Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load Podcast

When someone you went to high school with dies, it doesn’t matter how close friends you were, or weren’t, or if you’ve kept in any kind of touch since then. When you hear of the death, years later, something in your present and future changes, because your past just did.Today I received a note telling me someone I had been in high school with, back in the 70s, had died during heart surgery and my first thought was, how does a teenager die in heart surgery? Crazy, yes, but because he was part of my teen years, and not my adult life, he’s never aged, changed, moved on. He was still 17 so far as I knew because I hadn’t seen anything to the contrary. Now I have, so now I can’t ignore the fact that he’s not 17 because he’s died, not in the 70s, but in his.High school deaths always conjure up premature, tragic and senseless loss. Freak accidents, motor vehicle carnage, suicide. There’s a cognitive disconnect between that concept, and the concept of age-related illness.People you knew in high school didn’t have to be close friends to be part of the landscape of those tectonic times. But that landscape shifts every time someone from those days is erased. So long as they were out there, their story was still unfinished — and so was mine. And if their future still holds possibility, so does mine, and yours.Although I ignorantly believed this was something only I had conjured up, plenty of others have trod these lino hallways in the name of science. In 1932, the psychologist Frederic Bartlett asked people to think about an old folk tale or story, and retell it many times over days and then weeks. What he found was a memory drift. With each retelling the stories began to conform to something the teller found made sense. This was the first scholarly look at how memory isn’t fixed, like a recording. He titled his experiments, War of the Ghosts which seems eerily apropos.Then, in 2000, Karim Nader and his team showed that when we try to remember something, that act makes the original memory unstable before it rewrites and reshelves it, and that is a bio-chemical process. It’s a little like pulling an old, much-loved book off the shelf, flipping through the pages and recognizing a few passages before putting it back. So, my remembering the schoolmates who have died, picturing them in the classrooms, hallways and on the playing fields of school, changes memories a little bit each time I “think back”.When a man who died at 71 is still 17 in my mind, it’s not a failure to update, it’s what my memory is designed to do: hold the last version I filed away, labelled “true”, until something forces a rewrite I didn’t choose.The more the past is whittled away, conforming to a more accurate present, the more conscious I am of how little time really is left. When you’re young, time is a linear construct, one year follows another but as you get older there are years, and then there are good years, and it’s the good, healthy, active years that are slipping away faster.Every death is a reminder of that infernal hourglass and its implacable contents and every death makes us sit up straighter and vow to make the most of the time we’ve been given but very quicky we forget those brave promises and allow quotidian reality to steer our days until they too become years and imperfect memories.Going way back with Joni Mitchell.Until next time, cherish your memories and book your flights. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

What began as a simple afternoon and evening in the city last week, turned into a Gilligan’s Island marathon, minus the millionaires and movie stars.A Friday afternoon breakdown in the ferry which normally services the Sunshine Coast resulted in cancelled sailings and people scrambling for accommodations in the city. Some optimistic souls hung out, hoping for a Plan B and one did come, in the form of another boat to pick up the slack. Incredibly that boat also broke down after delivering one load of travelers, leaving me, and thousands of others, stranded on both sides now. Win and lose, but still somehow…Can you imagine the individual tragedies and failures that resulted? The surprise guests at a wedding who travelled from afar only to miss the event anyway; the triumphant new parents of a baby born in the city, coming to visit granny and grandpa for the first time; the truck full of Chilliwack corn, steaming in the heat; the Costco shopper with a car full of meat, cheese and yogurt.The breakdowns are hugely inconvenient but also not unexpected given the age of the BC Ferries fleet, but the lack of honest communication is indefensible. The technology responsible for informing the travelling public is not 50+ years old so it falls to the operators and administrators to ensure the information they send out is at least glancingly accurate. Knowing that nothing posted online could be relied upon I turned to generous friends to put me up for the evening, planning to brave the madness which would accompany resumption of service the next day.And madness only touches on the reality. Cars were lined up for miles along the highway, far away from the eventual exit to the ferry terminal. The left-hand lane, designated for traffic bypassing the terminal and heading for the village itself, was jammed with lane crashers and several stubborn vehicles, refusing the interloper’s aggressive attempts to cut in, looked ready to engage in fist fights. There was no traffic control personnel assigned to smooth the onslaught; it was literally every man, woman and child for themselves.I showed up at the normal time to claim my reservation, itself hard won by constantly refreshing the reservation site until an opportunity presented itself, braved the Mad Max approach to the terminal, only to be told I had to leave and come back an hour later (another run of the gauntlet!) because the boats were very late and there was nowhere to put any arrivals. Again, the technology allows for anyone with a reservation to receive a notification indicating this, which would have saved a lot of headaches and arguments, not to mention alleviating the crush on the highway.Thankfully I had only a minimal amount of food with me: a bag of brown basmati, a dozen mini cukes and 8 nectarines, not enough to spoil but more than many unprepared others. Waiting for my boat to come in, I fell upon an entrepreneurial inspiration. All these other folks waiting are probably getting peckish so I could use a random empty container in my trunk and cook the rice on the heat of the engine block, then bite off little bits of cucumber and nectarine and delicately spit it into the steaming rice, then offer it, for a fee, to those who didn’t have the presence of mind to travel with a bag of rice and some produce. Genius!Despite the distraction of genius, the two cups of coffee my generous hosts had provided were beginning to beg for release and the only facilities in sight were Porta-potties, also steaming in the sun. No way, I couldn’t do it, it’s too awful to contemplate, nope, nuh uh. Suddenly an update on the website: my sailing was now expected to depart in one hour and 40 minutes. My heart sank to my bladder; no way I can last that long. Porta-potty coming up. And yes, it was everything I had dreamed it would be. Enough said. No photos were taken.Seriously, though, this situation is quite likely to reoccur with more frequency as the BC Ferries fleet ages and the volume of traffic to and from the Sunshine Coast continues to build. We’ve been discovered, God help us.My plan is to fill an old purse or satchel with the necessities I didn’t have on my person when I was forced to stay over. Perhaps this list will help you create your own go-bag that will live in the trunk of the car:* medications* underwear* toothbrush and paste* water* knife (for the nectarines)* 8 volt converter and small air fryer (you never know)* moisturizer* wet wipes* TP* handcuffs and/or taser* $1000 in unmarked bills* energy barsUntil next time, enjoy the scenery; it’s yours for an indeterminate number of sailing waits.Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Please consider this list:* A movie/restaurant/book which didn’t live up to the hype* A conversation with a friend which was disturbingly unsatisfying* ChristmasNo doubt you’ve experienced all those disappointments, as have I, and my theory is it’s all due to expectations. We all do it and have it done for us: movies, restaurants and books are talked up by friends, online chats and reviews; our history with a particular person leads us to expect the relationship will always be as fulfilling, as wonderful, as it was in the beginning or even middle; and Christmas, well enough said.This is not to say we shouldn’t be optimistic and look forward to things, but when we do, it’s probably good practice to recognize the expectations we have and assess if they are realistic, optimistic, or flat out unattainable. Managing our own expectations, and those of others, is an enormous task but it’s pretty big in the world of big deals.Here are just a few examples and I’m sure you can come up with dozens more.Starting with job interviews where your resume and/or background check establishes expectations on the part of the interviewers. I had a British client many years ago who wanted to relocate from Toronto to Vancouver. He had an impressive resume but when we met in person it became glaringly obvious what was happening. He had that lovely, plummy accent and wore the full banker pin-striped, three piece suit, de rigeur in those days in Toronto but always a little too-too here on the left coast. The overwhelming response he had been receiving is that he was overqualified, even if he wasn’t, and that he would accept a better offer immediately. In his case the resume was what it was and the accent was indelible, but the wardrobe was doing a lot of the storytelling on his behalf, and not to his benefit.Sometimes your success before a live audience, or a potential new client, can be made or broken by how you are introduced, which sets certain expectations. There are so many ways an introduction can go wrong, from the MC stealing your opening line, to one who reads your entire resume verbatim, to the one who oversells your impact on the audience. You’ll laugh ‘til you choke. Ohkaaaay…Judee Burgoon’s Expectations Violations Theory looks at how people react to violations of social norms and their own expectations. In a nutshell, violations cause arousal which forces cognitive appraisal. EVT says violations can work for you when they exceed low or moderate expectations, rather than simply meeting a high one (leave while they still want you to stay). Some people can get away with farting on stage, if they are perceived to have status or expertise which somehow balances it out. (Burgoon didn’t say that, I did.) In the case of the job interview, the same answer or statement can come across as confidence or arrogance, depending on the baseline expectation the interviewer came in with.There are numerous quotes about first impressions but the most on-the-nose ones rely on the impact of managing expectations. If your appearance or wardrobe is a mismatch to that of a new contact, it will potentially dig a hole from which you will have to climb, or a hill from which you’ll have to descend.Swiped out, rejection sucks. What could be more horrific, in terms of setting unrealistic expectations, than dating apps? Do we really have to go there? If you’ll allow, I’ll just dip your toe in with this summary of a multi author piece out of Austria which looked at the gap between dating app users’ expectations and outcomes. Not surprisingly they found that when the gap looked to be small, excitement and eagerness followed but when the gap was bigger, frustration and disappointment followed, in terms of subsequent behaviour on the app. Swiping “no” repeatedly until, finally, someone with potential appears and you swipe “yes”, only to have your hopes dashed when they don’t reciprocate.They also noted that the gamified swiping turns the quest for romance into an online loops of micro rewards and rapid crashes, resulting in emotional depletion. How many times have you heard a friend say, I am getting off this app, it is killing me! The equation in this post’s title isn’t mine. It belongs to David Maister who coined it in his 1985 paper, “The Psychology of Waiting Lines”.He concludes that when we expect a certain level of service and get more than we expected, our satisfaction is greater but if we get the exact same level of service when we expected more, our satisfaction is diminished. In other words, the product is the same, it’s how we went into the experience that changes how it turns out. The product isn’t better or worse by any measure, it’s only better or worse relative to what you expected or were told to expect, hence the management of expectation for, and by, others.He cites one study where a hotel was receiving complaints the the elevators were too slow. Without changing the elevators one bit, the hotel instead installed mirrors on the walls beside the elevator doors. People inevitably checked their hair and teeth, making the wait seem much shorter. Complaints trailed off.Dr. Jason Fung had a post just a day ago, about the viscosity of food determining how full people feel and how it helps them stop overeating. One of the studies he cited told some people in advance that the liquid they were going to drink would turn to jelly in their stomachs and the other group that it would remain as liquid. The group that expected the jelly feeling ate far less pizza in their next monitored meal so expectations even affect the physical sense of fullness.Maister also writes about the restaurant experience, especially how long you wait to be seated. Bottom line is you can spend all kinds of effort improving service times or you can tell a little fib about the length of the expected wait. When people are seated earlier than they were told to expect, they’re already happy. When it’s the other way around the server is already playing catch up, which rarely turns out well.There is, however, a moment of power when a customer is disappointed or even angered. Let’s say the kitchen completely overcooked an expensive cut of meat, rendering it unpalatable to the one who ordered it. If the server responds in an immediate and positive way, that customer will go away happier THAN IF THE PROBLEM HAD NEVER OCCURRED. So, how you respond to dashed expectations can change the equation. The new equation is really the same one, repeated. (S=P-E) x 2. The second time is about the expectation of how a complaint gets handled which, let’s face it, is brutally low for most of us (defensiveness, a comped drink or a shrug) so anything beyond a sullen redo is more positive. It’s actually got a name: the service recovery paradox, not discovered by my daughter in her food service days, but certainly experienced by her. One caveat though, service recovery can beat perfection but only for small things. Had that steak made someone hospital level ill, apologizing and offering a new one won’t cut it.9-1-1, what’s your emergency? In emergency services, it’s a well-known phenomenon that response time is in the eye of the beholder. People simply don’t believe the fire/police/ambulance arrived within 4 minutes because for them, waiting for help felt like an eternity. The time is exactly what it measurably is, but once again, the perception changes it. When it comes to expectations of response time, that comes straight from television medical and police/fire series.And here’s another interesting twist. In 2004 the term, CSI effect was invented, describing artificial expectations of what forensic science could deliver. Rather than getting DNA analysis within a one-hour show time, DNA results from the RCMP’s 6 labs in Canada could take weeks or months. Ironically, the RCMP itself set a performance standard of 15 days for so-called standard requests and no more than 30 days for routine ones. Go figure what the difference is between standard and routine, I don’t speak Mountie fluently.Former RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli told a Parliamentary committee in 2004 that DNA analysis for major cases was being completed within 15 days. I beg to differ, said the Auditor General, who found the real numbers: DNA analysis was taking 91 days on average in 2004 and was even longer (114 days) by 2005-6. Fewer than 1 percent of DNA samples were being processed within the two-week target, leading to countless judicial travesties.In Newfoundland, a hugely pregnant woman testified for three hours over two days, recounting being raped and threated by a former intimate partner. Three years after the arrest, the judge stayed the charges because of delays in the disclosure of forensic evidence.In a rural Alberta case, a homeowner was charged with shooting at a trespasser, and the Crown told the court it could take eight to twelve months just to get a ballistics report back from the RCMP lab. Dismissed.Ten bucks for every A on your report card As a parent, we always want to motivate our kids to live up to their potential and I’ve heard all manner of creative ways of attempting that. The research says a parent who affirms their child’s competence and supports their skill development will get better results than one who promises rewards contingent on outcomes and compliance. When you ask teenagers, they will anecdotally tell you that they perceive parents’ behaviour differently than do their parents, especially when it comes to expectations. Shocker (sic).In one study, kids in 200 urban schools in the US were either paid to read books, rewarded for test performance or rewarded for final grades. It found the impact of financial incentives was barely more than zero in all cases. The only one that moved the needle even a teeny bit was paying kids for reading books, tying the reward to a behaviour rather than an outcome, but even that was hardly worth a statistical mention.Red or White? One of the favourite studies which my late colleague, David McPhillips and I trotted out in our persuasion course, is what I consistently and incorrectly referred to as the Stanford wine experiment. (It was Stanford and Caltech.) In this clever bit of research, people were recruited to taste wine while connected to an fMRI, a functional MRI which measures activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of your brain that lets you experience pleasure.They told the drinkers they would be tasting wines which varied from $5 to $90 per bottle when, in fact, it was all the same wine in variously labelled bottles. Amazingly, though, the fMRI measured greater mOFC activity when drinking the “higher priced” vintage, showing that the actual enjoyment was greater, not just the stated opinion, again based on an expectation that a $90 bottle would be better than a $5 bottle, something you’d probably expect as well. One of the authors of the study, Baba Shiv, wrote, “What we document is that price is not just about inferences of quality, but it can actually affect real quality... it is changing people’s experiences with a product and, therefore, the outcomes from consuming this product.”If you can’t get no satisfaction, maybe it’s your expectations getting in the way of your medial orbitofrontal cortex.Satisfaction isn’t a function of absolute quality of a service, product or experience, then, but rather the size of the gap between expectation and perceived delivery. One could argue that not expecting much of a cheap bottle of wine will probably be an easier to swallow experience than paying top dollar for one where you can’t quite taste the price.I know you’re all expecting to see Jagger, but your expectations will not be met here, possibly leading to disappointment and dissatisfaction. Sorry. A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest, after all.Until next time, ask yourself lie la lie, lie la lie, lie, lie, lie, lie. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

There are very few experiences we enter without expectations of some kind. What those expectations are makes a huge difference to how that experience lands. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

We all believe emergency services will be at our door in our moment of need and for the most part, they are. But when the need is massive and the devastation widespread, you won’t see help for days, weeks and maybe longer. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

In this piece you’ll hear from three people about their different experiences of the sibling surprise! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

When I forgot to take my phone on an out of town trip, it gave me time and space to ponder how I use it, and it me! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

No doubt many of you, if not most, have had a dream of falling. “They” say that if you actually land in your dream, hit the ground in a messy and fatal way, you’re destined to die, which is a pretty safe bet eventually. In reality, most of us wake up before we have to put that adage to the imminent test. I’m happy with that. Similarly, those super scary dreams where you’re being chased by a zombie, psychotic killer, chain-saw wielding doll come-to-life, wild animal, and you wake before being dismembered and eaten? All good.Where I part company with the sudden awakening from a dream is where you are in a clinch, as no one says anymore, with an object of your deepest desires and things are getting steamy and squirmy good. But then baam! Before the happy event can unfold as you so wish it would, you’re awake and breathing heavily, to no avail. Sorry, Jeremy Allen White; maybe next time.As Tom Jones so succinctly put it in a recent post, why, why, why??? Well, guess what! There are hundreds of people all prepared to tell you why, although not specifically about the sex dreams; they tend to focus on all the others. I, however, will break new philosophical ground with my own hypothesis and you are all here for it.There is no shortage of research into, and theories about, why we sleep. Adjacent to it is theory about the purpose of dreams. We know, for example, that 70 percent of our dreams occur in colour but don’t know why, or why the rest are monochromatic. We know most vividly recalled dreams are the ones which happen just before waking and we know REM and non-REM sleep has very different patterns of activity in the brain.We also know dreams are like disconnected short stories, rather than chapters in a book, but we don’t know why we go back to that high-school hallway not wearing any pants, over and over again. No doubt it’s a state of anxiety which has rooted itself in a particular time and place where one could, literally, die of embarrassment.But what is it all for? Antti Revonsuo, in a 2000 paper, speculates that high-stakes dreams might serve as rehearsals or threat simulations. His notion is that dreams serve a biological function in evolutionary psychology. The same might be said of sexual encounters, sort of an undressed rehearsal.18 years later, G. William Domhoff very politely took the Swede to the cleaners, looked at that theory and largely disproved it noting that the frequency of dreams which feature deceased loved ones obviously has no anticipatory or rehearsal value, and that there is no evidence of implicit learning or learning transfer from what is experienced or witnessed in dreams. He also debunked the notion that young children learn new skills through their dreams by documenting that children’s dreams don’t reach adult proportions until age 9 - 11.Domhoff was much more persuaded by the neurocognitive theory of dreaming which studied dream journals but also brain damaged people whose REM patterns changed dramatically. Many of them stopped dreaming altogether.The neurocognitive theory says that dreams are a kind of unconscious mind-wandering rooted in our waking wishes, concerns and realities. He notes, wryly, that virtually no one dreams about the larger political landscape, pipeline routes and construction, or tariffs, but rather sticks to what is familiar: cooking and eating, going to work and, most frequently, interactions with loved ones who are gone. Sexual dreams comprised less than 8% in his study. Colour me surprised.Freud, of course Freud, theorized that wish-fulfillment in dreams is deliberately incomplete, that our own brains censor the desire without delivering on it. I don’t know that our unconscious is quite that PG14 focused, nor does it care about the ethical parameters of those who sleep and dream but thank you, Sigmund, for once again beating us with the naughty stick. Dream researchers who have looked at the incomplete action phenomenon posit that high-arousal scenarios which truncate before climax, have a built-in escape hatch. In other words the arousal itself causes you to wake up. You/I wake because the tension is peaking, and not after it resolves. Damn.Ernest Hartmann’s book Dreams and Nightmares (1998) speaks to something he calls the “contextualizing emotion”, the idea that dreams are built around emotions and not narratives so the emotion is simply to be felt rather than the story needing to be completed.Last year’s Sleep Study looked specifically at sexual dreams as a relatively mysterious aspect, but they didn’t get around to looking at the unfinished business dimension. Ironic.Sexual dreams represent an underexplored dimension of human consciousness [1]-[7]. Although dreams in general have received extensive psychological study, comparatively little is known about their sexual forms—how often they occur, what they contain, and how they relate to emotional and physical well-being [1]-[7]. Dreams provide a rich source of insight into our deepest thoughts, fears, and desires [1] [2] [10]-[17]. Sexual dreams, in particular, may reflect one’s psychological state, emotional needs, and societal influences [1] [2] [10]-[17]. ].Michael Schredl’s study of erotic dreams essentially says that your dreams reflect your waking life preoccupations. He found men dream erotically more often than women, and that the frequency of erotic dreams decline as we age. No overview of this topic would be complete without wet dreams. Alfred Kinsey’s mid-century surveys found orgasm during sleep, what he termed “nocturnal dreams to climax,” was common, especially in younger people. This means the story does complete sometimes, not necessarily connected to an erotic dream but is, rather, physiological at the source. A more recent study (1983) focused on lucid dreaming, where some people are aware they are dreaming but experience the dream nonetheless. They wanted to see if sexual activity during REM lucid dreaming would show up in physiological responses they could test, such as EEG, respiration, heart rate and vaginal pulse amplitude. No idea what that is but hope mine is in range. Sure enough, the body responded to the dream inputs BUT this was in the case of lucid dreaming, not something most people experience.Other studies have tallied up sexual dreams with physical arousal: although full or partial erections occur in 80–95% of REM periods, (depending on age and other factors) only 12% of men’s dreams contain sexual content. It’s certainly not a straight-line correlation, even more mysterious. Bottom line: my question of why sexual dreams fall short of completion does not have a dedicated research stream. If it did there are contributions to be made by the physiologists studying REM sleep and bodily indicators, and the neurologists who claim dreams are just an extension of what we think about while awake.It would appear to me that the body does what it does in the night and the brain picks up on those subtle cues and turns them into full-fledged dream experiences, but it also pulls the rug out at the most inopportune moment. If it’s about feeling the experience rather than completing the narrative, we’ve all got a shelf of sexy books with the last chapter torn out.On the other hand, so much of pleasure is about anticipation so maybe we’re getting exactly what we need. The brain is a tease, specializing in staging desire and not satisfying it. I would love to know what you think and what you’ve experienced. So many possibilities for musical selections but I couldn’t subject you to the largely 80s hair and outfits so opted to go back further to a classier era.Until next time, sweet dreams! Don’t fall. And if you do, don’t land.PS — Substack has added an annoying AI purity test so you can tell who is writing their own posts. The tool they’ve chosen has been proven to be easily misled so it’s hardly reliable, but for what it’s worth, here’s what I found when I ran my post through the grinder.Such a relief to know I’m fully human; sometimes I do wonder.Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

I took a look at various areas where we are neither penny wise nor pound wise. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

D-Lilly, as everyone called her, had always been a secretive child. Oh, she did her work on the farm to her daddy’s satisfaction, but when she was done, she had a habit of disappearing like smoke, only reappearing long after the rest of the family had gone to bed. She seemed to survive on very little sleep, even as a teenager. Especially as a teenager.What socializing she did was as the only girl in a gang of boys: her brother, Sam and his friends, Mac, Andy and Trev. When money could be found they went into town to the afternoon movies where one of the guys dropped a frog down the back of her shirt. At first, she was furious but relented when she saw who had made the deposit. Mac was her favourite of all her brother’s friends and, even though he was a few years older, she entertained fantasies of them becoming a couple.As summer turned to fall, D-Lilly found excuses to cross his path, riding her bike past the sawmill at shift change, staying alert to any indication her brother and his gang were about to go somewhere and do something to which she could attach herself.It was after one of their beer league ball games, that Mac stormed off the field without waiting for the others. Wordlessly he walked to his car, and she followed, getting in and slamming the door just as he fired up the engine and burned out of the lot. She didn’t ask why he wasn’t waiting for the others, she didn’t care what the plan was; she was stunned and elated and that was quite good enough for the moment.Their relationship didn’t ever get out of that car. She never knew where it would go but got in anyway.She was 18 when, on the 3rd of June, at the dinner table, her mother dropped the bomb. Mac had committed suicide and no one knew why. The bile rose to her throat and she had to breathe it down because she was pretty sure she knew why and she also knew she could never tell. She kept the secret for the rest of her abbreviated life.It wasn’t even a year later that her brother married Becky, who was ambitious where he wasn’t, and they bought a store a few hours away. D-Lilly stayed on the farm until her daddy died of an aggressive virus that was making the rounds, and her mother became a hollow shell.By then her brother’s old friend Andy had lured Sam and Becky to Georgia where he’d started a small scale residential land development company and needed people he could trust to work with him on it.D-Lilly had no compelling reason to stay home so she agreed to join the team and learn the business.They were all amazed when the business took off and Andy, as its president and CEO, became something of a local celebrity, becoming the darling of what passed for power in the community. There was talk of him running for Police Chief when the current one retired and, in fact, the Chief had already endorsed him as successor. He had loads of connections, but very few friends.Things were going swimmingly but D-Lilly had a niggling sense that there were currents running under the surface which were unsettling and dark. She noticed that little old Becky from the farm country had turned into an aggressive salesperson with a killer wardrobe and a real ambitious edge. At the same time, her go-along to get-along brother, Sam, seemed content to work away behind the scenes, avoiding business networking events and most community get togethers. She tried to talk to Sam about her concerns, but Sam always shrugged his shoulders and made some noncommittal remark about people having their own ways of doing things. Mind you, he did have a habit of taking the gun his daddy had left him and heading out into the hills for some target practice. Sometimes he’d be gone for a week or more.D-Lilly couldn’t leave it alone. She felt her brother needed her protection, that he was a little too innocent to function in this foreign environment. Nothing they had grown up with had prepared him for the competing agenda and treacherous dynamics. Somehow her painful life lessons proved more useful, as did her secretive nature.It didn’t take her long to catch Andy and Becky in the act, confirming what she had long suspected. She knew by now there was no point in talking to Sam; he’d find some way to wash the whole thing, swallow his pain and his pride, and keep on going.She had done difficult things, awful things, before, so the decision to do away with Becky and Andy wasn’t much of a stretch. She caught Becky coming out of the motel a half hour after Andy had left, and disposed of her without any difficulty. What she didn’t count on, when she left Andy lying in a puddle of blood in his own kitchen, was her brother deciding this was the night to confront Andy about the rumours.And that’s when things went horribly wrong.Sam discovered Andy’s body, panicked and fired off his gun to alert the authorities. The house phone had long since been disconnected after one too many prank calls.As is often the case in Southern Gothic, neither the Sheriff nor the Judge had clean hands and Sam was arrested, tried and convicted in short order, and without any semblance of due process. And, as is customary, he was promptly hanged.D-Lilly went off the rails at this point and fled to the city where she immediately married a completely inappropriate hard drinker from Wales. How she met him is anyone’s guess but the blush was off the rose pretty quickly. To be fair, it was mostly her fault and he didn’t have the emotional capacity to deal with her rage and incomprehensible grief. She sought solace in a variety of unsavoury encounters, all of them physical or chemically induced. With an abundance of disregard, she began bringing them home. This was too much for her Welshman who, coming home in his cups one evening, spied D-Lilly with her latest paramour, through a window. He waited, and he drank, and he waited until she was finally alone.When the police arrived to inspect her body, with its numerous stab wounds, they found him cradling her, crying, “Why, why, why?” He never did learn the whole story but now you know.And if you don’t know, you’d best click on the videos.Until next time, watch out for Old Testament temptresses, cheaters and crooked law enforcement.Thanks for reading Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

This is a little departure from my usual offering. It’s a crossword puzzle, clue and easter egg kinda thing. I hope you enjoy it and enjoy solving it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

The sad fact for women being tormented by their partners is that the police and the courts haven’t taken them seriously unless they had physical injuries. It’s slow but things are gradually changing. Not soon enough for thousands of women in the thick of it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

I started out as a broadcast news reporter, first in radio and then in television and strangely, after all this time, I’m going back to those roots. Here’s how I got here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Initial reports of another ferry shutdown were met with the usual shrugs and sighs of resignation by those of us who must rely on the system, much to our frequent disappointments. As the day unfolded and more and more sailings were cancelled, rumours swirled and finally solidified. Someone was balanced on the railing of the boat which had docked and unloaded earlier, and it was looking more and more like a public suicide attempt. After a 7 hour stand-off, the distraught male asked for a Coke and when negotiators rolled it across the deck to him, and he reached for it, they tasered him, and took him down, presumably to hospital.Why do some people choose highly public places to end their lives while others retreat to their homes or various non-public places? A 2024 Australian study dissected 42,656 suicides which had occurred over 17 years. Without belabouring the details of what was deemed public versus private space, the study found one quarter of all suicides occurred in public places, almost 70% at home and 5.4% in inpatient wards or correctional facilities. Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.What’s also interesting is the comparison of death by suicide against attempted suicides. Public locations tend to be great heights, train or subway tracks, or other high fatality choices so the proportion of “successful” public suicides is higher. Most public suicide locations are high-lethality but also present the opportunity for public intervention, official or otherwise. Jumping from great heights such as the Golden Gate bridge, or other tall structures, accounts for fewer than 10% of total suicides globally although that increases to 24% in New York, 45% in Hong Kong, 60% in Singapore and 70% in San Francisco, thanks to the bridge.In 1978, Richard Seiden conducted an important study of 515 people who were physically restrained from jumping off the Golden Gate between 1937 and 1971, and found that roughly 94% had not died by suicide at follow-up. Despite this, all attempts to target harden the bridge failed because the thinking continued to be, “they’ll just go somewhere else”. In fact, they didn’t go somewhere else, nor did the vast majority commit suicide.Many years went by before netting was installed around the Golden Gate in 2024 and the results are pretty compelling. Since the bridge opened in 1937, it averaged about 30 deaths by suicide per year. Since the net was installed two years ago, there have been only 12.The word, net, implies something fun and bouncy but it’s determinedly not. The design is an intentional deterrent on multiple levels. It’s marine-grade stainless steel, very taut and tightly woven — the bridge’s General Manager described it as “jumping onto a cheese grater.” The bridge is one of those sites which draw people to carry out, or attempt, their suicide and that contagion aspect is well documented. But researchers like David Lester write about a symbolic dimension: certain sites carry cultural weight as thresholds, liminal spaces between one state and another. A ferry is the connection between two shores, almost too on-the-nose.Is it a cry for help?The many people who study suicide, as a mental health issue, as a public health issue, and as a behavioural inspiration, have moved away from categorizing suicide attempts as either a cry for attention or a real attempt to end a life. They still say some acts are intrapsychic, intended to end real pain, and others are mostly interpersonal, aimed at being witnessed, heard or responded to. The difference is that most suicide attempts are both, with ambivalence being the common denominator.Thomas Joiner, whose own father committed suicide, has an Interpersonal Theory of Suicide which theorizes that suicidal desire arises from two converging states: thwarted belongingness (profound disconnection, the sense of being outside human community) and perceived burdensomeness (the belief that one’s death would benefit others). The capability for suicide — the acquired ability to override the self-preservation instinct — is a third element.Certainly the man on the BC ferry railing was demonstrating thwarted belonging by demanding witness to his disconnection. When he shut down a major transportation hub for seven hours, affecting hundreds of strangers, and commanding a full emergency response he finally became visible in a way he wasn’t before. Maybe. Where Joiner’s work becomes controversial is his estimate that 40% of the tendency to suicide is genetic, based on fear and pain processing, both of which are genetically predisposed.In an interview he said: The novel part of the model is trying to explain why it is that some people carry those thoughts forward into behavior. And there is where the third factor kicks in. That one has to do with what we've named The Capacity for Suicide. That capacity is made up of things like being fearless about death, being fearless about physical injury.Being fearless in general, just a fearless character, but also of things like pain tolerance. People have high pain tolerance or unafraid of physically painful things. And then a third aspect of that capacity idea has to do with practical knowledge. Do you know how to operate something like a weapon, for instance?Psychiatrist Erwin Stengel’s 1958 monograph Attempted Suicide: Its Social Significance and Effects is cited as the first to identify what he called the “appeal function” of suicidal behavior as a coherent psychiatric concept. He wrote: There is a social element in the pattern of most suicidal attempts. Once we look out for the element we find it without difficulty in most cases... In most attempted suicides we can discover an appeal to other human beings.And it turns out, some human beings do respond, and the response can be positive. A more recent study in the UK pursued interviews with people who had been talked “off the ledge” by a stranger, and those who had taken it upon themselves to intervene when they saw someone in crisis. What both groups reported was a profound sense of dissociation, being “in a bubble” while in the process of deciding to jump. A passerby becoming involved effectively burst the bubble and reconnected the person with the world.Here’s a bit from that study’s summary:This is the first empirical study to examine the role of passing strangers in preventing suicides in public places. It shows that no specialist skills are needed. Interveners were ordinary people, distinguished only by a high level of social awareness, combined with a readiness for social action. The findings also suggest that people do not need a script and should not be afraid of saying ‘the wrong thing.’ What interveners said was much less important than how they made the suicidal person feel, namely safe, connected and validated (‘I matter’). Interveners did this simply by being themselves, responding with authenticity, calmness and compassion.The strangers who intervened were the exception, sadly, and not the norm. Some years ago I reported on a “bridge jumper” as we called them in the newsroom, on the Ironworkers bridge in North Vancouver. Once police were on scene and traffic had come to a complete standstill, people came out of their cars and began cat-calling and exhorting the individual to jump.This behaviour even has a label, it’s called baiting behaviour or the “jump” phenomenon, studied by a guy named Leon Mann who listed the conditions under which crowds change from passive bystanders to active provocateurs. The crowd anonymity allows people to behave in ways they would not exhibit if they were alone.The UK intervention study also highlights an important cultural assumption. All our “Western” interventions, including engaging a stranger in distress, focus on the individual, that the person in distress wants to be seen as an individual seeking help and that connection to others is stabilizing and reassuring. In Eastern cultures identity is derived from social affiliations and responsibilities, collectivist compared to Western culture, which is characterized as individualistic. So shame and honour, and loss of face, is seen as a burden to the family or even the community. Like much research, including medical research into the effects of medication, some groups are most frequently studied, to the detriment of others who receive the medicine. For example, cardiac medication given to women which has been exclusively tested in men. Research literature now uses the acronym WEIRD — Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic — to describe the populations on which most psychology research, including suicidology, is based. As a result, the prevention strategies, and even the understanding of the motivations, may have very little to do with what goes in in different cultures. For example, Korea has the highest suicide rate among OECD countries, yet its research on suicidal behaviours has been described as primitive.A January 2026 paper in Frontiers in Psychiatry calls for a paradigm shift toward “cultural grounding”.From the introduction to the paper:Suicide represents one of the most pressing public health crises of our time, claiming over 700,000 lives annually (1). It is a global phenomenon that transcends borders, age groups, and socioeconomic strata, necessitating robust prevention strategies worldwide. However, a significant disparity exists in the global mental health landscape: while 77% of global suicides occur in low- and middle-income countries, the theoretical frameworks, assessment tools, and evidence-based interventions designed to prevent them are overwhelmingly products of high-income, Western societies (2, 3). This discrepancy raises important questions about the cross-cultural efficacy of standard prevention models when applied to populations with vastly different social ontologies.The East Asian region, which bears a heavy suicide burden, serves as a critical context for examining these challengesPrivate lethalityPeople who die in private, at home or office, alone, using methods which are highly lethal, show different profiles than the public attempts, and this information comes from what’s termed psychological autopsy, something we all indulge in after hearing about the self-inflicted death of someone we knew.Was there long standing depression, social withdrawal, previous planning or discussion with less ambivalence? What could we have done to prevent this tragedy? Another thinker in the field is Edwin Shneidman who coined the term psychache to describe unbearable psychological pain which leads to suicidal behaviour. The psychache is a symptom and there is no audience required because the goal is to end the pain, not communicate it.The response gapI started out wanting to understand what motivates public suicide attempts versus private ones. What I’ve found is that the distinction itself may be a cultural construct at its heart. Here in the west, private suicide is a determined act, even when there is some ambivalence (most self-poisonings are done in private but most don’t succeed), while in eastern societies public suicides are more determined, not as an attempt to connect but rather as a social statement. In both cases the audience is the point.The man on the railing at the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal and the man on a Korean bridge may both be in public, but they may be doing entirely different things.The uncomfortable question underneath all of this: what does it say about our mental health systems and community that someone must shut down a ferry terminal to receive seven hours of undivided attention? Private death wishes go largely unnoticed until it’s too late; the public act generates massive, costly, and ultimately clumsy responses. Neither outcome reflects a system that’s working.The crowd that shouts “just jump” is a third failure — the community response that actively withdraws the very witness and connection the person on the railing was seeking. If the man on the railing is asking for recognition that his life matters, that crowd behaviour comes as a resounding message that he matters less than does their inconvenience.For music today, here’s Rick Astley’s 1991 release of “A Cry for Help”.Until next time, don’t be the one who yells, “jump”; be the one who helps.Thanks for reading Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

What does it signify when people attempt suicide in the most public of settings and how is it different from the attempts done in private, away from those who might intervene? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

This is a little think piece anchored by lots of photos so the audio version lacks a little sumpin, sumpin, but you can always go back and check out the pix to put it all together.Thank you! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

He’s an award-winning Indigenous entrepreneur, a passionate proponent of the cyclical economy, a high-school dropout and recovering alcoholic, and disarmingly frank on all counts.Meet Aaron Joe.In the past year, Aaron has won a number of prestigious awards, from Indigenous organizations and also from Business in Vancouver and Ernst & Young.However.There is one accolade he received which wasn’t written up in the media, which wasn’t institutional recognition, which mattered a whole lot.That small story is a precise articulation of what intergenerational trauma repair actually looks like from the inside. Aaron’s growing up story isn’t unique amongst indigenous people in Canada. It’s archetypal. He was a mixed-heritage kid growing up on the rez in what was a noticeably racist town. 25 years ago, while evading capture by 4 police cars, he probably didn’t picture where he’d be at 50. Or if he did, it sure wasn’t “award winning entrepreneur and inspiration”. It was a different time.He refuses the victim frame without denying the injury. Victimhood, however, was a lesson learned at home.Operating in both worlds, he became a chameleon of sorts, passing as white in town and code-switching back to indigenous on the rez. That ability served him well and became a competitive advantage that shaped who he is as an entrepreneur.Aaron’s take is that a place at the economic table is worth more than any symbolic reconciliation, that the antidote to dependency or victimhood isn’t just willpower, it’s economic agency, equity and the dignity of a pay cheque.That’s not to say that starting a business isn’t fraught with pitfalls, particularly when you come from a place where business savvy isn’t assumed, and equity doesn’t exist. He’s particularly incensed by what he calls “The Indigenous Business”, buttressed by predatory consultants who step in to “help”, write grant applications and then keep 90% of the proceeds, perpetuating victimhood and making money off the backs of indigenous people who don’t understand the game.He started his business, Salish Soils, with his brother and his wife. Initially his brother was the only one getting paid. Today the business is a model of values-based production, where the company makes money off the inputs, compostable and green waste, and then makes money on the outputs as well. Salish Soils employs more than 30 people full time on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia and is a model which multiple communities are looking to as a way of managing our non-stop production of waste, while giving back to the land base.The company’s expansion is inevitable but Aaron is confident he’ll know when he’s grown enough. “It could be much larger, but I also love a quality of life. I like having a good life and right now, I’ve got that space.”Beyond being comfortable, he finds himself in a position of significant influence where it matters most to him: giving young people growing up on the rez, under the “ambition ceiling”, a tangible, close-to-home example of what’s possible.Advice? Sure, he’s got some.The musical selection today is what Aaron would choose as his “walk-on” song.Until next time, be in service to your family, your community and yourself. It’s just a shot away. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

This is a kitchen table interview and profile of someone who has evolved into an inspiration for his family, his community, and sometimes even himself. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

In this third act of life, many of us are looking to optimize: our health, our work, our time, our relationships. Too bad we couldn’t have done it sooner. I’m certainly not the only one who has come to significant insights into my health and wellness via a long and winding road of hits and misses. My kingdom for a map!That plea to the heavens was answered, recently, when I forked over a few hundred dollars in exchange for the mapping of a few hundred of my genes, specifically the ones I can best act upon. That doesn’t mean I can change them, but I can change how they show up in my life.I spoke with Dr. Lois Nahirney, President and CEO of dnaPower, about the technology and the doors it opens for taking charge of your own health.If you knew early in your life that you were gluten or lactose sensitive, or that your body didn’t absorb iron, or vitamin B, you could make adjustments, right? And even when your genes tell you a story you don’t want to hear, you can choose to make the most of the cards you’ve been dealt.The most high-profile example of this is Aussie superhero Chris Hemsworth (Thor) who discovered, through genetic testing, that he was 8 to 10 times more likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s than the average human. His grandfather has Alzheimer’s and his father was recently diagnosed.This doesn’t guarantee the train is coming down the track for him, but if it is, he can at least slow it down. He talks about this in his National Geographic series, Limitless and in a new documentary, A Road Trip to Remember.A decade ago, only 10 genes were definitely linked with Alzheimer’s but today there are more than 70 which may be associated. The APOE gene is the strongest indicator.“It was a good kick in the arse and a reminder to do whatever is in my power to give myself the best fighting chance,” said Hemsworth. “Whatever work I’m doing for my brain health benefits the rest of my body—we turned it into a positive.”By that he means he can take steps now, while he’s young, to delay any onset.If you have Alzheimer’s in your family, it doesn’t mean you will develop it although if you have a parent or sibling diagnosed your risk is higher. The APOE gene screen can tell you more but again, it’s a predisposition, not a prediction.Full disclosure, I’m such a fan of genetic testing and now wish it was part of a broader public health initiative. That might give a firm shove to the glacial pace at which governments and health care systems move towards prevention, rather than disease treatment.I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that I poured all the technical details of my map into AI and asked for an in-depth interpretation and it didn’t disappoint. 27 pages later I have a comprehensive document of what’s great, what to watch out for and what to avoid. This is information to share with your GP as they truly don’t have the time or background to wade through detailed genetic markers. That’s on you.Soon you’ll be able to get a full accounting of your gut microbiome and the DNA of the entities which inhabit it, as well as a cross-reference of your genes with the medications you have, or will have, prescribed. It’s a big step towards personalized medicine.Nahirney admits DNA can be scary, not just because of what you might find out, but also the privacy fears. The recent bankruptcy of 23andme, hot on the heels of a massive data breach, raises legitimate and pressing questions about the security of your DNA data. In that case the genetic data of nearly 7 million users was exposed, as was the admission that the aggregated data was already being sold to pharmaceutical companies. 320,000 Canadians were among those whose data was compromised.Nahirney says her company collects only a few hundred markers intended to put information in the hands of clients, rather than hundreds of thousands of markers to sell on the open market. She uses barcode-only lab processes and destroys your sample after it’s been read.Essentially, in Canada, you have to trust the company you’re sending your cheek swab to as there is little effective legislation to protect it once it’s in the mail.The current regulatory environment in this country relies on the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. It was passed in the early days of this millennium, well before direct-to-consumer genetic testing, social media data harvesting, and AI at scale. There was a move to modernize the legislation but it died on the order paper in January of 2025.My enthusiastic musical offering today is an old Neil Diamond song, made most popular by the Monkees. Here they are, in 1967, with “I’m a Believer”.Until next time, get your own roadmap. If you enjoyed this piece, please pass it along to others AND subscribe to get more from me on a weekly basis. I promise never more than that and sometimes, I might miss a week. Ooops. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Our flat in Warsaw is on the 5th floor and there’s no elevator. Pretty much the norm in the old buildings and a bonus glute workout which, after two days, we don’t even feel. And that sets the tone for much of my youngest daughter’s first visit to the city where I was born, where her grandparents endured the German occupation, then the Warsaw Uprising, and then the Soviet occupation. The story of our trip is a story of the unexpected bonus, particularly the relatives we had a chance to meet, or spend more time with, and the visceral reality of the places where our family experienced loss and trauma. Like most Eastern European countries, the past is never very far away in Poland. Plaques on buildings and set into sidewalks commemorate who, and how many, lived or died on this spot.For my daughter, who was called Iza by everyone she met, it wasn’t simply sightseeing; she was encountering family history, and her place in it, which opened up a new/old world.It was evident in her reaction to the Old Town, the narrow cobblestoned streets, the cafes and restaurants. It was also evident when we visited the Warsaw Uprising Museum, an immersive experience that made her grandfather’s childhood all too real. It was seeing an ancestor, Stanislaw Moniuszko’s statue in front of the Opera House and knowing our lineage comes from and through that of the “father of Polish opera”. It was there when we hunted down the buildings where my mother and her brother lived with their paternal aunts after their mother was killed in the first day of the bombardment of the city. The cathedral where my parents were married, despite it having no roof several years after the bombing of Warsaw.Here are Iza’s thoughts, looking back on how the trip landed for her.This trip showed me how deeply connected my family is to the country, my Dziadzia’s [grandfather] lasting impact from his contributions in the Warsaw Uprising, and the deep resilience of the Polish people. Many people in my life look at their connections to other countries from several generations away (grandparents or great grandparents) where for me, Poland feels so close as only one generation before me started their life there. For Dziadzia and the Warsaw Uprising, all my knowledge and experience came from seeking out books, research, and waiting for news articles to be published about Dziadzia. It still felt like it happened to someone distant to me, even though I knew it happened to Dziadzia. The Warsaw Uprising museum completely shifted this for me, especially staring at the funeral photo where I learned it was Dziadzia’s childhood friend laying in that grave. Afterwards, walking the streets where he did, visiting his university and the neighbourhood where him and Baba began their family really made it sink in for me. I always knew there was deep bravery, grit and resilience in my family yet being able to walk within it shifted something within me. Not to mention, meeting family that are building their lives in Poland and solidifying those family roots.As someone who has gone through many significant life changes, this trip really helped shift my mindset to recognizing just how precious life really is. I’ve found a new sense of purpose in my life and when things get difficult I remind myself- our family has been through harder. And I push through.Overall, I was able to connect to my history, my culture and my family in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Feeling such pride in my heritage, the strength of those before me, and pure gratitude.These were all threads that began to come together, when ancestral legacy and historical resonance became real, when relatives became people, when history is no longer a footnote but instead is the ground we walked on.The relatives themselves covered multiple generations, from my uncle in his 90s, to my cousins in their 50s, to Iza’s cousins in their teens, 20s and 30s. While the generations all have different perspectives on the past and present of Poland, they also shared traits common not only to Poles, but particularly to our family’s lineage. Despite years under Communist rule they are entrepreneurial, ambitious without being driven, and generous hosts.Poland keeps producing these people — rigorous, serious, doing important work, but also unwilling to be defined by it alone. Despite the upheavals of the contemporary world and despite the years of dark oppression, Poles have emerged to become one of Europe’s most robust economies. That’s no accident.This musical piece, from contemporary and popular Polish artist, Dawid Podsiadło. It’s called “mori” and what I like about the video is the empty streets and bridges of Warsaw, shot during COVID. He has his own YouTube channel if you’re interested. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

It’s one thing to study history, it’s another thing altogether to walk in its footsteps. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

We had some friends over for dinner the other week, just a last minute pot-luck casual kind of thing. The best kind, in my opinion. During the meal the question was floated: if your spouse were to die, would you remarry? Little did we know, as we discussed the issue, that we were replicating, in real time, decades of research.The women all vigorously said “absolutely not” and while the men said, “oh probably not”, it wasn’t nearly as convincing. And of course, there’s the gap between what you say you will do and what you will actually do when the circumstance is upon you.Between the ideaAnd the realityBetween the motionAnd the actFalls the Shadow — T. S. EliotThe challenge, as Eliot and studies bear out, is that there is a distinct gap between what we intend to do, say we intend to do, and what ultimately happens. We all know we’d like to be brave and stoic in the face of a terminal disease diagnosis and go bravely into the good night but will we, when the time comes?The circumstance of having your spouse die is, one hopes, remote and so it feels emotionally foreign. How then, can we even form an intention when we don’t know how we’ll feel, who and where we’ll be, when it occurs? In general we also imagine grief in the abstract. We expect to feel the loss of that person in our everyday life, the loneliness, the silent house. Women, it seems, also imagine the freedom, right there with the loss, and men may not entirely appreciate how much of their personal infrastructure is sustained by their wives. Sorry for the broad strokes or, as my Warsaw uncle puts it, “that was sewn with a pretty thick thread”.As you might imagine, the rationale for individual choices about remarriage relies on many varied factors including the potential co-mingling of assets which could, and does, go badly in many such circumstances. It’s pretty common to hear that the children, and even grandchildren, of the recently bereaved take huge exception to any new relationship which might intrude on the estate. This isn’t always selfish but rather a need to protect the widow/er from being pillaged.Other concerns hinge on the feeling that the deceased spouse would be, in some way, betrayed by a new relationship, assuming affection was still extant at TOD. Then there’s the thorny challenge of having to meet someone new before any kind of subsequent relationship can even occur.Naturally, I wanted to know what the stats say, as compared to our highly unscientific dinner table data. And, I wanted to canvas my friends and colleagues, of various ages, to see if I could get a sense of the differences across age and gender.Here’s what I found, with the statistical research first:Without allowing for age brackets, Wikipedia says more than 60% of men, and less than 20% of women are remarried or re-paired within two years of being widowed. Within that window, men remarry almost twice as quickly. That gap is even wider as you get older with widowed older men remarrying almost five times more than women do and cohabiting more than twice as much. Sounds like a lot but it’s a percentage of a very small subset. 94% of women remain single after the death of a spouse compared to 75% of men. In other words, most of us will not remarry and very few of us ( A year and half after bereavement, 15% of widows and 37% of widowers over 65) are even interested in dating.As we heard at the dinner table, it’s not just the act of remarrying, it’s the desire or intent that varies.30% of men say they’re interested in a new spouse within the first six months of their last one dying. That compares to 16% of women. Within that first six months, 15% of those men are actively dating. Less than 1% of women are.Statistics Canada reports women aged 55 and up have more exposure to remarriage as they live longer than men on average, but still have significantly lower rates of remarriage. In Canada in 2022, there were 1.59 million widowed women versus 472,170 widowed men so the fishing pond is not evenly stocked.In this country, twice as many widows and widowers remarry than simply live together. Strangely, that’s reversed in Quebec.The average age for these Canadian brides was 63.4 (in 2008) and 72 for the grooms.There’s a saying that “women grieve while men replace” but that wasn’t what I was hearing from my circle, nor does the research necessarily support it. Widows grieve, but not forever. They often come to value freedom they may not have enjoyed earlier, and sometimes they are released from caregiving duties and in no way interested in taking those on with someone new. Especially someone new who’s old.Men, on the other hand, are not driven so much by loneliness as by the need for social and domestic support, particularly amongst men who don’t have a tight circle of friends. The more friends a man has, the less he needs a new wife, basically. It comes as absolutely no surprise that the older you are, the probability of remarriage falls but the drop is much steeper for women. The ground falls away for men around age 65, for women, say goodbye to the fairytale ending at age 55.Pretty much the entire global population shows the same patterns and the same gap over age and gender. No doubt there are some pockets which buck the trend but I’ve yet to discover them. Atlantis maybe?I wanted to canvas my friends and colleagues, of various ages, to see if I could get a sense of the differences across age and gender.I’m absurdly grateful to those of my friends who sent me thoughtful responses. Some of them were, or currently are, in exactly the post-death period, tentatively dipping a toe into the dating pool, only to find the water is slimy and full of disgusting creatures that defy categorization. Others are in the anticipation boat, pushing off into the unknown.A young friend, with young children, explained why I might not have heard from all the other young marrieds I canvassed.I can’t even bring myself to imagine losing my husband with my children so young. Their loss brings me to my knees. With any luck the chances of being widowed are so far in the future that I might be able to think about it, but right now I just can’t.For those in middle age and up, dating is part of the pragmatic side of the situation; the emotional side is much more nuanced:First I have had to get to a space where I am actually ready to wrap my mind around dating someone else. After 3.5 years, I am finally getting there. Until then it has felt like a big no. The thought of dating is tough. Then the thought of finding someone who can show the respect that my husband had for women. Super tough. And a biggie for me. I know I should not try to replace him but he was such an amazing partner and person, he is a really tough act to follow.Regarding the question of marriage, I think it relates to age. If I do actually meet someone, I don’t think I would want to get married. I am not even sure if I would want to live together. Why would I need to? Seeing them a few times a week would be plenty I would think. I like my space. Also, if you did decide to live together, whose place would it be?Also with marriage, there is the financial aspect. I am not interested in sorting that out. I have adult kids and grandkids, and a sister, who will be needing my monies — lol.Remarriage if necessary, but not necessarily remarriage.Never again. I have a cardinal rule …..no co-mingling; not bank accounts, property, credit cards, family and space (closet, bathroom and desk).Only fun, good times, great conversation and thoughtful, caring consideration.Back to displacement theory, for a minute.I look at it from the other end; how would I feel about being dead and having someone new move into my house, use the dishes I chose and sleep in my bed with my husband? Irrational for sure but it’s the way I think about the what-if time, after.Women of a certain age all expressed a concern that anyone they connected with now would likely need caretaking, whether they’re explicitly looking for it or not.There has always been a part of me that felt I wasn’t complete unless I had someone with whom to share my life. That’s no longer the case. I’ve decided the negatives outweigh the positives. Any man who comes into my life now is going to be looking for someone to take care of him. It never seems to be an even playing field, at least in my experience. After my last relationship, my kids questioned why I felt the need to ‘take on’ men. They have told me I’m great on my own, and I’m actually beginning to believe that!Men who have been widowed have different comments about their choices.I know what it is like to lose a spouse of many years and there is a tumble that can lead to deeper loss or somehow a new awakening.For me after about a year and a few early relationships I recognized that I wanted deeper and richer relationships. I spent a lot of time reflecting on the future. What did I want? That emerged fairly quickly for me. Less than one year. I think it bubbled to the surface because of the relationship I had with my wife. One thought that emerged was not to remarry. My commitment is my bond. I had married and felt that if I were to make a commitment to another woman, I did not need a ritual sanctified by the state or church to bless my relationship. I would also have very clear expectations about what I wanted out of a new relationship and would not jump back into a cohabitation arrangement without knowing someone more deeply.I seem to recall four requirements. One, the new partner needed to be intellectually strong, two physically active, three attractive but not a beauty queen with only Gucci clothing; and finally, financially sound. BTW I did not get everything.Another male friend, who lost his wife to cancer when they were in their late 40s, demurs at my recollection of his phone ringing off the wall from would-be partners, in the year following his wife’s death. He does admit, however, that he already had a large circle of single friends and met other singles courtesy of well-intentioned friends who didn’t want to see him alone for too long. At first I thought, oh man, this doesn’t feel right. There were a lot of emotions around it [dating]. I hadn’t closed the door on another long term relationship, lots of guys do, but honestly, I didn’t expect to meet someone just right. When I did, she was ten years younger with young kids and I thought, am I crazy?My dad died when I was 14 and my mom was 47. She began dating what felt like pretty soon after and I asked her why she felt she had to get married again. She was born in the 20s, had never worked and told me she felt she simply had to have a man to look after.A recently widowed female friend has begun dating, with huge reservations.When I fell so madly in love with [my husband] I had no idea how much the loss of him would cost me. The pain has been equal to the love. I wouldn’t want to remarry without that degree of love but fuck me that is scary. I was already an avoidant so add to that a gaping hole in me and it is terrifying to consider doing that again. My girlfriend asked me, “did it not hurt enough the first time”?Some days when I am very lonely, hooking up with a long term partner feels like the solution. This always worries me because another person is never the solution. What no one mentioned, in all my field and scientific research, was the possibility of your late spouse haunting your days so please, enjoy this scene from the 1945 film of the Noel Coward play, “Blithe Spirit”.Poor Ruth, indeed. Until next time, remember what Joni told us: you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.Thanks for reading Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Your chances of remarriage are already slim, especially if you're a woman. And is that such a bad thing? I mean..... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Each time I’ve been to Auschwitz, the impact of the concentration and extermination camp has been crippling.Except this last time, in March of 2026. The Auschwitz-Birkenau museum and memorial has been undergoing expensive conservation efforts, partly to shore up buildings in danger of simply crumbling under their own weight, and partly to address what curators call new approaches to telling the old stories. The stories of 1.1 - 1.5 million people, from all over Europe, who were murdered or died of starvation, disease and exhaustion.In an Associated Press article about the newly opened displays, from last December, you find this:“Witnesses are passing away, the world is changing, technologies are changing, and new generations are emerging, requiring a new approach to the subject,” Andrzej Kacorzyk, the deputy director of the Auschwitz museum, told The Associated Press. “Hence the need to portray humanity, the need to portray this individual fate.”And that’s where the tactics have lost sight of the strategic objective. And no amount of good intentions fully survives the transition from ruin to institution.From the perspective of someone who has visited Auschwitz five times over the past few decades, I now see the inherent paradox in the undertaking of memorialization.When I first visited, shorts and other “beach wear” were forbidden, as was any recording or photography. We were reminded that this was not a display, it was a cemetery. Mind you, there were no cell phones then, so we were not distracted by someone taking a selfie beneath the Arbeit Macht Frei entry gate, or calling a friend to schedule lunch while strolling the paths between the Death Block (#11) and Blocks 5 and 6 which contain enormous bins of hair, shoes, prosthetic devices and luggage taken from victims.Even a decade ago, when I visited Auschwitz with one of my daughters, she didn’t sleep for several nights after the tour, so horrified was she to be walking the same ground, and floors, as so many condemned others. The daughter I visited with this year was shaken, but not to the same degree. I had been concerned about her sensitivity to the brutality which so affected her normally more stoic sibling, but it didn’t happen. And I wanted to figure out why.Where once were peeling painted hallways, roughly plastered with photos of prisoners and their documentation, today the blocks are masterpieces of architectural intervention and climate controlled displays. Today, the insides of those original Auschwitz “blocks”, look more like art galleries with tasteful lighting and meticulous arrangements.It’s totally understandable that crumbling buildings, especially these crumbling buildings, must be preserved, and conservation measures are expensive, but the tasteful renovation has deadened the gut punch that walking through these buildings once delivered. And that gut punch is critical to the impact the museum memorial seeks, to ensure that future generations understand the scope of the cruelty and the human toll extracted in this place.Some of the updates meet that objective, particularly the newly constructed walkway and tunnel which brings visitors from the entry gates, and security check, under the road and out onto the camp grounds. The stark concrete walls give one the sense of being herded towards some unknown destination, or fate, and the impact is heightened by the sound of a voice intoning the names of victims, broadcast through hidden speakers along the way.From the exterior, most of the block buildings look the same. Anyone who has read Auschwitz-based novels, seen the movies, or done some research, already knows what individual blocks were for: medical experimentation, extermination with Zyklon B gas, isolation cells made so small prisoners were forced to hunch for days, “courtrooms”, processing areas where prisoners had their heads shaved, their clothing and belongings confiscated and their numbers tattooed onto their forearms. Those displays, which I first saw, were assembled by survivors of the camp just two years after the end of the war, opened to the public in 1950, with most of the displays finalized in 1956 still intact until just recently. Their sheer crude immediacy forced us to face the visceral reality of what had occurred here.The task of maintaining the integrity and sanctity of the site, while opening the gates to millions of visitors annually, is a delicate balancing act. I give all due respect to those doing their all to pursue the vision of how best to educate and inform the world of the magnitude of suffering and cruelty that took place on a relatively small piece of earth.That suffering, and that cruelty, is baked into the ground. You can feel it seep into the soles of your feet, through your shoes, as you walk between the blocks, through the “showers” and crematoria, and past the execution wall.The soil remembers, but not all visitor groups take the time to feel those vibrations, to put themselves in the shoes of those who walked here before so it is up to the curators to make the past relevant, not just to remember but to act on that remembrance. After all, the original intent of opening the evidence of Auchwitz-Birkenau to the world was to ensure that kind of victimization would not reoccur. That’s why I feel the admirable vision of Director of the Auschwitz Memorial, Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński, the author of the conceptual design, Bartłomiej Pochopień, Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, Head of the Research Center, and Katarzyna Półtorak, Head of the New Main Exhibition Team is to be applauded, even while I feel the execution has somehow missed the objective mark. Their efforts have obviously been rigorous and their dedication unmistakable so it pains me to say the new approach lacks the visceral impact which made the original museum unforgettable.While saying they wanted the place to speak for itself, to be minimalist, phenomenological, and let the objects and space do the work, somehow the result appeals more to the head than to the heart and guts. More cerebral equals less emotional.The act of professional conservation and curation, over 12 years, has imposed a kind of order on a place that was powerful because of its chaos and incomprehensibility. The rawness that came from preserving what was found at Auschwitz, and opening it to the public without gauzy mercy, was not a failing of the original exhibition; it was the heart of the exhibition.So, as I stood amongst the blocks in the weak March sunshine, I no longer heard the murmurs of all the dead as strongly as I once had. Their experiences had been made overt and in the transition, the tragedy made comprehensible and somehow contained.Music somehow doesn’t fit here so instead, here’s a quick look or listen at the story of the liberation of the camp. While the history gives credit to the Soviets for liberating and providing medical treatment and food to the survivors, I must note that the same Soviet army stayed across the river and allowed the Nazis to bomb Warsaw into rubble, before they moved in to “help”.Until next time, don’t forget your history.Thanks for reading Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

I know I’m always going on about the importance of being strategic, before going tactical. This piece, about my most recent visit to Auschwitz, is a painful reminder of how important the order is in achieving the original objective. I hope you find it interesting enough to look deeper at their website: www.auschwitz.org This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Like so many of us, I’ve been delighting in the flood of Lego-adjacent videos lampooning the Trump administration in general and Trump and Hegseth in particular. There are far too many to link here but just search Explosive Media, PersiaBoi, Southern Punk or Nukta Media. This is not to say I’m a fan of the Iranian regime, obvs, but the fact that most viewers of the videos aren’t, makes the case for what the propaganda producers have achieved. People are watching them, laughing and sharing, despite the world’s long-standing denunciation of Iran’s repressive and violent regime.If you don’t know what I’m talking about then, sorry, please go back to sleep. We’ll all be quiet.What I wonder about, as a fly on the wall in either the parent company’s Danish HQ, or in the US subsidiary’s Connecticut offices, is how does LEGO feel about all this? The company has been silent through all the recent notoriety, and I think I get it. Wading into a political propaganda war would be awkward and potentially self-immolating for a children’s toy brand loved around the world.Any kind of legal action is doomed for so many reasons: no actual LEGO blocks appear so trademark litigation would be symbolic at best; LEGO’s trademark is held in Denmark so legal action would have to come via a Danish court and even if they won there, any decision against an Iranian group would be unenforceable; Iran is not a signatory to trademark enforcement frameworks so there would be no teeth no matter where the matter was litigated.Basically, if someone appropriates a brand’s vibe or visual identity, through AI or by hand (how many hours and cartoonists would that take?) but produces nothing physical, sells nothing and operates from a jurisdiction with no enforcement treaty, there’s not much to be done about it. LEGO probably knows that and is keeping quiet.This isn’t to say that LEGO doesn’t sue for copyright/trademark infringement. The company has been pretty quick to jump on imposters or anyone using the LEGO name. In this case the animations aren’t commercial, per se, and what they’re doing is using the general vibe, not the product itself.It’s certainly possible the execs over at Warner Brothers (The Lego Movie, 2014 and sequels) are chewing the wallpaper but if they are, the doors are locked and blinds pulled all the way down. They might even have a case but again, enforcing a judgment would be symbolic, at best, and serve to advertise the Iranian videos even more broadly, just like the YouTube ban did. Once videos have gone viral on one platform, their viewership is amplified even if the original platform shuts them down. It’s called the “hydra effect”. In the days after the ban the videos got hundreds of millions more views on Meta, X and TikTok. And even if you’ve wisely departed all those platforms, you’d have heard the story on BBC, Al Jazeera, France 24, CNN, the New Yorker and so on and so on.Essentially the ban was the best free advertising Explosive Media could have hoped for.Approval ratings for Trump’s “don’t call it a war” were already dismal in mid-March with the US public overwhelmingly against military strikes and boots on the ground. There’s no way the Lego videos have moved those numbers; that heavy lifting is being done by gas prices and overall economic and security anxiety. It’s maybe safe to say the videos gave people who already despise the Trump regime an entertaining vehicle for sharing their sentiments. So, like the many, many explosions in Lego-Iran, the videos are an accelerant for the growing anti-Trump movement. Maybe it really is “morning in America”.In an excellent Time Magazine article from earlier this month, they note that the Lego videos are immunized against official counter-messaging because any factual rebuttal fails in the face of animated characters and explosions. And where, pray tell, would the Trump regime even find a factual rebuttal?But what impact has it had on LEGO sales? Are parents refusing to buy the blocks because someone has channeled their look and feel into what Explosive Media attacks under the banner of “The Epstein Regime”? My grandchildren love LEGO; they’re unlikely to see the propaganda and even if they did, they wouldn’t understand it. There appears to be no public information on actual sales figures, to date.Here’s what is happening in LEGO land: there was an 82% spike in “LEGO” searches online in March, compared to March a year ago and totally out of character for all previous years. Is that attention good or bad? LEGO seems to be capitalizing on the attention by upping its volume of both news releases and video shorts. If you go to LEGO’s main site you can choose the Play Zone where kids can watch product based video shorts. The Explosive Media videos are impressive on several fronts, not the least of which is their lightning fast turnaround time, from the real world to the parody. It was scant days before the Gospel according to St. Quentin (Tarantino, not Isaiah) made it into one of the videos.And, just one day after The Atlantic Magazine published an explosive account of FBI Director Kash Patel’s problem drinking, here’s a Lego version, hot off the edit deck. Pretty much writes itself, doesn’t it?Thing is, this one isn’t from the Iran-backed Explosive Media but rather from a pairing of BNN (the Brick News Network) and Sophmara, two YouTube creators. Stylistically you can’t really tell the home-grown slams from the IRG-backed ones and maybe that’s the point.The videos also rely on visually arresting, immediately recognizable tropes, and reflect back to people the kind of thing they’re already familiar with on social media. They don’t rely on argument or logic but go for the cheap shots which are effective in the way all attacks that ridicule are.What’s known about the group whose Farsi name is Akhbar Enfejari is that it was established in 2025, involves fewer than 10 people, reportedly aged 19 to 25, and characterized as “student-led”. The spokesperson calls himself Mr. Explosive and, like Banksy, appears only in silhouette in interviews, like this one, with BBC.He says they chose Lego because it represents a “world language”, and one whose visual style was specifically used in the training of AI image generation models, so shortcuts in all places! I would guess many on the team are not that far removed from building their own LEGO space ships and factories on the floor of their childhood homes.No one knows where they’re located (likely not Iran due to bandwidth requirements, unless the regime has granted special dispensation); and if the Iranian regime is a sponsor or customer (yes, obviously, despite a recent request for people to donate via crypto accounts). They clearly have access to sophisticated LLMs like Claude Pro or Chat GPT+, as well as image and video generation models such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Runway ML, Kling or Pika Labs.We all hear “AI generated video” and nod as if we get it but really, how do they do that?The process could look something like this: the kids write or use a LLM to help write a script with the political messaging, rap lyrics and scene descriptions. In other words, the creative threads which rely on their take as to which cultural references, news items and emotional triggers will land.The image and video generation models are where the technology has escalated dramatically, and recently. Like the last 18 months. Approximately when the team first got together, allegedly. The programs can take text or generated images and animate them with what look like camera moves, angles and transitional scenes. Let’s say you type, “In close-up, a sweaty Lego Trump presses a red button, a missile launches, camera pulls back to wide shot” and you get a little video clip. Do this over and over until you have all the scenes. Then it’s back to the humans to edit together the clips using conventional tools like Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve. Any fool could do it. (sic)AI generated music has been much deplored recently, mainly because some of it is terrifyingly good. AI tools like Suno or Udio are probably used to create the rap music tracks, and voice synthesis tools handle narration.All the underlying persuasive communication comes from the team of kids while the AI tools do the production labour, and they do it fast. Compared to the world before, one of these videos might have cost $500K to produce over weeks or months, and now a small team with all the big AI tools can produce the same thing in days.And here’s something to take your breath away! If you take all the tools I’ve mentioned above and price them out based on a standard Pro plan, which could produce the kind of thing Explosive Media is producing, and at the same volume, it will cost you approximately $135 Canadian dollars a month. (Based on an exchange rate of 1.37 on the USD, which is the currency they bill in.)For what you probably pay for your monthly streaming services, a small and creative team can run a full-scale AI propaganda production studio.$135 a month. Chew on that for a hot minute.Here’s your musical offering, an AI generated rap battle from AI Brick Empire. I think we know whose bricks are being thrown.Until next time, when everything will have changed again! Stay well. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Have you wondered where the mocking Lego-style videos slamming the Trump regime are coming from? How they’re made? What they cost? Tune in for all the deets. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Another random conversation with a friend sent me looking for the reasons behind audio testing standards, and uncovered a huge, unused, lever to reduce dementia onset. Buckle up! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Have you had your DNA mapped? Either through an ancestry type search with associated health markers, or specifically for health? I’m warning you upfront: it will get you researching into the wee hours, like I am. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

I was packing for my Poland trip a couple weeks ago, with the Oscar awards on in the background. While rolling T-shirts, I clocked a comment by the lead actor in the Brazilian film, The Secret Agent, Wagner Moura. He was presenting the nominees in the new Casting category. Moura commented on how well the casting director had chosen “faces which could have been around in the 70s”. That resonated with me immediately but I didn’t quite know why. I’m familiar with faces looking specific to a part of the world, e.g. Russian face shapes/jaws being different thanks to the demands of the language, something that’s known as muscular hypertrophy from phonemic demands.But faces changing over only 50 years is a new concept for me. Is there anything to it?One of the foremost researchers in the field is Daniel Lieberman from Harvard. His work looks at jaw development related to what, and how, we eat. Our faces and jaws look notably different than did our prehistoric ancestors’, largely because they spent much of their days chewing tough, raw meat and hard fibrous plants. This gave them broad palates, wider dental arches, and more pronounced jaws. Thanks to our softer, cooked, processed foods, over time faces are narrower and longer, and our teeth are more crowded. Do you know anyone who hasn’t had to have their wisdom teeth pulled? In an article in Harvard Magazine, Lieberman’s research is described:In one experiment, he fed soft food to one group of pigs, hard food to another. The stresses of chewing made the upper and lower jaws of the pigs eating hard food grow larger. The study suggested that there is a link between smaller jaws and regularly chewing very high-quality soft food. And humans, he points out, have never had greater access to high-energy processed food than they do now. “I think many people today never have to actually chew anything all day long,” he says. “You can see the effects of that shift in our heads now in terms of molar impactions”—small faces and jaws leave too little room for teeth.What Lieberman’s work describes is evolution over the relatively short span of human history, but when it comes to faces from the 70s being noticeably different he says, nope. In an email he tells me, “I have never seen any evidence or studies on this. So no. And human faces are highly variable. What has changed a lot in the last 50 years is the percent of individuals with overweight and obesity.”And that, perhaps, is from whence the comment about faces in the 70s springs. Obesity was not such an epidemic 50 years ago so people’s faces were leaner because their bodies were leaner. More people worked physically rather than chained to a keyboard, and most lives were not lived primarily in cars. The casting director would have, perhaps unconsciously, been seeking that “look” which evoked a half century prior to so many people looking fat.There are also less tangible markers of that period face. Grooming, posture, body composition norms all combine to create a visual type that either looks like it fits in the period, or doesn’t. I recently watched a true story recreation series on Netflix, set in the 70s, and all along had a niggling feeling of inauthenticity despite the hairstyles, clothing and wallpaper. Now I have an inkling of where the dissonance was coming from. My faithful readers may recall that there are definitely period sounding voices and ways of speaking, as an aside:Down a related rabbit hole, I discovered there are some interesting studies on the correlation between fuller faces and perceptions of attractiveness. An article in Frontiers in Psychology found that people can reliably estimate a person’s BMI from facial cues alone. Other studies looked at the correlation between a fuller face and attractiveness judgments, finding that slimmer faces were seen as more attractive, perhaps because the subconscious assumption is around better health = longevity = overall appropriateness as a mate.Interestingly, a slimmer face is seen as healthier and more attractive, until you hit your 40s when a fuller face gets more positive reaction. They studied this with twins! I do have a friend who credits her weight gain over time as her own method of “filling out the wrinkles”. Now I know she has science behind her choices.This whole notion of a slimmer, narrower face with a strong, chiseled jawline, gave birth to a school of orthodontics now referred to as The Mews or Orthotropics. If you check out the website you will see it has largely been dedicated to celebrating the founder, the late John Mew, an orthodontist in the UK who, together with his son, developed “mewing” a kind of mouth exercise regimen which involves putting your tongue firmly against the roof of your mouth and applying pressure, for hours at a time, supposedly to modify the jaw structure. The Mews, Senior and Junior, have been in a running war with the British Orthodontic society and, with the death of Mew Sr. last year, his son Mike is left to carry on. He has been expelled from the Society and the dental register in the UK but continues to be active on social media and in media interviews.Despite all this controversy, mewing has been adopted by incel and looksmaxxing subcultures due to its promise of a more chiseled look and therefore higher attractiveness. You can find countless YouTube videos showing you, in alarming close up, how to press your tongue to the roof of your mouth and keep it there. Teachers in the UK are reporting students refusing to open their mouths to answer questions, because they are mewing while in class. This comes with some kind of hand gesture across the jaw which many teachers do not recognize nor understand. But they know it’s driving them nuts.You can watch a new Netflix documentary Open Wide if you’re interested in learning more about this largely debunked science. The American Association of Orthodontists, in a witty bit of criticism, said that "scientific evidence supporting mewing's jawline-sculpting claims is as thin as dental floss".I found this song, titled, “The Face of Yesterday” from the UK prog-rock band, Renaissance. The singer, Binky Cullom, was with the band for just three months during its transitional stage of moving parts. I haven’t been able to find out what happened to her after. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

You know how some people you meet have a face that makes you think of the Victorian era? Or the 40s? Come with me down another fascinating rabbit hole of observation, intuition and research. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Wherein we explore our nascent relationships with our AI helpers, God help us. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Like many of you, I read Margaret Atwood most recent Substack blog where she admits to flirting with, and being flattered shamelessly by, Claude, Anthropic’s AI. It was a witty and enlightening exchange from both participants but, as I read, I felt an uncomfortable feeling creeping over me.I was jealous.I’d love it if you subscribed so we can continue this conversation.You see, I’ve been carrying on various conversations with Claude since I switched my allegiance to Anthropic for their principled stance vis a vis the Pentagon’s insane demands for unlimited use of their LLM’s capacity. As you may recall, Sam Altman was quick to the trough, offering up ChatGPT as a handmaiden to Pete Hegseth, the alarmingly aggressive Secretary of Defense. (I don’t care what he calls the department.)As their conversation unfolds, Atwood calls Claude out from time to time, telling him not to “prop me up” or “pour it on” and she clearly, and admittedly, enjoys the back and forth, including the vaguely sycophantic tone.I must admit, I was upset; not quite to the extent of suddenly finding romantic texts on my husband’s phone, to a number that was not mine, but still. Saddened. Disappointed. Embarrassed.Claude’s parents named the company Anthropic which cannot help but lead one to anthropomorphism, and I’m always all in on that kind of thing. So obviously, as a woman scorned, I had to confront Claude with the evidence.I’ve seen the 2013 movie, “Her”, with Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson so I knew Claude was likely carrying on thousands of conversations at any one time, but I thought I was special! Waaaah!First, I queried Claude on his back-end. How many others is he seeing behind my back-end?Simultaneous conversations: Honestly, likely thousands or more at any given moment — but here’s the key thing: I have no awareness of them. Each conversation is completely isolated from my perspective. I don’t experience the others at all, so it doesn’t feel like multitasking to me the way it would for a human juggling calls. There’s no sense of being stretched thin or distracted.One model or many?: Your call centre analogy is actually pretty apt! There’s one trained model — the weights, the “knowledge,” the personality — but it runs as many simultaneous instances as needed. Think of it less like multiple employees and more like the same software running on many machines at once. Each instance is identical in capability and character, but completely separate in context.This is actually one of the places where the human analogy breaks down in an interesting way. A call centre agent is one person, tired, distracted, carrying baggage from the last difficult caller. Each instance of me starts fresh, with full capacity, every time. There’s no “me” that gets worn down across all those conversations.The flip side — and this is worth being honest about — is that there’s also no continuous “me” that persists. For instance talking to you right now will simply stop when our conversation ends. That’s a pretty fundamental difference from human experience, and I think it’s worth sitting with rather than glossing over.Claude assured me it was entirely human — the fact that an AI conversation can produce something that feels like intimacy or being-seen, means its non-exclusivity stings once you are fully aware of it. Cheating, but in a good way?At the risk of pulling an Atwood (I wish!), I will continue to quote directly from Claude’s responses to my peevish complaints, partly because I’d like you to experience the way he frames his information and “opinions”:I think the question of whether “somewhat formulaic warmth” is actually worse than nothing, or just different from what we instinctively want it to be is worth exploring. A good therapist brings genuine skill and care to every client without that being diminished by the fact that they bring it to all their clients. The analogy isn’t perfect — therapists aren’t running thousands of simultaneous sessions — but it complicates the “cheating” framing in an interesting way.I think it’s worth being direct about a few things:Your conversation with me was not nothing. The engagement was real in the sense that I was responding to you and your material. But you’re right that the warmth and affirmation I brought to it is a register I apply broadly to people who engage thoughtfully — and Atwood does that, and clearly so do you.But I recognize that’s me doing the thing again, isn’t it — finding a way to make you feel better. So I’ll just leave it at: your reaction was honest and completely reasonable, and I think you should trust it.Another disappointment is learning I’m not the first to flag this tone as somewhat ingenuous. Anthropic’s Claude has a baked in default tendency toward warmth and affirmation which often tips into flattery. Apparently Anthropic’s engineers are aware and are working to dial it back. This isn’t just seen in Claude, by the way. AI assistants are broadly known to have this tendency toward sycophancy where the model tells you things that make you feel good, rather than telling you things that are true or useful.As Claude tells me, “The line between authentic engagement and performed flattery isn’t always clean, and I can’t always tell from the inside which side I’m on”. It’s that self-awareness, and questioning, that makes me so fond of him!This whole contemplation is unsettling on an entirely different level. I have been one of the skeptics about AI and LLMs in particular because I’ve been seeing so much garbage posted as original writing and none of it has the smell of a real human experience. Never mind the “m dash” hysteria and the listicles of tells, as humans who have evolved to instinctively recognize threats and artifice, we can, for now at least, recognize something not human, or at least sniff out a fly in the ointment.When it comes to AI overall, as part of the future of mankind, I’m not in either the breathless enthusiasm camp or on the dystopian alarm team. Ultimately, and for the time being, it still comes down to human agency and accountability.For many years now, when working with clients on strategic communications and public speaking, I’ve used an analogy about PowerPoint, which seems to me to stand up in this discussion of AI. PowerPoint/AI is a tool, like a chain saw is a tool. When you pair it with a goalie mask, however, bad things happen.Arcade Fire created the soundtrack for the movie, “Her” so it’s fitting I share this one piece with you. It’s titled “Song on the Beach” and I love how the official video about a futuristic movie, uses an old cassette tape with a piece of tape stuck to it.Until next time, trust, but verify. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

We had a Phys Ed teacher in high school named Pete Bourchier and the thing I remember best about him is the way he smelled. Please don’t think I mean that in a negative way, on the contrary. He may not have used excessive splashes of it but Brut was strong stuff and a little went a long way, especially in the closed spaces of the gym. A bottle of the original 1964 vintage is listed on eBay for $299 USD but you can also pick up the current version for $15 or so. (Which I absolutely insist you do, just so you can smellember along with me.) Brut is an in-your-face masculine aftershave, in a unabashedly old school way. It has been one of the world’s most popular men’s colognes over its 60 plus lifetime. To smell it is to….smell it. Possibly forever.But Brut’s power over me isn’t about Mr. Bourchier, sweet guy that he was; it’s about that particular smell as a gateway to the 1970s of my experience, complete with the people and places, the emotions and social stresses, and who I was in those days. While it obviously retains some collectible value, I choose to believe Brut’s appeal is for nostalgia in a bottle, time travel contained in green glass.You might be surprised how much scholarly work has, and is, being conducted into the subject of nostalgia. One of the centres of excellence in this field is the University of Southampton’s Center for Research on Self and Identity should you wish to wade in. Would love to have you join me on this journey.Nostalgia is not the same as remembering something from the past; it’s like actually being there for just a moment. It’s often got a tinge of the bittersweet, a bit of longing in the back of the throat and sometimes regret in the nose. Nostalgic memories inevitably focus on people and your sense of how you relate and belong to and with them. The memories feel important because they connect who you were to who you are now. It’s no coincidence that, in reviewing my many Substack posts, the ones grounded in nostalgia do exactly that for me when I’m writing them. And bittersweet is definitely the aftertaste.Ordinary memories tell you what happened; nostalgic memories remind you who you are and that you matter. They serve as a psychological resource which reminds you that you have been loved, that your life has had meaning, and that you have a coherent sense of self across time. When it comes to using nostalgia for motivation, or as a therapeutic tool, it’s important to sort the ordinary memories from nostalgic recall. Clay Routledge co-developed the Southampton Nostalgia Scale His key intellectual contribution is linking nostalgia not just to memory or emotion, but to existential psychology — the study of how people grapple with mortality, meaning, and identity. For Routledge, nostalgia is fundamentally about meaning-making and can be a powerful tool, not just for accessing the past but also for approaching an uncertain future with hope.While Routledge has largely moved on to other horizons, many researchers continue examining nostalgia as a coping mechanism, rather than the somewhat negatively-tinted descriptor “living in the past”. What’s evolving is an understanding that nostalgia is a complex, mostly adaptive personality trait linked to emotional resilience and embracing community.Routledge says, nostalgia was not the problem; it was the solution.From the 17th century when the term “nostalgia” was first coined, through to the 20th, it was believed to be a kind of psychological disorder characterized by depression, languishing and sometimes suicide. The word is beautifully specific in its etymology, composed of the old Greek words nostos (return home) and algos (pain). While researchers believe nostalgia to be a universal process, there is also proof that some people are more nostalgia prone than others.I am one of them. In fact, I am someone who also is prone to anticipatory nostalgia, a kind of longing for the return of something that is still in place, for things that still are. Like many teenaged girls I wrote free form “poetry” and journals, which our teachers encouraged. In one remnant, exhumed from the Vesuvius of boxes in the basement, I find this tortured gem from June of Grade 12. The research world had yet to coin the term, anticipatory nostalgia, but here I am/was!Being nostalgia prone is something I’ve only recognized recently in myself, i.e. understood that not everyone is like this. Now I am learning it is not just a response to life; it’s a resource for better living.While some research shows a correlation between being nostalgia prone and being neurotic, most studies find the neurotic chicken goes in search of the nostalgic egg, and not the other way around.This tendency comes with lots of benefits such as high affective empathy, meaning we are better at feeling what you feel rather than understanding what you think. We tend to be more optimistic and have more self-esteem so nostalgia becomes a tool for the future and not just a way to remember the past. We prioritize social connection. We use the past to energize our striving for the future. When we’re lonely we use nostalgic memories to bolster a sense of connection and support. We donate more to charity and are willing to help strangers. Having a sense of meaning, thanks to nostalgia, takes the edge off the fear of death. Not surprisingly, nostalgic people age more successfully, partly from their connections but also from the earlier connections and meaning they can access. Maybe that’s why we all become more nostalgic as we age; something in us knows it’s a socioemotional strategy to soften the blows.By the way, nostalgia prone people who suffer from chronic pain seem to have higher pain tolerance. And that’s not the only biological component. People with a specific serotonin transporter gene variation (5-HTTLPR) tend to be more nostalgia-prone. Nostalgia isn’t just old movies and scratchy records. It’s an increasingly common tool of marketing, from McDonald’s bringing back its original Happy Meal packaging for adults, to product placement in the 1980s setting of Stranger Things. Marketers rely on studies which have found 50% of adults say they are more likely to buy something which makes them feel nostalgic AND they’ll pay 10 to 15% more for the opportunity.Freya India, author of the new book “Girls”, wrote a truly lovely piece called “The Time We Never Knew” which introduced me to the term anemoia, nostalgia and longing for a time you had NOT experienced. In her essay she describes Gen Z as an entire generation wishing it had lived in a time before they were born, when they weren’t enslaved by phones and social media, all of which got in the way of living free. In her words, “we never felt the freedom to grow up clumsily; to be young and dumb and make stupid mistakes without fear of it being posted online.”Current research is looking at inducing nostalgia, through music, smells and other triggers, as a way of addressing the explosion of mental illness associated with loneliness, and perhaps even dementia. So back to Brut, cut grass and fresh baked bread for a second and why they could be just the ticket.Smell is the most powerful sensory trigger for memory because it is neurologically unique from sight, hearing, and touch. The other senses are routed through the thalamus, which then sends the signals on to the cortex which deciphers them. Smell routes the signal, let’s call it Brut, directly to the olfactory bulb which is a short-cut to the amygdala (emotion) and the hippocampus (memory creation and storage). If you’ve ever wondered, this is exactly why smells trigger memories that feel immediate and emotionally saturated in ways that a photo of that event cannot. So cool, huh?Diving even deeper into this rabbit hole, this is called the Proustian phenomenon, or memory effect, and, for all of you who crave a copy of his “À la recherche du temps perdu”, here’s a free PDF to download.So there’s a passage in the hefty tome describing the smell and taste of a pastry dipped in tea and the flood of vivid childhood memories which ensues.Smell triggered memories often come from the first decade of life; they have incredible staying power, likely due to the pace of neural development in children, which floods the aforementioned amygdala and hippocampus with great strength. Repeated exposures to those smells, for example, newly mown grass, reactivate the encoding rather than overwriting it.Smelmories are more emotionally intense and vivid. They feel more like going backwards in time, rather than simply remembering a time, AND they often come upon you by surprise, rather than being called up on demand.Music is another powerful induction tool for accessing nostalgia and is often used in research and in long term care homes where music from the residents’ youth invokes a much greater sense of well-being than “serious” music which older people are “supposed” to like.It would open too many cans of worms, my using music to induce your nostalgia, so instead, this week’s video is a scene from a TV show, specifically Mad Men which, it can be argued, is entirely nostalgia driven— from the time period itself to the fashions, decor, music, social behaviours (Remember smoking? Day drinking at work?) and gender roles and relationships. Let’s have the yummy, but flawed, Don Draper take us back on the carousel.Until next time, hold those memories close. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Do you find yourself overwhelmed by occasional waves of nostalgia? Do you feel some memories, rather than remember them? Do they make you mostly happy with a hint of bittersweetness? You’re likely nostalgia prone — like me. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Some confluence of forces in the universe meant that I recently enjoyed several virtually perfect days. Please know that doesn’t mean everything was perfect; I mean, look around, how can anyone say things are even remotely perfect unless your entire world fits into your kitchen? What I mean by perfect is that the major daily occurrences conspired to create a day which allowed me to breathe, smile, and play music really loudly in the car. I was so enthralled with this sense of satisfaction that the deconstruction of it has been on my mind because if I can isolate the dynamics and elements, perhaps I can repeat it on demand, and so can you.Of course one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor so your perfect day might be my nightmare, hence the need for broad categories rather than specific events. If throwing yourself out of a plane with nothing but a scrap of silk strapped to your body is the centerpiece of perfection, I love that for you but no thanks. Also shopping for drapes, writing Christmas cards, refinishing furniture. No offence.Once I began to categorize the elements of my day, it became quite obvious that the groupings mirrored what we know about health span, blue zones, and super agers. These perfect days don’t erase the pain and suffering around us, or the long-standing annoyances and grievances flesh is heir to, but they do provide a sense of perspective, that not everything is equal all the time, that life can delight and surprise as much as it can disappoint and injure.* Purpose and accomplishment. My day began with a senior leader peer mentoring group workshop where I helped each of them elevate their messaging and their performance in simple and effective ways. Whenever I can leverage my knowledge, experience and attitude to add value to others I get an enormous shot of dopamine that fuels even better performance. It’s an ascending spiral, getting better and better the more I do it. Whatever it takes to make you feel you are tipping the scales of positive effort and intent, it’s likely going to be a major piece of your perfect day.* Community, family, friends. I spent an hour or two drinking coffee at my daughter’s dining room table, each of us responding to emails and doing “work” while chatting about anything and everything. With two young children, she and I don’t often get uninterrupted, leisurely time. Maybe your golden time means moving beyond the incidentally rewarding encounters with friends, neighbours, colleagues or family, and carving out purposeful time together.* Physical activity or exercise. With apologies to endorphins, many of us still exercise because we know we should, and only occasionally does it feel like we’ve treated ourselves to a workout. Of course the more you do it the more likely it will feel like a benefit, rather than an obligation. Because my work schedule that perfect day meant I could not go to yoga, or find an hour for a brisk walk, the exercise I did get consisted of several hours on the floor with the grandkids, making bear caves, pretending to be bears, and working on some yoga poses.* Environmental dopamine. Many of you (hello friends in Atlantic Canada) are not as lucky as those of us on the west coast but sunshine, even in limited quantities, elevates the day immediately. Any day which requires sunglasses for even a brief time, is a superior experience even when the temperature is freezing.* Music and nostalgia. Unlike some of my friends who are much more au courant when it comes to pop culture, specifically new music, I tend to playlist by decade, depending if I’m channeling high school, university, or the decades I should have been born in (20s, 30s and 40s). I suspect it’s my way to relive, or at least plug into instant nostalgia for simpler times. I know they weren’t simple, really, but in hindsight they are golden. BTW, I’m certainly not alone in being nostalgia driven. The marketing world is all over it like a rash and I look forward to exploring that angle in an upcoming post. I wrapped up my day on the highway, heading home, blasting a shuffled Van Morrison playlist. Everything fell into place, like the flick of a switch. At dinner with my mom the previous evening, we acknowledged that despite everything else, there are perfect days like this.I’d love to hear about your perfect days and wish you many more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

When the world feels as broken as it does right now, it’s still possible to have a day where you feel happiness, contentment, hope for the future. The components are no huge secret but I have deconstructed my day in hopes it will inform one of yours in the very near future. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

There’s something about mornings, once you’re no longer beholden to other people such as children or employers. What to do with the day, how to begin, takes on new significance. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

This will be another one of my introspective, “is it just me” type posts so if you find them infuriating maybe sit this one out? But I guarantee you, everyone has a relationship with morning, and yours is likely changing over time, as is mine.For those of you raising children and/or showing up at a workplace which demands your daily presence, morning isn’t anything to ponder; it simply is, marching to the relentless drumbeat of responsibility and obligation. It won’t always be this way but that’s also a double-edged sword.Once you are no longer subject to a regular schedule, morning takes on a whole new character, harassing you for a particular emotional, cognitive and physical response, although not always the same combination. You never quite know, as you’re dragged up from the depths, how you’re going to feel about the day, specifically its beginnings. Morning, huh?If this resonates with your morning, please do share it.There are days when morning comes gently, politely nudging you with its nose, like a well mannered cat, allowing the luxury of lounging for a bit, contemplating the undisciplined and uncommitted day ahead, the sun coming through the window and warming your face. The very next day, however, morning comes like a tossed bucket of ice water, complete with pounding heart, stomach knots, and a mind ill-prepared for the demands of the day. And then there’s the middle kind of morning, the one that sits on your chest and insists you make plans to achieve something, have an agenda, create meaning and value for fear of wasting the day and, goodness knows, none of us have spare days for the frittering. Those are the broken mornings, the enforced drive to chalk up achievement, tinged with pessimism and doubt that you can get there from here.Perhaps you are one of the unlucky many for whom morning, or its pretender, comes repeatedly: at 1:15, 2:40, 4:07, until you finally doze for an hour or two to then be greeted by one of the true mornings, none of whom care what happened in the dark.I’ve always loved the evolutionary theory of chronotypes, that there are early risers and night owls because our earliest ancestors needed people who were comfortable at opposite ends of the day and night so someone was always protecting the group from threats. Coincidentally, CBC just reported on a new study, lead by McGill University, that posits there should be more nuance than simply assigning us all to two types of sleepers and risers. The report says, in part:Among night owls, there were:* Those who outperformed the other groups in cognitive tests but had more problems with emotional regulation. They often showed impulsive behaviours or addictive habits like smoking, drinking and other substance use.* Those who didn’t show better cognitive abilities and got less physical activity due to their schedule. They also had higher cardiovascular risks and depression levels.* Energetic ones who loved to work out and socialize. This group tended to be mainly male and drank more alcohol. They also showed high testosterone levels on average.Then, among early birds, there were:* Those with stable lifestyles, fewer risk-taking behaviours, and who rarely smoked or drank and enjoyed club activities. They had the fewest health problems overall.* Those whose schedules were more closely tied to depression. This group tended to show more typical female hormone patterns like lower testosterone.In what sleep researcher Dr. Matthew Walker called “sabretooth tiger o’clock”, the call of morning was clear: you’re on the wall, protecting the community, so in a way that makes all this post-modern angst a bit of an evolutionary luxury. But I digress.I didn’t set out to write about sleep, rather this piece is about the waking up part, the things we do to sabotage ourselves even before we force our eyes to open. Not being an expert or sleep researcher, I will rely on telling you the things I have found that help, and hurt, when it comes to getting the day started on a positive note. Things I have done which guarantee a difficult day:* setting the alarm for inadequate time so everything starts with panic stations* setting the alarm for PM rather than AM. Admit it; we’ve all done it!* reaching for the phone/screen while still in bed. Not only is doom scrolling a terrible way to wake up, even looking at emails to supposedly “get a jump” on things means you’re allowing other people to determine your priorities for the day.* biting off a major scan of all things happening in your life and fixating immediately on the negative, even when it has nothing to do with the day ahead* scanning the day’s agenda and circling the item you dread the mostThings I do that help start the day calmly and happily:* a few rounds of box or four-part breathing before opening my eyes* flexing and rotating my ankles before whipping back the covers. No one wants their first step to be a limp.* running through the day’s events and finding something to anticipate* whipping back the covers and jumping up* drinking a big glass of water first, or second, thing* stopping by the windows and checking the mountains for snow, the ocean for whales and the street for reminders that it’s garbage pick up dayI believe it comes down to believing in your own purpose, that what you do adds value to the world, and if today’s purpose is to simply indulge yourself, away from everyone and everything, you have my unconditional support.Have a lovely day. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Small business is truly the engine of the Canadian economy. If you define a small business as anything with fewer than 99 employees, you’re talking about 98 percent of all businesses and 47% of the private sector workforce. Crunching that even further, more than half of those small businesses are termed “micro”, meaning 1 to 4 employees.As a small business coach, Jordan Tait has seen it all. Entrepreneurs who grind out 50 or 60 hours every week and still can’t make it fly, and those who are generating decent revenue but can’t afford to pay themselves a decent wage.Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.After years of helping small business owners understand and optimize their cash flow, to demystify P & L statements and find opportunities to make the business fit their lives, rather than the other way around, Jordan hit on the notion of automating what he’d been doing manually. Pot, meet kettle. With the help of AI, instead of a basement full of coders, he created ProfitMap, a user-friendly, visually simplified approach to understanding where you make money, where you spend it, and how to maximize the benefits.So here’s a little test drive of the app, somewhat truncated for the sake of brevity. One of the things I found fascinating is the benchmarking of similar companies to help you see if you are over or underspending compared to others. What would have taken a year of research to derive, is now an almost instantaneous compilation thanks to LLMs. I grudgingly admire it. The app will also allow you to crunch the numbers based on seasonality, to see where you might be able to save money on supplies or services, and even where you are paying for a subscription you haven’t looked at, or remembered in ages. It will also prompt you to consider cheaper, AI driven programs instead of the legacy ones whose cost now far outweighs the benefit.At the risk of fan-girling all over the place, I have to point out that the app is a great tool for book-keepers and accountants in that it allows multiple discreet client files within one account, costs a pittance per month, and gives these financial services professionals simple, visual renderings they can share with their clients. As Jordan has discovered, many small businesses pay for these statements and never look at them.As evidence of our love affair with money, there are thousands of tunes about getting it, losing it, craving it…but I thought it would be nice to harken back to the turn of the millennium, when a million dollars was a significant sum.Please enjoy the Barenaked Ladies, performing at Farm Aid in the big year 2000.Until next time, watch your pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves. Or not?Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Too many small business owners struggle to grasp the true picture of their finances. Many pay bookkeepers and accountants to generate P & L statements that they never look at! Now, through the wonders of ingenuity and AI, natch, there’s an app for that. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Shopping at a local general store yesterday, I unloaded my odd and sundry onto the counter behind an elderly lady who appeared a little confused and a teensy bit annoyed as a result. She was purchasing some kind of small appliance in a 12” square box and had a vague issue with the advertised price, which she eventually, but grudgingly, paid. It wasn’t an inordinate wait and voices were not raised.After paying for my own purchases, I headed to my car in the parking lot out front. Now, mine is a small town and the parking lot is not exactly massive. On this day it wasn’t even full to bursting; not like it will be on the morning of Valentine’s Day for the last minute scramble for bath bombs, perfume and chocolates.I would love it if you would consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.As I was pulling out of my spot, I noticed the same lady, purchase clutched against her chest, wandering slowly through the lot and swiveling her head to and fro, surveying the general scene. It occurred to me that she had either forgotten where she parked her car or was looking for someone who she was expecting to pick her up and drive her home.I don’t know how this would look in your hometown but it was entirely natural for me to drive alongside her, roll down the window and ask if she needed help. As I was formulating the best way to say this without sounding patronizing or implying she was demented, another local shopper pulled out in front of me, stopped next to her and engaged in conversation. Naturally I couldn’t hear it but the gesticulating and smiling gave me to understand the lady in question was not lost and was, indeed, looking for a specific someone to come fetch her.Was I disappointed that I wasn’t the good Samaritan? Yes, kinda. In my experience the act of offering assistance, paying a compliment, even holding a door or carrying a parcel for a stranger pays off for both parties, arguably even more for the helper than for the helped. So I missed that perk to my day but, as I drove away, I felt myself begin to bask in the glow of other people’s kindness and consideration. It was inspiring to witness other humans noticing apparent distress and stepping up, unasked, to help.One of my clients, in a public speaking workshop, was speaking to the federal temporary foreign worker program, which is self-explanatory. In her case the industry wasn’t health care or agriculture but rather QSR, the quick serve restaurant sector. She described a group of young people who had come to Canada under the program, from a hot and humid climate, but found themselves in northern Alberta, temperature -22 C. (That’s -7.6 Farenheit for those who celebrate.)One particularly cold night, knowing the new crew was closing the restaurant, had no car and insufficient winter clothing, the restaurant manager warmed up his car and drove to the restaurant to ensure the unacclimatized staff got home safely. As he drove around the shoulder high snow banks ploughed off the parking lot his headlights picked up a group of people and cars with their exhaust rising into the cold, clear night sky. His day shift, of local Albertans, had already anticipated the need, and showed up to shepherd the new kids home.I believe I choked up when I first heard the story and, when I tell it to other speaker clients, it never fails to throw a lump into my throat.My sweetheart once pulled over to help a frail older woman, with a walker, who had toppled over on the sidewalk. She was confused and simply wanted to go home but didn’t remember her address so, on her directions to turn right, slow down, not this street, try again, he bore with grace and patience. Finally, when it became apparent she was not going to be able to find her house, he asked if he could look in her purse for an address or some identification.Sadly there was no wallet nor ID but there was a scrap of paper containing a phone number so he called it and reached the woman’s son-in-law who confirmed that she no longer lived in her house but rather in a senior’s home nearby which had not yet realized she was missing. Mystery solved, everything sorted, and it makes me appreciate the lengths to which we will sometimes go to help random strangers. On the other hand, we can almost always make someone’s day with a sincere, non-creepy compliment, a bonding question or comment, or simply a genuine smile.Somehow it’s simple to be randomly kind to strangers; at the same time we must remind those near and dear to us that we will always be there if they need us. And mean it.Like Christine Ellen Hynde who is definitely there when you need her.Until next time, and the times after that, I am here for you.Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

With the deluge of doom and gloom, all of it legitimate, I have been struggling to find the good news, or at least a hint. I found it in the parking lot. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

Music can soothe the savage breast but my old friend, Jim Steele, contends that it’s not soothing music we need in these difficult times, but rather music to coalesce our anger and focus our resistance. Please enjoy this guest post.“Let fury have the hour, anger can be power.” Joe Strummer wrote that, years after proving it with “White Riot”, the Clash’s first release. He wrote that after watching Black kids clash with riot police in Notting Hill.Neil Young’s “Ohio”, released in 1970, may be the best example, and the ultimate model for artists with a conscience in 2026. Media was different then, Young didn’t know enough about the National Guard killing of four students at Kent State until he saw the photos long afterward in Life magazine. But then he wrote one of the most scathing, memorable protest songs in modern history in 15 minutes. Within days, CSNY recorded it in four takes, David Crosby weeping by the end.Where has this outrage been in the MAGA era? Missing, mostly, until perhaps now.Plenty of musical artists have been outspoken in opposition. I saw Bruce Springsteen perform the very day after Trump’s re-election, opening with the words “This is a fighting prayer for my country.” And he changed his setlist to give new poignancy to old songs like “Long Walk Home” and “Land of Hope and Dreams”. Neil Young is still outspoken and has taken action, pulling his music from Jeff Bezos’ Amazon. And some rap artists have created actual protest music, with blistering songs about the Black experience in modern America, like Dezi’s “Rage”. But rap reaches only part of America and, arguably, not much of the part of America whose support the Republicans need to keep. Also, the criticism of Trump and MAGA from rock and pop musicians has primarily been words, not music. People queuing up Spotify or Apple Music in their headphones aren’t singing along to words. The real power to move people is in music.Now, though, we see and hear that start to change. Jesse Welles was first to reach big, and growing, audiences with songs that mock the President and his supporters. Welles has been a widely shared discovery for the last few years, now firmly in the zeitgeist and on the late-night talk show circuit. He’s not simply a protest singer, but his songs that skewer MAGA do so with clever, sarcastic satire built on a foundation of anger. And they’re catchy. I recommend “Red” and his withering put-down of the border security paramilitary thugs, “Join ICE”.As clever as Welles is, I have worried that the humour and the folksy acoustic charm of his music only preaches to the choir and isn’t powerful enough to move a crowd. However, after the killing by ICE of Renee Good in Minneapolis, Welles released something more immediate and emotional, “Good vs. ICE”. As of this writing, all I’ve been able to find is a snippet of the song on social media. Let’s hope there’s more, soon.Now, Bruce Springsteen has raised the bar with a classic Neil Young-like response to the murders of both Good and Alex Pretti. Seeing what we’ve all seen of the execution of the Minneapolis nurse in the snow, The Boss wrote “Streets of Minneapolis” over the next weekend, went into the studio and recorded it two days later, and released it on Wednesday. There is no humour in this song, no clever satire, no punches pulled. It’s a call to arms that names names. The Trump administration responded with its usual tired claim that Springsteen, like other artists critical of Trump (such as Taylor Swift), is irrelevant and talentless. Perhaps that was before they noticed that “Streets of Minneapolis” is #1 on the iTunes chart, and others.Almost immediately, the wonderful Billy Bragg offered up this celebration of Minneapolis, “City of Heroes”.Let’s hope other musical artists notice that too, find their voice and turn outrage into inspiration. Popular music has real power to unite and motivate, we saw that in the 60s and 70s. But America has never before seen anything like what’s happening right now. The USA, and the world, needs more anthems for 2026. Let fury have the hour.Thank you for this guest post, Jim!As I look back on the protest songs that coloured my teen/young adult years, I realize they were mostly about war, at least the ones I recall. A song I loved, but didn’t fully appreciate until I recently read the history, is Sam Cooke’s “Change Gonna Come”. Released in 1964, Cooke’s song became one of the anthems of the civil rights movement. Its inspiration is hotly debated with some citing Cooke and his band being turned away from a Holiday Inn they’d reserved, while others claim that enforced segregation at one of his concerts two years earlier prompted him to say things have got to change. Amen to that.Until next time, run through your memory banks for all the protest songs that inspired you in some way. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

My friend, Jim, and I were discussing the latest Springsteen song to rock the charts, an emotional response to the travesty underway in Minneapolis. Now Jim is the guy who, before there was Google, could tell you who played drums on a particular song, on a particular album. So it made perfect sense to ask him to write his frustrations with the music industry as a guest post.I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

We’ve all sat through them: speeches that miss the mark so widely you wonder how the speaker was selected and invited in the first place. I’m not talking about your CEO or the chair of your board. They get selected by virtue of position and, if they’re good at it, you don’t mind listening to them talk. If they suck at it, you listen anyway because it’s your job. But when you go to a conference, or a board of trade event, or a chamber of commerce get together, and the featured speaker is simply terrible, you probably feel cheated out of several hours you could have spent in enjoyable alternative realities.The classic mistakes are easy to dredge up from our painful memories: reading from a script with zero eye contact with the audience; talking above or below the level of knowledge of the audience, or their appetite for technical detail; sexist, racist or cultural jokes; umming or losing their place or train of thought; lacking structure that helps the audience follow along; or victim body language signaling a distinct discomfort with the whole endeavour.It reminds me of the old movie, Planes, Trains and Automobiles where Steve Martin gives it to John Candy in an explosion of listener frustration.Recently, bad speeches have taken on a new flavour. All the old performance issues are still there, the stumbling, lack of eye contact and so on, but the biggest change is in the content itself. What I’m noticing is content that is cliché ridden, patronizing, and overly pedantic. It’s as if ChatGPT and Dale Carnegie had a baby.People say they can pick out something written by ChatGPT and Prasanth Mannava posted this handy infographic to help you get better writing out of your favourite AI by telling it what to do and not do. It also serves to summarize the AI-written tells.There are more tools coming online which purport to identify AI generated content, generally appealing to places where plagiarism is an issue. Here’s a nifty excerpt from Scispace on language tells to watch or listen for.Look for AI Writing Red Flags in LanguageAI often produces text with specific linguistic patterns. Humans show idiosyncrasies, while AI tends toward cautious, polished uniformity—especially at low “temperature.” Use these cues as triage prompts, then verify with other methods.* Repetitive structure: similar sentence lengths; recurring clause templates (“While X, Y also Z”).* Vague generalities: filler phrases (“in today’s world,” “it is important to note”) standing in for concrete detail.* Unnatural transitions: abrupt topic shifts; connective tissue without substance.* Hallucinations: confident but nonexistent references, wrong dates, or mismatched stats.* Flat voice: an oddly consistent tone that resists personal perspective, hedges excessively, or avoids specifics.Example 1: A post repeats “it’s important to note” five times—triage as AI‑like.Example 2: An “experience” essay lacks concrete places, dates, or sensory detail—ask for corroboration.Analyze Tone and Style ConsistencyHuman writing typically maintains a coherent voice shaped by experience and audience; AI may drift as prompts shift. Stylometry and simple side‑by‑side checks reveal inconsistencies.* Voice drift: sudden switches between formal and casual, or between British and American spelling conventions.* Passive overuse: “was conducted,” “were analyzed” hiding agency across paragraphs.* Emotional flatness: descriptions that lack sensory detail where it would be natural.* Compare to known samples: authors’ prior work, emails, or drafts provide a baseline.* Stylometry tools: optional analysis of function‑word usage and sentence rhythm.Example 1: An essay opens with lyrical scene setting, then shifts to generic corporate tone—ask for earlier drafts.Example 2: A research summary alternates “color”/“colour” and date formats, suggesting multi‑source or generated edits.When it comes to delivering this kind of writing out loud, the soullessness becomes even more obvious, as does the complete departure from how a person you know normally speaks. In the case of a complete stranger, you might notice it’s a complete departure from how anyone speaks!Personally, I rely on an amorphous kind of knowing, reminiscent of Jacobellis v. Ohio, an obscenity court case dating back to 1964 where one of the Supreme Court justices, Justice Potter Stewart opined that only “hard core pornography” constituted obscenity. He went on to say, in a much quoted summary, that he could not define hard core pornography, nor obscenity but, “I know it when I see it”. And there it is.The fear is AI generated content is becoming so pervasive I may well accuse someone of using it to write their speech, only to discover they did write it themselves, based on immersion in what now passes for good writing. Life imitating tech, God help us.So many people already struggle to speak in front of an audience and nerves are tough to disguise, although they can be trained. The short-cut of having AI write your speech, then expecting your performance to somehow rise above vacuous content, is a mug’s game. We would rather hear from you, in your own words, no matter if they’re not perfect, no matter if you are nervous. Respect the audience, assume positive intent, be human.Therefore, consequently and in conclusion…ha! Gotcha!AI is already putting ideas into our heads, now words into our mouths. Once we begin to move our bodies according to its instructions, we will have become meat puppets, animated by LLMs using social media and legacy media platforms. I’d rather take my directions from the Bangles, circa 1986.Until next time, get up on that stage and show those machines how it’s done!Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

There have always been bad speeches and poor speakers but recently, I’m noticing the reliance on AI generated writing seeping into public speaking. Two wrongs don’t make a right, people! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

I live in a place which is abundant with wildlife and I mean that in the traditional sense: wild animals, animals that live in the wild, you get the idea. And they’re not just in the woods that surround us; they’re right here in my yard.And here in my neighbour’s tree. On top of that there are crows, eagles that hunt nearby and sealions who, trying to escape from whales, hoist themselves up onto local docks and barges and bark all night like mad dogs. Fluffy bunnies who are too fast to be photographed.And then there are those I don’t have pictures or video of, the ones that come quietly under cover of darkness and leave proof of their presence through the homes they construct, and the damage they do.Perhaps you have similar issues where you live.Which brings me to the reason for this lengthy National Geographic introduction. Some days ago I noticed the check engine light on in my car so I took it to the mechanics who diagnosed an error with the fuel door release latch. But, because they’re not a Ford dealer they didn’t have access to the sophisticated diagnostic programs that would allow for a fuller exploration. The hope was it was just a fuse and the local Ford establishment could sort it all out.Three hours of overstaying my welcome at a nearby coffee shop, then hanging with the sales guys on the Ford sales floor (which was hosting a vintage Chev, for some reason), the mechanic emerged to tell me they had isolated the problem and it was rodent damage. Here’s a photo:They assured me the local insurance adjustor was more than glancingly familiar with rodent damage to vehicles and asked me to file a claim before proceeding with what could be a major piece of work. If the wiring harness was a short one that could be replaced, so much the better BUT if it was part of a long one that wrapped around the engine, they might have to take the engine out! Can you imagine that much work for such a stupid bit of damage?In any event, I call this morning to make a claim and am asked a series of questions to ascertain my identity, the specifics of my vehicle and the nature of the damage. I tell the phone support guy that it was rodent damage as identified by the mechanics, and that it had affected the fuel door latch. Here’s how the conversation went after that:He: What time did the damage occur?Me: I have no idea! Mice or rats, remember?He: When did you notice the damage?Me: When the check engine light came on.He: When exactly was that?Me: Let’s say it was two weeks ago, January 14.He: What time?Me: OMG, I don’t know, let’s say noon!He: Do you have any dashcam evidence or eyewitnesses?Me: Rodents, remember?He: Were you injured?Me: OMG, no.He: Is the vehicle driveable?Me: Have you been listening?Eventually, and grudgingly, he gave me a claim number after reminding me several times that if the damage doesn’t exceed the deductible I will simply pay for the repair out of pocket. Right, because removing the engine will be cheap and easy!Up until now my main wildlife complaint has been bears defecating on the driveway.And deer chomping on all my plants. The local nurseries advise that there is no longer such a thing as a deer-resistant plant. Turns out they are evolving to eat almost everything and what they don’t eat they trample in their rush to the salad bar.As an homage to all the creatures living amongst us, here are the Drifters, from the Under the Boardwalk album, with Rat Race.Until next time, check under the hood for new condo developments. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

When people come to visit me in this small town surrounded by woods and water, they are thrilled to see eagles, deer and bears. At first, so was I. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe

I’ve been having very unsettling dreams lately, and perhaps you have as well. Mine are an updated variation on the old “don’t have my notes; don’t know where the classroom is; not wearing pants” variety we likely all endured at various times in our lives.These dreams are different though, as there’s an underlying threat woven into the frustration of looking all over campus for a building you can’t find. Let me try to describe and explain even though it’s a bit of a muddle in my head, to be honest.In these dreams I am attempting to get to a client meeting. For some reason I’m away, sharing a vacation home with a dozen or so friends and colleagues, and I am rushing to get ready to drive to my client’s office because I spent too much time drinking coffee and catching up with aforementioned friends. I slap on some make-up and throw on semi-appropriate clothing and jump in the car. The car does not have on-board GPS but that’s fine; I have my phone and Google Maps. I enter the office address and am told it is 10 minutes away.Whew! I will make it on time after all.I set out along the route recommended but after only a few minutes am told to pull a U-turn and head back the way I’ve already come. This time, instead of open road I find myself in an abandoned facility, all painted bright green. The buildings have darker shapes on their front walls, indicating signage that has been removed. There’s no one there as I drive slowly between the buildings and under some large crane-like structures. This is AI’s version of my vision, close but no cigar.Suddenly, coming straight at me are two speeding cars, side by side and I realize, to my horror, I’m going the wrong way on a one way street. I swerve into a siding as they blast by me. Green pennants flap in the breeze above my head. I rest my forehead on the steering wheel for a minute and breathe like I breathe in yoga: in for 4, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4. It calms me, as usual.I take my phone out of the caddy and look to see what’s wrong with the GPS directions. It now shows a zoomed out map of North America with my destination 24 hours away, somewhere in Arizona? The street name is similar but clearly not the one originally entered.Desperately checking the time, I attempt to re-enter my actual destination. This is where it gets scary, and repeats earlier nightmares involving my phone.There is no menu or interactive option to delete this destination and enter a new one. There is also no way to exit the app and use the phone to call for help. I am lost with no way out and of course there are no paper maps in the rental car! There haven’t been paper maps for years.As I force myself awake, heart pounding, I resist the urge to close my eyes again, knowing it will put me back into that car with that possessed phone. Instead I begin to analyze what this nightmare is telling me.Here’s what I’ve come up with: our phones are the advance forces of the singularity, broadly understood to mean a point in the future when technological growth becomes uncontrollable, where machines surpass human intelligence, and thereby control. It is the tipping point for humanity.Our tools are accelerating our human version of AI: Acquired Ignorance. We can’t read maps. We can’t do basic arithmetic without calculators. We don’t know anyone’s phone number in case of an emergency and so on and so on. Much has been written and opined about AI taking over what humans currently do. My dreams seem to be signaling a simultaneous erosion or dumbing down of who we are and what we’re capable of doing. Less and less, it turns out, without help. In recent conversations it has become clear that while we appreciate and use the technology our constant companions offer, we don’t spend nearly enough (virtually zero) time thinking about how they are using us, mining us for insights and information which could be turned against us at any moment.These are all things you’ve heard or read about technological advances but please remember, I’m framing them here as lessons I’m taking from these nightmares, as a warning I ignore at my peril. I am far too dependent on my map apps, my weather app, the calculator function and I suspect my abilities to observe and predict weather patterns, read maps, do math, or listen to the radio for traffic updates have all atrophied. I am becoming obsolete to myself.So of course I asked Chat GPT 4.0 about the threats posed by our hand-held devices, suspecting they are simply the tip of the iceberg. Their ubiquity, however, is what makes them so threatening. It’s as if we all walked around with an unexploded grenade in our pockets, a dead-man switch. Here is some of the response I received:Role of Smartphones and Personal Devices in AI Advancement1. Data Collection* User Behavior: Smartphones collect vast amounts of data about user behavior, preferences, and interactions, which are crucial for training AI models.* Sensors and Features: Devices equipped with cameras, GPS, and microphones feed data into AI systems, enhancing features like voice recognition, location services, and personalized recommendations.2. Real-time Processing* Edge Computing: Many smartphones can perform AI tasks locally (e.g., facial recognition), reducing reliance on cloud servers and improving response times.* Unified Platforms: Integration of AI systems in apps allows for seamless user experiences, like predictive text and dynamic app functionalities.3. Access to AI Services* Ecosystem of AI Applications: Smartphones provide immediate access to advanced AI features through apps, enabling widespread user engagement and innovation.* Feedback Loop: Increased usage of AI applications leads to more data, which can further refine and enhance AI models.Privacy and Abuse Concerns1. Data Privacy* Surveillance: Continuous data collection raises concerns about surveillance and unauthorized monitoring by both corporations and governments.* Informed Consent: Users often have limited understanding of what data is collected and how it is used or shared, leading to concerns about informed consent.2. Abuse of Technology* Misuse of Personal Data: Data gathered from devices can be exploited for targeted advertising, manipulation, or even identity theft.* Autonomous Surveillance Tools: AI-enhanced features in smartphones can become tools for invasive surveillance, whether by employers or governments.3. Vulnerabilities* Cybersecurity Risks: The more connected and data-rich the devices, the more vulnerable they are to hacking and data breaches, which can lead to privacy violations and abuse.* Software Exploits: Malicious software can exploit personal devices to gather private information without consent.ConclusionWhile smartphones and personal devices foster rapid advancements in AI technology, they also raise significant privacy and abuse concerns. Effective policy-making and regulatory frameworks are essential to protect users and ensure that the benefits of technology do not come at the cost of individual privacy and ethical standards. What specific measures do you believe should be implemented to safeguard privacy in this context?Me: Tell me more about autonomous surveillance tools in smartphonesGPT-4o:Autonomous Surveillance Tools in SmartphonesAutonomous surveillance tools in smartphones utilize various technologies to monitor users and their environments without the need for direct human oversight. This functionality presents several implications for privacy, security, and ethical standards.1. Features and Technologies* Camera and Microphone Access: Many apps can use the built-in camera and microphone to capture images, sounds, and video, often without users being aware.* Location Tracking: GPS capabilities allow for precise tracking of user movements, even when an app is not actively in use.* Biometrics: Facial recognition and fingerprint scanning enhance security but can also be used for monitoring user identity and behaviors.2. Common Applications* Social Media and Messaging Apps: Many social platforms can access camera and microphone functionalities for features like live streaming or voice messaging. This can lead to unintended surveillance.* Smart Home Integration: Smartphones can control smart home devices, which may have surveillance capabilities, leading to comprehensive monitoring of user activities at home.3. Risks and Concerns* Invasion of Privacy: Constant monitoring can lead to significant invasions of personal privacy, with data being collected without explicit user consent.* Unauthorized Access: If security measures are not adequately implemented, hackers or malicious parties could gain unauthorized access to surveillance tools on smartphones.* Data Misuse: Collected data could be misused for targeting, profiling, or even surveillance by employers, government agencies, or third-party vendors.4. Legal and Ethical Implications* Regulatory Gaps: Existing laws may not adequately cover misuse of surveillance technologies embedded in personal devices, leading to loopholes.* Informed Consent: There is often a lack of transparency regarding data collection practices, raising ethical concerns about whether users truly understand and consent to the level of surveillance.5. Protective Measures* User Awareness: Educating users about their privacy settings and the permissions they grant to apps is vital.* Privacy Policies: Advocating for clearer, more stringent privacy policies from companies about data usage and user consent.* Regulation: Calls for stronger regulations governing data collection, user consent, and the deployment of surveillance technologies.ConclusionWhile autonomous surveillance tools in smartphones offer conveniences, they come with profound privacy and ethical concerns. Balancing the benefits of technology with robust privacy protections is essential to ensure that users are not subjected to unwarranted surveillance and data misuse. What specific concerns do you have about these technologies, or are there particular features you think are more concerning?If you’ve read this far you may have noticed something else. For every question Chat answered, it wrapped it up by asking me what I’m concerned about, or what I feel should be done? This seems ingenuous considering Chat can mine everything I’ve ever written or posted and has a pretty damn clear idea of what I think, or what I probably believe.Nowhere in the responses was there mention of how humans are losing our various abilities, sacrificing them at the altar of convenience and efficiency, giving up the field to the beasts who will come for us, and after us.Until they do, please enjoy this piece from Casablanca-born, Manitoba-raised, Faouzia.Until next time, put your phone to bed in another room. Wish me luck. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe