Something You Should Know - How to Know What Someone is Thinking & The Amazing Success Story of LEGO

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Watch a couple hold hands as they stroll own the road. It often seems cute and quaint. But it is more than that. Holding hands has some real benefits. Even monkeys know this. Listen as I explain. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/fashion/05hands.html You probably like to think you are pretty good at reading people – right? As you talk with someone, you probably think you can generally tell what they are thinking or where their head is at. Well, what if I told you were not as good as you think you are? What if it turns out that reading body language or trying to "put yourself in someone else’s shoes" are actually pretty lousy strategies? What if there is a much better – almost full-proof technique to know what someone is thinking? This is what Nicholas Epley is here to discuss. He is a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and author of the book, Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want (https://amzn.to/3BuU6SY) Who hasn’t played with LEGO bricks? They have been around for decades. So, how does a low-tech, simple LEGO brick compete in the world of high-tech video games and other electronic distractions? The answer is: VERY WELL! Lego is a phenomenon that started from a transatlantic phone call in 1954 to a cultural phenomenon today. And the story of LEGO is truly a fascinating one. Joining me to tell it is Daniel Konstanski, the US Editor for Blocks Magazine (https://blocksmag.com/) and author of a book The Secret Life of LEGO® Bricks: The Story of a Design Icon (https://amzn.to/3Y8E8qE). When you are sad, it can affect your vision. You may not see things the same as you would if you were happy. That may sound odd, but listen as I explain. https://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2010/07/22/feeling-blue-seeing-gray#google_vignette Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, why you really might want to hold hands with your partner. Then, what's the best way to know what someone else is thinking? There is an answer, and the answer isn't body language. So data suggests that reading people's body language, not as helpful as we might imagine it is. I would be very skeptical about anybody who tells you that reading body language actually makes them better than understanding another person. You'd want to ask, what's the data on that? Also, feeling sad can alter what you see. And the incredible success story of Legos.

They've been around for decades and are still going strong. There have been several years where they've actually beaten out Mattel for the world's number one toy maker. That's just amazing when you consider how many different types of toys Mattel makes in comparison to the Lego group, which truly just makes bricks. All this today on something you should know. Mama, look at me. I'm going really fast. I just got my license.

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At Intact Insurance, we insure your car so you can enjoy the ride. Visit Intact.ca or talk to your broker. Conditions apply. 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. Well, hi. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Let me ask you, do you ever see a couple walking down the street holding hands and think, oh, that's so cute?

Well, it turns out it's more than just cute. Couples who hold hands are doing themselves a lot of good. Research shows that physical intimacy of any kind improves any relationship. It also turns out that people in stressful or threatening situations remain calmer and cope better when they hold hands with their mate. It also seems to have a beneficial effect on pain and can lower the level of stress hormones that can do damage to your immune system. Even monkeys know the importance of hand-holding. Monkeys have been observed holding hands in reconciliation after

they have a fight. And that is something you should know. You know when you're talking to someone, especially someone you already know, you have an idea in your head of what that other person is probably thinking. And all the while

you're looking for clues to get a sense of where their head's at in this conversation. You look for things like what they say, how they say it, eye contact, body language. Through all of this, we get a sense of who we're talking to and what they're thinking. It's basically the art of reading other people, getting a sense of them in the moment. So now that you know what I'm talking about, how good at this do you think you are? How accurately do you read other people? The answer is going to surprise you. Meet Nicholas Epley.

He is a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He's written for the New York Times, he's published more than 50 articles, and he's author of a book called MindWise, How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want. Hey, Nicholas, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, Mike. Thanks so much for having me. So I like to think I'm pretty good at what I just described, that I can get a sense of someone I'm talking to, especially in a face-to-face conversation.

I can tell where someone's head is at. And I think most people think the same. They think they're pretty good at it. Are they? Not as good as they think. So you and I have this ability that's unmatched on the planet. We can think about the minds of other people. The problem is it doesn't work quite as well as we think it does.

It operates kind of like a sixth sense. I can watch you do something and think from that, I know what you're thinking or know what you want or know what you believe about something. The problem is when we look in our research, we find that we're not quite as good at this as we think we are. We tend to be overconfident in our ability to reason about the minds of others. And in fact, the more we know somebody, the more this overconfidence grows. The people we know the best are not necessarily the people we know the most well. So when I think about looking at someone, talking to them, and trying to, not deliberately, as you say, it's part of the conversation, trying to figure out where they're at, what they're thinking,

where we're going with this conversation, I'm using clues that I'm seeing, cues that they're sending me. It could be their facial expression or their, you know, whatever. And I imagine that those can be very faulty, that you're looking for things and looking at things that may be giving you false signals. Yeah, so it's important to think carefully about what these signals are. There are actually maybe three we can think of that people use. So one signal we use to make

an inference about the mind of another person, what someone else might be thinking, what they might feel, what they might want, is we use our own mind. And that can actually work really great. If you and I are in a room together and I am just hot as can be, it's reasonable for me to assume that you are probably feeling pretty hot too, right? The problem with egocentrism is that if my perspective differs from yours, I'm giving a speech in this room or I'm wearing a heavy jacket or I happen to be right next to the heat register and you are not, then my perspective on the world can differ from yours. And we find that people don't really realize when their own perspective is unique and that can create egocentric biases.

Another few we use once we know a little more about somebody is we use stereotypes. So Mike, you're a man. I have stereotypes about what other men are like. I might be able to use that to make a guess about what kind of TV shows you might want to watch, or if you're going to buy a car, what kind of car you might want, or what your politics might be. And again, stereotypes in contrast to kind of the common negativity that we have about them actually contain some degree of accuracy to them. The problem is they don't contain nearly as much accuracy as we often ascribe to them. And then the last cue we use when trying to guess what's on the mind of another person is we use their behavior. So if I can see you doing something, if I watch you pick up a drink and drink it, I can make an

inference about what you're thinking. I can assume that, oh, I guess you wanted to drink that. You like that kind of drink. I use your behavior and work backwards. The problem is that behavior itself can be misleading too. Sometimes we choose things because it's the only thing that's available. Sometimes we do things because somebody else is making us do them. Our behavior is also not quite as crystal clear a guide to our thoughts as we might imagine it is. And so what? And so we walk into a room together and I say, boy, it's cold in here. And you say, no, it's not. Well, all right. So we disagree. So where's the problem? There's no problem there. We just disagree. So the problem comes in is that misunderstanding, that failing to appreciate what's on your mind

creates conflict, creates social friction. So let me give you a very simple example. I'm a teacher. I'm teaching problems to students. One problem is that when you're teaching something, you know the answer to it. Knowing the answer to it means that it seems easier to you. And if I can't appreciate that, Mike, as my student, you don't know the answer to this math problem, I'm not going to teach you as well as I could. In a marriage, if you think your spouse, because you're so aware that you're troubled in this relationship and that you are concerned about the way things are going, if because those concerns are so crystal clear to you that you assume that they must also be crystal clear to your partner, well, then you're going to be upset when they don't seem to be as concerned about this thing as you think they should be.

It creates conflict between two people and makes it hard to coordinate. If I really knew what was on your mind, Mike, then you and I could cooperate. We could work together perfectly well because I'd know what was on your mind before you did something. Not really knowing and misunderstanding what's on the mind of another creates needless conflict and friction. Let's go back to your example. Okay, you're teaching me math. And boy, that would be a challenge, because not my strong suit. And you know the answer, and I don't, so you're thinking this should be easier than I think

it is. You're going to get that clue from me, because I'm either going to tell you, hey, Nick, I don't get this, or you're going to see that look on my face. So we're going to course correct at some point, and you're going to understand that this isn't easy for So we're going to course correct at some point and you're going to understand that this isn't easy for me. So now we are back on the same page. Sometimes this is true. So when you and I actually get time to interact with each other, then we do course correct. Then I'm paying attention to your behavior. I'm watching what you do. I'm learning. And indeed, spending time with each other in conversation helps to correct our misunderstanding. But a lot of social life doesn't involve that kind of rich interaction.

We're not actually meeting each other. Maybe I'm teaching you online. Or I mean, think about how often you sit face to face with somebody else versus texting to them, right? You send along this joke to a friend, you think it's so funny. If you're face to face and that joke bombs or the person is offended, you can see it. But what happens when you type it in a text and you can't see their response and they're just offended, they can't believe you said something like that and they walk away angry. So you're right that in social life,

if we are actually interacting with each other face-to-face in a high-fidelity interaction, we can learn from our mistakes, but a lot of social life doesn't quite look like that. There's one other thing that doesn't always correct itself either. And those are the inferences that we can sometimes make from these mistakes. So if I'm teaching you a math problem because I know the answer, I think it's so easy. Mike, I see you're having a hard time with it. What I don't realize is that it's not really easy to anybody who doesn't know the answer. And I might think you're not so good at math when in fact you are quite good. And even if you figure it out in the end, I'm still left with that initial inference that I made that you just don't seem to be very good at math.

And that could be a mistake. It's not. Even our inferences don't get corrected. Might not have been in that case, but it can be in daily life. We can make mistaken inferences that we don't correct. We're talking about how good you are at reading other people and figuring out what's on their mind, and it turns out you're not as good as you think you are. My guest is Nicholas Epley.

He's author of the book MindWise, How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. feel and want. manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com. This episode is brought to you by Melissa and Doug. Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving and arts and crafts for creative thinking. Melissa and Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world because the way they play today shapes who they become tomorrow. Melissa and Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world because the way they play today shapes who they become tomorrow. Melissa and Doug, the play is pretend, the skills are real.

Look for Melissa and Doug wherever you shop for toys. So, Nicholas, talk about some of the experiments that you've conducted in your research that supports what you're saying about being able to read other people and understand what's on their mind? Consider an experiment that we did between married couples. These are people how to know each other. They've been with each other on average in this experiment for 10 years. So we have about 100 people, about 50 married couples in this experiment. Some folks have just been together for a short while. We had one couple that was together for over 40 years, so for a long time.

And what we had them do was just a little bit of mind reading. We had them guess, one person, guess how their spouse, the other person, would fill out a series of attitude items, of personal preference kinds of questions. Things like, I often think our family's too heavily in debt these days. That seems like a pretty important thing. You ought to know about what your spouse thinks. Or I would rather spend a weekend in London than in Paris, right? So some sense about what their preferences are. Or if I could go back in life, I sure would do things differently, okay? Sense of whether your spouse is living with some deep

regrets or not. And for each of these statements, the spouse could indicate that they strongly disagree or strongly agree with that, okay? And we had one member predict how their spouse would respond, and then the other spouse actually responded. And then we can look at accuracy. Out of these 20 items, how many do people guess exactly correctly? What we found that after 10 years of marriage on average, they are a little better than chance at guessing exactly correctly how their spouse is going to answer these instead of three, which is roughly what chance would be the answer, about four and a half, correct. So maybe that's just the state of the world. It's just hard. It's just hard to know what somebody else is thinking and there's not much we can do to it. That doesn't seem to be quite true though, but some strategies work better

than others, it turns out. So data suggests that reading people's body language, not as helpful as we might imagine it is, because body language can often mislead. Often we try to take people's perspectives. I try to put myself in your shoes, Mike, and think what you might be thinking in this situation. We find with our married couples that that doesn't work at all when they put themselves in their spouse's shoes to try to really think carefully about what they're thinking. They don't do better. They do worse. The only thing that makes us better at this is stopping guessing and just asking what's on the mind of another person. So if I actually ask you what you think, how often do you feel like you were actually too much in debt these days? Then I'll find out what you're actually thinking because you will say it. That doesn't seem like rocket science. That seems totally obvious, except that for our participants

in these experiments, when they were actually using that strategy, when we actually gave them the chance to ask their partner how they felt about these things before going off and predicting how they would respond on the survey, they didn't think they did any better than the people who were using the far less effective strategies of just guessing or considering somebody else's perspective. So the strategy that seems obviously effective doesn't seem to be one we use as often as we should or think that it's as effective when we actually use it as it is. Well, it's certainly surprising that people only got four out of 20. I mean, that just seems so low. But talk about how people later thought they did on the questionnaire. When we

asked our married couples to predict how many they thought they actually got right, how many they thought they got exactly correct, they wildly overestimated how many they actually got correct. They were actually barely better than chance, but they thought, so they were getting a little over four correct, they thought on average they were getting 12 out of 20 exactly correct. And even in the condition where they ask their spouse these questions and actually heard their response, they were then doing much better. They were getting more like 10 out of 20. Exactly correct. They still thought they were only at about 12. So using this strategy of actually not guessing, but actually asking what's on the mind of another person didn't lead people to think they were doing markedly, markedly better.

And that's, I think, the interesting thing is that we're wildly overconfident in how good we are at understanding the minds of others just by guessing. I would guess most people believe that body language is a very good indicator of what someone is thinking and feeling. And we hear, you know, the FBI or whoever has a CIA has interrogation techniques and they can tell by, you know, what people say and where they look and what they do with their arms or their feet or whatever that these kind of body language cues are real. Are they real? Yeah, you can drive to a bookstore and drive away with a truckload of books telling you about the importance of reading body language.

And before any presidential election, you'll see the media outlets trotting out their body language experts to read somebody's body language. The data make it crystal clear that those things generally don't work well. That is, mostly when we ask people to pay closer attention, for instance, to somebody's body language, or if we look at people who are trained to do it, they don't do markedly better than people do when they're just guessing. The TSA, they so believed in the value of body language that they put in place for a number of years, a program that actually allowed them to interrogate people based on what they saw in body language. Mostly this led to a whole bunch of false alarms. They don't use it anymore because it just doesn't work very well.

I would be very dubious, very skeptical about anybody who tells you that reading body language actually makes them better than understanding another person. You'd want to ask, what's the data on that? So are you saying that body language is worthless? It's baloney? That's not quite what I'm saying. So our body language does reveal things it's just most of that you already know that is none of that seems particularly surprising um to people when they are trained to pay closer attention even when algorithms are trained to pay closer attention

to body language they don't do markedly better at actually guessing what's on another person's mind in experiments where you're trying for instance to detect whether somebody is lying or telling language, they don't do markedly better at actually guessing what's on another person's mind. In experiments where you're trying, for instance, to detect whether somebody is lying or telling the truth, focusing on body language, turning off the sound, for instance, and just focusing on body language actually makes people much worse than when you can hear what they're saying. There is, though, a strong belief in the power of body language. So people do believe in fact, and like in our experiments, when we have people try to detect lies, for instance, people think that they're getting a lot out of people's body language. Turns out they're

just mostly getting it out of their voice and what they say. The problem with body language is that it can lead as well as it can mislead. So what's another important practical implication of this work that you do about how we perceive others? Because it seems like we're not all that good at it or we're not as good as we think. And what are we missing by misperceiving others? One of the things that I think is most important about this misunderstanding, and we're learning this in research we're doing more recently, is that there's a pretty common mistake that we tend to make about the minds of others that I actually think can have pretty profound catastrophic effects on our well-being and happiness. And that is that we tend to make about the minds of others that I actually think can have pretty profound catastrophic effects on our well-being and happiness. And that is that we tend to systematically underestimate how positively other people

respond to them when we reach out and approach them. We reach out to say hello or to try to have a meaningful or deeper conversation. We tend to be overly pessimistic about how other people will respond to us. And some of this comes from reading body language. If you're walking down the hallway and somebody says hi to you, they might not be saying hi to you because you're not saying hi to them. But we can infer, people might infer that this person isn't interested in us. And that can be a meaningful mistake that can keep us from reaching out and connecting with other people because we think that others aren't so interested in us. And in recent years, we've been finding that that kind of pessimism about the minds of other people, and in particular, how interested other people are engaging in us, can create a barrier to us reaching out with them. And I

think that that can contribute to the kind of loneliness we're seeing out there in the world. What I find so interesting about what you just said is, and I've heard this talked about before, that it's so ingrained that even at a party where people theoretically are there to engage with other people, we're still reluctant to approach somebody. Well, they wouldn't be there if they didn't want to talk to people. They wouldn't have come to the party. But still, there's that reluctance that, yeah, they don't seem like they really want to talk to me. Well, they don't seem interested.

And once we are talking to them, we find that we tend to stay too shallow in conversation because we can think about what's on the mind of another, which means that we can worry about what others are thinking about us. We tend to be concerned that others are thinking poorly of us. So let's not be too vulnerable. Let's hold back. Let's keep it kind of on the shallow end of the conversation pool. As a result, that anxiety, that pessimism about the minds of others can keep us overly disconnected, even when we're talking to people at a party. So it seems like the takeaway here, what I'm taking away from this is that I'm not as good as I think I am when it comes to reading other people and what's on their mind. And that the very best way to find out what's on somebody's mind and what they're thinking is to ask them. Nicholas Epley has been my guest.

Nicholas is a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and the name of his book is MindWise, How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes for this episode. Thank you for being here today, Nicholas. Thanks so much for having me here, Mike. It's been really fun. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks,

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I imagine you have at some point in your life played with Legos or maybe stepped on a Lego. Hard to forget that experience. Legos have been around for a long time. And still, in this era of video games and games on your phone and a million other distractions, Legos are still doing a very brisk business.

And the basic Lego brick hasn't changed. In fact, if you have an old Lego set from, like, decades ago and take one of the little bricks out of it, it will fit perfectly on a new Lego set. A Lego is a Lego. Here to tell this remarkable story of

Legos and how they have endured and thrived is Daniel Konstansky. He's the U.S. editor for Blocks Magazine and a lifelong Lego fan. He's the author ofS. editor for Blocks Magazine and a lifelong Lego fan. He's the author of a book called The Secret Life of Lego Bricks, The Story of a Design Icon. Hi, Daniel. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you, Mike. It is a pleasure to be with you.

All right. So here's the thing about Legos, in my view. If you came to me and said, look, I've got this idea, I'm going to create these bricks, these little pieces of plastic, and they're going to snap together and make things, what do you think? I'd say, well, yeah, okay, ho-hum, not the greatest idea I've ever heard. It doesn't seem like something like that could take off the way it did. So what do you suppose is the magic of Legos that they have endured and they are so popular? I think it comes down to the degree to which the Lego group has been able to take something that is actually really complicated. You know, the way that bricks work together, the way that the, you know, click and hold and all of that, there's actually a huge amount of science and complexity behind it, but they've been able to distill it down and make it so simple for the user. It's just such a

straightforward and natural experience. And just that ability to take something incredibly complex that gives you so many opportunities and so many options and distill it down into something that is so simple and straightforward for the user. I think that's part of the reason that they've been able to just be so successful and so popular. Well, and how successful and how popular are they? So they are incredibly successful and popular. There have been several years in the past where they've actually beaten out Mattel for the world's number one toy maker. And that's just amazing when you consider how many different types of toys Mattel makes in comparison to the Lego group, which truly just makes bricks. And the fact that they've been able to do that is just an incredible testament to the level

of popularity of these toys. So they've been incredibly popular and incredibly successful throughout the world. You can find them everywhere, you know, with kids and adults alike. Do you have a sense of who the average Lego user is and how many people, I mean, it's hard to imagine you could get through life and not touch a Lego brick, but how, or step on one, which you remember forever, but how, how popular in terms of the population, do we have any sense of that? There aren't hard numbers, but I think you can get a real sense of it where you talk to almost anybody and they will be familiar with what a Lego brick is. So and it's because it has such a wide range of appeal.

And obviously they're toys. Right. So they are targeted and designed primarily for children. But there is also a huge and growing audience for Lego products that are, you know, older teens. And then there's a vibrant adult fan of Lego community. We call ourselves AFOLs, Adult Fan of Lego. There are conventions and fan events where, you know, people will come and they will have built these enormous displays with hundreds of thousands of Lego bricks completely as fans. So where do Legos come from? Are they all made in the same place? What's the Lego story? They actually come from Denmark. The company is headquartered in a small town in rural Denmark called Bieland. It's about a couple hours from Copenhagen in the western part of the country. And it's actually where the original

founder was from. He was a woodworker and that was where he had his woodworking shop. And so, the company has just stayed. It's hilarious to travel there because you get dropped into this very small rural town in the middle of nowhere. And there's this huge, you know, multi-billion dollar a year corporation that's got its headquarters in a major manufacturing facility there. And are all the bricks made there? Not anymore. So historically, most of the bricks were made there for a while, but now they have more regional factories in different countries, you know, in Mexico and in other places in Europe. So it, but there are still many, you know, tens of millions of bricks made there each year. It's hard, I think, for most of us to imagine a time when there weren't Legos,

but when did they actually start? When was the first Lego brick sold? So that's a great question. So with something as popular and as, you know, well-known and loved as the Lego brick, it surprises many to learn that everything we know and love today, giant Millennium Falcons, minifigures, those eye-popping displays at Legoland, all of it only happened because of a chance conversation that occurred in 1954 over the English Channel. And up till this time, the Lego bricks had been just a small kind of insignificant novelty within the company's portfolio. But the owner at the time, a gentleman by the name of Godfrey Kirk Christiansen, he was the second generation owner of the company. He happened to have this chance conversation on

this ferry ride where a gentleman asked, kind of commented to him offhandedly, he said, you know, there's no system within the toy industry. No one makes toys based on a system. And that word really stuck with Godfred. And he ended up going back and kind of looking at the entire portfolio of products that the company made, which at that time was both wood and plastic, kind of asking himself, well, what could I make into a system? And he homed in on these bricks that his father had made almost as a kind of special interest

thing on his own. And the company sold them, but they were not popular. They were hardly even a player within the company's balance sheet. And he looked at them, he said, I could turn these into a system. And so that revolutionized the company's portfolio because. And he looked at them, he said, I could turn these into a system. And so that revolutionized the company's portfolio because what he did is he took those bricks and he realized you could make a house out of them. You could make a gas station. You could make all of these different products and then you could take them and mix and match. So you could come up with a system. And that's what he actually released it as the Lego system in play a year later in 1955. And so that was when the kind of the modern take of Lego bricks. Before that, they were different. They didn't have tubes underneath

them and they were more like just kind of classic stacking with a little bit of grip. So it was that chance conversation that really motivated Godfred to do something with these bricks and that was where it all started. And was it an instant success? that really motivated Godfred to do something with these bricks. And that was where it all started. And was it an instant success? Pretty much, yes. As soon as they released it, again, it was kind of that revolutionary idea, real innovative move at that time to make all of these toys into a system that had not been done before. And so, yes, it proved wildly popular first, kind of in the Nordic countries, Germany, and then they very quickly marched out from there across Europe into the US,

and then also into Australia, and now, of course, the whole world. Has it ever slumped? Has there ever been a lack of demand? Did it ever kind of fall out of favor? Yes. So, the company actually had a major crisis right at the turn, right around the turn of the millennium. And it was actually motivated in large measure by there was kind of this this fear that permeated through the management at the time that the brick was kind of going to be sort of antiquated and passe in light of video games and kind of all of these new digital experiences that kids could have. And so the company kind of tried to make a pivot and rebrand as a company that would provide, you know, experiences and toys beyond the brick. So they engaged in a variety of different experiments, kind of sold different types of toys that were really tangential, some that really kind of had nothing to do with

bricks. And it actually drove the company to near bankruptcy, all of these experiments that they tried. And eventually they said, you know what, we've just got to kind of focus back and we've got to focus on what we know, which is the brick. And they kind of realigned themselves. They jettisoned a lot of these other experiments and other product lines and refocused on the brick and it proved wildly successful. In the early 2000s, the company was remade and reborn with an incredibly successful turnaround that took them from near bankruptcy in 2004 to just a few years later to incredible levels of profitability

that they've just continued since then. As I recall, because I played Legos when I was a kid and I'm more into it now than I was then, primarily because my son is into it, and we've built some of the big ones together. But I recall that in the old days, Legos were more like, well, you build a house, and Harry Potter and Warner Brothers, that really helped turbo boost the company. late 1970s with the invention of the minifigure. So the minifigure is that iconic small Lego person or Lego people that comes pretty much every set now. We've got the little arms and accessories and all of that. So prior to 1978, Lego products didn't have... There had been a few experiments with kind of proto figures and some that were made of regular bricks that were much larger, but there had never been a population to put in with these toys. And that really revolutionized the company and allowed them to do themes. They went into space

and castle, a lot of all of these various different ways that they could go. Because before that, it had primarily just been kind of modern life town settings that they did toys for. And so this allowed them to branch out into all of these other worlds. And so that started this pattern of themes. But you are absolutely correct. So up until Star Wars, which came out around 1999, the Lego Group did not do franchises. They did not do licenses. And it really was a major turning point for the company when they did. And they had phenomenal success with it.

I mean, obviously, you know, pairing up with Star Wars is a pretty great place to start. I'm curious about the process of creating something out of Legos. When the people at Lego sit down and say, OK, we've got a deal with Warner Brothers. We're going to make the Hogwarts school from Harry Potter out of Lego bricks and sell that. How does that process go? How do they, is it just computers figure it out or do people figure it out? Do they test it? And it seems like they're making new bricks that I've never seen before that go specifically for this set. How does that all work? Do you know? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So the process by which Lego sets and products are made is absolutely fascinating. And so they begin it by casting

a very wide net just to kind of say, okay, what are kids into? What is the interest right now amongst different age groups? A big term you'll hear is icons? What are the icons? You know, is the cultural zeitgeist focused on pirates or ninjas or astronauts, kind of these big themes, big picture themes that kids the world over will recognize. And then they begin a process of they will develop sketches and really simplistic models that kind of flesh out an idea. And then they do an incredible amount of testing with children. And they will then refine based on the learnings. That's the term that they use, the learnings that they get from those various tests. And then eventually that gets refined and they will bring in new parts. They have an incredible 3D modeling set up in the Lego headquarters where they generate all of these ideas and work on these test models.

And so they can very quickly generate new parts that they consider developing. And then if something gets a really great reaction from kids and it really facilitates, you know, exciting types of play or really cool model, then they will take that 3D prototype and 3D printed prototype. And they will then refine it into something that they can actually mold and create into a new part. So yeah, almost every wave of sets that comes out will have some number of new parts that they have created in order to facilitate something that they wanted to accomplish with that wave of sets. Here's a question i think anybody who plays with legos builds legos has why are there always pieces left over at the end and why those pieces absolutely that is a great question and i do have the answer so the reason that you get those those little extra parts in the bags at

the end and they're always small right so you're going to get little one by one rounds, or maybe if it's a set that comes with tiles, you might get one of the little quarter tiles that gets left over. And the reason for that is quality control. So the way that obviously the nightmare for the Lego group is for a set to be missing a part. That's the thing that's going to make it a bad experience for whoever bought the set. And so the way that they make sure that they are not missing any pieces is that once those bags that all your parts come in

are sealed, they weigh them. And they know exactly, you know, down to some crazy level of accuracy, how much that particular bag from that particular set is supposed to weigh. And they put in those little extra pieces because even with the level of accuracy on these scales, it's possible for those really tiny pieces to register a little high or a little low and be within the margin of error. And so, they're putting them in there basically as a way to make sure that they are giving all of those little parts that are necessary and not short shorting the customers.

So like if the weight is a little off, it'll only be a tiny bit off. And if it's a tiny bit off, then if it is missing a piece, it could only be one of these tiny little pieces because it could only be a tiny bit off. But it does seem, I mean, I've built a lot of Legos and everyone who's built a Lego, I think, has had the experience of, where's that piece? I cannot find that piece. And you look in the bags and you look on the floor and you look all over the place and look in, you know, your shoe and whatever. But you always find it. I mean, you always find it. It doesn't seem like they miss pieces. They do not. Yeah. So, Mike, I've personally owned over 1,500 Lego sets. Of those 1,500 sets, I can count on three fingers the number of times there has actually been a missing part.

You know, most of the time it's you either put something in the wrong place or it's still in the bag. That's always the first place to look is check back in the bag and see if you just left it in there, didn't pour everything out. Or it might've gotten stuck. Sometimes I've found them stuck on the inside or the underside of a bigger brick. But yes, I forget what the exact statistics are, but it's incredible how few sets actually come up with the missing part. But it is funny that you mentioned that because despite that incredible track record that I myself have personally experienced every time, every time I build a set, there's a moment where I can't find something. I'm like, oh, well, maybe this is set number four that's going to be missing a part. But of course, it almost never is.

And the other thing I wonder about is, so when you buy one of the big sets, all the pieces come in numbered bags. But within the bag are little bags. But why? Because you still have to open all the bags because you don't know, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to what's in the little bag versus what's in the big bag. So you have to open them all anyway. So why the little bag? So those little bags, there's two reasons for it. So one is, again, going back to the quality control and that kind of factor of safety that I mentioned previously. So the more bags you pack things into, the more precisely you can determine the range of weights that is okay. And so there's the quality control aspect of it. But there's also just on the practical side, the Lego group has lines.

They're called packing lines where they are filling all of these bags. And from a manufacturing standpoint, you want those packing lines to be about the same length, packing similar numbers of bricks, no matter how many bags there are in a set. You want each bag to have about the same number of parts. And so that's part of the reason as well, is that you need those little parts for that section of the build that you're doing, but it's just easier for them to pack them separately and then insert that bag later into the main bag that's numbered.

It seems like the unsung hero in a Lego set that nobody talks much about is the instruction books that come with it. And like with the big ones, we have one of the big Star Wars ones. It came with three loose-leaf notebooks of instructions to put it together. And the artwork, and, you know, there's no words. It doesn't tell you what to do. It shows you what to do. And you kind of have to learn their language. But those instruction books are pretty amazing. The building instructions are actually a huge part of the set development

process. The company has a whole team of people that it's their entire job to try to make sure that instructions are as straightforward and as simple as possible. And again, this is a case where for the most part, you know, 99% of the time the company succeeds with, you know, making it so that children of the appropriate age, right, that age mark on the box can follow it through. But they really do an incredible amount of refining and changing and workshopping these instructions to try to make them as simple as possible. Obviously, when you're developing tens of thousands of steps each year across all of the different sets that are released, there's inevitably going to be a few that might be a

little bit confusing. But it is really crazy to give you one example. When they are doing those instructions and they will build the model over and over again. They actually have a specific process where they try to figure out where people who are building the model might go wrong, might veer off of the instructions. And then they kind of experiment and say, okay, well, if they mess up with that or if they build it differently, what will they end up with? And then they'll actually make changes to the main model so that if you do go a little bit astray, you still end up with something that is usable and fun and is a good experience,. So it's great to have you to answer these questions. So you take one of the Star Wars or the Harry Potter, the Hogwarts school. You know, these are big Lego sets, right?

What is it they're using to base that off of? Does Warner Brothers give them the plans for Hogwarts or do they invite them over there? And, or do they, is it just done from photographs or like how much information do they get from the source in order to create as, as realistic a Lego as you can create? Yeah. So it, uh, it ranges. So yes, sometimes they will get material directly from, say, a Lucasfilm or Disney now, I guess, where they will send them photos from sets or from the set of movies. They might send them actual models. They might invite them to come to a workshop where they're building props for the movie

and allow them to see it. A lot of times it's just pictures that they will send. Or in the case of like, yeah of some of those big Technic vehicles, they'll get to go and see the actual vehicle at the factory. And then sometimes it will just be, obviously all of these partners get to review the products ahead of time. And sometimes they'll just come back with something like, hey, you might want to change that.

So one of the funniest stories in that vein is when The Phantom Menace, the first of the prequel Star Wars movies was coming out. That was when the Lego group was first beginning to work on that license. And they got some design feedback on the design of the lightsaber hilts, the small handles for a lightsaber that they were making. And the feedback was, hey, you might want to make it so that a blade can be attached on both ends. And the Lego designers, because of course, at that point, we'd never seen a double-bladed lightsaber. They were like, well, why? They were like, no reason, but you should probably do it. And then of course, the trailer came out and there was that iconic moment of Darth Maul with his double-bladed lightsaber and everyone in Billum went, ah, that's what they were talking about.

Well, it is such an iconic brand, Lego. It's so fun to hear the story and the history, especially against this backdrop of, you know, modern day technology and video games and all that. Lego still rules. I've been speaking with Daniel Konstansky. He is the U.S. editor for Blocks Magazine, and he's author of the book, The Secret Life of Lego Bricks, The Story of a Design Icon.

And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Daniel. When you're feeling down, when you're feeling a little blue, it's common to see gray. You see, a research study compared two groups of people, one group of people with depression compared to another group with no history of depression. The researchers found that the depressed people had a decrease in the sensitivity of their retina, resulting in seeing colors and contrasts differently than the people in the other group. In essence, the world literally looked duller to the depressed people. So it's not just your imagination. When you're sad, everything can look a little gray and gloomy.

And that is something you should know. So if you've been listening to Something You Should Know for a while, you have a pretty good sense of what this podcast is about. I bet you could write a really good review. And it's easy to do. Whatever platform you're listening to this on will usually allow you to write a review and leave a rating. And it really helps us because people like to see them. We like to read them. So please take a moment. It doesn't take long. It just it doesn't have to be a big, long essay. Just be a short little review. I'm Mike Carruthers.

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