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Isn’t it nice sometimes when research defies common warnings?  Like maybe chocolate and red wine aren’t really that bad for you, and maybe you don’t really need to stretch before you exercise.  Unfortunately, this new study by Nathan Pettit at Cornell and Niro Sivanathan at London Business school isn’t one of those cases.

The paper suggests what most of us could already vouch for anecdotally.  Feeling bad about ourselves can lead to unnecessary spending.

The two researchers take things a step further by saying that moments of low self esteem motivate high-status purchases, so-called “showy” items.  And because we shop to make ourselves feel better, not worse, when we’re feeling down on ourselves we’re likely delay the negative effects of shopping by using credit cards.

Pettit and Sivanathan had college students take an ambiguous computer test. They then told half the students that they’d scored in the 88th percentile, and the other half that they’d scored in the 12th percentile.  The subjects who were made to feel like dummies were more likely to report they’d go ahead with a prospective purchase, and they were more likely to say they’d pay for it with a credit card.

I called up Pettit at Cornell this morning.  To him, the most interesting part of this story is what he sees as a “perfect storm.”  He described how “an adverse psychological state drives people towards spending money on high status conspicuous goods, and using credit to do so.”  This results, he says, in people “not only spending more, but doing it in a more costly way.”

The study was inspired by the 2008 market crash, which many economists attribute to banks lending too much credit to people who couldn’t pay back their loans.  Pettit equates “lower socioeconomic status” with lower self esteem, and supposes that this “chronic self threat” could be an explanation for poor people overcompensating with showy purchases.  This makes me a little nervous.  I might be jumping to conclusions, but this line of reasoning seems to lend itself a little too easily to scoffing at a poor people in a tricked-out cars.

That aside, this study made me think of how previous studies have shown beauty advertisements and advertisements using models can make viewers feel bad about themselves.  Maybe this effect isn’t arbitrary.  Maybe advertisers are consciously harnessing the purchasing tendencies of our lowered self worth.

The Chemical Heritage Foundation’s podcast, Distillations, has asked me to produce a commentary for their September show.  I’ll write up and narrate a piece about The Tongue Map Myth, which I shared here in January.  Stay tuned!

Other exciting opportunities, and lovely houseguests, have kept me away from this website for the past week.  Since I have no radio-related work of my own to share with you, I thought I’d at least link you to two great pieces by other Brooklyn independent producers.

My friend Nina Porzuki traveled the country a few years back recording people’s stories for StoryCorps.  She and her fellow StoryCorps mobile tour members felt a special connection with the city of Buffalo, NY.   The five of them formed The Recollective, and decided to create a musical portrait of Buffalo.  Listen to their project, called Sounds & Echoes, here.

Brendan Baker’s another member of my Brooklyn listening group.  He composed the music and helped produce The Wisdom of Jay Thunderbolt for the podcast Love + Radio.  Cutting-edge stuff — gorgeous and highly profane.  Listen here.

Last October at the Third Coast International Audio Festival I was lucky enough to nab an appointment with Robert Krulwich of NPR, ABC news, and Radiolab fame.  His advice to me as a new science radio freelancer in New York?  Two things.  One, collaborate with others.  Two, seek out science cafes.

Since then, pretty much every radio success I’ve had has come from following Mr. Krulwich’s advice. Finding New York’s science cafes felt like a bit of a scavenger hunt though, so I figured I’d put a list together for others interested in checking them out.

• Secret Science Club–  Fun monthly lectures and performances held at the Bell House in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood.  This science cafe feels largely geared towards twenty and thirty-somethings.  It’s usually free.
• Columbia Cafe Science– Lectures by well-spoken Columbia scientists.  Held monthly at PicNic Market and Cafe in Manhattan.  The $10 cover charge comes with a free glass of wine and a noticeably older audience.
• Entertaining Science– Creative assemblages of speakers, monthly at the Cornelia Street Cafe in Manhattan.  Again a $10 cover charge, but I can’t say whether there’s a free drink involved- I’m always working my side job Sunday evenings when they meet.  The cafe’s hosted by noble prize-winning chemist Roald Hoffmann.
• Observatory–  My personal favorite, though as a their podcaster I have a bit of a bias.   Not technically a science cafe, Observatory’s an arts and events space that hosts lectures on topics that combine art and science.  It’s located in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn.  Most weeks you’ll find multiple lectures to choose from and a diverse crowd.  There’s a $5 entrance fee for most talks, with complimentary Two Buck Chuck.

I’d be happy to hear if you know of any I’m missing out on!

Thanks to some advice from last post’s lecturer Holly Tucker (@history_geek) I’ve joined Twitter.  Follow me @audreyqq!

One influential group of people did start to take notice of Greenpoint.  Riverkeeper is a nonprofit that looks after water quality on the Hudson River and its tributaries.   They started patrolling Newtown Creek in 2002, and  found oil leaking into the creek from a bulkhead  on the Exxon Mobil property near the BQE.  They filed notice of intent to sue the company under the Clean Water Act.  A few years later NY State joined in with a parallel lawsuit.

Joshua Veleum, a lawyer with Riverkeeper, told me they went through three years of negotiations with Exxon Mobil, and getting Greenpoint residents to join in the case.  This last November they finally reached a settlement, settling the State’s case as a side agreement.  The settlement forced Exxon Mobil to give $19 million to fund environmental projects in Greenpoint, and spend millions more thoroughly cleaning up the oil contaminating Greenpoint groundwater.  Riverkeeper retained the right to monitor the clean up.  They can take the company back to court if the reparations aren’t up to Riverkeeper’s standards.

Those 2002 patrols also got Riverkeeper pushing for EPA Superfund status for Newtown Creek.  They started writing state politicians, including then NY senator Hillary Clinton, asking them to petition the EPA.   The EPA first had to come out and give Newtown Creek a hazard ranking score, to see if it was eligible for the Superfund rank.  It was, and the EPA added Newtown Creek to its list of Superfund sites.

Why’d it take so long for forceful action, like the Exxon Mobil settlement and the Superfund designation, to come to Greenpoint?  Riverkeeper’s Veleum points out that Greenpoint’s always been a really industrial area, where people might have considered pollution as coming with the territory.  Also, the oil leak was slow and underground, out of view from the everyday person.  Veleum also suggests that those at the state level may have recognized what a big task the clean up would be, and just didn’t want to have to do what it would take to tackle it.   I keep hearing about the history of corruption in Albany, and I’m curious to see how that might relate to representatives’ hesitation to confront oil companies in Greenpoint.  Even to this day the state downplays the health risks in this neighborhood, though Riverkeeper and residents remain concerned.

Speaking of people worried about health in Greenpoint, how does Laura Hofmann feel about last fall’s two victories?  I thought she might still be skeptical, but she’s unequivocally elated.  “It’s wonderful,” she told me.  And she’s proud of how the people of Greenpoint banded together to fight for change.  “This neighborhood turned out to be a kick-ass neighborhood,” she says frankly.  “Within a decade, 100% more has gone through than was done in all the decades before.”

Considering I’d like to produce this story over the next year, I’m trying to figure out what kind of progress I’ll get to cover.  In regards to the Superfund site, a representative from the EPA told me they first have to put together a Remedial Investigation Report, which focuses on “the nature and extent of the contamination”.  The EPA rep was hesitant to give me a timeline, but other sources say the report alone will likely take a full year to complete.  Then they have to do a feasibility study to look at the options for clean up.  Then they have to debate the merits of those options.  You get it, it’s going to be a while before the EPA gets anything visible done.  As far as seeing results from the Exxon Mobil settlement, I unfortunately have to leave you hanging.  I’m still waiting for responses from Riverkeeper and the state Department of Environmental Conservation regarding timeline for putting the settlement money into action.

I’ve continued to spend about a day a week researching my neighborhood for a possible radio documentary fellowship.  I never figured myself for a history nut, but I’m suddenly getting all jazzed up geeking out over dates and court documents.  Walking down the streets I keep thinking about how the sounds around me would fit into a radio piece–the squeals of children playing in McGolrick park, the gossip of elderly Polish speakers watching over their stoops, and the lapping of waves along the edge of Newtown Creek.

It’s incredible to find out how long New York regulators have ignored the oil seeping into Greenpoint, in spite of some pretty blatant warnings.  Oil leaked from refinery pipes beginning in the 1940’s.  In 1950, enough oil had seeped into the sewer system that it somehow combusted, causing an explosion in the business district that threw manhole covers as high as second story windows.  The city wrote off the disaster as a natural gas leak, and from what I can tell no one looked into it further.  Then in 1978, a Coast Guard helicopter flying over Newtown Creek noticed a giant plume of oil coming out of the water. Workers collected oil around the plume, but millions of gallons of oil remained in the creek and groundwater.  After Mobil spilled an additional 50,000 gallons of oil into the creek in one week in 1990, New York State entered into consent orders with the company to require a clean up.  But the agreement didn’t stipulate any dates for progress so Mobil could continue to evade responsibility.

I wanted to get a sense of what it was like to live in Greenpoint alongside such egregious environmental neglect.  Laura Hoffman graciously welcomed me into her home to chat over coffee.  Now a grandmother, Ms. Hoffman’s lived in Greenpoint all her life.  Even her parents grew up just across Newtown Creek in Queens.  They both died from rare brain diseases.  Every one of their siblings died from some kind of cancer.  Ms. Hoffman, all of her brothers and sisters, and all of her children have had unusual diseases too.   Given the benzine, dioxin, and thalate emissions in the neighborhood, she sees the wave of newcomers moving into Greenpoint as future hospital patients.  Gulp.

I loved listening to Ms. Hoffman’s thick Brooklyn accent as she lead me through her own account of Greenpoint history.  Surprisingly, the neighborhood I know as “Little Poland” has only had an influx of Polish immigrants since the 1980’s, by her estimates. As a child she remembers mostly Irish and German American residents.  Then in the 60’s and 70’s more Latinos came, and she recalls a lot of violent racial unrest during that time.  She got her first glimpse of Greenpoint gentrification in the late 1990’s, when rezoning brought about the conversion of old buildings into condos.

Watching her family’s failing health, Ms. Hoffman began to complain about Greenpoint pollution to the EPA.  But she was calling about pollution in a poor immigrant neighborhood.  Pollution caused by companies that brought the state a lot of money.  She says she’s still waiting for a response to her 1990 complaint about ash falling from the sky in front of her home.  The lack of respect she got from regulators didn’t stop her from continuing to contact officials about her concerns.  When I called her perseverance bold, she told me, “It’s not about being gutsy, it’s about being pissed off.”  She compares her sense of turf  to Vivienne Lee in Gone with the Wind.  Sure, things have been bad in Greenpoint, but it’s the only home she’s ever had.  She’s never considered leaving.

It’s time for me to close the cheese shop, but I promise some resolution to this story in my next post.

Friday morning I took a trip down the New Jersey Turnpike to record an interview with Irma Aandahl.  Irma hosted WAMU‘s morning talk show in the 1970’s–until her assistant Diane Rehm took over and it became the now famous Diane Rehm Show in 1979.

After at least 80 years of life,  I figured Irma might have some good advice for a less seasoned radio producer.

Some favorite nuggets:

• The best advancement to come in radio production?  “Microphone holders.  They changed everything.”
• There’s no reason to doubt yourself.  “I never got nervous.  Why would I be nervous?”
• Speak your mind.  “This is just the stupidest conversation I’ve ever had!”
• Do your homework.  “We were good about that, we never reviewed a book we hadn’t read.”
• Handcrafts are silly.  Of Diane Rehm,  “Let’s just say, she made her own clothes (eyeroll).”

As I got up to leave, I adjusted the clasp of my jacket cuff which had come undone.  Irma shrieked, “Can’t you afford to get that fixed?”  I feebly tried to explain it wasn’t broken.  Irma just tsk-ed and lit up another Winston as her nurse lead me out the door.

I got a nice little birthday surprise from my old Seattle station today.   They purchased my fish story (previously aired on Word of Mouth) from PRX and played it this afternoon on KUOW Presents.  I really miss that city, so it’s  nice knowing I’ve been back on the Seattle airwaves if not there in person!

I’ve spent much of this week learning how plants and animals communicate using chemicals, for another prospective story.  I realized there was a common purpose for most of this chemical communication: reproduction.  I like calling these chemicals the sexy scents.  Many plants and animals use them to advertise their virility.  Pheremones croon “Mate with me!” and floral aromas call out “Pollinate me!”.

But why scents?  If you smelled the waxy goo coming out of a monkey’s chest gland I’m pretty sure copulation would be the last thing on your mind.  And are we really supposed to believe that tiny pollinating insects fancy themselves perfume connoisseurs?

Scientists are finding that a plant or animal’s scent can carry a Sunday’s paper worth of advertising material for prospective mates or pollinators (“I know where the good food is baby, hmm, hmm” or “My pollen is the very sweetest!”).  Also, communicating through chemicals can save energy and lead to more successful reproduction.  Indulge me here as I cue Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On”.

To research this story I talked with Robert Raguso of Cornell University.  He studies chemical communication between flowering plants and their pollinators.  Raguso tells me of how cleverly plants use scent to lure and even trick pollinators.  Communicating with chemicals allows plants to send pollinators complex messages.  The scents they emit are ofter composed of hundreds of different chemical compounds.  Scents can also attract pollinators with poor eyesight or those that fly at night.  Some species of tropical orchids use scent to trick males bees into thinking the flowers are female bees.  The mistaken males rub up against the flower in vain, but they do succeed in pollinating the plant.  Raguso  says plants that advertise visually have to constantly spend energy sustaining their impressive blooms, while plants that advertise with smell can limit scent production to times when pollinators are near.

I also talked with Anthony Di Fiore of New York University.  He studies primate mating behavior. He explains how some monkeys emit scent chemicals from glands on their chest or ano-genital region.  These scents can boast on topics ranging from their arousal level, to their physical strength, to their access to resources.  Most interestingly, Di Fiore’s found that monkeys who use chemical communication are much less aggressive towards each other than other monkeys.  They don’t have to waste energy fighting for mates because their scent automatically displays their dominance.

This could be a fun piece if I could get some human actors to verbalize what these plants and animals are “saying” with chemicals.  I like the idea of having little snippets of a radio drama within a more science-y story.