Kinds of things go, because fear makes you act rashly and what happened was that the fear was played upon, and prison was presented, and mass incarceration was presented as the opt way to deal with crime, and we know that there is no correlation between the drop in crime rates and the rise in mass incarceration. Study after study has shown this. We know there are other routes. It did not have to be this route towards mass incarceration. Host were in california, the home of the strikes and your out. That has been effective in any way . Guest hardly. Californias tree strikes and your another, we have the rock fell are drug laws in new york, a whole host of other tough sentencing laws that have landed, again, millions of people in jails and prisons and under correctional supervision, draining our resources and draining us of the value of these human beings, who could be contributing to society in all kinds of ways. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. A History News Networkl founder, the author of this recent book political animals how our own ainge bridge gets in the way of smart politics. Do shark attacks effect elections . Guest well, thats the story i begin the book with. H. 100 years ago in 1916, the worst series of shark attacks in American History struck southern new jersey. The movie jaws that everybody. Has seen, it was based on the story of what happened back then in the twoweek period, fourur people were killed in shark attacks. What has that got to do with politics . I wrote a book on politics. Well, four months later woodroww will son was up for reelection, and he won the state of new jersey, but in those small beach towns which had been devastated by the shark attacks, you can imagine what happened. People heard sharks and the hotels emptied and everybodypm went home and it was a devastating Economic Development fork that area. As soon as they held the vote, what happened . The people in those towns voted against Woodrow Wilson in overwhelming numbers, in the same proportion that those people volted against Herbert Hoover at the height of the Great Depression . Why . Woodrow will son could not have done anything to help thoseth people solve their shark problems. That was beyond the power of the president of the United States, but people are irrational when. They vote, and particularly mitt cal scientist have found when bad things happen to them they take out their angst on theot. Incumbent party is whether that incumbent is responsible or not. The book is about how our brain works, 40 years ago when i was in college we didnt know how the brian works. Today we do mostly as a result of neuroscience but also the insights of evolutionary psychologists, political psychologist, anthropologists and all this science over the last 15, 20 years has changed our understanding how our brain operates iwhat do you mean by ostone aged thinking. The stone age lasted for two and a half million years, and it was during this period the human brain wag evolving it evolved to help huntergarters address the problem the faced at huntergatherers. Didnt evolve to help news the 21st century address the problems were facing. And our problems are far different. When youre living in a Small Community of no more than 100 to 150 people you know everybody. You work with everybody. You know your leaders because youre living withthem, and in many cases theyre kin folk. Today, the modern world, theres millions, billions of people,ing and we dont get to meet our leaders. All we do is get to see them on tv and we often read them wrongp we dont understand when theyre lying to us and manipulating usu and the book is all about how you have to protect yourself against your own brain, because youre brain will trick you to thinking youre in a small cooperate and you know these people, and actually you dont. Host rick in the production to your book, you write that im going to tell you the stories of people who have been paid in ways that zoom absurd. Your focus on behavior associated with being disengaged from politics and apathetic and not correctly sizing up our leads, punishing politicians who tell us hard truths, and failing to show empathy in circumstancec that clearly cry out for it. That said, is there a general impression that you can give of what voters are like in America Today . Guest i dont know what to do with that question. Give me something a little more. Host are voters curious . Guest good. Voters are curious about what is happening in their immediate circumstances. Thats what the human brain is designed to do, to be curious about what is happening about things you can see. Half of the human brain isis devoted to visual tasks. We are very responsive to what we can see, and particularly because of our nervous system, to what we can feel. So when youre in a group of people you can size them up, you can read their body language, you can get a good sense of kind of who they are, at least a certain ability to have an assess. Of who they are and what theyre like. You cant do it in the modern world. In the political world were living in because most of the time you see your politicians only on tv. Your nervous system isnt coming into play. That means youre not really focused, and if you cant see somebodys eyes and how theyre really looking at you, its very hard to read them. And in any case, our brain is, again, playing a trick on us. Back in the stone age, when were reading peoples emotions lets say you were going out on a hunt and wanted to look toward the leader of the hunt, you could tell whether in a particular moment is he feeling courageous or frozen by fear . You had a deeper understanding of the person because you lived with them. You worked with them all the time. In the modern world, we dont have that kind of personal intimate experience with our b leaders, and yet our brian still makes us think we do know them. So, heres the question. Are we curious . Huntergatherers, never been an example of huntergatherers who arent curious about who is leading them. Theyre curious because what do human beings do all day long . They gossip. Thats what human beings do. We gossip about people. What does gossipping do . Gossip helps us understand who is up, who is down, whether somebody made a mistake, speculating about their motives. That means were automatically engaged as human beings in our local politics. M but in the multicultural world were living in, with millions of people, we dont have that kind of natural nerve obvious system reaction to people who live far airplane from thus. Is it the problem hoff washington, dc. Youre in washington, dc. Mores of the American People live hundreds if not thousands of miles away. Live in seattle, washington. Seattle is far away fromom washington, dc. So when things are happening there, its very hard for me, living in seattle, to try to get really sited about what is going on in d. C. If i see two candidates duking it out in a political debate, okay, i can get excited about that momentarily, but that feeling quickly evaporates. Me, i happen to be a political junkie so im paying attention, but most americans are living their lives, not payingdi attention to politics so they seem to display if difference, a lack of curiosity about politics. Thats because of the way the human brain works. Its an indictment of human beings, our brain wasnt devisep for television politics. It was devised for small, intimate groups. Were really good at that kind of politics. Not so good at politics where w talk about things happening a long, way away from us. I hope that answers you question. To host should we trust our instincts when it comes to politics . Guest no thats the main point of the book. Basically in our daily lives, we trust our instincts because theyre constantly provingng theyre pretty good. If youre walking on the sidewalk, and you hear tires screeching, your instinct is to look up quickly, look around, and pull back and make sure youre not about to get run over by a bus or truck going by. Thats the same if you were a huntergathererrers 10 0 00, 100,000 years ago and you heard a tying fer the wood tiger in the woods, you would have a fight or flight response in our personal lives our instincts work inch politics, i argue, you can almost never unquestioningli go with your instinct becaused your instincts are generally not suited for the kinds of problemy we face in the modern world. Host you look at the work of psychologists drew weston, and you write about some of his work. Here is westns explanation. What goes on in our brain when we turn a blind eye toward information we fiend objectionable. Quote. C when confronted with potentially troubling political information, a network of neurons becomes active that produces distress, the brain registers the conflict between data and desire, and begins to search for ways to turn off the spigot of unpleasant emotion, notice what we dont do. We dont expend Cognitive Energy to digest the information. Instead we immediately try to reconcile it with our partisan prefer reins. Can you give us an preferences can you give us an example. Guest back in 2004, johnhn kerry versus george w. Bush. He put kerry voters inside an mri machine and then he told them some information about john kerry that wasnt flattering, something that made him look like he was a hypocrite. And what happened inside their brain . Well, they very briefly registered a reaction, of course it was disfavor with what they were hearing, and then immediately their brains shutnt off the flow of information and those neurons went quiet. They went inactive. The same thing happened when he put bush votes in the mri machine. When they heard unpleasantt information they had an initial reaction and then they went quiet. Their neurons went quiet. Ia what is that . That is what other social scientists refer to as our psychological immune system at work. We dont like dissidence. We dont like to find out that a belief we hold about somebodyy that we like, and then it turns out that, well, heres some contrary information to what we believe about that person, that creates dissidence. We dont like dissidence. The human brain doesnt like that feeling. Makes us feel anxious and bad. So quickly tries to figure out a way to get rid of the information and does it by basically closing the door on the information so those neurons go quiet. And then our psychological immune system improves, we restore our feeling of wellbeing. So, when youre, for instance, talking about trump voters, so donald trump has been called out by politico and opolitical fact changing organizations for telling one lie after another after another. Like for instance when he debuted his campaign and started talking about how thousands of muslims were dancing on theft rooftops of apartment buildings in new jersey as the watched the twin towers fall down and they were cheering. That just wasnt true. What did trump voters make of that . Their brains, just like for other voter its not just about trump voters. Its true of all of us. We dont want to hear that Bad Information about a candidate who were inclined to support so they basically ignored it and theyre not bothered by i it. Their brain shuts off the information. This is how the human brain works theft what drew westons research so ably shows us. Host rink shenkman is our guest. The numberers on the screen. 202 is the area code, republicans, 7488001. Democrats 7488000, and independents, 748, 8002. You can dial in. Well begin taking your calls in just a minute. You can also participate via social media, chance wj is our twitter handle. Heat bin with robert in worcester, massachusetts, on our democrats line. Go ahead. Is caller i dont know what this guy is talking about, but the average person really does not know politicians know that the average person is almost ignorant. Would you have a commercial on tv . You see a tide commercial, and the tide commercial says, it would take the ring off your husbands neck, the next day, that same woman will go down and buy that tide because of that powerful commercial. Pe and the main problem is that people are not voting with theyre heart. Theyre voting with their heads and you got to put them both together you have to have head and a heart, and when you let the politicians and in trick, that is a sin. Never should you let a politician walk in your chair and speak on the pulpit and that is all you black people fromet down south host last, let get a response. What did you hear . Guest well, the caller is absolutely right that the American People dont know a lot of facts about the way our government functions. So, a majority of the American People dont know that we have 100 u. S. Senators, even though thats a nice round snub easy to remember. Ch a majority tv the American People dont know we have the branches of the government. A majority of people believe on the eve of the iraq war that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9 11 attacks and that the reason we were going to invade iraq was to take revenge for him having destroyed the World Trade Center and attacked the pentagon. So, when you are what is called a lowinformation voter, which is unfortunately true of a majority of the American People, lowinformation voters are mose easily manipulated by politicians so they dont know enough so 0 politician can stand up and if he is are articulate and enthusiastic and can make a case and connect with you as one person to another person, look through a tv camera, as im doing right now, if im really exciting and youre impressed with my passion and enthusiasm and what im saying makes sense you dont have the independent basis upon which to evaluate my arguments or my information. N. So youre just going with kind of your gut and a hunch, and that is what im, aing in my become is a mistake. Host jedwin tweets into you, mr. Shenkman, i respectfully disagree with you. Cant read politicians from watching them on tv. Body language is all telling. Guest body language is important. How quickly do we make evaluations on politicians . We make up minds and basically anybody that we encounter in 167 milliseconds. Thats faster than it takes to blink your eye, and if you give people more time to make an evaluation, they just double down on what their initial impression is, and the problema with that it your brain is playing a trick on you. Back in the stone age, when we were making these super fast evaluations, of course it was very, very important because if you encountered a stranger in the forest or jungle you had to quickly be able to size them up, and most of the time that meant this was a person who was hostile and a threat to your life, so you probably either should run or you have to kill the guy. But for the hunter gatherers when they were sizing people up it wasnt just on the basis of body language, or facial expression. It was on the basis of deep knowledge of in this person pause you were living with this person and working with them. Ve so if you have an overreliance on body language and you think that you can tell whether somebody is lying to you or telling the truth, based on their body language, you are deceiving yourself. Let the go one step even further. When somebody, a politician, is telling you something, and they believe it to be true, then your psychological system, your detention system doesnt work. Our system only works if theho person telling us a lie thinks theyre lying. E politicians, though, are really good. Theyre like used car salesmen. Theyre really good at tellingng you something that at that moment they can convince themselves they actually believe. That is why you cant rely on your ability to read somebody and their body language, because if theyre sincere and politicians are always sincere then your detection system doesnt work. Host lets hear from barbara, a democrat, in marthas vineyard, massachusetts. Youre on. Caller hi, peter. Thank you much. Richard, this is the best, best, best news every. The first day of the new era which i am christening in case you havent come up with a phrase, paleopolitical. This is our brain on the drugs of politics that we dont understand how our brain works so, pete,i have a homework assignment for your staff. Assemble the experts that richard will lead you to on evolutionary biology and psychology and get them together with richard and three hours nobody in depth or however the hell you can do it or rich you assemble them in a become fair. This is the story, folks. Now, i want another thing to. Do i want you produce tower look bat an email i just sent. It has no text it in. Its only visual. I want to prove richards point. The subject line is just vote blue. So this is my message for how the democrats have to unify. A visual pun in it and i want to see if richard can figure it out. This man is walking the walk and talking the talk, and richard, last night, keep on using the emphasis youre using in your speech, just like aam deliberately using it now. Theres a penetrative quality to assertion. We are asserting thises the truth. Were not hypothesizing. This is the dawn of the new age host bart. Barbara, thank you. Rick schenk men, any response for barbara. Guest she was very complimentary so im not going to disagree with her. Lets talk about another aspect of how our brain works. Basically from neuroscience we have learn in the last 20, 30 years, that we have two ways of digesting information. One is called system one and the other is called system two. With system one basically youre not thinking, youre just taking in information, matching it with other information you have in your brain and if theres a close enough match, your brain doesnt think hard about it, you assume the new information isan just like the old information and you treat it the same way. System two is higher order cognitive thinking, and guess what we want to do in politics . Almost always politicians dont want you to use system two. They dont want you to use higher order cognitive thinking. So theyll use red meat words that get your system one juices progress so youre not really thinking, youre just reacting. For a republican audience theyll Say Something like,mu scary muslim terrorists and that activists certain neurons in your brain and youre acting fearful or angry and youre not thinking, youre just reacting, and the democrat does the same thing. They tell some a substory prr about somebody to get you to feel empathetic and then go along with their programs. Youre not really thinking about it. Youre just kind of reacting. And what im arguing in the book is that the only way to safeguard yourself against manipulation by politicians is to always secondguess your automatic reaction. You have to secondguess your automatic reaction. Dont trust yourself in politics. That goes a