Societal Implications of Ubiquitous Cameras

They think they know everything and are always quite sure about it I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm Stehen Dubner, and you're listening to no stupid questions Today on the show How can we heal the tension between generations Is Sororta want to kill off the old people? Also, what's wrong with taking pictures and videos of major life events? Put away your phone, it's the Olympics. Damn it Angela, we have a question from a listener named Jenny Layden, who is fifty one years old. How old are you It's my age. What a great age, Jenny. Unless Jenny is Angela Did you perhaps write in to your own show under a pseudonym? I'm pretty sure I haven't but read me the question. Maybe it was me. Jenny writes in to say this. I am a fifty one year old person who increasingly finds it difficult to listen to emmpathize with and tolerate often very loud voices of people in their twenties. That's not me, Stehven. No, I was kidding, ' because you're a college professor and you love the people in their twenties. The twenties are a great decade So Jenny wants to know, was I that annoying then? and how can I, as an older and questionably wiser member of the human race, engage in a productive way with these children in adult bodies without being a condescending jerk without dismissing them entirely or letting their hyper crritical and ignorantly uninformed viewpoints and or very loud voices make my head explode. I think Jenny M may have issues Beyond not liking people in their twenties. But I like Jenny so much. Children in adult bodies. I think this is where the problem really rises because as Jenny wrates further, I'm currently going back to school for a second degree and find that sharing a classroom with these twenty something is very challenging. So this is not just sitting in a restaurant saying, o, those noisy young people She's actually interacting with them in a more systemic way Finally, she writes, Are we destined to only be close to people within a few years of our age and maintain a distance from people from different generations because they simply have no concept of what it is to be at that age Just as I have no idea, she writes, how it feels for my eighty one year old mother So that's Jenny's question or set of questions, which I find extremely compelling. I don't mean to be critical or prescriptive, but in this case If Jenny's asking for advice about how to not let these Children in adult bodies with their hyper crritical and ignorantly uninformed viewpoints, make her head explode Do you think a good first step might be that Jenny smoke some weed or something and just relaxes a little bit only half joking. Maybe with the twenty something year olds in her class, that would be one way to get together. But the reason I ask this is whenever I get irritated by something My first question is, should I smoke weed That's what we're saying. I think that's my second question My first question is Is this prima facia irritating? or am I being overly irritative? Is it them or is it me? Yeah. And I have to say, even if it's them Rather than getting upset or angry or jealous or whatever, wouldn't it just be better, more efficient and ultimately good for me, so there's strong self interest in being able to adjust my mindset to the thing so that I'm not upset like that When we're annoyed by anyone, whether they're people in their twenties and we're in our fifties or just your next door neighbor, before we go to the mindful center, it's like a cloud passing in front of the sun kind of approach, we should consider all emotions, including irritation as signals that carry information Iritation or annoyance is a soft version of anger. And anger is the emotion that comes from some registration that your rights are being violated, your principles are being infringed on, or your respect is being taken away. But to introspect for a moment and say, why are these young people irritating the hell out of me? and then looking for the cause like, oh, I think what they're saying annoys me because then you can move on and be more centered. If we skip over to a stage where we say, I'm experiencing an emotion, what is that emotion probably signaling? And we're missing out on a lot of important information. Let me go even further into that side of the argument. Maybe the younger people take great pleasure in noisily irritating the older people I don't think they care about fifty one year olds. Okay, but how much do you believe this may be connected to the intent of the quote younger generation to be aggressive in taking center stage. And I wonder about this from an evolutionary or a growth and survival perspective because ultimately, don't you sorta want to kill off the old people in their ways to make room for yourself and your new ways? Well, let's reflect on this from all the perspectives that we can. I love that Jenny ends this question with the musing about her eighty one year old mother because there's the recognition there she may be just as loud and annoying and unwise Relative to her eighty one year old mother as these twenty something year olds are to her. What this question also gets at is this ongoing debate, Stehven, between the idea of there being generational differences in personality and character and narcissism and so forth, and the famous finding is that young people are more and more narcissistic This kind of ego centric, like I'm the center of the universe, alsoso I know better than you. That was one of the first high profile findings that came out. And the reason why we might even speculate about this is that there are questionnaires on narcissism that have been given out and completed from the seventies all the way up So now And I will say that psychologists have disagreed about how to analyze the data, about which comparisons really are more fairly considered apples to apples. The psychologists on the other side of the debate are like, no,,. What is masquerading as these generational differences in narcissism is really a developmental trend and in general, young adults can be a little Less wise, a little less able to see the big picture, et cetera. Meaning if we were to consider this question not in twenty twenty one, but in nineteen twenty one or eighteen twenty one or even eight twenty one, that theoretically we may find the same sentiment because it's not so much about generational shift as it is about your actual age and stage of development Yeah, that's exactly right. So those are the two sides of the debate. and I would say for myself as a psychologist who's not directly engaged on either side, I would say that in general, developmental differences tend to be much larger than generational differences. And that really makes sense. Does it to you? I don't know, not to everybody does because I think that as much as we think time changes and history changes and technology changes, which it all does. I think that the power of human development is just stronger. In other words, I would think that the differences would be larger in the development of a human over time versus let's say someone who lives to eighty years old Would the changes within a given person from zero to eighty be stronger than or weaker than the changes in the circumstances that might change their behavior over the course of eighty years? Exactly. We're not talking about like the Pleistocene era. 'cause if you put Jenny back in the Pleistocene, whoa. Watch out. I will also say that sometimes our intuitions about these generational differences can go exactly in the opposite direction of the data that's available So questionnaires are one thing, but the best way to do generational comparisons is actually using measures that are not questionnaires, because you're not making a judgment relative to your cultural norms. For example, the delay of gratification task that Walter Michell invented, where little kids, usually around age four, have a choice between one treat now, say one marshmallow now versus a larger amount of the treat later, say two marshmallows later Task has been given now for decades. and when you ask people, do you think our kids today are better, the same or worse? A delay in gratification compared to kids who grew up decades ago, most people put their money on the kids from decades before. Back in my day, I wouldn't eat a marshmallow for five years. I would wait ' till it turned to dust I don't think a marshmallow ever turns to dust. It seems to be shelf stable forever, like twwinkies. It does suggest that Walter Michelle chose exactly the right research ingredient. He probably just bought one batch of marshmallows in the sixties and then he used them forever. But the point is that people say when you survey adults, o, people are definitely getting less good at delaying gratification, and the data are literally exactly the opposite. In other words, little kids today wait longer in the marshmallow task than their counterparts did decades before. Wow. So I have two things to say. one, Stale marshmallows are not as good as soft fluffy marshmallows. I love that you took a definitive stand on that. Can I commend your bravery? You may. The only thing I would say is that potentially, if you are roasting them over an open fire, whether to make some morears or just have the marshmallows, the staleness, I think doesn't hurt you. And in fact, it may contribute to the shell like nature of the burnt outer layer. The crackly outside, contrasting with the gooey inside So we've cleared that up. Number two, I do find the last part of Jenny's question very moving. She writes, arere we destined to only be close to people within a few years of our age and maintain a distance from people from different generations because they simply have no concept of what it is to be at that age. I guess the broader question is How C we all relate to and interact with and stop feeling dismissive or hateful of people who aren't like you, so not just age different in any way, because I think that is a fundamental human problem. I wasn't kidding when I said that I wanted to hang out with Jenny and it wasn't only because she used these great phrases like children in adult bodies. She began her question with the word empathy. She said, I'm somebody who finds it increasingly difficult to empathize with the young people that I'm hanging out with more and more She did say empathize with and tolerate. Yes, it's true. I think empathy is really hard, not only between the fifty one year olds and the twenty one year olds, but even with ourselves, George Lewenstein, one of my favorite behavioral scientists, George has this term the hot cold empathy gap, and he's not talking about me not being able to understand Stephven Dubgner's life He's not talking about me not being able to understand my eighty seven year old mother's life. He's talking about me not being able to understand me. And it can happen even as simply as, you know I go to the supermarket and I'm hungry. When you have a hungry Angela at the supermarket, it's not that Angela is buying you know lettuce, spinach tofu and other healthy things. It's like Angela in the snack aisle. I'm just unable to empathize with Angela who's not hungry, and this hot, cold empathy gap, even within ourselves, could explain impulsive behavior of people doing things in a hot state and then failing to remember or empathize with their more reflective self And if it's difficult for us to empathize even with our other selves across a four hour period, imagine how hard it must be to truly understand the thoughts and feelings of someone else regardless of their age I also wonder if part of Jenny's experience with these younger people, especially because she's a peer now and And So she's a bit of an outlier. She's someone who in her fifties is going back to school, which can't be easy on a number of fronts, although it's also exciting on a number of fronts But I wonder if her experience is partly informed by her belief that what's happening here is ageism, the notion that as you get older You become a little bit less visible to younger people. You are made to feel a little bit less relevant. And this is a real effect. I know the World Health Organization recently called aggeism a very significant global challenge, saying it leads to poorer health and social isolation, earlier deaths, and that it costs economies billions of dollars because older people, especially pre COVID, when they weren't so needed for the short labor market, were basically pushed aside. This turns up in a number of places If you look at different medical disciplines, there is a very significant shortage of geriatricians, doctors who specialize in the care of older people. I think it's worth talking about the general impulse toward empathy and these general ideas around generations, but I do also wonder if perhaps she's identifying something that's a little bit below the surface that she might be picking up on. And it would seem to me that the psychology of these other isms would apply, which is that being marginalized from society and pushed out to the outside of the herd and made to feel like you don't matter, that does seem to be one of the pernicious things that you can do to somebody. It activates an inflammatory response the physiological level, these indicators that lead to cardiac problems and more. so it makes sense that it would have toxic effects I will leave Jenny with one thought if she's looking for ammunition for why she's right to think that young people are terrible. This is from Aristotle who did his thinking many centuries ago He wrote, Young people have exalted notions because they've not yet been humbled by life or learnt its necessary limitations. Moreover Their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones. Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning They think they know everything and are always quite sure about it. So that sounds like something Jenny could maybe carry around in her pocket and show these noisy young people, but the record, Aristotle is not so easy on the old people either. And for the record, wise old Aristotle was once young, unwise Aristotle. That is true. Aristotle wrote O people have lived many years. I guess that's kind of a truism then life on the whole is a bad business. The result is that they are sure about nothing and they underdo everything They think he wrote, but they never know They are small minded because they've been humbled by life Their desires are set upon nothing more exalted or unusual than what will help keep them alive. Aristotle's really cranky. I think he's throwing everyone under the bus. So I guess if Jenny wants to feel better, she should read some Aristotle and say that compared to him, everybody is actually pretty awesome. I think that's a good antidote Still to come on no stupid questions, Stehven and Angela discuss how personal technology affects our ability to live in the moment You're trying to pay attention to Dr. Duckworth and the person next to you is watching Gossip Girl Stephven, we have an email from William Anderson. Would you mind if I read it to you? It has a little bit of golf in it?. You can read me ten letters from Mill Anderson. I had you at golf. Okay. When watching the Ridder Cup, but really every event, that's it, Stven that's all the golf just to manage expectations. Okay, but this is a little bit of synchronicity. Did we not just discuss the Ridder Cup in a recent episode? We did. This is probably not specific to golf, and that's why William says, but really every event. I'm always struck by the number of people with their phone in front of their face, presumably filming slash, streaming, slash posting To me, it seems like the proper way to enjoy an event is by being in the moment and enjoying the experience. Aittle judgy there, William, but that's okay. continue. C curious your perspectives on the relative value of being in the moment versus filming it. Maybe others can do both, but I'm not sure I can or would want to. It seemems as though whenever anything cool, slash controversial happens these days, a sizable cohort of folks instinctively take out their phone to capture it Maybe I'm just being a curmudgon. Furthermore, do people even go back and look at photos anyways? It seems as though the ease of taking quality photos may have paradoxically reduced their independent value as people take so many of them. Thanks, William Now by the way, the whole time I'm like, is William eighty years old or is he eighteen I don't think eighteen year olds use the word Cudgon. I think that's reserved for above fifty at least. Plus this has proper capitalization and punctuation right there. You're like, wait, you're definitely not eighteen. Anyway, I don't know how old William is, but I have wondered this question myself. Whether we should advise everyone put away their phones at graduations and so forth. I agree with you, and William that it is an interesting phenomenon. The economic angle certainly intrigues me, which is as he put it, because it's so easy to take good pictures, does it reduce their value? I mean, you have to agree that the supply or the abundance of photos today means that they seem pial otentally at least to someone like William less valuable than when the resource was scarce. But I would also argue, isn't that what human progress is about? Until the last century or two, one of the biggest threats to humankind was not having enough food For many people now, one of the biggest threats to their personal health at least is eating too much food So The way that we deal with abundance can be puzzling sometimes. and I understand his point, but I think it's more than that that troubles him. He asks How many people even go back and look? That's one form of utility, but if you text a photo to someone who cares about it or if you post it on Instagram, that's another form of utility. So I think that his points are perfectly valid, but a little off the center of The real question, which is when you're at an event and everyone pulls out their phone Does it make sense? And I think what he's implying is that maybe it doesn't because you can't experience it the way you would if you didn't have the phone in front of your face. And I do think there are some valid questions to ask about why we do it I think heard mentality has a lot to do with it. Heard mentality. If you're at an event with nine other people and all nine of them pull out their phone, do you feel a little weird for not? Like, Ohh, well, plainly, I should be recording this as well. I don't quite know why, but I feel I should. You have this social norm effect, like, wait, everyone's doing it. There's probably a good reason they're doing it something bad might happen been if I don't do it, the safer thing as it were is to just whip out the phone. Did you feel though that when you were watching the Olympic opening ceremonies this past summer? It's quite an assumption that I watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. Wait, you don't watch the opening ceremonies? God, that's the worst. The closing ceremonies are the worst. I mean The opening ceremonies are interesting. I'm not much for pageantry, I have to tell you. Although The London games several years ago, did you watch those opening ceremonies? Yes, I did. Okay, I know they were famous for I think Boris Johnson, who was not yet Prime Minister, who was the Mor of London and he apparently ziplined into the stadium. So I know that got a lot of attention. I actually didn't see that. I think there was some skit or something where there was James Bond and the Queen. I think neither of them were the real ones maybe or maybe Queen Elizabeth II ziplined into the stadium as well. part that I did see They had a segment that was a celebration of the NHS, the National Health Service. and they had Pe in beds, like dancers in beds who are posing as sick people and then they get up and they start dancing around with the nurses and the doctors. It was the most British and most wonderfully unique way to say who we are and what we care about. care about our Queen, we care about James Bond and we love our NHS. damn it. Yeah. So anyway. I guess I did watch an opening ceremony once. Okay, the reason why I brought up the Olympic ceremonies is that more and more, you see these athletes have spent their whole lives making it the Olympics and they're walking in formation behind the flag of their country as the entire world looks on and they have their phones out basically experiencing the opening of the Olympics through their phones. I'm like, you're there, stop put your phone away. So I am now making on my notepad a little matrix. There's curudgin, not Cudgin. In the Cudgin column, William And Angela. Oh, come on. You don't think that's absurd. That's a very Steven Dumbererd thing to say. like put away your phone. It's the Olympics. Damn it. I may be a carudant in some ways, but here's the way I think about it. Let's say I am a pummel hororser. Gymnast, Do you mean like gymnast. That's what I meant to go for And I've been working since I was the age of whatever four. toward this goal and now I'm there I know that there's going to be a tape of it. And what I want is for my personal memory and to show my family and my friends and maybe my future spouse and future kids and grandkids, I wna show my experience of that moment. literally my point of view. What's wrong with that? Well, there's nothing morally wrong with that. And let me concede a little ground here So my friend Gal Zalberman at Yale, has actually done scientific research on using photos. Oh, you're gonna bring in the science here. That's kind of cheap. Yeah, I' gonna pull the science card. But lookook, I'm playing it against myself. So this is good for your argument. Perfect. Bring it on in one of his studies, he actually hired a tour bus and then randomly assigned undergraduates to go on one tour without photos and cameras. The other one, please take photos. Can I just say I love the idea of that study and I applaud the use of whatever tax dollars went toward it. I'm sure it was federal research dollars. is probably where it was. I don't know, Maybe Yale paid for it. Children are starving We now know whether picture taking on a tour bus But it is so clever. And what he found was that when you are randomly assigned to take photos of your experience, that on average, it actually enhances your enjoyment. So I'm arguing against self and I'm arguing against William, I guess, too. So maybe we old people who you know still capitalize words and sentences. We don't understand that when people take photos of what they're doing, that it can actually increase enjoyment. What I find most interesting about this is you, the scientist, knew the science coming in and yet you the person actually argued the other side of it. Now, that's okay. There are a lot of things that I know to be true or empirical. and yet I have a personal preference for the opposite. But I am curious Whether you find that scientific evidence unconvincing or whether you think that there is some kind of moral override on the utilitarianness of it. So when I read Gal's research, I mean, look, I read it with my own bias and this was some years ago, so it was before this last Olympics, but had always been annoyed by people whipping out their phones at college graduations and other things where I was like Damnit, just like experience the thing. So Critically, I read this article, and here's something else I want to say, which kind of takes back a little of the ground that I gave you. Okay. Gal also found that the photo taking benefits in terms of increasing enjoyment, they depended on engagement. In other words, the reason why you enjoy it more is that when tasked with taking photos, you're just a little more into it, you're engaged If the experience is already engaging, or the photo taking interferes with the experience, you know, imagine that you're at the altar. You could also say like, I'm just gonna want this for posterity. I know there's a videographer, but wait, hold that thought. In that case, you gott to wear a GoPro. You just don't use the phone, you just walk in with the headgeear. and I think that makes everybody very comfortable So I think the big caveat here is all things being equal, increasing your engagement with experience because you're taking photos can be beneficial. But there are many scenarios in which you were already at maximal engagement and where the phone actually somehow interferes with your presentess. That is an interesting nuance and it reminds me of a similar Ish piece of research. We did this episode a while back on Freconomics radio to try to look at the impact of taking notes by longhand, pen and paper, whatnot versus by laptop. And this was research by Pam Mueller and Dan Oppenheimer, who I guess you know, correct? Yes, I do. What Oppenheimer and Mueller found was that for factual questions There was no difference between the laptop and the longghand note taking But for conceptual questions, do you remember the result? It had this great title, It's like the pen is mightier than the keyboard. So yes, long handand in that study was better for the important key ideas of a lecture. And the mechanism by which that would happen would be to your mind, what? Why do you think that would be the case? When you are in class with a keyboard, you're a stenographer. You're just taking down everything in a kind of mindless, you know and that's preventing you from doing what you really need to do, which is to sit there and just really think and synthesize and draw the connections. And I do think there's something about having The keyboard in front of you and the fact that we can, frankly, type faster than we can write, that actually leads us down that slippery slope of just,, you spend the whole time typing everything the professor says That article though, by the way, has been since questioned. and I think it would be fair to say that the jury's out on what's better. My guess is it's also going to vary a lot by the person. And I know for college professors such as yourself, this is a point of interest, not so much whether taking is better on the computer by hand, but whether note taking on computers should be allowed. So I know that with your behavior change for G proroject David Labson who's running experiments about whether to allow computers in a class The idea being that these students who are at Harvard and Princeton and Yale have such little self control that they're spending all their time on Facebook or Instagram or whatever. So if I let someone in my class with a laptop thenen they're going to abuse it and they're not going to pay attention. It's because of the externalities, Meaning other people will be disturbed by your engrossment. Yeah. I mean, there is research suggesting that if you have your laptop in class, which you are likely not using to take notes, but in fact watching a full length feature film, then you are going to distract your classmate who's actually trying to pay attention to the extremely boring professor So I don't let my students have laptops in class, not because I worry about their own cognitive retention as much as I really do think it's distracting. When my husband showed me the photograph of my own students in my own class watching YouTube videos and not taking notes, even though it looked to me like they were from the other side of the laptop, I just knew right then that there would be this enormous externality problem You're trying to pay attention to Dr. Duckworth, and the person next to you is watching Gossip Girl. Now it may be that there was one person in that entire class doing something that you would like them to not do I can see that as a potential problem, but as someone who's for years and years and years loved taking notes on computers because I can type a lot faster than I can write I would be the collateral damage if the laptop were banned. That's true. suchuch is the life of the policymaker, Stehven. what can I say? But I do think that with this original question of should people take photos at big events? or should they not? I have to say that when I was having these curmudgeonly thoughts about people like graduation I was literally at a graduation and I was like, they're looking at their beloved daughter or son through a phone. They're right there, but you're not looking at them. I thought about psychological distancing, which is something that Ethan Cross and other psychologists have worked on. I've worked on it with Ethan for some years. And it's this idea that when you take a removed perspective, like when you're not immersed in the experience, but you have some removed. You're looking at it through a phone, or you're looking at it from a third person perspective That in some cases, it can be good, if it's a very painful event and you take a removed perspective, then you have a little psychological distance, that's good. But I remember thinking this in a curudgely way at a graduation because I was like, this is where you don't want psychological distance. You want to be immersed in the first person perspective. What I'm starting to take away from this conversation, even though we're both wiggling and waggling a little bit on William's original question is that having your phone and recording it, whether still photo, video, whatever is a complement to the event and not a substitute for the activity. In other words, it can augment, it could potentially subtract, of course But it could also augment because it's a different part of the activity. And that's where I feel that you curmudgans are not quite seeing the full picture. So to speak. And the other thing to think about is this, in the old days, meaning like let's say twenty years ago There were a group of people who were called publishers, and they controlled what all of us saw. There were newspapers, there were TV stations. This is like a fable a long, long time ago. And it was a relatively tiny, tiny group of people who decided for all of us, what we would see on a given day Now Everyone is their own publisher I want to have as content My Blurry F second image of Roy Mclroy taking a swing in a Ryder Cup competition Hey, I'm the publisher. You have the power. And therefore, who am I to say to you that no, no, no, you should experience the moment live in real time, put down the phone. I think it's not understanding the different dimensions on which people gain happiness or utility. That's what I would have to say. Williams's question was fairly narrow, but it raises a broader point about the implications of cameras just being everywhere If you look at the drop in crime in many cities across the world over the past really thirty years now It's hotly debated. It's hard to fully understand what's causal all the time. But in the UK, for instance, one attribute that is widely considered to have been successful is the presence of what they used to call CCTVs, closed circuit TV's. There're just cameras everywhere. There's a much greater chance that if someone commits a crime, they'll be captured on film and then captured in real life It also works if the police commit a crime. I mean, think about George Floyd and Derek Chovin Do you think that Derek Chauvin would have been convicted without the photographic or video evidence? I don't think so. I don't think so. And nor would we have had the ripple effect of essentially a social revolution without that footage. argably. There's a recent trial over Ahmad Arbbery who was killed And what's interesting is that the video evidence was shot, I believe by one of the three men who later was accused and then put on trial for killing him. So I think the thread that William began to pull is a really interesting and very, very, very large thread that it would behoove us all to think about a little bit more deeply Well, let me conclude with pro camera comments just to show you How open minded I am, Stepven. I am all in favor of speed cameras, red light cameras. I would have cameras on every street corner Film everything. and I think that would be enormously positive for society. I don't have a lot of hangups about what about my privacy as I'm walking down the sidewalk? I don't care. So you're Owellian in your pursuit of cameras everywhere, but if you pull out your iPhone at a graduation damnit, Duckworth is all over you I think back to a conversation we had on this show a while ago about hoarding and nostalgia. It really affected me because you are deeply non nostalgic and you keep nothing. Yes. And I am a little bit of a nostalgist and a hoarder That said, and I hope you don't mind me, saying so because we're friends and I'm about to reveal a slight intimacy, but you will occasionally teext me a photo of something that you see out in the world All I'm saying is that you're saying that you don't believe in memorabilia, nostalgia hoarding. True. And then I send you photos that are kind of sal. The person that I get the most texts from of cute little pictures is you. It's true. So I think what this anti hoarding and yet pro picture texting dichotomy in you shows is that you, like the rest of us Angela, are an and humans have a variety of intertwining motivations and values. you may be the most human human ever Stephven, what can I say, I am large, I contain moltages. Coming up after the break, a fact check of today's conversation And now here's a fact check of today's conversations. In the first half of the show, Steven and Angela wonder about the shelf life of a marshmallow and compare it to that of a twwinkie. Unfortunately, neither is shelf stable forever The myth began when Roger Benatti, a science teacher in Blue Hill, Maine kept a twwinkie on top of his classroom blackboard for more than thirty years. Upon his retirement in two thousand four, Benoti told the Associated press, quote, It's rather brittle, but if you dusted it off, it's probably still edible. But manufacturers don't suggest eating a twwinkie after about forty five days. If you're planning to eat a twwinkie older than that, Researchers suggest carefully checking for mold and fungi first. The shelf life of a marshmallow is a little longer According to the brand Essential Every Day, marshmallows have a shelf life of two hundred and forty days from the date of manufacture and about one hundred and fifty days from the receipt of goods Later, Angela and Stephven guess that Listener William is over fifty years old because of his feelings about cell phones and his use of the word curmudgon I followed up with William via email and found out that he's actually a relatively young person, just twenty nine years old From the language in his question, he sounds like the type of millennial that listener Jenny might actually enjoy hanging out with. Also, Stephen wavers on the details of the opening ceremonies of the London twenty twelve Olympics Bis Johnson did indeed zipline, not into the stadium, but over Victoria Park, where the games were being shown on big screens He famously lost momentum and was stuck hanging twenty feet above the ground for several minutes. Queen Elizabeth II and Daniel Craig as James Bond did indeed participate in a celebratory sketch However, the queen was not involved in any ziplining. Stehven's description of the NHS dancers was accurate. Children posing as patients rose from hospital beds to dance with performers dressed as doctors and nurses Finally, Stepven jokes about federal dollars funding Gaalls Dauberman's study on whether taking photos increases enjoyment of experiences. Angela thinks that Yale may have paid for it. In actuality, neither funded the research The study was paid for by a grant from the Marketing Science Institute, as well as several grants from Angela's own Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania That's it for the fact Chack Nonow Stic Questions is part of the Freconomics Radio Network and is produced by Freakonomics Radio This episode of No StupidQuestions was produced by me, Rebecca Lee Douglas Our theme song is An She W by Talking Heads. Special thanks to David Byrne and Warner Chapppell Music If you have a question for a future episode, please email it to NSQ at freconomics. com And if you heard Stehven or Angela reference a study, an expert, or a book that you'd like to learn more about, you can check out freakonomics dot com slash NsQ, where we link to all of the major references that you heard about here today. Thanks for listening If you haven't watched the Beijing Olympic opening ceremonies, You have not lived. How many hospital beds did they have? Because if they had less than one hundred hospital beds, it was not a proper opening ceremony Radio Network. the hidden side of everything