,
(43:24):
I recall early in my career.
I got, I got a, again, acolleague, uh, who was my boss,
very, very, very angry at me.
And, um, he was so angry, thatI ended up crying in his office
he was yelling at me so much.
And now looking back at it froma distance, I realize I had, I
(43:47):
had actually hurt his feelings.
and I didn't mean to obviously,um, I was in my twenties and, um,
foolish and impetuous, and, uh,had, had done something that I
think he felt was threatening to himand, , you know, for whatever reason.
Um, and, and I mistook it, it was anger.
(44:07):
He was shouting at me, but it, he,he was hurt and, I think, Sometimes
people, uh, are reacting in that way.
And of course you, if you, I would nevershout back at my boss, but if you did,
you'd be missing the whole point, right?
You're missing the whole point.
He's shouting at you.
Not because he's really mad, butbecause he cannot express his
(44:28):
hurt in a business, uh, situation.
To tell someone you're hurt oryour feelings have been hurt.
Again, I, I hate to say this,but especially a man to say that?
That's true.
It's true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I agree.
It's very, very hard.
Right.
So, so it come it sometimesit's sometimes anger.
Uh, so I think it's reallyhelpful to keep that in mind.
(44:49):
I mean, sometimes it, it, you know,it is anger, but oftentimes it's not.
So it's better to sort thosetwo things out if you can.
It it's so true.
What you said, especiallyabout the male bit.
I do a lot of executive coaching in mywork and, and one of the things I say.
To the person that's hiring me, I willwork with him or her doesn't matter.
And they will tell me things.
(45:10):
They won't tell you simply becauseyou're their boss and they won't.
I mean, they might tell me that youare a dickhead or that you are, you
know, you offend them or et cetera,cetera, but they won't say that to
you because they feel they can't.
And so, and it's good to beable to express that and I
might help them explore ways toexpress it to, uh, their boss.
(45:31):
I'm just saying, amen, Iguess to what you just said.
I think it's changing.
I think, I know when my childrenwere little, my husband was very
reluctant, to say, that he needed tosay to stay home with a sick child.
Okay.
This was something that was really,you know, not, uh, not in his.
You know, portfolio hewas not gonna say that.
(45:54):
And of course for me, you know, I thought,you know, if I had the something I ne I
needed to do, I needed to be on a plane orI needed to, um, if we had a, a sick child
at home and, and he was not on a plane,I was hoping he would tell his employer.
I've got a sick child at home.
But that was, that wasnot something he could do.
(46:15):
Now, um, my, I, my children aregrown, my daughters are grown, and
one of my daughters is a parent andher husband, uh, is perfectly open to
saying that I think it's generational.
I think it's, I think it's wonderful that,um, millennials and generated generation
Z, uh, are able to, to, you know, menare able to do that, uh, a lot more.
(46:38):
And so maybe this will change.
Maybe it's all changing.
lesson number 10.
Empathy is not compassion.
Right.
Right.
So empathizing and, and anybody, andany of your listeners who have training
in psychology probably already knowthis, but it, it took me, I don't.
(46:59):
And so it took me a long time.
I tend to be very empathic.
A lot of writers are, you know, butthat's very different from compassion.
Empathy oftentimes is when you identifywith, the difficulties, someone
else is going through the challengessomeone else is going through, and
that's good for writer because youcan, then you can write it, right.
(47:20):
But it doesn't make you necessarilya good friend or a good boss, because
really you don't really need toreally feel it, or really deeply
understand it to have compassion.
Right.
So compassion is to forgive the personor be a good listener or be supportive.
It doesn't mean that you're feeling it.
(47:42):
Those are very, very different things.
And I think as a, in fact,as a manager, I, I think that
empathy can get in your way.
I think it's, you're, you're feeling it.
You're, you're maybe even relating abouthow you've been there too, you know, um,
that doesn't really help the other personit's not really being compassionate.
And I'd say that took me a very longtime to learn, because I do have
(48:06):
this empathic nature, which againis not, I'm not flattering myself.
I don't think that'snecessarily a positive thing.
Being compassionate is a positive thing.
And I've had to work very, veryhard on that and I fail a lot.
Well, you're not the onlyone that the Dai Lama says.
Um, we must practice itbecause it doesn't come easily.
(48:29):
Doesn't come naturally.
In fact, he goes through and hesays, you need all those dickhead
and Jack asses in your life.
And I say, why Dai Lama?
And he says, because you need to practice.
You're not very good at it.
And it's kind of hard to refute thatlogic because, so, you know, you get
so many opportunities to practiceand that's how you get better at it.
I guess that's how youbecome the Dai Lama.
(48:49):
And he, he makes it very clear that, andI think as you, as you said, you you've,
well, you haven't said it in so many ways.
What you've revealed is that, youknow, you have the same emotions
and feelings as everybody else.
As the Dai Lama has, we all have thesame feelings and sets of emotions.
There's no difference in sort of the rawingredients that go into our personality.
(49:11):
It's just the, the salad that getstossed, um, taste a bit different.
I guess that's how I would put that.
Well, I have a long way to goto reach the Dai Lama's level of
compassion, but we can all aspire.
it's like I say, I ain't running for DaiLama, so don't hold me to that standard.
(49:31):
You know, I said I'm aday by day kind of guy.
I never, I never claimedenlightenment, but you know, that's
why we're doing this podcast.
Speaking.
We've been talking about a lotof things that you've learned.
Can you we'll finish up with this,Ellen, can you think of something
that you have unlearned lately?
Something that you absolutelypositive knew to be true?
(49:54):
Uh, very recently, but, and now you'vediscovered it's just not the case.
Yes, and I think it's greatDuff, you brought it up.
And, that is, what I used to think,which was that, uh, this, this sort
of this idea among progressivesin the United States that people
vote against their best interests.
(50:14):
And this idea's been outthere, uh, for a long time.
Uh, there was a book called, um,What's The Matter With Kansas
.And it's written by a gentleman.
I think Tom Frank, um, I think that'shis name and, and I, when I read
that book must have been, oh my God.
It must have been 15 years ago.
oh, I, I thought it was wonderfuland I, I thought it was so insightful
(50:34):
and his, his premise is that peoplevote against their best interests.
But you're absolutely right.
people don't vote against theirbest, what they perceive to
be their best interests and.
I think the arrogance on the part ofpeople like me who say that is we think
(50:55):
we know what their best interests are.
And they're voting against them.
And let me give you an example ofhow this was really hit home for me.
When I was doing my last book,The Job I went to Kentucky.
And I spent an evening witha family in Appalachia.
And I don't know if all your listenerswill know about Appalachia, but it can
(51:18):
be a very poor part of the United States.
The mountains of Appalachia and thisfamily, was a father, a mom and, their
kids were mostly grown up, but the fatherwho was 49 years old, he worked in a
glass factory and he made $16 an hourand, he worked in a, a glass factory
(51:40):
that was not unionized so he anti-union.
and so well to the average person thatsounds like he's voting against his
vast interest so I was, I, you know,I was drinking coffee in his kitchen
with his, him and his wife, and Isaid, so you're anti-union and he said,
you better believe I'm anti-union.
And I said, well, why?
(52:00):
And he said, because if we unionizethis glass factory, the work
is gonna go straight to Mexico.
if we have to, if they have to pay usmore, they're gonna close my plant.
And he said, I've got, I don'tknow how many years I've got left
working in this glass factory.
I'm 49 years old.
I hope I have a few more years.
(52:21):
but I won't have anything else.
This is my last job.
This is it.
I can't afford.
To have this glass factory move.
So that, that was areal eye opener for me.
Um, that's his reality and he'sprobably, he's probably right.
There's, there's no law against thiscompany closing and moving to Mexico.
(52:42):
There's no law against it at all.
And after, you know, since I'd writtenthat book Cheap, The High Cost Of
Discount Culture I'd had, I'd seenthis happen over and over again.
And so this guy was right.
So simple unionization wasnot the answer for him.
And so we assume he was votingagainst his best interest.
(53:04):
He absolutely was not.
Okay.
So, uh, that was a real lesson to me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I, I would, uh, having consultedthe boardroom for 30 years, I would
question the received wisdom of hislogic that it would move to, you
know, Offshore, but what do I know?
I mean, I've been in thoseboardrooms and I've seen the
way they make those decisions.
(53:24):
And you know, somebody in Londonmakes a decision to close a, an
office in Sydney and they have,and they, and they've done it.
I've been in meetings where they decidedthe one company bought another company.
They just, so they closed all theirwineries or they took 'em over.
So they don't need wine makers.
They don't need the generalmanagers cuz they got their own.
(53:45):
, and this is something that I havelearned suffering can be visited
upon you has nothing to do with you.
Kind of goes back to your point,about don't take it personally.
It's not about you.
It's about the causes a risingin the world to, to use a Buddhist
phrase and over which you havezero control anyway, that aside.
So, but I guess the point is.
(54:06):
It's not up to us to be telling themwhat to think or to feel, or, or
how to vote or what's best for them.
Cuz as you say, thatis just so patronizing.
It is.
Yes, it is.
Well, can I ask you, do you have,are you working on another book?
What's next for you?
I am.
I, I actually am working on another book.
I just sent out the proposal,last week or had my agent do
(54:30):
it, so I can't talk about it.
right now.
Okay.
Yeah.
Um, I can tell you, uh, so the bookI cannot talk about, but, uh, but
I'm working on, , some other I'm I'mdoing some magazine work as well.
And, uh, it ha most of it's builtaround environmental issues, um,
aquaculture, and, seascapes, thingslike that, which is very appropriate.
(54:53):
Cuz I, I spend about half my yearnow in Maine, which is a seafaring
state and I'm immersed in, um, thequestions of commercial fisheries and
their decline in, in things like that.
So I've been runningabout that quite a bit.
Well, it gives me something tolook forward to the next book.
(55:14):
We'll finish here on that note, you'vebeen listening to the podcast, 10
lessons that took me 50 years to learn.
Our guest today has been Ellen RuppelShell, who is author investigative
journalist and professor ofjournalism at Boston university.
You've heard from us.
We'd like to hear from you.
You can contact us, email us atpodcast@10lessonslearned.com.
That's podcast 10 to numberone, zero lessons, learn.com.
(55:38):
Tell us what you thinkand why you're at it.
Go ahead and hit that subscribe button,because this is the podcast that's making
the world a wiser place lesson by lesson.
Thanks for listen.
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