Speaker 1: This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 3: Hey, here we go for a nice another weekend edition
Speaker 3: of the Gary and Shannon Weekend Fix.
Speaker 2: Comfy and here.
Speaker 4: Beautiful on a Saturday morning.
Speaker 2: My gosh, the sun is shining? Is it shining? Where
Speaker 2: you are shining? In my heart?
Speaker 4: It is now?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You're already upset about what we're going to talk about.
Speaker 4: No, I'm not. I am not. So this is we're
Speaker 4: doing the Weekend Fix.
Speaker 3: So this is an episode of the podcast basically that
Speaker 3: you do not hear throughout the course of the week.
Speaker 3: I mean, twenty hours of sitting in a room and
Speaker 3: talking to each other is apparently not enough. We still
Speaker 3: have other things that we could say to each other.
Speaker 3: So you found this your face? Sorry, sorry, we.
Speaker 2: Still have other things you can say to each other.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to say that out loud and then
Speaker 2: it will be true.
Speaker 3: There is a bio statistician. He's fun at parties, but
Speaker 3: he's from the University of Chicago, and Tyler Vanderweel has
Speaker 3: talked about how scientists define and measure well being, human
Speaker 3: well being? Like, what does it mean for us to
Speaker 3: be well? How do we measure it? Can you put
Speaker 3: a number on it? Can you judge it by scale?
Speaker 3: Can you group you break it down by different demographics
Speaker 3: and figure out who is the most well off of
Speaker 3: all of us?
Speaker 4: And not financially.
Speaker 3: Necessarily, but just we're just we're just good, We're well,
Speaker 3: We're everything is in the green.
Speaker 2: What's his name again?
Speaker 4: Jacob Tyler?
Speaker 1: Jay Van I knew there was a Jay involved somewhere well.
Speaker 1: His first job at the University of Chicago involved him
Speaker 1: looking into studies that measured human well being, and he
Speaker 1: was very dissatisfied with this. He thumbed through all of
Speaker 1: those studies on specific measures of clinical symptoms like depression
Speaker 1: or happiness, anxiety. He had seen that researchers had tracked
Speaker 1: objective markers health, blood pressure, things like that sleep, how
Speaker 1: well you sleep, economic conditions as well.
Speaker 2: And what's his name again?
Speaker 4: Tyler?
Speaker 2: JV Tyler J Tyler Tyler Tyler Tyler. There's a president Tyler.
Speaker 2: Wasn't there there was back in the day?
Speaker 3: Anyway, Maybe that's next week. We'll just go through the
Speaker 3: president's names. There's there's one name Calvin.
Speaker 2: Wait Tyler was the last name, though, wasn't it John Tyler? Okay?
Speaker 2: Where was he in the lineup? Like seventh?
Speaker 4: Or I never learned that that.
Speaker 2: You didn't learn that song.
Speaker 1: I did not learn that song either. What did we learn?
Speaker 1: Absolutely nothing? A lot of nothing. I do have a
Speaker 1: book that has a bunch of fun facts, like on
Speaker 1: each president, and it's fascinating and I read it from
Speaker 1: time to time. I think I've read it about ninety
Speaker 1: seven times, but it.
Speaker 4: Doesn't have anything about the order that they came in.
Speaker 1: It might, it might, but it's more like anecdotes, you know,
Speaker 1: like people who broke the toilet and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Anyway, what's his name again? Tyler?
Speaker 1: Tyler felt that these studies that he flipped through when
Speaker 1: he got to the University of Chicago that they missed
Speaker 1: a holistic picture, that they were just looking at measurable
Speaker 1: data right when it comes to the meaning and purpose
Speaker 1: in life, and measurable data is very important. But he
Speaker 1: has defined a more holistic approach to seeing how well
Speaker 1: people are doing. And they're not calling it happiness or
Speaker 1: well being or whatever.
Speaker 2: They're calling it. Flourishing, flourishing, flourishing, it's.
Speaker 1: Understood as a state in which all aspects of a
Speaker 1: person's life are good, to which I say, when is
Speaker 1: that one hundred percent the case? Like when are you
Speaker 1: firing on all cylinders when it comes to work, relationship,
Speaker 1: physical stuff? You know, eating, drinking, smoking, whatever it is
Speaker 1: you enjoy doing all of the things.
Speaker 3: You can never be at one hundred on all those categories, can't. Well,
Speaker 3: it seems like having gone through this and remembering this
Speaker 3: guy is a biostatistician. So you're talking about a guy
Speaker 3: who tries to take some sometimes squishy topics like human
Speaker 3: well being and put numbers to it or squish it
Speaker 3: into a box and then try to describe what you've got.
Speaker 1: And that's his struggle, Tyler's struggle. Now that I've learned
Speaker 1: his name, Tyler J.
Speaker 2: Tyler J.
Speaker 4: Vander Walden, vander Wheel, vander Wheel, I.
Speaker 2: Knew there was a W.
Speaker 1: There always is after vander But anyway, he is trying
Speaker 1: to science his way.
Speaker 2: Through what you can't science your way through.
Speaker 3: And I think he's that quantify something that is more
Speaker 3: qualitative in nature exactly.
Speaker 2: So he and his team have decided that.
Speaker 1: They would look at the non measurable elements of perfect
Speaker 1: a person's life, and just to just get it down
Speaker 1: to what it is. It is what we talk about
Speaker 1: all the time on this show, and it's contact with people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he teamed up with another professor at Baylor University,
Speaker 3: Byron Johnson, and they wanted to calibrate the measure of flourishing,
Speaker 3: human flourishing in order to study it more deeply. And
Speaker 3: their big takeaway, big takeaway in a new report that
Speaker 3: just came out was community is crucial. That when we
Speaker 3: get something wrong, especially here in the United States or
Speaker 3: Western culture, there's a push towards you deal with it,
Speaker 3: You rub some dirt on it, You get back in
Speaker 3: the game, take care of whatever mistakes you make yourself,
Speaker 3: and get back in there.
Speaker 1: We've been set up for the fat past five you
Speaker 1: can argue ten years. We have been set up to isolate.
Speaker 1: We have been set up to isolate with our phones.
Speaker 1: Who do you need? You don't need anybody. You don't
Speaker 1: need to go talk to anybody at the store, or
Speaker 1: you don't need to talk to anybody at the takeout
Speaker 1: place or at the restaurant.
Speaker 2: You just need your phone to order that.
Speaker 1: Hey, leave it at the door. You don't need anybody.
Speaker 1: The world's telling you you don't need anybody anymore. That's
Speaker 1: exactly what they're telling you. COVID told us you don't
Speaker 1: need anyone. In fact, other people are bad you. Not
Speaker 1: only do not need them, they'll kill you.
Speaker 4: They will kill you.
Speaker 1: I afraid you can swear on this pod. But but
Speaker 1: we have been told to isolate. Everything is isolating. Do
Speaker 1: you want entertainment? You don't need to go talk to
Speaker 1: other people or have fun with other people. You can
Speaker 1: just be on your phone. You know, the difference between
Speaker 1: facetiming a friend and actually being in the room and
Speaker 1: falling into giggle fits is huge. And so that and
Speaker 1: it's hard because it's comfortable to isolate. It's so comfortable.
Speaker 4: That's what I was going to say.
Speaker 1: Just get into your bed and be comfy. And I
Speaker 1: do it all the time, and I freaking love it,
Speaker 1: and I think that it's making me happy, and it
Speaker 1: might make me happy, but it's not the totality of happiness.
Speaker 2: So you need other people for the totality.
Speaker 3: That same that same feeling is echoed in.
Speaker 4: In alcohol and drugs.
Speaker 3: A lot of times you think to yourself, this is
Speaker 3: a great feeling, I really like this feeling, whatever it is,
Speaker 3: but you know doing it is not helping you. It's
Speaker 3: not it's not healthy for you to do it on
Speaker 3: a regular basis, or to only do that, or to
Speaker 3: only do that, or to use that as the way
Speaker 3: to make yourself happy again as opposed to doing something
Speaker 3: that's that's uh creative or healthier whatever.
Speaker 1: Only As we all learned in Star Wars, happiness comes
Speaker 1: from within is where the light is.
Speaker 2: Did we learn that? I don't know. I made that
Speaker 2: up to get interested.
Speaker 3: The Global Flourish Study is what they say is the
Speaker 3: gauge how people from different countries have flourished over the
Speaker 3: course of five years. And they focus on six key
Speaker 3: areas happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning
Speaker 3: and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and then
Speaker 3: financial immaterial security, and then answers to questioning. Each of
Speaker 3: these areas tallied up, you get a snapshot, you add,
Speaker 3: you put a number to it, and then you generally
Speaker 3: determine how well people in those countries or locations or
Speaker 3: demographics how they're flourishing. They found something that I thought
Speaker 3: was kind of interesting that in general, people between the
Speaker 3: ages of eighteen and twenty nine are not flourishing because
Speaker 3: they talk about anxiety. The implications of this raise questions
Speaker 3: about what we're doing to prioritize the well being of
Speaker 3: our younger Lisa.
Speaker 1: It's not flourishing from eighteen to twenty nine because you're
Speaker 1: worried about what am I going to end up doing?
Speaker 1: Who am I going to end up with? How am
Speaker 1: I going to make money? Am I gonna make enough
Speaker 1: of it? Am I gonna be happy? I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a constant cycle of those thoughts over and over again,
Speaker 1: and to where you don't have any time to just
Speaker 1: like relax and think everything's going to be fine.
Speaker 3: But you you specifically didn't then sink into unhappiness you didn't.
Speaker 4: Let go of. But I still have work to do.
Speaker 3: I may not be flourishing, but all of these questions
Speaker 3: that are rattling around my head about the future or
Speaker 3: how I'm going to.
Speaker 4: Make ends meet.
Speaker 3: Motivates me to do something right. And I don't That's
Speaker 3: the part that I think we're not doing for anybody else.
Speaker 1: To go back to finding Nemo, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: and keep swimming.
Speaker 4: It's okay, Well that's a movie reference that actually works.
Speaker 4: I will acceps.
Speaker 2: I've got another reference.
Speaker 4: Okay, is it a movie reference.
Speaker 2: It's a show reference.
Speaker 1: A documentary, all right, the documentary about Scamanda. Remember Scamanda's
Speaker 1: I didn't see.
Speaker 4: It was a.
Speaker 2: Podcast and a documentary. It's worth a watch if you're
Speaker 2: isolating this weekend.
Speaker 4: But you're not.
Speaker 1: You're not flourishing if you choose not to flourish anyway.
Speaker 1: So I was watching with my girlfriends, not isolating, and
Speaker 1: there was this one scene of this one. It's in
Speaker 1: the beginning. I'm not ruining anything here, but there. To
Speaker 1: make a long story short, Amanda is this woman who
Speaker 1: gets involved in a megachurch up in the Bay Area
Speaker 1: in San Francisco Bay Area, and she lies to everyone
Speaker 1: and says that she has cancer because she loves the
Speaker 1: attention that she gets and it's awful.
Speaker 2: One of the women who she.
Speaker 1: Who was entrenched in this big lie, said she didn't
Speaker 1: have money to give to Amanda. So what she would
Speaker 1: do is she would donate platelets and like to the
Speaker 1: point where she couldn't donate platelets anymore.
Speaker 2: And my girlfriend goes, oh, she just wanted community.
Speaker 1: And it was funny at the time because I was like,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what that girl wanted, and she's like out
Speaker 1: of platelets now because she wanted community. But it's true,
Speaker 1: it's like this intrinsic need were born with to want community, right,
Speaker 1: and we have been cut off from community in so
Speaker 1: many ways, whether it's through the phones or post COVID
Speaker 1: or lack of religion or any sort of you know group.
Speaker 1: Even when it comes down to streaming shows and not
Speaker 1: watching them at the same time anymore, there's community there. Hey,
Speaker 1: did you see Seinfeld last night or what have you?
Speaker 1: There's a forty year old reference. But you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like, we used to do more things together
Speaker 1: all the time, and now we don't do anything together.
Speaker 1: Everything is on your own, and it seems so attractive
Speaker 1: and so easy and so easy to stick to that well.
Speaker 3: And the other thing about it being younger people saying
Speaker 3: they're not flourishing. It seems like you have to not
Speaker 3: flourish in order to know that you are flourishing when
Speaker 3: it does happen in your life.
Speaker 1: You know, I know the people that have calmed the
Speaker 1: f down and have flourished, right, I mean, they because
Speaker 1: they're okay with not being go getters and driven people.
Speaker 4: Like they're half where they are.
Speaker 2: They're happy people just naturally, but you have to.
Speaker 4: It's similar to money.
Speaker 3: If you have any amount of money, you don't appreciate
Speaker 3: it unless you've not had the amount of if you
Speaker 3: grew up like my kids grew up, I had a
Speaker 3: stable job.
Speaker 4: Since they've been alive, thankfully.
Speaker 1: You should have hit the crack pipe and showed those
Speaker 1: kids what true happiness is.
Speaker 3: Well, but they don't remember because they weren't around. They
Speaker 3: don't remember my wife and I scraping by and barely
Speaker 3: making mortgage payments and trying to figure out which bills
Speaker 3: you pay first, so that the you don't get the
Speaker 3: power turned off or you don't get the gas from
Speaker 3: They don't remember any.
Speaker 2: Your wife remembers the crack days.
Speaker 4: She does.
Speaker 3: She in fact, those were the salad days, as we
Speaker 3: refer to them, because we don't say crack in our house.
Speaker 2: You don't say cracking your We don't like to bring
Speaker 2: not even when you're talking.
Speaker 4: About ass Uh.
Speaker 2: Hey, honey, let me see some of that fine crack.
Speaker 4: You know we say that, We say double hams.
Speaker 1: Double hams. I didn't need to know that. I'm not
Speaker 1: even gonna ask a.
Speaker 3: Follow up speaking of money, though, one of the things
Speaker 3: they found out is that.
Speaker 2: I feel that's true.
Speaker 3: You're getting a little too close to the nerve there, lady.
Speaker 3: They said that one of the findings is that meaning
Speaker 3: in life and flourishing is inversely or seems to be
Speaker 3: inversely correlated with a nation's gross domestic product per capita.
Speaker 3: The richer the country is, the less likely you are
Speaker 3: to feel like you're flourishing. And if you if you
Speaker 3: just use the context of the United States, a lot
Speaker 3: of people see the only way to flourish is with money,
Speaker 3: with you know, all of this expendable income. That's the
Speaker 3: only way you flourish. At least that's what they perceive.
Speaker 3: When we know, I mean, like you we said at
Speaker 3: the beginning, most of the time, community is what allows
Speaker 3: you to flourish. Community is what gives you the feeling
Speaker 3: of flourishing. You have friends, you have things to do,
Speaker 3: you have people to help out, You have others. We've
Speaker 3: said this before as well, you have others to do
Speaker 3: things for. You know, serving somebody else in a time
Speaker 3: of need, or even just to be nice to them
Speaker 3: makes you feel a whole lot better about yourself.
Speaker 1: So easy to say now but like the twenty three
Speaker 1: year old that went to a check cashing place and
Speaker 1: had half of her paycheck taken away because I couldn't
Speaker 1: make rent.
Speaker 2: Is like, go f right off with all this flourishing bullshit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I don't.
Speaker 2: Care that one day I will be happy.
Speaker 1: Stuff sucks right now, but I don't want to go
Speaker 1: hang out with my friends.
Speaker 2: I want to be in bed.
Speaker 4: And you have.
Speaker 3: Because you have that memory, the flourishing that you feel
Speaker 3: today is probably probably that much more.
Speaker 4: Yes, uh makes you feel happy?
Speaker 2: It does. It does because that was a shady ass neighborhood.
Speaker 3: They also described, and this what I think is funny,
Speaker 3: Indonesia specifically. They say they don't experience stress because Indonesians
Speaker 3: in general, not me granted, they live in one of
Speaker 3: the most beautiful corners of the earth. Yes, right, and
Speaker 3: you can have an entire two thousand square foot house
Speaker 3: on stilts over the ocean.
Speaker 1: Such a cultural thing it is, and in many ways
Speaker 1: uniquely American.
Speaker 4: It's a badge of honor for dress.
Speaker 2: I'm so busy, I have so much to do. Look
Speaker 2: at me, good lord.
Speaker 3: Okay, So as you get old as you are now
Speaker 3: in your winter of your years, I'm not in the winter.
Speaker 3: What would you say then late summer Indian summer. Maybe
Speaker 3: I have to pee? Like I said, you are, you're
Speaker 3: that old you can't sit for fifteen minutes without bladder urgency.
Speaker 4: All right, this has been the Weekend Fix for the Gary.
Speaker 2: And Shians Urgency.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's better than fecal urgency, unless that's what you're
Speaker 4: trying to hide.
Speaker 2: I don't. I'm good with that.
Speaker 3: Make sure that you subscribe to the podcast where you're
Speaker 3: listening to it, leave a rating, leave a comment, and
Speaker 3: if you have any questions or you want a topic
Speaker 3: discussed on the Weekend Fix or any part of the show,
Speaker 3: you can always leave us a talk back on the
Speaker 3: iHeart app or through your you know, Alexa enabled device.
Speaker 4: Just say hey Alexa, leave a message for KFI.
Speaker 1: Have fun with all your hams. Double hams, double hams.
Speaker 4: Only two?
Speaker 2: Only two?
Speaker 4: Well there's two for me, two for her, four.
Speaker 2: Hams in that house. That's cool.
Speaker 4: A lot of hams.
Speaker 2: HM, go pee, I used to like ham.
Speaker 3: You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show. You
Speaker 3: can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty
Speaker 3: nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and
Speaker 3: anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio lap