Correlation doesn't equal causation, but that doesn't stop us from finding patterns in the strangest places. Pentagon pizza orders spike right before major military operations, proving that pepperoni consumption is apparently a national security indicator. A study found that kids who play video games are measurably smarter than TV-watching children, which vindicates every parent who gave up fighting the Xbox battle. And the Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that China and Saudi Arabia lead in governmental trust, raising the question: are people genuinely trusting their governments or just too scared to say otherwise?
Pentagon Pizza Orders: The Strangest Military Indicator
A spike in pizza orders around the Pentagon has historically coincided with significant military actions, making pepperoni and cheese consumption an unofficial predictor of imminent operations. It's a perfect example of correlation versus causation - the pizza doesn't cause military strikes, but late-night strategy sessions apparently require carbohydrates.
This quirky metric demonstrates how indirect measures can be useful yet slightly terrifying. While we can observe two things happening simultaneously, it doesn't mean one causes the other. It's a reminder that metrics, those peculiar indicators we treat as the holy grail of decision-making, often baffle more than enlighten and demand clever interpretation.
Video Games Make Kids Smarter
A study of children aged nine to ten found that those playing video games were measurably smarter than their TV-watching counterparts. Video games develop cognitive skills through digital interactions, testing more than just reflexes - they're honing problem-solving abilities and creative thinking, crucial components of intelligence.
This challenges decades of parental anxiety about screen time and gaming addiction. Turns out that navigating digital landscapes, solving puzzles and strategising in virtual worlds actually builds neural pathways better than passively consuming television.
Trust Statistics: Uncomfortable Global Truths
The Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that China and Saudi Arabia lead in governmental trust, which immediately raises skeptical eyebrows. Are these responses genuine reflections of public sentiment, or merely products of societal pressures where criticizing the government has consequences? As scientists, we have to question whether survey respondents feel safe answering honestly.
Surveys have rhetorical power - they're persuasive and eye-opening, telling compelling tales about human behavior and societal trends. But their accuracy depends entirely on who you're asking, how you're asking, and whether respondents feel safe answering honestly. They're a double-edged sword that can illuminate truth or reinforce comfortable fictions.
When survey results seem counterintuitive, we need to question the methodology and context rather than accepting the numbers at face value. Sometimes what surveys reveal says more about the conditions under which they were conducted than the reality they claim to measure.
From pizza-predicting military operations to intelligence-boosting video games and questionable trust statistics, this week proves that metrics might only be as good as our interpretation of them.
So, stay skeptical of convenient metrics, trust the pizza indicator, and remember that surveys aren't always telling the whole truth. Oh, and maybe let your kids play that video game - science says they're getting smarter.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction
00:53 The Quirks of Metrics and Correlation
01:31 Target's Predictive Analytics Story
02:48 Pizza Orders and Military Movements
07:37 Video Games and IQ
09:32 Edelman Trust Barometer Insights
12:00 Grievance Rankings by Country
13:11 Trust in Companies by Country
14:00 Trust in Industry Sectors
15:19 Trust in Professions and Neighbors
16:17 Lack of Optimism for the Future
17:00 Hostile Activism Among Youth
17:48 Reflections on Survey Validity
19:54 Conclusion and Listener Engagement
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[00:00:07] WILL: It is time for a little bit of science. I'm will grant an associate professor in science communication at the Australian National University.
[00:00:17] ROD: and I'm Rod Lambert. I'm a 30 year science communication veteran with a mind of a teenage boy.
[00:00:22] WILL: and today. Well, we've been at the Beach Large Hadron Collider.
[00:00:27] ROD: Yeah. Drinking in swimming cocktails. In fact, I'm still there. I dunno where you
[00:00:31] WILL: are of, uh, isotopes and science and stuff like that. So rather than giving you our regular pile of science, we've
[00:00:38] ROD: saved you something delicious. We've been scrolling away little snippets throughout the millennium and you're gonna get a bunch of those right now.
It's gonna be fab.
[00:00:47] WILL: Enjoy.
[00:00:53] ROD: metrics, right? Measurement indicators of one thing, meaning something else, giving us ideas. There are a lot of them. [00:01:00] They're weird. Some of 'em are better. Some of 'em are worse.
[00:01:02] WILL: Ah, no, they're all perfect. They're
[00:01:03] ROD: all perfect is what I meant to
[00:01:04] WILL: say. Yeah. They're all lovely
[00:01:06] ROD: Related to this though, and, and you know this, I know you know this, but one person listening might not. Correlation doesn't equal causation.
[00:01:13] WILL: Oh, okay.
[00:01:14] ROD: We can see two things happening at the same time. That doesn't mean one causes the other. Also, when someone, when you, when you think something's telling you something, giving you an indicator, you might not be.
Other times you might look at unrelated variables and suddenly think there is a connection between these. So there's. Strange things going on with metrics. So there's a classic story, and we talked about this in a old wholesome show episode, the classic story from Target. Are you, do you remember this where, um, some people did a bunch of analyses on what different people were buying and the characteristics of those people?
Yeah. And one of the subcategories that became famous was, women who were, once they'd had babies, they tracked back their buying histories of the sorts of things they buy. And when they bought them, they went, okay, there's a bit of a profile here. Well, no, got earlier.
[00:01:58] WILL: No, I get it.
[00:01:59] ROD: the classic [00:02:00] story was when, a man got very angry that Target kept sending his daughter.
brochures with stuff about, I don't know, nipple clamps and, and cots or whatever babies
[00:02:09] WILL: Um, is that what
um, is that what they're called?
Um,
[00:02:13] ROD: breast smoother.
anyway, he basically said,
[00:02:16] WILL: take him anyway,
[00:02:17] ROD: why the hell are you sending my daughter stuff about pregnancies, my teenage daughter? That's ridiculous. And that's when she had to go, daddy, actually I'm pregnant.
So this became a big deal because what they noticed was shoppers who basically are getting towards pregnancy would buy lots and lots of particular kinds of lotions or an abundance of certain, um,minerals, you know, calcium, magnesium, and stuff. It was a bit of a giveaway. Yeah. So it was an unusual indicator.
So indirect measures can be quite useful and they can also be a little bit scary. Oh god. Well you gotta be clever about it, right? So like, if you wanna predict when the US is aware of or about to launch an invasion or a military strike,
[00:02:53] WILL: ah,
[00:02:53] ROD: where would you look?
[00:02:54] WILL: Ah, well
[00:02:55] ROD: where would you look? You've seen the story.
[00:02:57] WILL: Ah, look, look, I've heard rumors. I've [00:03:00] heard rumors that it's is about pizza.
[00:03:02] ROD: It is about pizza. Not only, but mostly. So the clue is really, there's a multitude of fast food restaurants in the Pentagon Complex, but no pizza.
[00:03:12] WILL: Oh, really?
[00:03:13] ROD: Apparently
[00:03:14] WILL: they don't.
I mean, so hang on. So there's the, I assume it's a big build, big office building. Yeah. And there's gonna be like a food court
[00:03:20] ROD: Yeah. You got, you Tuck Go bell. You've got your hamburger Man. Donate
[00:03:24] WILL: pizza. Like pizza is a fairly common would've thought form of fast food
[00:03:28] ROD: according to at least some of the sources that you will see in our show notes. No pizza. So according to therefore, the Pentagon Pizza report on Twitter, sorry, X whatever spikes in pizza orders and deliveries tend to go up around the Pentagon when big things are going on.
So, for example, June 12 and 13 this year. Mm-hmm.
[00:03:48] WILL: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:49] ROD: So Israel planned to attack Iran about an hour before. This is all top secret, but about an hour before, nearly all the pizza establishments near the Pentagon experienced huge surges in [00:04:00] deliveries. Like it went off. And so they're like, there's something, there's something going on at the Pentagon.
Um, and an hour before the explosions first started, they started to again, track these particular and strange late night activities around these, these outlets. They also noted another indicator, which is not related to pizza. Three hours later, uh, gay bar near the Pentagon reported abnormally low traffic for a Thursday night.
So apparently also when the gay bar near the Pentagon
[00:04:25] WILL: let's just, let's just assume it's, it's a bar as well. I
[00:04:28] ROD: no, but they particularly emphasize the gay bar for some reason.
[00:04:30] WILL: Oh, okay.
[00:04:31] ROD: No other information. Because I
[00:04:33] WILL: let, let's assume there's other bars that have dropped in
[00:04:36] ROD: possibly, but for some reason that's the one they note.
Okay. Because they're just being inclusive.
[00:04:40] WILL: Oh, that's good.
[00:04:41] ROD: So, and if you want to cross reference, is it just a coincidence? So this is back to correlation. It just so happened an hour before the strike, the spike went up, et cetera. Who knows, maybe? Well,
[00:04:51] WILL: no, I mean, I mean, it, it clearly is a correlation and it's a correlation that has some really strong justification to be, to be [00:05:00] causative, but not guaranteed. Because you could imagine Trump says, okay, let's put on a big parade tomorrow. Yeah. And they're like, and you have to do it. Then people are like, I ordered, ordered some pizzas.
There's a big job to do. Yeah. So it's not inherently that they're gonna war.
[00:05:13] ROD: necessarily. Or, or, yeah. Monitoring strikes likely. Well, there's been other times too. This is what's good about it. So, pizza delivery is not necessarily gay bars. Pizza's, deliveries to the Pentagon doubled right before the US invasion of Panama in 89.
They surged again in 91 before Desert Storm went off. Mm-hmm. , And during Israel's missile strikes in 2024 on Iran, it said also that. Pizza deliveries went
did it monitor other times? Pizza deliveries went off? That I don't
[00:05:43] WILL: Well, no, there's a chunk of, okay. At least, at least, you know, the US recent bombing in, in Iran, was foreshadowed by Israel's efforts and blah, blah, blah.
And it wasn't a, a giant military buildup, but, you know, the us, the US invasion of, of say Iraq, then the Gulf [00:06:00] War,
[00:06:00] ROD: think it was building for a while?
[00:06:01] WILL: I think there was some indicators. I think it wasn't, you
[00:06:03] ROD: but this, this most recent one, I think, interesting about that was literally about an hour before Mike Huckabee, who's the US Ambassador in Jerusalem now.
He tweeted at our embassy in Jerusalem and closely monitoring the situation. We'll remain here all night, pray for peace in Jerusalem. So the timing is kind of interesting. He, he knew, obviously he had, he got the heads up. As obviously people in the Pentagon did. So there may be something to it. I
[00:06:27] WILL: I think the broader, broader, point here, is that no matter how secret we might aim to be, yeah. we leave data traces all the time. We leave data and, and you know, classic, classic case was the, one of the, what was it, Strava, I think it was one of the, one of the running app, sort of, you know, you track your, your your running route or something
[00:06:45] ROD: yeah, yeah.
[00:06:45] WILL: And that was used to identify us basis because people are like
[00:06:49] ROD: oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
[00:06:50] WILL: their running and the GPS is going and, and you can see a clear path of people running
[00:06:54] ROD: and, and there's nothing else there.
[00:06:55] WILL: This is the point of science that that unusual data traces can be [00:07:00] found all over the place and they pop up weirdly years and years later.
So, you
[00:07:05] ROD: I, I honestly, I think it's actually pretty
[00:07:06] WILL: I think we should always be skeptical that correlation doesn't equal causation, but we gotta remember a whole bunch of science. Relies on correlations. Like we don't have, we don't have causative evidence for a lot of public health stuff. So,
[00:07:18] ROD: associations do matter. Yeah. Also, yeah, you're right. With public health, I mean, the best you can do is measure as much of it as possible.
And the more different, um, examples of it you measure, the more you see the correlation, the closer you get to going. Yeah. I think something's affecting something else here, epidemiologist, you know, that
[00:07:37] WILL: this one is just for the, for the kids out there, I thought, um, I thought that you would be very happy to know something that science has
[00:07:44] ROD: provided for our
[00:07:45] WILL: 6-year-old business. Uh, six to, uh. Well this, this particular study was done with kids age nine to 10, but let's assume, let's assume it parallels for, older and younger kids to some extent.
Okay.
basically whole bunch of kids. Yeah. Um, [00:08:00] and, uh, they were nine and 10 years old. Mm-hmm. And, um, they compared whether they watched a bunch of TV. Or online videos or played video games or, or sort of socialized over the internet. And then two years later they looked at their iq. Oh. And,
[00:08:14] ROD: and they didn't
[00:08:15] WILL: didn't have one.
The, the, the ones where, you know, so comparing tv, watching, yeah. Internet use, and video games.
[00:08:22] ROD: I know. Who's
[00:08:23] WILL: smartest, who's
[00:08:24] ROD: the smartest TV watchers? Ah, because that's
[00:08:26] WILL: me.
[00:08:26] ROD: I watch a lot of TV as a child because there wasn't any of the other
[00:08:29] WILL: options. Uh, get, do you wanna guess again?
[00:08:31] ROD: And not, not
[00:08:32] WILL: TV watches. Not TV watches.
Yeah. But narrowed it down. Which ones? Games? Yes. Video games. Yeah. The video games make the kids
[00:08:38] ROD: smarter because of your social skills, uh, that you develop from video
[00:08:41] WILL: games. I don't know. I don't know. I, I feel like, I feel like the test is focused on,
[00:08:46] ROD: towards hand eye coordination,
[00:08:48] WILL: like the, the IQ test based on playing a video game.
[00:08:50] ROD: Yeah. Yeah. So the, so how do they get good at it? Oh, yeah. They've done the test 2000 times a week.
[00:08:56] WILL: they're all sitting there playing IQ tests like it's Mario does an IQ[00:09:00]
[00:09:00] ROD: test. Oh God. Yeah. That's the Wexler cues. Oh, fantastic. F.
[00:09:04] WILL: Fantastic. So anyway, kids, occasionally, uh, a little bit of science, we will give, uh, kid based science, but the show itself is not kid based.
So don't listen to us. Just this segment, just this segment. We'll occasionally do that, but, um, video games make you smarter, but a lot of other
[00:09:17] ROD: do.
Look, we love stats, right? We love
[00:09:22] WILL: stats. Counting is the
[00:09:23] ROD: best. Yep. Counting, crunching, whatever. I came across this, I mean, some things I do in my day job for decades have had to do with, you know, surveys and stuff. And there's this mob called the Edelman Trust. You've probably heard of them. I mean, you will not
[00:09:37] WILL: others, haven't you?
Oh, yeah, I have. I have, I have, but uh, but tell me because, uh, you know, I,
[00:09:42] ROD: you know, yeah. But I, I, I mean a lot of people probably haven't, but they, they do what they call the Edelman Trust Barometer, and they've done this giant international survey for, this is the 25th
[00:09:51] WILL: year.
[00:09:51] ROD: yeah. This year is the 25th year.
so they do this online survey. They do 28 countries, which isn't bad. They on average about [00:10:00] 1100 people per country do respond, which is not fricking bad. And Australia is of course one of them. So there's just a bunch of things that I found interesting. if you wanna download it, the Edelman Trust Barometer, you can go and get a full global report. You can go and download country specific stuff. This is what's interesting. So they talk about, there's a generic kind of trust in government one, and this is the one that caught my eye because it was the, uh, the top level thing.
And it says this, this number, this chart says elections fail to improve trust.
[00:10:31] WILL: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:32] ROD: I thought what And what they really mean is when they do a comparison of countries that have certain kinds of political systems over others, and they ask 'em about their trust in
[00:10:40] WILL: government, Uhhuh Uhhuh.
[00:10:42] ROD: Uhhuh. And it turns out the people who have the highest trust in government are countries like.
China, uh, Saudi
[00:10:48] WILL: Saudi Arabia,
[00:10:49] ROD: Nigeria, Singapore, et cetera. So let's say what governments that,
[00:10:54] WILL: know, Singapore has elections,
[00:10:56] ROD: they do, but they have a government that has strong opinions about how people [00:11:00] should
[00:11:00] WILL: behave.
[00:11:01] ROD: Strong, very enforceable opinions. So I just thought it was interesting. It's very, very clear that the, basically the countries that okay, don't have a strong influence on
[00:11:09] WILL: Can, can I just, can I just ask there that, uh, how, um, how honestly do you feel people in China are able to answer a question? How much do you trust the government?
Because if I feel, if I'm a, you know, uh, all over Chinese listeners will have different sorts of opinions on this, but I suspect, there might be some countries where if the government, if, if, if there's a survey, how much do you trust the government?
[00:11:30] ROD: Yeah, shitloads
[00:11:32] WILL: love
[00:11:33] ROD: them. Oh my God.
[00:11:34] WILL: Oh my God, they're my
[00:11:34] ROD: I've ever thought believed, owned, loved, or valued. Yeah, I mean, straight away. Look at that. And I think, ah, there's something to be said here. but what's more interesting, I think, is they've got this big thing about grievances, not the Chinese, this barometer.
So they check people. There's this composite score of senses of grievance against business, government and the rich. So combined grievance score and Australia pretty
[00:11:59] WILL: [00:12:00] grievance. Are we
[00:12:00] ROD: grievance? We're pretty
[00:12:01] WILL: GI thought we were
[00:12:02] ROD: GI thought we were chill. No. Okay. We're around the middle of the 28 countries in grievances. We're a bit above South Korea and a bit below whatever that blurry word is.
[00:12:10] WILL: Canada above. So we have more grievances than South Korea.
We do. I
[00:12:14] ROD: I, I
[00:12:14] WILL: know, sorry to our South Korean listeners, but I, I did not historically think of you as the
[00:12:18] ROD: chillest country. If, if I remember my own notes correctly, and I probably don't. There's an interesting thing about South Korea in a moment. The top of the grievance list.
Have
[00:12:27] WILL: a guess. United
[00:12:28] ROD: of America? No. Oh, less
[00:12:31] WILL: tu
[00:12:32] ROD: It starts with s Ah.
[00:12:33] WILL: Ah.
[00:12:35] ROD: Satin Spain. Really? The Spanish are very grieved and grieved. Then Nigeria, South Africa, uk and down and down it goes. Least aggrieved Singapore for some
[00:12:47] WILL: reason.
[00:12:48] ROD: But again, the question is, you know, yeah. The extent to which these people are reporting, honestly, in Australia, six out of 10 people hold grievances against the business, government and the rich. So that's not bad. 62% of us are [00:13:00] like, nah, I've got a pretty reasonable grievance against this combined, the man, the people, the bastards. and then they start to digress into all these other measures. And one of the ones I enjoyed, I'm, I'm just cherry picking stuff that fascinated me. Australia only trust companies that are headquartered in, there are three countries in which Australians will trust a company depending on where its headquarters
[00:13:19] WILL: are.
Alright,
[00:13:20] ROD: go on. Guess one, one Country of the three?
[00:13:24] WILL: Australia?
[00:13:24] ROD: No.
[00:13:26] WILL: Okay. Uh, Japan. Yes. Yeah. Good. Japan is, no, no. We trust, we trust Japanese companies. We do, we love 'em. They,
[00:13:33] ROD: they're great. Yeah. Two
[00:13:34] WILL: others. okay. Okay. So can we do South Korea in that
[00:13:37] ROD: sense? You can. It's wrong, but you
[00:13:39] WILL: can Ah, ah,
[00:13:40] ROD: uh, okay. Stay Commonwealth.
[00:13:42] WILL: Commonwealth, yeah. We don't trust New Zealand companies. Canadian companies. Yes. Yeah. We trust a Canadian company
[00:13:49] ROD: and, and the origins of the
[00:13:50] WILL: Commonwealth. Yeah. We were forced, we
[00:13:51] ROD: uk, yeah. Yeah. It's in the, it's
[00:13:53] WILL: in the national one must, one must trust
[00:13:54] ROD: the mother. We trust the mothers, companies and all their massives.
[00:13:59] WILL: That was
[00:13:59] ROD: [00:14:00] beautiful. When we get to, um, industry sectors, so like healthcare versus automobiles, airlines, et cetera, Australians have a trust level. So we're talking about distrust, neutral or reasonable trust levels. Uh, there are 17 industries represented. 10 of them we trust quite nicely. And three, we really don't, ones we don't trust.
[00:14:20] WILL: uh, mining companies,
[00:14:21] ROD: uh, kind one of 'em is energy, so that's not
[00:14:24] WILL: unrelated. Oh, okay. That,
[00:14:25] ROD: Okay. Because I don't think it means solar
[00:14:27] WILL: but you never know. No. pharmaceuticals.
[00:14:29] ROD: No. Not in, not in there
[00:14:31] WILL: though. We trust
[00:14:32] ROD: pharmaceuticals. Well, they haven't, they didn't break it down as pharmaceuticals. There's healthcare, but that's the top. The top.
[00:14:38] WILL: Trusted. Yeah. Okay. Hospitals, we like them.
[00:14:41] ROD: The lowest social media
[00:14:43] WILL: organizations. Yeah. Well, look, yeah. See, I,
I, I trust them. I just don't think their values are aligned with us. Like, I think, I think I know they're gonna, I know they're gonna operate in, orientation to their
[00:14:55] ROD: values. No, they're not like us. They wouldn't return the treasure if they found it on someone else's land.
[00:15:00] Exactly. But yeah. So the top trust is healthcare, then education, then food and
[00:15:04] WILL: beverage we trust. But you kind of, no, I trust our food and
[00:15:07] ROD: Beverage. Well, you have to because otherwise strangers are handing you
[00:15:10] WILL: food? No, no. Australia has a, has a historically globally world leading beautiful food
[00:15:16] ROD: and and beverage, uh, industry.
We do, we do. professions and stuff. So you've got, you've got things like journalists, CEOs, ci, trust, citizens of my country, my neighbors,
[00:15:27] WILL: teachers.
We put my neighbors with CEOs.
[00:15:29] ROD: No, no. This is just a list of people in order, whether you trust me or not.
Comparison. Who do we trust more than institutional leaders? Journalists at the bottom of the pile. Yep. CEOs are right down there,
[00:15:41] WILL: where are podcasters?
top Nice
[00:15:44] ROD: in a different
[00:15:45] WILL: survey. Ah,
[00:15:46] ROD: The top of the pile, which is relevant to US scientists. Most trusted.
There you go, scientists. That's nice. Then teachers,
[00:15:54] WILL: Wow. And then.
[00:15:56] ROD: my neighbors. These people have not met my neighbors. [00:16:00] My neighbors who are definitely not listed to this podcast are not my favorite humans, but, so they've got this weird little blend of stuff. But the things, let's, let's get into the last couple that I think are kind of scary.
I mean, this, this survey covers wild, wild array of things. This one is, um, entitled Our future in Peril. We lack optimism for the next Generation. So turn that into a question they ask The 28 countries, the extent to which people lack optimism. We really lack optimism. The only that's in Australia. Yeah. The only people who lack it less.
And there ain't many Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, France, and Germany, which I find surprising and super top who don't lack optimism in the next generation, not surprisingly. Guess the country?
[00:16:46] WILL: Uh, Botswana
[00:16:48] ROD: no. So close though. What? Saudi Arabia.
[00:16:51] WILL: Oh.
[00:16:52] ROD: they're quite optimistic about the next generation. Yeah. Because what, how are your kids gonna go?
Well, they're gonna be loaded that much I [00:17:00] know. it fascinates me. And the only other one I'll pull out, because I thought it was interesting, was the extent to which people see hostile activism as a viable means to drive
[00:17:09] WILL: change.
What do we mean by
[00:17:11] ROD: hostile activism? Like actually breaking shit.
Threatening or committing violence. Okay. Intentionally spreading disinformation, attacking people online and damaging public or private property. This is the cluster of things they ask when we're talking young folk. One in two are okay
[00:17:28] WILL: with it.
Are
[00:17:29] ROD: Are okay. One in two from 18 to 34. Australia or Australia.
One in two, 18 to 34 year olds are like, if it, if we really wanna drive, change hostile activism, the things I just listed are cool. Overall, 31% of us go, yeah, no,
[00:17:42] WILL: enough.
[00:17:45] ROD: And it's, it's amazing. But this, this, this pushes my buttons. 'cause you know, as you know, and maybe a couple of people, listen, I've done a lot of surveys in my time, some of them national, et cetera.
I've, I've messed around with surveys. And they always find interesting things. Yes. and the one I did that was the largest found [00:18:00] that, you know, Australians apparently prefer informational news about science and technology versus sport. They do listen. Yeah. And every time I've done this survey, I did over, what, 10 years or something?
One of the ones you you're involved in the first one? Yeah. The, the survey is robust. The way we ask people questions was clear. And every time I read it I'm like, it's bullshit. It's just gotta be bullshit. But it's methodologically absolutely sound. And I, so I always think, nah, what are we, what are we dealing with?
[00:18:28] WILL: I want is, you know, I wanna go back in time with these surveys 'cause, 'cause all fine to do it now. And you can tell some interesting story, but I want, I wanna know,
[00:18:35] ROD: like, so I see one
[00:18:36] WILL: problem with that. Yeah. Yes, yes. But, you know, in the, in the lead up to whatever, you know, a revolution or a war or something like that, I wanna know what were their things
[00:18:45] ROD: like? Like, yeah, yeah,
[00:18:45] WILL: can you see in the, in before the Russian
[00:18:48] ROD: Revolution, preemptive
[00:18:49] WILL: patterns?
Is there spiking in, I'm happy to use violence, you know,
[00:18:53] ROD: does that sound It would be interesting. Yeah. And I look, honestly right now, I and I, with apologies to the Edelman [00:19:00] Trust, it mostly feels like interesting chat points and click bait to me.
Because like you said, when you, when you ask the Chinese, how much do you trust your government? They're like, well, someone's
[00:19:07] WILL: listening. Oh. Or, or, you know, the Spanish are the most
[00:19:10] ROD: grieved, grieved,
[00:19:11] WILL: grooved. Like, how do we really know? Like, I mean, are they just more likely to answer that question in a certain sort of
[00:19:18] ROD: way?
Well, it's a cluster question. Like you can dig in, if you click onto the Edelman Barometer, you can dive into their data, you can get long form reports. You can do all that stuff if you so choose. So you can pull apart the methods if you want to. I didn't because I didn't want to, but. Yeah. It, it brings up bigger issues of what are these things worth.
I mean, the one thing I've always said to myself and to students and when I was doing media shit on interviews, they have strong rhetorical sway. They're very appealing. They're very rhetorically persuasive. Are they good? Are they right? Are they useful? I dunno. I dunno.
[00:19:54] WILL: Well, that was your little bit of science for the week.
[00:19:56] ROD: holiday edition. You're special by the pool wearing a bikini [00:20:00] edition.
[00:20:00] WILL: But because you're on holiday, you know that you still have the power to give us the rating that you need to give us. Yeah,
[00:20:07] ROD: seven stars on every app. Even things that don't do podcasts.
Yeah.
[00:20:10] WILL: Go out there and write it on like a recipe app
[00:20:13] ROD: an Uber and Yelp. Is it Yelp still? a thing?
[00:20:15] WILL: I think. so. I'm
[00:20:16] ROD: I don't know. I'm at a restaurant where Don't ye
[00:20:17] WILL: listener, if you've got some topics that you want us to explore,
[00:20:21] ROD: tell Will.
[00:20:22] WILL: How would you tell Will his
[00:20:24] ROD: number is 0 4 0 5 Oh. Uh, cheers. At a little bit of science Do com
[00:20:30] WILL: au.
[00:20:31] ROD: au.
[00:20:31] WILL: Do that. We want your stories.
[00:20:33] ROD: we wanna hear from you.
[00:20:34] WILL: Lovely listener. Enjoy the pina colada.
[00:20:38] ROD: Oh, and the
[00:20:39] WILL: col. Pin colada.
[00:20:41] ROD: Pini Kaia Pina Pia
[00:20:42] WILL: Pina Kaia of
[00:20:42] ROD: of the Clade
[00:20:43] WILL: Penai. Cate.
