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Shoutout to "One Time for a Good Time!": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCheK4sFWZk (I highly recommend listening to this podcast)

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Note: Merchants of Misery is produced for the ear and designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using artificial intelligence, machine learning, human transcription by myself, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio and corrections at the end of this transcript before quoting in print.

Host: So, I want to talk about two things— discrimination and survivorship bias.

[MUSIC -- "MILITAIRE ELECTRONIC" BY KEVIN MACLEOD]

The goal here is to incorporate science in this podcast in a way that helps bridge that gap in communication between scientists and the public. There's two conditions that I want us to consider before we start:

The first condition is, let's just forget the idea that arguments have to be won. Thinking about things like that, it's just not productive.

The second condition is, try to think of this podcast as more of a tool, like a device used to reveal an answer consistent with the truth. I don't want people to just believe that these issues are important either. Believing doesn't reflect an understanding. I want people to understand these issues. We live in a time where misinformation spreads fast, and I think that's something everyone should be concerned about, regardless of their politics.

Part of the problem is that as we get older, we tend to share more misinformation. Dr. Nadia Brashier is a cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard University, who recently discussed this trend:

[MUSIC - "INSPIRED" BY KEVIN MACLEOD]

Dr. Nadia Brashier: So one of the strongest predictors of people engaging with and sharing fake news, typically political fake news, is advanced age. So older adults are more likely to see political fake news in their (news) feeds. And they're seven times more likely than the youngest users to share it. At this point, we don't have a lot of conclusive evidence for why that might be, but we do know that some of the sort of lay intuitions about why could be wrong. So I think it's easy to default to the perspective that older adults suffer from cognitive impairments, such as memory troubles, maybe attentional issues, and that that's a big reason why they're sharing so much fake news. I would push back against that perspective to say that the research doesn't exactly align with that, and that we should probably be considering other factors like social and motivational aspects and also digital literacy issues.

Host: So the point here isn't to play some kind of blame game. The point is that we all need to realize that the spread of misinformation is getting significantly worse each year, and the response to this rise and misinformation requires high quality information, delivered in a clear way, guided by science.

[MUSIC - "GRIPHOP" BY KEVIN MACLEOD"]

Unknown Voice: Merchants of Misery, a podcast examining the pulse of society.

Host: Act One-- "Height Privilege"

[MUSIC -- "LOCAL FORECAST -- SLOWER" BY KEVIN MACLEOD]

I'm six foot three. For men, height is usually considered a pretty good thing. And it comes with all kinds of benefits. I'll give an example:

In a study from the University of North Carolina, researchers demonstrated that all men benefit from increased perceptions of competence. So if you're talking and listening to this, you might be nodding your head right now because you've experienced this too.

Now, at this point, I do have to clarify one key detail. While it's true that being tall, it's beneficial for men in terms of things like salary and success. It's a little more complicated than that.

[MUSIC ABRUPTLY STOPS]

That only applies to men who are tall and white.

So, according to that same study I just mentioned, quote, "for black men, height may be more costly than beneficial, primarily signalling threat rather than competence", unquote.

The researchers conducted three different studies.

Study one demonstrates that tall black men receive disproportionate attention from police officers. Data from over 1 million NYPD stop and frisk encounters over a span of eight years was analyzed and found that tall black men were especially likely to receive attention from police that was ultimately deemed unjustified. All raw data came from the NYPD’s annual reports.

Study two involved testing whether height and race influenced people's perception by manipulating the height of black and white men in photographs. Both sets of men and the photographs who look down at the camera are perceived as taller than they were perceived in the photographs of them looking up at the camera. The study demonstrates that while height amplifies the perceived threat of black men, the opposite effect was found in that height amplifies the perceived competence of white men.

Study three addressed stimuli concerns from study too, but again demonstrated that tall black men are perceived as especially threatening when compared to short black men, short white men and tall white men. The research I've been talking about was published three years ago, and is the first of its kind to demonstrate the link between perceptions of height and threat for tall black men.

Now, just consider this. Why did it take until 2018 for an academic study to demonstrate that if you're black, being tall isn't always a good thing, and that it actually can be a very bad thing? The NYPD data was there well before this research was conducted. So why did it take so long to be studied?

Before we go on, let's discuss some key points about the NYPD stop and frisk program using some stats directly from their own annual reports from 2002 to 2019. Almost 90% of people stopped and frisked were found to have been completely innocent. 57% of people stopped and frisked were black, even though black people only account for 24% of New York's population. Almost 40% of people stopped and frisked by police for black and Latino males from 14 years old to 24, despite accounting for only 5% of the city's population.

These numbers clearly show that people are in fact disproportionately harassed by the police for the crime of being dark skinned. And if you're tall and dark-skinned, well, as we just learned a minute ago, adding height to the equation tends to make things worse, not better.

I've been six three since grade five. I remember at the track and field meet that year, I somehow forgot my running shoes. And our vice principal was nice enough to offer his own pair of shoes, only for us to find out that they were like three sizes too small. And it was around that time that I was faced with this sort of kind of new and pretty bizarre reality of being perceived as a man or at least an older teenager by most people, even though I was a kid.

So in this episode, I want to get more into the indirect effects of discrimination, and how they become significant underlying factors in terms of what paths we go down in life.

[MUSIC - "MILITAIRE ELECTRONIC" BY KEVIN MACLEOD]

When I was in high school, I could put on a button down shirt with an annoyed look on my face, and nine times out of ten that was enough to make it past the doors of liquor stores, bars, clubs, even casinos. It was ridiculous.

So if you've been paying attention, you might be thinking, "Oh, hold on. That study said that tall black men are perceived as threats, not tall black males including underage teenagers".

And you're right. But my counterpoint is that even if you're an underage teen, if someone is perceived as being a tall black man, that's what matters, in that they're far more likely to be perceived as a threat regardless of their true age. For me, the overwhelming evidence that people thought I was an adult when I was actually under age was how easily I could get into all kinds of age restricted businesses, without ever being asked for identification.

I mean, look-- at 13 people thought I was 16. At 15 people thought I was 20. At that time, it came with a complicated list of advantages and disadvantages, like I generally didn't have to worry about physical confrontations but when I did, it often came from police officers.

[MUSIC - "LIMIT 70" BY KEVIN MACLEOD]

The worst offender in particular was an officer who for the better part of two years, went out of his way to harass me at school, at a community festival while he was off duty, at the gym while I was working out, and believe it or not, this officer even harassed my older brother at another gym after mistakenly recognizing him as me.

That officer's harassment made me feel significantly less safe in my community around police officers in general because of how clearly unafraid he was ever being held accountable for his actions by his superiors. I'll just note that in those two years that officer only ever charged me once-- a made up ticket for littering that was eventually thrown out by a judge who seemed more angry about it than me when she realized what the officer had done.

After that, it was like he knew better than to make up charges. So his main priority was just to make my life miserable without laying charges. In fact, the first time that officer harassed me and gave me that ticket for littering, I naively remarked that I was gonna file a complaint against him. And I remember what he said to me like it was yesterday. He said, "You do that and I'll throw your ass in jail".

One of my teachers heard what happened that day, and she tried to console me. I think she meant well, but hearing her say, "Well, those dreadlocks aren't doing you any favors, you have to admit that"-- it hurt in a weirdly personal way that kind of forced me to accept reality. It was my first day at a new school, in a new city. And I was about 4000 kilometers or about 2500 miles away from home.

Here, let me give one more kind of bizarre example so you can understand how dehumanizing and humiliating discrimination can be. It was around the same time I started attending that high school. My brother and I were driving to pick up a movie from Blockbuster, and we got hit by a school bus that blew a stop sign. The bus driver got out, and she was screaming about how my brother had somehow hit the front of her school bus with the side of our car, despite even the kids on the bus calling her out for rolling through a stop sign.

And when a police officer arrived, the bus driver was quick to tell the officer that my brother was acting aggressively and before we knew it, my brother was immediately handcuffed and placed in the back of a police cruiser, despite not even raising his voice or even acting remotely aggressive. The responding officer then proceeded to listen to the bus drivers creative little story and naturally, he found my brother at fault. Again, all while the kids in the bus were yelling out of the windows trying to tell the officer that their bus driver blew through the stop sign.

There's a silver lining though at least. After further review, a week or two later, the bus driver was ultimately found to be at fault, and her employer's insurance paid for the car door to be replaced.

And that's great and all but again, I'll remind you of how my brother was so unnecessarily placed in handcuffs and put in the back of a police cruiser. All because the bus driver claimed he was acting aggressively despite even her own passengers calling her a liar.

[MUSIC - "NETHERWORLD SHANTY" BY KEVIN MACLEOD]

Imagine if that happened to you. How would that make you feel?

So let's wind down Act One and think about this for a moment. When those of us affected by discrimination try to voice our concerns, all too often we’re met with the usual list of dismissive excuses like, "Oh, it's all in your head", or "That's just an isolated incident" or my favorite-- "Well, I've dealt discrimination too, and I've turned out fine".

And all I ask these people to think about is that some things in life can be bad for you, even if they don't completely destroy you. Kind of like how a musician can play off key without necessarily ruining the whole song.

Act Two-- Survivorship Bias

When I think back on the binge drinking that I did as a teenager, I can't help but wonder just how much long term damage I did to myself. And there's really no shortage of scientific research that shows a clear link between binge drinking as a teen and brain abnormalities in adulthood.

[MUSIC - "PALE RIDER" BY KEVIN MACLEOD"]

Host 14:12In a paper published by the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, [researchers] demonstrated that, quote, "adolescent binge drinking leads to long lasting changes in the adult brain that increased risk of adult psychopathology", unquote.

Now at this point, I'm sure some people will be quick to say that they drink as a teen and turned out fine. But what if that person could have grown up to be more healthy and well functioning, had they avoided binge drinking as a teen?

Let's talk about survivorship bias using two examples:

The first example is child labor. Before 1938, child labor was a legal practice in the United States. And a common justification was "well I worked at a factory when I was nine years old and I turned out fine".

The second example of survivorship bias is spanking children. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who would say that they were spanked as a kid and turned out fine. According to a study published in the Journal of family psychology from 2016, quote, "parents who use spanking might reconsider doing so given that there's no evidence that spanking does any good for children and all evidence points to the risk of it doing harm” [unquote].

For those of you rolling your eyes, just consider the credibility of a scientific study that was based on five decades of research involving over 160,000 children.

What I'm trying to explain is that people have this weird tendency to assume that as long as their bottom line isn't immediately impacted, "then the status quo is perfectly fine and you should quit complaining". The types of people who say they've been discriminated against to and they turned out fine. I turned out fine, too-- but my point is that we could have been better than just fine, had we been treated like boys when we were boys instead of men who pose a threat, all because of the color of our skin and our height.

What ends up happening over time is we allow our mental health to basically get held hostage by other people's judgment. Maybe allow isn't the best word because I don't think people willfully let this happen to them, but I think you understand.

If you're not affected by certain types of discrimination, think about your friends and family members who are affected by it and just talk to them about it. Ask them what it's like to be discriminated against, and what they think we can do collectively, to help those affected by discrimination. Test your worldview to see if it's in alignment with the real world.

[MUSIC - “TOO COOL” BY KEVIN MACLEOD]

When I made this episode, I tried to talk to as many people as I could about their perspective on the issue. Two conversations in particular stuck out and I'd like to discuss them. I should mention that I have received permission from both people to discuss these conversations.

The first conversation I want to talk about was with a close friend of mine, who recently talked about his experiences in high school after his classmates found out he's half Jewish. He didn't turn it into a competition. He just wanted to offer me his own personal experience with discrimination. And I was grateful for it.

The second conversation I want to talk about was with my best friend. We've known each other since we were little kids. We talked about how when we were kids, I'd get bullied all the time at school because of my dark skin and oftentimes, he'd get so upset that he'd be the one crying about it instead of me. Now we're adults, and I should mention that my friend is also six foot three like myself. We always do a mandatory height comparison every time we meet.

In February of 2020, my best friend visited me and we got in a very heated argument about white privilege, and the many ways in which he's benefited from it as well as his height, whereas my height combined with my dark skin has often resulted in more trouble coming my way than anything good. I tried to explain to my friend how often I've been harassed by the police only to be told "that's just an isolated incident" or that I can't "100% prove that race played a factor".

It felt like a betrayal and I was furious. By that point, it was about 4am. We've been arguing for hours and the general feeling was that our friendship was unraveling by the second. We had ran out of words. He went to sleep and I went for a walk. So as you might expect, the rest of his visit was pretty quiet and we went a few months without talking after that. I felt like a fool for ever believing that he could ever understand.

Then I received a handwritten letter in the mail from him. He reflected on our argument and spoke to his mother about it. During the Civil Rights era protests of the 1960s she was one of many who was arrested.

The letter he had wrote reflected a newfound understanding of the issue by someone who had clearly taken the time to reassess their worldview. Shortly after I'd received that letter. A working black father of five children was killed after being choked to death for eight minutes and 46 seconds by a white police officer. It was a despicable crime witnessed by millions of people around the world who then went on to protest against police brutality, in what would become the largest movement of any kind in US history.

By that point, I'm very proud to say that my best friend was quite vocal about racial injustice and he was doing his best to reach out to his friends and encourage them to reassess their views. Minds were being changed on a scale like I'd never seen in my life.

[MUSIC - "GROOVE GROVE” BY KEVIN MACLEOD]

Act Three-- Happiness.

So, what does all this mean?

I want to close today's episode by talking about happiness. Our happiness in life shouldn't rely on external validation. That kind of reliance basically allows your mental health to be held hostage by other people's opinions of you. Now, as much as we long for a world without discrimination, we do have to accept that discrimination is like a virus, like COVID-19, in that may not ever be fully eradicated, nor will a vaccine ever reach 100% efficacy, but we still need to collectively work to control and reduce the spread of the virus that is discrimination in society. Because when we don't collectively work together, the consequences are felt by everyone, even those not directly impacted by it.

Long term happiness requires a sort of underlying contentment that operates independently of temporary emotions or external points of examination. I think a lot of people in this world aren't satisfied with themselves because of how other people view them. Like where they fit in society, or just if they fit in society. With happiness, if a person's always had it, the origin tends to be kind of complex and defining it is more or less a lost cause. But if you're one of those people who wasn't born with it, it's especially important to realize that cultivating long term happiness requires a strong foundation built by the person who knows you best— yourself.

When we become excessively reliant on how other people view us, our mental health becomes perpetually held hostage by people around us and that's not a good thing. Of course, having an external support network is very important. Think of it like having a personal trainer. They can come with you to the gym every day but in the end, it's you that has to work out to build muscle. They can't do that part for you. But they still play a vital role in your physical health, just like our emotional support network of friends and family play a vital role in our mental health.

So let's go back to where we started— height. Height isn't something that's earned, and the bonuses that comes with it like increased perceived competence or increased salary… they’re not exactly earned either. It's not something achieved by working out or eating a strict diet, you kind of either are tall or you're not. And yet so many people act like it's something we should boast about. I think the same can be said about a lot of physical traits that are linked to various social benefits that are largely unearned.

While my height has increased the odds of me being perceived as a threat, I'm not going to pretend as though my height hasn't ever been an advantage. But the point is that those benefits are generally outweighed by detrimental effects. And I think there's a considerable amount of high quality scientific data to support that statement.

Discrimination is a very complex thing that I think needs to be discussed more in terms of the finer details, the shades of grey between black and white. Otherwise, it's like we're driving an out of control car that's just banging in between one racial guardrail to another racial guardrail back and forth until the car is totalled, and nobody gets anywhere. I don't know, maybe this whole thing made more sense in my head. But that's why I would appreciate feedback through your external lenses-- especially if you disagree with me.

[MUSIC - “GRIPHOP” BY KEVIN MACLEOD]

Host 23:56The program today was produced by yours truly. Music was composed and performed by Devin MacLeod. Merchants of Misery is delivered to you thanks to the support of my friends, family and listeners like you. If you have any questions, suggestions or corrections to make, you can contact me at merchantsofmiseryeditor@gmail.com. Thanks as always to my best friend who I recently got into another heated debate with about which of us is taller. I insisted on slightly taller but he refused to listen.

Dr. Brashier: I would push back against that perspective to say that the research doesn't exactly align with that.

Corrections (audio)

At 14:18 "Adult binge drinking leads to long-lasting changes in the adult brain that increases risk of adult psychopathology" is an incorrect quotation.

The correct quotation is "adolescent binge drinking leads to long-lasting changes in the adult brain that increases risk of adult psychopathology". Apologies for this mistake.

Research cited in the program are as follows, in order of appearance:

1.Title “For Black men, being tall increases threat stereotyping and police stops” (2018)Authors: Kurt Gray and Neil HesterAcademic Institution: Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillPublisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS)

2. Title:"Size Matters! Body Height and Labor Market Discrimination: A Cross-European Analysis” (2009)Authors: Francesco Cinnirella and Joachim WinterAcademic Institutions: Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, University of MannheimPublisher: Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging

3. Title:"Stop and Frisk in the De Blasio Era” (2019)Authors: Michelle Shames (Research Data Strategist), Christopher Dunn (Legal Director)Editor: Diana Lee (Communications Director)Publisher: America Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

4. Title: “Adolescent Alcohol Exposure Persistently Impacts Adult Neurobiology and Behaviour” (2016)Authors: Fulton Crews, Ryan Vetreno, Margaret Broadwater, and Donita RobinsonAcademic Institutions: Department of Pharmacology, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillPublisher: Pharmacological Reviews

5. Title: “Spanking and Child Outcomes: Old Controversies and New Meta-Analyses” (2016)Authors: Elizabeth Gershoff, Andrew Grogan-KaylorAcademic Institutions: University of Texas at Austin, University of MichiganPublisher: Journal of Family Psychology

Interview credits:

1. Dr. Nadia Brashier (Interviewee)Interview link (timestamped): https://youtu.be/7q6VLXha9OM?t=502Twitter: https://twitter.com/nadiabrashierWebsite: https://www.nadiabrashier.com/

2. Tommy Shane (Interviewer) Head of Policy and Impact at First Draft.First Draft News YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0TI...Website: https://firstdraftnews.org/

Music credits:

Griphop by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song... License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Groove Grove by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song... License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Inspired by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song... License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Local Forecast by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song... License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Militaire Electronic by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song... License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Netherworld Shanty by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song... License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Pale Rider by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song... License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Thinking Music by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song... License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Too Cool by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song... License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

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