Something You Should Know - Is The Shopping Mall Dead? & When Less Is Really More

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

You have likely heard people say that having a dog is good for you. Usually, dog lovers say that. So exactly how good is good? Do dogs really improve your health and well-being? This episode begins with an explanation. https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/lifestyle/10-science-based-benefits-dog/ Shopping malls are an American institution. For decades they have been popular places to shop, eat, go to the movies and just hang out. But are their days numbered? Is the shopping mall a dinosaur today due to online shopping and changes in the makeup of America? Listen as I discuss the past, present and future of the shopping mall with Alexandra Lange an architecture critic and author of the book Meet Me By The Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall (https://amzn.to/3cyzahi). Listen to what she has to say and you won’t look at your neighborhood mall in quite the same way. When there is a problem, we tend to add something to try to fix it. If there is trouble at work, we add a new rule. If there is a problem we need to solve, we look for new ideas. When we’re sick we want more medicine. Yet maybe it would be better to try to take obstacles away rather than add new rules and ideas – at least sometimes. That’s the case Leidy Klotz makes. Leidy is a professor of engineering and architecture at the University of Virginia and author of the book Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less (https://amzn.to/3olHXG5).   If you are one of those people who has trouble cutting back on sugar, maybe a pickle could help. Listen as I explain how this works. http://www.wisegeek.com/why-do-some-pregnant-women-crave-pickles-and-ice-cream.htm PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! We really like The Jordan Harbinger Show! Check out https://jordanharbinger.com/start OR search for it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen!  Get $100 off of your first month with Talkspace! To match with a licensed therapist today, go to https://Talkspace.com & make sure to use the code SYSK to get $100 off of your first month! Go to https://Shopify.com/sysk for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features! Redeem your rewards for cash in any amount, at any time, with Discover Card! Learn more at https://Discover.com/RedeemRewards https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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. Today on Something You Should Know, is having a dog really good for you? We'll look at the science. Then, some people say shopping malls are dead. Are they? Well, not exactly, but there are some problems. The U.S. has really been overmalled for several decades. Like there's more square footage of mall space than people could possibly buy things in.

And also, malls really have to change with the times. Also why the secret to cutting back on sugar and sweets may be pickles. And you often hear that more is better, but maybe the best solution to a problem is less. Subtract something. In other words, it's to think about subtracting as a way to make things better. One of my favorite quotes, to gain knowledge, add things every day, to gain wisdom, subtract things every day. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic.

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Walking with a dog can make you more approachable and give people a conversation starter. Researchers found that about 40% of dog owners had an easier time making friends. And that is something you should know. I think there's a perception for a lot of people that the shopping mall is dead or dying. That online shopping, the pandemic, and a lot of other factors have really knocked the wind out of the shopping mall. But for decades, going to the mall was what people did, and some still do. So what is the state of affairs of this all-American institution, and what is the future of the shopping mall?

Here to discuss this is Alexandra Lang. She's an architecture critic and author of a book called Meet Me at the Fountain, An Inside History of the Mall. Hi, Alexandra. Welcome. Thanks for having me. So let's get right to the heart of it here. Is the shopping mall dying? Some malls are dying, but not all malls are dying. There are a lot of malls in the U.S. that are still very successful. They tend to be the high-end malls. But the U.S. has really been over-malled for several decades. There's more square footage of mall space than people could possibly buy things in. And also, malls really have to change with the times and change in response to the death of the department store

and online shopping. Well, and those are two pretty big factors, it would seem, because online shopping has clearly become a big thing. And my understanding is that malls really depend on those big anchor stores to pull people in, like a Macy's or a Sears. And if they go away, I mean, those are a couple of pretty big obstacles to overcome. They are. But in fact, online shopping, at least pre-pandemic, wasn't as big a strike against the mall as people were predicting in the early 2000s. Online shopping was about like 13% of retail through 2019 or so. It's gone way up during the pandemic for obvious reasons, but it is likely to go back down when people feel that they can safely shop in person. I actually think the departments, the demise of department stores is a much bigger deal because they were, in fact, both the financial and conceptual anchor for shopping malls.

And what shopping mall owners need to figure out is what kinds of uses can really anchor a mall when people don't care about department stores anymore. I don't know if there's research on this, but I'd be curious as to what your perception is. The average person who walks into a shopping mall, are they there to buy something specific or are they just coming to the mall to go shopping? I think they're walking in a mall to buy something, but usually what happens is they end up buying a lot of other things. I mean, that was really the insight of Victor Gruen, the father of the shopping mall.

And that moment when you go from working on your shopping list to just wandering around and touching things and buying things that you don't need is typically referred to as the Gruen transfer. And he's the guy that really invented the mall. Yeah, he's the guy that invented the mall. He's a really interesting person. He was an emigre from Vienna. He fled the Nazis and moved to the U.S. in 1938. And his desire was to bring a kind of European urban life to the American suburbs. Where was the first indoor shopping mall? The first indoor shopping mall in the U.S. is Southdale in Edina, Minnesota, which was designed by Gruen and opened in 1956. And it's still there?

It's still there. And one sort of detail that I really like is that there were two sculptures by Harry Bertoia in the mall called the Golden Trees. And those are still there. And Bertoia is a mid-century sculptor that you can see in museums. But at Southdale, the sculptures are just hanging out at the mall. So back in the beginning, back when Victor Gruen was developing shopping malls, what was the thinking? What were they trying to improve on? Who were they aiming this at? Why were they designed the way they were designed? Well, originally the malls were really designed for suburban homeowners, and those tended to be middle-class white mothers

and their children who were in the suburbs while the male breadwinner of the family was at his office in the suburbs or the city. That was the original demographic. But over the past 70 years, the demographics of the suburbs and indeed the demographics of the US have changed tremendously.

So now the demographics of the U.S. have changed tremendously. So now the demographics around individual malls are much more diverse. Some malls, most malls are not in all white neighborhoods anymore. Many malls, especially in the first and second ring suburbs, are surrounded by immigrant communities. Many more people stay single longer. Many more people live in multi-generational households. So one of the things that malls are going to need to do going forward to save themselves is really think about the makeup of the communities around them

and what would serve those people the best. With the department store fading away and that being one of the big reasons people would go to a mall, what are the reasons now? I mean, malls mostly seem to have movie theaters. A lot of them have pretty nice restaurants. Do people go to the mall for just that? And then people who go to the movies at the mall, seems like they go to the movies and then they go home. They not necessarily go there and then shop around. I think that entertainment and food are going to be the new anchors of the mall.

But those uses have to be oriented so that they draw people into the mall afterward. I mean, I don't know about everywhere, but the movie theater that I used to go to at the mall growing up had an outside entrance and only a very tiny door into the mall. So it wasn't set up like the department stores were, that you would wander around the department store and then it would feed you through this large door into the rest of the mall.

But as you look at malls where the department stores have left, a lot of them are replacing the department stores with things like food halls where you can eat, but also do some shopping for food to take home. They're replacing them with things like trampoline parks and other family-friendly entertainment. So it's things that you really can't do at home, that you want to do with other people, that provide a whole afternoon of entertainment for your family. Those are the things that are getting people out of the house. So it seemed that in the 80s, maybe the 90s,

the mall was the place where teenagers hung out. And that doesn't seem to be a thing anymore? I'm not sure that teenagers wouldn't hang out at the mall given the opportunity. I mean, I look at the way my own like teens and tweens use the city. We live in Brooklyn and they are buying bubble tea and looking for a place to sit down and eating pizza and shopping at the thrift store. And I feel like all of those things are collected in one place when teens hang out at the mall. Like, I don't think teenagers today are that different.

I just think because of the need for transportation to the mall, because there is more online socializing possible, maybe teens aren't as motivated to go to the mall because there is more online socializing possible. Maybe teens aren't as motivated to go to the mall. But you're right that for 80s and 90s teens, the mall was the place to be. And that was definitely true for me. And one of the reasons I wanted to write this book really was to kind of unearth like what was behind those teenage memories and why people have such strong feelings about the mall. Well, I wonder too, if one of the reasons you don't see teenagers hanging around at the mall is that the mall doesn't really like that and the security people kind of move them out. That was one of the really interesting things that I discovered is that

most malls have codes of conduct. You can Google your mall and look up the code of conduct. And many, many of those codes of conduct explicitly prohibit groups of teenagers of more than four people or groups of teenagers after a certain time in the evening. So that's one of the funny kind of ironies of the mall is that we think of it as a teen space, but because teenagers can be unruly, because teenagers don't spend as much money as adults do, often malls are actively trying to discourage them. So they must come and hang out and not spend a lot of money because if they did spend a lot of money, they would be much more welcome. Exactly. I mean, there's a reason why the food court is identified in our minds as a teen space, because the food court is where you can spend, you know, $3 or $5 on a drink and then hang out

at a table all afternoon. And, you know, I think also fast fashion retailers, you know, Forever 21, where you can spend $20 and get five garments, is also something that teens tend to do. They gravitate towards the cheaper stores and the cheaper places to spend money. We're discussing the All-American Shopping Mall, and my guest is Alexandra Lang. She's author of the book, Meet Me by the Fountain, An Inside History of the Mall. At Wealthsimple, we're built for whatever you're building. Built for Jane, who wants to break into the housing market. We're built for Ted, who's obsessed with what's happening in the global markets. And built for Celine, who just wants to retire and explore the world's flea markets.

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Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Alexandra, it's interesting how the American shopping mall shows up in a lot of movies and TV shows. Mall Cop, I mean, all those movies where the kids are in the mall working at the hot dog on a stick or whatever that, you know, in Stranger Things. And it does get kind of memorialized in time and has over the years in movies and television. I mean, I think part of that is because setting a movie mostly in teenage bedrooms just doesn't

make for good cinema. So you have to get them out of the house and into a space. But I also think that the prominence of malls and movies reflects the childhood experience of those film directors and represents real experience. I mean, I can't tell you how many of my friends, their first job was in a mall and they love to tell me those stories. And the Duffer brothers who created Stranger Things have spoken in interviews about how they grew up in North Carolina going to the mall. And that definitely, you know, pushed their desire to set one of the seasons of Stranger Things at the mall. I can't tell you how many times I've gone by stores in malls and wondered, how do they stay in business? Because they sell such kind of off-base things or things that I would never buy. And you wonder, like, is there really a demand for that? But there must be, because there they are. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the great things about the mall is that it aggregates so many different niche

interests into one place. I mean, the mall is incredibly convenient. So if you're a parent, and you need to, I don't know, buy stuff for your kids to go to camp, you can do that there. But you can also browse for a book for yourself. And you can go to a boutique to buy a birthday present for a friend. And the mall has lots of stores that some, you know, some parts of the demographic will never go into, but for other people, that is the draw of the mall. I mean, that was really, I think, the motivation for the longtime success of Hot Topic, which is a teen store that many people have very fond memories of because they were kind of the misfits in their suburban community. And Hot Topic was the one store in the mall where you could buy

goth wear. There are a lot of types of stores that you used to find in a mall that have left. Sporting goods stores, toy stores, electronic stores, they used to be all over the mall and now they're gone. Yeah, I think along with the demise of the department store, because it just stopped being a kind of fashion forward place to buy clothes, there are a lot of categories of things that it really is just easier to buy online. And I think toys are one of them. You know, it's kids today have so many specific interests and there are so many more toys than there used to be that I think it's just easier for parents and grandparents to order them online because they can go to the Lego store or they can go to the American Girl doll store and get exactly what the child wants. I also think, for obvious reasons, electronic stores, Radio Shack was a mall staple.

I've gone out of business because the only electronic we need now is our phone. But there are many, many Apple stores at many high-end malls, and those are really today's Radio Shack. And what makes a high-end mall a high-end mall? My sense is if it has like an Apple store and a Nordstrom that, you know, okay, that's probably a high-end mall. Yeah, that's exactly right. The department stores that are still doing well tend to be the more expensive department stores like Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus and Apple very explicitly went after a high fashion market a few years ago.

So it wants to be associated with stores like that. At one mall that I write about in the book, North Park, there is a Nordstrom and the Apple store is literally right outside the door to the Nordstrom. So they want to be in that setting. And then other high end shops want to be in that setting at North Park. You know, there's Williams Sonoma. They just put in a huge Eataly, which is a food hall and marketplace that people can eat at or get takeout. There are also more boutique brands.

They have a Tiffany there, too. So the high end malls are places like South Coast Plaza, North Park, King of Prussia. These are places that still have a lot of cachet for shoppers and have stores that you can't get anywhere else in the region. I remember hearing about the Mall of America, which is or was the biggest mall in the country or the world or whatever, that people would come great distances to visit that mall. But still, it is a mall. And I wonder, is that unique to that mall? Mall of America is sort of a special case because it was the largest mall in America when it was built. And when it was built, it actually got visitors from across the country and even internationally.

There were international flights to Minneapolis's airport so that people could go to Mall of America. Nowadays, I think people are more likely to go to a super regional mall, which are often those high-end malls that I mentioned. So they'll make a day of it to go to the mall, do all of their shopping for the prom or for a wedding or something like that, special occasion shopping. But as airfare prices came down, you know, over the past decades, more people could travel nationally and internationally to other cities. And so

something like the Mall of America stopped being quite as much of a draw as it was when it opened in the early 1990s. Well, you're an architecture critic. Do malls have a certain type of architecture to change over. The individual boutiques come and go. The central atrium gets refreshed over the years. That's why it's so hard to find a vintage mall that you can walk around. But that's also something that mall operators are familiar with, changing to keep up with the times and changing to keep up with the people that are actually shopping there now. We've talked before here about the psychology of the supermarket, how a supermarket is laid out to get you to spend more time and to get you to spend more money. Is there a similar psychology of the shopping mall? There is. Often malls have kind of income brackets for different sections of

the mall. For example, if you have a higher end department store like Neiman Marcus or Nordstrom, you will group luxury boutiques and things like the Apple store outside that department store. So it becomes kind of a luxury row. There's also a thinking on the part of mall operators that you want to group like stores together. So a lot of the women's boutiques will be grouped together, for example, because if someone is shopping for a dress for a wedding, they'll want to stop in and see the options at each one and then maybe go back and make a purchase at the first one. But it'll be totally frustrating if you have to crisscross all over the mall to do that. Let's see what else. Well, the food court is typically located

on the second floor, but overlooking the atrium. So when you walk into a mall, you kind of mentally clock where it is so you know where to find it. But you don't want your first impression of the mall to be food with all of those smells. Generally, are people's attitudes toward the mall today positive, negative, neutral, or it just depends on the person? I feel like people's attitudes are probably neutral nowadays. Like a lot of people have a very strong impression that malls are dead. And so see them positively in general through a nostalgia lens, but don't necessarily see them as part of their lives going forward.

So I guess one of the things that I was trying to do with the book is to point out that A, not all malls are dead but also look at how the mall space might be reused in a more creative manner. Because I think there's a tendency when you see photography of dead malls to think, okay, you know, that's it, malls are over, but not to think about what happens to the community around the mall when they have this big empty parking lot and this big

empty building in the middle of the community. That can really drag down all of the businesses around the mall and the neighborhood around the mall. When malls go out of business, why typically do they go out of, well, obviously people aren't, and not enough people are coming, but why aren't enough people coming? What goes wrong? Well, the U.S. is over-malled, as I mentioned before. So a lot of times a mall will die because a brand new mall opens 10 miles further out in their larger suburban area. And people think, oh, why should I go to the old mall when I can go to the new mall? You know, malls are built on the same kind of planned obsolescence as the products that they sell.

So a new mall will cannibalize the audience of an old mall. And then the old mall tends to struggle because its offerings are not seen as prime. Maybe the department store that was its anchor has gone bankrupt. You know, JCPenney, Sears have gone out of business and they can't fill that space. And once the anchor stores leave and there are these kind of big dark holes at the end of the mall, it's very hard for the rest of the stores at the mall to survive because the whole thing takes on a bit of a zombie-like cast. So it's usually an anchor store going out, not being able to replace it, then the rest of the mall will limp along. Maybe the mall owner will try to get in some local businesses rather than national chains and try a bunch of things.

But it really depends on the creativity of the owner and the willingness to experiment with things that are not historical mall uses. Well, the shopping mall is and has been a big part of our lives, a bigger part for some than others, but still everyone's been to a shopping mall. I think people generally enjoy and look forward to going shopping at a shopping mall. It's a great place to people watch and it's really interesting to hear the story of the shopping mall. Alexandra Lang has been my guest. She's an architecture critic and author of a book called Meet Me at the Fountain,

An Inside History of the Mall. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Alexandra. Thanks so much for having me. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world,

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If you're sick, you want the doctor to give you more medicine. Our minds tend to want to add things to make things better or to fix a problem, which in many cases is just fine. But in some cases, less might be better. For example, we come up with a lot of new rules at work when in fact it might be better to get rid of some of the old ones. Probably the best example I can think of of when subtracting is best is editing. When you're editing a term paper or a video or a podcast,

the process of editing, which is subtracting things, makes it better. Adding something is often the default solution, when in fact subtracting can be an excellent, but often overlooked way to go. This is according to Leidy Klotz. He's a scientist who studies and writes about design and problem solving. He's a professor of engineering and architecture

at the University of Virginia and author of the book, Subtract, The Untapped Science of Less. Hi, Lighty. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, Mike. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. So when I hear words like less and subtract, I think, oh, here comes one of those minimalist guys who's going to tell me to get rid of all my furniture and accept the chair in the corner and, you know, throw away all my forks, except the four I need. And, and, but, but that's not your, what your message necessarily is. So

what is it? It's to think about subtracting as a way to make things better. Um, and you know, if we think about any situation that we encounter, this happens all the time, whether it's, you know, you mentioned the minimalist ideas that often has to do with the physical things in our house. We ask, how do we make our living space better? It's like, well, I could add this blanket or whatever. Whenever we are at, whenever we ask that question, we have multiple options. One is to add things. One is to kind of rearrange things. And one that we overlook is that we can actually take things away. One of my favorite quotes, to gain knowledge, add things every day, to gain wisdom, subtract things every day. And this is like that quote still gets thrown around

the internet. And it's evidence that we've been overlooking subtracting for a long time and that we still overlook it because that kind of quote rings true and counterintuitive still. So subtracting rather than adding, is that just not human nature? When we have a problem, we look to add something and that's what we do? Yeah, that's what our research found. I mean, so I've been interested in this for a really long time as a designer, engineer, architect, professor. I kind of noticed these instances where taking something away actually creates something better, whether it's editing words, right? If you write 200 words and you're challenged to narrow it down to 100, that'll be a better 100 words. Or it's, you know, these streamlined, elegant, modern designs that

looks better. And so the question was, do we actually overlook that? And the answer is yes. So let's talk about some real life examples of what you mean by subtracting and how that makes it better? The best example is, I mean, I was playing Legos with my three-year-old son and this was before we had done the research. What we were doing was building a bridge, basically. And the problem we had was that the Lego bridge wasn't level. So there was one column on the bridge that was shorter than the other column. And so I went to solve this problem to improve this situation. I turned around behind me to grab a block to add to the shorter column. By the time I had turned back around, my son had removed a block from the longer column.

And so, you know, what's cool about that example is that we didn't know it at the time, but the thought process that I went through was pretty close to what we think, you know, is the normal process that most people would go through in trying to improve a situation, which is to think, what can I add to it? And then if my son hadn't been there, I would have just added the block and created the level bridge and moved on without even asking whether subtracting was a better option. Well, but subtracting, was it a better option or it was just an option? Yeah. In that case, it was just an option.

I mean, you could make an argument that my son's solution was easier and required less resources. But, you know, this is why we needed to do research, right? We needed to figure out, do people overlook this even when it's to their detriment, even when it's the better option? So that Lego example and your son, that's a great example, but that's a physical example of building things. Let's move into the world of, say, ideas and how this plays out with ideas and and an example might help one of our studies was a study of real life our university's strategic improvement plan asked for hey what are ways that we can improve the university and we looked at that data and only eight percent of the suggestions were to take something away so

it's overwhelmingly additive suggestions which again this suggests that options are being left on the table right the people aren't fully exploring the range of solutions that could make this university a better place. But it seems that in many cases, it's so subjective. I mean, adding might work, subtracting might work. As in the case of your Lego example with your son, he subtracted, you were going to add. But one wasn't necessarily better than the other. They were just different ways of approaching the same problem. Yeah. I mean, I'm so glad you brought that up. And if somebody likes adding, by all means add. I mean, this is not us trying to say subtracting is always better. It's that,

you know, we systematically don't think of it and then we're missing out on options. But I do think that it, well, I know that it's helpful to remember to consider subtracting. When people were reminded that, hey, you can add or subtract here, just a simple reminder, that increased rates of taking away, which you'd say, well, big deal, because shouldn't a reminder increase rates of anything? But the rate that that reminder didn't increase rates of adding. So when we, when we're reminded to add, we can add or subtract, we subtract more. So that's again, evidence that we're systematically overlooking it, but also, you know, something that we can put into practice immediately, which is, Hey, these are important decisions I have to make in my life. You know, cleaning your desk, you probably don't need a reminder. But when it's doing your weekly to-do list, maybe you need to remind yourself to also consider some stop doings, right?

Or some stop things that you want to take off of your weekly to-do list. Yeah, that's a little bit of the science, but it also has very real implications for how we live our lives. Well, as you've been talking, it got me to thinking because using, again, the Lego example with your son, he chose to take away one little Lego block to fix the problem. And as you were pointing out, on a to-do list, maybe you need to take some things off your to-do list. But it occurred to me, and I want to get you to comment on this, when we talk about Lego bricks and taking things off your to-do list, these are small moves.

These are taking little pieces of something and subtracting them. And maybe we need a more fundamental subtraction. Maybe you don't need a to-do list. Maybe you need to subtract the whole to-do list and get a calendar or something. For example, science used to believe that everything revolved around the Earth, and that was the premise,

and then everything was added on top of that. But if you at some point weren't willing to let go of that concept, you keep trying to add on top of it. You're adding on to a foundation that is going to crumble. So even more important that you learn to take away and say, well, let's question that before we move on. Right. And it's very analogous to how we do it in the physical world. Right. And so the physical example's very analogous to how we do it in the physical world. Right. And so the, the physical example that I like is, um, balance bikes. And these are the, the bikes that kids two and younger can ride a balance bike. And this bike is small for that age group, but it also has the pedals removed, which is the subtractive innovation. And, um, and then the kids

can stride on top of the bike and then the surprising thing is that they can actually balance um so it's a great great invention but the same thing that was happening with the solar system on a on a smaller scale to be able to come up with this invention you had to let go of the idea that the the drivetrain is a fundamental part of the bike. Well, I like that example because it illustrates your point so well that if you're going to create a bicycle for little kids, well, it's a bicycle. So one of the first things you're going to put

on your bicycle for little kids are pedals. But if you can get your mind to think, well, wait, maybe we don't need pedals. Let's subtract the pedals. And it turns out you really got something. So where else can we use this concept of subtracting? One great example is spending money to save time. It's analogous to the to-do list and the stop doing list. But

basically what you're doing is taking something off of your calendar and you're actually paying for the subtraction. But research shows that that can actually make us happier, right? Spending money to save time. So that's a subtraction that can make our lives immediately better. And then the cleaning one, you mentioned the desk and I know like, okay, cleaning up your desk. I think that the cleaning illustrates that the more you take away, the more noticeable it becomes, whether it's a really tightly edited podcast or a super clean desk or a really streamlined modern design.

There are these examples of subtraction where it is noticeable that somebody put in the effort to take away. When you think of less, there's also that worry that, well, what am I missing? If I decide rather than look at all 3 million podcasts on Apple Podcasts as my potential list of podcasts, I narrow it down to something else. I'm immediately going to think, well, what am I, what am I leaving off this list? That's still on that big list. That's true. That, that fear of missing out is definitely

a reason of, you know, once we think of subtracting that we might be less inclined to actually follow through with it. And so we are battling that. And I think we're also more disappointed to lose something as we are to gain something of roughly the same value. So if we view those missing podcasts as a loss, it's going to make it even more hard emotionally. So I guess the tip on this one is to try to keep the focus on what the vision is, right? Or the goal, right? So your goal in this case is not to listen to as many podcasts as possible. Probably it's more likely that to get the best information out of the four hours a week I have or whatever it is to listen to podcasts. And when that's the goal, then the subtractions are actually

pulling you towards the goal. But sometimes we don't consider what our goals or what our values are. And then we just kind of slide back into that adding mindset where the fear of missing out steers us away from what would be a better outcome. What about though, maybe I'm nitpicking here, but... No, no, the nitpicking's good, I think, yeah. So somebody could say, well, kids, you know, I heard this podcast and Lighty said, you know, we should subtract. So we're not going on vacation this year, we're subtracting vacations. And everyone's upset about that, but we're doing, we're following your advice. Yeah, I'm not saying subtract, I'm saying think, add, or add and

subtract, right? One of the reasons that we don't think about subtracting is because we position these things as opposites, right? It's either add or subtract. And really what we should think of them as is complementary approaches to making change, right? So you're thinking about okay how do we improve our family life uh one way is to add a vacation one way is to subtract a vacation now you've thought about both of them and you know their their complementary approaches to change that's great you brought both of them to mind and you can go about making the best decision for you i I think the root of that question, like Whitey said, we should subtract or just because we don't think of subtracting, we should always subtract. I think that often comes from a place of positioning these things as opposite each other instead of complementary.

And if they're complementary, then we go a long way towards overcoming the fundamental problem here, which is that we don't even think of subtracting. Yeah, well, I think that's the big takeaway from this, or at least from this conversation is, like you said, when you remind people that you can either add or subtract, you get more subtraction, you don't get more addition, that people just don't think about it. But when you think about it, well, sometimes it's like a light bulb going off. Yeah.

And if it's not a light bulb going off, then you don't have to follow through with it. I mean, but I think, you know, how can we capture all these, this really low hanging fruit, these cases where it's just so obviously, so much, so obviously better when you think of it but do you think this this desire for addition is human nature or is it a cultural thing we just learn that any behavior has multiple reasons for it but this definitely goes beyond cultural um based on our based on our research and based on, you know, kind of how it's working in our brains, where, I mean, we did in some of our experiments, for example, tested people in Japan and Germany, and our goal wasn't to do a cross-cultural comparison. So they weren't, you know, this isn't conclusive that it's exactly the same across cultures, but there was more variation within those

cultures than there was between the cultures. So what we found in those other cultures was quite consistent. And there's a lot of just really good biological reasons why we might do this. I mean, so there's the competence issue, right, where we want to display competence. That's a biological instinct. There's also just acquiring things, namely food has been really good for passing down genes, right? That, that help that an instinct to acquire in that case helps you make it through the, if you're, if you do that during good times, it helps you, makes you more likely to make it through the lean times and pass past genes down across generations so there's that biological reasons i also think there's some just real cultural reasons but the cultural reasons extend beyond they cross all the cultures that are around now or nearly all of the cultures that are around now

in that as we're developing civilization it made a lot of sense to add in most cases right if there's no highway it makes sense to add a road to connect the places but now that you know there's a so many highways that some are bisecting cities now that subtracting highways becomes a more viable option, or at least it's on the table now. And so through the history of civilization, adding has been often the better way to make things better. The same with knowledge, right? The less knowledge you have, the more likely the additions are helpful. The more knowledge you have, the more kind of opportunities there are to reflect on the information that you already have. And then the other cultural thing is we just walk around in this world where adding is all around us,

right? So, and even if somebody subtracts something, you may notice it the first day, but after a year or two years, there's not this reminder that subtracting is to thank. And, you know, we get our cues from the world that we live in. So it creates this reinforcing cycle where you're less likely to think of subtracting. You're less likely to encounter subtraction, which makes you even less likely to think of it. And that reinforces itself. So I think it's a, to back to your question, I think, yes, there's a cultural element to it. Yes, there's a biological element to it. Yes, there's a biological element to it. And these forces reinforce each other. Well, and we have floating in our heads, you know, those two sayings, more is better, but also less is more.

So more is better when you think of things like money, food, those kind of things. I mean, like you were saying that more is better, but everybody has some understanding of that phrase, less is more, that too much is not always good. And those things do kind of compete in our heads of, you know, is it less or is it more? More is better is almost, I mean, that doesn't even need to be said, right? That's just kind of life. And I think the less is more in those phrases that become so catchy, they've endured for a really long time. And the reason we need them, I think, is because they're effectively reminders, right? They work like the reminders worked in our experiment to say, hey, look, sometimes this might work. Well, it certainly makes you think.

And I guess what it makes you think is that there are often other options where we are often adding things to fix a problem. Maybe we have options of subtracting something that could fix the problem just as well, if not even better. I've been talking with Leidy Klotz, who studies and writes about design and problem solving. He is a professor of engineering and architecture at the University of Virginia, and the name of his book is

Subtract, the Untapped Science of Less. And you'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Leidy. Appreciate you being here. All right. Thanks, Lighty. Appreciate you being here. All right. Thanks, Mike. I know a lot of people are trying to cut back on sugar and sweets, and if you're one of them, you might want to stock up on pickles. Pickles can do wonders at curbing cravings, especially if you've got a craving for something sweet. Pickles are crunchy, sour, pungent, and spicy all

at once, and they overwhelm the senses. In an experiment, hungry participants were practically drooling over some delicious desserts that they would soon be eating. But first, they had to eat a pickle. In most cases, the urge

to eat the sweets was gone in as little as 10 seconds. Those who insisted on dessert say they ate less of it than they would have if they hadn't eaten the pickle. And that is something you should know. You know, out here in podcast land, it's dog-eat-dog. There's millions of podcasts to choose from, and often what people need is a recommendation. So please, recommend this podcast to someone you know. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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

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