Intelligent Millennials Podcast

In this pilot episode, I’m going to be interviewing Nate Davidson, who is a friend of mine and who is also a paramedic. In our conversation, we talk about what its like to be a paramedic – not necessarily the exciting stuff where you must rescue people from car accidents or whatnot—but what exactly happens in the hours between 9-1-1 calls. On slow nights you could be waiting around for hours. On others you might be awakened out of a deep sleep in order respond to a drug overdose.

Brains are pretty complicated organs. We like to think that we are lucid at all times and that we make all our decisions based on reason and logic. But with a little life experience we all know that's not true. Underneath our thin veneer of free will, we operate out of our lizard brains-- our emotions, habits and trained behaviors that make decisions for us. We then use our rational brains to justify the reason long after the lizard brain has acted. So today in this episode, we are going to be talking to John Cook about: * Psychology and why there's so much disagreement in the field * Behaviorism and Skinner Boxes * How games and media are carefully crafted Skinner Boxes for humans * How to fight logical fallacies * How to train your lizard brain to do the right thing Full show notes can be found at www.intelligentmillennials.com

A lot of the advice we get at 18 can sound obvious, trite and generic. You can only hear platitudes like “stay humble and work hard,” or “find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” so many times before you start tuning out the adults. The subject of the conversation today is about advice we wish we had known after graduating high school. We try to cut through the platitudes and get to the real, practical information that would have been so useful to us at 18. We also risk dating ourselves, since we acknowledge the existence of the word “bae.” To those listening to the show in the far future, hello future listeners, “bae” is a term that couples used to refer to each other. It showed up in the mid 2010’s and as far as I know in mid 2018, no one says “bae” anymore. As an update for today, I wanted to do a shout-out to Tony who’s now graduating this summer. Tony, continue to stay curious and never stop learning. Explore new ways of doing things but at the same time never compromise on your principles. Being an adult is difficult and progress is never going to be a straight line. You will find some things easy. You will plateau and have difficulty with other things. Progress might be slow at times, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not worth it. Working through the tough stuff is what’s going to make you stronger. Hannah and I are very proud of what you’ve accomplished and we’re looking forward to seeing what you’re going to do next! Everything we talked about was based on a blog entry I wrote a few years ago. A link to the article, along with links to all the other references we made will be listed on the show notes. And as a correction to what I said about compound interest, the 700% return that I claimed was based on a compound rate of 10% over 20 years. That doesn’t take inflation into account, and most mutual funds will go up and down and nothing will stay a consistent 10% every single year for 20 years. Lastly, because I was curious, I back-tested the returns I would have made had I hypothetically not bought an N64 and had invested $500 dollars into a generic fund in 1997. That $500 would have turned into $1500 dollars if you calculate for dividends, inflation, etc. etc. A lot less than a 700% return, but still a respectable triple. And with that, thanks for listening, and as always, stay intelligent! External Links: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage_divorce_tables.htm https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/ https://www.cnn.com/2014/12/22/us/marshmallow-test/index.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlcqWQVVuU http://mikerowe.com/2015/06/wheremagbaltimore/ https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Elevator_Mechanic/Hourly_Rate/a4d10557/Portland-OR https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivated/comments/620x42/image_not_all_those_who_wander_are_lost/?st=jhn46v4f&sh=b70910fb http://intelligentmillennials.redlilynw.com/blog/personal-finance/104-high-school-graduation-advice-elevator-mechanic-old-n64-relieved-soul-crushing-student-loan-debt-didnt/

Cancer is a very difficult subject, especially when you or someone you know gets diagnosed with it. If you’re diagnosed, how would you go about telling your friends? What kind of help should you be asking for? How do you explain to your kids? For myself personally, it had been an incredibly difficult subject to approach. My mother passed away from cancer in 2010 and only recently I’ve been able to be more open to talking about hers and my experience. Talking about cancer simply sucks out all the air in the room and can make conversations extremely awkward. Many people avoid talking about their own cancer because they don’t want to be “pitied,” nor do they want to be viewed as simply a “host” of cancer. And for friends of people with cancer, its equally difficult to maneuver. Its not something you talk about everyday—so how do you respond? You might want to offer condolences, but it often comes off as trite and/or insincere. It might even sound like you’re more interested in the cancer than the person, which plays exactly into what the patient is afraid of. If you avoid talking about cancer, then it becomes an 800 lb gorilla and you risk coming off like you don’t care about the patient’s well-being at all. So where can we strike a good balance, and how can we support our loved ones if a family member gets diagnosed? To help us answer these questions, I’ve invited Jessica Buscho (twitter: @TenaciousJess, Instagram: @Tenacious_Jess) onto the show. She’s a friend of mine and probably top 20 when it comes to the most healthy, active, people I know. Last year, she was diagnosed with stage IV colorectal cancer. So today we’ll be catching up on life, running, volunteering, early 2000’s emo music, and being outdoors. We then talk about her cancer diagnosis and how she’s had to adjust her life. We conclude by talking about things we can all do to support our loved ones and what we can do to prevent cancer and to spread awareness. Please remember to rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts to help others find our show. And as always, Stay Intelligent! If you’re interested in learning more about colorectal Cancer, please visit the Colorectal Cancer Alliance located at https://www.ccalliance.org/. There you can learn all about colorectal cancer, how you can get screened, and how you can support the cause. You can even rent a giant inflatable colon for corporate events to raise awareness. You gotta check it out, if nothing else but to see what a giant inflatable colon even looks like. An as an additional note, the actual quote I had in mind was: “Don’t pray for easy lives, pray to be stronger men.” It was indeed uttered by JFK. Of course, he wasn’t the only one to say that. Similar quotes have been attributed to other figures, including 19th century bishop Phillips Brooks and even Bruce Lee. External Links http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9548 https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Phillips_Brooks https://www.brucelee.com/podcast-blog/2017/10/25/69-the-easy-life https://www.ccalliance.org/ https://www.everykidinapark.gov https://www.nps.gov/planyourvisit/passes.htm https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-running-blog/2017/may/12/dean-karnazes-ultramarathoner-ancient-greek-spartathlon