Show notes and links:

The law, in many ways, is shared morality. As we’ve talked about in previous episodes, there is a certain element of shared morality in that law. In religious societies, it’s a more clear line. In mostly non-religiously based societies, the law stands in as that shared moral code.

Which brings up that question of why make something illegal is important? One answer is simple. When something is made illegal, it increases the social and economic “cost” of whatever that thing is. By increasing the cost, the idea is that demand decreases. The enforcement of a law further increases the social and economic cost, which tends to decrease demand. It also tends to increase the risk, which further decreases demand – though it also increases reward.

You can see this impact in the actual impacts of alcohol prohibition. Quoting from the New York Times:

“Cirrhosis death rates for men were 29.5 per 100,000 in 1911 and 10.7 in 1929. Admissions to state mental hospitals for alcoholic psychosis declined from 10.1 per 100,000… to 4.7 in 1928. Arrests for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct declined 50 percent between 1916 and 1922. For the population as a whole, the best estimates are that consumption of alcohol declined by 30 percent to 50 percent.”

Yet at the same time, prohibition was repealed. And we all do things, every day, that are illegal – like making and sharing animated GIFs of copyrighted content. Or, in states like Washington and Colorado, many people consume federally illegal, schedule 1 substance called marijuana.

The fact is, making something illegal does two things – increase cost, and create an obligation to enforce under the social contract we call law. There are thousands of laws still on the books that simply aren’t enforced, and those laws become something to laugh at as much as an artifact of previous societal values – just like changing values lead to things that were previously OK being named as newly illegal.

Show notes and links:

Around 1937, British astrologer R.H. Naylor started publishing astrological predictions for everyday people, on the basis of sun signs, also known as star signs. This was one of the first incarnations of the modern newspaper horoscope. This was an outgrowth of the common practice of asking astrologers to offer their opinion on individuals often showing up in society pages.

Depending on who you ask, somewhere between 12 and 37 percent of Americans read their horoscope daily. A 2009 Harris poll reported that 26 percent of Americans self-report as believing in astrology.

But believing in something doesn’t make it scientifically supported. One of the challenges of astrology is designing a study that rigorously tests the personality traits and the accuracy of predictions. One study in 2003, however, attempted to do just that. Researchers tracked 2,000 babies whom were all “time twins” – born in the same few weeks in a similar place – for several decades. More than 100 different characteristics were measured, and researchers found no similarities that sun-sign astrology would predict to be the case.

Not all scientists agree – Percy Seymor argues in The Scientific Proof of Astrology that shifting magnetic fields do have an impact on fetal development. Dr. Mike Hapgood, quoted in The Guardian responding to this book, agreed that we don’t well understand how these fields impact human behavior.

In pointing to why, despite the lack of solid evidence, so many people base so much on horoscopes, two effects are most often mentioned. The Barnum effect, which explains that when individuals encounter descriptions of themselves, they tend to be more willing to believe those descriptions. There’s also the 1948 Forer study of self-validation, where students rated generic descriptions 4.26 on a scale of 1-5 as being “accurate” because they had previously taken a personality test.

Show notes and links:

In a 2013 study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, researchers took a look at the impact of privacy in the workspace. They looked at how standard offices – with four opaque walls and a door – compared to open workspaces without these separation when it comes to employee emotional exhaustion and stress levels.

The study, however, found one other piece of interesting information – that the ability to personalize a space reduced the amount of stress the employee felt, even in the open workspace.

Which jives with several other previous studies about the importance of workplace personalization. In an article by researcher Meredith Wells-Lepley, she discusses how her research has shown that personalization has positive impacts on the workplace environment, from encouraging social connections with co-workers to increasing the perceived and actual connection and dedication an individual has to that place that they are working.

But, as with many things, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. In a University of Michigan Ross School of Business study, researchers found that the “ideal” ratio is about 22% personal items. More than about one out of five “personal” items on your desk is an invitation to view for others to view your space as “unprofessional.” Though, thankfully, plants are not viewed as personal items in this study.

Show notes and links:

Adulting, as a verb, is hard. Seriously. There’s so much to remember and do and inevitably we will all feel like we’ve failed. In talking with my own parents, they assure me that this imposter’s syndrome of adulthood is something that never really goes away, it can just be tamped down the more you deal with, well, people younger than you.

Which… well, frankly, kind of scares me. Being an adult means navigating a number of situations that are uncertain and new, and just as many that we never seem to be able to get quite right, despite our best efforts.

Which is why I absolutely adore the blog – and now the book – Adulting. The author, Kelly Williams Brown, carefully goes through advice on how to handle everything from doing email right to helping out friends that are currently sick There’s even suggestions that are, frankly, just good reminders. Things like don’t wash your hands with a long-sleeve coat on.

This blog was where I first found one of my favorite pieces of advice when it comes to language, ever. Step 213 – Do not comment on things people are, comment on things they do. It’s a scientifically supported, incredibly easy to forget, and incredibly powerful piece of advice that really makes me feel like an adult when I remember to do it.

Though I admit, I also adore the flowchart of how many drinks you can have at a work function, the advice about how to properly care for clothes (something I’m still working on), an “The proper response to a compliment is thank you.” Just thank you.

Adulting is work. Adulting is tough. And being an adult isn’t one particular thing, it’s a million little things – and admitting when you need help and advice is one of those things, in every situation in which you might have to be an adult.

Show notes and links:

The information superhighway is one of those descriptive terms that is actually anything but hyperbolic. In the 1700s and before, it could take weeks or months for news to make it just a few hundred miles, much less around the world — which is why there are so many stories of battles being fought after a war was declared officially “over”.

When an event was happening, you either saw what was going on with your own eyes, or had to take the information as it was coming in, however it was coming in. The official or authoritative story may have been passed along from a storyteller, from a runner, from a legend, or just rumor passed person to person. There was still room for misinformation – and it was quite common.

Then again, misinformation is still quite common. The appetite for updates is very strong – especially in a crisis – and it’s one of the places that social networks and “citizen reporting” starts to shine. You can get information from multiple sources at a time, and often much faster than anyone can keep up with.

The problem with that is, there’s no verification nor vetting. The American Press Institute, in 2015, surveyed Twitter users and found that 64% of Twitter users said they’d encountered something on Twitter that they later discovered wasn’t true. 62% of that group said that they discovered the inaccuracy somewhere off of Twitter. And there are times – such as when the Associated Press Twitter account was hacked to post that there had been explosions at the White House – where there’s an immediate desire for more information, as reactions are already happening even when the information is not vetted.

Any good crisis communications plan will include a discussion of setting expectations. When the next updates will come, who they will come from, and how to know that they’re authoritative. The appetite for more information will always be there from those that prefer (or need) incomplete information, but at least setting expectations helps create the parameters for what is actually reasonable.

Show notes and links:

As with many parts of our language, the idea of “celebrate” began as a religious concept. As in to “celebrate” the Catholic mass. And much like the Mass, the word holds two seemingly contradictory meanings – “much frequented” and “assembled to honor.” Yet, probably partially because I’m a recovering Catholic, there’s something to the idea of frequently taking a chance to celebrate.

In a TED talk from 2016, Astro Teller from X, formerly Google X, talks about the importance of not just celebrating successes, but also the failures. In fact, they make it a point to make wild, fast failures one of the things they strive for at X – by making it the path of least resistance. They make it a point to encourage failures by making it safe to fail. When a project fails, there are hugs and high fives. There are promotions. There’s a lot of celebration, because the goal of X is to find big answers to big problems, and mostly figure out why their ideas won’t work.

For many of us, the idea of celebrating every one of our failures can be a very scary place to start when it comes to celebration. After all, if celebration is a chance to recognize, promote, and demonstrate a particular set of values, then it can be tough – really tough – to celebrate what we feel uneasy about.

Yet facing our fears, and celebrating when we do face them – is part of what creates a positive feedback loop of a good habit – even when (and perhaps especially) when what we’re trying to do is scary. In one dissertation study, research by Virginia Farr found that celebrating helped enhance group solidarity and sense of belonging in classrooms, and even helped teachers find meaning in their work. In other words, finding things worth approaching with happiness and solemnity actually helped create – and not just recognize – community.

Show notes and links:

Talking about emotions can be quite difficult. The reasons vary – it may be shame, stigma, fear, unfamiliarity with starting the conversations, a lack of trust with those that we might open up to, a feeling of hopelessness that it would even help… the reasons vary. But the result is statistically significant. In almost every one of 30 cultures studied by Vingerhoets and Becht and 1996, women showed a higher propensity to discuss emotions than men. A review of multiple studies outlined in the book Gender and Emotion found that Western cultures tend to have more pronounced differences in emotional expression than non-Western cultures.

Interestingly, though, there are major differences in Western cultures too. A 2015 Stanford study compared German and American expressions of sympathy and found that American tend to focus more on the positive, finding the acknowledgement or expression of negative emotion to be undesirable and “almost sinful”, while German respondents tended to specifically name a negative emotion. Both cultures show empathy and sympathy, often quite deeply, to individuals that are close friends. However, the way in which the emotion is expressed differs greatly.

That is – if the emotions are expressed at all. Time and time again, emotional repression is linked to stress, high blood pressure, depression, asthma, and a number of other negative health impacts.

Show notes and links:

In some (though not all) dictionaries, “respect” and “accept” are considered synonyms, or close to. Connotatively, it seems difficult to accept someone without respecting them, or visa versa. Yet there are significant denotative differences and differences in functional results.

Acceptance is an ideal usually abbreviated as the mental state of thinking that something is OK. In legal terminology, acceptance is consenting to an offer or an ideal. In either situation, it’s an assent to something. It may not be something that you like, but it is something that you have come to recognize is reality. In the 2009 book General Principles and Empirically Supported Techniques of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, the editors discuss how acceptance often includes of not actively trying to change whatever it is you’ve “accepted” as well, and point out that acceptance in one area often leads to an easing of stress in others.

Respect, on the other hand, is something very different. While acceptance is an internal process that has external implications, I believe respect is often an external process with internal implications (refer to episode 3, or the deep dive on internal & external change for more about this).

Respect can be defined many ways. In one attempt to define respect for kids, Talking Tree Books suggests using the phrase “care about” – acting in ways that show that you do not actively wish to go against an expectation. Urban Dictionary uses the word “respect” to define “dignity”. Consideration also comes up often. It definitely seems that “respect” is difficult to define, yet easy to name when it’s been broken.

So what’s the difference? The founder of the group Respect Differences puts it this way:

“Can we get all people to accept people of color, queer individuals, or a certain religion? No. What we can do is get those people to understand that they are entitled to their thoughts and feelings, but they need to RESPECT that there are people different than them in the world….We are all different, and we should simply just respect that. When respect is broken, that is where a line is crossed. And respect is often broken beca

current incarnations of tattoos…. So today, we’re going to talk about something that some argue is on level with tattoos, just more technological. Wearable tech is a big thing right now, but some think it’s merely a stepping stone to something more – embeddable tech. Even before computers became a thing, there was the discussion of creating human-technological hybrids. The movie Metropolis was one of the first times this was cinematically explored, and it’s a theme that continues to be explored in a variety of media. I’ll admit that I tend to think of Locutus of the Borg when thinking human-techno hybrids but it goes beyond that.

There are modern-day “biohackers” doing this already — beyond the FitBits, Google Glasses, and external wearable tech that continues to develop. Biohackers are even going above and beyond pure medical research, designed to look for a way to help individuals paralyzed or otherwise immobilized find a way to communicate again. In the medical realm, in 2004, one research group helped a locked-in patient gain the ability to move a computer mouse with his brain, creating a way to slowly type out messages.

While the medical advances are dramatic, and slowly coming, as with many technologies created for accessibility, it’s the consumer-level applications that have the most financial promise. Which is why the question becomes – would you get an implant? Currently, that may be a DIY proposition, but in the next few years it may not be. A FitBit style tracker under your skin? A pair of Google Glasses that are contacts instead? How about magnets implanted in your earlobes in a way they act as bluetooth headset and speakers all in one? A hackers done that. A tattoo that changes colors? Sound far out? These all already being done by hobbyists, with an eye towards commercial implementation. They might have medical use, or it may simply be for aesthetic purposes.

_regrets”>Tattoos in Austrailia: Perceptions, Trends, and Regrets (McCrindle)

A person’s body, in a social world, takes on much more meaning than purely a body. Instead, a body is also considered a philosophical, psychological, and spiritual representation of an individual as a whole. This makes it not at all unusual that how one chooses to handle their body also becomes a social, philosophical, psychological, and spiritual representation in addition to a physical reality. When it comes to tattoos, that can be a very fraught expression.

Near as historians can tell, humans have been creating permanent ink marks in their skin for over five thousand years. It’s been an incredibly common practice. Yet in both the Western world, and some Eastern countries, tattoos have a very unsavory reputation. Associated with criminals, organized crime, and prisoners, tattoos were considered a social stigma.

Part of this may stem from the fact that the Greeks used tattoos as a form of punishment, as did Japan in the Edo period. In China and Japan, tattoos were often used by organized crime to “mark” their newly-initiated family members. In both situations, a tattoo became a way to indelibly mark someone for a change in their life.

Yet times have also changed. Now, around 12% of Australians have tattoos, 20% of Brits are inked, around 15-20% of Americans, and even the infamous Japanese Yakuza – which used to be identified by their tattoos – are reportedly encouraging their members to go either clean-skinned or get their tattoos removed before they can move up in the organization.

Even so, it’s a minority of individuals that choose to get inked, and doing so is often a very personal decision though there’s an interesting argument to be made that tattoos are really as much fashion as personal decision. So what do you think about tattoos? Do you have one? Would you get one? Of what?