Up next on booktv after words with guest host maggie jackson, author of distracted. This weeks matt richtel and his latest book is a deadly wandering a tale of tragedy and redemption in the age of attention. In it a New York Times reporter tells the story of a tragic car accident due to texting from impact through the court proceeding. He combines the disturbing reallife story with a thorough examination of the distractions of technology and their impact on society. The program is about an hour. Host hello. Im here today hosting after words with matt richtel and congratulations on your new and very powerful book, a deadly wandering it. I think its a story about a crash and yet so much more. Its a story and you write about tragedy and redemption and i say you could call it the canary in the coal mine type case of how we are living with technology both in distracted and constructive ways. I think we have a lot to talk about and i want to welcome you. Guest where was that when i needed an elevator pitch . Host i wanted to welcome you and start off by asking the words deadliest in the title so before going to the story how deadly is this trend and what are we talking about historically especially visavis drunk driving which everyone has heard about . Guest first of all i like your canary in a the coal mine reference. The reason i like it relative to the question you just asked is the canary is if you are texting while you are driving it will kill you but its really indicative of a lot of other things when it comes to distraction, sitting at the dinner table being counterproductive at work. So thats kind of an extreme example but specifically to your question drunk driving i think now is about 10,000 a year in the u. S. Its the biggest number that we can measure up to 30 to 40,000 deaths we have a year. Its come down sharply. Candace leitner and madd and strong laws have brought it down sharply. What about texting and driving . The real answer is we dont know yet. We have some very decent estimates about the amount of crashes and the amount of death caused by phone use by drivers and just let me pause and say this is then like an eightminute sentence and say shall i tell you why its complicated . Said the estimates from the National Safety council would put if memory serves about 1. 5 million of 5. 6 crashes million crashes in the u. S. Owing to phone use but those are estimates and the reason we dont know its because its very hard to track for police agencies. Hard to get the information. People lie and we just started trying to collect the data. So the estimates are based largely on how much we know people are using phones and how many crashes there are. Just to give one example of how we know the official numbers are so far off, theres a number from 2011 which is the latest data we have of death owing to phone use. In tennessee remarks 93 cases and the state of new york one. Just simply impossible. We are not tracking it accurately so the short answer is we dont know. The long answer is all the science in everything we see on the roadways say its a big and growing problem. Host what is it about the story because we are dealing with a very important problem. It does seem to be on the rise even if we are not quite of the scope of the problem. Tell me about the story briefly because its very gripping model or example of what can happen to all of us. Guest when i thought about writing about the science and im sure well talk about it at some point i thought what would interest me when i read it anything as the story, its character, its narrative comments emotions conflict and i could not have imagined the story i discovered. It starts with a young man, 19 years old, september 22, 2006 and these driving to work at 6 30 in the morning. Happens to be the last day of summer but already be its raining and its dark. Hes going 55 miles an hour which is the speed limit that the swerving periodically across the yellow divider. This is noticed by the guy driving behind him who happens to be a four shoemaker who has got two tons of poor shoes and portion making equipment and missile at highway speed. The last time reggie shaw, the young man do i mentioned earlier, swerved across the yellow divider he clipped a saturn carrying again you can make this stuff up, to not only find family men but rocket scientist, the real thing, building boosters for the next day shuttle. They spin across the road, they are hit by its broadside in the two men and a saturn are killed instantly. Host thats quite a tragedy. Guest a big tragedy. Host of course what we are talking about is an example of so much more. So lets get into what this represents. One of the most amazing reasons and i think it mightve been why he came to write this book and you can tell us about that but one of the most amazing issues related to this is why do people do this . We can talk about do they know the risks . In 2006 there were arguments but i guess we can assume now that many people have an inkling of the danger. So lets talk a little bit about why we do such a selfdestructive thing. Guest just to square the circle reggie was texting. He was stops down the road at 100 yards unscathed because he hydroplaned. There was a Sherlock Holmes like digital age experience and they discover after 18 years of looking that he has texted 11 times in the minutes and seconds around the crash and maybe at the crash. This historic precedent but you asked the question, hes texting something innocuous like good morning to a young woman he is barely even dating. Hes just getting to know. What would compel a young man who is a decidedly good person although as you read in the book hes got a little bit of a checkered past when it comes to telling the truth so hes got some issues but hes decidedly a good guy kind of the allamerican guy. He could tell the difference between right and wrong look down in his lap. This turns out to be a long scientific journey and so let me try to break it down into pieces. Maybe the best way to start maggie is to give you an image of us going back lets say a million years or 100,000 years. Picture a caveman or a cave woman and that person is tending to a fire. He or she gets a tap on the shoulder. I would just ask you, if it were you would you be able to avoid turning around . If someone tapped on your shoulder and you were attending a fire and didnt know who it was, do you think you could ignore the tap . Host not at all. Guest leading question, im sorry your honor but of course he couldnt. You dont know puts a threat come you dont know if its opportunity or someone with a spear. Thats the first image i would put in peoples minds and im going to give you the neuroscience of this in a minute but essentially when you are driving in a car and the phone rings, the first thing to think about is what is the proverbial tap on the shoulder that could be from anyone anywhere in the world and youve got no idea, is that opportunity, is that a threat, is that my boss, is that my spouse, is that my potential mate . Its unknown and so this technology has given us a warp speed version of a tap on the shoulder. Maybe i should pause here and talk before i go to the next level of the lure about the neuroscience of that moment. Host tell us a little bit about the limits of our attention which has been well studied for more than a century. We are very limited animals when it comes to our attentional capabilities. Guest exactly so whats happening in a moment and it will go indirectly to answering that question of limits is lets go back to the cave person. The cave person tending to the fire is using this part of the head, the prefrontal cortex. They call it executive control. Its a thing responsible for architecture, civilization but when we hear werber lie in its census signal up from here, the reptile parts of the brain, much more primitive survival mechanism. In the case of a lion it says little lion run. The parts of doing these highlevel tasks must listen to the lower part of the brain because if it didnt guess what . So now lets go back in time to understand these limitations of our brains. We cannot ignore first of all that reptiles down. I mean if you can you would essentially have to have eyes in the back of your head. So going back to probably the mid1900s right after world war ii, scientists in britain were really wrestling with the question. Why was it that their pilots in airplanes fighting the battle over britain, why was it that they radar operators could have troubles with screams and cockpits and have trouble with what they are looking at . Why was it that they couldnt focus on a lifeanddeath situation that they were getting interrupted. Part of it has to do with the civil war going on inside of your brain that ive just described. If something came from. Interrupted the ability to focus even if the focus was on something very important. Secondly what they discovered, and its even more for basic point, something called the Cocktail Party effect. This happened right in the aftermath of world war ii, these kind of initial neuroscientist who stories i tell you in the book were gathered in britain and they were trying to figure out how much information can we possibly handle . I mentioned the key person image. Let me ask you and the audience to think of another vision. You are at a Cocktail Party and you were talking with a person in front of you as i am currently talking to you and you try to listen to the person standing behind you. What you will discover, because i have tried this a number of times, is that you can really only do one thing. I can focus on maggie. You deserve my attention or i can switch my brain, i can switch the track and listen to that person. At that point i can no longer listen to you. Its simply physically impossible and its 1948 cents all these tests were done with one tiny cup so much as i can listen to you and just maybe i can pick up my name for the change in gender. That is not new science. That goes back to 1950. Over the years between 1950 and 2000 the neuroscientist began to refine these models. What they began to discover is that there are networks of attention in our brain. They discovered they can literally watch inside the brain of blood flow and discover when you are at tending to one thing and you shift your focus you can see that the load shifts. You cant juggle both things. Its often said that there is a myth of multitasking. That understanding with the neuroscientist goes all the way back to 1948. Host we are talking about a creature with limited potential capacity. We are destined to be unexpected in our environment. If you are paying attention to something you are going to be blind. If you are paying attention to say your cell phonecall you are literally blind. The visual signals into your brain when a child walks into the street. Add to this email lets talk a little pout about the lure of technology. He wrote about the social connection and the technology represents. I thought that was really fascinating. Guest there are three or four levels of this. One is the social connection and the social wiring is buried deep enough and it is again a survival mechanism. In fact as we go through the conversation i think what i will begin to describe is the power of these devices because they are in effect survival mechanisms that are becoming so powerful that they can be counterproductive and even deadly. Antisurvival mechanisms for lack of better word. On the social pilots go back to the fire analogy. One value from being social is that we learn from each other. So maggie if you learned that fire burns you a millennia ago that you are unable to communicate that to me then i have to burn my hand in order to not be killed, because i get burned and i get an infection and im dead. Language itself, anything else is so deeply wired on the social level because it helps us survive. It tells us go into the bomb shelter. Go down the list of ways. Communication and the idea that communication could be urgent is deeply wired into us. Its not just the receipt of information that is so powerful but as i document in this book the share of information gives you a dopamine rush, helps squirt the reward centers in your brain. Its reinforcing the idea that the sharing of social information as a reward. So now youve got the receipt being a reward and you have the sheer being a reward. I will stop there and say thats one way in which art device has lured us but its only one of several. Host you are painting a picture of fumbling behind the wheel getting an extraordinary temptation from that device. It might be a computer and its a smartphone now. Is there something possibly rewarding and even the idea of peeking behind the curtain of this novelty of rewarding. Guest before you go on to that because you set a really important word. He said possibly rewarding. I think maybe in some ways my favorite bit of science that i learned in this, the one that really surprised me and honed in on just help powerful of these devices are busy with think to yourself well math, maggie or whomever if i know that a lot of this stuff is spam, and it is, 67 of what we get is spam in email than i would be conditioned to ignore it because i know its worthless. Going back to your question possibly important it turns out that the very fact that most of the stuff is worthless makes it even harder to resist. This goes back to bf skinner and a concept called intermittent reinforcement. The way i would illustrated is it will connect to your audience as it did for me is that you have a rat in a cage in the rat is supposed to push a lever to get food that the rat doesnt know which bush will bring the food. The rat is compelled to push all the time, all the time, all the time. Its called intermittent reinforcement, one of the most powerful lures in all of psychology so forgive the comparison of us to a rodent. Its exactly the same thing happening with your phone. You press and press impressed and you dont when the good thing is going to come. Its a veritable slot machine in your pocket. To add that piece to the social wiring, you are starting to find something super powerful and i havent given you the full range yet. Host its really powerful. I dont think when people are doing it they quite realize what a package of dynamite is sitting in the car with them. I think it also seems as though its a part of our daily life. Its a fixture, a tool so that perceptual invisibility adds to the fact that what its doing to us is kind of becoming invisible. Guest i like the way you put it that its just becoming a fixture. We understand it to be part of life and maybe even to go a step further and celebrate it. If you look at the way the advertising is today it may not tell you to do this in the car but it certainly celebrates being on all the time. I document to add coming from various places try to do more, try to do more faster for Wireless Companies or an ad from one company and they seem to little kids of course you want to do more than one thing at a time. The kids say of course i would so its a fixture, to become invisible and its become celebrated. If we are enumerating you take the social, you take the slot machine, you take the cultural and you are adding up again a prettier sister bowl thing. Host to push that point a little further, i dont know if complicity is too strong of a word but what was news to me is the idea that the mobile phone company in the Car Companies come he still see this today. The Car Companies want more on their dashboard. Mobilephone Companies Want to have this device at hand at all times. Tell us a little bit about that. There were echoes to me of smoking. That was very interesting. Guest look, theres another one of these is a report in this book one anecdote when youre on the phone reporting and you experience this where youve got the phone and you one of the neuroscientists in the book that played a huge role in the reggie shut case that we talked about at the beginning names david strayer. He worked as a lot of neuroscientists do, he went into Corporate America when he first started. He was working for one of the Cell Phone Companies in the early 90s. They were starting to market these phones. He went to them and he said i think we have got a problem. I understand he was in this long line of people going back to world war ii so this very fine line connected all the way back to the beginning of neuroscience were they understood the stuff we are talking about and he went to his boss and he said im not sure you understand. This is dangerous. They said to him why would we want to know that . And he said to him it was selfevident. The way he describes the situation knowing that is counter to making a lot of money. I want to be really careful in this conversation because the Cell Phone Companies have actually gotten much more responsible but i do think its worth noting that point you brought up. Early on the cell phone was a carphone. Thats how was sold. He recently sold that way is because that was where you had phone service. If you are trying to build a business you will build it where you can have phone access. The early cell towers maggie went off on the highways. The money was made there and you remember what they used to charge. He was 50 cents a minute, right . Marketing from the Cell Phone Companies were loving this. They would be a guy that would have literally an ad with the guys standing in his jeep were sitting in his jeep the phone to his ear speeding down the road and it was a glorification of this. I think there was one common closing my eyes because im trying to remember. Well will be in the book but it says something wildly effective on the number of levels but Something Like can your secretary take dictation at 50 miles an hour and its a guy and a sports car talking on the phone. Thats the early days. The carphone, its hard to imagine that the Wireless Companies didnt know and in fact early on some very courageous legislators particularly in california and in utah where this story happened got caught by the Wireless Companies who said what people do what they want. We are not sure of the risks. Parallel to the smoking in the streets, i wouldnt use that exactly but it was a kind of prevarication thats very unnerving. Now these days the Cell Phone Companies have really taken the mantle of no texting in particular and they have put out blocks. At t verizon, they have campaigns and at Public Service announcements but right now its ensconced in our culture. The other companies, let me possible stop. Host i think we are approaching a break and i think we want to talk about solutions and where is the industry and we have been. Im getting a picture, an incredible picture of individual accountability and perhaps a vital responsibility here