Something You Should Know - How to Master Emotional Power & How Elevators Changed the World - SYSK Choice

Episode Date: October 18, 2025

As people age, forgetfulness often creeps in — but not all memory loss is inevitable. In fact, some of the most common causes are preventable, and with the right strategies, memory can be protected and even improved. I’ll explain what really drives age-related forgetfulness and what you can do about it. Source: William Cone, PhD, author of Stop Memory Loss (https://amzn.to/3PNKIOX). Negative emotions hit us all — anger, fear, frustration, stress — but how you handle those feelings determines your “emotional power.” Leading neuropsychologist Julia DiGangi reveals the science behind emotional triggers and how your brain shapes your reactions. She’s the author of Energy Rising: The Neuroscience of Leading with Emotional Power (https://amzn.to/463rDhu), and her insights will help you understand why you react the way you do and how to channel emotions into strength rather than struggle. Elevators are so ordinary we barely think about them — until we’re standing in one, feeling awkward or even a little uneasy. Yet without elevators, skyscrapers and modern cities as we know them wouldn’t exist. Dr. Lee Gray, professor of architectural history at UNC Charlotte and author of From Ascending Rooms to Express Elevators: A History of the Passenger Elevator (https://amzn.to/44ZLtsM)., takes us inside the fascinating history of elevators, from their risky beginnings to the sophisticated systems we trust today. Struggling to sleep? The problem may not be you — it could be your bedroom. Small details in your sleep environment can make the difference between tossing and turning or getting deep, restful sleep. I’ll share quick and easy changes you can make tonight for a better night’s rest. https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/understanding-sleep-problems-basics PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now! DELL: Your new Dell PC with Intel Core Ultra helps you handle a lot when your holiday to-dos get to be…a lot. Upgrade today by visiting⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://Dell.com/Deals⁠⁠⁠⁠ QUINCE: Layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! SHOPIFY: Shopify is the commerce platform for millions of businesses around the world! To start selling today, sign up for your $1 per month trial at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That's annoying. What? You're a muffler. You don't hear it? Oh, I don't even notice it. I usually drown it out with the radio. How's this? Oh, yeah.

Way better. Save on insurance by switching to Bel Air Direct and use the money to fix your car. Bell Air Direct, insurance simplified. Conditions apply. Today on something you should know, if you know older people who tend to forget things, you need to hear something.

Then, understanding your emotions and why they can be difficult to control. What the evidence shows us is the more we obsessively seek certainty, you would think that's kind of logical, right? We'll feel better when we're certain. But the more we obsessively seek certainty, the sicker we get. The more anxious we get, the more afraid we get, the more agitated we get. Also, an effective and simple remedy for the next time you have trouble sleeping. And elevators, we need them, we willingly go in them, but they are a little creepy and scary.

If you made a list of the most socially awkward spaces you know, the elevator's probably at the top of the list. Especially as Americans, you know, we don't necessarily like standing that close to each other. All this today on Something You Should Know. I want to tell you about a podcast I listen to. There's a new episode every weekday, and I believe it can help you uncomplicate the news and better understand what's really going on in the world.

It's called On Point. On Point is a rare public space where you hear nuanced explorations of complex topics, live and in real time. Host Magna Chakrabarty leads provocative conversations that will help make sense of the world with urgency, timeliness, and depth. Each episode is a deeply researched, beautifully produced hour. Listeners will learn, be challenged, and have some fun, too. You can hear episodes of On Point every weekday, wherever you get your podcast. Something You Should Know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. You may have noticed or experienced if you know someone older who might be suffering some memory law. that older people who have memory loss have more trouble holding on to recent memories than older ones. They can remember what happened 30 years ago as clear as a bell, but often can't remember what happened yesterday. According to memory expert Dr. William Cohn, memory loss in older people is common, and sometimes it just happens. But there are two other reasons that older people can't remember what happened yesterday. One of them is that nothing happened yesterday. Older people, especially those suffering memory loss,

often don't do very much of anything all day long. So there's really nothing to remember. Plus, that lack of brain activity slows the brain function even more. Increasing activity, physical activity, can really help. And then there's medication. For people taking several medications, there's an excellent chance those medicines are interfering with the thinking process. Having a medication evaluation and making some adjustments in the medicine

can work wonders for brain function and memory. And that is something you should know. If you think about it, when life is easy, well, then life is easy. In part, because your emotions are not engaged. It is when life is hard that your emotions kick in, and life becomes more challenging. How you use those emotions in those challenging times, that is your emotional power.

And that's what Julia Degangy is here to discuss. Julia is a neuropsychologist, founder of neurohealth partners, and author of a book called Energy Rising, the neuroscience of leading with emotional power. Hi, Julia, welcome to something you should know. I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for having me, Mike. So explain, if you will, in a little more detail, what my emotional power is so everyone understands.

Emotional power, so let me actually back up and think, sort of talk more broadly about emotions. So in the moments in your life where things are just working out for you, and I hope people have plenty of days like this, right? So the people are just listening, the kids are just obeying, our partners are just kind of cooperating with us, our teams are listening. those are wonderful moments, but they don't require an ounce of our strength or our power. All of our emotional power shows up in the moments of emotional resistance, right? So who do I become in these moments when people are not cooperating with me, when people are not listening to me, when things are not working out as I wanted? And if you really understand the brain, you know, what those situations really generate, the reason we, even call them problems is more fundamentally they create negative emotional energy, which I call

emotional pain. So things like stress, irritation, frustration, I could go on and on. There's probably a thousand synonyms. So our emotional power is who we become in the moments when we hit this emotional resistance or this emotional pain. And a lot of us aren't too thrilled with that person we become when those things happen? Not at all. I mean, I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, we simply don't have enough conversations like this. You know, one of the things I always say is it kind of blows my mind that we pay more attention to figuring out how to operate chat, GPT, or our cell phones, then we pay attention to understanding how to operate our brains. Our brain is the most

powerful, magnificent machine will ever own. And I think in today's day and age, we have a lot of really strong neuropsychological evidence that tells us how to powerfully navigate difficult situations, scary situations, and uncertain situations. Well, I think that the assumption is, or my assumption is, that how you react to those things when people don't cooperate, when things don't go your way, that that is largely hardwired in. And yeah, you can jiggle the wires maybe, but that you are who you are and you react how you react? You know what? As a neuropsychologist, I couldn't disagree more.

So I really believe in emotional transformation, behavioral transformation, and I don't just believe in it. You know, I've done a lot of, you know, I'm really well published in the scientific literature. So I sort of have seen very clearly the evidence of emotional and behavioral change. And I work with people all day long for many, many years. You know, one of the things that I think surprises people. people is if you really want to achieve change,

you have to understand the brain's relationship with uncertainty. Can I talk about this for a minute? Absolutely. So as I mentioned, I'm sort of most fundamentally a trauma expert. So I've worked with, you know, incredibly intense human emotions, rage, despondency, betrayal, and certainly those emotional experiences are very painful. But one of the things that struck me in my work is we actually under underestimate what could potentially be the most taxing emotion of all? And that emotion is

confusion. Now, I don't care if you call it confusion or ambiguity or uncertainty from a neural perspective, the brain is kind of doing the same thing. Now, to understand why uncertainty is so difficult for your brain or why confusion is so so difficult for your brain, you have to understand what the brain is. So the best way to think about your brain is, is as a pattern detection machine, right? So you are going through your life and your brain is basically going apple, apple, apple, fill in the blank, that should be an apple. So you can see the only thing that will really stop the brain from doing its core function is confusion. So even if you're, you know, even if I have to experience rage or if I'm sad, my brain can handle those things much better

than it can handle me not knowing what to do next. So a lot of our pain, actually comes. It's this very counterintuitive thing. And this is why I think it's so powerful to learn the brain. A lot of our pain actually comes when we try to create certainty. Right. So I just said the brain is a pattern detection machine. It's kryptonite are these moments of uncertainty or confusion. So what a lot of us do to try to create certainty is we try to do it through what I call the overs, okay? So the overs, and I think your listeners are really going to resonate with this. The overs are things like overworking, overthinking, overdoing, overdoing, over communicating, over giving. I mean, I could just go on and on and on. And in each of those moments,

what I'm really doing is I'm trying to use an abundance of my energy to create certainty where there is none, right? So working is amazing. But over, the only reason anyone ever overworked, is because they're afraid. Thinking is very pleasant. The only reason someone overthinkes is because they're anxious. So here's the final point, and then I'll kind of come up for air, is what we're very clear about from the neuropsychological research, and I think this is such a mind-blowing moment for people,

is actually what the evidence shows us is that the more we obsessively seek certainty, you would think that's kind of logical, right? We'll feel better when we're certain. But the more we obsessively seek certainty, the sicker we get. The more anxious we get, the more afraid we get, the more scared we get, the more agitated we get. So if we really want to lead emotionally powerful lives, we have to understand how the brain responds to uncertainty and how to navigate that powerfully. So what it sounds like is if you're trying to create certainty when there isn't any so that So don't try.

So just, well, K sarah, sara, whatever happens, happens. But that's not human nature. We need to try to get our way to control things to, you know, move forward the way we want. We have wants and needs, too. Absolutely. Absolutely. So here's the thing, though. And this is such like this, we're coming back to this core idea that everyone's heard a million

times before of balance. So is it important to, on some level, understand how to navigate the external world? of course. It would be absurd to say otherwise. But I would tell you, I think one of the most pressing behavioral problems in our individual lives, in our homes, and I do a lot of work in organizations, in the larger culture, is we are obsessed. We are obsessed with what is happening in the external world. Hey, what are you doing? Why is this person talking like this? Why are the people on social media doing this. Why are those, it just goes on and on and on. If I had to distill all of my work down to a single question, it would be this. How can I control these people who

matter to me? So how can I control the behavior of these people around me so that their behavior doesn't make me feel the things I don't like to feel? So what happens is that because we're so externally obsessed, we overfocus on the external environment and we totally neglect our inner environment. So what I'm really saying, again, this is kind of counterintuitive is like absolutely navigate the external world. That's what we're on this planet to in part do. But if you think the opposite of uncertainty is certainty, that's not true. In fact, the more you seek certainty obsessively, the worst you're going to feel. So then what is the opposite of uncertainty?

The opposite of uncertainty is self-trust. That even if these people don't cooperate, the way that I need them to cooperate, it's okay. That even, you know, I work in a lot of organizational settings where micromanagement is a big problem. All micromanagement is at its core is certainty seeking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jim, I'm going to need to see that email before you send it.

Sarah, I'm going to need to be in. in that meeting. I'm going to need you guys to run the idea by me a hundred times. So I'm trying to control. Why am I trying to control? Because I don't think I'll be okay if not. And why is that? Why is it that we feel we won't be okay if we can't control it? Your brain is actually the native universal language of every single human being is a language of emotion. Okay, this is true. I mean, and if we're really honest about it, it's a language of negative emotion because every single one of us showed up on this planet, red face, terrified, screaming, and enraged, okay? So the brain's kind of running on this emotional energy. I don't mean this metaphorically. I mean it neurobiologically.

So in the ways that you get into pain in your life, you have a core emotional pattern. And it's going to sound something like this. People just don't really listen to me. People just don't really listen to me. People just don't really listen to me. Maybe my emotional pattern is things just never work out for me. Things just never work out for me. Things just never work out for me. Then watch me find a new relationship. And I promise you, you will come to see that things just don't work out for you. Yeah, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I think people have a sense of that because it's probably easier to see it in other people. You see those people who always say things aren't going to work out and they never work out. I'm speaking

with Julia Degangy. She is a neuropsychologist. Author of the book, Energy Rising, the neuroscience of leading with emotional power. Maybe it's just a phase you're going through. You'll get over it. I can't help you with that. The next appointment is in six months. You're not alone. Finding mental health support shouldn't leave you feeling more lost. At CAMH, we know how frustrating it can be trying to access care. We're working to build a future where the path to support is clear. Every step forward feels like progress, not another wrong turn. Visit camh.ca to help us forge a better path for mental health care.

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We'd love to talk, business. So, Julia, talk some more about this self-fulfilling prophecy idea and how you know it to be true. In one of my experience, so we use in fMRI and EEG research, we use this well-validated face paradigm, okay, and we put people in scanners and we show them four faces, angry faces, fearful faces, mad faces, or neutral faces. One of the most interesting faces is actually the neutral faces. So everyone is seeing the same faces. But interestingly, people who are, we call them healthy controls,

so people that don't have a diagnosis like anxiety or depression, will report the faces as neutral. They'll just say, I don't know, that's kind of blank. Whereas people who already have anxiety will say the faces are threatening. Who's right? The point I'm driving at here is based on how the brain works, there's no way to take affect out of it. So go back to your micromanagement thing.

You're saying, I need to micromanage because Susie can't do her job. I'm saying I would ask a different question. I would say, what is it about in your emotional coding that is signaling to you that Susie can't do her job? And even if you said to me, you know what, Julia, I've had 20s, because this happens a lot, I've had 27 conversations with Susie about how you. So you're telling me 28, email review 28 is going to save you. You see what I'm saying?

A big thing I see is like it's very difficult for people to give difficult feedback. Why? Because it makes them anxious. Because it makes them scared. Because they're afraid that someone's going to get mad at them. I'm afraid to fire her. Why? Because I don't, I believe that there's not people that I can hire to do this job.

I feel that someone's going to get. It's always. coming back to emotional energy. Why? Because how your brain makes meaning is predicated on affective circuits in the brain. In other words, do you have a good life? I don't know. How do you feel about it? Do people work hard for you? I don't know how do you feel about it. How much money is enough money? How much time is enough time? All of these things are ultimately mediated by emotion. And so when people just talk about situation without talking about emotion, we are denying the very physiology upon which consciousness rises.

The micromanager guy, let's say you convince him not to read Susie's email before she sends it, you're asking him to change. So what does he do? Uh-huh. Because a lot of this is about don't do this, don't do this. Well, but you've got to do something. You can't just don't do something. Totally.

So here's the thing. I'm going to give you one more quick story. So I'm brought in a lot to help organizations with employee engagement, okay? So I'll say, what's going on around here? And they'll say, for example, things aren't looking good. Morale is low. There's not a lot of inspiration. There's not a lot of engagement because the staff is X, Y, and Z.

And I say, great, that's super valid. We're going to totally get to that. Just really quick, tell me how you're doing. what invariably I hear, Mike, is people say, I'm not doing good. I'm frustrated. I'm burnt out. I'm irritated. I'm fresh. I keep saying to say. So in other words, they're embodying the very energy they're saying they want out of their team, whether it's their team at work or their team in their home. Now, here's the thing. Neuroscience tells us that emotion is a thing of contagion. You quite literally catch, we catch each other's emotions the way we catch colds.

You already know this is true because you plenty of times, you've been in a great mood, you walk into a room and you're like, oh God, and your mood just sinks like a lead balloon. Or alternatively, this is my favorite one, is like you've definitely walked into rooms before where people are cracking up. You don't even know what they're laughing about and you just start laughing. We are wired to catch emotion. So overwhelmingly, in my experience with leaders, they want their people to do well. They want to run a happy organization, a happy house. So they'll start to obsess, how do I make these people feel more inspired? How do I make them feel more motivated? How do I

make them feel more engaged? And I say, your job is actually not to motivate anyone. Your job is to motivate yourself and trust that they will catch the energy of that motivation. They will catch the energy of that inspiration. Your job is to inspire no one. Because until you tell me how you can get inside someone's nervous system and like click around in there and zing, zing, zab, zzoing, so they feel a feeling inside their own body, it will never work. But what does work is we know the mechanism.

We know that emotions are contagious. So I need to start thinking, what is the emotional energy that is missing on my team? Is it patience? Is it clarity? Is it kindness? Is it authenticity? and then I need to start thinking about how do I want to embody the very energy that I am saying I want to see more of on my team. Which sounds a little like, you know, lead by example, do as I do, watch me and hopefully you will do the same.

But it seems a little, I don't know, iffy, like, you know, maybe they will, maybe they won't. And when you think about leading and motivating, it's like you're supposed to be doing something, telling people, rallying the troops. That's what motivating is. If I'm serious about motivating, and we've all been around leaders who inspire us. And never once have I heard someone say, you know who's really motivating and inspiring to me, are the leaders who try to micromanage the hell out of me, the ones who tell me how to do it, the ones who keep checking in on me. We are inspired by people who are really lit up by the work, who are really authentic.

So what I'm saying here is that if you want, and I completely understand if this has not been the way that you've been living your life for, and I think a lot of us don't, it seems like a very big paradigm shift. But the thing that I think anchors us is like, well, all of this is ultimately being told by how the brain operates. So let me just think here for a second. Okay, what's the problem? The problem is people are motivated. Okay, how do I get them motivated? I should give them more Starbucks gift cards. we already know that extrinsic forms of motivation don't meaningfully work they right so we have we have

those data well we know that there are two circuits for motivation in the brain there's extrinsic motivation which is like I'm going to give you a Starbucks gift card I'm going to give you a bonus and we know that there are intrinsic forms of motivation which is do I feel happy to be here is this aligned with so even if these things feel nebulous which I understand for a lot of people they do, that doesn't, they're still real. They still work at the level of the brain. Okay, so if I'm a, if I'm a boss and I say, I want people around here more motivated, I understand that I've kind of tapped out extrinsic forms of motivation. I need to tap into internal systems of motivation. I can't get inside of their nervous system. Let me work on mine. Can you give me another example of how emotional energy works in maybe not in a business setting, but maybe a parent. setting. So I was at the park the other day. I have little kids. And there was this little Noah. So little Noah was like up on the slide. And little Noah's mom was like, Noah, get down off that

slide. Noah, Noah, come down. Noah. And I was kind of watching this, right? And like, little Noah looked quite sure-footed. He looked quite confident. He was having a good time up there. He kept telling his mom, like, I think I'm okay. Like, I don't want to come down. So eventually, little Noah complies. What was really happening in that transaction? Was it really that little Noah was going to get so catastrophically injured? Or was it more that mom was having very big feelings inside of her body and she needed Noah to come down off that slide so she could control the feelings at her body? Also, I want you to think about this. We say that we want to raise really powerful children, meaning they're self-reliant, they're self-intimate.

They really understand themselves. We give our kids a lot of interesting messages, right? So the most powerful form of leadership on the planet is parent leadership. So, you know, we will say things to our kids like, eat that broccoli. I don't want to eat the broccoli. Eat it anyway. Go tell her you're sorry. Wait, but I'm not sorry.

Hey, I said go tell her you're sorry. March over there right now. right so it's like we as parents have these ideas of how things should go what happens though in the child is the child's having an emotional experience i don't like broccoli i am not afraid i do not want to apologize because mom didn't see but you know this kid hit me in the head first right whatever it is but then we're we're telling our children you're having this emotional experience override the emotional experience and behave in a way that I'm telling you to behave in. The problem with that chronically is that what we're really teaching our children is their own

emotional experiences can't be trusted. And this is when you start to see. We have a whole society of people right now talking about people pleasing and performers and obsessed with attention and not confidence and unable to help themselves. There's real consequences of these things. I will tell you, I work with a lot of anxious, like, parents that come for coaching for anxious kids. You want to know one of the biggest hallmarks of anxiety in the child, anxiety in the parents. Well, and every parent's done that where, you know, say the child doesn't want to do his homework. And then somehow you, you like catastrophize that into some horrible, their whole academic career will be ruined because you're having trouble getting them to do their homework.

and we do that, that anxiety. Right? So there's like, the kid won't do the math homework, the way the parent wants, the math homework done, and now it's become this, like, epic thing where like no one's respecting, no one's loving. And when you really start to work on the parent's energy, you start to always see that the parent is telling,

often unconsciously, a catastrophic story to themselves. They're not going to do well in geometry. They're not going to be successful in high school. They're never going to get into a good college. They won't have a good job. And by the end of this story, once you get them to verbalize it, their child is homeless living in a refrigerator box underneath a bridge. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Like we did that to ourselves, right? And there can be something very healing and very empowering when we start to understand how our emotions are coloring the ways we're acting with our children and other people we love. Well, this is a very different, unique way of looking at how emotions work that I know I haven't really thought much about before. I've been speaking with Julia Degangy. She is a neuropsychologist and author of the book,

Energy Rising, the neuroscience of leading with emotional power. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you for being here, Julia, and explaining all this. Thank you. You are awesome, and I actually like the... You had challenging questions, and I appreciated that as well. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track side. So being a fan for life,

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at OnePeloton.ca. In the near future, you are likely going to step into a small room, possibly with total strangers. The door will lock behind you and there you will stand. You may struggle deciding if you should say something or even look at these other people in the room with you as this room moves up or down in a building. It is, of course, an elevator.

Elevators are weird little spaces, yet they change the world in a way. They made tall buildings possible. But they are a little mysterious. I'm sure you've worried when an elevator bounces a little when it stops on a floor. Should you worry? Is that a problem? What about those open-and-closed door buttons

that often don't really seem to do any, thing. Could an elevator actually come loose and plummet to the ground? Here to explain things about the elevator is Lee Gray. He is a professor of architectural history at the University of North Carolina, an author of a book called From Ascending Rooms to Express Elevators, a history of the passenger elevator. Hi, Lee, welcome to something you should know. Hi. So I know there are conflicting stories about which was the first passenger elevator but but pick one that you that is your best guess as to probably the the most important or the first or whatever and and when and how and why and where the one that I know of of an

elevator that was specifically designed to carry passengers was 1859 in the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City and who where did it come from who who created it? How did it get in the building? So what we have to remember is mid-19th century, large urban hotels were just becoming a major part of, a major feature rather, in American, not only American cities, but in cities also throughout Europe. And when you went to one of those hotels, you had incredible amenities that you didn't have at home, so to speak, running water in your room, a bathroom adjacent to your room, steam, heat, all of these incredible things that many people didn't have at home. And in planning for the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the developer

of the hotel thought, well, we have all this wonderful technology. What if we can put technology in the hotel that would transport the guests up and down from the lobby to their rooms? and the proprietor contacted a gentleman named Otis Tufts. We think of Otis as associated with elevators. This is a different one, where his first name is Otis. Otis Tufts, who was a Boston engineer, and he designed a machine exclusively for the Fifth Avenue Hotel to carry guests up and down.

This was a very, actually very strange machine in that the designer was very safety conscious and therefore thought, well, if we suspend a car or cabin by cables, the cables could always break, passengers would fall, bad things would happen. So he eliminated the cables and designed and they constructed this enormous shaft from the basement to the top of the building, and it was a screw shaft, if you will, and the car fit on the shaft just like a nut on a bolt. and the steam engine rotated this massive metal shaft and as it turned the car slowly very very slowly would rise and fall throughout going moving up and down the shaft the idea was that it was perfectly safe because there were no cables so it was basically on a screw it screwed up and down it screwed up and down is yes that's exactly what it did well that must have been amazingly slow it was amazingly slow even for for the time period, it was ridiculously expensive around $25,000 and $25,000 in 1859 is real money. I mean, it was insanely expensive, and only one other similar machine was built for a hotel

in Philadelphia, and that technology was very rapidly abandoned because it was too expensive, and even for a hotel, it was too slow. Yet there it was. But what it did do is it set an important paradigm for how hotels, excuse me, how elevators in hotels, and later on in fine department stores and other settings worked, in that you approached the elevator station, operator would open the door, you would go into the elevator car, take a seat on a really very comfortable, well-cushioned little bench, admiring the fine woodwork. of the car, nice mirrors on the walls, a little gas chandelier hanging down, and after everyone was seated, the door would be closed by the operator, and then he would slowly and gracefully ride up to your floor, and then the operation would reverse itself, because the idea initially, of course, wasn't speed. It was luxury. I'm going to this hotel to be pampered and to be

well taken care of. So as we move along the chronology here, I wanted to ask you, at what point in the chronology of elevators do escalators show up? Is it early on, later on, prior to, after the fact, when? So escalators begin to show up in the 1890s. And they begin to show up for primarily two reasons. One, it is a form of vertical transportation that doesn't require an operator. Therefore, quite simply, I don't have to pay for one. And two, they operate all. the time, you know, they don't stop and start. And I guess really then there's a third reason because they operate all the time. They carry many, many more passengers in the same amount of time than an elevator can.

And this is, you know, if you've watched an escalator, you know, there's an endless flow of passengers moving nonstop. Elevators, of course, stop, doors open, people exit, you enter, doors closed and so on. It's even, it's obviously much slower. The early elevators, and I don't know how early, early is before it started to change, but was it a case of like somebody, an elevator operator, had to kind of manually line up the elevator with the floor, or was that already in place that the elevator knew how to stop at the floor?

Or like how automatic versus manually driven was it? That's a great question. Up until the early 1920s, all elevators, elevator stops were under the control of the operator. And if you stopped the car within about within one half inch of level to the floor, that was considered a good job. So up until the early 1920s, it was all up to the skill of the operator to stop the car level. By the mid-1920s, we had automatic leveling systems, which meant that the car would automatically stop and be perfectly leveled. And as one sort of cultural footnote to that, one of the, an early silent movie, I want to say 1917, 1918 was actually predicated on this, this hapless, but penniless inventor who invents a system that elevators would stop level with the floor, which makes him a fortune.

And then he marries his boss's daughter and all that kind of thing. the elevator operator like it like how tough was it was it because it seems like that's got to be a relatively dull job but maybe it was more skilled than i realize so it's there's it's kind of a paradox here it was skilled to be able to drive the elevator primarily to stop at level with the floor but it was also more than that until um actually until the late 1920s so let's imagine a 10-story building and what what do I do is an elevator elevator operator I would start my day on the lobby floor and if there are four other elevators I'm not going anywhere until I'm directed to by a person called the

starter the starter was the staff member in the building in charge of directing elevator traffic so I would be in my elevator car and people would start piling in and when the starter gave me a signal, I would start my elevator. And I would go all the way up to the 10th floor and then I would go all the way down to the first floor, even if I didn't have any passengers to pick up because there's no automated control. While I'm running my elevator, if somebody wants the car, they'll push a button and a signal goes off in my car that says stop on floor 6. So I've got to watch for signals, stop where I'm supposed to stop, stop level where I'm supposed to stop, open the doors for passengers to come in, close the doors after the passengers

have come in, ask them what floor they're supposed to go to. So you get the idea. There was, I'm doing a lot. And it also, and here's the paradox, was one of the lowest paying jobs in the building. The modern elevator today is it like, because it does the same thing as it did in the 60s in the 50s, and the 40s, and it gets people up and down. Is it technologically just so much better, or is it basically the same thing today as it's always been?

In some ways, it's the same thing it's always been, but all of the features that we encounter have been enhanced. Most of the enhancements have to do with two fundamental ideas. The first is safety. Elevators are incredibly safe, and many, many improvements are predicated on increasing that safety. A good example would be, we don't tend to think about this, are the elevator doors. Most elevator doors now have sensor arrays that are not only between the two doors,

but often will extend three dimensions in front of the doors to make sure that they open and close properly, but most importantly, they don't close on a passenger either exiting or entering. And it's a very, very sophisticated systems. But most of those are refinements to existing technology that begins in the 1950s. So despite what you might see in the movies or whatever, have there been many, any free-falling elevators that killed people? In the 19th century, yes. from 1950 to the present, I won't say that there are none because I don't know the history of every elevator accident. It's very, very rare because one of the things that would happen, and the example I always use is in the movie Speed, everybody remembers the bus.

But what the other thing that we find in the movie speed, if you remember the first sort of third of it, is when the, I guess, mad bomber blows up the cables on the elevator car and it starts to fall down the shaft. And then you see the safeties grab onto the guide rails and the car stops. That's what would happen. So if you go into a building, a tall building in New York City, you'll often see banks of elevates. that don't all go to all floors. These elevators only go up to this floor, these elevators pass that floor and start stopping later on. Is that just for convenience so people don't have to stand in the elevator so long?

Or is there a mechanical reason for that? Fundamentally, that's about efficient traffic control in a building. If it's a 30-story building and I have elevators serving 1 to 10, 10 to 20, 20 to 30, and then a handful that serve the whole building. I can divide the building traffic into three zones. So first thing in the morning and at the end of the day, it's very efficient for people entering the building, getting to work, and leaving. What that also means, that bank that serves 1 to 10, above the 10th floor, that space is no longer occupied by elevator shafts, which means it's available for use or for rent. So it's both a lot of the 10th floor. So it's

both about efficient traffic control in a building and also taking up the smallest amount of space possible because, of course, that space is incredibly valuable for rental purposes or leasing purposes. We've all been in an elevator where it comes to a stop and then it does like a little bounce and everybody goes, oh, what is that? The first thing about the bounce, you're perfectly safe. That's the first thing to know. If an elevator hasn't been maintained in a while, you can get a little cable stretch and the motor can have a little bit of play in it, and you can get a little bit of a bounce.

It's perfectly safe. It just, it may mean, not always, but it may mean that the elevator just needs a little maintenance. I've always thought it had something to do with like there's too many people in here. Something's wrong. Somebody needs to get out. that's another good point in most elevators if there's too many people in them and it's too heavy that's when the alarm goes off and that's the elevator won't leave a landing until one or more people get off so most elevators are very good about letting you know no there's too many

people on board i'm not going anywhere and what these are just like random questions that come up as I'm thinking about my elevator rides, whenever I get in an elevator and I push the closed door button, it doesn't really seem to do anything. So there's a lot of urban myths about those. You'll hear that they don't do anything that the companies just put them there to make people feel good. They are supposed to function. But depending on how the elevator is set up, it may not function immediately because the elevator is predicated on being at the landing for a certain period of time to ensure that waiting passengers have an opportunity to approach and to board. But no, it is supposed to work, although that doesn't mean it always does. So there's basically a timer on it

first and that overrides you pushing the button to close the doors. Yes, it's predicated on waiting a certain amount of time before the doors start to close. And that's a safety feature. Are the people who do elevators, are the same, make them and install them, or the same people that do escalators? Are those two different industries? Same industry. Most elevator companies, manufacturers will manufacture elevators, and many of them also manufacture moving sidewalks.

And in some instances, what are often referred to is people, movers at airports, the sort of automated train systems, where the doors open and close, very much like an elevator, those are also, in some instances, manufactured by the same folks who build elevators. So when you put an elevator in a building, or you build a building with elevators in it, at what point does that elevator or the guts of that elevator become obsolete? How typically often do they have to be replaced and modernized?

If an elevator is well maintained, it can last a long, long time. Now, this is perhaps more true of elevators built pre-World War II or just after modern elevators are like a lot of other modern things because of modern materials that are used, they don't last as long. There are, in some American cities, elevator systems that have been there, 60, 70, 80 years and they're well maintained and they work they work fine the what tends to happen and when modernization is needed is when the elevator no longer meets the needs of the occupants of the building in terms of speed of operation it's mostly speed and and getting people where they need to

go sometimes it's the amenities so a good example would be operator less elevators full the automatic operators first appear in the 1950s. Throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s. It took about 30 years. Elevator systems were replaced in buildings with the newest technology that did not require an elevator. But most of the time, if it works, you modernize or you update just bits and pieces. You might update a motor, but not the cabs and other things. this seems to happen like in apartment buildings residential buildings that have old elevators in them it's that experience of you know it's probably going to be pretty slow and then when it gets to the floor you want it to get on it sits there for a while

and the door doesn't open and it doesn't open and then it opens and I've always thought well why can't they fix that why can't when you get there why can't the door just open You probably could fix that depending on the building, but the issue there is, now obviously I'm just speculating here, the elevator is perfectly safe, therefore the building owner has no, you know, no reason to improve that. Now, if it was an office building, yes, it would be worked on immediately to make sure that the occupants of that office building, especially a class A building, that it works really quickly. In apartment buildings, in theory, the idea is we're not in that big a hurry. Is there something about elevators that you find really fascinating or odd or peculiar or something? If you made a list of the most socially awkward spaces you know, the elevator is probably at the top of the list. And the reason for that, this is my speculation, it has to do with, you know, what an elevator is,

elevator car is. If it's got doors, it's got a ceiling, it's got a floor, it's got four walls. When we walk into any building, at the buildings filled with rooms, we can decode the rooms pretty quickly in terms of their function. And culturally, we know how we're supposed to behave and how we can navigate that space. An elevator is this tiny little room that moves. And we'd also, we don't know how it moves. It just moves. It's like magic. but especially as Americans, you know, we don't necessarily like standing that close to each other. So, hence socially awkward, especially in a building where you don't know people. The example used in an apartment building, if I get to know my neighbors, then the elevator's kind of a social space.

And it's very different than when you're in a place where you don't know people and how close do I stand? Do I find my corner? Do I talk to them? you know, it's culturally weird. And you know what I notice about elevators is elevators all have a smell. It smells like nothing else but elevator, but that they're all different elevator smells. And I have no idea if there's any significance to that or not.

I've been talking with Dr. Lee Gray. He's a professor of architectural history at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, and author of a book called From Ascending Rooms to Express Elevators, a history of the passenger elevator. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Hey, this was fun.

Lee, thanks for coming on. You are very welcome, Mike. I really enjoy talking to you. Next time you're having trouble sleeping, you might want to tidy up your bedroom and put on some clean sheets. It does seem that being in a clean environment can put your body at ease more quickly, leading to better sleep.

And clean sheets? Well, in an article in Prevention magazine, 78% of people reported feeling more excited about going to bed when they have clean sheets. 71% reported sleeping better on clean sheets, and 29% said they go to bed earlier when they have clean sheets on their bed. So if you're having trouble sleeping, clean up your room, put on some clean sheets. And that is something. you should know. You know, if it weren't for our sponsors, we wouldn't be doing this. They make this

podcast possible. And our advertisers have some great products and services they offer. So if you hear one that sounds interesting to you, I hope you'll check it out. And usually you will find a link to whoever that advertiser is in the show notes. I'm Mike Hurruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. with a daily ritual of getting dressed. Fashion's power lies in its endless possibilities. Each garment is an invitation to get creative, be unique, and show the world exactly who you are as you are.

Be true, be authentic, be unapologetically you. Express yourself at Simons. I'm often asked, as you might imagine, what podcast do I listen to? And I actually have an eclectic taste, and I jump around, try different ones. But I will say that I have a couple I'm very consistent about, and one of them is The Jordan Harbinger Show. It's kind of, man, a little like something you should know, but Jordan goes in interestingly different directions. I do know that we share a lot of listeners, a lot of listeners who like this podcast like the Jordan Harbinger Show. Jordan is really good at getting his guests to open up and share great insights.

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