MSP [] MATTSPLAINED [] MSPx

In a world where constant change is the new normal, today’s show looks at the science behind the epidemic of uncertainty and wonders: is there any way to cope?

Living in a digital era can sometimes feel exhausting. We’re told we need to retrain, pivot and adapt to the new paradigm. Whatever that is. But is there real science lying behind these feelings of insecurity and uncertainty? And if there is, could there be a cure. Today, MSP explore chaos.

Why are we coming back to chaos and uncertainty this week?
I mean - do you even need to ask me that question?
Regular listeners may remember that uncertainty was a big theme on the show a couple of years ago.
That the digital world, while absolutely fantastic in many respects, does couple
A really steep learning curve.
Coupled with rapid evolution.
So as soon as you feel you’ve learned new skills or adapted or shifted your mindset to whatever the new status quo is…
It’s already marching somewhere else.

It’s strange to talk about a dynamic status quo…
And it’s even stranger when you realise that you haven’t invented the term.
Dynamic status quo is a term that exists in employment law and relates to collective bargaining agreements.

I hope that isn’t what we’re talking about today. Some of our listeners are loyal, but I don’t think we need to push them to extremes.
No, we’re not. Dynamic status quo was a term that popped into my head to help describe the world we live in.
A quick Google search showed that it already exists.
But like all good citizens in the dynamic status quo, I’m robbing it and giving it the meaning I want.

That’s just chaos…
Yes. And chaos is the new norm.
Before anyone goes off alarming, I’m not talking about chaos in the societal collapse sense…

Organoids are tiny laboratory grown human brains. Along with DNA biohacking and advances in robotics and artificial intelligence, are we on the verge of creating Numans, a post-human species?

Is a hidden epidemic of perfectionism creating stress and anxiety? How can we escape the perfection trap in a world of curated experiences?

Episode Sources:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24332430-600-the-misunderstood-personality-trait-that-is-causing-anxiety-and-stress/
https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-bul0000138.pdf

Episode Excerpt:

We keep hearing about ideas like the perfection trap. But is it real? Does the perfection trap exist?
That’s probably the hardest question of today’s show.
Because it’s totally subjective.
Certainly - and I don’t think it’s the first time we’ve discussed this subject this year
We are seeing an increase in the numbers of people with mental health issues.
Particularly people in the generations we define as millennial and digital native.
And while perfectionism isn’t generally accepted as an illness in and of itself,
It has been closely linked to eating disorders, OCD, anxiety and depression.
It does seem that people with those conditions are more likely to demonstrate perfectionist traits than you would expect to see in the general population.

So what are we actually talking about? How are we framing or defining perfectionism?
Perfectionism is hard to define in a clinical sense.
And there doesn’t seem to be a clear consensus among psychologists as to its definitions although many are starting to become alarmed about the potential mental health timebomb that might be ticking away in the next generation.
The closest they have come to a consensus on this issue is the 30 year old multidimensional Perfection Scale which grades participants for a series of 45 questions on a level of 1 to 7.
And there is more than one type of perfectionism.

Which are?
There are self-oriented perfectionists.
These are the people who set themselves ridiculously high goals and then feel miserable when they can’t achieve them.

Like you?
You’re saying it as a joke but it’s probably a fair assessment tbh.
I left one line of work behind me because it was something that left a lot to chance.
Even when things were at their most successful, there were always failures.
And I found that very hard to cope with. I couldn’t take pleasure in the success because I only saw the failures.

Then there are are Other-Oriented perfectionists…
Who hold others to ridiculously high standards.

Which sounds like you again…
And explains why I don’t have staff anymore and work largely alone.
Not because I ‘can’t find anyone good enough’ which is what you often hear from entrepreneurs who suffer from the same delusions as me.
But because it’s simply unfair on the people who are doing a great job that you are unable to comprehend.

And the final one: socially prescribed perfectionists?
This is where perfectionism dovetails with our own set of interests.
These are the people who feel an overwhelming pressure from others.
That might be from bosses or colleagues, friends or family members.
And, increasingly, it’s rooted in the digital sphere.
Not just in social media, but in the way we communicate.
And that many of those communications are shorn of context.

MSP has been away for a few weeks owing to an unscheduled illness in Matt's family. Still, he can't be expected to get the future right all the time.

As Elon Musk gets ready for his Mars Mission, MSP looks at an electrifying new treatment for baldness, how echolocation can rewire the brain and asks if invisible ink is the solution to encryption hacks. Oh yes. And tea bags are evil.

Show Notes:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2217050-a-hat-that-zaps-the-scalp-with-electricity-helps-reverse-male-balding/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2216247-generator-that-runs-on-heat-escaping-to-the-sky-can-charge-phones/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2217483-plastic-tea-bags-shed-billions-of-microplastic-particles-into-the-cup/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2216382-tall-twisting-tower-is-made-from-wood-that-shapes-itself-as-it-dries/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2217550-coated-paper-holds-secret-messages-that-can-be-erased-with-a-hairdryer/
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/echolocation-blind-people-reveals-brain-s-adaptive-powers
https://www.space.com/china-new-spacecraft-crewed-moon-missions.html?utm_source=notification
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2217915-avoiding-red-or-processed-meat-doesnt-seem-to-give-health-benefits/

EPISODE EXCERPT

It’s that time again where Matt unfreezes his smile, has it stress tested and tries to reanimate those dormant facial muscles. Yes, it’s time to be happy as we return to an MSP regular feature that celebrates science and the innovations and breakthroughs that demonstrate that our humanity isn’t rotting away to nothing.

That wasn’t the most uplifting intro. Rotting away to nothing?
It’s a new tactic.
I get you to say all the negative stuff.

Why would you do that?
No, Jeff. The question is why would you do that?
I’m not the one being negative here.
Show our listeners that you’re better than that.

Are you going to tell listeners where you’ve been for the past few weeks?
I could lie and say I was visiting the future.
In truth, a family member was very unwell but is now on the mend.

While we’re on the subject of illness, the first thing I want to talk about is baldness…
Baldness is not an affliction.
It’s nature’s aerodynamic modelling.
Do you see how mean these comments make you look?

I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way…
In a post truth world, the way you’re drawn is the way you are.
But you’re right. Baldness. Very important thing to start with.

Does being bald make you unhappy?
Just to point out to listeners that this isn’t another mean question.
I asked Jeff to ask me this.
And no. It doesn’t really bother me.
I wish I had a...

We're off-air this week. So, here, in light of recent global attempts at fakery, is one of our most popular episodes of 2019: Fake It Till You Make It.

Are you selling the dream or running a long con? How to sort the Silicon Valley spin from the outright lies.

We've got a ton of show links this week. Great reporting from all these sources. Support content makers!!!

Show Links:
https://www.vox.com/2015/2/26/8114391/inventions-dumb-fads
http://fortune.com/silicon-valley-startups-fraud-venture-capital/
https://www.wired.com/story/theranos-and-silicon-valleys-fake-it-till-you-make-it-culture/
https://www.wired.com/story/theranos-and-silicon-valleys-fake-it-till-you-make-it-culture/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/21/big-tech-products-silicon-valley
https://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Spectacular-recent-Bay-Area-tech-startup-failures-12378764.php#photo-14592820
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/commentisfree/2019/mar/20/elizabeth-holmes-and-her-firm-theranos-show-why-we-must-stop-fetishising-entrepreneurs

Episode Transcript

These shows are dictated to and transcribed by machines, and hurriedly edited by a human. Apologies for the typos and grammar flaws.

Technology can be a harsh business. You spend years and millions of dollars developing a product, only to find out no one wants it, or that another innovator has turned your invention from a product into a feature.

With the release this week of The Inventor, a documentary about the failed startup Theranos, we thought it was time that MSP took a deeper look into the industry’s fake it till you make it ethos.

Matt, I can’t believe that you are going to be the one telling people about the dangers of faking it.
•Who better than me?
•I’ve spent my entire life faking it.
•I’ve got a masters degree in faking it from Stanford.

That’s a lie!
•Exactly. If you want to catch a conman, you get a con man.
•If you want to talk about lies, find a liar.
•That kind of the point about today’s show.
•There’s a fine line between promoting your invention, giving it enough hype to get yourself some media coverage and some venture capital and flat out lying.

Juicero!
•Exactly. Now Juicero wasn’t a lie.
•But it was very weird. And it was a great example of giving customers exactly what they don’t want at a price they can’t afford.
•Which, in Silicon Valley speak, is the perfect business model.

We haven’t talked about this for ages. Go on. Remind everyone what’s it’s all about.
•People like juices. And I imagine, people who have millions of dollars of stock options can afford to buy really fancy juicers.
•Juicero was an attempt to meet the market’s need for slow pressed juices.
•So they marketed a really expensive juicer – I think it was USD700 or something – which had to be connected to the Internet.
•And you could only use it with really expensive bags of the company’s own pre-mulched juices.

As Indonesia and the Amazon’s rainforests burn and the Arctic melts, radical geo-engineering projects offer a potential way out. It’s time to look to the clouds.

Episode Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/29/the-air-conditioning-trap-how-cold-air-is-heating-the-world &
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24332450-700-refreezing-the-arctic-how-to-bring-the-ice-back-with-geoengineering/
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-on-sand/
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/537681/the-world-in-a-grain-by-vince-beiser/9780399576447/


EPISODE EXCERPT

Refrigeration is a topic we come back to frequently on MSP. Mostly because Matt Armitage can’t actually cope with the tropical climate he chose to live in. Today we take a look at solutions to refreeze the Arctic and how our own addiction to cold air could be warming the planet.

You have an obsession with being cold. When you complain about the temperature in the recording studios, then we know it really is cold.
Well, of course, when I first came to Malaysia it wasn’t as hot as it is now.
In fact, I remember when I first came here, there was snow on the ground and the taxi driver at the airport instructed me not to feed the polar bears.

I think you’re remembering a fever dream…
All Youth is a fever dream. You wake up one morning and there’s just a stagnant eternity ahead of you.
You’ll realise that one day.
If you aren’t burned up in the fiery hell that is climate change, first.

Nice link from hopelessness to eternal damnation…
Have to say I was quite pleased with it, too.
But it’s true. I find Malaysia’s climate increasingly hard to cope with.
Now, I could do the solid research based thing and look up temperature and rainfall charts over the past 20 years.
And compare them to similar records over the past couple of hundred.
But who has time for anything that’s not on the first page of a Google search?

Certainly not you…
Double definitely not me.
But also because I know that a lot of the problem is me and changes in the way I react to heat, which I won’t bore you with.

Because you’re bald and overweight and very very pale?
As I said. Boring reasons that don’t need to be discussed in detail on-air.
In fact, I woke up with a start yesterday morning because the air conditioning in my bedroom suddenly clicked off.
There are two reasons I panic when that happens - firstly, because it’s a bit of a PTSD-lite trigger, as I was once in a landslide in the middle of the night that was signalled by the power going out.
And secondly because I’m the angriest person in the world if I sleep in the heat.
Honestly, a sleep-deprived me is nicer than an over-heated me.
Which should give you some indication as to how mean I get without climate control.
In the end it turned out that I had accidentally set the shut off timer by mistake, groping around for the controller in the dark.
So i turned it on and went back to sleep.

Given the quality of that anecdote, I’m guessing that you’re still sleep-deprived?
Maybe. Or maybe I’m swallowing the meanness.
I wouldn’t suggest that you drink any of the liquids at your desk, however.
The anecdote that thrilled you so was to illustrate our addiction to and dependence on a/c.

Online shopping is a convenient marvel of the digital age. But are there ways to make those services more effective, efficient and ultimately more sustainable?

Produced by Jeff Sandhu for BFM89.9

Episode Sources:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24332460-800-guilt-free-online-shopping-is-possible-if-we-reinvent-home-delivery/

EPISODE EXCERPT

Shopping Online. Most of us have done it. The convenience of buying with a click and having that product delivered to your door is one of the minor miracles of the digital age. But have you stopped to think about the impact your shopping habits are having on the environment? Or even if the current system of online retail is remotely efficient. Someone who is definitely overthinking it is MSP’s Matt Armitage.

What’s your problem with home delivery?
Yesterday I had deliveries from the Post Office, a food delivery service, a local online retailer and an overseas online retailer.
That’s two bikes and two vans.
That’s kind of an average day. But you can pretty much live off online purchases.
A friend was recently hurt in a fall - fortunately he’s healing now.
He lives alone, so in between visits from friends, he had to bring in everything by delivery.

Surely that’s a good thing?
You know what my answer’s going to be, don’t you?

Yes and No? Because you’re boring and predictable?
[Pause]
As Jeff knows, in radioland we use silence to denote displeasure.
You say boring and predictable.
I say nuanced.

Isn’t nuanced another way of saying talking nonsense?
Take the nonsense out of these shows and all you’re left with is some ad breaks.
Can I go on?

Sure. If I wasn’t here I’d have to do some actual work…
To answer your question.

Your question…
Ok. To answer my own question.
It’s amazing that we can pick up a phone, open an app, and as long as we have the money, buy pretty much anything we need - or want.
It’s incredible - and slightly odd - that I can buy a boiled egg or a can of soda and have that single item delivered to my house within minutes.
It’s hard to believe that buying things used to be such a hassle.

When you were a kid?
It’s not that long ago…
And it wasn’t that backward.
Not like we existed god’s lovely turnip, maggoty bread and devil’s dumplings, to paraphrase Blackadder and Lord of the Rings.
But that’s what makes it so remarkable that things have changed so fast.
As a kid a lot of the stores in my town closed at lunchtime for an hour, finished up their working day by 5pm, closed at midday on Wednesdays and Saturdays and all day on Sunday.
It’s a wonder we even managed to eat.
I think the supermarket opened till about 7pm and we had sundry stores that opened till 9.

Who the hell thought the flying car was a hot idea? And other similar success stories from the sillier side of innovation.

We're a little behind in posting episodes, so please enjoy the multiple feeds this week!

Episode Sources:
https://www.alphr.com/technology/1000477/the-5-worst-ideas-in-tech-history/
https://www.redbull.com/nz-en/weirdest-worst-tech-startup-ideas
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612930/the-10-worst-technologies-of-the-21st-century/
https://www.inc.com/sean-wise/mit-announced-top-10-worst-tech-innovations-of-21st-century-heres-what-they-all-have-in-common.html

EPISODE EXCERPT

We’ve been dancing on the light side on MSP for the last couple of weeks. It couldn’t last. The pull of the dark is simply too strong for Matt Armitage to bear. Today we look at some breakthroughs in technology and ask: was that a good idea?

Are you in the driving seat today?
Nicely lined up for me!
Because I want to talk about flying cars.
Which are once again in the news because one of Malaysia’s Ministers has been talking about the country becoming an early adopter of airborne car traffic.
After talking about a local company with a flying vehicle prototype under development in Japan.

Except it’s not really a car, is it?
No. From what I understand it’s based on drone technology.
So I imagine it’s remote controlled or autonomous, whether or not it carries passengers.
Which is why I wanted to talk about some of the terrible ideas we have that simply refuse to go away.
Flying cars has been a sci-fi dream for at least 50 years.
We’re sending probes to Mars, but by and large, cars are still limited to roads.

We’ve had plenty of flying cars over the years…
I’m not even going to list them.
Wikipedia is a great source of knowledge about the common sense breakdown that is flying cars.
It’s full of the good, the bad and the ugly. Just without the good.
We’ve been making flying cars since the 1960s.
Roger Moore flew a car come plane in the Bond movie The Man With the Golden Gun in 1974.
Which was built by AMC, a major automaker in the US at the time.

Didn’t the Bond series have a submarine car, too?
Yeah, a Lotus Turbo Esprit.
Which I think could really dive under water.
of course, there are plenty of car boat things as well.
Cars that can float. Boats that can drive on land.
Motoring shows love to do those stunts where they have to develop some kind of hybrid.

But the ideas never take off?
No. Even if the actual cars can.
We have the technology to do this.
We’re not being cheated out of a world of star Wars style Speeders because we’re waiting for technology to catch up.
The technology is there. The problem is the idea itself.
It’s not good. It’s like setting your feet on fire.
You can do it. But you’d really be better off not.

As Malaysia celebrates its 62nd year of independence, MSP looks at some of the milestones in technology and science since 1957.


We're a little behind in posting episodes, so please enjoy the multiple feeds this week!

EPISODE EXCERPT

With his authoritarian nature we’re not entirely sure it was a good idea to ask Matt to put together a list of tech and science advances and breakthroughs to celebrate the 62 years since Malaysian Independence. But MSP is a show that takes risks. And Matt has promised to keep today’s content WHO compliant. Unlike many of his business ventures.

How are we going to do this? Chronologically?
I thought that that would be a bit boring.
As riveting as listening to me reciting a list of facts for 25 minutes would be, I thought jumping about might make it a bit more interesting.
Because it’s also about looking at the way those discoveries are interconnected.
How one breakthrough leads to another.
And how they might appear to be unrelated.

Which means you have to give us an example…
Happy to.
For the benefit of the listeners, I asked Jeff and a few other people to share some of their favourite moments in tech history over the last 60 or so years.
One of the things that came up on both our lists was Photoshop.
The image processing and manipulation software released by Adobe back in 1990.
Can you imagine? Photoshop is almost 30 years old.
I guess we’ll have to dedicate an MSP Ikons show to it at some point.

Obviously, we’re celebrating it as a breakthrough, but isn’t Photoshop one of those love to hate it inclusions?
Yes, of course.
I think most of the big software breakthroughs - including milestones like Microsoft Word and the Office Suite - are very much in the love hate category.
And designers have horror stories about early versions of Photoshop.
Many of which are more about the state of computing back in the 90s.
Buggy machines that would hang.
Graphics cards and processors that couldn’t handle the load.
Slow data transfer and rendering speeds.
The number of times I used to get stuck in the office because a page of a magazine was crashing the zip drive.
It used to take hours to download things.

Yet Photoshop is still a transformational tool?
Yes. For all its complexity.
It helped to transform desktop publishing.
We’re talking media industries. Fashion. Advertising.
It made it possible to easily manipulate photos. Colour correct them.
Give them a distinct look and feel.
That’s a legacy that we carry over into products like Instagram and its photo filters.
We take it for granted, but to do what Instagram does with the click of a button, used to take many minutes if not hours on early versions of Photoshop.
And those same tricks could take a designer days to do manually with physical photos and negatives.
All those clean looking social media posts against lily white walls. We owe those to Photoshop.

Negative stories in your social media feeds getting you down? Let The Knowledge soothe your troubles with edible algae, miracle magnets and a keto-based migraine cure.

We're a little behind in posting episodes, so please enjoy the multiple feeds this week!

Episode Sources:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2213394-ketogenic-diet-may-stop-migraines-by-changing-the-brains-fuel/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2213755-cities-are-using-walls-of-moss-to-tackle-air-pollution-from-traffic/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/13/algae-spirulina-e3-blue-majik-health-benefits
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/13/algae-spirulina-e3-blue-majik-health-benefits
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2213622-tiny-magnets-could-help-rid-the-ocean-of-harmful-microplastics/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2213756-a-classic-quantum-theorem-may-prove-there-are-many-parallel-universes/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2213655-having-kids-makes-you-happier-but-only-when-they-move-out/

Unbelievably Matt is making good on his promise to show us that this world is a better place than our social media feeds might indicate. Today on MSP we have a lot of algae, some moss, quantum universes, children and magnets. Yes, it’s time to get your feelgood on.

Where are we going today? Are you going to start us off with physics or food?
I’ll go with a couple of food stories.
Leave the stuff that’s mentally hard to swallow until later.
We often hear about fad diets being the latest thing to help us lose weight and keep us in shape.
And as we talked about a few shows ago, diets on their own often make very little difference to your weight over the long term because the body adjusts to the calories coming in and adjusts the way it burns and stores energy.
But it turns out that the Ketogenic diet could be having unintended and quite profound health benefits for people with certain long term illnesses.

For people that don’t know, the ketogenic diet essentially restricts carbs and calories and promotes a mixture of protein and fats to derive energy from.
Yes, so it’s a bit like a more extreme version of the Atkins Diet that was popular a few years ago.
You’ll find loads of keto influencers on social media and it seems to be wildly popular with a subsection of fitness freaks.
What wasn’t perhaps anticipated was the effect it might have for migraine sufferers.
And it’s something else that underscores, that despite all the advances, how poorly we understand the way our own bodies, especially our brains, work.

Don’t tell me. You ran a little test?
Haha. I left that question in from last week.
And no, I didn’t.
I know I have a slightly fast and loose reputation when it comes to experimenting with humans, but my line is drawn a long way before we get to chronic migraines.
Besides, I signed a hypocritical oath sta