How to Find Out People's Secrets, With Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

The Upgrade by Lifehacker

Lifehacker

Tech News, News, How To, Education, Self-improvement

4.6 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2017

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’re living in a time of secrets. Whether it’s the health-care bill, Russia’s secret connection with our recent election, or the lies we all tell, secrets plague all of us. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, author of “Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are” explains what the Internet can tell us about the prejudices, fears, and fetishes we’re hiding. We talk with our Lifehacker writers about a Reddit thread where Redditors shared secrets that, if revealed, would ruin people’s lives. Psychiatrist Eileen Wachter visits the studio to discuss the psychological effects of keeping secrets. And our producer takes to the streets to find out what sort of secrets we’ve been keeping for other people. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcast from the team at Lifehacker.com, where we help you improve your life one week at a time.
0:20.4	I'm Melissa Kirsch, editor-in-chief of Lifehacker. And I'm Alice Bradley, Lifehacker.com where we help you improve your life one week at a time. I'm Melissa Kirsch,
0:21.8	editor-in-chief of Lifehacker. And I'm Alice Bradley, Lifehacker's deputy editor. And today we're
0:26.8	talking about secrets. We're going to be talking with some of the Lifehacker team about this
0:31.1	Reddit thread where people divulge the secrets that if they were revealed would ruin their lives.
0:36.7	It's not even the grossest
0:38.0	story of that type that I've seen. But at the time, in an innocent age, it was the most disgusting
0:44.6	thing anyone had seen. We're also talking to Seth Stevens Davidowitz, who's got some pretty
0:49.2	revealing insights about the disconnect between the way we present ourselves and who we really are
0:54.0	that he gleamed by studying Google trends.
0:56.5	You might think you're going to vote, but you're not going to vote, and the algorithms maybe know you better than you know yourself.
1:02.8	And we're going to get into the psychology of secrets with psychiatrist Eileen Wachter.
1:07.2	There was actually some research that showed that keeping secrets may be bad for our health.
1:11.2	And you should definitely hang out until the end of the episode because our producer Levi Sharp ventured out into the wilds of New York City's Union Square to ask people to tell him about the biggest or most shocking secret they've ever kept for someone.
1:23.2	So we had the idea to discuss secrets in this episode because we seem to be living right now in a time of secrets.
1:30.8	Specifically, the health care bill, which was revealed to us a couple of days ago, the Senate version of the health care bill, that was up until now kept secret.
1:39.7	We have no idea what's being proposed.
1:43.9	There's a group of guys in a back room somewhere.
1:46.5	The Senate is not a place where you can just cook up something behind closed doors and rush it for a vote on the floor.
1:52.5	The Republicans are writing their health care bill under the cover of darkness because they're ashamed of it.
1:57.5	Plain and simple.
1:59.0	Totally secret.
	...

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