When things aren’t going so well, it can be so easy to focus on what’s wrong, what’s frustrating, or what’s angering. That high emotion can be so easy to get caught in. At the same time, there’s a large body of research that highlights how much gratitude can help with some parts of life.

As Harvard Health Publishing published in November of 2011:

In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.

Two psychologists, Dr. Robert A. Emmons of the University of California, Davis, and Dr. Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami, have done much of the research on gratitude. In one study, they asked all participants to write a few sentences each week, focusing on particular topics.

One group wrote about things they were grateful for that had occurred during the week. A second group wrote about daily irritations or things that had displeased them, and the third wrote about events that had affected them (with no emphasis on them being positive or negative). After 10 weeks, those who wrote about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. Surprisingly, they also exercised more and had fewer visits to physicians than those who focused on sources of aggravation.

Another leading researcher in this field, Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, tested the impact of various positive psychology interventions on 411 people, each compared with a control assignment of writing about early memories. When their week’s assignment was to write and personally deliver a letter of gratitude to someone who had never been properly thanked for his or her kindness, participants immediately exhibited a huge increase in happiness scores. This impact was greater than that from any other intervention, with benefits lasting for a month.

Meanwhile, expressing gratitude has also been found in some studies to make individuals more patient, improve relationships (even more so than feeling indebted to your partner or partners), and even improve sleep when you think of things you are grateful for before you go to sleep.

Of course, gratitude isn’t a magic bullet that will fix everything, but searching all over the place, I couldn’t find a single piece of research that said expressing or thinking about thing you’re grateful for will hurt at all. So perhaps it’s worth thinking for a moment about what you’re grateful for.

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In April of 2013, Ian Leslie wrote in the Financial Times, quote:

We used to complain that there was never anything good on TV. Now we complain about the opposite. Spoilt for choice as we may be, we should not forget to be astonished that an industry once regarded as an artistic wasteland has turned itself into the world’s most prolific source of new stories.

Whether we are in the middle or nearing the end of television’s golden age is hard to tell. Our sense of being overwhelmed by new shows is not illusory. According to FX Networks research, in 2016 there were 455 original series in TV, up from 182 in 2002. Yet we haven’t necessarily reached what John Landgraf has called “peak TV”.

Spoiled for choice as we are, the very common question of what your favorite TV show can be difficult for just about anyone to answer. The Very Good TV Podcast from IndieWire offers give suggestions for how to answer the question:

Consider whether you’re answering subjectively or objectively.

Be declarative.

Don’t say, “Oh, there are just so many shows!”

Don’t pretend you’ve never been asked before.

Don’t be embarrassed by your choice — or qualify it.

Yet – sometimes qualifying that choice can be rather fun. And there’s absolutely no shame to be found in enjoying what you enjoy.

A 2017 study published in Critical Studies in Media Communication examined the social networks created by female “spontaneous fans” of television shows — rather than dedicated fans. That study found that, quote:

these online communities give women a significant degree of group identification as they self-reflect and swap opinions with others about the storylines of the TV shows.

Analysis of more than 7,800 comments on social media and other online forums revealed that the women in these digital communities expressed themselves specifically through their emotional ties with a television series, contributing to a sense of belonging based on their mutual enjoyment of the TV shows. Of more than 2,500 fans whose comments were reviewed, 44.6 percent expressed a feeling of belonging.

In other words, enjoying what you enjoy can not only provide private appreciation, it can also provide a community. So what do you enjoy?

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Looking for something to listen to this weekend?

May I suggest The Amelia Project? It is an audio drama podcast that has always resulted in a few good giggles… and also feeling like I’ve been hit upside the head by something just weird and just awesome enough to listen to a second t

Judging the value of investments – even if they don’t involve cash – can be notoriously difficult. There’s all kind of logical fallacies that can get in the way, not to mention measuring the value of an emotional investment is, by definition, difficult to do logically

Even with all of that, it can be an interesting exercise to apply the language of investment and financial management to other things in life – or the financial decisions you’ve made.

At the base level, there’s a few different kind of investment measurements of cost — incremental cost, opportunity cost, and sunk cost.

Incremental cost (and it’s best friend incremental revenue) is the cost and revenue difference between two alternatives. If it’s financial considerations, then it’s easy — if option A is $100 and option B is $250, there’s a $150 incremental cost. If option A will earn you $150, and option B will earn you $500, then the incremental revenue is $350.

When you’re talking about non-financial considerations, then the incremental cost might be more like the time you’re spending, or even the amount of emotional energy it takes.

The opportunity cost is less of a comparative measure and more a consideration of what you’re giving up. The amount of time, money, energy, or whatever other measurement criteria you choose on a choice will, by virtue of the resources available, preclude some other choices. Choosing option Q means you cannot choose option R.

And while it’s tempting to think that the opportunity cost is a sunk cost… nope. That’s very different. One of the things that I love about taking a financial and investment mindset towards other decisions is the idea of sunk cost.

So you’ve spent five years building something. Or you’ve dumped $1,000 into what seemed like a good idea. And there’s no way you’ll get that time or money back, but you’re facing a decision thinking “well, I’ve already invested…”

But in reality, a sunk cost is sunk. You’re never getting it back, so given that, you’re freed to make the decision or to consider your decision based on the here and now. Opportunity cost, values, incremental cost — all those things that measure where you are, instead of where you may have been.

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In 1894, one of the very first moving pictures recorded, of a Spanish dancer, was banned in some areas because of the perceived adult themes it contained.

Things didn’t get much better for a while. Between 1915 and 1952, the United States Supreme Court held that motion pictures were not protected under the FIrst Amendment. and that resulted in more than a few attempts to mark some films as for “adults only.”  

Today, there are ratings in the United States that are intended to make it easy for someone to tell, at a glance, the general level of sex, violence, and other quote-unquote adult themes a movie contains.

That doesn’t mean that the system is always correct — or even comprehensible. The PG-13 rating was created around the same time as Jaws, which was released with a PG rating. Today, most big blockbusters fall under “PG-13” rating, even though merchandising goes far below that magical 13 years old age limit.

Of course, what’s actually a part of that rating has been changing. As a 2011 study in the Journal of Children and the Media reported, quote:

A quantitative content analysis of 45 films was conducted, and significant increases in violent content in the PG-13 rating category from  1988 to  1997 and 2006 were found. However, similar increases in other types of adult content in the PG-13 rating category were not found.

Beyond even this creep, the entire MPAA rating system is rather dense system. A group of anonymous Los Angeles parents work for the Classifications and Ratings Administration, a nonprofit arm of the MPAA owned by the major studios. There are guidelines, but very few hard and fast rules that guide how a movie is rated. And that creates a situation where some things that some people consider an “adult movie” is far from for others.

So, even in this subjective world of R ratings, I’m curious what your experience has been?

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According to a recent clickbait article I was tricked into reading, my relationships are doomed because we don’t cuddle one another within an inch of our lives every moment of the night.

Ok, that’s probably a bit overstated. But there’s definitely a theme that cuddling is of course what you should do at night with your romantic — or even non-romantic — close relationships.

According to sleep.com, even among bed-sharers, only 13 percent cuddle close, while 63 percent sleep without touching their partner.

The Sleep Matters Club points to a few other statistics – quote:

Two-thirds of Brits (64%) said they cuddle in bed with their partner every night. 39% of those went on to say they cuddle regularly. Scotland had the cuddliest responders, with just 9% of them saying they don’t do it at all.

But – there’s plenty of reason to not cuddle, too. Sleep Matters Club continues quoting the study by sharing the reasons people do not cuddle:

Their partner snores (20%)

They find it too hot (19%)

They don’t feel the need to (18%)

They’ve been with their partner long enough not to cuddle (17%)

By the time they get to bed, they fall straight asleep (15%)

No matter what your preference is, as Thrillest puts it:

You need to have the “cuddle conversation” the first time you have a sleepover. It just might be the most important talk of your relationship. If you’re with a new partner who doesn’t know how to sleep like a normal human being, instead always clinging to you like a malnourished baby koala, you need to have a conversation and right this ship immediately.

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Max O’Rell’s Her Royal Highness Woman, a book from 1901, gives a rule about the age of marriage in a way that will likely sound familiar to many, minus one big detail. Quote “A man should marry a woman half his age, plus seven.”

These days, half your age plus seven is usually used as the lower limit for quote-unquote socially acceptable ages for sexual or romantic relationships. But, humans being what we are, what’s socially acceptable isn’t what we all fall lockstep in with.

There’s plenty of very public – and very private – relationships with much larger age gaps. French president Emmanuel Macron is married to a woman 24 years his senior, for example.

What does the research say? Once you go beyond the question of individuals too young to consent — in and of itself an entire discussion that is worth very close ethical consideration, because seriously people, consent is a thing, there is quite a bit of research out there.

Buried in a 2014 paper about wedding expenses from Emory University was a discussion of age differences. With a sample size of 3,000 people, the study found that couples with a five-year age gap are 18 per cent more likely to split up than those of the same age. That figure rose to 39 per cent for couples with a 10-year age gap and 95 per cent for those with a 20-year age gap.

Similarly, as quoted by AARP:

The research group Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) compiled 13 years of data from 8,682 households and 19,914 individuals. The study investigated “how the marital age gap affects the evolution of marital satisfaction over the duration of marriage.”

Researchers found that people coupled with younger partners mesh well in the beginning — basically the same as same-age couples. But statistics show the relationship may sour as time goes on. he study points out that after six to 10 years of marriage, the age gap appears to widen and satisfaction tends to dissolve. “The people who are married to a much older or younger spouse tend to have larger declines in marital satisfaction over time as compared with those who are married to spouses who are similar in age,” according to the HILDA study.

 Your personal opinion, though, may vary. Because statistics are averages, and those averages don’t work for everyone. So what’s your opinion?

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In 2014, a study called Do Unto Others: Doctors’ Personal End-of-Life Resuscitation Preferences and Their Attitudes toward Advance Directives was published. The study compared two surveys — one from 1989 and one from 2013 to determine if doctors would choose to undergo the same kind of medical interventions that they often do on a regular basis when it came to end-of-life care.

The two major findings of the study were that no, 88.3% of the surveyed doctors would choose to have Do Not Resuscitate orders or no-extraordinary-measures guidelines for their own end-of-life care, and that’s a number that didn’t change much at all, even though the 1990 Patient Self Determination Act gave patients access to advance directive documents at the time they are admitted to medical facilities.

Quoting from that paper directly:

“This study raises questions about why doctors provide care, to their patients, which is very different from what they choose for themselves and also what seriously ill patients want. Our current default is ‘doing,’ but in any serious illness there comes a tipping point where the high-intensity treatment becomes more of a burden than the disease itself.”

It sounds very simple — but as with almost everything medical and emotional, there’s a lot of complication. The very definition of “extraordinary measures” is the first one. Duhaime’s Law Dictionary provides three separate definitions. Quote:

Extraordinary life-sustaining treatment is defined as any medical procedure or measure which, when administered to a terminally ill patient, will only prolong the process of dying when death is imminent, but excludes palliative care.

The 1983 Natural Death Act of South Australia defined extraordinary measures as follows:

“Extraordinary measures means medical or surgical measures that prolong life, or are intended to prolong life, by supplanting or maintaining the operation of bodily functions that are temporarily or permanently incapable of independent operation.”

[And written by] Justice Hughes of the Supreme Court of New Jersey in Re Quinlan:

“…. one would have to think that the use of the same respirator or like support could be considered ‘ordinary’ in the context of the possibly curable patient but ‘”extraordinary’ in the context of the forced sustaining by cardio-respiratory processes of an irreversibly doomed patient.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom. In 2018, Lindsay Kalter wrote in the Amateur’s Guide to Death and Dying about a group of Massachusetts medical

So back in episode 480, we talked about how decorating for the holidays tends to – quote – communicate a more friendly outward appearance. In other words, it’s probably good for your neighborhood. But – that ignored one very important question. What holiday?

The choice of what holiday – or what quote-unquote holiday – to celebrate has become in some ways easier and more complicated than ever. We will talk about why this is, but first I think it’s important to dig down in to why a holiday is even a thing.

If you believe the 1917 article from The Biblical World journal published by the University of Chicago, the value of a national holiday is in the opportunity to pass on national values of patriotism, and, quote, “rightly interpreted many of these days stand for ideal values.”

And while that article goes WAY overboard in my opinion in talking about how we should and shouldn’t interpret a holiday, the base assumption that holidays can have a very important cultural value is a valid one. As the National Association for the Education of Young Children puts it, quote:

Holiday celebrations can be wonderful opportunities for children to learn about the traditions and values that are cherished parts of people’s lives.

Put a little differently by Scott Rousseau writing for Inter-nations, quote:

“Traditional celebrations are some of the core aspects of any culture. Whether it is a wedding, a harvest festival, a religious holiday, or a national observance, our celebrations are woven tightly into our overall cultural identity.”

And cultures – thankfully for some and frustratingly for others – can and often do change, develop, and reorganize themselves. In 2015, our friends at the Pew Research Center took a look at the shifting attitudes towards and traditions around the Christmas holiday. They found that, quote:

“Nine-in-ten Americans say they celebrate Christmas. […] But only about half see Christmas mostly as a religious holiday, while one-third view it as more of a cultural holiday.”

While I personally tend to cringe every time someone talks about how the Millennial generation is SO different than others, there is some research that fits. As digital marketing agency 360i points out, quote:

Millennials’ acceptance of the modern family has made them more open to reinventing traditional holidays by creating ne

Going the do-it-yourself route — for everything from weddings to home repair — is being referred to by some industry groups as the “Pinterest-it-yourself” trend. But is this view of Pinterest-driven crafty projects the reality of those who choose to do it yourself?

Probably not shockingly, the answer is no. Choosing to do projects yourself is very common. As a study from European Home Improvement Monitor of the Dutch USP Marketing Consultancy found:

In 2017 European consumers opted to do it themselves more often. The proportion of home improvement projects realised as do-it-yourself, rather than commissioning a tradesman (Do-it-for-me), increased from 65 per cent in 2016 to 67 per cent.

And it’s a trend that is the case in the United States as well. As construction advertising firm Venveo explained:

Although saving money does play a factor, our recent survey of DIYers shows that only 39% of DIYers are DIYing specifically to save money .A recent Google study revealed that 47% of home improvement projects were done because people take pleasure in doing DIY projects.

Then again, as TJ McCue pointed out in Forbes ,quote:

Do-it-yourself repair isn’t new. People have been fixing their own stuff for as long as there has been something to break. What is new, though, is the growing number of online resources to figure out how to fix something.

There is something new to how many individuals choose to approach DIY now, though. And that’s not just the thousand-plus percent increase in the search volume for wallpaper by the DIY segment of people (seriously, wallpaper?).

As quoted in the New York Times:

The D.I.Y. movement is part of the larger personalization of all things. Ann Swidler, a University of California, Berkeley sociology professor and one of the authors of the book “Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life,” suggests that older forms of status, like knowledge of opera or Renaissance paintings, have lost their cachet, while new ones, “based on asserting one’s uniqueness and creativity,” are emerging.

Sometimes, that might come in choosing to take on a project yourself. Other times, it could take on a different flavor. Whatever you’re hacking together, it may be more about doing it and creating something than making it perfect.

This script may vary from the actual episode transcript.

Possibly because of its popularity in college classrooms and meetings, or possibly just because of the fact that it seems to be a fairly universal experience — there’s a lot of research around doodling.

Doodles have been found pretty much anywhere that humans have some kind of writing stick and medium, including margins of medieval texts, from when writing was a cherished and uncommon skill.

One of the most commonly-cited studies about doodling was one done in 2009 by Jackie Andrade. That study asked participants to doodle by filling in pre-defined boxes while listening to a monotonous voicemail message. Those that doodled, as opposed to only listening to the message, tended to have better recall and understanding of what had been in the message.

However, not everyone doodles merely by filling in pre-existing boxes on a sheet of paper.  A study out of UNLV took a very close look at this study and created a partner study in an attempt to replicate and further investigate these results. That study tested a few additional variables — free-form doodling, structured doodling, note-taking, and just listening. The study participants were limited to only what they had been assigned — so the note-takers were not allowed to doodle in the margins. That study found that, quote:

The results indicated that participants in the unstructured doodling condition performed significantly worse than those in the structured doodling and note-taking condition.

Yet, as an essay on Harvard Health points out, even unstructured doodling can be very useful. Specifically, quote:

A report on the learning styles of medical students (who generally have to absorb large amounts of information) indicated that even they may find doodling helpful, as long as they limit the time they do it. A simple 30-minute doodle helps them remember information, fills in gaps in their thinking, and provides a much-needed reprieve from the loads of information they must wade through.

There’s a lot more research out there about doodling and the value there may be in it — but it seems like most of it comes down to if it helps you engage your automatic brain so your focus-brain can pay attention, all the better.

This script may vary from the actual episode transcript.