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This is

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the TED Radio Hour. Each

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job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED

0:28

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0:30

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0:34

From those talks, we bring you

0:36

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0:38

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0:40

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0:44

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spreading. From TED and

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0:57

Manoush Zomorodi. I

0:59

want to start with a story that, well,

1:02

it might seem unbelievable. Birds

1:04

aren't real! Birds aren't

1:06

real! On October

1:09

15, 2022, thousands of protesters

1:11

gathered in Washington Square Park

1:13

in New York City. Go

1:15

home birds! Go home

1:17

birds! I

1:20

get flashbacks to that, to

1:22

that moment, to that rally all the time. Because

1:25

it was the most beautiful moment of my life. There

1:27

were 3,000 people of

1:29

all ages, all races, all

1:31

beliefs, coming together for a

1:34

shared truth. Something

1:36

we can all agree on. We're waking

1:38

up this country together! We

1:40

flooded the streets. This line is

1:42

mine! We had

1:45

banners, we had signs, we had our

1:47

bagpiper with us just to commemorate and

1:49

remember why we're there. Which is because

1:51

of a tragedy. Because 12 billion

1:55

birds died at the hands of the United States government. And

1:58

they've never received justice for that. We're here

2:00

to avenge them. We're gonna want to run

2:02

to New York City! We're gonna take them

2:04

to the hospital! This

2:06

is Peter McIndoe. I'm the public

2:09

information officer for the Birds

2:11

Aren't Real movement, which

2:13

has been active since 1976. Since

2:17

1976, but you've not been involved since then.

2:20

Oh, no, I'm 25 years old. Kind

2:24

of a brief history of the movement is, it

2:28

started when animal rights

2:30

activists and anti-surveillance activists learned about

2:32

the government's plot to replace every

2:35

bird with a surveillance drone. And

2:37

they teamed up to

2:39

create a movement called Birds Aren't Real to

2:41

protest this. From 1969 through 2001, the

2:45

U.S. government murdered over 12 billion

2:48

birds in the American skies. Here's

2:50

Peter McIndoe on the TED stage. They

2:53

did this using poisonous toxins dropped from airplanes.

2:55

It was contagious and murdered all of the

2:57

birds over the course of about 40 years.

3:00

For each bird the government killed,

3:03

they replaced it with a surveillance

3:05

drone replica in disguise designed

3:07

to spy on the American people. The

3:10

proof that birds are robots is all

3:12

around us, if you start looking. For

3:14

starters, birds charge their

3:16

batteries on power lines. They

3:19

also track civilians using liquid traffic on

3:26

a tracking device. Over

3:29

the years as I began putting

3:31

this information together, there

3:34

were times I wished I never even learned

3:36

this. My life would be so much easier,

3:38

but I always come back to this. It

3:40

is my moral obligation as one

3:42

of the few privileged enough to know this, to

3:44

share it with you. So

3:47

this whole thing, it got big.

3:49

You went to CNN headquarters to

3:52

protest their coverage of the movement. You

3:54

went to Twitter headquarters to protest their...

4:00

logo. What's

4:06

your overall strategy here? How does it

4:08

work? Yeah, so we have a van

4:10

that we drive around the country, we

4:13

hold rallies, that's my primary responsibility as

4:15

public information officer. I drive

4:17

around the country in a van that we

4:20

covered in decals, kind of full of

4:23

facts and, you know, questions

4:25

that we want people to ask when

4:27

they're driving, like, have you ever seen

4:29

a baby pigeon? Never wonder? I've

4:31

never seen a baby pigeon. Why? They

4:33

come out of the factory as adults.

4:38

Throughout my time doing birds aren't real, I've had

4:40

multiple kind of people come forward and seen some

4:42

leaked documents to prove that they

4:44

come out of the factory as adults. So

4:47

there's no organic growth from

4:49

baby to adult pigeon. So

4:52

back to Washington Square, you had the

4:54

van parked there, presumably, since it

4:56

was Washington Square Park in New York City,

4:58

there were a lot of pigeons. There

5:01

were a lot of pigeons and anytime

5:03

that, you know, a flock of

5:05

pigeons flew over the crowd,

5:08

there would be just a cacophony

5:10

of, of goos. It

5:15

was like a heavenly quiet. So my

5:17

ears just hearing everyone collectively,

5:19

you know, come together and let

5:22

the government know that we know what they're doing and

5:24

we don't like it. How

5:28

shocked would you say people are

5:30

when they first hear about your

5:33

theory that birds aren't

5:36

in fact real? Yeah,

5:39

that's a tough one. Unfortunately, I

5:41

try to tell people what's going

5:44

on. And they look at me

5:46

like I'm a freak. And

5:48

those scream at me telling me I'm

5:50

the problem with this country. You're so

5:52

stupid. But that's why I'm doing

5:54

this. It's clear we have a lot of work to

5:57

do. And so I'm

5:59

hoping, you know, My grandchildren will be living

6:01

in a world where being a bird truther is

6:03

the norm. You know, where

6:05

it's weird if you believe in birds,

6:07

you know, that's this old, that's boomer

6:09

belief, you know what? You

6:12

know, we know, we know the truth. So

6:14

that's the world I'm working toward. And,

6:17

you know, that is that is what

6:19

drives me forward every day. All

6:24

right. Tell us who you really are.

6:28

That was really fun, by the way. That

6:33

was fun. I, my

6:35

name is Peter Mackendoe, but

6:37

I do not believe the

6:40

birds are robots. And

6:43

that is a character that I just did that

6:45

I've been playing for years and years now. I

6:49

started this by accident in 2016. How

6:53

does one do that by accident? What do you mean? It

6:56

was an actual accident. I swear I

6:58

was in Memphis, Tennessee, visiting

7:00

a friend. It was shortly

7:02

after Trump got elected. And

7:05

there was a rally happening in

7:08

Memphis. It was a woman's march. And

7:10

there were also people in red hats

7:13

shouting things at them. And it was just kind of this,

7:16

this chaos. And I'm

7:18

not really sure why I did this. I think I

7:20

was just maybe overwhelmed or

7:23

maybe it felt like there was so much

7:25

madness happening, but I

7:27

decided to pick up a

7:29

sign and write my own thing on it. So

7:33

I wrote on the sign the three most random

7:35

words I could think of the pair together, and

7:38

as you can guess, they were birds aren't real.

7:41

And then I started walking around, chanting

7:43

birds aren't real. And

7:45

people were asking me, what does that

7:48

mean? And unbeknownst to me,

7:51

I was being filmed the

7:53

entire time. The

7:55

next week I started being sent

7:58

pictures of. birds

8:00

aren't real spray painted on walls

8:02

in Memphis. And high

8:05

school classrooms, writing it

8:08

on the chalkboard, chancing it in

8:10

the cafeteria. No. No kidding.

8:13

And I was sitting, looking

8:15

at all this, and

8:18

just thinking I would always regret it

8:20

if I didn't try

8:22

to lean into that energy that was already there.

8:27

We live in an attention

8:29

seeking age with companies and

8:31

influencers vying for our

8:34

eyeballs, one upping each other

8:36

with outrageous and shocking images.

8:39

It can feel exhausting and

8:42

exploitative. But what

8:44

if being jolted out of the everyday

8:46

can actually be helpful?

8:49

Today on the show, shock value.

8:53

Ideas about how provocative stories,

8:55

surprising actions, and bolts from

8:58

the blue can

9:00

set the stage for productive

9:02

dialogue, connections between adversaries, and

9:06

ultimately, positive change. For

9:10

Peter Macendu, birds aren't real started as

9:12

a funny bit to make people laugh or

9:15

to ruffle some feathers. But he decided he wanted to see how

9:18

far he could take the farce. Our

9:24

goal was to convince the public

9:26

that our satirical movement was a real one and

9:29

see if the media would believe what

9:31

we were saying. To do this, I

9:33

played this character that I just showed

9:35

you. We held rallies, put up

9:37

billboards. We even sent the media a lot of fake evidence.

9:39

We hired an old actor to pose as an ex-CIA agent

9:41

confessing to his crimes. We

9:48

sent them a historic email leak called Poultrygate that came

9:50

out of the Pentagon. Where we forged hundreds of fake

9:55

emails exposing elites and government officials in the brain. verge

10:00

drone surveillance plot. It

10:03

didn't take much to convince the media. After

10:05

just one summer holding rallies like

10:08

this, it became nationally

10:10

syndicated news on tons of local news stations

10:12

that we were a real movement that had

10:14

been around for 50 years. And

10:18

there was a resurgence happening where it

10:20

was coming back and there was a

10:22

radical new leader, myself, bringing

10:26

the movement back as the rise of

10:28

conspiracy theories swept the nation. At

10:31

this point, I'm sitting on my couch watching

10:33

the media report on my fake movement as a real one.

10:35

And third is probably time to come out of

10:37

character. One, because we'd accomplished what we

10:40

came there to do, but also

10:42

I didn't want this to snowball on anything it

10:44

was never supposed to. So in 2021, I broke

10:46

character, revealed

10:49

the movement was a farce on

10:51

the front page of the New York Times. I

10:55

mean, it's pretty impressive how

10:58

much you committed to the bit. And

11:00

I read that it was partly because

11:02

you identified with the character because you

11:04

grew up in an environment where you

11:06

were exposed to some conspiracy theories.

11:08

So what was your childhood like? Yeah,

11:11

like you said, I grew up in

11:14

kind of a hyper conservative

11:16

religious community where I

11:20

was homeschooled in

11:23

the outskirts of town in

11:26

Arkansas, actually. And a big reason why

11:29

I was homeschooled is

11:31

because there's a conspiracy theory that's

11:33

still very prominent to this day,

11:36

but the common core school

11:38

system is brainwashing children. So

11:40

that's a big reason why I was homeschooled, but

11:44

still had some access to the real world.

11:46

And I had neighbors when I was very,

11:48

very young who

11:50

were Muslim. And I remember

11:52

asking my parents about what they believed

11:54

in. And they said that they believed

11:56

in their God, just like we believe

11:58

in ours. And I

12:01

remember thinking, oh, well then how do

12:03

we know that ours is

12:05

the one, you know? And

12:08

that was before I was 10. A

12:13

family friend gave me a book called

12:15

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. So

12:18

that was one of the first books I read in

12:21

like my teenage years. Wow, a family

12:23

member gave you that book? Well, he's

12:26

a very close friend of my

12:28

dad, which I've always respected. They

12:30

do have very different beliefs. I

12:32

mean, that's actually a very constructive way to

12:34

talk to you by giving you a copy

12:36

of Joseph Campbell. And

12:38

showing you the power of story. Yes,

12:40

it really was because that book talked about

12:43

the power of story and

12:45

myth and how maybe we weren't so different

12:47

from those neighbors after all. Yeah,

12:50

I think that a big part of the

12:52

way that I got through that was through

12:55

humor and not making fun

12:57

of my surroundings, but definitely joking about them

13:00

a lot. When

13:04

we come back, how Peter channeled

13:06

that curiosity to grow

13:08

his fake movement and walk

13:10

the fine line between comedy and

13:13

condescension. On the

13:16

show today, shock value. I'm

13:18

Anusha Zamorodi, and you're listening to the TED

13:20

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15:30

Hey, it's Manoush. Before we get back

15:32

to the show, if you donate to

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And thank you. It's

16:54

the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

16:57

I'm Manoush Zamorodi. And

16:59

today on the show, shock

17:01

value. Before the break, we

17:03

were talking to Peter McIndoo about how

17:05

he started a viral and

17:07

fake conspiracy movement called

17:10

Birds Aren't Real. From

17:13

the start, Peter didn't want it to

17:15

seem like he was making fun of anyone. You

17:17

know, that was a thought from the beginning of

17:20

Birds Aren't Real, is that this could be a

17:22

very shallow project. So

17:24

I remember at the beginning looking

17:27

at it less like a conspiracy

17:29

theorist satire, but more

17:31

like just this absurdist belief satire

17:34

that could be applied to either

17:36

side of the political spectrum. And

17:39

so from there, it was

17:41

really interesting. When the idea was growing, it

17:43

sort of became this Rorschach test for

17:46

who people thought, you know, believed

17:48

something ridiculous. And a

17:51

lot of people think that, you

17:54

know, the other side, you could say, or

17:57

people that, you know, disagree with

17:59

fundamental core beliefs. of theirs are

18:01

crazy or brainwashed. There

18:03

were hundreds, maybe thousands of instances

18:06

over the years where strangers would

18:08

approach me. They'd see me

18:10

in public and I'd see them notice me. It'd

18:12

walk up to me with complete disdain

18:15

on their face. They thought

18:17

that I was a real conspiracy theorist. And

18:20

time and time again, they'd come up to me and

18:22

they would tell me how stupid I am. My

18:26

outer character self may interpret these interactions

18:28

as a funny response to someone that

18:30

fell for the comedy project. But instead

18:33

I felt the emotions of the character. I

18:36

felt emboldened and I

18:39

felt sad and angry. Like

18:42

they didn't even take the time to know

18:44

me. And in those moments when those people

18:46

were talking to me, they could not have

18:48

been more ineffective at what I

18:50

would assume they really want. What

18:58

if by talking to conspiracy theorists

19:00

like they're ignorant and stupid, we're

19:03

actually pushing them farther away from the truth

19:05

that we want them to see? Because

19:08

what happens when someone tells you that

19:10

you're stupid, you're all wrong, you're the

19:13

problem, you'll

19:15

feel judged and dismissed and most importantly you'll

19:17

feel other. Which may

19:19

lead you to look for safety in those

19:21

who are like-minded to do what

19:24

they have been doing for you. Affirm

19:26

your selfhood, give you a sense

19:28

of identity, belonging. These

19:31

are some of the most basic human desires.

19:36

I think as the time has gone on, we

19:38

started building more of a character and

19:40

a person out of this Birds aren't Real guy. So

19:43

where he wasn't just this random

19:46

guy who shouts on the street because that's

19:48

really not who conspiracy theorists are. A lot

19:50

of the time they're talking about these forums

19:52

that they're on online and they really don't

19:54

have a lot of real life friends

19:57

or community. So

20:00

as the time's gone on, it really hasn't even been

20:02

about the bird robot thing at all. It's been about

20:05

a character that is

20:07

finding purpose and meaning

20:10

and community through this

20:13

idea. And that

20:15

is what's making him go deeper and

20:17

deeper into it. Did you

20:19

ever have conversations with real

20:21

conspiracy theorists? There

20:23

was one time that I'm happy

20:25

that it was just one time.

20:28

Because at the first rally we

20:30

ever held was in Springfield, Missouri.

20:34

I didn't know who was going to show up. I didn't

20:36

know if we'd have 20 people show up. I didn't know

20:38

if we'd have a bunch of old men show up who

20:40

really believed this. And

20:44

so we showed up and it was just

20:47

all a couple hundred actually. It's like Gen

20:49

Z kids who totally understood and got the

20:51

wink in the eye. And

20:54

from there, that's when I learned that that really

20:56

was our whole audience. But there was one time

20:58

at the CNN rally actually, this guy walked up

21:00

to me and starts

21:03

talking about how he's a member of this very

21:06

elite family with his famous name. And

21:09

he was saying, I love how a lot of

21:11

the information you present is absurd. But

21:16

it's true. But it's true. The way you present

21:19

it is absurd, which is a smart way to get it out

21:21

to people, but it is true. Interesting.

21:23

And later that day I got an Instagram message

21:25

from this guy. He said, oh my God, this

21:27

is the guy from the rally. And

21:30

I opened up his profile and it was

21:32

just years and years of thousands of posts

21:34

of conspiracy theories. Oh. Yeah.

21:38

Which I think that a lot of times it

21:40

is one conspiracy theory can

21:42

lead to another and then reality really

21:44

can unravel. And

21:48

yeah, that was the first time that I'd ever

21:50

experienced that. It shocked

21:53

me at how similarly

21:56

he spoke like the character.

22:00

and how much he identified with it. Did

22:03

you ever have anyone who was angry at you about

22:05

this? About birds aren't

22:07

real in general? Yeah, like this is

22:09

not funny. Like conspiracy theories aren't something

22:11

to laugh at. Yeah, there have

22:13

been people who have said that. And

22:16

I really think it's important that

22:18

we can talk about these things in

22:21

a space that's not intense. I

22:23

think comedy is a very disarming way to

22:25

enter a thought space. You can enter this

22:27

idea through something with levity

22:29

and then once

22:31

we're past that, then we can maybe get

22:33

into some ideas in a more disarmed way. You

22:36

know, obviously there are a lot of harmful

22:39

conspiracy theories and that's important to talk about

22:41

too, is that there are

22:44

some ideas that are

22:46

truly hateful and very hurtful. But

22:49

I think that with the general person in

22:51

our life that believes in conspiracy theories or

22:54

that friend group where someone says something

22:56

that makes us raise an eyebrow and responding

22:58

to that in a way that isn't shaming,

23:02

but that is curious about how they

23:04

got there. If we can

23:06

have more people talking about it like that,

23:08

looking at the problem as

23:10

an issue of belonging rather

23:13

than belief, that

23:16

might be the most productive thing we can

23:18

do to fight the problem of misinformation. That's

23:22

Peter McIndoe. He's the founder of

23:24

the fake movement, Birds Aren't

23:26

Real. We are planning on running

23:29

for president ourselves as a

23:31

movement, not as a person. In

23:34

2024, this is a TED Radio

23:36

Hour exclusive. Oh, thank you for that.

23:38

Of course. And

23:42

you can see his full talk at ted.com.

23:50

On the show today, shock value, which

23:53

can include the irresistible desire

23:56

to do something bad. And

23:58

if we're going to talk about being. psychology

24:01

professor Paul Bloom suggests that there's no

24:03

better person to start with than the

24:05

original bad boy, Saint

24:07

Augustine. So Augustine

24:09

wrote a very famous book called The

24:12

Confessions about 1600 years

24:14

ago. And it's famous because

24:16

it tells the story of his youthful descent

24:19

into sin and a subsequent

24:21

conversion to Christianity. And

24:24

he begins book two, this great

24:26

line, I propose now

24:28

to set down my past wickedness and

24:31

a carnal corruption of my soul. Which

24:34

sounds like Augustine's about to dish out

24:36

some pretty racy stuff, but

24:39

the same he spends the most time talking

24:41

about is, you might think

24:43

it's fairly mild. There was a pear tree

24:45

near our vineyard weighed down

24:48

with fruit, alluring neither in

24:50

appearance nor in flavor. And

24:53

one day 16 year old

24:55

Augustine and his buddies decided they were

24:57

going to steal those pears.

24:59

And we carried off from there

25:01

enormous loads of fruit, not

25:04

to our meals, but rather to cast

25:06

before swine. And

25:09

that was it. That was it. That was, that was the

25:11

beginning and the end of the sin. But

25:14

it fascinated Augustine cause

25:18

he said, look, why did I do this? Behold

25:20

my heart, God, behold my

25:22

heart. I wasn't hungry. I threw most

25:25

of the pears to pigs. I had

25:27

nothing against the person who owned the

25:29

orchard. And he concluded that

25:31

he did it because he had

25:33

no motivation for wickedness except

25:38

for wickedness itself. If any

25:40

part of one of those pears passed

25:43

my lips, it was the

25:45

sin that gave it flavor. I

25:47

had no motivation for wickedness, except

25:49

wickedness itself. I was foul and

25:52

I loved it. He wanted to

25:54

do it simply because it was wrong. And

25:57

unlike his sexual sense where he had, you

25:59

know, He had drives he understood what he

26:01

was up to. This fascinated and

26:03

horrified him. This seemed to him

26:05

like a glimmer of pure evil. Paul

26:09

loves stories like these. I love

26:11

it because it's so paradoxical. Because

26:15

sure, we sometimes do bad things. Because

26:18

we think that we're actually in

26:20

the right, that morality is on

26:22

our side. We fight back because

26:24

we're overwhelmed with anger and injustice.

26:26

Or because we want to get revenge against

26:29

someone who's wronged us. Usually

26:31

we have some sort of reason. But

26:34

stealing pairs just for the hell

26:36

of it? These perverse acts fall

26:38

outside all of that. Proverse as

26:40

in illogical, irrational. They seem to

26:43

be cases where people know

26:45

something is wrong. And they do

26:47

it. Not despite the

26:49

fact that it's wrong, but because it's

26:52

wrong. So in an attempt

26:54

to understand what drives us to do

26:56

these thoroughly unhelpful acts,

26:59

Paul launched the Proversity

27:01

Project, where he asked people

27:03

to submit their everyday examples of doing

27:05

wrong just for the sake of it.

27:08

So one of the first stories I got was flirted

27:10

with a woman's boyfriend knowing fully well he liked

27:12

me. I knew I could

27:15

steal him if I wanted, but I didn't want

27:17

to do that. I just wanted her to feel

27:19

uncomfortable whenever the three of us were in

27:21

the same room. Here's

27:23

Paul Bloom on the TED stage. Causing

27:26

people pain is wrong, but that's exactly

27:28

why I did it. And

27:30

in fact, this is the plot of the Dolly

27:32

Parton song, Jolene. Sometimes

27:35

it's self-destructive. A young man

27:37

wrote to me, ice skating on a pond,

27:39

dark and frozen spot 30 yards out. Instead

27:41

of avoiding it, I skate towards it, knowing

27:43

but wondering, knowing but wondering, and

27:46

splash. But

27:48

not all the stories I got had that kind

27:50

of nature. Some were a little bit more benign.

27:52

Here's one of my favorites. When

27:55

I was in a professional choir, at every concert I

27:57

felt, the desire to sing a few notes very incorrectly

27:59

on purpose. To this day, I don't

28:01

completely understand why. Someone else

28:03

wrote me, and this is going to be the

28:05

sweetest, sadnessful example of modest perversity. Sometimes

28:09

I walk on the grass and set it apart just

28:11

because I know it's wrong. You

28:14

know, I think my favorite from your

28:16

survey is the ice cream pie. You

28:19

remember that one? Oh, this was,

28:21

I think, the first entry I got

28:23

from the Perversity Project. You

28:25

hit the jackpot right from the start. I just

28:27

loved it. And he wrote, on

28:30

one occasion in my early 20s, I was out with

28:32

a friend. He decided to get

28:34

himself ice cream, and before he

28:36

had a chance to try it, I stuck my

28:38

finger in it. I played

28:40

it on as a joke, but

28:42

really, I had a sudden thought, man,

28:45

it would be messed up if I just

28:47

jammed my finger in his ice cream. And

28:51

for full clarity, he didn't use the word messed

28:53

up. I mean,

28:56

there's something about a person

28:58

who decides to give

29:00

you an entry for your Perversity

29:02

Project, that they have a sort of

29:05

self-appreciation, or they're trying

29:07

to understand their own

29:09

motivation. It does not

29:12

pass them by that

29:14

something wicked

29:16

was within them, or they wanted

29:18

to shock someone. They

29:20

known themselves well enough to have recognized

29:22

that this was what was happening when

29:24

they committed these acts. I

29:27

think that's exactly right. It is the kind of sweet

29:30

spot where people know this

29:32

is strange. This is outside of

29:34

the usual. And a lot

29:36

of the Perversity examples that we could talk about

29:39

don't make sense to the person doing them.

29:43

And one of the theories that I'm interested in for

29:45

why we do this, which is to

29:47

shock others, to shock

29:49

and scare and impress others.

29:52

In a nice way, you just want to surprise

29:54

or sometimes amuse other people, it could be funny.

29:57

On the other hand, in the extreme.

30:00

extremes, perversity becomes

30:02

terrible. It becomes people

30:04

doing cruel, rotten, violent

30:06

things, simply for

30:08

the sake of doing

30:10

them. Psychologists

30:14

have long been interested in violent,

30:16

disruptive perverse acts and the kinds of

30:19

people who do them. An example people

30:21

often give is a Joker from the

30:23

Batman comics. Christopher

30:26

Nolan's film The Dark Knight, Alfred,

30:28

Batman's Butler, describes a Joker by

30:31

saying, some men can't be bought,

30:33

bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some

30:36

men just want to watch the world burn. And

30:38

psychologists have thought up a need

30:40

for chaos scale. That event,

30:42

it gives you a bunch of statements and how much

30:45

you agree with them will tell you how much you

30:47

want to watch the world burn. So just do this

30:49

quietly in your head. I

30:51

need chaos around me. It's too boring if nothing

30:53

is going on. Sometimes

30:56

I dislike destroying beautiful things. I've

31:01

spent back in the day

31:03

covering a lot of political protests and

31:06

oftentimes we saw that they would be completely

31:09

nonviolent and

31:11

rational. And then you would see the

31:14

anarchists show up in black hoods and

31:17

things would just descend

31:19

into utter chaos, not because they felt

31:22

strongly for either side of the issue

31:24

that people were protesting, but because they

31:26

just wanted to mess things

31:29

up. Yeah. And I

31:32

think there you see the dark side

31:34

of perversity where there are

31:36

some people around who just want to make

31:38

trouble. And sometimes the making

31:40

trouble can be funny. They may want

31:42

to amuse people or surprise people in

31:44

the benign way. But sometimes they

31:46

might really want to hurt people. They might want to

31:48

destroy things and hurt people. And there's

31:51

something apolitical about it. They'll

31:53

dress up, they'll put on masks

31:55

and at root they don't care

31:58

what the demonstration is about. if

32:00

they can throw some rocks and get

32:02

some trouble going, their day is done.

32:05

They tend to be male, they

32:07

tend to be young. I think many

32:09

people age out of it. It's

32:11

kind of in a sort of hormonal rage

32:14

of being a teenager. But

32:16

it is the scary side

32:19

of perversity. And

32:21

then there's another side, which I think is more common

32:23

and something really worth knowing, which

32:26

also connects to politics,

32:28

where people don't like

32:30

being told what to do. Part

32:32

of a perverse actor is somebody

32:35

who wants to maintain their autonomy.

32:37

They want to maintain their freedom.

32:40

And there's a lot of evidence that if you

32:42

tell people, look, you

32:44

are forbidden to smoke. Look, you

32:46

must take these vaccines. Look, anybody

32:48

who votes for this person is

32:51

a total moron. Don't vote for

32:53

this person. Some proportions say,

32:55

okay, I'll do what you tell me to. And

32:57

some proportions say, hell with

32:59

that. I'm going to do the opposite. And

33:03

I think political scientists underestimate how

33:07

often people put their polls and

33:09

do what they are told not to do,

33:12

just because they are told not to do it.

33:18

Okay, so these acts can

33:20

be troublesome. But you

33:23

also think that they can be

33:25

pretty interesting, maybe even positive. And

33:27

you use the example of the

33:29

art world and certain pieces of art.

33:31

Yes. Maybe the most

33:33

the newest one was

33:35

by Banksy. Yeah, we had a lot of interest on

33:37

it, as you can

33:40

imagine, where he had a canvas girl with

33:42

a balloon. It was

33:44

on auction at Sotheby. It was all set

33:47

up in a frame. And

33:49

then the moment the gavel went down, a

33:52

machine in the frame started to activate

33:55

it. And

33:57

the artwork was partially shredded. And

34:01

if you go to YouTube and you wifey

34:03

people are fucked it never seems me like

34:05

it now horrifying But

34:09

this became a classic and people thought

34:12

it was wonderful and ingenious and clever

34:16

Maybe the origin of Modern

34:19

art started when Marcel Duchamp when it was

34:21

an art competition in New York and he

34:23

said send in any artwork you want So

34:25

he sent in a year. No and

34:28

they said no, no, no, no, we're not accepting

34:30

that we we're talking art and this is it is art and

34:34

This is a big debate and then

34:36

the conception of what art is

34:38

change Yeah, I think society and

34:41

science and art wouldn't work

34:43

unless most people play by the rules But

34:46

these these geniuses who are often weird

34:48

people and often perverse in other ways

34:50

as well Make

34:53

things more interesting. They push us to different

34:55

levels When

34:58

we return Paul explains why telling

35:00

someone not to do something What

35:03

if make them want to do it even more

35:06

on the show today? I'm

35:09

Anusha Zamorodi and you're listening to the

35:11

TED radio hour from NPR.

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the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

37:23

I'm Manoush Zomorodi and on the

37:25

show today, shock value.

37:27

We were just talking to

37:29

psychology professor Paul Bloom, who

37:31

is endlessly fascinated with what

37:33

he calls acts of

37:36

perversity. Basically, being

37:38

bad just because you

37:40

can. Edgar Allan

37:42

Poe, describing perversity, described it, talked

37:45

about imps, little magical demons in

37:47

our heads that cause us to

37:49

do terrible things. But like

37:51

I said, I'm a psychologist. I don't believe in imps. I think

37:54

what we do has reasons, has motivations,

37:56

and I think for perverse actions, there's

37:58

a range of them. One

38:01

of them was mentioned by Augustine. So later on,

38:03

after describing the incident with the Pears, he writes,

38:05

I would not have done it by myself. My

38:08

satisfaction did not lie in the Pears and lay in

38:10

the crime itself committed in the league with a gang

38:12

of sinners. The social force

38:14

drove him. A warning for parents tonight,

38:16

the Tide Pod Challenge is the latest fat

38:19

among teens. Jonah Berger gives this great

38:21

example of the Tide Pod Challenge, where

38:23

it is a few years ago, kids

38:25

were just like sticking Tide Pods in their

38:28

mouth and filming it. I mean, this is nothing

38:30

to laugh at, it's no joke. They do look

38:32

yummy, I understand. They do, no. We

38:35

are gonna get an illegal product. We should really

38:37

say, it is not safe to put Tide Pods in

38:39

your mouth. No. But actually, maybe

38:41

we shouldn't say this because the company

38:43

that owned Tide Pods, I think Procter and Gamble,

38:46

put up some extremely expensive ads.

38:48

Keep laundry packs out of reach and

38:50

away from children. Berger points

38:53

out when this ad came up, consumption

38:55

of the pods shot up. I'm

38:57

not down, nobody's gonna tell me what to

38:59

do. I'm gonna be an autonomous free being.

39:05

Or take threats of reprisal. There's

39:07

a lovely study by a team of political

39:09

scientists which asked the subjects to imagine that

39:11

they're an ambassador to a country and they're

39:14

deciding whether or not to have sanctions

39:16

towards that country. In

39:18

one condition, the dictator says, if you do sanctions

39:21

towards our country, that's okay. I won't do anything.

39:23

In the second condition, the dictator says,

39:26

if you do sanctions towards our country,

39:28

I will unleash terrorist attacks against you.

39:31

What's the stunning finding for this is

39:33

that in the second condition, not the

39:35

first, they were more likely to do

39:37

it. A lot of our

39:39

perverse actions are in response to

39:41

people telling us not to do what we wanna

39:44

do. And it makes us want all

39:46

the more to do that thing. So

39:49

much of global conflict involves

39:52

sending off a message

39:54

saying, don't expect

39:57

me to be reasonable. expect

40:00

me to only care about my own

40:02

best interest. And people

40:05

talk about the evolution of our minds,

40:07

the evolution of emotions, say this

40:10

is where emotions like losing your

40:12

temper, like rage, come from. Rage

40:15

is an honest signal that I am about

40:17

to make threats that are not reasonable but

40:20

nonetheless I'm going to follow up on. It's

40:24

one of the great quirks in human

40:26

interaction that a perfectly

40:28

rational being, a perfectly intelligent rational

40:31

being who weighs the cost and

40:33

benefits of a Mr. Spock, it's

40:36

going to be less effective at life than

40:39

someone who's a little bit crazy. And

40:43

we're being grim but it

40:45

also works for positive things

40:47

too. Who

40:50

would you find most compelling? Somebody

40:52

who says to you, I want

40:55

to be with you, I want to spend the rest of my life

40:57

with you because the

40:59

benefits of being with you outweigh the costs.

41:02

You were the most attractive, promising mate

41:04

I have seen based

41:07

on searching for the last little while and up

41:09

until I find somebody better than you, I will

41:11

stick with you. Or

41:14

would you rather have somebody who's sobbing at

41:17

your feet and say I am so crazy

41:19

in love with you, I will never leave

41:21

you, you are the one for me. And

41:24

now the second person isn't

41:26

thinking rationally. You know, dude, cost

41:28

benefits but he's

41:31

much more of a

41:33

compelling, making a much more compelling deal.

41:36

Love is basically a

41:38

sort of irrational bet that when somebody

41:41

better comes along, you're not going

41:43

to stray. Human

41:46

relations, we are

41:48

so weird and complicated and

41:50

strange and delightful. We

41:53

are perverse. That's

41:57

Paul Bloom. He's a psychology professor at the University

41:59

of New York. University of Toronto

42:01

and Professor Emeritus at Yale

42:03

University. His latest book is

42:06

Shake! The Story of the Human

42:08

Mind. You can see his talks

42:10

at ted.com. And thank you

42:12

so much to J.C. Howard for

42:15

giving voice to St. Augustine. On

42:18

the show today, shock value. We've

42:21

talked about perverse thoughts

42:23

and outrageous conspiracy theories,

42:26

but what about a shock that's more personal? The

42:29

kind of shock that can upend

42:31

our big plans in life. When

42:34

it comes to navigating change and trying

42:36

to sustain hope during

42:39

hard times, as someone

42:41

who's not a particularly spiritual or religious

42:43

person, I try to

42:45

have as open a mind as I can day

42:47

to day. That's my south landing, human

42:50

psychology. Maya

42:52

Shunker is a cognitive scientist

42:55

that was not what she wanted to be when

42:57

she grew up. When I was six,

42:59

my mom went up to her attic and

43:01

brought down my grandmother's violin that she had

43:03

brought with her from India to the United

43:05

States. And I just remember being so captivated

43:08

by the instrument. I was really close to

43:10

my to my grandmother and I knew she

43:12

had played it as a little girl. And

43:15

so I very quickly asked my

43:17

mom if I could have a quarter-sized violin

43:20

of my own to play. Maya's

43:22

childhood revolved around her

43:24

violin. My focus each and

43:26

every day when I woke up, it was always

43:28

about the violin. Like that's what I woke up

43:30

thinking about. That's usually what I fell asleep thinking

43:32

about. Kind of remarkably, my parents

43:34

never had to ask me to practice. Music

43:36

seemed like it was striking at something that was

43:39

so intrinsic. At age

43:41

nine, she was accepted into the Juilliard School.

43:44

We lived in Connecticut and every Saturday, my mom and I

43:46

would wake up at 430 in

43:48

the morning and take a train

43:50

into Manhattan. And I would have you

43:52

know up to 10 hours of classes and then we come

43:55

home and you know get back at around 10 or so

43:57

at night. After

43:59

years of intensive training, her hard work

44:01

paid off. When I was

44:03

a teenager, the renowned violinist, Itzhak Perlman,

44:05

invited me to be his private student.

44:09

This was around when I was 13 or so, and

44:11

so I was like, living the dream.

44:13

Manoush, I really was. What

44:16

was the dream? Like,

44:18

what did you envision for yourself? It

44:21

was really when Perlman took me on as a

44:23

student that I received that vote of confidence that,

44:25

hey, maybe I could actually do this. Maybe this

44:27

could really be my career. I

44:29

had a special schedule at school to

44:31

accommodate more practicing. Even

44:35

physically, my body grew around the violin. So

44:37

to this day, my right shoulder is

44:40

slightly elevated compared to

44:42

my left, and my spine is slightly curved because

44:46

of all the hours I spent in that violin position.

44:48

Yeah, it really became an

44:50

extension of my body. And

44:55

then that brings us to one day when you

44:57

were 15. Yeah, so I was at

45:00

summer music camp. I was practicing this

45:02

very, very technical, very

45:05

challenging passage of a Paganini caprice. I

45:08

overstretched my finger on

45:10

a note, and I heard a popping sound, and

45:13

was alarmed to find that it wasn't a string that had

45:15

popped that actually attended in my left hand. Mmm.

45:19

How did you respond?

45:22

Yeah, I responded really poorly. I

45:24

was frustrated. I

45:27

was very impatient, and so every day, and

45:30

probably 200 times over the course of the day,

45:32

I would touch my hand, move it around, and

45:36

see whether maybe things had improved, and then

45:38

they wouldn't have improved, and then I would pick

45:40

up the violin and think, you

45:43

know what, I'm just going to bulldoze my way through

45:45

this injury. I played

45:47

through months of pain, just using anti-inflammatories and

45:49

trying my best at physical therapy. I

45:52

was just willing to do anything at all. Did

45:54

it work? It didn't work, no. It

45:57

didn't work. And so, eventually, Dr.

46:00

suggested surgery, that didn't help me. Finally,

46:03

I was told I had to stop playing altogether.

46:06

When I lost the violin, I expected to

46:09

grieve the loss of the instrument,

46:11

right? And grieve not being able to play anymore,

46:13

but I did not

46:15

expect that I would grieve the loss of

46:17

myself. Without it,

46:19

I really felt unmoored. And sometimes

46:22

it's when we're throwing these big changes in

46:24

our lives, that it brings to

46:26

the surface just how much certain things in our life

46:28

matter to us, right? And how defining they were. So

46:32

Maya started to ask herself, who

46:34

was she, if not a violinist?

46:37

Because, you know, I was wearing

46:39

blinders and I was on the speed train

46:42

trying to become a professional violinist, and so

46:44

I closed out all these other worlds. And

46:46

so, it's not just about

46:48

discovering other pursuits, it's about rediscovering myself

46:50

at this more fundamental level. But

46:53

it turned out, once a high

46:56

achiever, always a high achiever. Maya

46:59

ended up earning a PhD in

47:01

cognitive psychology from Oxford University. From

47:04

there, she served in the Obama administration

47:06

as founder and chair of the

47:08

White House Behavioral Sciences team. Now

47:11

she's a behavioral scientist at Google. And

47:14

a couple years ago, she started

47:16

her podcast, A Slight Change of

47:18

Plans, which is about, you

47:20

guessed it, life-changing moments.

47:24

So I realized through that experience

47:26

that it can be more sturdy

47:28

to anchor your identity, not

47:32

to specific pursuits, but

47:34

to the underlying features of those pursuits

47:36

that really make you tick, that light

47:38

you up. And when

47:40

it came to the violin, what I really

47:42

loved about music is that it gave me

47:44

the ability to emotionally connect

47:46

with other people. And that

47:48

underlying passion persisted. I mean, that's a core part

47:51

of who I am. It gave

47:53

me like a through line because I, well, I lost

47:55

the violin and since then I've lost the ability to

47:57

do other things or maybe life took an unexpected turn.

48:00

But I can still find that same

48:02

love of human connection in other pursuits.

48:06

And so I would urge people who are listening

48:08

to ask themselves, like, what is my

48:10

through line, right? What is the defining

48:12

feature of the things that I love

48:14

to do? And can I find that elsewhere when

48:16

life throws me a curveball? Maya

48:18

Schunker continues from the TED stage.

48:21

Change is scary for a lot of us. For

48:24

one, it is filled with uncertainty. And

48:27

we hate uncertainty. Research

48:30

shows that we're more stressed when we're told we

48:32

have a 50% chance of getting an

48:35

electric shock than when we're told we have

48:37

a 100% chance. I

48:40

mean, we'd rather be sure that a bad

48:42

thing is going to happen than to have

48:44

to deal with any uncertainty. Change

48:47

is also scary because it involves loss

48:49

of some kind. By definition,

48:51

we're departing from an old way of being

48:53

and entering a new one. And

48:56

when we experience a change that we wouldn't have

48:59

chosen for ourselves, it's easy to

49:01

feel that our lives are contracting, that

49:04

we're more limited than before. But

49:06

when we take this perspective, we fail to

49:09

account for an important fact that

49:11

when an unexpected change happens to

49:13

us, it can

49:16

also inspire lasting change within us.

49:19

We become different people on the other side of

49:21

change. What we're capable

49:23

of, what we value, and how we

49:25

define ourselves, these things can

49:27

all shift. And

49:30

if we can learn to take close attention to

49:32

these internal shifts, we may just

49:34

find that rather than limiting us, change

49:38

can actually expand us. So

49:41

clearly, you have bounced back.

49:44

Are you, I don't know, is grateful

49:46

the right word? But when

49:49

you think back on that moment

49:51

and where you are now, can

49:53

you draw a straight line? Yeah,

49:56

it's a great question. I mean,

49:58

I think it's too high a bow. for all of us

50:01

to try and reach gratitude in

50:03

the face of every change. That might be

50:05

unreasonable, but one thing that I felt

50:08

time and time again through all the changes that

50:10

I've endured is that there's a

50:12

huge amount of self discovery and growth

50:14

that happens along the way. And

50:17

there's so much mystery around the ways

50:19

in which change in

50:21

turn changes us inside. You can

50:24

take two people who are experiencing

50:26

the same external change situation and

50:28

their internal response is markedly different.

50:30

And I think when we can

50:33

tap into people's internal themes as

50:36

they're navigating change, that's where the true

50:38

wisdom lies. Often we're

50:40

united by our psychological response to any

50:42

situation, so someone going through a divorce

50:45

might find the most resonance in the

50:47

story of a cancer patient who feels

50:49

their body has betrayed them in some

50:52

way. And I think there's a

50:54

hopeful message there. I think it helps us

50:56

feel connected across all of the

50:58

challenges that we face in our lives. You

51:01

mentioned that you are going through another change

51:04

yourself or you had an idea of what

51:06

your life was going to be like and

51:08

it's not working

51:10

out exactly how you'd pictured it when it comes

51:12

to starting a family. Are you okay to talk

51:14

about that? Yeah, so

51:17

in 2020 after years of fertility treatment

51:21

and trying to match with a

51:23

gestational surrogate, we found this wonderful

51:26

woman, Hailey, who is pregnant with our

51:28

baby girl. My husband Jimmy and I

51:30

were just over the moon. That finally this

51:32

dream of parenthood was coming true. And then

51:36

we found out that Hailey had miscarried. And

51:40

I remember thinking in that moment,

51:43

wow, I feel so unprepared for this

51:45

change. Like I might have navigated change

51:47

earlier in my life, but man,

51:50

the emotional like gut punch of

51:52

this is so overwhelming. And I

51:55

don't feel like I have the tools needed

51:58

to get through this moment. And

52:01

I felt really discouraged and just

52:03

felt like I needed help and I needed human connection. Fast

52:06

forward about a year and a half

52:08

and Hilary was now pregnant with our

52:10

identical twin girls. And we were, again,

52:12

so thrilled. And

52:15

then unfortunately she miscarried. And

52:18

I... Oh my gosh. Yeah. And

52:21

I think more recently I've been reflecting on

52:24

my current journey

52:26

when it comes to parenthood. One

52:29

thing I learned with the violin was, what

52:32

is it that I loved about the violin and

52:34

can I find that elsewhere? And I think in

52:36

the domain of parenthood, I'm asking myself a similar

52:38

question, which is, what was

52:40

I craving from parenthood and can I find

52:42

that elsewhere? I

52:45

mean, it also sounds like a very organic process.

52:47

I don't hear you slipping

52:49

into clinical speak in any way, you

52:52

know, saying, well, I'm just suffering from PTSD or whatever

52:55

else. You're

52:57

not labeling it. You're

53:00

talking about the human experience. Yeah.

53:03

I think that I, that's how

53:05

I'm processing this is just as

53:09

a human experience. So... A

53:11

hard one. Yeah. I've always

53:13

wanted to be a mom, but becoming one has

53:15

been difficult. And my husband and

53:18

I have had to navigate pregnancy losses and

53:21

other heartbreaks over the years. And

53:24

now I'm not sure what will happen. I'm

53:26

asking myself how this unexpected

53:29

challenge might change what

53:31

I'm capable of, what I

53:33

value and how I define

53:35

myself. I'm

53:37

still figuring things out. But

53:40

what I can tell you right now is that

53:43

I'm imagining a future me who is

53:46

expanding her definition of what it means to

53:48

parent, who's

53:50

perhaps finding what she craved from motherhood

53:52

in other places. At

53:55

a minimum, this exploration has allowed

53:58

me to loosen my grip. on

54:00

the identity of mom just a bit and

54:03

I found it freeing. I'm

54:05

beginning to see change with more possibility

54:08

and I'm hoping you can too. Thank

54:11

you so much. That

54:14

was Maya Shankar. She hosts the podcast,

54:16

A Slight Change of Plans. You

54:19

can see her full talk at

54:21

ted.com. Thank you so

54:23

much for listening to our show

54:26

today, Shock Value. This episode was

54:28

produced by Katie Monteleone, James De

54:30

La Houssie, and Harsha Nihada. It

54:32

was edited by Sanaz Meshkanpour. Our

54:35

production staff at NPR also includes

54:37

Rachel Faulkner-White, Matthew Cloutier, and Fiona

54:39

Guerin. Irene Noguchi is

54:41

our executive producer. Our

54:44

audio engineers were Patrick Murray and

54:46

Gilly Moon. Our theme

54:48

music was written by Ramteen

54:50

Arablui. Our partners at TED

54:52

are Chris Anderson, Michelle Quint,

54:55

Alejandra Salazar, and Daniela Balarezo.

54:57

I'm Manoush Zomorodi and you've been listening

54:59

to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

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