January 30, 2017
EP. 163 — The Enormous Lie About Modern Life (You Likely Believe)
Once you hit your mid-twenties, everything starts beginning to suck. Your favorite band? Not as good as when they first came out. Favorite hangouts? All gone to shit since all the young people started showing up and ruining everything. The world? Basically a day away from total anarchy.
Even the idea of time begins to suck. The present is somehow always the worst and no matter how bad your life was 5, 10 years ago– it all seems tinted with rose-colored glasses. Sure you were bored all the time, had no way of communicating with people who weren’t your neighbors and loved Hootie and the Blowfish, but man the 90s were the absolute peak of human existence, right? Not really.
Somehow humans have this bias that makes them think the world is always at the brink of complete collapse and that things were better before…before AIDS and Ebola started killing everybody; before all the bees disappeared; before crime took over the streets, when you could leave your front door open all day and the criminals would tip their hats and say, “good morning!”
We’re here to say this way of thinking is wrong and completely ignores all of the amazing advancements humanity is continuing to make every day. It’s just you don’t hear about them because the headline “Cancer Deaths Slowly and Steadily Dropping” isn’t as flashy as “IT’S ALL BURNING DOWN MAN, DON’T EVEN BOTHER!”
On the podcast this week, Jack O’Brien is joined by Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) to talk about how we’re neither going to hell nor are we in a hand basket. Poverty, war and disease are at all time lows, all you have to do is look away from the news to see it.
Our next live podcast is on Saturday, February 11th at 7pm at the UCB Sunset Theatre in Los Angeles. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, join Jack O’Brien, Michael Swaim and Teresa Lee as they welcome Dr. Christopher Ryan, author of Sex at Dawn for a discussion about love, relationships and why our sex lives now bear no resemblance to the way our ancestors got down. Tickets are $7 and available here: https://goo.gl/aXqXex
Footnotes:
Articles: Cracked: Pieces of Good News Nobody is Reporting:
Article: Biography.com: H.H. Holmes: https://goo.gl/U1Bo6V
Website: OurWorldInData.com: https://goo.gl/afqC0a
Graph: Innovation.org: Actual vs. Projected Death Rates for HIV/AIDS in the US: https://goo.gl/ZI6zHY
Article: Cracked: 5 Horrifying Apocalyptic Scenarios That Already Happened (#1 The Toba Event): https://goo.gl/5COk09
Scholarly Article: British Journal of Preventative and Social Medicine: The Coal Gas Story: https://goo.gl/EbJkvD
Article: Bloomberg: Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think: https://goo.gl/98f6Uv
Article: The New Yorker: Doomsday Prep for the Super Rich: https://goo.gl/GBcpKk
This episode is brought to you by Shari’s Berries (www.berries.com code: CRACKED) and Blue Apron (www.blueapron.com/cracked).
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