Something You Should Know - How Spaces and Places Affect Your Behavior & Why Johnny Can't Build or Fix Anything

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 was 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. 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.

Starting point is 00:00:37 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. Today on Something You Should Know, when an invitation says no gifts, is it okay to bring a gift? I'll discuss several common etiquette mistakes a lot of people make. Then the interesting ways your environment affects you and how you communicate. The best orientation for communication is sitting corner to corner, not across from each other, not right next to each other, but at a 90 degree angle.

Starting point is 00:01:29 Because that way we can make eye contact with each other, but we're not forced to make eye contact with each other all the time. Plus, how to take better photographs this summer. And are we creating a generation of mechanically illiterate people? I was horrified to read an article in the paper that they're having trouble training interns to do surgery because they've never used scissors. They've never used tools when they were kids. A kid isn't going to get interested in tools if he's not exposed to them. All this today on Something You Should Know. People who listen to Something You Should Know

Starting point is 00:02:06 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.

Starting point is 00:02:30 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. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts and practical advice

Starting point is 00:03:13 you can use in your life. Today, something you should know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. As you no doubt have noticed, we have several great advertisers in this podcast, many of whom use promo codes to make special offers to you to give you deals on what they're selling. And although we do put the promo codes in the show notes, we've also added something to the website to make it even easier. If you go to the website somethingyoushouldknow.net, right there at the top in the navigation, it says Promo Codes. And if you click on that, it'll take you to all the recent promo codes so you can take advantage of those deals. First up today, manners still matter. And here are a few common etiquette rules that you might be unintentionally breaking. For example, you should RSVP to every invitation you get.

Starting point is 00:04:07 It helps the host plan better, and it shows that you are thoughtful. When an invitation says no gifts, don't bring a gift. You'll embarrass the other guests who obeyed the request. If you do want to give a gift, do it privately. Don't ask people to come to a restaurant to celebrate your husband's birthday and then expect them to pay for their own food. If the party was at your house, you wouldn't ask people to pay, and you shouldn't at a restaurant either. You're the host and you should pay the bill. If you can't afford it, then invite fewer people or do it at home.

Starting point is 00:04:43 Don't use a speakerphone without asking if it is okay with the other person on the other end of the line. The other person may want your call to be confidential and they don't necessarily want other people to hear it. It's also hard to hear people clearly on a speakerphone. And don't talk about children in their presence as if they're not there. For example, instead of asking a parent, how old is little Billy, ask Billy. It's more respectful to the child and he will most likely be happy to tell you. And don't wait to send a wedding gift until after the wedding. The notion that you have a year to send a wedding gift is not true.

Starting point is 00:05:22 The gift is to celebrate the event, not the one-year anniversary of the event. Wedding gifts should be sent at the time of the wedding or brought to the event itself. And that is something you should know. Think for a moment about all the places you go, the buildings that you walk into, the rooms in those buildings, and the things in those rooms, all of these things affect you, often in ways you don't even realize. For example, where you sit in relation to others, the shape of the table you sit at, all these things have an impact on you. And here with some great insight and explanation into this and why it's so important is Lily Bernheimer. Lily is a researcher, writer, and consultant in environmental

Starting point is 00:06:13 psychology. She is founding director of Spaceworks Consulting and author of the book The Shaping of Us, How Everyday Spaces Structure Our lives, behavior, and well-being. Hi, Lily. Hi, thank you. So perhaps a good place to start this discussion of how the environment we're in affects us would be to start with the environments that we're attracted to in the first place. And you talk about something called biophilia. So let's start there called biophilia. So let's start there with

Starting point is 00:06:46 biophilia. So biophilia literally means love of nature or love of the living world. And what that means is that as humans, we have a sort of innate attraction to the natural world and to all sorts of elements and shapes and forms that we find within it. So this brings together everything from our attraction to natural light and fire to our love of trees and water. So what we find is that when we look at the built environment and the things that support our well-being best in the built environment, they tend to link back to things that would have supported our survival in the evolutionary environments of our past. Great example of this is what I like to call ninja-proof seats. You notice when you go into a restaurant, if not all the seats are taken, people will usually first

Starting point is 00:07:54 take those seats where they can have their back to the wall and they also have a good view of the door, the window, where they can see any sort of opportunities or threats that might be coming towards them. And I once worked in an office with a lot of computer programmers who were fighting over what they called the ninja-proof seats, which were the seats that had their back to the wall where no ninjas could sneak up from behind you. Yeah, yeah, that's very natural to want to sit in a chair where you're not facing the wall. You want to look out the window.

Starting point is 00:08:30 You want to see the view. You want to see the room. You want to be able to keep your eye on things. We believe that this goes back to this kind of really deep evolutionary instinct that when we were being chased by, you know, lions or, you know, other human attackers or whoever, we would have been safest in these kind of positions, in places where we knew nothing could come up from behind us and where we could also see what was coming towards us, whether that's a fort up on a hillside or a nice spot in a tree or protected space in a meadow or something. And so we also feel most comfortable and can focus better on our work today when we're sitting in these kind of positions.

Starting point is 00:09:21 One type of space or environment that's gotten a lot of press, a lot of people have talked about the idea of the open floor plan for offices where people all work together in one big room. There's actually been strong research since the 80s and going way back that showed that open plan offices are really not good for collaboration or communication, which was the main rationale. I think there were genuinely some idealistic people who thought, oh, this will be really good to change our offices in this way. This will help people collaborate and communicate. But the research from way back then has showed that that's not really the case. I think what we're seeing with the open office trend is it seems in the short term to have economic advantages

Starting point is 00:10:11 for companies. It tends to be less expensive and, you know, you can fit a lot more people into the same space if it's an open office than if it's a closed office. But over time, I think a lot of retreating and becoming more reclusive because they're overstimulated. So they end up talking to each other less because they're just overstimulated and they kind of shut down a bit. Well, it's always interested me that offices are set up, you know, one way. Somebody decides, okay, this is what the lighting in the office is going to be. This is what the temperature is going to be. And the thermostat is locked so nobody can mess with it. That it's kind of one size fits all. But I know from just watching people that everybody has their own preferences for lighting and temperature and things like that.

Starting point is 00:11:22 And what we find with a variety of environmental factors, whether it's noise or lighting or temperature, is that when people have an ability to have some control over their environment, that gives them a sense of agency. Even if it's still a little bit too hot or a little bit too loud, the fact that they can open a window or move to a different spot will make them happier, more satisfied, and better able to concentrate. Talk about fractals. Not everybody knows what they are, but it's interesting how they play a role in creating the environments we create. The easiest way to think of a fractal is when you look at the overall shape of a tree, you have the branches and then

Starting point is 00:12:06 you have smaller branches and then you have twigs. And the overall form of the tree is kind of repeated in miniature when you look at the shape of the branches and then at the shape of the twigs. So that's basically what a fractal is. We find fractals all throughout nature. And we also find them throughout the sort of traditional historical architecture of all cultures around the world. So when you're in a typical older house, you'll find moldings on all of the window frames and door frames, those little sort of like funny wooden things that stick out above and below your windows and above your doors. And the shape of those moldings actually tend to have this same sort of fractal geometry in them, where there's these little details that are sort of smaller versions of the bigger shape. So when you think about why do we go to this

Starting point is 00:13:16 extent of adorning our, why did we historically go to this extent of adorning our windows and doors with these strange shapes, we believe it's because those forms actually remind us of the fractal geometry that we find in nature. And that means they have this kind of calming and stimulating impact on us. When we look at nature, when we look at trees or plants or things like that, it's not just that we like natural forms and shapes. They have this ability to calm us and also to increase our ability to focus at the same time. There was a particularly famous study of this where they compared hospital patients recovering from surgery. Half of those patients were in a room where they had a view of trees, and half those patients were in a room where they had a view of a brick wall.

Starting point is 00:14:18 And the patients in the room with a view of the trees not only recovered more quickly, but also experienced less pain in the process. I'm talking with Lily Bernheimer. She's a researcher, consultant, and founder of Spaceworks Consulting. And she's also author of the book, The Shaping of Us, How Everyday Spaces Structure Our Lives, Behavior, and Well-Being. 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

Starting point is 00:14:56 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. 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,

Starting point is 00:15:19 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

Starting point is 00:15:57 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. So, Lily, talk about the space around us, the environment we're in when we're traveling on the road. So with street spaces, there's some really interesting research coming out of the Netherlands. We find that when we remove some of the stop signs and stop lights stoplights from our intersections, surprisingly, this can encourage us to drive and bike and walk

Starting point is 00:16:50 more safely in those intersections. It's really counterintuitive. You would think it'd be more dangerous. But when we take away some of the rules and signs, it actually encourages people to pay more attention to each other and their surroundings and to be safer. Then when we look at workspaces, we also see that when people are able to feel more like themselves in their workspace, to personalize their workspace and kind of make it more specific to who they are, to the needs of the specific people and purpose of that workspace, that that has really great benefits for well-being and for company productivity. And then when we look at housing, we also find that when we design housing in a way to, you know, encourage people to connect with their communities, to be less anonymous, to know who their neighbors are. That has really great well-being benefits.

Starting point is 00:17:54 And beyond that, when people are encouraged to take a bigger role in, you know, sort of being part of housing themselves in shaping their own homes to meet their needs, that that has great well-being and potentially sustainability benefits as well. Are there specific shapes that affect us in specific ways that we might not be aware of? Absolutely. Absolutely. So, rounder forms tend to have a more calming effect on us, and then more angular forms can make us feel a little bit competitive or anxious. Things like what? Particularly, you know, even just say you're sitting at a square table instead of a round Things like what? sort of formal business negotiation, then you want to be at a square table. We tend to think of sofas, couches as being a good place to sit down and have a chat with people. But actually, the best orientation for communication is sitting corner to corner. So, you know, if you have a

Starting point is 00:19:22 square table, you're sitting on one corner and I'm sitting at the adjacent corner, not across from each other, not right next to each other, but at a 90 degree angle. Because that way we can make eye contact with each other, but we're not forced to make eye contact with each other all the time because that's kind of competitive to be just head to head directly making eye contact all the time. Well, you were talking earlier about traffic, and this applies to that, right? The angles of a four-way stop, which we have in the United States, versus, say, the roundabout that is more common in Great Britain. So, you know, I lived in the UK for many years and there it's very typical that an intersection will have a roundabout in it.

Starting point is 00:20:11 So in the US, we tend to have these four-way intersections. You go up, you stop, you have to wait for the other cars to go. Whereas there, it's this circular sort of you go in and you go roundabout with all the other cars. So I was really curious, you know, why do we have this cultural difference in the way we handle our intersections? So I looked into it and it turns out that roundabouts are actually statistically much safer than the four-way intersections that we have here. When you're at a four way intersection, there's like a huge number of collision points that you can have. And at a roundabout, just the number of possible points that two cars or a car and a person could collide is way, way lower. And the reason that

Starting point is 00:20:59 the British ended up deciding to use roundabouts was that they have a national health system that is, you know, a publicly funded system for health care. And so when the government was looking at, well, how should we handle roads, they realized that roundabouts were just much safer. And since they were paying for medical bills, they said, well, there's no two ways about this. We've got to use roundabouts. So it's like spatially this incredibly sort of British eccentric communal seeming thing. And physically, it's actually less confrontational and means that it's much safer. I thought it was interesting. You talk about how environments affect people with dementia. And I thought it was interesting because if it has that effect on them, it probably has a similar effect on all of us.

Starting point is 00:21:53 So typically when people are suffering from something like dementia in the US, we tend to kind of put people in institutionalized settings. And those institutionalized settings look very different from where people with dementia have been used to living and spending most of their time. And, you know, when people have dementia, they are really thinking back to the past a lot. They're not able to, you know, deal with new situations and learn new things very well. And then you take this person whose cognitive resources are really suffering and put them in an environment which is very monotonous. You know, hospitals, places like this, it tends to be, they tend to be very colorless, long corridors with lots of halls.

Starting point is 00:22:46 And every hallway, every doorway looks the same. It's very easy to get lost even for someone who doesn't have dementia. So over in the Netherlands, they have developed a really interesting, different approach to caring for people with dementia. It's a project called Hogawick. I'm probably not saying that completely right from the Dutch, but they have basically created a little village that looks just like a, you know, sort of residential neighborhood that an older Dutch person would be used to spending their time in. The housing facilities look kind of like a typical Dutch home with a dining room and a living room. And then there's little streets that they can walk around on

Starting point is 00:23:33 and even a little store that they can go and kind of buy groceries in. And they're finding this has really great well-being benefits because it's a more diverse and naturalistic environment. And that means that people who are, you know, having more difficulty finding their way around are much easier to orient themselves, to feel comfortable. And it's having really great well-being benefits. I also thought it was interesting and a little weird, was a lot weird, was this half a house project. So talk about the half a house project. This was pioneered by an architect called Alejandro Aravena, who's from Chile.

Starting point is 00:24:22 And what they did is they were working with a low-income community and they found that they could build a very affordable economically priced housing by literally building half of a house and then enabling the families to build the other half of the house themselves. So it sounds kind of crazy. Who wants half a house? What are you going to do with half a house? But what they found was that a lot of the people living in this community were, you know, builders or had family members who were builders and had those skills themselves. So when they built them the half of the house that had all the plumbing and, you know, bathrooms and everything, and then let the people build the

Starting point is 00:25:05 other half themselves, they ended up with a much more beautiful, interesting-looking neighborhood because it was diverse and mixed and interesting. And people were also able to create a home that was better suited to their needs because they were involved in the process of building it themselves. So this brings together two things that environmental psychology research has found are really important. The first is called ordered complexity. And basically, we're really drawn to a balance of order and complexity in our environments. We like things to be kind of organized and we don't want every house to look like completely different from the house next to it. We want there to be some common themes, but we also like complexity. We find it boring when I was saying like in a

Starting point is 00:25:57 hospital institutional building, like every door looks the same, every corridor looks the same. That makes us feel kind of like disoriented and confused and lost. So we like a balance of order and complexity. And when people are empowered to shape spaces themselves, this also brings about something called collective efficacy, which is the sort of communal power to be creative, to create and build our own spaces. And when communities have higher rates of collective efficacy, they also tend to have less litter and vandalism, less violent crime, and to feel more empowered to tackle social and environmental problems. So, you know, that's kind of one little case study that I think really gets at the heart of the kind of approach we should be taking to try to enhance well-being.

Starting point is 00:26:55 Isn't it amazing how we're so, most of us anyway, are so unaware of these things, and yet they have such an important impact on us? And I appreciate you sharing all of this. Lily Bernheimer has been my guest. She is the founding director of Spaceworks Consulting, and she's author of the book The Shaping of Us, How Everyday Spaces Structure Our Lives, Behavior, and Well-Being. And there is a link to her book in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:27:23 Thank you, Lily. Great talking to you. 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 Lister 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. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown.

Starting point is 00:28:13 I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown

Starting point is 00:28:35 wherever you get your podcasts. This is a segment about unintended consequences regarding something I bet you never really thought much about. And what's so interesting, it doesn't really make sense until it does. And it will by the end of this segment. We talk a lot today about the importance of innovation and invention and new ideas. And yet we have raised an entire generation or two of young people who couldn't actually invent or build anything. They don't have the skills. I mean, to oversimplify,

Starting point is 00:29:13 they don't know how to hammer a nail into a piece of wood. They aren't taught the hands-on skills of using tools or using their hands or how things actually work. The results of this affect you and me every day in some very interesting ways and here sounding the alarm is someone I want you to meet. Her name is Temple Grandin. You may have heard her name before. Temple is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University and she was the subject of an Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning biographical film.

Starting point is 00:29:46 She is one of the first individuals on the autism spectrum to publicly share her insights from her personal experience of being autistic. And she is the subject and author of several books, including one called Calling All Minds, How to Think and Create Like an Inventor. Hi, Temple. It's wonderful to be here. Before we get into this important concern that you're talking about, I want to talk about inventors and inventions.

Starting point is 00:30:14 And I know you have invented things in your area of expertise, which is animals and livestock, and you come from a family of inventors. My grandfather was the co-inventor of the autopilot for airplanes, and he worked with a man who was probably definitely on the autism spectrum, who came up with this crazy, totally original idea of three little coils to sense the magnetic field to guide the airplane. Everybody else in the past was trying to wire the plane's controls directly to the magnetic compass, and you'd have problems with it gyrating all over the place. And my grandfather looked at this idea and goes, hmm, I can make that work. That's the different kinds of minds working

Starting point is 00:30:55 together. He was the more regular type of engineer. And then you have some people that are visual thinkers who just think up totally new things. I'm a visual thinker. That helped me in my work with cattle. And when I first started in the 70s, I didn't know that other people were not visual thinkers. So it was obvious to me to look at what the cattle were seeing. And they'd see a coat on a fence, and they would stop. And other people were not noticing that.

Starting point is 00:31:25 It was obvious to me. And then you've got your computer programmers. They're going to be your more mathematical thinkers. They think in patterns instead of pictures. Well, that's interesting and important, I imagine, to realize that people think differently. And then it's probably important to know how you individually think. I think it helps because the different kinds of thinkers can work together. You take somebody like Steve Jobs. He was an artist, not a programmer. That's why your phone is easy to use. And then the more mathematically inclined engineers had to make that phone work. That's an example of the different kinds of minds working together, and the skills can

Starting point is 00:32:05 complement each other. But the first step you have to do is realize that these different kinds of thought exist. That's the first step. And then you can see how the skills complement each other. So now your big concern, and I was really fascinated to learn about this because I've never really heard this discussed before, is that we have a generation, maybe two generations of kids, who have grown up without an understanding of how things work mechanically. So much emphasis is on virtual and knowledge-based thinking, but kids don't use tools the way they used to. Kids don't know how things work in a mechanical way anymore.

Starting point is 00:32:46 I was horrified to read an article in the paper that they're having trouble training interns to do surgery because they've never used scissors. They've never used tools when they were kids. And we also have a gigantic shortage of skilled trades right now. Plumbers, electricians, and when I was working on designing facilities for the big meatpacking plants, I worked with skilled trades people that were brilliant. And they would just come up with all kinds of clever ways to do things. And the problem is, those people are not getting replaced. That's the problem. And so some of the

Starting point is 00:33:22 very clever mechanical engineering, like some of the specialized equipment for processing pork, for example, is all made in Europe. And the reason it's made in Europe is because we've taken skilled trades out of the schools. Now there's a few schools that are starting to put this back in now, and Texas has been one of the leaders in this. Well, and I imagine this has a lot to do with understanding what kind of thinker you are that you were talking about a few moments ago. Well, absolutely it is. I mean, some of your best skilled tradespeople are visual thinkers. And one of the problems we've got today is these kids absolutely can't do algebra. I can't do algebra because there's nothing to visualize. And I'm seeing smart kids getting screened out, ending up in the basement playing video games because nobody

Starting point is 00:34:04 thought to teach them a trade or even expose them to a trade. This brings up another thing. How does a kid get involved in a certain job? I ended up in the cattle industry because I got exposed to it when I was a teenager. Kids have to be exposed to careers in order to get interested in any career. You were probably a good example to explore this because a lot of people work with cattle. But not everybody invents things and thinks the way you think that works in cattle. So what is it about you and the way you think that's different than other people in your industry? Well, I like to make things. When I was a very young child, I made bird kites, I made parachutes.

Starting point is 00:34:46 In fact, all of my childhood projects are in Calling All Mines. And I had to tinker to get my bird kite to work. And it's got little wing tips similar to an airliner has. I had to tinker with a parachute, so I put a framework on it so it would open and the strings wouldn't tangle. I had to tinker to get these things to work. I guess a lot of the thinking today is, well, you know, we don't have to learn those kinds of skills because computers will do that, AI will do that, and people don't need to know how to do that. They just need to know how to think. Nonsense. Nonsense. In fact, the jobs that

Starting point is 00:35:24 are going to get taken over by artificial intelligence, I've been following this really carefully, are high-end, narrow knowledge jobs. Let's look at medicine, dermatology, radiology, endocrinology, internal medicine. That's going to get taken over by AI first. I don't think AI is going to fix a broken water system in a city anytime soon. You know what's so interesting to me is that when you talk to people, almost everybody has an idea. They thought of this thing. They thought of an idea.

Starting point is 00:35:58 Nothing much ever comes of it, but everybody has that idea. Well, lots of people come up with ideas, and they don't do anything with it. When I was a child, I had an idea for a way to make old dungarees. Blue jeans were called dungarees in the 50s. And now it's fashionable to have them ripped and have them all faded. But in the 50s, it wasn't. So the denim would get white around the knees. So I thought if we could have dungaree spray, there'd be a dye and you could spray it on your blue jean knees and make them new again.

Starting point is 00:36:31 That was an idea I had when I was about eight. I had no way of implementing it. That's a good idea, actually. It's a really good idea back then. Yeah, back then it was a really good idea because I could make the old dungarees, is what we used to call them, look new again with dungaree spray. But as you say, if kids are not exposed to this, if they don't know how to work with tools, if they don't understand how mechanical things go together and work together, if they're never exposed to it, the potential that they may have in working in those things will never be revealed.

Starting point is 00:37:06 We've got kids grow. I go to autism meetings and I'll see a kid who ought to go work for Google, and he still likes to build robots and things out of Legos, but he's never used a tool. You know, when we were kids, in my neighborhood, we were using tools, you know, seven, eight years old, we would use a handsaw and hammer and nails and screwdrivers and stuff like that. A kid isn't going to get interested in tools if he's not exposed to them. And the more I'm looking into how do people get into careers, this whole thing of exposing kids to different things. And this is why I think in school, it's important to have creative classes, theater and music. How would a kid know he likes music or is good at it if he never got a chance

Starting point is 00:37:45 to try a musical instrument? I tried playing a piano. That did not work for me. I didn't have the coordination to do it right, but I was exposed to it. Also, there's some research that was done that showed that a Nobel Prize winner in science was more likely to have a creative hobby like music or building things or art than just a scientist out of the listing in the science society. It does seem like we're in this kind of specialized world where people learn one thing, like they're going to be an accountant or they're going to be a doctor. But there's some general knowledge about how the world works that's really important. Well, you're still going to have to have people to repair

Starting point is 00:38:31 things. You know, somebody the other day said, well, a car is just a smartphone on wheels. I go, yes, it's got computers in it, but it also has physical parts that make the car go, mechanical parts of it. And a self-driving car is going to have a lot of complicated sensors that are going to need repair because they interact with the physical environment. Right. Well, and think about it. There have been car repair shops and brake shops for as long as there have been cars. And while other businesses and industries have come and gone, there are still lots of very successful car repair shops and brake shops because somebody has to fix it. Somebody has to fix stuff. And in the last year and a half, I've been in three hotels where we had major water problems, all in downtown areas in major cities.

Starting point is 00:39:20 And the worst mess was in Pittsburgh when the water mains broke and the Pittsburgh Sheraton had no water for 24 hours. And we almost had to do a conference with porta potties. There's real problems with infrastructure. I'm concerned, you know, as I travel around looking at the condition of bridges and roads and just, you know, basic infrastructure. We've got to fix this stuff. It's essential stuff. Well, part of the problem, though, is that a lot of people, when they hear you say, well, your kids need to be exposed to tools, well, Dad may not even have any. Well, that's the problem. Now, in Calling All Minds, a lot of the projects in there are paper and just really simple things

Starting point is 00:40:00 just to get kids making things. And when I did a book signing for Calling All Minds last year in a suburb of Colorado, I was horrified to find out that about a third of the elementary school kids that attended, and there was a whole bunch of them, several hundred of them, had never made a paper airplane. What? Yes, you heard me right. Never made a paper airplane. You know, this is one of those things that I, except for you, I've never heard anyone really address this as a serious problem, but when you think about it, when you listen to what you're saying

Starting point is 00:40:33 and then apply it to the world, this is a real serious problem that most people never think about, that we're creating a generation, maybe two generations now, of people who can't fix anything. Well, that's right. And I think it's a really big problem. And I'm very concerned about losing the skills. And then this business with the surgeons having trouble doing surgery because they haven't made things with their hands. That's kind of shocking to discover that. And the other thing I'm concerned right now is the quality of drafting for drawing things. It has no detail in it.

Starting point is 00:41:12 I looked at a set of drawings the other day for some steel work, and they didn't show things like, well, how do you bolt this metal flange to the concrete wall? You haven't shown the fasteners. This drawing has no detail. It's horrible. Well, I know, and everybody knows, that in many families, in many communities, in many high schools, the preferred outcome is that after high school, you go to college, and from college, you take that knowledge and apply it to your profession, and off you go. Sort of in second place is, if college isn't for you,

Starting point is 00:41:47 then okay, then go learn a trade. But it's almost as if that's a disappointment. And what you're saying is, not only is it not a disappointment, it may be the preferred path for people who have those skills and who have been exposed to those skills. And the skilled trades are the one area where you can get a job for life with good pay and good health benefits for the rest of your life. And the thing that also bothers me is when I read the business magazines, they don't

Starting point is 00:42:18 seem to discuss this. But most people write in business magazines haven't worked out in the skilled trades world where I spent 25 years. So summarize up here, what's your message? What's your call to arms here? My call to arms is we've got to expose kids to the high-end skilled trades, because we really need people to fix things, plumbing, electrical, heating and air conditioning, mechanics to fix all sorts of things, welders who can read drawings, because there's a whole big line of what I call clever mechanical things that we don't know how to do anymore. So really high-tech machine stuff,

Starting point is 00:43:01 super machine stuff, that we know how to do. We know how to do some of the lower-tech stuff. But you take really specialized equipment that's super clever mechanical engineering, that's a skill we're losing, and the Europeans are doing it. And the reason they're doing it is because they have not taken out skilled trades. That's why they're doing it. That's why a food processing plant, in some cases now, will be made with all European equipment, even though it's very expensive, because countries like Holland and Germany and Italy have kept their skilled trades. And then you get certain kids going into that. I'm the kind of kid that's good at that sort of stuff because I'm a visual thinker.

Starting point is 00:43:44 And our educational system is screening out visual thinkers because they can't do algebra. You don't need algebra for skilled trades. You need old-fashioned finding the area of a circle, measuring things. You need to have that, angles and percents. You need to do that sort of stuff. But too many smart kids are getting screened out because they can't do algebra. Now, if you want to invent quantum computing, then you're going to need algebra. That's real high-end, fancy stuff.

Starting point is 00:44:08 That's way beyond me. But we still have to have somebody who's going to keep the electricity on in the building and fix things and invent new mechanical things that we need. Well, this is so important. And as you said in the beginning, people don't really think about this, but this idea that we need people to fix things, and when we emphasize that everybody goes to college and everybody works in a profession, and there's less emphasis on putting people in skilled trade positions

Starting point is 00:44:36 to fix things and to make things, that that's a real problem that we need to address. Temple Grandin has been my guest. Her book is called Calling All Minds, How to Think and Create Like an Inventor. There's a link to that book and also a link to Temple's website, templegrandin.com. You'll find all of that in the show notes. Thank you, Temple. Well, thank you so much for having me. When you're out and about taking photographs this summer, there are

Starting point is 00:45:08 a few things to keep in mind that will give you much better pictures in the end, according to Mike Newton, who is author of the e-book Hacking Photography. First of all, straighten your lines. Just take an extra second to make sure that horizontal lines are horizontal and vertical lines are vertical. It will make a big difference. Shoot from interesting perspectives. Most of the pictures people see are taken from the eye level of the photographer when he or she is just standing shooting a picture, which is the same viewpoint that we see 99% of our lives from.

Starting point is 00:45:44 So it's no surprise that when you go to the top of a huge building and look down at a city, it's visually stunning because we don't see that perspective. Different perspectives make an interesting picture. Eliminate the clutter. This is really important because the best images are ones that are simple and have breathing room for the subject. You should try to find the simplest background possible and get close and then get even closer. Closer is always better.

Starting point is 00:46:15 Sometimes really close is even better. It's okay to cut off foreheads, legs, or someone's lower half every now and then. Try getting a close-up of someone's face from the eyebrows to the mouth. And that is something you should know. Ratings and reviews help this podcast, and we read them. We enjoy reading reviews because it helps us make a better podcast. So wherever you are listening to this podcast, please take a moment and leave a rating and or review.

Starting point is 00:46:46 I'm Micah Ruthers. 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

Starting point is 00:47:16 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. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator.

Starting point is 00:47:55 Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Randolph Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available.

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