Pod Insights TED Radio Hour We resist change and surprises—but shock can shift our lives for the better About this episode Being jolted out of the everyday can be a good thing. From an elaborate farce, to benign naughtiness, to a life-altering event—this hour, TED speakers explain the productive side of the provocative. Guests include bird truther Peter McIndoe, psychologist Paul Bloom and cognitive scientist Maya Shankar.
Original broadcast date: December 8, 2023
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Manoush Zomorodi? This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message: What if instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current so you can win more deals. Learn more at hubspot.com. This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks.
0:24 Speaker 01 Our job now is to dream big.
0:25 Manoush Zomorodi? Delivered at TED conferences.
0:27 Speaker 02 To bring about the future we want to see.
0:29 Manoush Zomorodi? Around the world.
0:30 Speaker 03 To understand who we are.
0:32 Manoush Zomorodi? From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.
0:37 Speaker 04 You just don't know what you're gonna find.
0:39 Manoush Zomorodi? Challenge you.
0:40 Speaker 05 We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy?
0:42 Manoush Zomorodi? And even change you.
0:43 Speaker 06 I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way?
0:48 Manoush Zomorodi? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR. I'm Anush Zomorodi. I want to start with a story that, well, it might seem unbelievable. Birds are real! Birds are real! On October 15th, 2022, thousands of protesters gathered in Washington Square Park in New York City.
1:13 Speaker 07 Go, home birds! Go, home birds! I get flashbacks to that, to that moment, to that rally, all the, all the time. Because it was the most beautiful moment of my life. There were 3,000 people of all ages, all races, all beliefs, coming together for a shared truth, something we can all agree on. We're waking up this country together! We flooded the streets. It's live, it's fine! We had banners, we had signs, we had our bagpiper with us just to commemorate and remember why we're there, which is because of a tragedy, because, you know, 12 billion birds died at the hands of the United States governments, and they've never received justice for that.
1:58 Speaker 07 So we're here to avenge them. We're gonna march around New York City!
2:04 Manoush Zomorodi? This is Peter McIndoe.
2:06 Speaker 07 I'm the Public Information Officer for the Birds Aren't Real movement, which has been active since 1976.
2:15 Manoush Zomorodi? Since 76, but you've not been involved since then?
2:18 Speaker 07 Oh, no, I'm 25 years old.
2:22 Speaker 07 Kind of a brief history of the movement is it started when animal rights activists and anti-surveillance activists learned about the government's plot to replace every bird with a surveillance drone. And they teamed up to create a movement called Birds Aren't Real to protest this. From 1969 through 2001, the US government murdered over 12 billion birds in the American skies.
2:48 Manoush Zomorodi? Here's Peter McIndoe on the TED stage.
2:51 Speaker 07 They did this using poisonous toxins dropped from airplanes. It was contagious and murdered all of the birds over the course of about 40 years. For each bird the government killed, they replaced it with a surveillance drone replica in disguise, designed to spy on the American people. The proof that birds are robots is all around us if you start looking. For starters, birds charge their batteries on power lines.
3:21 Speaker 07 They also track civilians using a liquid tracking device.
3:27 Speaker 07 Over the years, as I began putting this information together, there were times I wished I never even learned this. My life would be so much easier. But I always come back to this. It is my moral obligation, as one of the few privileged enough to know this, to share it with you.
3:45 Manoush Zomorodi? So this whole thing, it got big. You went to CNN headquarters to protest their coverage of the movement.
3:55 Manoush Zomorodi? You went to Twitter headquarters to protest their logo.
3:59 Speaker 07 We are here today to protest. We're part of the Washington.
4:03 Manoush Zomorodi? What's your overall strategy here? How does it work?
4:06 Speaker 07 Yeah, so we have a van that we drive around the country. We hold rallies. That's my primary responsibility as public information officer. I drive around the country in a van that we covered in decals, kind of full of facts and, you know, questions that we want people to ask when they're driving. Like, have you ever seen a baby pigeon? You ever wonder? I've never seen a baby pigeon. Why? It come out of the factory as adults. Why? Throughout my time doing Birds Not Real, I've had multiple kind of people come forward and seen some leaked documents that prove that they come out of the factory as adults.
4:44 Manoush Zomorodi? Hmm.
4:45 Speaker 07 So there's no organic growth from baby to adult pigeon.
4:50 Manoush Zomorodi? So back to Washington Square. You had the van parked there. Presumably, since it was Washington Square Park in New York City, there were a lot of pigeons.
4:59 Speaker 07 There were a lot of pigeons. And any time that, you know, a flock of pigeons flew over the crowd, there would be just a cacophony of goos.
5:13 Speaker 07 It was like a heavenly choir to my ears, just hearing everyone collectively, you know, come together and let the government know that we know what they're doing and we don't like it.
5:26 Manoush Zomorodi? How shocked would you say people are when they first hear about your theory that birds aren't in fact real?
5:37 Speaker 07 Yeah, that's a tough one. Unfortunately, I try to tell people what's going on and they look at me like I'm a freak. And they'll scream at me, telling me I'm the problem with this country. You're so stupid.
5:51 Manoush Zomorodi? Hmm.
5:52 Speaker 07 But that's why I'm doing this. It's clear we have a lot of work to do. And so I'm hoping, you know, my grandchildren will be living in a world where being a birther is the norm, you know, where it's weird if you believe in birds, you know? That's this old, that's boomer belief, you know? No, what's, you know, we know, we know the truth. So that's the world I'm working toward. And, you know, that is, that is what drives me forward every day.
6:22 Manoush Zomorodi? All right, tell us who you really are.
6:27 Manoush Zomorodi? That was really fun, by the way.
6:31 Speaker 07 That was fun. My name is Peter McIndoe, but I do not believe the birds are robots. And that is a character that I just did that I've been playing for years and years now.
6:47 Speaker 07 I started this by accident in 2016.
6:51 Manoush Zomorodi? How does one do that by accident? What do you mean?
6:53 Speaker 07 It was an actual accident, I swear. I was in Memphis, Tennessee, visiting a friend. It was shortly after Trump got elected. And there was a rally happening in Memphis. It was a women's march. And there were also people in red hats shouting things at them. And it was just kind of this chaos. And I'm not really sure why I did this. I think I was just maybe overwhelmed or maybe it felt like there was so much madness happening. But I decided to pick up a sign and write my own thing on it. So I wrote on the sign the three most random words I could think of to pair together.
7:36 Speaker 07 And as you can guess, they were "birds aren't real." And then I started walking around chanting "birds aren't real." And people were asking me, "What does that mean?" And unbeknownst to me, I was being filmed the entire time. The next week, I started being sent pictures of "birds aren't real" spray painted on walls in Memphis. And high school classrooms, writing it on the chalkboard, chanting it in the cafeteria.
8:09 Manoush Zomorodi? No.
8:10 Speaker 07 No kidding. And I was sitting, looking at all this, and just thinking, "I would always regret it if I didn't try to lean into that energy that was already there."
8:25 Manoush Zomorodi? We live in an attention-seeking age with companies and influencers vying for our eyeballs, one-upping each other with outrageous and shocking images. It can feel exhausting and exploitative. But what if being jolted out of the everyday can actually be helpful? Today on the show, shock value. Ideas about how provocative stories, surprising actions, and bolts from the blue can set the stage for productive dialogue, connections between adversaries, and ultimately, positive change.
9:09 Manoush Zomorodi? For Peter McIndoe, "Birds Aren't Real" started as a funny bit to make people laugh or to ruffle some feathers. But he decided he wanted to see how far he could take the farce.
9:21 Speaker 01 Our goal was to convince the public that our satirical movement was a real one, and see if the media would believe what we were saying. To do this, I played this character that I just showed you. We held rallies, put up billboards. We even sent the media a lot of fake evidence. We hired an old actor to pose as an ex-CIA agent confessing to his crimes. We sent them a historic email leak called "Poultry Gate" that came out of the Pentagon, where we forged hundreds of fake emails exposing elites and government officials in the bird drone surveillance plot. It didn't take much to convince the
10:02 Speaker 01 media. After just one summer holding rallies like this, it became nationally syndicated news on tons of local news stations that we were a real movement that had been around for 50 years. And there was a resurgence happening, where it was coming back, and there was a radical new leader, myself, bringing the movement back as the rise of conspiracy theories swept the nation. At this point, I'm sitting on my couch, watching the media report on my fake movement as a real one, and figured it was probably time to come out of character. One, because we'd accomplished what we came there to do, but also, I didn't want this to snowball into anything it was never supposed to. So, in 2021, I broke
10:46 Speaker 01 character, revealed the movement was a farce on the front page of the New York Times.
10:54 Manoush Zomorodi? I mean, it's pretty impressive how much you committed to the bit. And I read that it was partly because you identified with the character, because you grew up in an environment where you were exposed to some conspiracy theories. So what was your childhood like?
11:09 Speaker 07 Yeah, like you said, I grew up in kind of a hyper-conservative religious community where I was homeschooled in the outskirts of town, in Arkansas, actually. And a big reason why I was homeschooled is because there's a conspiracy theory that's still very prominent to this day, that the common core school system is brainwashing children. So that's a big reason why I was homeschooled. But still had some access to the real world. And I had neighbors, when I was very, very young, who were Muslim. And I remember asking my parents about what they believed in.
11:53 Speaker 07 And they said that, you know, they believed in their God, just like we believe in ours. And I remember thinking, oh, well, then how do we know that ours is, that ours is the one? You know? And that was before I was 10.
12:11 Speaker 07 A family friend gave me a book called The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. So that was one of the first books I read in like my teenage years.
12:21 Manoush Zomorodi? Wow, a family member gave you that book?
12:23 Speaker 07 Well, he's a very close friend of my dad, which I've always respected. They do have very different beliefs.
12:30 Manoush Zomorodi? I mean, that's actually a very constructive way to talk to you, by giving you a copy of Joseph Campbell.
12:36 Speaker 07 Yeah.
12:36 Manoush Zomorodi? And showing you the power of story.
12:38 Speaker 07 Yes, it really was, because that book talked about the power of story and myth, and how maybe we weren't so different from those neighbors after all. And yeah, I think that a big part of the way that I got through that was through humor. And not making fun of my surroundings, but definitely joking about them a lot.
13:01 Manoush Zomorodi? When we come back, how Peter channeled that curiosity to grow his fake movement and walk the fine line between comedy and condescension. On the show today, shock value. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.
13:30 Manoush Zomorodi? Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
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14:50 Manoush Zomorodi? Hey, it's Manoush. This past year, we have brought you stories about AI, relationships, climate change, neurotechnology, dinosaurs, privacy, human behavior, and even one about what it means to create thriving public spaces. All of these public spaces that we take For granted, you know, all of this social infrastructure. We work really hard to bring you all of these stories because that is our public service, kind of like a park or a public library.
15:21 Speaker 02 And libraries are these beautiful hubs that can take on the shape of whatever community that uses them really needs.
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16:48 Manoush Zomorodi? It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. And today on the show, shock value. Before the break, we were talking to Peter Macadoo about how he started a viral and fake conspiracy movement called Birds Aren't Real. From the start, Peter didn't want it to seem like he was making fun of anyone.
17:11 Speaker 07 You know, that was a thought from the beginning of Birds Aren't Real is that this could be a very shallow project. Um, so I remember at the beginning, looking at it, less like a conspiracy theorist satire, uh, but more like just this absurdist belief satire that could be applied to either side of the political spectrum. And so, uh, from there, it was really interesting. When the idea was growing, it sort of became this Rorschach test for who people thought, you know, believed something ridiculous. Um, and a lot of people think that, you know, uh, the other side, you could say, um, or
17:50 Speaker 07 people that, you know, disagree with fundamental core beliefs of theirs are crazy or brainwashed.
17:57 Speaker 01 There were hundreds, maybe thousands of instances over the years where strangers would approach me, you know, they'd see me in public and I'd see them notice me. They'd walk up to me with complete disdain on their face. They thought that I was a real conspiracy theorist. And time and time again, they'd come up to me and, uh, it would tell me how stupid I am. My out of character self may interpret these interactions as a funny response to someone that fell for the comedy project, but instead I felt the emotions of the character. I felt emboldened and I felt sad and angry, like they didn't even take the time to know me.
18:38 Speaker 01 And in those moments when those people were talking to me, they could not have been more ineffective at what I would assume they really want. Less conspiracy theorists in the world. What if by talking to conspiracy theorists, like they're ignorant and stupid, we're actually pushing them farther away from the truth that we want them to see? Because what happens when someone tells you that you're stupid, you're all wrong, you're the problem? You'll feel judged and dismissed and most importantly, you'll feel othered, which may lead you to look for safety in those who are like-minded, to do what they have been doing for you.
19:19 Speaker 01 Affirm your selfhood, give you a sense of identity, belonging. These are some of the most basic human desires.
19:29 Speaker 07 I think as the time has gone on, we started building more of a character and a person out of this Birds Aren't Real guy. To where, you know, he wasn't just this random guy who shouts on the street, because that's really not who conspiracy theorists are. A lot of the time, you know, they're talking about these forums that they're on, online, and they really don't have a lot of real life friends or community. And so, as the time's gone on, it really hasn't even been about the bird robot thing at all. It's been about a character that is finding purpose and, and meaning and community through this idea. And that is what's making him go deeper and deeper into it.
20:12 Manoush Zomorodi? Did you ever have conversations with real conspiracy theorists?
20:16 Speaker 07 There was one time that I, and I'm, I'm happy that it was just one time. You know, because at the first rally we ever held was in Springfield, Missouri. I, I didn't know who was gonna show up. I didn't know if we'd have 20 people show up. I didn't know we'd have a bunch of, you know, old men show up who really believe this, you know?
20:37 Speaker 07 And so, we showed up and it was just all, a couple hundred, actually. It's like Gen Z kids who totally understood and got the wink in the eye. And from there, you know, that's when I learned that that really was our whole audience. But there was one time, at the CNN rally, actually. This guy walked up to me and starts talking about how he's a member of this, you know, very elite family with this famous name. And he was saying, you know, I love how a lot of the information, a lot of the information you present is absurd. But, you know, but, but it's true. But it's true. You know, the way you presented is absurd, which is a smart way to get it out to people, but it, but it is true. And
21:16 Manoush Zomorodi? Interesting.
21:17 Speaker 07 Later that day, I got an Instagram message from, from this guy. He said, oh my God, that's the guy from the rally. And I opened up his profile and it was just years and years of thousands of posts of conspiracy theories.
21:29 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh.
21:30 Speaker 07 Yeah, which I think that, you know, a lot of times it is, you know, one conspiracy theory can lead to another and then reality really can kind of unravel. And, uh, yeah, that was the first time that I'd ever experienced that. It kind of shocked me. At how similarly, uh, he spoke like the character. And how much he identified with it.
21:56 Manoush Zomorodi? Did you ever have anyone who was angry at you about this?
21:59 Speaker 07 About birds aren't real in general?
22:01 Manoush Zomorodi? Yeah, like, like, this is not funny. Like, conspiracy theories aren't something to laugh at.
22:06 Speaker 07 Yeah, there have been, there have been people who have said that. And I really think it's important that we can talk about these things in a space that's not intense.
22:16 Manoush Zomorodi? Huh.
22:16 Speaker 07 I think comedy is a very disarming way to enter a thought space. You can enter this idea through something with, with levity. And then, once we're past that, then we can maybe get into some ideas in a more disarmed way. Um, you know, and obviously, there are a lot of harmful conspiracy theories. And that's important to talk about, too, uh, is that there are some ideas, uh, that are truly hateful and very hurtful. But I think that with the general person in our life that believes in conspiracy theories, or that friend group where someone says something that makes us raise an eyebrow and responding to that in a way that isn't shaming, uh, but that is curious about how they got there.
22:59 Speaker 07 If we can have more people talking about it like that, looking at the problem, uh, as an issue of belonging rather than belief, that might be the most productive thing we can do to fight the problem of misinformation.
23:15 Manoush Zomorodi? That's Peter McIndoe. He's the founder of the fake movement, Birds Aren't Real.
23:21 Speaker 07 We are planning on running for president ourselves, as a movement, not as a person. In 2024, this is a, this is a TED Radio Hour exclusive.
23:30 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh, thank you for that.
23:32 Speaker 07 Of course.
23:35 Manoush Zomorodi? And you can see his full talk at ted.com.
23:43 Manoush Zomorodi? On the show today, shock value, which can include the irresistible desire to do something bad. And if we're going to talk about being bad, psychology professor Paul Bloom suggests that there's no better person to start with than the original bad boy, Saint Augustine.
24:02 Speaker 05 So Augustine wrote a very famous book called The Confessions about 1,600 years ago. And it's famous because it tells the story of his youthful descent into sin and his subsequent conversion to Christianity. And he begins book two with this great line.
24:22 Manoush Zomorodi? To set down my past wickedness and a carnal corruption of my soul. Which sounds like Augustine's about to dish out some pretty racy stuff, but...
24:32 Speaker 05 The sin he spends the most time talking about is, you might think it's fairly mild.
24:38 Manoush Zomorodi? There was a pear tree near our vineyard, weighed down with fruit, alluring neither in appearance nor in flavor. And one day, 16-year-old Augustine and his buddies decided they were going to steal those pears. And we carried off from there enormous loads of fruit, not to our meals, but rather to cast before swine.
25:02 Speaker 05 And that was it.
25:03 Manoush Zomorodi? That was it.
25:04 Speaker 05 That was the beginning and the end of the sin. But it fascinated Augustine.
25:11 Speaker 05 Because he said, "Look, why did I do this?" Behold my heart, God, behold my heart. I wasn't hungry. I threw most of the pears to pigs. I had nothing against the person who owned the orchard. And he concluded that he did it because he had no motivation for wickedness, except for wickedness itself. If any part of one of those pears passed my lips, it was the sin that gave it flavor. I had no motivation for wickedness, except wickedness itself. I was foul, and I loved it. He wanted to do it simply because it was wrong. And unlike his sexual sins, where he had motivations, he had drives, he understood what he was up to.
25:56 Speaker 05 This fascinated and horrified him. This seemed to him like a glimmer of pure evil.
26:02 Manoush Zomorodi? Paul loves stories like these.
26:05 Speaker 05 I love it because it's so paradoxical.
26:08 Manoush Zomorodi? Because sure, we sometimes do bad things because we think that we're actually in the right, that morality is on our side. We fight back because we're overwhelmed with anger at injustice, or because we want to get revenge against someone who's wronged us. Usually, we have some sort of reason, but stealing pears just for the hell of it?
26:30 Speaker 05 These perverse acts fall outside all of that.
26:32 Manoush Zomorodi? Perverse, as in illogical, irrational.
26:36 Speaker 05 They seem to be cases where people know something is wrong. And they do it, not despite the fact that it's wrong, but because it's wrong.
26:46 Manoush Zomorodi? So in an attempt to understand what drives us to do these thoroughly unhelpful acts, Paul launched the Perversity Project, where he asked people to submit their everyday examples of doing wrong just for the sake of it.
27:01 Speaker 05 So one of our first stories I got was flirted with a woman's boyfriend, knowing fully well he liked me. I knew I could steal him if I wanted, but I didn't want to do that. I just wanted her to feel uncomfortable whenever the three of us were in the same room.
27:17 Manoush Zomorodi? Here's Paul Bloom on the TED stage.
27:19 Speaker 05 Causing people pain is wrong, but that's exactly why I did it. And in fact, this is the plot of the Dolly Parton song, "Jolene."
27:28 Speaker 05 Sometimes it's self-destructive. A young man wrote to me, "Ice skating on a pond, dark and frozen spot 30 yards out. Instead of avoiding it, I skate towards it, knowing but wondering, knowing but wondering, and splash."
27:41 Speaker 05 But not all the stories I got had that kind of nature. Some were a little bit more benign. Here's one of my favorites. "When I was in a professional choir, at every concert, I felt the desire to sing a few notes very incorrectly on purpose. To this day, I don't completely understand why." Someone else wrote me, "And this is going to be the sweetest sadness little example of modest perversity. Sometimes I walk on the grass instead of the path, just because I know it's wrong."
28:07 Manoush Zomorodi? You know, I think my favorite from your survey is the ice cream guy. You remember that one?
28:13 Speaker 05 This was, I think, the first entry I got from the Perversity Project.
28:19 Manoush Zomorodi? You hit the jackpot right from the start.
28:21 Speaker 05 I just loved it. And he wrote, "On one occasion in my early 20s, I was out with a friend. He decided to get himself ice cream, and before he had a chance to try it, I stuck my finger in it. I played it off as a joke, but really, I had a sudden thought, man, it would be messed up if I just jammed my finger in his ice cream." And for full clarity, he didn't use the word messed up.
28:48 Manoush Zomorodi? I mean, there's something about a person who decides to give you an entry for your Perversity Project, that they have a sort of self-appreciation, or they're trying to understand their own motivation. It does not pass them by, that something...
29:09 Manoush Zomorodi? Wicked was within them, or they wanted to shock someone. They know themselves well enough to have recognized that this was what was happening when they committed these acts.
29:21 Speaker 05 I think that's exactly right. It is the kind of sweet spot where people know this is strange. This is outside of the usual. And a lot of the perversity examples that we could talk about don't make sense to the person doing them. And one of the theories that I'm interested for why we do this, which is to shock others, to shock and scare and impress others. In a nice way, you just want a surprise, or sometimes amuse other people. It could be funny. On the other hand, in the extremes, perversity becomes terrible. It becomes people doing cruel, rotten, violent things, simply, you know, for the sake of doing them.
30:07 Speaker 05 Psychologists have long been interested in violent, disruptive, perverse acts, and the kinds of people who do them. An example people often give is a joker from the Batman comics. In Christopher Nolan's film The Dark Knight, Alfred, Batman's butler, describes a joker by saying, "Some men can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn." And psychologists have thought up a need-for-chaos scale that gives you a bunch of statements, and how much you agree with them will tell you how much you want to watch the world burn. So do this quietly in your head. "I need chaos around me. It's too boring if nothing is going on. Sometimes I dislike destroying beautiful things."
30:54 Manoush Zomorodi? I've spent, back in the day, covering a lot of political protests, and oftentimes we saw that they would be completely nonviolent and rational, and then you would see the anarchists show up in black hoods, and things would just...
31:12 Manoush Zomorodi? Descend into utter chaos, not because they felt strongly for either side of the issue that people were protesting, but because they just wanted to mess things up.
31:23 Speaker 05 Yeah, and I think there you see the dark side of perversity, where there are some people around who just want to make trouble. And sometimes the making trouble can be funny. They may want to amuse people or surprise people in a benign way, but sometimes they might really want to hurt people. They might want to destroy things and hurt people. And there's something apolitical about it. You know, they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll dress up, they'll put on masks, and at root, they don't care what the demonstration is about.
31:53 Manoush Zomorodi? No.
31:53 Speaker 05 But if they could throw some rocks and get some trouble going, their, their day is done. They tend to be male, they tend to be young. I think many people age out of it. It's kind of in a, in a sort of hormonal rage of being a teenager. But, um, but it, it, it is the scary side of perversity. And then there's another side, which I think is more common and something really worth knowing, which also connects to politics, where people don't like being told what to do. They don't, they, they, part of a perverse actor is somebody who wants to maintain their autonomy. They want to maintain their freedom.
32:33 Speaker 05 And there's a lot of evidence that if you tell people, "Look, you are forbidden to smoke. Look, you must take these vaccines. Look, anybody who votes for this person is a total moron. Don't vote for this person." Some proportions say, "Okay, I'll do what you tell me to." And some proportions say, "Hell with that, I'm gonna do the opposite."
32:57 Speaker 05 And I, I think political scientists underestimate how often people look at polls and do what they are told not to do, just because they are told not to do it.
33:11 Manoush Zomorodi? Okay, so these acts can be troublesome. But you also think that they can be pretty interesting, maybe even positive. And you use the example of the art world and certain pieces of art.
33:25 Speaker 05 Yes. Maybe the newest one was by Banksy. Yeah, we had a lot of interest on it, as you can imagine. Where he had a canvas girl with a balloon. It was on auction at Sotheby's. It was all set up in a frame. Eight hundred dollars. And then the moment the gavel went down, a machine in the frame started to activate. And the artwork was partially shredded. And if you go to YouTube and you watch, people are shocked. They had never seen anything like it. They're horrified. Next gentleman, we have to move our hands. I'm trying to get your attention. But this became a classic. And people thought it was wonderful and ingenious and clever.
34:10 Speaker 05 Maybe the origin of modern art started when Marcel Duchamp, when there was an art competition in New York. And he said, send in any artwork you want. So he sent in a urinal. And they said, no, no, no, no, no, we're not accepting that. We're talking art. And he said, it is art. And there's a big debate. And then the conception of what art is changed.
34:32 Manoush Zomorodi? Yeah.
34:33 Speaker 05 I think society and science and art wouldn't work unless most people play by the rules. But these geniuses, who are often weird people and often perverse in other ways as well, make things more interesting. They push us to different levels.
34:51 Manoush Zomorodi? When we return, Paul explains why telling someone not to do something will just make them want to do it even more. On the show today, shock value. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay tuned.
35:19 Speaker 06 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. One subscription that does it all. Personalized AI and premium business versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, and more. Try it free for 14 days at g o o dot g l e slash Workspace with Gemini. This message comes from TED Talks Daily, the podcast that brings you a new idea every day. Learn what's transforming humanity. From balancing AI and your critical thinking to surpassing discoveries about the adolescent brain. Find TED Talks Daily wherever you listen.
35:57 Manoush Zomorodi? This message comes from Middlesex County, New Jersey. Here's why companies are actually making the move to Middlesex County, New Jersey. It's ranked in the top 2% of US counties for talent and knowledge creation and is more innovative than 98% of the nation. The opportunity's real, and it's right here. Visit biz dot discovermiddlesex dot com to set up a meeting with a business advisor today. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. And on the show today, shock value. We were just talking to psychology professor Paul Bloom, who is endlessly fascinated with what he calls acts of perversity.
36:39 Manoush Zomorodi? Basically, being bad just because you can.
36:43 Speaker 05 Edgar Allan Poe, describing perversity, described, talked about imps, little magical demons in our heads that cause us to do terrible things. But like I said, I'm a psychologist. I don't believe in imps. I think what we do has reasons, has motivations. And I think for perverse actions, there's a range of them. One of them was mentioned by Augustine. So later on, after describing the incident with the pears, he writes, "I would not have done it by myself. My satisfaction did not lie in the pears, it lay in the crime itself committed in league with a gang of sinners. The social force drove him."
37:17 Speaker 06 A warning for parents tonight. The Tide Pod Challenge is the latest fad among teens.
37:21 Speaker 05 Jonah Berger gives this great example of the Tide Pod Challenge, where it was a few years ago, kids would just like be sticking Tide Pods in their mouth and filming it. I mean, this is nothing.
37:31 Manoush Zomorodi? They do look yummy, I understand.
37:36 Speaker 05 We are gonna get legal problems. We should really say it is not safe to put Tide Pods in your mouth.
37:41 Manoush Zomorodi? No.
37:42 Speaker 05 But, but actually, maybe we shouldn't say this because the company that owned Tide Pods, I think Procter and Gamble, put up some extremely expensive ads.
37:50 Speaker 03 Keep laundry packs out of reach and away from children.
37:54 Speaker 05 Burger points out when this ad came up, consumption of the pods shot up. Not down, nobody's gonna tell me what to do. I'm gonna be an autonomous, free being.
38:06 Speaker 05 Or take threats of reprisal. There's a lovely study by a team of political scientists, which asked the subjects to imagine that they're an ambassador to a country, and they're deciding whether or not to have sanctions towards that country. In one condition, the dictator says, if you do sanctions towards our country, that's okay. I won't do anything. In the second condition, the dictator says, if you do sanctions towards our country, I will unleash terrorist attacks against you. What's the stunning finding for them is that in the second condition, not the first, they were more likely to do it. A lot of our perverse actions are in response to people telling us not to do what we want to do, and it makes us want all the more to do that thing.
38:50 Speaker 05 So much of global conflict involves sending off a message saying, um, don't expect me to be reasonable. Don't expect me to, to only care about my own best interests. And people talk about the evolution of, of our minds, the evolution of emotions, say, this is where emotions like losing your temper, like rage, come from. Rage is an honest signal that I am about to make threats that are not reasonable, but nonetheless, I'm gonna follow up on. It's one of the great quirks in human interaction, that a perfectly rational being, a perfectly
39:31 Speaker 05 intelligent, rational being, who weighs the cost and benefits, a Mr. Spock, is gonna be less effective at life than someone who's a little bit crazy.
39:44 Speaker 05 And, and we're being, we're being grim, but it also fall, it also has, works for positive things, too.
39:51 Speaker 05 Who would you find most compelling? Somebody who says to you, "I want to be with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you because the benefits of being with you outweigh the costs. You are the most attractive, promising mate I have seen, based on searching for the last little while. And up until I find somebody better than you, I will stick with you." Or would you rather have somebody who's sobbing at your feet and said, "I am so crazy in love with you. I will never leave you. You are the one for me." And now, the second person isn't thinking rationally. You know, dude, cost benefits. But, but, but he's much more of a compelling,
40:35 Speaker 05 making a much more compelling deal. Love is basically a sort of irrational bet that when somebody better comes along, you're not going to stray.
40:47 Manoush Zomorodi? Human relations. We are so weird and complicated and strange and delightful.
40:54 Speaker 05 We are, we are, we are perverse.
40:58 Manoush Zomorodi? That's Paul Bloom. He's a psychology professor at the University of Toronto and professor emeritus at Yale University. His latest book is Psych: The Story of the Human Mind. You can see his talks at ted.com. And thank you so much to J.C. Howard for giving voice to St. Augustine. On the show today, shock value. We've talked about perverse thoughts and outrageous conspiracy theories. But what about a shock that's more personal? The kind of shock that can upend our big plans in life?
41:36 Speaker 06 When it comes to navigating change and trying to sustain hope during hard times, as someone who's not a particularly spiritual or religious person, I try to have as open a mind as I can day to day. That's my soft landing. It's human psychology.
41:53 Manoush Zomorodi? Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist. That was not what she wanted to be when she grew up.
42:00 Speaker 06 When I was six, my mom went up to her attic and brought down my grandmother's violin that she had brought with her from India to the United States. And I just remember being so captivated by the instrument. I was really close to my grandmother and I knew she had played it as a little girl. And so I very quickly asked my mom if I could have a quarter-sized violin of my own to play.
42:23 Manoush Zomorodi? Maya's childhood revolved around her violin.
42:27 Speaker 06 My focus each and every day when I woke up, it was always about the violin. Like, that's what I woke up thinking about. That's usually what I fell asleep thinking about. Kind of remarkably, my parents never had to ask me to practice. Music seemed like it was striking at something that was so intrinsic.
42:42 Manoush Zomorodi? At age nine, she was accepted into the Juilliard School.
42:46 Speaker 06 We lived in Connecticut and every Saturday, my mom and I would wake up at 4:30 in the morning and take a train into Manhattan. And I would have, you know, up to 10 hours of classes. And then we'd come home and, you know, get back at around 10 or so at night.
43:00 Manoush Zomorodi? After years of intensive training, her hard work paid off.
43:04 Speaker 06 When I was a teenager, the renowned violinist, Itzak Perlman, invited me to be his private student. This was around when I was 13 or so. And so I was like, living the dream. Manoush, I really was.
43:18 Manoush Zomorodi? Well, what was the dream? Like, what did you envision for yourself?
43:22 Speaker 06 It was really when Perlman took me on as a student that I received that vote of confidence that, hey, maybe I could actually do this. Maybe this could really be my career. You know, I had a special schedule at school to accommodate more practicing.
43:37 Speaker 06 Even physically, my body grew around the violin. So, you know, to this day, my right shoulder is slightly elevated compared to my left. And my spine is slightly curved because of all the hours I spent, you know, in that violin position. Yeah, it really became an extension of my body.
43:57 Manoush Zomorodi? And then that brings us to one day when you were 15.
44:01 Speaker 06 Yeah, so I was at summer music camp. I was practicing this very, very technical, very challenging passage of a Paganini caprice. I overstretched my finger on a note and I heard a popping sound and was alarmed to find that it wasn't a string that had popped that actually attended in my left hand.
44:22 Manoush Zomorodi? Hmm. Well, how did you respond?
44:25 Speaker 06 Yeah, I responded really poorly. I was frustrated. I was very impatient. And so every day and probably 200 times over the course of the day, I would like touch my hand, move it around and see whether maybe things had improved and then they wouldn't have improved. And then I would pick up the violin and think, you know what? I'm just going to like bulldoze my way through this injury. And I played through months of pain, you know, just using anti-inflammatories and trying my best at physical therapy. I was just willing to do anything at all.
44:56 Manoush Zomorodi? Did it work? Like, were you?
44:58 Speaker 06 It didn't work.
44:58 Manoush Zomorodi? No?
44:59 Speaker 06 It didn't work. And so eventually doctors suggested surgery. That didn't help me. Finally, I was told I had to stop playing altogether. When I lost the violin, I expected to grieve the loss of the instrument, right? And grieve not being able to play anymore. But I did not expect that I would grieve the loss of myself. Without it, I really felt unmoored. And sometimes it's when we're thrown these big changes in our lives that it brings to the surface just how much certain things in our life matter to us, right? And how defining they were.
45:33 Manoush Zomorodi? So Maya started to ask herself, who was she if not a violinist?
45:39 Speaker 06 Because, you know, I was wearing blinders and I was on this speed train trying to become a professional violinist. And so I closed out all these other worlds. And so it's not just about discovering other pursuits. It's about rediscovering myself at this more fundamental level.
45:55 Manoush Zomorodi? But it turned out, once a high achiever, always a high achiever. Maya ended up earning a PhD in cognitive psychology from Oxford University. From there, she served in the Obama administration as founder and chair of the White House Behavioral Sciences Team. Now she's a behavioral scientist at Google. And a couple of years ago, she started her podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, which is about, you guessed it, life-changing moments.
46:25 Speaker 06 So I realized through that experience that it can be more sturdy to anchor your identity not to specific pursuits, but to the underlying features of those pursuits that really make you tick, that light you up. And when it came to the violin, what I really loved about music is that it gave me the ability to emotionally connect with other people. And that underlying passion persisted. I mean, that's a core part of who I am. It gave me like a through line because I, well, I lost the violin and since then I've lost the ability to do other things, or maybe life took an unexpected turn. But I can still find that same love of human connection in other pursuits.
47:07 Speaker 06 And so I would urge people who are listening to ask themselves, like, what is my through line, right? What is the defining feature of the things that I love to do? And can I find that elsewhere when life throws me a curveball?
47:20 Manoush Zomorodi? Maya Shankar continues from the TED stage.
47:23 Speaker 06 Change is scary for a lot of us. For one, it is filled with uncertainty, and we hate uncertainty. Research shows that we're more stressed when we're told we have a 50% chance of getting an electric shock than when we're told we have a 100% chance. I mean, we'd rather be sure that a bad thing is going to happen than to have to deal with any uncertainty. Change is also scary because it involves loss of some kind. By definition, we're departing from an old way of being and entering a new one. And when we experience a change that we wouldn't have chosen for ourselves, it's easy to feel that our lives are contracting, that we're more limited than before.
48:08 Speaker 06 But when we take this perspective, we fail to account for an important fact, that when an unexpected change happens to us, it can also inspire lasting change within us. We become different people on the other side of change. What we're capable of, what we value, and how we define ourselves, these things can all shift. And if we can learn to pay close attention to these internal shifts, we may just find that rather than limiting us, change can actually expand us.
48:42 Manoush Zomorodi? So clearly, you have bounced back. Are you, I don't know, is grateful the right word? What do you, when you think back on that moment and where you are now, can you draw a straight line?
48:57 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think it's too high a bar for all of us to try and reach gratitude in the face of every change. That might be unreasonable. But one thing that I've felt time and time again through all of the changes that I've endured is that there's a huge amount of self-discovery and growth that happens along the way. And there's so much mystery around the ways in which change in turn changes us inside. You can take two people who are experiencing the same external change situation, and their internal response is markedly different. And I think when we can tap into people's internal states as they're navigating change, that's where the true wisdom lies. Often, we're united
49:42 Speaker 06 by our psychological response to any situation. So someone going through a divorce might find the most resonance in the story of a cancer patient who feels their body has betrayed them in some way. And I think there's a hopeful message there. I think it helps us feel connected across all of the challenges that we face in our lives.
50:03 Manoush Zomorodi? You mentioned that you are going through another change yourself, or you had an idea of what your life was going to be like, and it's not working out exactly how you'd pictured it when it comes to starting a family. Are you OK to talk about that?
50:18 Speaker 06 Yeah. So in 2020, after years of fertility treatment and trying to match with a gestational surrogate, we found this wonderful woman, Haley, who is pregnant with our baby girl. My husband, Jimmy, and I were just over the moon that finally this dream of parenthood was coming true. And then we found out that Haley had miscarried.
50:39 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh, gosh.
50:40 Speaker 06 And I remember thinking in that moment, wow, I feel so unprepared for this change. Like, I might have navigated change earlier in my life, but, man, the emotional, like, gut punch of this is so overwhelming. And I don't feel like I have the tools needed to get through this moment. And I felt really discouraged and just felt like I needed help and I needed human connection. Fast forward about a year and a half, and Haley was now pregnant with our identical twin girls. And we were, again, so thrilled. And then unfortunately, she miscarried.
51:18 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh.
51:18 Speaker 06 And I...
51:20 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh, my gosh.
51:21 Speaker 06 Yeah. And I think more recently, I've been reflecting on my current journey when it comes to parenthood. And one thing I learned with the violin was, what is it that I loved about the violin? And can I find that elsewhere? And I think in the domain of parenthood, I'm asking myself a similar question, which is, what was I craving from parenthood? And can I find that elsewhere?
51:46 Manoush Zomorodi? I mean, it also sounds like a very organic process. I don't hear you slipping into clinical speak in any way, you know, saying, well, I'm just suffering from PTSD or whatever else. You don't, you're not labeling it.
52:02 Manoush Zomorodi? You're talking about the human experience.
52:04 Speaker 06 Yeah, I think that I, that's how I'm processing this, is just as a, as a human experience. So...
52:12 Manoush Zomorodi? A hard one.
52:13 Speaker 06 Yeah. I've always wanted to be a mom, but becoming one has been difficult. And my husband and I have had to navigate pregnancy losses and other heartbreaks over the years.
52:25 Speaker 06 And now I'm not sure what will happen. I'm asking myself how this unexpected challenge might change what I'm capable of, what I value, and how I define myself. I'm still figuring things out. But what I can tell you right now is that I'm imagining a future me who is expanding her definition of what it means to parent, who's perhaps finding what she craved from motherhood in other places. At a minimum, this exploration has allowed me to loosen my grip on the identity of mom just a bit, and I found it freeing.
53:07 Speaker 06 I'm beginning to see change with more possibility, and I'm hoping you can too. Thank you so much.
53:15 Manoush Zomorodi? That was Maya Shankar. She hosts the podcast A Slight Change of Plans. You can see her full talk at ted.com. Thank you so much for listening to our show today, Shock Value. This episode was produced by Katie Monteleone, James Delahoussaye, and Harsha Nahada. It was edited by Sanaz Meshkhanpour. Our production staff at NPR also includes Rachel Faulkner White, Matthew Cloutier, and Fiona Giran. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. Our audio engineers were Patrick Murray and Gilli Moon. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Michelle Quint, Alejandra Salazar, and Daniela Balarezzo.
53:59 Manoush Zomorodi? I'm Anusha Zamirodi, and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.
54:10 Manoush Zomorodi? Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
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