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How Boredom Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. And I'm Josh, and
0:13
Speaker 2: there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too. And we are going
0:16
Speaker 2: to do the opposite of making you bored with this
0:20
Speaker 2: episode on boredom.
0:23
Speaker 1: That's right. Before we get going, though, we want to
0:26
Speaker 1: recommend a podcast to our listeners from our always friend.
0:31
Speaker 1: And former colleague.
0:33
Speaker 2: Forever friend.
0:33
Speaker 1: Forever. Yeah, he's our FF. But former colleague. We used
0:37
Speaker 1: to work with Mangesh Hadakadur at HowStuffWorks. And I'm not
0:43
Speaker 1: lying when I think we'll all agree, because Jerry's listening too,
0:47
Speaker 1: that Mangesh is one of the sweetest, sweethearts, kindest, most intelligent,
0:53
Speaker 1: nicest dudes of all time. And that's reason enough to
0:56
Speaker 1: listen to anything that he does.
0:58
Speaker 2: He's a high quality person.
1:00
Speaker 1: He's the best man gets just great. So he has
1:02
Speaker 1: a show out called how to live forever, which is
1:04
Speaker 1: not like, here's how you live forever. It's more like
1:07
Speaker 1: trying to understand this sort of movement that's going around
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1:20
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1:21
Speaker 1: And it's a great show. He wants to recommend in particular,
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1:25
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1:28
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Speaker 1: And it is, buddy, because in episode five, Mangesh kind
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2:02
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Speaker 1: of this thing. So is ARPA-H, and it's just kind
2:08
Speaker 1: of crazy stuff. So that's episode five. But the podcast
2:12
Speaker 1: is How to Live Forever, and it's awesome.
2:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Mengesh is super interesting and entertaining. And if
2:17
Speaker 2: you're not quite convinced of this Mengesh guy, put this
2:21
Speaker 2: in your pipe and smoke it. He, along with another
2:24
Speaker 2: colleague of ours, Will Pearson, Co-founded Mental Floss back in
2:28
Speaker 2: the day when he was in college.
2:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, man.
2:30
Speaker 2: Yep.
2:31
Speaker 1: That's all you need to know. Yeah, Man Gush is
2:33
Speaker 1: the best, so check out How to Live Forever. I'm
2:35
Speaker 1: going to get all corporate here and say wherever you
2:37
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.
2:38
Speaker 2: Ooh, is it guaranteed human?
2:41
Speaker 1: I think so.
2:42
Speaker 2: Okay, great. Okay, Chuck, so we're talking about boredom. I
2:47
Speaker 2: found it exceedingly hard to concentrate while I was studying this.
2:51
Speaker 2: Did you?
2:52
Speaker 1: Yeah. I hated to say it, but it was kind
2:54
Speaker 1: of boring.
2:56
Speaker 2: I actually liked it. Oh, really? Yes, I did. At
2:59
Speaker 2: first I was like, this is kind of boring. It's
3:01
Speaker 2: very dry. But if you put it all together, it
3:05
Speaker 2: actually boredom did become a little more interesting to me
3:07
Speaker 2: than it had been before. Let me just say it
3:10
Speaker 2: like that. How about that?
3:11
Speaker 1: Well, that's good.
3:12
Speaker 2: But it's like when we researched sushi or yawning or whatever,
3:16
Speaker 2: I wanted sushi. I couldn't stop yawning.
3:18
Speaker 1: Right, right.
3:20
Speaker 2: Like reading about boredom actually makes you like it's hard
3:23
Speaker 2: to concentrate, which is one of the traits of boredom.
3:26
Speaker 2: I just thought that was very interesting. For sure.
3:30
Speaker 1: If you want to talk about just how boredom is
3:32
Speaker 1: sort of defined, it is the experience of wanting to
3:37
Speaker 1: engage in something that is like satisfying to you, but
3:41
Speaker 1: not being able to and being left in a state.
3:45
Speaker 1: In this case, it's called an adaptive state.
3:47
Speaker 2: Yeah.
3:48
Speaker 1: Where, you know, you don't have an optimal energy level.
3:55
Speaker 1: There may be some discomfort. This is a big part
3:59
Speaker 1: of boredom is it urges new action because, as we'll see,
4:03
Speaker 1: just being bored can lead to you doing really dumb
4:07
Speaker 1: things just so something is happening.
4:10
Speaker 2: If you put all that together, man, it really just
4:13
Speaker 2: sounds like you need a Snickers.
4:15
Speaker 1: Right.
4:16
Speaker 2: You know?
4:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe so, because boredom, you know, it's boredom definitely
4:21
Speaker 1: urges you to pursue something different than what's going on.
4:25
Speaker 1: That's sort of the whole point behind it.
4:26
Speaker 2: Yes. Now, whether what you pursue is up to you
4:31
Speaker 2: and it can be negative, it can be positive, it
4:33
Speaker 2: can be really bad for you. It can actually be great.
4:38
Speaker 2: And this is like this is like it's really well studied.
4:42
Speaker 2: I think one of the things I appreciated about it
4:44
Speaker 2: is the philosophers starting in the 19th century with Schopenhauer.
4:49
Speaker 2: And then Nietzsche, like they really thought a lot about
4:53
Speaker 2: boredom and what boredom was. And they created a great
4:56
Speaker 2: basis for it that science then took over. And science
4:59
Speaker 2: has done a really good job of investigating it and
5:02
Speaker 2: explaining it, too. And I love topics like that because
5:05
Speaker 2: we cover so much stuff. Like I like it when
5:07
Speaker 2: it's like no one understands this and here's this theory
5:09
Speaker 2: and here's that theory. Right. Topics like that. But I
5:12
Speaker 2: also like topics where it's all like, oh, all the
5:15
Speaker 2: components are here and we can put them together. Now
5:17
Speaker 2: I understand it.
5:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I agree, too. If there's boredom happening,
5:22
Speaker 1: that means there's obviously nothing new or stimulating happening. There
5:25
Speaker 1: may be a time distortion, like things are really dragging
5:28
Speaker 1: on and it might feel meaningless. And you mentioned Schopenhauer.
5:32
Speaker 1: He put forth that boredom and pain are like the
5:35
Speaker 1: twin poles of life. And you just kind of swing
5:37
Speaker 1: between those.
5:39
Speaker 2: Yeah.
5:40
Speaker 1: Yeah.
5:41
Speaker 2: Nietzsche came along and he was like, I agree. He said, yes, and.
5:45
Speaker 2: I think boredom can actually lead to creativity. I don't
5:48
Speaker 2: think it's all bad. And he went on to say,
5:51
Speaker 2: which I think is going a little far, that God
5:54
Speaker 2: created humans because God was bored. OK. It's a little
6:01
Speaker 2: it's like, how are you going to prove that? And
6:03
Speaker 2: he said, I'm a philosopher. I don't have to prove
6:04
Speaker 2: a thing.
6:08
Speaker 1: Emily has always and I've since gotten on board when,
6:11
Speaker 1: you know, when you have a kid. you know, I'm bored,
6:13
Speaker 1: I'm bored. You hear that a lot. And she, from
6:15
Speaker 1: the very beginning with Ruby was like, well, you know,
6:18
Speaker 1: what's on the other side of boredom, creativity. And, you know,
6:20
Speaker 1: Ruby's tired of hearing that, but that's a good way
6:23
Speaker 1: to handle it with kids is, and they say to like,
6:27
Speaker 1: you know, don't hand them something to do. Like you're bored. Oh, here,
6:31
Speaker 1: do this and do this and like try and solve
6:32
Speaker 1: their problem. You're like, solve it yourself, go find something
6:35
Speaker 1: to do. And if all goes well, and generally it does,
6:39
Speaker 1: at least with my daughter, all of a sudden she's,
6:41
Speaker 1: you know, drawing something or writing something.
6:44
Speaker 2: That's neat. Yeah. Or you're like, where did she get
6:47
Speaker 2: that pony? Right. All of a sudden.
6:51
Speaker 1: I know. How creative.
6:53
Speaker 2: So one thing that the philosophers did have in common, Chuck,
6:56
Speaker 2: was that they considered boredom important. And I think today
6:59
Speaker 2: most people, including me, I did not think of boredom
7:03
Speaker 2: as particularly important. But if you look at it a
7:06
Speaker 2: certain way, say like have science nowadays, It's extremely important
7:11
Speaker 2: in that if you think about us never getting bored,
7:15
Speaker 2: we would just sit around either blissed out all day
7:18
Speaker 2: or sitting around doing nothing. Right. Like boredom actually prompts
7:23
Speaker 2: you to action. And they believe now that essentially it's
7:28
Speaker 2: because your brain is constantly seeking new novel stimuli. Yeah.
7:34
Speaker 2: That when it's not granted that, when it doesn't have
7:37
Speaker 2: the opportunity to do that anymore, and we'll see in
7:40
Speaker 2: a second there's different reasons why that can happen, it
7:43
Speaker 2: just basically shuts down to a certain extent. And that's
7:49
Speaker 2: not just it. If it just kind of shut down,
7:50
Speaker 2: you would just be daydreaming. There's also a negative arousal
7:55
Speaker 2: state to where you just feel restless, agitated. You can't concentrate.
7:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
8:00
Speaker 2: And those two things combined make boredom kind of unpleasant
8:05
Speaker 2: and spur you to action, to go do something that
8:07
Speaker 2: will give your brain the novel stimuli it gets to
8:10
Speaker 2: search for. It likes to search for signal among noise
8:13
Speaker 2: and then engage with the signal, is how I saw
8:16
Speaker 2: it put. And that when it can't do that, that's
8:19
Speaker 2: where boredom comes.
8:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought that was really interesting because I was
8:23
Speaker 1: today years old when I found out that the brain
8:27
Speaker 1: is constantly predicting sensory inputs.
8:31
Speaker 2: Right.
8:31
Speaker 1: I always just kind of thought the brain was processing
8:33
Speaker 1: information as it receives it, but the brain is, is
8:36
Speaker 1: predicting like, like actively predicting sensory inputs and the brain
8:41
Speaker 1: loves it when those predictions are validated. But what it
8:45
Speaker 1: really loves is when it, uh, it's in an environment
8:50
Speaker 1: where it makes a prediction that is, um, slightly different
8:55
Speaker 1: than what it predicted in reality.
8:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, we would call that learning in other words, right?
9:00
Speaker 2: And that's where the brain gets a little dose of
9:02
Speaker 2: dopamine because we've talked about dopamine before. It's a reinforcing
9:07
Speaker 2: reward chemical, right? It's not like, oh, I ate the
9:10
Speaker 2: Snickers and there's dopamine. That's a misstatement of what dopamine is.
9:13
Speaker 2: Dopamine is what our brain gets when we get it.
9:16
Speaker 2: Our brain gets it slightly wrong. So that it learns,
9:19
Speaker 2: it says, this is important. Here's what the correct answer was.
9:22
Speaker 2: And now your brain just learned. And that's what it
9:24
Speaker 2: seems to like the most, like you said.
9:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And boredom could also or at least
9:29
Speaker 1: what it could represent is a faulty prediction where the
9:34
Speaker 1: brain has an unrealistic award or reward that they think
9:39
Speaker 1: is coming. So in that case, it varies from like
9:43
Speaker 1: the prediction, but not in a good way. So like
9:46
Speaker 1: there's a hypothesis that if you're prone to boredom, that
9:49
Speaker 1: your brain isn't predicting well. It's like bad at predicting
9:52
Speaker 1: what's happening.
9:53
Speaker 2: Right. There's other situations that they've identified where you can
9:57
Speaker 2: get bored or where boredom sets in. One is obviously
10:01
Speaker 2: where you're just not getting enough stimulation. Like an example
10:06
Speaker 2: I thought of is, let's say your quality control for
10:09
Speaker 2: the Schatz brewery production line and your job is to
10:13
Speaker 2: look for a glove on a bottle. And that's only
10:15
Speaker 2: happened one time and it's never happened since. And you're
10:18
Speaker 2: really getting bored by this point because you know that
10:22
Speaker 2: nothing new is coming along. So your brain is like,
10:25
Speaker 2: I'm bored, right?
10:26
Speaker 1: Yeah.
10:26
Speaker 2: Which as we'll see is a terrible state for you
10:29
Speaker 2: to be in as a worker for years and years
10:31
Speaker 2: on end. And then the other one is the opposite.
10:34
Speaker 2: Like you're getting so much information that you don't understand
10:37
Speaker 2: that you get bored because your brain can't find signal
10:41
Speaker 2: in the noise. And a good example I saw of
10:43
Speaker 2: that is like a really dense lecture on a topic
10:46
Speaker 2: that you are totally unfamiliar with.
10:50
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
10:51
Speaker 2: You know?
10:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I fall into that trap a lot,
10:55
Speaker 1: I feel like.
10:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think most people do.
10:57
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you can become really restless if you're trying
11:01
Speaker 1: to become mentally engaged. And then if you fail to,
11:04
Speaker 1: that a real listlessness can follow. I mentioned the time thing.
11:08
Speaker 1: It can really feel like time has slowed down. And
11:11
Speaker 1: that there's no value in what's going on and your
11:13
Speaker 1: concentration is off. We did talk about, like, you don't
11:17
Speaker 1: necessarily yawn when you're bored, but you can yawn when
11:20
Speaker 1: you're bored. Like, you can change your, like, physical state.
11:23
Speaker 1: You could slouch a lot more. It's, you know, sometimes
11:27
Speaker 1: this may be a signal to other people that we're
11:30
Speaker 1: with of, like, you know, this party's lame. Let's get
11:34
Speaker 1: out of here. Yeah.
11:35
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, because I remember in our yawning episode that
11:40
Speaker 2: they said, One of the theories was that it was
11:42
Speaker 2: a signal to others that danger was nearby when we
11:45
Speaker 2: were anxious.
11:47
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, that's right. Danger.
11:48
Speaker 2: So there's been studies about what it's like to be bored.
11:51
Speaker 2: All of us know what boredom is like. But I
11:53
Speaker 2: think if you just took me aside and, you know,
11:57
Speaker 2: five days ago said like, OK, what is boredom? Like,
12:01
Speaker 2: explain it, describe it.
12:02
Speaker 1: You'd say this.
12:05
Speaker 2: I probably wouldn't have been able to. So people have
12:08
Speaker 2: studied boredom. to try to figure out subjectively what boredom
12:10
Speaker 2: is like. He ticked off a lot of it, but
12:13
Speaker 2: it seems like the studies that really kind of got
12:15
Speaker 2: to the root of it went to the furthest extreme
12:19
Speaker 2: and induced the deepest possible boredom that you can through
12:24
Speaker 2: sensory deprivation. And what they found is that the brain
12:27
Speaker 2: just goes haywire when it's bored to those extreme levels.
12:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, they did. You know, they've done studies like this,
12:35
Speaker 1: you know, for decades. But there was one in the
12:37
Speaker 1: 50s at McGill University in Montreal. Shout out Montreal, where
12:42
Speaker 1: they paid people 20 bucks a day to stay in
12:44
Speaker 1: these little rooms. You had to wear like sensory deprivation
12:47
Speaker 1: goggles and headphones and gloves and cardboard tubes on the arms.
12:51
Speaker 1: I didn't quite get that. I guess they just wanted
12:53
Speaker 1: you to be fully sort of, I don't know, locked down.
12:56
Speaker 2: No sense of touch, maybe.
12:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. And I think it was
13:01
Speaker 1: over the period of a few days. They never went
13:03
Speaker 1: longer than a week. Right. But it was not good.
13:07
Speaker 1: You know, people couldn't think of like fix on anything,
13:10
Speaker 1: like any thought for any length of time at all.
13:13
Speaker 1: And their word pattern recognition got all over the place.
13:16
Speaker 1: Their arithmetic skills were terrible. They started like hallucinating and
13:22
Speaker 1: they became more susceptible to supernatural beliefs.
13:24
Speaker 2: Yep.
13:25
Speaker 1: So obviously something like solitary confinement in prison, which I
13:29
Speaker 1: think we Did we do a whole episode in solitary
13:31
Speaker 1: or just?
13:31
Speaker 2: Yes, we did. And we concluded it's not only inhumane,
13:36
Speaker 2: it's inhuman.
13:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, completely. Because it physically alters the brain, like it
13:42
Speaker 1: shrinks your hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that,
13:45
Speaker 1: you know, we talk about a lot, but it's involved
13:46
Speaker 1: in emotion control, spatial orientation, memory, that kind of thing.
13:50
Speaker 1: So you're basically just you're shrinking that part of your
13:54
Speaker 1: brain when you throw someone in solitary.
13:56
Speaker 2: Right. You want to take a break and come back
13:58
Speaker 2: and talk about how boredom can be useful?
14:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it. No stuff you should know, stuff
14:22
Speaker 1: you should know.
14:27
Speaker 2: All right, Chuck. So we've basically talked about how boredom
14:30
Speaker 2: is not pleasant. And that kind of prompted a lot
14:35
Speaker 2: of researchers to be like, well, then why are we
14:37
Speaker 2: experiencing boredom? If we experience boredom, and it seems like
14:40
Speaker 2: a lot of different animals experience boredom too, as we'll see,
14:44
Speaker 2: there has to be some sort of evolutionary benefit from
14:48
Speaker 2: it for it sticking around for clearly tens or hundreds
14:51
Speaker 2: of millions of years, right? And what they've What they
14:55
Speaker 2: finally landed on was the same thing that Schopenhauer and
14:57
Speaker 2: Nietzsche and Henry David Thoreau and a bunch of other
15:00
Speaker 2: philosophers pointed to, which was it prompts you to go
15:04
Speaker 2: out and do other stuff. And it doesn't necessarily prompt
15:08
Speaker 2: you to go out and do the safest thing. It
15:11
Speaker 2: turns out that it prompts you to go do anything else,
15:14
Speaker 2: even stuff that is outside of your comfort zone. If
15:17
Speaker 2: it's an alternative to whatever you're doing now and you're bored,
15:22
Speaker 2: you're much likelier to go try it than when you're
15:25
Speaker 2: not bored. And that's what a bunch of research has
15:27
Speaker 2: turned up. Yeah.
15:29
Speaker 1: I mean, that's, you know, you think about the scenario
15:32
Speaker 1: of a bunch of kids bored in the summertime. They're like, hey,
15:34
Speaker 1: let's go jump off the roof of the house right
15:37
Speaker 1: now and see what happens.
15:38
Speaker 2: Yeah.
15:38
Speaker 1: You know, that kind of thing. There was a study
15:41
Speaker 1: in the, I guess it's a scientific paper, Emotion, or
15:47
Speaker 1: a magazine.
15:48
Speaker 2: A journal, yeah. Journal.
15:50
Speaker 1: Quarterly, maybe. I don't know.
15:53
Speaker 2: A rag.
15:54
Speaker 1: A white paper. By doctors Heather Lynch and Shane Bench,
15:58
Speaker 1: Lynch and Bench. Yeah. Where they subjected the participants to
16:02
Speaker 1: stimuli that would make them bored. Either neutral bored, positive bored,
16:07
Speaker 1: or negative bored. And across all the studies, people reporting
16:13
Speaker 1: high boredom were more likely to choose something unfamiliar, which
16:18
Speaker 1: included negative experiences. And people bored by positive conditions sought
16:23
Speaker 1: out negative experiences. And if you were bored by negative content,
16:27
Speaker 1: you sought out positive experiences. So almost like you're seeking
16:30
Speaker 1: out the opposite of whatever you're experiencing in your boredom.
16:34
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah. They kept showing them like picture after picture
16:37
Speaker 2: after picture. And even if it was positive, They're like,
16:39
Speaker 2: do you want to switch to the negative pictures? It's
16:41
Speaker 2: like cockroaches and stacks of dirty dishes. And the people
16:45
Speaker 2: were like, yes, please hurry up. So, yeah, that's pretty
16:49
Speaker 2: good study pointing out that, you know, it will leave
16:53
Speaker 2: our comfort zone. At least we'll go look at pictures
16:56
Speaker 2: of dirty dishes if we're bored. Right. And then other
16:59
Speaker 2: studies have kind of followed this up. There was one
17:01
Speaker 2: in 2014 that attached something that could deliver an electric
17:06
Speaker 2: shock around participants ankles. And then just left them to
17:10
Speaker 2: be bored in a room alone for 15 minutes and
17:14
Speaker 2: see if anybody would press the button that gave themselves
17:17
Speaker 2: a shock. Knowing that if they press this button, that's
17:20
Speaker 2: what was going to happen. It wasn't like a surprise.
17:23
Speaker 2: And people did. A lot of people did. As a
17:25
Speaker 2: matter of fact, they got so bored. They're like, I
17:27
Speaker 2: guess I'll just give myself electric shocks.
17:29
Speaker 1: I could see myself totally doing that, by the way.
17:32
Speaker 2: I think it depends on the shock. I would at
17:34
Speaker 2: least try it once probably eventually.
17:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, my deal. I would try it once and be like, well,
17:38
Speaker 1: I got to see what the button does. There's like
17:40
Speaker 1: no way I'm just going to sit here and not know.
17:41
Speaker 2: Right.
17:42
Speaker 1: Yeah.
17:43
Speaker 2: The one guy apparently pressed the button 190 times in
17:46
Speaker 2: that study.
17:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they should do some follow-up studies with
17:51
Speaker 1: that guy.
17:51
Speaker 2: And just that guy.
17:53
Speaker 1: Something's going on there.
17:54
Speaker 2: Exactly. So circling it back around to evolution, what they
17:59
Speaker 2: basically put all this together is that You know, just
18:02
Speaker 2: sitting around like a campfire or something. If we got
18:06
Speaker 2: bored or Tuk-Tuk got bored, that might prompt him to
18:11
Speaker 2: be like, I'm going to go see what's over here.
18:12
Speaker 2: I'm going to go, you know, see what's down this river.
18:16
Speaker 2: And then maybe Tuk-Tuk encountered a new animal that Tuk-Tuk
18:20
Speaker 2: had never seen before. And Tuk-Tuk was kind of forced
18:23
Speaker 2: to create a new weapon to hunt that animal or
18:26
Speaker 2: even better, even better. Tuk-Tuk made friends with that animal.
18:31
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden, both of their brains just
18:33
Speaker 2: enlarged because of the empathy and love that developed between
18:36
Speaker 2: the two.
18:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that could go either way. You know,
18:40
Speaker 1: I've talked a bit about watching the survival TV show alone.
18:44
Speaker 1: And a common theme among all participants on that show
18:47
Speaker 1: is like, you're out here by yourself and like it
18:50
Speaker 1: gets boring. And sometimes that has led to them making
18:53
Speaker 1: decisions that leads to like the end of their stay there.
18:57
Speaker 1: Because they did what Tuk Tuk did. They're like, hey,
18:59
Speaker 1: I'm bored. I want to go cross that stream that
19:02
Speaker 1: I thought it was probably a really bad idea to cross.
19:05
Speaker 1: And it turns out that was correct. And all of
19:07
Speaker 1: a sudden they're getting helicoptered out.
19:09
Speaker 2: Yes. But it can also work out, too, in that
19:12
Speaker 2: you go make a friend with an animal on the
19:14
Speaker 2: other side.
19:14
Speaker 1: Of that stream. Yeah. Or kill it and eat it.
19:19
Speaker 2: So I think also one of the more prevalent interpretations
19:22
Speaker 2: among lay people like us is meaning people who like
19:26
Speaker 2: to just lay around, is that dumb people are more
19:31
Speaker 2: prone to be bored. And apparently this is the idea
19:34
Speaker 2: of Henry David Thoreau. He was like, if you're smart,
19:37
Speaker 2: you can always find something to occupy yourself. And everyone's like,
19:40
Speaker 2: shut up, Thoreau. We know that you're so smart and cool.
19:44
Speaker 2: We get it. You don't have to put everybody else down.
19:47
Speaker 2: Studies have not borne out Thoreau's idea. It finds that
19:52
Speaker 2: intelligent people and people of lower intelligence are not, neither
19:56
Speaker 2: one's more likely to become bored more easily. But there
20:00
Speaker 2: are personality traits that create like trait boredom. There's trait
20:05
Speaker 2: and there's state, just like optimism. There's trait boredom and
20:08
Speaker 2: there's state boredom. And trait boredom seems to be kind
20:12
Speaker 2: of identified with two different types of people.
20:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a psychologist named John Eastwood that said if
20:17
Speaker 1: you're an impulsive person and if you're always like looking
20:22
Speaker 1: for that new thrill and that, you know, generally kind
20:25
Speaker 1: of understimulated by the world around you, then that totally
20:28
Speaker 1: makes sense that you would be prone to boredom. This one,
20:32
Speaker 1: I don't know, I can't make sense of, but if
20:34
Speaker 1: you're highly sensitive to pain and fearful of the world
20:38
Speaker 1: around you, maybe you're unsatisfied by the idea, like the
20:44
Speaker 1: safety net of not leaving your comfort zone. So you
20:47
Speaker 1: might be more prone to boredom. But I guess maybe
20:50
Speaker 1: more willing to live with it?
20:51
Speaker 2: Yes. Your anxiety or your fears overcome your aversion, your
20:58
Speaker 2: natural aversion to boredom as a human. And so you're
21:02
Speaker 2: just not feeding your brain any new stuff anymore. So
21:05
Speaker 2: you become bored. It's very sad. Reason for being prone
21:09
Speaker 2: to boredom.
21:10
Speaker 1: Yeah. In school, you know, you were talking about intelligence
21:13
Speaker 1: in school. Boredom is a big, you know, can be
21:15
Speaker 1: a big challenge for any student. But there are eight
21:19
Speaker 1: precursors for boredom in school, which is you're under challenged.
21:23
Speaker 1: Like maybe you're in a like a remedial class and
21:27
Speaker 1: you're a little more advanced over challenge and go the
21:30
Speaker 1: other way to where if you're like, I just don't
21:32
Speaker 1: get this stuff. So you just slip into boredom. Right.
21:34
Speaker 1: You were talking about earlier. monotony in classrooms, if you
21:37
Speaker 1: don't like your teacher, if you think there's a lack
21:40
Speaker 1: of meaning in going to school or a lack of involvement.
21:44
Speaker 1: And then the other one is just the, you know, man,
21:47
Speaker 1: I could be doing whatever. I could be outside throwing
21:50
Speaker 1: the Frisbee right now instead of being in this dumb class. Yeah.
21:54
Speaker 2: And if you're an adolescent, you're essentially born to be bored.
21:57
Speaker 2: Like your boredom levels peak between the ages of 10
22:01
Speaker 2: and 17. Apparently where you and I are in life
22:04
Speaker 2: right now is where boredom levels dip the most.
22:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel that.
22:11
Speaker 2: I can too. It's not like I'm always doing something
22:13
Speaker 2: meaningful or important. I just don't feel bored ever. That's all.
22:18
Speaker 1: I don't either.
22:19
Speaker 2: Yeah. Even when I'm not doing anything, I'm never bored.
22:22
Speaker 1: Same, man. I don't feel boredom anymore. It's kind of great.
22:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great.
22:27
Speaker 1: I wonder if it's just getting to a certain point
22:29
Speaker 1: in your life where you're Maybe just satisfied with where
22:33
Speaker 1: you are or maybe drinking the small things more. I
22:36
Speaker 1: don't know.
22:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I think that's definitely part of it.
22:40
Speaker 2: And apparently it starts to go back up as you
22:43
Speaker 2: get older, which I'm not looking forward to.
22:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's avoid that. Let's agree to avoid that. Yes.
22:48
Speaker 2: All right. Agreed. Pinky swear.
22:49
Speaker 1: Pinky swear.
22:51
Speaker 2: But nothing compares to your levels of boredom from 10
22:54
Speaker 2: to 17. Part of it is that your brain is
22:57
Speaker 2: still developing. So you said impulse control. needing stimulation is
23:05
Speaker 2: one group of people who get bored more easily. Well,
23:07
Speaker 2: adolescents by nature are like that because their brain is
23:10
Speaker 2: still developing. And then also they have much less agency
23:14
Speaker 2: or control over their lives. And control or lack of
23:18
Speaker 2: control is positively correlated with boredom. Oh, sure.
23:24
Speaker 1: Yes.
23:24
Speaker 2: So if you're like, I want to go buy a
23:27
Speaker 2: mad magazine at this awesome used comic book store. But
23:31
Speaker 2: I can't because I can't drive and it's all the
23:33
Speaker 2: way on the other side of town. You're probably going
23:36
Speaker 2: to really resent the situation that you're in right there.
23:39
Speaker 2: And nothing is going to make you like you're not
23:42
Speaker 2: going to say, oh, I'll just go play duck hunt
23:44
Speaker 2: then and be happy. You're just upset about that. And
23:48
Speaker 2: that can can create like a sense of boredom in
23:52
Speaker 2: and of itself.
23:53
Speaker 1: Buddy, do you remember the feeling you got when you
23:57
Speaker 1: got that driver's license?
24:00
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, not really. I don't.
24:04
Speaker 1: Oh, really? Yeah. Man, that is, and it might just
24:09
Speaker 1: be me then. That was one of the single most
24:12
Speaker 1: like important sort of things that happened in my life
24:16
Speaker 1: up to, you know, my 20s or 30s even.
24:18
Speaker 2: Wow, that's awesome.
24:19
Speaker 1: That freedom when I finally got that car key and
24:23
Speaker 1: was able to go and leave the house by myself
24:26
Speaker 1: to go do something and go somewhere that I wanted
24:28
Speaker 1: to go.
24:29
Speaker 2: That's cool, man.
24:30
Speaker 1: It was incredible. I remember the feeling of just being like,
24:33
Speaker 1: Now I can leave. I mean, no shade toward my
24:38
Speaker 1: family or anything. I've talked before about not having the
24:43
Speaker 1: greatest situation with my parents and all. So, yeah, I
24:47
Speaker 1: wanted to get out of there. But just the freedom
24:49
Speaker 1: to go to my friend's house or whatever, go to
24:50
Speaker 1: the Turtles record store or whatever.
24:52
Speaker 2: Oh, I remember those.
24:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was incredible.
24:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally. You prize freedom.
24:57
Speaker 1: Yeah.
24:57
Speaker 2: That makes sense.
24:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. We should probably talk about digital media, though, because... Yes.
25:03
Speaker 1: If you look at like boredom generationally, it's a different
25:06
Speaker 1: ball of twine these days.
25:09
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I think most people think when you get bored,
25:12
Speaker 2: you pull out your smartphone, you go on Instagram or
25:14
Speaker 2: Facebook or TikTok, I guess is how you pronounce it.
25:20
Speaker 2: And like now you're not bored any longer. And there
25:23
Speaker 2: are theories, starting with our good friend Arthur Schopenhauer, that
25:29
Speaker 2: you are still bored. What you have done is actually changed.
25:32
Speaker 2: lowered your cognitive levels. Yeah. So that you're not bored anymore.
25:39
Speaker 2: You're not going and doing something meaningful or fulfilling to
25:42
Speaker 2: stave off boredom. You've just undertaken a deeply maladaptive response
25:48
Speaker 2: to boredom, which is I'm going to stop thinking so much.
25:51
Speaker 2: And that's what you're doing when you go scroll on
25:53
Speaker 2: social media.
25:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I guess it's a temporary salve kind of thing.
26:00
Speaker 1: But like chronic exposure to that to like your smartphone
26:05
Speaker 1: is basically pushing up the standard of what you find
26:09
Speaker 1: engaging enough to keep you from being bored. Does that
26:12
Speaker 1: make sense?
26:13
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's, so that's a little different from what
26:16
Speaker 2: I'm saying. That totally makes sense to me. The one
26:19
Speaker 2: I'm talking about is this idea that what you're engaging
26:22
Speaker 2: is existential escape. And there's a whole school of thought
26:26
Speaker 2: that boredom represents a threat to to meaning. It shows
26:31
Speaker 2: you what you're doing right now is not meaningful. What
26:34
Speaker 2: you're doing is meaningless. Maybe your entire life is meaningless.
26:38
Speaker 2: Maybe everyone's life is meaningless. So you're threatened by that. Boredom,
26:43
Speaker 2: it generates those thoughts in you. So when you go
26:47
Speaker 2: pick up your phone and start scrolling, you are escaping
26:51
Speaker 2: those existential thoughts by not thinking about that kind of stuff.
26:57
Speaker 2: And when people spend hours and hours every day on
27:00
Speaker 2: their phone and everybody has it in their pocket, We
27:03
Speaker 2: have now this quick and easy way to just stop
27:06
Speaker 2: thinking and stop going and doing something else that is
27:11
Speaker 2: more meaningful to you personally, not necessarily to society, but
27:14
Speaker 2: something that's more meaningful to you. And so we get
27:17
Speaker 2: trapped in this state of living to a lesser degree
27:22
Speaker 2: than we would if there weren't social media apps on smartphones. Seriously,
27:27
Speaker 2: it's as cut and dried as that.
27:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I'm getting a dumb phone.
27:33
Speaker 2: Are you?
27:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got to figure it out because I just
27:36
Speaker 1: started sort of looking into it. But I want to
27:39
Speaker 1: be able to have both with the same phone number.
27:43
Speaker 2: Oh, neat.
27:44
Speaker 1: Because in certain situations, I'm going to still want my iPhone,
27:47
Speaker 1: like when I'm traveling or whatever. A lot of situations
27:50
Speaker 1: where I'm going to want it.
27:51
Speaker 2: Yeah.
27:51
Speaker 1: But I want to get one. And maybe if someone
27:54
Speaker 1: knows how to do this, that would be great if
27:56
Speaker 1: they could write in. But I want to get one
27:58
Speaker 1: that works with the same phone number on the same carrier.
28:00
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
28:01
Speaker 1: I'm happy to pay for the extra whatever it costs
28:03
Speaker 1: to manage that account or whatever. But yeah, in a
28:08
Speaker 1: lot of most situations, I would try to have the
28:11
Speaker 1: dumb phone on me.
28:13
Speaker 2: I'm just like talking out of turn here, but it
28:17
Speaker 2: seems like spoofing your SIM would be the answer to that.
28:21
Speaker 2: And I don't know how you would do that, but
28:23
Speaker 2: that would be my guess.
28:25
Speaker 1: I don't know what spoofing a SIM means.
28:27
Speaker 2: Your SIM card is what gives your phone its individual characteristics,
28:30
Speaker 2: like your phone number and all that stuff.
28:32
Speaker 1: Oh, okay.
28:33
Speaker 2: So if you can figure out how to duplicate that
28:35
Speaker 2: or spoof it in TikTok terms, you could conceivably have
28:40
Speaker 2: two phones with the same number getting the same info
28:42
Speaker 2: at the same time.
28:44
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know why Apple doesn't put out
28:47
Speaker 1: a dumb phone that's like, here's another thing we can
28:50
Speaker 1: sell you. Right. uh, that works perfectly with your phone
28:54
Speaker 1: number and everything. Like I figured, I think they would
28:56
Speaker 1: sell a ton of those because people would be like, yeah,
28:58
Speaker 1: I want two phones when I'm out with my friends.
29:00
Speaker 1: I want my dumb phone so I can just stay present. And, uh,
29:03
Speaker 1: when I, whatever I want my smartphone.
29:06
Speaker 2: I think that, I think you just kind of answered it, that, um,
29:09
Speaker 2: there's people who would say, because generally people in charge
29:14
Speaker 2: don't want you to be present.
29:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe so.
29:17
Speaker 2: That's, that's, yeah, it's my guess.
29:20
Speaker 1: I just saw where, uh, Social media companies are being
29:23
Speaker 1: sued for $ 220 billion by a handful of states for
29:27
Speaker 1: getting children addicted to social media.
29:29
Speaker 2: Which they 100% did. Yeah. I'm really curious how that
29:34
Speaker 2: pans out because it's, I mean, it's a slam dunk case.
29:37
Speaker 2: It's just those guys are so powerful. that I mean,
29:41
Speaker 2: they make the tobacco companies look like, you know, a
29:45
Speaker 2: local auto body shop.
29:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm with you. And hats off to Australia, because
29:51
Speaker 1: they mandated countrywide no social media for any children under 16.
29:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did that a while back, didn't they?
29:58
Speaker 1: I don't know how recently, but they're sort of leading
30:00
Speaker 1: the way in a lot of other countries are like, hey,
30:02
Speaker 1: maybe that's not such a bad idea. And certainly, you know,
30:04
Speaker 1: we're going to do that in our family. And I
30:06
Speaker 1: don't even think 16, man, I would love to see
30:08
Speaker 1: Ruby get through all of high school without any exposure
30:11
Speaker 1: to social media.
30:11
Speaker 2: That would be something really great. Yeah, I think it's
30:14
Speaker 2: very sad. And I think it's going to be something
30:16
Speaker 2: that we it's just going to get more and more
30:19
Speaker 2: clear as time goes on, like just how harmful that was.
30:24
Speaker 1: And yeah, and especially as it gets more and more fake.
30:28
Speaker 1: and deep faked and AI to the point where people
30:31
Speaker 1: are sitting around staring at something that isn't even real ever.
30:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. I, I tend to hope though, Chuck, that it's
30:38
Speaker 2: been ground in so hard and in, in such a
30:43
Speaker 2: compressed amount of time over the course of just several
30:45
Speaker 2: years that people are just going to have a natural
30:48
Speaker 2: backlash against it. And maybe like the cool thing will
30:52
Speaker 2: be to spend all your time outside doing stuff or,
30:55
Speaker 2: you know.
30:56
Speaker 1: I hope so, man. I would love to see it swing.
30:58
Speaker 1: And things a lot of times do swing back hard
31:01
Speaker 1: the other way. I would love to see that of
31:02
Speaker 1: like people like smashing their smartphones and be like, no, man,
31:06
Speaker 1: it was things were better before. Let's go back to that. Yeah,
31:09
Speaker 1: that'd be great. Maybe we'll take a break and talk
31:13
Speaker 1: about animals and benefits of boredom. Does that sound good?
31:16
Speaker 2: Yeah. All right.
31:17
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. All right, everyone, we're back after
31:46
Speaker 1: our little rant. I hope it was taken in the
31:49
Speaker 1: right way.
31:49
Speaker 2: Tim Cook is like, those guys really hurt my feelings.
31:54
Speaker 1: Tim Cook would be, I hope he gives me credit
31:56
Speaker 1: when they invent a dumb phone that they can sell
31:57
Speaker 1: you for like $ 700. Yeah, at least. You can text
32:03
Speaker 1: and get the map to places and call people and that'll.
32:09
Speaker 2: Be $ 700. You're paying not to go into cognitive decline.
32:12
Speaker 2: I think that's really what the price reflects. All right.
32:15
Speaker 1: So I promised to talk about animals getting bored, animals
32:17
Speaker 1: that aren't us, that is. And they have done research
32:20
Speaker 1: and basically kind of said like, yeah, animals for sure
32:23
Speaker 1: get bored. I think we, I mean, people that are,
32:26
Speaker 1: you know, dog and at least dog owners have seen
32:28
Speaker 1: their own dogs get bored and get like get destructive
32:30
Speaker 1: because they're They're not stimulated enough. And I think that's
32:33
Speaker 1: kind of the same thing. But they've studied mink, like
32:38
Speaker 1: the animal, the mink that they house them in non
32:41
Speaker 1: enriching environments was terrible. And then they said they definitely
32:47
Speaker 1: experienced boredom like states because they found that they would
32:51
Speaker 1: these mink would approach anything novel shown to them. Even
32:55
Speaker 1: if it was like a predator, like what they thought
32:58
Speaker 1: was a predator, like a predator shadow and the noises
33:00
Speaker 1: of a predator, the mink was like, well, I'll go
33:02
Speaker 1: check it out. I don't care. Anything but this cage. Yeah.
33:04
Speaker 2: Isn't that interesting though? It increased curiosity in them, like
33:08
Speaker 2: because they were bored. So that kind of goes to,
33:10
Speaker 2: to support that evolutionary idea too. Yeah. There's another one
33:14
Speaker 2: that studied rats where basically they switched up foraging material
33:19
Speaker 2: and the flavor of the pellets under the foraging material.
33:22
Speaker 2: For some rats and then others, they just gave them
33:24
Speaker 2: the same ones over and over again. And the ones
33:27
Speaker 2: that got the same ones over and over again exhibited
33:29
Speaker 2: behavior like trying to find the exit out of their
33:31
Speaker 2: cage and other really sad stuff. So what's heartening about
33:35
Speaker 2: this is animal welfare people are pointing to this and saying, like,
33:39
Speaker 2: if you have a pet or an animal that you keep,
33:43
Speaker 2: you have a greater responsibility to it than just keeping
33:46
Speaker 2: it alive and giving it food and water, maybe taking
33:48
Speaker 2: it for a walk. Animals get bored, which means you
33:50
Speaker 2: have to you're responsible for stimulating something that gets bored
33:54
Speaker 2: if you've taken responsibility for it in any way.
33:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. My one dog, Gibson, is a hound
34:00
Speaker 1: dog and he is very stimulated by smelling stuff, obviously.
34:04
Speaker 1: So they say when you take your dog for a
34:07
Speaker 1: walk to let them smell like if you're if you're
34:10
Speaker 1: constantly just pulling your dog, you know, because you're trying
34:12
Speaker 1: to get your steps in. They get more worn out
34:15
Speaker 1: from a 20-minute sniff walk than an hour, like, hardcore
34:19
Speaker 1: exercise walk. And my walks with Gibson, like, they're 45
34:23
Speaker 1: to 50 minutes long, and I bet half of that
34:24
Speaker 1: is standing around while he smells stuff.
34:27
Speaker 2: I am so glad you said that, dude, because that
34:29
Speaker 2: is absolutely true. And you see a lot of people
34:33
Speaker 2: who are just like, come on. And that's, yeah, it doesn't, like,
34:36
Speaker 2: that's how your dog, like, enjoys life is by sniffing
34:40
Speaker 2: other stuff.
34:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great. And it's a good lesson for me,
34:46
Speaker 1: like as a person.
34:47
Speaker 2: I thought you were learning to sniff things, too. No, no, no.
34:49
Speaker 1: Just to slow down. Like yesterday, another weird example is
34:52
Speaker 1: I got I went sometimes I'll go out to play
34:55
Speaker 1: golf by myself if no one's around and get in
34:58
Speaker 1: like a little, you know, if they don't pair me
35:00
Speaker 1: with anyone, it's kind of great because I can, you know.
35:02
Speaker 1: drop as many balls to take the shot over again
35:05
Speaker 1: and really like just sort of treat it as practice. Yeah.
35:07
Speaker 1: But I went out to do that the other day
35:09
Speaker 1: and they paired me with these two old fellers that
35:12
Speaker 1: were probably mid eighties to nineties.
35:15
Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
35:15
Speaker 1: And boy, these guys were slow, slow, slow. And I
35:19
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, Chuck, this isn't that day.
35:22
Speaker 1: You're just going to be there with them. You're going
35:25
Speaker 1: to help look for their balls. You're going to carry
35:27
Speaker 1: the clubs to them when they drop them. And you're
35:29
Speaker 1: going to slow it down. And it was a really lovely,
35:32
Speaker 1: relaxing experience. I didn't get bored. I tried to, like,
35:37
Speaker 1: revel in the slowness of it all, you know.
35:39
Speaker 2: They kept dropping their clubs?
35:41
Speaker 1: No, like, you know, you carry a pitching wedge and
35:44
Speaker 1: a putter to the green and you drop your pitching
35:46
Speaker 1: wedge to putt. I would always go, like, catty their
35:51
Speaker 1: club for them or get their ball or whatever. You know,
35:53
Speaker 1: try to help these guys out.
35:55
Speaker 2: I got you now.
35:56
Speaker 1: They didn't like me very much, though. It was still fun.
35:59
Speaker 2: So, yeah, I think that's great advice, too, just to
36:02
Speaker 2: slow down and stay present and mindful. Yeah.
36:05
Speaker 1: And all that, I think, comes around to the boredom thing.
36:07
Speaker 1: It's like there are many ways to keep yourself from
36:09
Speaker 1: being bored. And one might be to just try and
36:11
Speaker 1: look at the circumstance you're in in a different way.
36:15
Speaker 2: For sure. Also, I think it's important to bear in
36:19
Speaker 2: mind that you like what's meaningful to you or what's
36:23
Speaker 2: boring to you is boring or meaningful to somebody else. Right.
36:28
Speaker 1: Right.
36:28
Speaker 2: So it's not like you'll get all sorts of advice,
36:31
Speaker 2: like go out and read a book, go and ride
36:33
Speaker 2: a bike. That might not necessarily be meaningful to you.
36:38
Speaker 2: There's something else that's going to be meaningful to you.
36:40
Speaker 2: And that's advice that's typically given to deal with boredom,
36:44
Speaker 2: which is identify things that you care about and then
36:49
Speaker 2: go do those things. Just have them on hand. You know,
36:51
Speaker 2: you don't have to do them all the time. You
36:53
Speaker 2: don't have to become the best at them. You don't
36:55
Speaker 2: have to drive yourself. You don't have to share your
36:57
Speaker 2: experience with anybody else. But just identify some things like
37:01
Speaker 2: this is meaningful to me so that if you do
37:03
Speaker 2: find yourself bored, you don't necessarily just pull out your phone.
37:06
Speaker 2: You go, hmm, maybe I'll go to, you know, rescue
37:10
Speaker 2: guppies out of elementary school aquariums.
37:15
Speaker 1: Right.
37:16
Speaker 2: Whatever it is.
37:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it definitely can lead to creativity. There's
37:20
Speaker 1: a psychologist named Sandy Mann that says that you know,
37:25
Speaker 1: embrace that boredom. There was a study that she did
37:28
Speaker 1: where she had people copying numbers from a telephone directory
37:32
Speaker 1: and she found that they were more creative after, like
37:35
Speaker 1: she gave them a task, like, hey, try and think
37:37
Speaker 1: while you're doing this, try and think of new uses
37:39
Speaker 1: for plastic cups. And once they were subjected to the
37:42
Speaker 1: tedium of just copying numbers, it allowed their, you know,
37:45
Speaker 1: they embrace that boredom and their mind wandered to all
37:47
Speaker 1: these creative things they could do with the cups.
37:51
Speaker 2: Beer pong was born.
37:53
Speaker 1: Exactly. And that there's something called the default mode network,
37:59
Speaker 1: where if you're not doing anything, that gives your brain
38:03
Speaker 1: space to go in that default mode where your brain
38:07
Speaker 1: isn't engaged in a specific thing, but it can get creative.
38:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've talked about that a lot over the last
38:13
Speaker 2: few years. I know it's a big deal with ADHD
38:16
Speaker 2: that it's really hard to get out of your default
38:18
Speaker 2: mode network. Right. And so no surprise there. Boredom can
38:22
Speaker 2: be a part of ADHD too.
38:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And, you know, we're talking about some
38:29
Speaker 1: of the positives that can also be a negative thing
38:33
Speaker 1: because we talked about risk taking and risky behavior just
38:35
Speaker 1: to do something different. They definitely tied boredom to like,
38:39
Speaker 1: you know, gambling, substance abuse and stuff like that. Like
38:43
Speaker 1: the promise of a stimulation that you're seeking because you're
38:47
Speaker 1: bored can sometimes be like a really bad thing.
38:50
Speaker 2: Agreed. you can turn to, and we've been picking on
38:55
Speaker 2: smartphones and sorry to everybody who's like, you guys are
38:57
Speaker 2: too preachy these days. That was definitely very preachy, but
39:01
Speaker 2: it is a pretty good example. It's not the only one.
39:03
Speaker 2: People take up drugs, literally take up drugs because they're
39:07
Speaker 2: bored with life. They start drinking sometimes. Studies show that
39:13
Speaker 2: people who are bored consistently go to lower quality or
39:18
Speaker 2: low nutrition snacks over you know, something better for them
39:22
Speaker 2: when they have the option. Like you can just, you
39:25
Speaker 2: go in a place where you're going to find some
39:27
Speaker 2: sort of stimulation, And yeah, so there are a lot
39:31
Speaker 2: of risk behaviors associated with boredom that you're going to
39:35
Speaker 2: do something because that you got to get rid of
39:37
Speaker 2: that arousal state that's unpleasant, which is boredom, but it's
39:41
Speaker 2: not necessarily going to be going and volunteering at the
39:44
Speaker 2: cancer ward at your local hospital. It might be, I'll
39:48
Speaker 2: go see what crack's all about.
39:51
Speaker 1: Man, you're so preachy.
39:54
Speaker 2: Some people do. We get that from time to time.
39:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're sitting there encouraging people to, like, engage
40:00
Speaker 1: with the world and to go volunteer for cancer and
40:03
Speaker 1: not to do crack. Like, get off your high horse.
40:07
Speaker 2: I think that some people don't like being told what
40:10
Speaker 2: to do no matter what it is.
40:12
Speaker 1: I know. Yeah.
40:14
Speaker 2: And I get that. I don't I feel like also
40:16
Speaker 2: I think it's our age, too. we're just lucky that
40:20
Speaker 2: we're not like the kind who like tell everybody how
40:22
Speaker 2: stupid they are too, you know?
40:25
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I hope people know it's always take
40:27
Speaker 1: it or leave it. Like, you know, you don't have
40:31
Speaker 1: to be the way we're saying to be, but I
40:33
Speaker 1: love the advice of engaging with the world or volunteering for,
40:36
Speaker 1: you know, sick children in a hospital rather than doing crack.
40:40
Speaker 1: I'll stand, I'll die on that Hill.
40:42
Speaker 2: And I think also though, Chuck, it's really important that
40:44
Speaker 2: we pointed out that, you know, there's, There's not some
40:48
Speaker 2: ideal thing you should go be go do now that
40:52
Speaker 2: it's all based on what you find meaningful. And that's
40:55
Speaker 2: the point. Not what we're saying. You should get for
40:57
Speaker 2: sure what you think you should go do. The point
40:59
Speaker 2: is to just do something that's going to help you
41:02
Speaker 2: in the long run more than, you know, turning to pot.
41:06
Speaker 1: Right. Procrastination is another thing. I know we've talked about
41:11
Speaker 1: that before, but it is definitely a response to boredom.
41:15
Speaker 1: Proneness to boredom increases someone's tendency to procrastinate generally, which
41:22
Speaker 1: is interesting because it's, you know, doing that thing would
41:26
Speaker 1: solve the boredom problem that like the thing you're putting
41:28
Speaker 1: off a lot of times.
41:29
Speaker 2: I think they're equating it with like looking at your smartphone.
41:32
Speaker 2: You're not actually doing anything. You're just lowering your brain
41:35
Speaker 2: standards for input.
41:38
Speaker 1: I guess that makes sense then.
41:40
Speaker 2: And we talked about some stuff with managing boredom, like
41:44
Speaker 2: identifying ahead of time things that you could go do.
41:47
Speaker 2: Like you said, don't just try to solve it immediately
41:49
Speaker 2: for kids. Let them kind of figure it out on
41:52
Speaker 2: their own. I also saw there was a study where
41:56
Speaker 2: researchers presented kids with a big bag of toys and
41:59
Speaker 2: they found that the kids played with each one a
42:01
Speaker 2: little bit and then just stopped eventually. And that if
42:04
Speaker 2: they gave kids just like one toy, the kid engaged
42:08
Speaker 2: with that one toy much longer. So that's part of it, too,
42:11
Speaker 2: I guess, is robbing children of any sort of choice
42:14
Speaker 2: in life, I think, is the lesson there.
42:17
Speaker 1: I really what really hit home was when you like
42:20
Speaker 1: to do something meaningful for you. I really like that
42:22
Speaker 1: you said that because that could be going to, you know,
42:26
Speaker 1: working in your garden or whatever. It could be drawing something.
42:29
Speaker 1: It could be writing something, could be taking a walk.
42:32
Speaker 1: It could be anything. It doesn't have to be some
42:34
Speaker 1: like grand, meaningful gesture to other people.
42:37
Speaker 2: Right. That's what I was trying to say, that there's
42:39
Speaker 2: not some level that your activities have to rise to
42:43
Speaker 2: to be considered meaningful. If they're meaningful for you, bam.
42:46
Speaker 2: And do not say that looking at Instagram is meaningful
42:49
Speaker 2: for you. You're lying. You're lying to yourself. You're lying
42:53
Speaker 2: to Chuck. You're lying to me. You're lying to everybody.
42:57
Speaker 1: I agree with that.
42:59
Speaker 2: I think that's it for boredom for now, huh? Yeah.
43:02
Speaker 2: That was a good one. I like this one.
43:04
Speaker 1: I did too.
43:05
Speaker 2: And I think since this is the end of boredom,
43:07
Speaker 2: it's time then for listener mail.
43:10
Speaker 1: That's right. This is short and sweet. Hey guys, long
43:12
Speaker 1: time listener, first time writer. This is about the irony
43:15
Speaker 1: episode from Nick. I once had a debate about the
43:18
Speaker 1: song Ironic that you guys talked about from Alanis Morissette.
43:21
Speaker 2: Yeah.
43:21
Speaker 1: An English teacher I worked with. I argued that it
43:25
Speaker 1: is a purely ironic song because it's called Ironic and
43:28
Speaker 1: contains no irony. And irony is flipping expectations around. to
43:33
Speaker 1: a certain degree on a meta level, I really think
43:35
Speaker 1: the song is pure irony. Never really thought about that.
43:38
Speaker 2: Yeah.
43:39
Speaker 1: Yeah. Thanks for the great content, guys. I used to
43:41
Speaker 1: have playlists for my AP students to listen to for
43:44
Speaker 1: introducing subjects and for review, and they enjoyed it, and
43:47
Speaker 1: it helped lay the foundation for their studies. And that
43:49
Speaker 1: is Nick.
43:50
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Nick. That was just an all-around great email.
43:53
Speaker 2: It's not very often that our minds are just completely blown,
43:57
Speaker 2: but I'm pretty sure you just did it for both
43:59
Speaker 2: of us. Yes. If you want to be like Nick
44:01
Speaker 2: and blow our minds, please do. You can send it
44:05
Speaker 2: in an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.
44:12
Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
44:15
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
44:19
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.