Did a Gallup poll find that Americans feared public speaking more than death? No, not ever!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some surveys about fear of public speaking have been misquoted repeatedly for many years. There is a post at the SpeakUp PUBLIC SPEAKING PRACTICE blog on April 2, 2026 titled Fear of Public Speaking Is More Common Than You Think. The second paragraph gave a nonworking link and claimed:

 

“A Gallup poll found many Americans reported fearing public speaking more than death.”

 

But that survey actually looked at two surveys from 2001 and 1998 on what more people feared, which is a completely different question than what people feared more. And death was not on those fears lists. The quarter-century old article by Geoffrey Brewer at Gallup News on March 19, 2001 is titled Snakes Top List of Americans’ Fears. For 2001 the list of 13 fears and their percentages is as follows:

 

Snakes: 51%

Public speaking in front of an audience: 40%

Heights: 36%

Being closed in a small space: 34%

Spiders and insects: 27%

Needles and getting shots: 21%

Mice: 20%

Flying on an airplane: 18%

Crowds: 11%

Dogs: 11%

Thunder and lightning: 11%

Going to the doctor: 9%

The dark: 5%

 

And for 1998 the list of 13 fears and their percentages is as follows:

 

Snakes: 56%

Public speaking in front of an audience: 45%

Heights: 41%

Being closed in a small space: 36%

Spiders and insects: 34%

Mice: 26%

Needles and getting shots: 21%

Flying on an airplane: 20%

Thunder and lightning: 17%

Going to the doctor: 12%

Crowds: 11%

Dogs: 10%

The dark: 8%

 

Another earlier article by Roxine Kee at CollegeInfoGeek on September 17, 2018 titled 5 Tips for Crafting Great Speeches and Presentations stated:

 

“If you’re like most people, you probably would rather die than present in front of a classroom. I’m not exaggerating: in this Gallup poll from 2001, the fear of public speaking is ranked #2, ahead of the fear of death (#6).”

 

There is an undated article by Kathy Varol titled The secret that turned my public speaking anxiety into excitement which also claimed:

 

“A 2001 Gallup poll found that 40% of Americans cited public speaking as their top fear – more than double the number who feared death.”

 

But Kathy confused the Gallup poll with the 1973 Bruskin survey I had blogged about in a post back on October 27, 2009 titled The 14 Worst Human Fears in the 1977 Book of Lists: where did this data really come from? It found 40.6% feared speaking while 18.7% feared death.

  

Another undated article from Eileen Hopkins titled Are you afraid to speak in public? said that:

 

“Public speaking is one of the greatest fears people face; in fact, according to a Gallup poll, 40% of people are more scared of giving a speech than they are of dying!

 

Also, on July 18, 2025 I blogged about Spouting nonsense – a YouTube video from Amrez with fairy tales about two surveys on public speaking fears. One was the Gallup article but they incorrectly claimed it included death, illness, old age, running, losing a loved one, or other.  

 

The skull and crossbones cartoon came from here at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Your Best Meeting Ever is a very useful 2026 book by Rebecca Hinds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

There is a very useful 2026 book by Rebecca Hinds titled Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for designing meetings that get things done. Google Books has a  preview through page 27. An article by Roger Dean Duncan at Forbes on February 3, 2026 titled Stop Wasting Time: The Science of Meetings That Work discusses that book. He says:

 

“Hinds focuses on seven core principles that challenge many deeply held assumptions about meetings: treating meetings as a last resort rather than a default, measuring return on time invested, designing meetings around decision-making and complexity, keeping participation intentionally small, actively designing for engagement, protecting cognitive energy, and ensuring rigorous follow-through. Together, they form a blueprint for meetings that respect time, attention, and outcomes.”

 

There also is another article by Brandon Laws at xenium on February 3, 2026 titled Designing Meetings That Actually Get Work Done accompanied by a 36-minutes podcast at Xenium HR on February 3, 2026 titled Designing Meetings That Actually Get Work Done with Rebecca Hinds.

 

At the end of her book, starting on page 228, Rebecca summarizes THE SIMPLE MEETING DESIGN USER MANUAL as follows:

 

“Meetings are your most important product. Design them as if they are.

 

Principle 1

Volume: Cut Your Meeting Debt

 

Meetings pile up like technical debt – quietly draining time, energy, and sanity. Use these five steps to wipe out your meeting debt:

 

STEP 1: LAUNCH A CALENDAR CLEANSE. Delete your recurring meetings for forty-eight hours and rebuild your calendar from the ground up.

 

STEP 2: EQUIP EMPLOYEES TO DEFEND THEIR TOME. Give your team the tools – and permission – to say no to meetings.

 

STEP 3: BUILD A MEETING DEBT DEPOSITORY. Create a place where employees can flag bloated or broken meetings. And make sure leaders act on it.

 

STEP 4: ADD GUARDRAILS TO PREVENT MEETING DEBT. Use spped bumps, gatekeepers, and blocks to stop bad meetings before they hit the calendar.

 

STEP 5: COMMIT TO REGULAR MAINTENANCE. Hold recurring Meeting Doomsdays – and reward the people who don’t let the clutter creep back in.

 

Principle 2

Measurement: Choose the Right Metrics

 

You can’t fix what you don’t measure. And you also can’t fix what you measure badly. Stick to these four mantras for meaningful meeting measurement:

 

MANTRA 1: AVOID MSSLEADING METRICS. Watch out for four misleading metrics: sentiment, self-ratings, cost, and time saved. They’re easy to track. And easy to misinterpret.

 

MATRA 2: USE RETURN ON TIME INVESTED (ROTI). ROTI is your most brutally honest – and most reliable – metric for assessing whether a meeting was effective.

 

MANTRA 3: MEASURE WHAT MATTERS: Use meeting analytics to move past surface metrics and dissect what’s really going on. Start with time in meetings, airtime, multitasking, punctuality, and attendance.

 

MANTRA 4: BEWARE METRICS AS TARGETS. When a metric becomes a target, it stops driving progress. People start gaming the system instead of fixing the meeting.

 

Principle 3

Structure: Become a Meeting Minimalist

 

Apply the Rule of Halves and other minimalist strategies to cut the clutter from your meetings across four key dimensions: agenda, duration, attendees, and frequency.

 

DIMENSION 1: AGENDA. Every agenda item should have a job to do. Give it one by converting it into a verb-noun combination, like: ‘Decide budget,’ ‘Finalize draft messaging,’ or ‘Align on Q2 plan.’

 

DIMENSION 2: LENGTH. Beware Parkinson’s Law: Your meeting will expand to fill the time you give it. So set tight time limits and stick to them. 

 

DIMENSION 3: ATTENDEES. Follow the Rule of Eight: no more than eight attendees. Only invite stakeholders, not spectators.

 

DIMENSION 4: FREQUENCY. Eliminate meetings that happen too often, especially ‘meetings about the meetings.’ Prevent zombie meetings by giving each one an expiry date. Use the Disagree and Commit rule to shut down spin-off meetings – and make sure the real decision makers are in the room. 

 

Principle 4

Flow: Apply Systems Thinking

 

Broken meetings are often the result of broken communication outside of the meeting. Use these three upgrades to improve the flow – before, during, and after the meeting:

 

UPGRADE 1: STANDARDIZE YOUR COMMUNICATION TOOLS: Pick a core communication tech stack and stick to it. Then, standardize what justifies a live meeting with the 4D-CEO Test: meet only to discuss, decide, debate, or develop, and only if the topic is complex, emotionally intense, or involves a one-way door.

 

UPGRADE 2: DEFAULT TO ASYNCHORNOUS COMMUNICATION. Meetings should be your last resort, not your first. Build a system where work moves forward without needing real-time conversations.

 

UPGRADE 3: DESIGN FOR DISTANCE. Don’t just design for the people in the room. Make sure your communication system works for everyone, everywhere.

 

Principle 5

Engagement: Prioritize User-Centric Design

 

Meetings should serve the people in the room – not just the person who scheduled them. Start by squashing these four energy-sucking bugs:

 

ENERGY-SUCKING BUG 1: POWER MOVES. Don’t let volume, title, or ego run your meeting. When one person dominates, everyone else checks out.

 

ENERGY-SUCKING BUG 2: LATENESS. Start on time. End on time. Respect for people starts with respect for the clock.

 

ENERGY-SUCKING BUG 3: JARGON. Jargon doesn’t make you sound smart. It just makes your message harder to understand and easier to ignore. Speak like a smart ninth grader. Ditch the buzzwords and gobbledygook.

 

ENERGY-SUCKING BUG 4: BOREDOM. Beige rooms breed beige ideas. Add plants, color, light, movement, or food. And make sure every meeting has at least one moment of delight.

 

Principle 6

Timing: Get Your Message in Rhythm

 

The best meetings sync with the natural flow of work – not interrupt it. Align your meetings to three key rhythms:

 

RHYTHM 1: STRATEGIC RHYTHM. Sync your strategy meetings with your company’s goal-setting cycles and anchor them to a single source of truth.

 

RHYTHM 2: TACTICAL RHYTHM. Align your tactical meetings with key project milestones: premortem, midpoint check-ins, and postmortems.

 

RHYTHM 3: OPERATIONAL RHYTHM. Match operational meetings like daily huddles to the rhythm of your day-to-day work. Protect deep work with strategic meeting pauses: no-meeting days, blocks, and buffers.

 

Principle 7:

Technology: Innovate and Iterate

 

Treat your meetings like a product in beta that needs constant upgrading and refining. Stick to these rules:

 

RULE 1: GET YOUR MVP RIGHT. Prioritize clear audio and video quality before piling on extra features.

 

RULE 2: EMBRACE CALM TECHNOLOGY. When adding new technology to your meetings, follow two calm principles. First, it should require minimal effort to use. Second, it should amplify the best of both humans and technology.

 

RULE 3: RELENTLESSLY PROTOTYPE WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Use AI to handle the grunt work, surface real-time insights, and (sometimes) attend meetings for you. But never run a meeting on an AI autopilot.

 

You have the blueprint. Now go design your best meeting ever.”

 

The cartoon was adapted from one of an interview at OpenClipArt.

 

 

How do we and how should we talk to ourselves?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Carmine Gallo at Inc. on March 22, 2025 titled How to Turn Public Speaking-Anxiety Into Confidence and subtitled Change your relationship with public speaking by embracing time travel and positive self-talk. And he refers to a 2025 book by Ethan Kross titled Shift: Managing Your Emotions – So They Don’t Manage You.

 

Another article by Lauren Parsons in Toastmaster Magazine on December 2024 (pages 17 to 19) is titled Master Your Self-Talk and subtitled Filter out negative influences and talk to yourself compassionately. Yet another article at The Buckley School on May 5, 2021 is titled Calm Public Speaking Nerves: Let’s Talk about Self-Talk.

 

There is a post by Catherine Syme at the Fear-Less blog on February 11, 2021 titled Nervous About Public Speaking? Self-Talk That Actually Helps. And way back on August 27, 2014 I blogged about Should fear of negative self-talk be on Top Ten lists of fears?

 

Finally, there is a very detailed, 12-page pdf article by Kathyrn E. Schertz et al. at Scientific Reports [Nature] on November 6, 2025 titled The frequency, form, and function of self-talk in everyday life. I found it at PubMed Central.

 

The self-talk woman was adapted from a cartoon at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Five philosophical razors for clearer thinking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a Wikipedia article titled Philosophical razor which defines one as:

 

“a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate (shave off) unlikely explanations for a phenomenon or avoid unnecessary actions.

 

The best known is Occam’s razor. Wikipedia says that:

 

“In philosophy, Occam’s razor is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony.”

 

There is a more specific principle called Hanlon’s razor that instead says:  

 

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”

 

On March 23, 2026 I blogged about it in a post titled Stupidity can explain a lot of behavior.

 

And there is Alder’s razor:

 

“If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate.”

 

There is Grice’s razor:

 

“Address what someone meant to say instead of the literal meaning of the words.”

 

There is Hitchens’ razor:

 

“That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

 

An article at Life Lessons is titled 9 Philosophical razors you need to know. Another article by Chris Meyer at The Mind Collection is titled 11 Philosophical razors to simplify your life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

How we describe the solar system is a good example of Occam’s razor. As shown simply above, once we had an earth-centered view using circular orbits. For Geocentrism Wikipedia says:

 

“The resultant system, which eventually came to be widely accepted in the west, seems unwieldy to modern astronomers; each planet required an epicycle revolving on a deferent, offset by an equant which was different for each planet. It predicted various celestial motions, including the beginning and end of retrograde motion, to within a maximum error of 10 degrees, considerably better than without the equant.”

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The modern, simpler, heliocentric version, is shown above. It has elliptical orbits that result from gravitational attraction.

 

 

The razor was adapted from an image at OpenClipart.  The Ptolemaic model and solar system were adapted from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Jim Jones sardonically described the Idaho state legislature’s budget process as being “Throwing together feathers, hoping for a duck”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Jim Jones in the Idaho Press on April 4, 2026 titled Jones: Budgeting process - throwing together feathers, hoping for a duck. And in the Lewiston Tribune on April 5, 2026 it similarly was titled OPINION: Idaho’s budgeting process is throwing together feathers, hoping for a duck.

 

He had served both as the Attorney General of Idaho for eight years, and an Idaho Supreme Court Justice for twelve years. Jim Jones has a way with words!

 

The ugly ducking cartoon was adapted from a February 21, 1906 Puck magazine cover at the Library of Congress.

 

How to have a conversation with difficult people

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cover for the April 2026 issue of Toastmaster magazine describes it as having Top Tips for Effective Conversations. There is a Featured Article by Jefferson Fisher on pages 14 to 17 that is titled How to Talk to Difficult People and subtitled Tips for handling people with challenging personality traits. He describes seven types and how to handle them:

 

The Insulter and Belittler

The Interrupter and Talker-Over

The Always-Has-To-Be-Right

The Passive Aggressor

The Gaslighter

The Narcissist

The One-Upper

 

Also, back on page 26 there is another article titled 5 Questions with Jefferson Fisher, which logically should have appeared right after it on page 18. It is not linked to under Related Articles though. You have to download the pdf file of this issue to find it. That is a very curious editorial omission.

 

On March 1, 2026 I blogged about how The Next Conversation is a thoughtful book by Jefferson Fisher.

 

The image of a 2017 BMW press conference was cropped from one by Matti Blume at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

A very useful book on the Science of Cleaning by Italian chemistry professor Dario Bressanini

 

 

 

There is a very useful 2024 book by Dario Bressanini titled The Science of Cleaning: Use the power of chemistry to clean smarter, easier, and safer. A  preview is at Google Books. He discusses what works (a lot), what is useless, and what is dangerous. His twelve chapters and their starting page numbers are:

 

 1] Clean and Dirty, 6

 2] Acids and Bases, 14

 3] Limescale, 30

 4] Soaps, 50

 5] Detergents, 68

 6] Chlorine-Based Bleach, 92

 7] Oxygen-Based Bleach, 110

 8] Laundry, 120

 9] Dishes, 150

10] Disinfectants, 174

11] Baking Soda, 206

12] Household Surfaces, 224  

 

One useless mixture is described in his detailed section on pages 24 to 26 titled Baking Soda and Vinegar: a mixture that makes no sense. The reaction is shown above. He says:

 

“Every time someone suggests mixing vinegar and baking soda to remove a stain or unblock a drain, a chemist somewhere combusts. I couldn’t say precisely when this particular craze began, but it’s definitely popular. Pick any online cleaning forum or Facebook group, then look for a video on how to unblock the sink, clean the carpet, or degrease a frying pan – or follow a few influencers or pick through the hand hints section of a modern home magazine – and it won’t be long before you begin to hear the inexorable chant in your head ‘Vinegar and baking soda, vinegar and baking soda, mix them quickly and watch the magic.’

 

It's a pity that not only does mixing them not work, it can even be counterproductive. I know many of you are thinking, ‘But everyone is saying it!’ Well, I’m afraid that everyone is wrong. No matter how many times we repeat something false, it doesn’t become true. As I explained above, baking soda is basic while vinegar is acidic. When mixed, they react instantly to produce water, carbon dioxide, and sodium acetate, a mildly basic substance with absolutely no cleaning properties. Likewise if you mix – in the correct quantities – two highly corrosive substances like lye and hydrochloric acid. The result is an innocuous water and sodium chloride mixture: salt water, in other words. This happens because in chemical reactions, the properties of the original substances disappear as the substances themselves no longer exist, having chemically transformed. Therefore, it makes absolutely no sense to mix substances that react with each other.

 

I realize, however, that it might be too flippant to dismiss vinegar and baking soda in this way. As a chemist. I’ve often wondered how such an inaccurate piece of advice could have become so popular. It wouldn’t be the first time a wholly incorrect or ineffective home or traditional remedy has propagated at such speed and with such fervor. Kitchen and cooking tips are an excellent case in point, and some of the popular claims about how to clean or keep our kitchens hygienic are so wildly inaccurate that they shouldn’t be given the time of day. Why would throwing coffee grounds down the sink help unclog it?

 

 Anyway, the habit of mixing vinegar and baking soda is so common, and its promoters are so convinced of its effectiveness, that I decided to take a closer look. I spent a long time thinking about it until I eventually identified three reasons this urban legend has taken such a strong hold.

 

The first is psychological: When vinegar (or lemon juice) touches baking soda, it instantly fizzes, producing a very impressive cloud of foam and bubbles. It may look like something special is happening, but it’s still just carbon dioxide with no detergent properties. It you put it in the kitchen sink, the bubbles may drag up some of the dirt from the pipes and you may interpret this as a cleaning miracle. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news: It isn’t.

 

The second reason is the comforting knowledge that both vinegar and baking soda are edible, so they must be completely harmless. Everywhere we turn, we’re bombarded with warnings and ads fueling concerns for our health and the environment, suggesting – incorrectly and often dishonestly – that normal cleaning products, the ones ‘made of stuff with complicated names we don’t understand,’ are hazardous for our health. Conversely, there’s no denying that if you buy a product to unlock the kitchen sink, it will have a warning symbol blazoned across the label. For example, as I said earlier, lye should be used with caution, but it’s precisely its corrosiveness that enables it to unclog your sink. So if you pick up a magazine or follow an influencer and both tell you to use a much safer mix of vinegar and baking soda instead of the more dangerous lye, the temptation to believe is difficult to resist, especially if you’ve forgotten the chemistry you learned in school.

 

I’ve no doubt that many of you reading this will be ready to swear that your mixture ‘worked’ – that the last time you used it, it really did clean the thing you set out to clean.

 

This brings me to my third reason for this phenomenon, which is strictly chemical. I said earlier that vinegar and baking soda (just like lye and hydrochloric acid) cancel each other out, but only if you use the correct quantities of the two reactants. I’ll save you the calculations, but a liter of ordinary 6-percent vinegar requires exactly 84 grams of baking soda to react fully and produce a solution of water, carbon dioxide, and sodium acetate. Or, if you prefer, 100 ml of vinegar reacts fully with 8.4 grams of baking soda. After the reaction, both the baking soda and the acetic acid originally present in the vinegar no longer exist. I’m pretty certain none of the concoctions touted as the remedy of all cleaning ills contain exactly these quantities, which is the key to understanding why this mixture is believed to work miracles. If you mix less than 8.4 grams of baking soda with 100 ml of vinegar, the baking soda completely disappears when the two substances finish reacting, and all that is left is the excess acetic acid that didn’t react. Vice versa, if you add more baking soda, the acetic acid disappears and excess baking soda is left. It is the addition of the leftover, unused reactants that makes the mixture look like it is working.

 

There are generally two types of recipes for mixing vinegar with baking soda: hose with an overabundance of vinegar, which create a watery solution, and those with an overabundance of baking soda, where the latter is barely wetted by the vinegar to form a paste. When the leftover reactant is acetic acid, it is still active to a degree against any limescale crusting up faucets, lining pipes, or stopping water from draining properly. This is why the mixture seems to work, even if you’re only using what was left after the reaction and not the full 100 ml you started out with. You’re wasting vinegar and baking soda to create a liquid that is much less effective.

 

Some people even recommend making the mixture in advance and keeping it in a bottle. I hope you’re beginning to see why this makes absolutely no sense: As soon as baking soda and vinegar touch, at least one of them ceases to exist. If any cleaning is being done, it is coming from the leftover vinegar.

 

In the other recipes, the cleaning power comes from the abrasive properties of the baking soda, which is useful for scrubbing a crusted frying pan or removing buildup from an oven tray. Here, the amount of vinegar recommended leaves a portion of the baking soda unreacted and lightly moistened, so it can be used to scrape off the dirt. Once again, you’d be better off not wasting vinegar at all and just dampening a small amount of baking soda with water.”   

 

Recent magazine articles also discuss why to not mix baking soda and vinegar. One by Ashley Abramson and Barbara Bellesi Zito at Apartment Therapy on July 31, 2024 is titled Why You Shouldn’t Mix Baking Soda and Vinegar for Cleaning, According to a Chemist. Another by Caroline Mullen in the New York Times – Wirecutter on September 15, 2025 is titled Please stop mixing baking soda and vinegar to make cleaning paste.

 

Regarding what is dangerous there is a box all about bleach on page 98  in white lettering on a dark gray background with a heading of WARNING!:

 

"Never, ever, EVER mix bleach with another substance unless you are 100 percent sure what will happen. You should especially avoid combining bleach with acids.

 

Every year, hundreds of people end up in the hospital after intentionally mixing acidic cleaning products with bleach. When bleach comes in contact with an acid, it liberates poisonous chlorine gas, which was used as a chemical weapon in WWI due to its toxicity. Unfortunately, there are a host of toilet cleaners out there that are identical in everything but color, except that some contain bleach and some contain hydrochloric acid. While cleaning the house one busy morning, you could easily finish one bottle and start using another without thinking – but the new bottle happens to contain a hydrochloric acid-based cleaner, and before you know it, you’re choking on chlorine gas.

 

Separating bleach and acids also means avoiding using a toilet that you’ve just poured a bleach-based product into. Urine is acidic, so if it hits the bleach, don’t be surprised when you get a whiff of gas. And don’t forget that vinegar and lemon juice are acids too. Ammonia and bleach are both frequently used around the house. While they’re equally effective cleaners on their own, when combined (which I beg you never to do), they can create a very unwelcome – not to mention highly irritating and toxic – substance called chloramine.

 

Bleach mixed with hydrogen peroxide (which is a weaker oxygen-based bleach) produces an instant whoosh of oxygen bubbles. On its own, oxygen is not toxic, but the fizz is so vigorous that it can easily send splashes of liquid onto your skin and eyes. Please also steer clear of bleach and ethyl alcohol mixtures, which can create a number of organic compounds – from chloroform to acetaldehyde – in varying concentrations.

 

So I’ll say it again: Don’t mix bleach with any cleaning product, really. Ever!”