Learn why the phrase “money can’t buy happiness” isn’t always true. Then, learn how different generations write differently online, with some help from internet linguist and author Gretchen McCulloch. Please support this episode’s sponsor! Get your first month of KiwiCo FREE by visiting https://www.kiwico.com/curiosity In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com about why the saying “money can’t buy happiness” isn’t always true: https://curiosity.im/2KoFAiP Additional resources from Gretchen McCullough: “Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language” — https://amazon.com Follow @GretchenAMcC on Twitter — https://twitter.com/GretchenAMcC Official website — https://gretchenmcculloch.com/ Lingthusiasm, Gretchen’s podcast — https://lingthusiasm.com/ Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn why the phrase “money can’t buy happiness” isn’t always true. Then, learn how different generations write differently online, with some help from internet linguist and author Gretchen McCulloch.
Please support this episode’s sponsor! Get your first month of KiwiCo FREE by visiting https://www.kiwico.com/curiosity
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com about why the saying “money can’t buy happiness” isn’t always true: https://curiosity.im/2KoFAiP
Additional resources from Gretchen McCullough:
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/online-boomer-speak-w-gretchen-mcculloch-and-is-money-cant-buy-happiness-true
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn why the phrase “money can’t buy happiness” isn’t always true. Then, you’ll learn how different generations write differently online, with some help from internet linguist and author Gretchen McCulloch.
CODY: Woot! Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
"Money Can't Buy Happiness" Isn't Always True — https://curiosity.im/2KoFAiP (Ashley)
We all know the cliché: "Money can't buy happiness." But clearly, a certain amount of money can mean the difference between happiness and misery. In 2010, researchers decided to find out exactly how much money you’d need to buy happiness, and what they found was pretty interesting.
For their study, researchers Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deacon differentiated between two types of happiness. First, emotional well-being, defined by day-to-day emotional experience. Secondly, life evaluation, defined as the self-perception of one's life as a whole.
They analyzed 450,000 responses to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which is a daily survey of US residents conducted by the Gallup Organization. The survey asked questions about things like how they were feeling yesterday and how they see life as a whole. Emotional experiences included questions like "Did you laugh a lot yesterday?" Life assessment required people to rank themselves on a ladder, where zero represented the worst life, and ten represented the best life.
They found that when it comes to emotional well-being, money does buys happiness — but only to a point. The more money you make, the more your day-to-day happiness improves, UNTIL you hit around $75,000 per year. After that, the improvement levels off. But when it comes to life evaluation, no matter their income bracket, people who make more money had a more favorable evaluation of their life as a whole. The study concluded that, quote, "high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being," unquote
The researchers suggest that once you have sufficient money to weather life’s storms, your day-to-day life is pretty much stable. But it’s generally recognized that overall life evaluation is tied to your level of education, which in turn is tied to your income. In that way, the fact that money can buy you a positive assessment of your life makes sense. Maybe it's time we all asked for a raise.
[KIWICO]
CODY: Today’s episode is sponsored by KiwiCo. Our kids are the future and it’s our job to prepare them for that. Empower them to be creative, confident, and fearless in all their endeavors with KiwiCo’s innovative projects!
ASHLEY: KiwiCo (KEY-WEE-COH) creates super cool hands-on projects for kids to make learning about STEAM fun! STEAM, as in, Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math.
CODY: [ad lib about friends’ kids and putting together stuff like LEGOs]
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CODY: Curiosity Daily listeners, go to kiwico.com/CURIOSITY to get YOUR FIRST MONTH FREE. Every day counts when it comes to making a difference so don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity!
ASHLEY: Again, go to kiwico.com slash CURIOSITY and get YOUR FIRST MONTH FREE. That’s kiwico.com/CURIOSITY.
Gretchen McCulloch #2 — How different generations talk online [4:53] (Both)
CODY: Why do our parents write SO DIFFERENTLY when they’re talking online? Today we’ll get some answers in the second edition of our Hashtag Tuesdays mini-series. Our guest is internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch [Cul-luck], author of the new book “Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language.” And she has some incredible insights into what’s behind the internet dialect of baby boomers that you may have seen referred to as “Boomer speak.” But before she gets into that, we asked her: what’s the main reason why older people and younger sound different when they talk online?
[CLIP 4:53]
ASHLEY: Give Baby Boomers some credit: they’re just trying to write the way they sound! Again, that was Gretchen McCulloch [Cul-luck], author of the new book “Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language.” You can find links to the book and more from Gretchen in today’s show notes, and next week she’ll be back to talk about some really interesting international differences in internet dialects.
ASHLEY: And now, let’s recap what we learned today.
CODY: Today we learned that money CAN buy happiness, until you make about $75,000 a year. Then, not so much.
ASHLEY: And that it’s not just your age that determines how you talk online, but how old you were when you started using the internet.
CODY: And that baby boomers are just trying to write conversationally online, not be passive-aggressive. Don’t take it so personally!
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!