The Technology That Gets You to Pay More & The Good News About Envy

When you delete a spam text, your phone often gives you the option to “Delete and Report.” But have you ever wondered what actually happens when you report it? Who gets the report? Does anyone do anything with it? Turns out, hitting that button isn’t as pointless as it may seem. https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-recognize-and-report-spam-text-messages Imagine two people shopping for the exact same thing — but being offered different prices based on what a company knows about each of them. That’s the unsettling idea behind “surveillance pricing” and it happens all the time. Companies can use data, algorithms, hidden fees and other techniques to determine how much they think you are willing to pay — and then charge accordingly. So how does it work and what can consumers do about it? My guest is Lindsay Owens is president and CEO of the Groundwork Collaborative, an economic think tank and corporate watchdog in Washington, D. C. She has testified before Congress and advised lawmakers on consumer and economic issues. She is author of Gouged: The End of a Fair Price—and What That Means for Your Wallet (https://link.amazon/B0f69O9qK). Envy has a terrible reputation. We’re told not to compare ourselves to others, to be grateful for what we have and certainly not to covet what someone else has. But what if envy isn’t a character flaw at all? What if that uncomfortable feeling is actually giving you useful information about what you want from your own life? Social scientist Stacy Kim explains why envy may be worth paying attention to and how to use it without letting it consume you. She has spent more than 15 years helping people understand and use envy more productively and is author of Envy: Why Wanting What They Have Is the Key to Getting What You Want (https://link.amazon/B01U7KWW1). Why do certain foods — lasagna, chili, stews and other leftovers — often taste even better the next day? What could possibly happen sitting in the refrigerator overnight that improves the flavor? There is actually some interesting science behind it. And in some cases, cooling and reheating food may even change it nutritionally. Listen and discover what your leftovers are doing while you sleep. https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/why-does-food-taste-better-the-next-day Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 0:41Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:22Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, when you report a spam text, does it do any good? Then, many businesses today are using surveillance pricing, or personalized pricing, to charge you more money.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, companies tend to him and ha and clutch their pearls a little bit when they're accused of this. Oh, we're not using personalized pricing. We're just doing routine pricing experiments. For many Americans, that's a distinction without a difference. You didn't sign up to be lab rats in a pricing experiment.

• 1:54Mike Carruthers?

  Also, why does some food taste better the next day? And envy. It's considered a sin by some, but everyone feels envy.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  I think everyone has to compare themselves with other people to figure out where they are. And when you compare, you naturally find ways where you might fall short, or you might be lacking in some ways. And then the envy happens.

• 2:17Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know. There's probably no better endorsement for a company than this. I keep buying their stuff. That's exactly what's happening with me and Quince. It started with their clothes. I've bought sweaters, polos, pants, jeans, shoes, a belt. And Quince has become one of the first places I look when I need something new to wear. And my wife and son buy from Quince too, all the time. What keeps bringing us back is the quality and the price. Quince uses premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, merino wool.

• 3:00Mike Carruthers?

  Their cashmere sweaters start at just $60. And with colder weather coming, they have down jackets and classic wool outerwear as well. Quince prices everything 50% to 80% less than similar brands by working directly with ethical factories and cutting out the middlemen. And it's not just clothes. They have bedding, bath, kitchen essentials, and furniture. We even have Quince pillows. So this isn't one of those endorsements where I try something once because they sent it to me. We shop at Quince, and I absolutely recommend you try it. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com.

• 3:42Mike Carruthers?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was Something You Should Know. It's the best way to support our show.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

• 4:11Mike Carruthers?

  You know, when you go to delete a spam text you got, and it asks you, do you want to report it as spam? And I've always wondered, well, like, who do you report it to? Where does that go? Well, that's what we're going to explore as we begin this episode. I'm Mike Carruthers. Welcome to Something You Should Know. So when a spam text arrives, your phone may give you the option to delete and report junk, or delete and report spam. And you might reasonably wonder, report it to who? Is anybody actually listening? Well, turns out, that button isn't just there to make you feel better. When you hit Report Spam, the report really does go somewhere.

• 4:53Mike Carruthers?

  Depending on your phone and the messaging service you use, information about the sender and message can be sent to Apple, or Google, or your wireless carrier. Those reports help them identify spam patterns and improve the system that blocks similar messages from reaching other people. Wireless carriers use spam reports to fine-tune filters and blocking systems so that similar messages can be identified before reaching other phones. The Federal Trade Commission specifically recommends using your phone's Report Spam feature, or forwarding suspicious texts to 7726, which spells spam on a telephone keyboard,

• 5:35Mike Carruthers?

  because it helps your carrier spot and block similar messages. So when that obviously bogus text arrives about, you know, there's a problem with your package or your bank account, don't just delete it. Hit Report Spam. You won't necessarily help bring down an international scam operation, but combined with everyone else's reports, it helps the system keep the next one from getting through. And that is something you should know. When you see a price for something, you probably assume everyone else is seeing pretty much the same price. But increasingly, that may not be true.

• 6:17Mike Carruthers?

  Companies now have sophisticated technology that can use what they know about you, like where you live, what you buy, even how you behave, to help determine what price you pay. And that's just one of the new ways that companies have figured out to squeeze more money out of consumers. There are also hidden fees, surge pricing, algorithms that can push prices higher, and data collection you may not even realize is happening. So how do you know when you're being played, and what can you actually do about it? Lindsay Owens has been investigating all of this. She is president and CEO of The Groundwork Collaborative, an economic think tank and corporate watchdog in Washington, DC.

• 7:02Mike Carruthers?

  She has testified before Congress, advised lawmakers, and is a frequent commentator on consumer and economic issues. She's author of a book called Gouged: The End of a Fair Price and What That Means for Your Wallet. Hi, Lindsay. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for having me.

• 7:21Mike Carruthers?

  So I imagine most people have heard of surveillance pricing. They have a sense of what it is. And certainly, the name itself is a very vivid description of what it is. But can you explain it a little more?

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, surveillance pricing is at the intersection of two things that Americans hate: being spied on and being ripped off. But it's really just a colloquial term for something that economists call personalized pricing, or first-degree price discrimination. This is the idea that a company would set a price tailored for you specifically, based on their assessment of your willingness to pay. So what would this look like in practice? A company might log your purchase history, might collect information about your geolocation,

• 8:14Speaker 01

  where you live in the United States, information about what kind of device you're logging on from, a Mac, or a PC, a phone, or a computer, how urgently you need something, how desperate you are for something. All of this information is then sort of collected and built into a graph, if you will, that helps a company assess how much they can charge you, or overcharge you, as the case may be. And the really interesting thing about surveillance pricing is, it doesn't always line up perfectly with income. So yes, of course, if a company can take a peek into your wallet before deciding how

• 8:55Speaker 01

  much to charge you, they can sort of assess if you've got a little extra cash lying around that they could tack on to the price. But sometimes you're willing to pay more because you're desperate. You've got to get home for a funeral, and you've got to catch a flight. Or you need something urgently. I'm a mom of a toddler, and there are times where I'll do anything to break my toddler's fever, or keep him from crying. So I might be willing to pay top dollar for a bottle of Tylenol, for example.

• 9:25Mike Carruthers?

  But the concept of charging different people different prices for the same thing is not, is not a, this is not a new idea.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so for, you know, for thousands of years,

• 9:37Speaker 01

  we haggled in marketplaces. That was the original form of personalized pricing. You went to the souk and you picked something out and then you started bartering with the merchant. And if you were wearing a nice tunic, he might have said, oh, this person could pay a little more and charged you more. Maybe you had a little dirt on the merchant. You probably got a good deal. You had a little leverage in that negotiation. But in the late 1800s, the Quakers in the United States felt like the Puritans way of haggling was immoral and unequal and unfair. And they said, look, all men are created equal under God. We're going to offer a fixed price. So everyone pays the same amount for the same items at the market.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  And then it was John Wanamaker, Philadelphia retailer, devout Presbyterian, inspired by the moral convictions of the Quakers, but also a businessman who thought, you know, it'll be quicker to have price tags on my items so that people spend a long time in Wanamakers, but when they're ready to check out, they can get out quickly. And he instituted the first price tags in his Wanamakers department store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the late 1800s. And for about 150 years, we've had that stable, predictable, transparent, fair posted price. And in the last couple of decades, it's starting to be at risk of extinction.

• 11:03Mike Carruthers?

  So give me a couple of very specific examples of modern day surveillance pricing.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  We know Target has used your geolocation data to charge you more when you're in the parking lot because they know you're probably going to make a purchase. We know Princeton Review charged families logging on from ZIP codes that had a higher percentage of Asian American households more for test prep services because they thought they valued them more. We know that Expedia has charged more for the same hotel room in Manhattan for someone logging on from San Francisco versus someone logging on from a lower cost geography. We know that Instacart was running pricing experiments on grocery shoppers,

• 11:52Speaker 01

  calibrating how much they could charge each one of them for every item in their basket. And as we've started to study different forms of agentic commerce, the early indications are that agents are pushing customers towards more expensive products. But we don't yet know exactly how they're doing that.

• 12:15Mike Carruthers?

  So if you were to ask some of the companies that you just mentioned, are you doing this? And, and because this seems unfair, what would they say?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, companies tend to hem and haw and clutch their pearls a little bit when they're accused of this. This, of course, isn't a good look for most businesses. But they tend to hide behind technical jargon. Oh, we're not using personalized pricing. We're just doing routine pricing experiments to test how much we can charge you. And I think for many Americans, that's a distinction without a difference. We didn't sign up to be lab rats in a pricing experiment when we shop for our groceries online. But there are a number of different forms of pricing that companies are using now. And they often play a little bit of, you know, three-card monte, where they sort of shuffle between which ones they're willing to admit they use and which ones they deny using.

• 13:11Mike Carruthers?

  So one example of this that I've heard often spoken about is Lyft and Uber. When it rains, they raise their prices. But isn't that just, I mean, you ever tried to get a taxi in New York in the rain? I mean, demand goes way up, supply stays the same, so the price goes up. Now, it doesn't go up for the taxi because they're regulated by the city. But, but I understand supply and demand. Everybody's going to want an Uber when it's raining, so I understand the price goes up. But if you don't want to pay it, then you don't get an Uber.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  You know, what you're describing is pricing that varies according to market conditions, supply and demand. There are a lot of ways to allocate scarce resources. And dynamic pricing is, is a reasonably good one. I think the problem here is twofold. The first is, we often don't actually know what's under the hood of Uber's algorithm. And what we've learned over time from experiments is two riders who are looking for the exact same ride, standing at the same pickup spot, headed to the same destination, at the exact same time, facing the same market conditions, are being charged different fares.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  That's not being decided by the market conditions. They face identical market conditions. That's being decided by characteristics of the rider. So that veers into personalized pricing or surveillance pricing rather than dynamic pricing. The other concern that I have on the dynamic pricing front is increasingly we're seeing dynamic pricing seep into areas where there are no scarce resources to allocate. There's no supply and demand to bring into equilibrium. So what's going on here? Well, you know, Wendy's isn't running out of french fries. If they're using electronic menu boards to contemplate dynamic pricing, that's just so they can charge you more for french fries or more for a frosty on a hot day,

• 15:18Speaker 01

  not because we are, you know, handling a complex supply chain or inventory matter. And the research shows dynamic pricing is showing up everywhere. We're seeing it in sundry stores and Vegas casinos. I'm a mom of a toddler and I've seen dynamic pricing for children's museum admissions tickets, you know, charging me more on a rainy day where I've got to find a place for my kiddo to run around. These types of pricing technologies and tactics are moving into almost every nook and cranny of our economy and really coming for every line item in the household budget.

• 15:56Mike Carruthers?

  You know, I'm wondering if there are any examples of this where this kind of pricing policy is used to the consumer's favor. I want to ask you about that when we come back. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday, I'll have a place to wear that. Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility: sell it. Every day, people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty painless. Take what you don't wear, list it on Vinted. Listing is quick and simple.

• 16:42Mike Carruthers?

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• 17:23Mike Carruthers?

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• 18:05Mike Carruthers?

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• 18:46Mike Carruthers?

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• 19:06Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about surveillance pricing, personal pricing. My guest is Lindsay Owens. She's author of the book Gouged: The End of a Fair Price and What That Means for Your Wallet. So Lindsay, are there any examples of this kind of pricing that are actually in the consumers' favor? And I can think of one, and that is my supermarket, because I'm a member of their club, keeps track of what I buy. So they'll send me coupons for things that I buy and give it to me at a great discount or even for free. I mean, that's surveillance pricing, but I don't mind.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, loyalty programs are a great example of when customers can really benefit from a company's diligent tracking of their consumer information. But we have looked into this issue closely, and increasingly, what we see is, in some scenarios, you actually might be subject to a loyalty penalty rather than a loyalty premium. These are pretty sophisticated data harvesting operations. You hand over a lot of data on your purchase history, what you buy, when you buy it, when you log into your loyalty program before you make a purchase.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  And there was a Washington Post reporter who used a local law to request his loyalty data from Starbucks. He was a loyal customer. He purchased in the app. And what he found is, over time, as Starbucks learned that he was indeed a caffeine-addled reporter, they stopped offering him those perks and discounts that they initially gave him to get him in the door. He was a sure thing. So even loyalty programs can sometimes be a bit of a Trojan horse for data collection, and there can be loyalty penalties that consumers are subject to.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  By the way, companies make a lot of money from these loyalty programs because they sell your data. Kroger is not just selling groceries. About 30% of their net operating income comes from their alternative profits business, which includes the sale of your data. So there's a lot going on behind the scenes of these loyalty programs, and they can be quite nice deals, but they can also be problematic for consumers as well.

• 21:31Mike Carruthers?

  But as concerning as this might be, these pricing policies that you're pointing out, they're not illegal. So unless you change the law, I mean, you can get upset and jump up and down, but what else can you do?

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Well, I think there are a couple of points to make. The first is, I don't think our consumer protection laws were written for an age of high-tech price gouging. I don't think they were written for the modern e-commerce landscape, yet alone the modern agentic commerce landscape. Instead, they were written for an era of paper price tags, of weekend circulars, right, and coupons, where you could see what the price of beef was at each local market at the end of your Sunday paper.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  And so I do think we're overdue for a reckoning and a revisiting of our consumer protections. And in the book, I suggest a shopper's bill of rights, things like the right to a refund without having to battle a chatbot for a week on end, things like the right to cancel a subscription the same way you signed up for it. If a company can auto-populate your credit card information to take your money, they can do the same to give your money back. I support a ban on surveillance pricing. There is no reason for companies to use your data against you in price-setting decisions. So I do think we're due for some new boundaries in the consumer landscape.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  But I also know that it can take a while to wait around for Congress. I was a Hill staffer for many years myself. I've seen firsthand how slow that process can be. So I do suggest some tips for consumers to use today as they go about their shopping, you know, this week and ahead of the holiday season.

• 23:32Mike Carruthers?

  And those include?

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Sure. One of the best things is to update how you think about comparison shopping. It's no longer enough to compare the same product across a couple of different stores. You need to compare the product price within store across different venues, in the app versus on the website versus at the brick-and-mortar store, logged in versus logged out. Admittedly, this is exhausting and will eat up a different resource, your time. But this is certainly one way to see how much price variation is afoot and try to get the best deal. The other thing I really recommend is turning their tactics back on them.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  They learn how much we are willing to pay by running experiments on us, sophisticated pricing experiments. Turn those experiments back on them. Sit down on the couch with your spouse, take both of your computers out, see who gets the better deal. Order an Uber with three of your friends, leaving a concert. Everyone fire up the app, see who gets the better deal. Go with a lower-priced option. I think you'll be surprised how much price variation you'll see when you run experiments like that. I run a think tank in Washington, DC for my day job, and we run experiments like this all the time, and we see this type of variation every single day.

• 24:58Mike Carruthers?

  If I go online with any big retailer and I shop for a specific item and I shop for it logged in, not logged in, and on the app, you think it's likely I will get four different prices?

• 25:13Speaker 01

  It's very common. You may also get a different price if you log in an hour later. The volatility of pricing has changed dramatically in recent years. I always like to tell the story of JetBlue, who, you know, recently tweeted at an angry customer who said the price of his flight shot up $200 overnight, and he was headed to a funeral. And JetBlue's corporate Twitter account tweeted back to him, "Have you ever tried clearing your cash or shopping in incognito mode?" You know, as big of a confession in broad daylight as you'll ever see from a corporate

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Twitter account, that your data is being used in price-setting decisions.

• 26:00Mike Carruthers?

  Are there any stories of consumers revolting against this and getting companies to knock it off?

• 26:07Speaker 01

  There is a great story of the Coke CEO in the 90s letting slip in an interview that they were piloting installing thermometers in vending machines. These thermometers would, of course, take the temperature and then could vary the price of Coke, charging customers more for a Coke on a hot day when they were desperate for an icy cold beverage. And when word got out, the American people erupted. It was on the cover of every major newspaper coast to coast, and Coke backed off. Pepsi seized on the PR gaffe, and Coke cried uncle. We saw a couple of years ago, Delta announced a partnership with an AI pricing company called

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Fetcher that would have allowed for more personalized pricing on Delta planes. CEO of American said, "No, no, we're not going to do that." Delta backed off. When my organization investigated Instacart and uncovered their experiment, two weeks later, the company apologized in a blog post and said they got this one wrong. They were no longer going to run experiments on Americans while they shopped for groceries, charging different shoppers different amounts for the same item at the same time. So I do think consumers raising their voices is an important way that we start to put a perimeter around some of these practices and restore some honesty in our markets.

• 27:34Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this is really eye-opening. I mean, I knew some of this was going on, but I didn't know it was going on to the extent that it is, and I appreciate you explaining it. Lindsay Owens has been my guest. She's president and CEO of The Groundwork Collaborative, an economic think tank and corporate watchdog in Washington, DC. She's author of a book called Gouged: The End of a Fair Price and What That Means for Your Wallet. And there's a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes. Lindsay, this was great. I appreciate you opening everybody's eyes to this.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Oh, well, thank you. This was really enjoyable.

• 29:12Mike Carruthers?

  Envy is one of those emotions we're not supposed to admit to. Someone has the career, the house, the relationship, the life we wish we had, and suddenly we feel that little pang of, "Why them and not me?" Then we're told to knock it off, be grateful, stop comparing yourself to other people, appreciate what you have. But what if that's exactly the wrong way to look at envy? What if envy is actually trying to tell you something important about what you want, and maybe even showing you how to get it? Stacy Kim has spent years studying envy and helping people understand what's really behind it. She is a social scientist and coach with more than 15 years of experience

• 29:57Mike Carruthers?

  helping conscientious high achievers untangle envy and use it more productively. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Business Insider. And she's author of a book called Envy: Why Wanting What They Have Is The Key To Getting What You Want. Hi Stacy, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Hi Mike, thank you for having me.

• 30:20Mike Carruthers?

  So I imagine most people know what envy is and have experienced the feeling of envy, right? Does everybody feel envy?

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Yes, I think so. I think that it's really hard to admit that you have it, especially in this country. It has such a negative connotation, you know, it's associated with the deadly sin. And, you know, we don't have lots of words to describe envy, we only have one. And there are actually some positive sides of envy, but we don't have those words to describe it. And there are good reasons for us to compare ourselves with others. That's how we learn, and so we do that as social beings. And so, yes, I think everyone, you know, has to compare themselves with other people to figure out where they are.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  And when you compare, you naturally find ways where you might fall short or you might be lacking in some ways, and then the envy happens.

• 31:21Mike Carruthers?

  But the envy happens because you're comparing yourself and what you have to what somebody else has, but likely not knowing the whole story. And it seems that you're creating a story that's resulting in that envy that may or may not be true.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Yes, I mean, we, especially now with social media, we get a very one-dimensional, very curated view of somebody else's life. And we then will compare ourselves to that and then feel that lacking. So I think, you know, there are many more opportunities, thanks to social media, thanks to smartphones and, you know, digital devices that we have. There are many more opportunities to compare ourselves and then to feel envy. At the same time, you know, I don't think that saying to somebody, you know, "Hey, comparison is the thief of joy," and telling somebody, "Don't compare yourself." I think that's not very helpful, because we have to compare ourselves.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  We have to, we're social beings. You know, learning how to fit into a group, learning how, you know, we are versus somebody else, it requires comparisons. So I think we're wired as social beings to compare. So I just argue that, you know, using our envy, using those kind of negative emotions, we can learn how to compare ourselves better and look at the fuller picture and understand, well, there are things that envy wants to tell us that are actually very useful and I think very hopeful.

• 33:06Mike Carruthers?

  Well, one thing that happens that I find interesting is that, so I could be envious. My neighbor gets a new car and I think, "Oh, boy, that's really cool. I'd really like to have that car." Well, I'm not gonna go do anything that's gonna help me go get that car. So it's a feeling of, yeah, I'm envious of that car, but if I wanted to, I could take steps to see how I might go get that car, but I'm probably not. I'm just gonna sit with that envy and feel bad. And then I think, well, what's the point of that?

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Well, I think that's what I'm hoping people will learn, is that, you know, envy is just another negative emotion. And all negative emotions tell us something important. Social scientists call negative emotions, I mean, they say that negative emotions have signaling value. And when we don't look at those signals, we don't hear the alarm bells sound, you know, we're ignoring important information that our consciousness is trying to tell us. So, for example, with your example with the car, what I might do is say, "Okay, I'm feeling envious. This doesn't feel great, you know, I wish I had that car. I don't have that car."

• 34:26Speaker 02

  But then take it a step further. And I don't know if this is a good time for me to talk about the four components of envy and how you might use that to examine your envy further.

• 34:38Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, of course.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you first recognize, "Okay, I'm feeling envy. This kind of doesn't feel good." Then what you might wanna do is take a look at the four different components of envy and then examine it further to figure out what is my envy trying to tell me? Because there's a bigger message here and I don't wanna ignore it. So first, I think it's helpful to realize that, yes, it is a negative emotion. And so we're just not gonna feel good about it. But then second, it's important to remember that it's because we're similar to that person that we are envious.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  We don't usually envy people who are really far ahead of us. Like, you know, I use the example of a young cellist. They're not gonna envy Yo-Yo Ma. That Yo-Yo Ma is just way up there. They're gonna admire Yo-Yo Ma. But they're gonna envy the first chair of, first-chair cellist in their youth orchestra. Right? Especially if they're second chair. So I always see that, you know, envy is showing us something that we want that's usually within our reach. And that's why you feel that, "Oh, why not me?" You know, that's where that pain is coming from. And then the third component is relevant comparison.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Like, you don't envy things that are in a domain that's not important to you. Like, take that young cellist. They're not going to envy their friend who's a tennis player, right? Because they don't care about tennis, they care about their cello. So it's also in a domain that's important to you. And then finally, you know, looking at, once you go through all of those steps, then you can look at, okay, what is the intangible desire? So Mike, like, I would ask you to consider, what do you think you would feel? Or how do you think you would feel if you got that red car? And that's really what you're really wanting? Not just the red car, but what the red car represents?

• 36:48Speaker 02

  And then there are usually more opportunities to get that feeling, to get that intangible desire than just the red car. So it opens up more possibilities, and that's why I think it's hopeful.

• 37:02Mike Carruthers?

  So it's kind of like, like, you'll see somebody driving some really fancy car and go, "Wow, lucky him, but I don't really want that car. Maybe I just want the prestige, the money, or whatever he's got that allows him to have that car, but I don't really want that car. That's just a symbol that shows that this guy's got some level of success that might be desirable." But it isn't, I'm not envious that he owns that car, because I wouldn't want that car.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Right, right. And so you've already identified some of the intangible desires. And then it's not just about the car, you know, it's about that other prestige status. And there's many other ways of getting that prestige and status or that recognition, or being, you know, getting that attention, maybe. And you can figure out a way to do it in your own way. And so, you know, if you keep seeing that guy with a car and it keeps bugging you, then you're likely to want to pay attention to, "Okay, well, what is my envy trying to tell me? It's not about the car, but it's something else."

• 38:12Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I don't think of myself as a particularly envious person, but when I have felt envy in my life, it isn't necessarily motivating. It doesn't make me get off the couch and go wanna get whatever it is I'm envious of that this other guy might have. I just feel bad that I don't have it, but not enough to go do anything. But it seems like if you were going to use envy in a positive way, you would use that as motivation. If you really wanted something to go, to go get it.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  Yes, you, Mike, you're really bringing up a really great point here in that I think that because envy is so associated here in the US with things like the deadly sin, or, you know, it's, it's just embarrassing to want something that somebody else has. It has, it produces so much discomfort that we actually are taking it one step further and feeling shame. You know, there are some wonderful researchers, Lion and Rubin, who look at shame more closely, and they talk about how shame can keep you stuck. And I

• 39:29Speaker 02

  think that's what you're describing, is that when we feel envy, we instantly go to shame, and we don't even realize that we're doing that. And when we feel that shame, it's really hard to get motivated. It's, it keeps us stuck. And part of it is, is that we think, you know, somewhere in there, we think, okay, I'm feeling this way, I'm feeling this bad feeling, and then you're translating it to, I might be a bad person. And that is where the shame lies. And so I wanted to kind of detach, you know, by talking about envy and by sharing all of these ideas that I didn't actually come up with, that, you know, a

• 40:10Speaker 02

  lot of researchers, researchers have found as well. I'm just sharing it, hoping to share it to the world. But to kind of take away that shame from that negative emotion, that's where you can start to feel more motivated about it, when we don't have that shame, because the shame keeps us stuck. So to be able to say, okay, I'm feeling this bad feeling, but that doesn't make me a bad person. It's so natural. It's universal. Everyone feels this way. We're social beings. We have to compare. And so, yeah, I'm gonna feel envy, but I don't have to feel bad about myself. It doesn't make me a bad person.

• 40:51Mike Carruthers?

  Do you find that people have different levels of envy? As I said, I don't consider myself a particularly envious person, but I know people who are very into comparing, and, you know, they're much more into it than I am. But I, so I imagine everybody's different somehow.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  It's really hard to know if somebody else is feeling envy without really talking to them, because, you know, we, there's no facial expression for envy. However, you can kind of sense that somebody is feeling envious. You might get some clues about that. I try not to judge other people to, you know, it might be, they might be feeling envy, they might feel, be feeling outraged, you know, I'm not quite sure. However, if, you know, if it feels like someone, or someone you know, or someone, or you are feeling a lot of envy. Again, it's not that you're a bad person, it's just that you, there's something that your envy is trying to tell you, and it's really irksome, and you haven't

• 41:53Speaker 02

  maybe addressed it, right? You know, you're gonna feel more envious about the things that you really care about, right? I actually don't care about cars, because I'm not a very good driver. I live in New York City. I take subways and trains and buses. And, you know, when we do need a car, my husband drives, and I get to be passenger princess. So I really don't care about cars. But if I see somebody knit something really beautiful, or if I see somebody write some, you know, something that's really amazing, then I'm gonna feel envy, and it's gonna bug me, and it's gonna eat at me, and it's going to, you know, it's gonna be harder for me to let go of that envy. And so, you know, if

• 42:36Speaker 02

  we're stuck there, then, then yeah, you're gonna feel envy a lot. I'm guessing, Mike, that you probably, you know, instinctively know how to deal with that envy, if you do feel it, and you quickly remind yourself of the things that you do have, and the things that you have done. And so you, it could be that you're faster at processing all of these feelings. But, you know, that other person is somehow stuck, and is somehow not paying attention, maybe, to what their envy is trying to tell them.

• 43:13Mike Carruthers?

  I always find it interesting when people, envy seems to be a very one-way emotion. Like, we're always envious of other people. And every once in a while, I will hear about someone who's envious of me, and I go, wow, really? And it's, it's like, that's, hadn't thought of that, but I guess that, you know, it's kind of a wake-up call. Like, you know, it, it's not that everybody else has everything else, and you don't have anything. It's like, there are things you have that people admire and are envious of.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Absol- absolutely. I mean, I'm sure there are other podcasters that envy you, or other people who are doing similar things to you, that, that you're ahead of them, and therefore they envy you. And it's, it's, again, natural. And also, for you, it's also an opportunity, if I might suggest. You know, I really believe, having been a researcher for so long, I really believe that there are three components, or three keys to, for a good life. And one is, you know, doing meaningful work, thing, you know, whether it's paid or unpaid, you know, doing things, doing the activities that really are meaningful

• 44:31Speaker 02

  to you. The second is having deep relationships with people you care about. And so anytime you're able to deepen a relationship, that's another way of having a good life. And finally, serving other people is a way to have an extraordinary life. And so envy can help us in all three of those cases. You know, envy shows us, like, what we want to achieve, and, and maybe, you know, figure out what skills to build, to incorporate that into our meaningful work. It shows us who we care about, and how we might share our envy to deepen our relationships. And then finally, you know, when we envy, we tend to look up

• 45:13Speaker 02

  all the time, but we don't turn around and look, oh, wait, who's behind us? Who's right next to us? And so, you know, if you consider that, if you can kind of look at, okay, well, I'm envying this other, you know, person, but I, if I look around me, there are people next to me, and there are people behind me, and if I hook arms with them, or if I help the person who is behind me, then I'm serving a population that is really meaningful to me. And I'm likely to be serving people who are people I might want to develop relationships with. So all of these are not easy things to do in life, but they are definitely worth

• 45:56Speaker 02

  the effort. And in, but all three cases, I believe that envy has something to tell us about that. So that's why I see envy as a very hopeful emotion, and a moral emotion in some cases. And so even though it feels bad, if we could just get over it a little bit, and take a closer look, I think that that's what can help us and the people around us.

• 46:20Mike Carruthers?

  And so what is the suggestion or the recommendation of, when you're, the next time you're feeling envy, what do you do with it? Because I think that's a thing people don't know, like, well, what do I do with this emotion? I'm feeling this, but so what? I mean, eventually, it will dissipate, and as emotions have a way of doing. But what do I do with it right now?

• 46:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, first, you know, I think we went over the four components, and I created an acronym to make it easier for people to remember. And siren, S-I-R-N, are the four components of envy. And what you can do is, you can, you can recognize that you're feeling envy, and then just go through the four components. And you can remember them by thinking about siren, S-I-R-N. S is the similar target, you're not so far behind. I is the intangible desire that you, that feeling that you want behind the thing that you think you want, right? And R is relevant comparison. It's, you know, I'm,

• 47:28Speaker 02

  I'm envying in a domain that's important to me, so maybe I need to pay attention to this area. And then N is that negative emotion. And, and can also, like, the negative emotion can be a guide. Like, the more you're feeling envy, the more angrier you are, the more upset you are by the envy, the more you might want to pay attention to this. The siren is screaming louder, trying to get you to pay attention. So just going through those things, and, and thinking about, okay, what are these, what are the four components? What am I really after? How am I similar to that person? You know, why is this, is

• 48:08Speaker 02

  this a domain that I've been ignoring? And, you know, that negative emotion, like, okay, it, it's an emotion, it makes me feel bad, but that doesn't make me a bad person.

• 48:19Mike Carruthers?

  Well, even though everybody feels envy many times throughout their life, this is the first time I've ever sat down and talked about it. And really, there's so much more to it than I think people realize. I've been speaking with Stacy Kim. She is author of the book, Envy, Why Wanting What They Have Is The Key To Getting What You Want. And there's a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes. Great, Stacy. Thank you for being here.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Mike, I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much.

• 48:51Mike Carruthers?

  I'm sure you've noticed that some dishes, like lasagna, or some saucy spaghetti dishes, often taste better the next day. Well, you're not necessarily imagining that. You see, as a cooked dish sits there, its ingredients continue to mingle. Aromatic compounds from herbs, spices, garlic, and other ingredients can move through the sauce and through the food, creating a more integrated flavor. Reheating can release those aromas again, which helps explain why stews and sauces and other complex dishes often taste better the next day. And there may even be a nutritional bonus, at least with pasta. Pasta is very

• 49:32Mike Carruthers?

  starchy, and when cooked starch is cooled, some of that starch changes into resistant starch, which isn't digested in quite the same way as ordinary starch. Research has found that cooling and reheating certain starchy foods can reduce their effect on blood sugar. So making too much pasta isn't necessarily a bad thing. You may actually be making tomorrow's dinner better. And that is something you should know. Hey, you know, I'd love it if you would write a review of this podcast, preferably a five-star review. Just go to the platform you're listening to this on, and there's usually a button or something you can push to leave a review, and we read them, we like

• 50:14Mike Carruthers?

  them, we, we learn from them, and we appreciate it. I'm Mike Heruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 50:23Speaker 04

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• 50:51Speaker 05

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