good morning John so I assume that you
like everyone else on the Internet has
seen mark Robers amazing new video in
which he builds a bait package that
explodes glitter on people when they
steal it I don't want to take away from
the amazing engineering here it's very
good but the reason I've watched this
video five times
isn't that like amazing glitter swirl
and it isn't the well engineered fart
spray or if the part where the thieves
don't look or act the way I thought that
they would look I'm just being honest
I don't actually know what I thought
they were gonna look like maybe because
I dehumanized what a thief was in my
head but that challenge to my
expectation whatever it was immediately
changed the way I was thinking about
thieves and I went from like maybe a
little bit of anger and also pity to
more curiosity and also still angry cuz
getting offended that like your theft
ended in a prank my guard yeah come on
so I did a bunch of research because
that's what I do and some of that
research involved talking to package
thieves which I managed to do and hear
and the voice of actors not the people
themselves are some of the things that I
heard from those people all of my
friends were doing it and I didn't have
that many friends and I didn't know how
to make new ones there's some
satisfaction and just getting away with
something I had a debatable need to
steal when I was in my active addiction
I could sell or trade the stuff I had
stolen you don't ever know what people
might have ordered it could be a USB
cable or it could be an iPhone it's like
anything addictive and this is better
than my other addictions I never really
thought about the consequences but I
knew that even if someone called the
cops I'm young charming white and I have
a clean record so the consequences
wouldn't be too bad we were just having
fun until we put together the fact that
this was almost certainly a toy meant
for a child to open on Christmas morning
it stopped being fun then and we took it
back
all these perspectives were super
helpful for me and understanding how
theft happens without the need for theft
and that doesn't mean excusing it the
better understanding it at the same time
like I felt very out of my depth like
I'm not a psychologist but dr. Robert
Tyminski is and he wrote a book called
the psychology of theft and loss and I
just called him off my job most theft is
not because people need it there's a
small category that's opportunistic
based on like social and economic
deprivation that's actually pretty small
they felt like there was strength and
getting away with it that they can fool
people and dupe them and in the rush and
that's also true for shoplifters there's
also really interesting to me that this
was often not a solitary activity and
that's like a defense against
experiencing the guilt then like if you
are prone to some guilt then somehow you
get to divide but more than that what I
came away from this thinking is that
theft like all sociological enterprise
is super complicated I did a lot of
research on theft this weekend one of
the most fascinating studies I came
across was from dr. Dan Ariely
II did an experiment where a whole bunch
of people came into a classroom and they
had to answer math problems and for
every one they got right they got paid
but there was one actor in the group and
the actor stood up 30 seconds into the
test walked to the front said that they
got all of the questions right took the
money and left so did the existence of
an obvious cheater make it more or less
likely that the other students would
cheat well it depended on what sweater
the cheater was wearing if they were
wearing a sweater from the same
university that all the rest of the
students were from cheating increased
but if they were wearing a sweater from
a rival university cheating decreased I
came away from that research thinking
the same thing I thought about mark
rubriz video genius design and theft is
a lot more complicated than I wanted it
to be John I'll see you on Tuesday
thanks to my voice actors - doctor -
Minsky - Andrew kwan for the music and
to all the people who shared their
experiences of package theft with me and
a reminder John isn't gonna have a video
next Tuesday because that day is
Christmas
[Music]