3 MINUTE MONDAY

Hi friend,

I’m coming back to Australia with a brand new live show in March! Plus New Zealand and Bali 💜

Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth, Christchurch, Auckland and Canggu.

In celebration, here’s a story from that side of the world.

In Australia in the 1970’s a woman was assaulted.

Her assailant had broken into her house and attacked her inside of her home.

The police were called and took her report, she identified a TV psychologist, Donald Thomson as her attacker.

That night, the police arrested Thomson. Later he gets placed in a lineup and is identified by the victim as the man who had assaulted her.

Thomson was stunned and said it couldn’t have been him as he had been live on television at the time of the assault.

The policeman taking his statement scoffed at his alibi, replying "Yes, I suppose you've got Jesus Christ, and the Queen of England, too."

The police knew that the victim had been assaulted. They had DNA and photo evidence, as well as her statement, plus she had categorically identified Thomson as her attacker in the lineup.

It seemed like a slam dunk.

But there was a wrinkle - investigators learned that the attacker had entered the woman's home at the exact same time as the show Thomson claimed to be on was airing.

Only then did they realise the victim's mistake.

The attacker had assaulted the woman as she was watching TV—the very program on which Thompson had appeared.

It turned out she had confused memory sources.

She had been watching Thomson's TV interview shortly before the attack; later, her traumatised mind merged Thomson's face (seen on TV) with the memory of the assaulter.

Thomson was eventually cleared - but his case became a famous example of how convincing yet false memories can land an innocent person in jail.

An eyewitness identification, even given with total confidence, may be completely wrong if memory mixes up time, place, or faces.

The kicker? Thomson was on TV to discuss an area of particular expertise he had as a psychologist - specifically the unreliability of eyewitness memory.

MODERN WISDOM

I do a podcast where I pretend to have a British accent.

This week’s upcoming episodes:

Monday.
Jon Bellion - one of the biggest music producers in the world on why he left touring behind for fatherhood and family life. Listen now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Thursday.
Dr Paul Hewitt - one of the world’s leading researchers into the psychology of perfectionism. Absolute must listen.

Saturday.
Alison Armstrong - how the world can treat men better, make them feel happy and learn to communicate effectively.

THINGS I'VE LEARNED

1.
Traditional masculinity isn't toxic when women & children need to go first.

Of the 2,223 passengers on the Titanic, only 706 survived leaving 1,517 dead.

Overall, only 20% of the men survived, compared to nearly 75% of the women.

The survival rate for Third Class children was similar to that of First Class Men.

An interesting disparity is that a greater percentage of British passengers died than American passengers; some sources claim this could be because many Britons of the time were too polite and queued, rather than to force and elbow their way onto the lifeboats as some Americans did.

The captain, Edward John Smith, shouted out: “Be British, boys, be British!” as the ocean liner went down, according to witnesses.

2.
Being smart is basically pointless unless you’re at peace.

“Any amount of intelligence can be overridden by: ego, insecurity, immorality, bad incentives, or impatience, usually in that order.” — Morgan Housel

3.
The internet is not the real world.

“‘Having a boyfriend is embarrassing now’ has the same energy as ‘the Kardashians made skinny go out of style’ - in that neither is true if you go outside.” — Steph:)