Something You Should Know - A Better Way to Make Your Choices in Life & How to Be Irresistible to the Opposite Sex

Episode Date: January 25, 2018

I am sure you have had to perform under pressure. And so you know that it is difficult to do and often your performance suffers. But why? Well a couple of interesting things happen in that situation and when you understand them you can make the experience of performing under pressure a lot easier. Listen as I begin this episode with this fascinating intel. Then, we are going to explore the process of making choices. Today, we have so many choices for everything – breakfast cereal, cars, food, careers – everywhere choices abound! And that can be great except that too many choices can actually be paralyzing. Anyone who has spent more time choosing what show to watch on Netflix than actually watching a show knows what I mean. Barry Schwartz, author of the book, The Paradox of Choice (http://amzn.to/2n9IpHD) joins me to explain why trying to make the “best” choice may be a waste of time and he offers a better way to make choices that will leave you more satisfied. Have you heard that we only use about 10% of our brain? Well, that turns out to be nonsense and it is just one of several myths about the brain we will clear up in this episode. What attracts men to women and women to men? Allan Pease has some very interesting answers. Allan has been studying how people communicate and he is author of the book, Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love (http://amzn.to/2Fcp7IW). Listen as he explains how to make yourself more attractive to the opposite sex based on evolutionary drives and urges that still rule our feelings and actions.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, on Something You Should Know, if you've ever had trouble performing under pressure, you need to hear what I have to tell you, and it'll make it a lot easier. Then, the paradox of choice. We have so many choices to make in life. Are we better off going for the best choice, or a choice that's good enough? People who go into decisions trying to get good enough are more satisfied with their decisions than people who go into decisions looking for the best. They may do less well, but they're more satisfied.

Then does doing crossword puzzles really do much for your mind and memory? I'll tell you what the science says. And we'll explore what makes women attractive to men and what makes men attractive to women. Dancing. Dancing by most animals is done as a prelude to love. It's a courtship thing, and that's why women are good at it and love to do it. If you can do basic dancing as a man, you will be popular with all the women. All this today on Something You Should Know. As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about.

And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion,

embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life.

Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi and welcome. We have a lot of things to cover today, so I'm going to dive right in if you don't mind. And we begin today with the whole idea of performing under pressure. You know that feeling of you're doing something really important and you know you're being watched. Athletes, musicians, public speakers have almost all had that experience of stumbling or crumbling under that kind of pressure. And it turns out there are a couple of things going on. For one thing, we know that when people know they're being watched, they use more force.

Piano players hit the keys harder, tennis players grip the racket tighter, that kind of thing. And when you do that, when you use more force, performance typically suffers. The other reason is anxiety. Researchers found that when you're doing something and you believe the audience wants you to do well, you usually do well. But if you're worried that the audience is not on your side, which is common for a lot of beginning public speakers, for example, you tend to fall apart. The fact is that in most cases, if someone is watching you, an observer, or you're doing it in front of an audience, they want you to do well. Convincing yourself of that is really hard, but once you do, it makes your life easier and you perform better. And

that is something you should know. One of the great things about living in the 21st century is that we have a lot of choices. I mean, think of how many breakfast cereals there are in the supermarket, or how many different makes and models of cars there are, or computers, or when you go shopping for clothes. I mean, how many sweaters do you have to choose from? But you've probably also had the experience that all those choices can be a problem. They can be paralyzing. Have you ever looked at a restaurant menu with so many choices, you can't decide what to order? Maybe you've spent more time trying to figure out what to watch on Netflix than actually watching a show. This, in a nutshell, is the paradox of choice, having so many choices

that it's hard to choose. So is there a better way to make choices without having to sift through all the possibilities, get overwhelmed by it, and come up with nothing? Yes, there is. According to Barry Schwartz, he's a lifelong educator and author of a book called The Paradox of Choice. Hi, Barry. Welcome to the program. It's great to be with you. It's a pleasure.

So I think you would be hard-pressed to find many people who would say, well, you know, less choice is better, because that brings to mind things like, you know, empty store shelves because there's nothing to choose from, or you can have any color car you want as long as it's black, which, you know, Henry Ford is famous for saying, that having choice is a good thing. That fact is true. The paradox is that we've also assumed that if some choice is good, more choice is better. And that turns out not to be true. A point can be reached where instead of being liberated by all the choice we have, we get paralyzed by it. So like you go to a restaurant and there's so many things on the menu,

you can't decide because there's too many... You can't pull the trigger. Or you go to a department store and there are so many kinds of jeans, you can't pull the trigger. Or you're trying to decide where to go on vacation and you can't pull the trigger. Or you're trying to buy a new refrigerator and you go to Consumer Reports and you can't pull... I mean, basically, there's no area in life at this point where there are not too many options. But it beats the alternative, because if you have no choice, well, maybe... but it's not either-or, is it? It's not that it's either everything or nothing, it's that we just have too much choice. That's exactly right. And when my book came out, which is now, you know, a while ago, the critics, mostly, I think, sort of with a libertarian orientation, that more choice is always better than less, the critics would say, well, would you like to live in, you know,

Eastern Europe or North Korea, where there's no choice? And of course, no one ever said that. I certainly never said that the better alternative to this is no choice. The better alternative is the right amount of choice. And nobody knows what that is. I think it was William Blake, the poet, who said once, you don't know how much is enough until you experience too much. But I think it is a fair question to ask. If you're going to say that what we have is too much. But I think it is a fair question to ask if you're going to say

that what we have is too much choice, then it's fair to ask you, well, what is enough? What is the right amount of choice? Well, I think, unfortunately, that this is a complicated, not an easy question to answer, partly because it varies from person to person, and it varies from person to person and it varies from one domain of life to another. There have been a handful of studies done that suggest that the right amount of choice is somewhere on the order of eight to ten options. But these were people deciding whether or not to buy pens or little gift boxes. It would be ridiculous to imagine that the right amount of choice when you're choosing a pen and the right amount of choice when you're choosing a job is the same.

So I think when I talk to industry groups, what I tell people is, listen, there is no formulaic answer to this question. The way you find out what the right amount of choice is in your domain is to do the experiments. You know, if you're a housing developer, how many options do you want to give people when they're outfitting their homes for the kind of tile they can have and the appliances they can have and, you know, the floor finishes they can have and so on. The way you find out what the right amount of choice to offer your customers is, is by doing research. And in fact, some companies have done this and discovered that

they were indeed offering people too much choice. So they started streamlining options in some categories and they found the time spent making decisions went down, which saved them money, and the satisfaction with what people ended up with went up. So give me an example besides, you know, tile and my menu example. What are other examples of when you have less choice, it's better? I don't, I can't think of any domain where that's not true. When I walk into a store, which I hate to do, I'm overwhelmed. I live now in the Bay Area, and there's a grocery store in Berkeley that's quite popular called the Berkeley Bowl,

and its focus is really on fresh fruits and vegetables. And the first time I walked in there, they had 20 different kinds of avocados. I didn't know there were 20 different kinds of avocados. And it was not just avocados. Then they have 30 different kinds of tomatoes and 50 different kinds of apples. And it's like, what the hell is the difference between one and the other? And I couldn't get out of there fast enough. So I just don't see, when you go to your grocery store and there are 150 kinds of cereal on the shelf, is that too many options? Yes.

How do people solve that problem? They buy the same cereal this week that they bought last week. I mean, I think we simplify our lives by relying on habit, on past decisions, which is okay when you're making these small decisions, but not so okay when you're trying to decide which job to take and what city to move to. It seems to me, when I'm confronted with this this and as I listen to you talk that the best solution for me is to do it by elimination. Figure out what I don't want and then look at what's left. Yeah, but you know, here's the problem with that. Suppose you're trying to decide who to accept at a highly selective college. So Stanford accepts, I don't

know, 3% of the people who apply. Now, what percentage of the people who apply to Stanford do you think would do fine at Stanford? My guess, given the self-selection, is that more than half would. So you throw out the obvious underperformers, and you're left with still with 10 times more students than you can say yes to. And now what? You know, eliminating hasn't solved your problem. It's just made your problem a tiny little bit smaller, it seems. On the other hand, all the candidates you're left with are so similar to one another that it feels like

you're, you know, you'll end up deciding by flipping coins. So I don't think that that works in the world we live in. But neither does anything else. That's exactly right. I think the only, well, I think there's one thing that does solve the problem, and that is looking for something that's good enough, as opposed to looking for something that's the best. But your example right there, it won't work. Stanford can't look at their applicants and just pick who's good enough. Yes, it can. No, it can't. I've actually written several articles that argue that what places like Stanford and Berkeley and Harvard and Yale and Swarthmore,

my former institution, should do is take all the applicants, divide them into two piles, not good enough and good enough, and then from the good enough pile, pick their class at random. So it's still not always easy to decide who's good enough and who's not, and you will certainly make some mistakes, but you're not any longer trying to decide among the good enough who the superstars are. So they could do admissions that way. And by the way, if they did, it would be an enormous boon to high school kids

who are torturing themselves with the pressure of getting into a good college. And settling for good enough doesn't mean that you have no standards. It just means that you don't need the best. And now all of a sudden, when you're in a restaurant and you're going down the menu, you stop at the first item on the menu that's attractive, that's good enough, and you don't worry about the other items on the menu. You don't do that, and neither do I. I do do that. I mean, look, I don't do that at most restaurants, because at most restaurants, there are six

or eight options. So I do read all of them. But if there were 60 options, that's exactly what I would do. I'd start at the top, and I would stop at the first option that was attractive to me. Then you'd always eat a salad. Maybe, or sometimes I could start at the bottom. Well, I like my system better, where I say, you know what, today I don't want beef and I don't want chicken, so let's leave off those pages, and then I still have a manageable choice because I've eliminated some.

Well, I'm not saying that that never works. All I'm saying is that that doesn't really solve the problem in general. It solves the problem in some circumstances. But as you've said, It solves the problem in some circumstances. But as you've said, nothing solves the problem. Nothing solves the problem in general. But having the standard of a good enough result rather than the best result, what it does is it takes the pressure off you to examine the options exhaustively. And that's not a problem in a restaurant because there aren't that many options, although there are probably too many. But out there, when you're trying to decide what car to buy or where to go on vacation, where the options are essentially unlimited, trying to find the best place to go on vacation is a way not to go on vacation.

I'm speaking with Barry Schwartz. He's author of the book, The Paradox of Choice. It does seem as if everyone today has to have a website, sometimes more than one. If you have a business or organization, it's mandatory. But I know people who have a website about their dog. Of course, the problem is creating a great website seems daunting. And if you think that, you have to check out Squarespace. They have simplified the process and created the technology that makes creating a beautiful website fast and simple. You start with their templates created by world-class web designers,

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use the offer code SOMETHING to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com, and the offer code is SOMETHING. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years.

She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity.

Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Barry, don't you think it's human nature to want to look at all the choices and feel like you've made this evaluation and come up with the best choice for you? Because you don't want to look across the table at the restaurant and see what somebody else ordered and said, gee, well, you know, I wish I'd ordered that. No, no, that can certainly happen.

But, you know, the notion that doing an exhaustive search and choosing the chicken stuffed with spinach and feta cheese means you've chosen the best is going to stop you from looking at the person at the table next to you and saying, God, what he got looks better than what I got. So that's going to happen anyway. You know, when you think you've chosen the best, how do you know it's the best? You're still going to be looking over your shoulder to see whether someone in your environment seems to have made a better decision than you have. So I don't, you know, is it human nature to want the best?

I think the answer to that is no. I think we get taught to aspire to that. Is it human nature to compare what we have to what other people have and to compare what we have to what we hope have, and to compare what we have to what we'd hope to have or what we expected to have, yeah, I think those are characteristics of how people make evaluations. But the more committed you are to getting the best, the more likely you are when you make those evaluations and make those comparisons to feel like you have somehow fallen short. Isn't it also human nature? Hasn't there been research where, you know,

when you give people more than two choices, they tend to choose nothing? Yes, there is research that shows that not more than three. Again, the magic number is unclear. But, you know, the study that launched this whole line of work, which was done by a woman named Sheena Iyengar, was at a fancy food store in Palo Alto where they put out these imported jams for people to sample. And if they did go to the table and sample the jam, they'd get a coupon that would save them a dollar on any jam they bought. And one day they had six jams, and one day they had 24 jams.

And what they found is more people came to the table when there were lots of jams, but one-tenth as many people actually bought jam. So yes, you can so overwhelm people with these options that they basically say, the hell with this, and they move on. Is that what they say? Do they say, the hell with this, or this is too complicated? I don't know. I'm just imagining what they say. Well, what do you say? When you see 24 jars of jam, is that what you say? I say, the hell with this, and I move on. Yeah.

You know, it's not like it's complicated, although it may be. It's just not worth the trouble. Unless I manage to put on my be satisfied with good enough hat, in which case I will just look at the labels and I will start at the left. And as soon as I find a flavor that sounds appealing to me, I'll buy it. You know, I think that's a way to cope that most of the time works. And, you know, as long as you manage to control to some degree, you're looking around at what everyone else has and what everyone else has chosen, chances are you will. And there is research on this too. People who go into decisions trying

to get good enough, which I call satisficing, are more satisfied with their decisions than people who go into decisions looking for the best. They may do less well on an objective scale, but they're more satisfied with what they've got. But you have to know that when people hear you talk like this, or when I hear you talk like this, what I'm hearing is that you should settle. That rather than go for the best, settle. It'll make you happier, and maybe it makes you happier, but doesn't it also make you wonder what if?

I mean, you're settling. And settle, you know, we should never be settling. And it implies mediocrity. But that's not right. You know, Stanford is not going to settle for mediocre high school graduates when it decides who's good enough for Stanford, everybody in that list is a star. It's just that it doesn't feel the need to then make distinctions among stars, to see which star is the brightest star. But don't you think that if Stanford were to change

their admission policy to good enough, Stanford would all of a sudden become a much less desirable school because people would say, did you hear how people get in? It's basically a dartboard. Yep. Well, so two things. One, that's the way it currently is, except no one is willing to admit it because the distinctions that these people have to make are not makeable. We don't have measuring instruments that are accurate enough to make the kind of tiny distinctions that these poor deans of admissions have to make. So that's one thing. Two, yes, people will say it will hurt Stanford's reputation in the very short run. But when people see the wisdom of doing it this way and how they are managing to get less damaged goods in their entering first year class because kids haven't destroyed themselves trying to get into college, it'll spread and it will simply become how these kinds of decisions get made. You're basically a guy with a problem that has no answer or a mediocre answer. I mean, that's kind of how this plays out.

It's not mediocre. Well, it looks that way, at least at first glance. It looks like we're settling. It's how people perceive it. We're settling for excellent, which is not mediocre. No, we're settling for good enough. Well, but good enough can be excellent. I'm not telling people where to set their standards.

I'm just saying that your standards should be something other than the best. So lastly, because we could go around in circles on this all day, but so knowing this, so what? Now what? Just the advice is to go for good enough and you'll be happier? Yes. But here's the important point. What's more important when we make consumption decisions, most decisions, is what's more important, how good the thing we've chosen is on some objective scale or how good we feel about what we've chosen.

Is it more important to get the best and feel bad about it or to get the less than best and feel good about it? And I believe deeply that there are virtually no areas in life where it isn't more important to feel good about a decision than to make a good decision and feel bad. And I think that a life of aspiring to the best is a life of always being disappointed with what you choose. And the result of that is that people will end up much less satisfied with decisions than they should be. So the question now is, can I actually do good enough? Because it's not my nature. But I could

give it a try and see how it goes. Barry Schwartz has been my guest. His book is The Paradox of Choice, and there's a link to his book in the show notes. And if you've enjoyed this conversation, Barry was a guest almost exactly a year ago in episode 37, where we talked about another book he wrote called Why We Work and the satisfaction we get from work. And it was a pretty interesting conversation. So if you enjoyed this, I think you would enjoy that. And it's easy to find episode 37. Just go to the website, somethingyoushouldknow.net,

click on the little search icon and type in the number 37 or Barry Schwartz and the episode will come up. Thanks for being here, Barry. You were very challenging, which is good. That's my job.

That's what I do. Hey, thanks so much, Barry. I appreciate your time. Me too. Thanks. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared.

It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong.

And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Men and women are always looking for better ways to understand each other, the opposite sex, and to figure out what's the best way to attract the other. And then when you do find someone, how do you get along better with each other? Alan and Barbara Pease have been exploring this subject for a long time, and one of the many books they have authored is Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love. And Alan Pease joins me now. Hi, Alan. So it's your contention that men and women think differently and speak differently. So what's the recommendation

as you begin to communicate with someone of the opposite sex? What's the mindset that you suggest we approach it with? That if you identify that they do speak ineffective foreign language and think very differently, which is what the brain scans show, and you manage them and deal with them within those confines of what they think and how they value things, then your life becomes really good with the opposite sex, which it can be. Currently, we've got 50% divorce rates in most parts of the world now, which shows that in this supposed age of equality that we still just don't get it. So, first of all then, what would men be better off knowing about women and how they think?

And then we'll turn the tables and go the other way. Well, the first thing in understanding how women think is that when a woman is looking at a man, she's evaluating his potential as a partner based on his ability to provide resources, which is a very ancient drive. Resources means, in simple terms, to provide food, protection, and shelter. Now, even in this politically correct 21st century where one in three American women for example will earn more money than their male partner, those women even though they're earning more resources, they have more resources than him, they still demand a guy in their life who has the ability to provide his

own resources and at a higher level than her. Now, as a consequence of this, this is why women who are financially very successful in business have such difficulty getting good relationships with men because of the fact that they're choosing from a smaller group of men because they've got more resources than most men. So as a man, what do you do to attract a woman? You increase your perceived resources or your real resources. You educate yourself better.

You dress better. You become more ambitious. And you have a go at things in life because that's what women are still looking for. So even a woman who has a lot of her own resources, who has her own money, she's still looking for a man who has more? That's right. That was one of the interesting findings we found on this, is that a woman who might be the chief executive of a company,

she may earn a huge salary, have her own assets, her own financial independence. She still doesn't want a guy who's a loser or who has less. That only happens in the movies. All right. So what are men looking for when they're looking for a woman? Well, men, like women, are driven by very ancient drives. We have 10 to 20 times more testosterone than women.

That's the sex drive for women. It drives men to want to have sex, which is at the top of all men's lists everywhere. What they're looking for is a woman's ability to reproduce. So they're looking for health and youth, and the clues that show that, which is why men are so visual. They're using their eyes to evaluate women. And I know in a politically correct 21st century, this is not a popular conversation, particularly amongst many women,

but this is the reality of what happens, that men are looking for signals such as a 70% hips-to-waist ratio. That is, that her waist is around 70% of her hips, because women who have that ratio are the most fertile and most likely to conceive. The bigger or smaller the ratio, the less chance that is there. And that's good news for women who are carrying a bit too much in the way of weight because as long as she's got the curve and the shape, the curve is the key, not the actual amount

of weight. And that's also the reason why there's a multi-trillion dollar business in women's cosmetics to artificially make you look younger and healthier. Because men want someone who's fertile. In basic biological terms, that's what they're looking for, exactly. And in the politically correct 21st century, it's popular to think, well, we've changed. We're living now, we've moved away from our ancient roots. But what any scientist knows and what the brain scans we show in this book show,

and for the first time, it shows where, love, and romance are positioned in the brain and how we use them. And we use them the same way that our ancestors would have used them as well, even though we're not living in times that really those things evolved in. And that's where the contradiction is that our biology is out of date with the way we choose to live. But it has to go beyond that, doesn't it? I mean, it can't just be women want a guy with money and men want a woman that's fertile.

I mean, what about chemistry and compatibility and the ability to get along and share things? What about that? Well, it's very important. You've got two things here. First, you've got chemistry, and chemistry is largely a physical reaction. It's a hormonal reaction to someone that you find attractive.

So when you meet somebody who you might say just tickles your eye, they turn you on, you're just crazy about that person. And most people listening to this program have been, sometime in their life, crazy about someone. That's how they're described. I'm crazy about them. And what's happening is the part of the brain, which is about centre between the left and right hemisphere,

that is where cocaine addicts are addicted. The part that deals with cocaine addiction is the the part of the brain, which is about centre between the left and right hemisphere, that is where cocaine addicts are addicted. The part that deals with cocaine addiction is the same part of the brain that operates in both men and women when they're crazy in love. So it's a hormonal response. What this is, Mother Nature pushing you to do the basics of reproduction, even though we don't want to have 20 or 30 kids anymore. We're not up to that because it doesn't suit the way we live. In fact, contraception prevents us from doing that,

but the drive to do it is still there. And the cocaine part of the brain is the part that's involved in chemistry. And for a relationship to be totally successful, it's important to have the chemistry. But compatibility is a different question together. Couples who last long term are those we've found who have mutual core values and beliefs they believe the same basic things about kids raising them education sex who gets what how

often what you will or won't do finance money who spends it where and when social family how we entertain them if you have mutual core values and beliefs when the hormonal thing wears off which is somewhere between nine and twelve months for 90% of people, it's gone. And people think, love must have gone. No, the hormones wore off. And if there's nothing left, such as the core values and beliefs, then the relationship will usually fail. Why does it seem, I don't know if you looked at this in your research, but why does it seem that as soon as someone rejects us, we want them more? Yeah, that's an interesting one.

And many people have seen that, perhaps had that happen to them. But suddenly the person that you want to break up from, they may initiate the break. And suddenly it's a rejection. And the hormone is saying, hey, wait a minute, we haven't reproduced enough with that one person. So we find ourselves chasing the person that we actually were going to reject. And that's why people have this tendency to chase their exes. And it's a very basic reproductive thing. person so we find ourselves chasing the person that we actually were going to reject which and that's why people have this tendency to to chase their exes and it's a very basic reproductive thing and if you understand what's causing it then you can look at it more superciliously or

you can laugh about it not be a victim of and this is the one of the problems we have that because our biology is still dictating many of our needs and urges and the way we're choosing things that not understanding it means that you can become a victim of it. If you know what's happening to yourself, it can become quite funny. Why do men have such a tough time saying, I love you? Yeah, well, that's a difficult one

because in English, the word love, we only have one word for it, we love. Whereas the Greeks have four words for it and the ancient Persians had nearly 100 words to describe different types of love and normally in a love relationship when a couple's been together around three months usually the woman is the first to say normally around the three-month period i love you now for him he thought this is all going really well until suddenly she said one night i love you and most men will panic at that point because i think this means now i'm going to be faced with endearing monogamy baldness fatness and become a pretty dull sort of

a guy that's what they're picturing so we've had a women it's important early in a relationship to hold back the i love you phrase because in the first three to nine months it's going to be hormonally based in any case and the question is if a cocaine addict said they loved you would you believe them well the answer is no but when you're crazy in love with someone that's that's the same feeling you get you want to tell them these things so rather than say to a man i love you which frightens him you say to him you know being around you makes me feel really great i feel positive about life and i'm looking forward to the future and i love being with with you. To a man, that makes good sense. But to say I love you infers commitment, which a lot of guys will drop their bundle and don't want to

react positively to it. So here's a question. Throughout history, men have made the rules. I mean, it has been a man's world for centuries and centuries and centuries. And it does seem that if men had their way, they would be less monogamous than the rules that we have in our society dictate. So if men make the rules, why are the rules about monogamy and relationships seem to be more suited to what women want than what men want?

Well, the rules of the world have to do with, with men, have to do with resources. Men's evolution, men's history has been catching the other guy's resources, invading his country and taking what he owns, which includes anything he owns, his property and his women. They would kill the men and they'd take the women, which is part of the resources. So men's history has been capturing resources. But when it comes to the home front, maternal, women have always control what happens in the home, what happens with relationships.

Women are more interested in relationships than men. That's why most books on relationships are written by women and read by women. Men are more interested in the resource side of things, and they're not very, compared to women, they're not very acutely aware of relationships and how they function. And don't care? Well, it's not that they don't care. They're not aware of it. If they were aware and didn't care, that could be seen as a different story, but they're just not generally aware of it. And women are far more aware, we from from relationship studies with body language of reading people's emotions through their body movements and that has to do with the survival of babies looking at babies that have no language

and determining what the emotion is are they hungry frightened tired injured in or in pain and most men are not very good and tested doing that with crying babies most men respond yes it wants its mother. So it's more a resource reaction than an emotional one. You say that women are attracted to men who can make them laugh and who can cook? Yes, and dance. I've got six kids, including three sons, and I've taught all my three sons what you must do by the time you get to be 20 years of age. You must learn how to cook because men have been providing food for women for a million years. And there's a very basic primal thing in a man providing food for a woman by cooking it for her. And if he takes her to dinner, takes her to lunch, and this is something that most guys get a bit confused about.

If you want to really pull a woman's ivories and make her feel good pay the bill don't go for the half her half me that's not going to get you a love relationship as a man provide the food and pay the bill now dancing is uh as we said 100 years ago is is the horizontal is a vertical expression of horizontal enjoyment is what they say dancing by most animals is done as a prelude to love. It's a courtship thing, and that's why women are good at it and love to do it. And most men don't have a rhythm switch in the brain to be able to tap a beat to music.

But you can get enough basic lessons to be able to dance. And if you can do basic dancing as a man, you will be popular with all the women. Isn't that funny that so many men hate to dance and yet women would like it if men would dance? Well that's right and if he dances for her and he cooks for her and if he makes her laugh this is the first one you mentioned this is an important one man one of the things we found with women everywhere in the world we went to 33 cultures is they're attracted to a man who can make them laugh and it seems a bit of a

mystery at first but when you delve into it it makes good sense why this is the case is that men realize that women are attracted to men who can tell jokes and that's why with men when they get together they start to tell a joke and a guy one guy will tell a joke the next guy will try and tell a better joke and jokes start to happen as men try to one-up each other and the guy with the best repertoire it gains the most amount of status in that group because men secretly know that women are attracted to men who can tell a joke for two reasons first he gets high status amongst other men because you can do it and secondly that in laughing you release a chemical called endorphin from the back of the brain which builds your immune system so it's almost appears that women

somehow on a deep level appear to be aware of the fact that which builds your immune system. So it almost appears that women somehow on a deep level appear to be aware of the fact that their health is going to be better with a man who can make her laugh. And back in the 80s, Patchasm showed very conclusively that when you laugh or around people who make you laugh all the time, you experience better health, less illnesses, and live longer. I think everyone has observed the dance or been part of the dance when you go to a public place and you can see that men are doing what they can do to attract women and women are doing what they can do to attract the right guy. Are there things that people can do in that situation to improve their odds of being found attractive?

Well, you know, there's an old saying that every woman can be convinced that there's a right guy, but you can't convince every woman you're the guy. It's back to the numbers game. And the numbers game is that there are a percentage of opposite sex partners who will be physically attracted to you because of the way you look, the pheromones you object from your body, and the characteristics about you. But the good news is that you can increase what we call your mating rating to make yourself more attractive by doing the basic things that the other opposite sex is looking for.

In the case of men, as we said, learn how to tell a few jokes. You don't have to be a comedian, but learn how jokes work. Increase your ability to earn more money by giving yourself more education, applying for a better job, dress better, learn to dance, learn to cook. And any man will do that. Most straight guys will say he must be gay because gay guys are good at that. And that's why women love them. You know, you're right that this is seemingly out of tune to the politically correct 21st century

where we think we're not driven by those kinds of urges and responses anymore. But in fact, we are, and there's nothing you can do about it. And it's good to understand what is going on. Alan Pease has been my guest. His book is called Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love. And you will find a link to his book in the show notes for this episode. Thank you, Alan. Your brain is pretty amazing, but some of the things that you believe about your brain may not be true. For example, I'm sure you've heard that expression that we only use 10% of our brain. Well, it's not true at all. What happened was, in 1907, a psychologist was misquoted, and that's how this

whole we only use 10% of our brain thing got started. But scans show that we use every part of our brain. We just don't use all of our brain all at the same time. Male brains are better suited for math and science, while female brains are better suited for empathy. That's a pretty common belief, but while there are some small gender differences in the brain, the evidence suggests that gender differences are due to cultural expectations much more than they're due to biology. You've heard that doing crossword puzzles improves memory. A 2011 study led by researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine found that solving crossword puzzles initially delayed the onset of memory decline

in individuals between 75 and 85, but it sped up that decline once the person showed signs of dementia. And nobody knows why. Today, most neuroscientists agree that there's no harm in doing crossword puzzles, but don't expect it to make you better at finding your keys or your wallet. And everyone's heard that drinking alcohol

kills brain cells. Well, that woozy feeling you get after three or four glasses of wine isn't from brain cells dying. Alcohol, like other substances, can kill brain cells in high doses. But moderate alcohol use does not. It does interfere with how neurons communicate, and it affects your ability to perform tasks like walking, speaking, and making decisions.

And that is something you should know. I invite you to like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter. We post content in addition to what you hear in the program. And if you have time, please leave a review of this program wherever you listen to podcasts on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn, wherever. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law,

her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce.

That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.