Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How to Achieve Your New Year’s Resolutions & What Influences Our Preferences

Episode Date: December 31, 2022

Why do we yawn? You might think it is because we are tired or bored. However, according to some research, yawning has nothing to do with either of those things. This episode begins with a look at the real reason we yawn and why yawning is contagious. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3425960&page=1 If you have ever tried to make a significant change in your life, you know it can be very difficult. It’s why so many New Year’s resolutions don’t last very long. What makes change so hard? One of the big reasons is what executive coach Marshall Goldsmith calls “triggers.” Triggers are those things that can get in the way of achieving your goals. Listen as Marshall offers concrete advice for making lasting positive changes and achieving your goals by managing those triggers. Marshall is author of the book Triggers (http://amzn.to/2dWTWog). Why do you like the things you like? You probably have a favorite color or a favorite food – but why? It is interesting that one person can hate something that another person loves. It applies to clothes, cars, numbers, people – almost anything. What is it that influences our tastes and preferences? Listen as I speak with Tom Vanderbilt author of the book You May Also Like (http://amzn.to/2h8YecT ) and discover why you prefer some things over others and why you have a favorite color. What really matters when it comes to health and long life? Yes, exercise, diet and lifestyle are all important, but it actually may have even more to do with the kind of person you are. To find out if you are that kind of person who is likely to live a long and healthy life, you need to answer an important question. Listen and I will tell you what that question is. (Source: Dr. Paul Persall author of, Write Your Own Pleasure Prescription: https://amzn.to/2RdFqyU). PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to https://RocketMoney.com/something ! If you think you’re okay to drive after a few drinks, think again. Play it safe and plan ahead to get a ride. It only takes one mistake to change your life, or someone else’s, forever. Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over.  PAID FOR BY NHTSA Did you know that driving under the influence of marijuana is illegal? If you feel different, you drive different. Drive high, get a DUI. PAID FOR BY NHTSA 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 do you yawn and why is yawning contagious? I'll explore that. Then, why is it so hard to make changes and achieve important goals? I talk about 15 major delusions that stop us from achieving our goals. We think if we understand something, we're going to do it. We believe that we're going to have time next week. Tomorrow's going to be different and it

won't be crazy anymore. Those are all delusions. Tomorrow's probably going to be even crazier than today. Plus, I want to ask an important question. Your answer could determine how long you live. And why do you like some things other people hate? What accounts for your taste? Philosophers, going back several hundred years, have been wrestling with this question of taste. We all know the expression, there's no accounting for taste. Usually when we say that, we're never talking about our own taste. We're talking about someone else's taste because we think they like something that shouldn't really be liked. All this today on Something

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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, our final episode of 2022. And we begin this episode with a question. Why is it that we yawn? You probably associate yawning with being tired or maybe being bored. But that's not according to researchers at State University of New York at Albany.

Their studies show that we yawn to cool our brain. Your brain, like a computer, operates best when it's cool, and yawning seems to help do just that. And as a result, your brain works better. In one experiment, subjects watched videos of other people yawning, which made them yawn. But when they held cold compresses to their head, they stopped yawning. The same thing happened when people breathed through their nose, which also has a cooling effect on the brain. But why is yawning contagious? I mean, I'm sure you've had the experience of watching someone yawn and then you yawn. Well, the researchers theorize that this is for self-preservation of the group. To remain vigilant against danger if one person yawned, everyone yawned to optimize the brain to be more alert. And that's why yawning is contagious. And that

is something you should know. As one year ends and another one begins, people think about making changes, New Year's resolutions, kinds of changes. And anyone who's tried to do that knows that it's hard. Change is difficult. And one of the reasons change is so difficult is because things crop up, things happen, things get in the way of your goal. It's what Marshall Goldsmith calls triggers. Marshall Goldsmith is a top executive coach. He's authored countless books, and one of his latest books is called Triggers, Creating Behavior That Lasts, Becoming the Person You Want to Be. Hi, Marshall. Welcome. And so explain in a little more detail than I just did.

Explain what triggers are. A trigger is any stimulus from our environment that impacts our behavior. So as we wander through life, we make these great plans about who we're going to become, and then every day we're bombarded with triggers, often unanticipated, that kind of take us off course. Is that just human nature? It's definitely human nature, and it's part of life. There's something I call the planner bias. When we make plans, we think the planner and the doer are the same people. The person planning to go on the diet is not that doer that's hungry and

staring at the chocolate cake. And often life is very different for the person who's doing the doing than it is for the person who's doing the planning. With all good intentions, and then everything falls apart. Exactly. There's something I talk about called the high probability of low probability events. We never plan on a low probability distraction. We don't plan on, oh, a car wreck, or your brakes don't work, or somebody got sick, because they're low probability. What we don't think about, there are a million low probability distractions that could occur.

While the odds on any one of them might be quite small, the odds on something happening are usually almost certain. Well, if that's just kind of the way it is, I suspect the reason you wrote a book was that because there's a way to combat this somehow. Exactly. Well, let me tell you one thing I do, and it's something I highly recommend. I'm now going to teach you something that takes two minutes a day, costs absolutely zero, and will help people get better at anything.

Now your listeners are probably a little skeptical, thinking, wait a minute, two minutes a day costs nothing. Help me get better at almost anything. Sounds too good to be true. I'll also predict half the people that start doing this will quit in two weeks. And you won't quit because it doesn't work. You'll quit because it does work. This is called the daily question process. How does it work? Every day, you get out an Excel spreadsheet. Make a list of the most important questions you need to challenge yourself every day in life. Friends, family, health, business. Every question has to be answered with a yes,

no, or a number. Yes is a one, no is a zero, or a number. Seven boxes across, one for every day of the week. Fill it out every day. At the end of the week, you get a report card. And what I always tell people in the corporations I work for is a report card at the end of the week is not going to be as pretty as a value plaque you got stuck up on the wall. Because when we do this every day, you know what you quickly learn? Life is real easy to talk and hard to live. This will help you get better at almost anything. You have to have the courage to do it. I pay a woman to listen to me describe my questions and answers every day. Why do I pay her to do this? Probably wouldn't have the courage to do it myself.

It's just too hard. It works. It's not easy, though. Well, true for so many things in life. We think we're going to do the right thing, and then we get distracted. We get torn or pulled into another direction, and it's hard to stay on course. Well, the other thing is we have too much ego and pride, and we think we can do everything on our own. One thing I'm proud of is I kind of changed the world of executive coaching from, you know, fixing losers to helping winners. My coaching clients in 27 of them wrote endorsements for the book. These are CEOs or could be CEOs of huge organizations.

They're mega successful people. And why do they have a coach? Because they want to get better. Why do the top ten tennis players have coaches? Because they want to get better. Well, when we get over that shame about needing help, structure, direction, that shame about needing someone to help us, life gets a lot easier because we realize we don't have to rely on willpower to solve all of our problems because you know what? I tell people, for example, I'll teach a class. I'll

say, how many of you need to be a better listener? Well, they'll raise their hand and I'll say, Joe, how many years you needed to be a better listener? He'll say 20. I'll say, repeat after me, my name is Joe. I need to be a better listener, and I'm not fixing this by myself for 20 years. It's highly unlikely I'm going to fix it by myself next week. I need help, but it's okay. Just be comfortable with the fact nobody's perfect. If you could do it by yourself, you'd probably have done it by now.

Put that up on the wall. If you could do it yourself, you probably would have done it by now. Exactly. That's life right there. That's it. That's it. That's why I pay somebody to call me every day, because, you know, if I could do it by myself, I wouldn't be paying somebody. But do you think that in many cases, you don't need to pay somebody that anybody is better than nobody? I totally agree. You know, if you can get somebody to do it for free, don't pay somebody. That makes a ton of sense. Yeah, and it doesn't matter who you pick as long as they do it every day. I think your point is very well taken. You know, a lot of people go to a gym and have a trainer, not that they really don't know how to use the machines, they just need them there because you got to pay them whether you show up or not,

so you're more likely to show up. Well, almost every Hollywood movie star has a trainer. Just like you said, they know how to do the exercises. The trainer's not teaching them anything. All the trainer's there to do is just make sure they do what they know they're supposed to do. In most cases, I don't think you need somebody to tell you what you're supposed to do every day. You can write your own list. We probably need somebody to make sure we do it, though. But talk about that. Do you think we know what we need to do every day, or are many of us

deluding ourselves? Well, I think we delude ourselves about how hard it is. I think if I asked most people to develop a profile of the person they would like to become, they'd pretty much tell me good things. You know, good with the family, good with the customers, in good shape. You know, they would describe this wonderful human being. I think where we delude ourselves is the degree of difficulty to become that person. And we delude ourselves in the sense we think we have all this willpower that we're going to do it by ourselves. Generally not. In my book, I talk about 15 major delusions that stop us from achieving our goals.

You know, we believe the planner is the same as the doer. We think if we understand something, we're going to do it. We believe that we're going to have time next week. We believe that, by the way, tomorrow is going to be different and it won't be crazy anymore, and that all of a sudden we're going to get this time and everything's going to be sane and rational and we can achieve all of our goals next week. Well, those are all delusions. Tomorrow's probably going to be even crazier than today. So the simple answer to corralling all that stuff and getting a handle on it is to do what? Well, the first thing is figure out not just this

big picture of who I want to be. How does this translate into my day-to-day behavior? And then how can I get some ongoing input to help me? What I do for a living is I coach executives. How do I do it? I interview everyone around the people I coach. I give them confidential feedback so I know what everybody thinks of them. I help them pick the two or three things that are going to make the biggest positive difference in their life. Then they learn to talk to people about their feedback, and they develop a follow-up system and measurement. And then we measure, do they get better? And in my coaching, I don't get paid if they don't get better. And better is not judged by me or them.

It's judged by everyone around them. By the way, you can tell if someone believes what they're saying. Ask them a question. You want to bet on it? If they say, I believe it, but I don't want to bet on it, they don't believe it. They say, here's the money. They believe it. I bet on this every time. And you know what? They almost always get better. Why is this so hard? I think one reason it's so hard is that we underestimate temptation. We underestimate distraction. I have a little verse from a song

there in the beginning of the book, and it says, do you know that song, Bird on the Wire? Like a bird on the wire. Anyway, it's a quote from the song. It said, there was a beggar

leaning on his wooden crutch. He said to me, why do you ask for so much? Well, you see, the trigger was the beggar leaning on his wooden crutch. He said to me, why do you ask for so much? Well, you see, the trigger was the beggar. Why do I ask for so much? Why don't I just be happy? Then the second verse is, there was a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door. She cried out, why not ask for more?

Well, that's kind of the way life is. As we go through life, we are bombarded with these stimulus and idea. Oh, and we're also given an illusion. It sounds like this. The most popular Western art form sounds like this. There's a person. The person is sad. They spend money to buy a product, and they become happy.

It's called a commercial. I don't know if you've ever seen one of those before, but we see millions of those things every day. So we are constantly barraged with this message of, you know, all I have to do is pay this money or buy this coach or read this book, and all of a sudden life's going to be just fine. Not quite so simple. It's the day-to-day-to-day work and discipline. It's basically having the courage to look in the mirror,

humility to admit we need to improve, and the hard part is the discipline to follow up day after day after day and make sure we actually do it. I'm talking with Marshall Goldsmith. He is an executive coach and author of the best-selling book, Triggers. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's 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. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not.

With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. You know, it makes you wonder. People are so interested in self-improvement. How many books and seminars and all this kind of self-improvement material that's available for people, because clearly the desire is there, but the follow-through isn't. People want to change, but they have trouble changing. Why is it so hard?

Well, I'm one of the few teachers you've ever met that's actually measured that people go to my courses, do they do what I teach, and do they get better? And, you know, the people who do the stuff get better. Not surprisingly, people who do absolutely nothing will have good news, they don't get worse, they just don't get any better, they stay the same. Well, you know, if you don't have ongoing measurement, discipline, follow-up, you don't have ongoing help, some ongoing structure, some ongoing direction, you're not going to get better because you read a book. And what do I tell my coaching clients? You're not going to get better because you have a coach. If you get better, it's not about me, it's about you. I mean, I can give you ideas,

but you're the ones got to do it. You know, Arnold Schwarzenegger got a great quote. He said, nobody got muscles by watching me lift weights. Well, the key is not understanding the theory of weightlifting. You've got to lift weights. When my book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There, was the number one best-selling business book in the United States, the number one best-selling diet book sold ten times as many copies. Americans get fatter and fatter and fatter while purchasing more and more diet books.

If buying diet books would make you thin, Americans would be the thinnest people in the history of the world. Well, you don't lose weight because you buy a diet book. You've got to go on a diet. And you've got to stick with it. And you've got to stick with it. Oh, another delusion is, well, once I get better, that lasts forever. Well, you see that in diets all the time.

Once people start looking good, what do they think? I don't have to be on a diet anymore. Well, the bottom line is you got to keep going for it. If you want to get better at something and you want it to be part of your life, you have to make it part of your life and you have to at least try to do it every day because if we don't, it's not going to last anyway. Some people, though, seem to handle this kind of naturally. What do they have, some sort of self-motivation, self... What is it that makes those people more able to do this? Well, I think, you know, for everybody, it kind of depends on the task.

Now, you see some people, and they're good at working out. You think, well, why don't they have a problem? Or, I've written 35 books, so you can say, well, that I guys got a lot of self-discipline he's written 35 books he has a PhD but there are parts of my life where I just like everybody else stuck right and everybody I coach I mean they have got us you don't become a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company if you don't have self-discipline they've got a lot of self-discipline on the other hand that doesn't mean they have self-discipline for everything so other hand, that doesn't mean they have self-discipline for everything. So I think the important thing is don't fall into what I call a superstition trap.

Somebody behaves this way, they are successful, therefore they're successful because they behave this way. Everyone I coach is mega successful when they behave the way they behave, and everyone of them is successful because they do a lot right and a few things that don't make any sense. Well, in my life, I'm pretty successful. I'm successful because of a few things. And last time I checked, I have quite a few things on my in spite of list. So how about you? My guess is you're, on the whole, a pretty successful guy, but you probably got a little something on the in spite of list.

Oh, yeah, that's quite a list, actually. An impressive list. Oh, yeah, that's quite a list, actually. An impressive list. But do you think that even though those people who do this pretty well but still have a few things on that list feel just as bad about the things they don't do as the people who have lots of things on the list they don't do? Well, actually, they're often more likely to correct the things that they need to correct than the people that have even more things to improve. You see, some of the greatest leaders I met, why are they great? They keep trying to get better. You know, why are they great? I mean, I'm coaching the CEO of Pfizer, and his feedback is very good.

After a while, I said, I'm not sure you need me as a coach. He said, no, I want you to keep working with me. I said, why? He said, number one you need me as a coach. He said, no, I want you to keep working with me. I said, why? He said, number one, I can always get better. Number two, though, I want everybody else to get better. And as a leader, I want them to see that I'm trying to improve. And I'm not better than them or talking down to them. I'm just like them.

Well, to me, if you want other people to try to get better, let them watch you try to get better. Don't give them sermons about the value of trying to get better. And I think we can all improve. Ironically, the answer to that question is, in many cases, I'm like all educators. The people I coach that want help the most are often the ones that need it the least. And the people that need help the most are usually the ones that want it the least. Right. So you're preaching to the choir, really? Well, kind of. I'm preaching to people that are already good who are trying to get better,

not disasters who don't want to get better. And if you look at this school, right, which parents tend to show up? Usually the kid that's making all A's, their parents are there for the parent meeting. The kid that's flunking out, their parent doesn't show up. So there's kind of a negative correlation between the attention the kid gets and how much they need that attention. That's definitely true in my life. And it's true, by the way, not just to me, it's true in almost any educational person's life. But is it ever enough? Do you ever go, you know what? I did it and done and that's it?

Well, I think you can do two things at once. One, you could try to get better all the time, and two, still be happy with who you are. I always have a case study I use. I say, imagine you're 95 years old and you're on your deathbed, and you're just getting ready to die. What advice would the old you have for the you that's here now? And some friends of mine ask old people that question. The number one answer is be happy now.

Not next week, not next month, not next year. Be happy now. And I think it's infinitely possible to be very happy with who you are and what you do and still work at trying to get better. The leaders I've worked with who I think, well, the two greatest ones I've worked with are Alan Mulally, who just retired as the CEO of Ford. He was ranked in Fortune magazine last year as the third greatest leader in the world

behind the Pope and Angela Merkel. Frances Hesselbein, who I had dinner with last night, was the CEO of the Girl Scouts. Peter Drucker said the greatest leader he's ever met. She's also ranked as one of the top 50 leaders in the world last year, and she's 99 years old. Well, I've known both of these people for years, and, you know, they're always happy and upbeat and positive, and they're also always trying to get better.

Well, great. Well, that's some excellent advice to head into 2023 with. I've been speaking with Marshall Goldsmith, and the name of his book is Triggers. You'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Marshall. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. Thanks for being here, Marshall. lot of podcasts or conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents

pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world,

looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today.

Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. What's your favorite color? Most people say blue. And the second most, I think, is red. But why? Why do we have a favorite color? Why do we like what we like? It's actually a fascinating question, and here to discuss it is Tom Vanderbilt. Tom is the author of a book called You May Also Like, Taste in an Age of Endless Choice.

Welcome, Tom. And it seems to me that the question of why do we like what we like, it's an interesting question, but it is somewhat answerless that, you know, we like what we like because we like what we like. So why is this even worthy of a book or a discussion? Don know why we like what we like, or we might even not really like the things we like as much as we do, or there might be things that we think we don't like that we actually might like if we only kind of could get to them, but sometimes those things we think we dislike get in the way of our actual liking, if that's not too many uses of the word like there. Well, like, yeah. So tell me how you thought, let's take a look at what

people's tastes are and why they have them. I mean, where did that even come from? It seems so out of the blue, but yet so fascinating. I mean, I think I have this interest in everyday things that are around us that are so obvious, but they're so obvious that we almost don't think about them. My last book was about traffic, about basically sitting in cars and wondering, you know, what was happening out there in the world around us. But this book, my daughter basically one day on the way to school just asked me, you know, what my favorite color was. And she had been going through this whole thing that a lot of four and five-year-olds go through, just being obsessed with kind of what favorite things were of their classmates. You know, what's your favorite color? What's your favorite food. And I think for them, they're just trying to figure out their identity and who they are. But

this simple question just sort of, you know, I had to come up with an answer. And that answer was blue. And that's a pretty popular answer. In fact, the most popular answer if you ask people. So, but I just sort of wonder, like, do I really have a favorite color? Did I just say blue because she asked me? And I started to wonder about all sorts of other things in the world out there, music, food, movies, art, and, you know, things that nowadays you're asked to kind of express your opinion in all kinds of ways from Facebook pages onward. But that simple question from a four-year-old kind of set me off on this path. Yeah, well, if someone were to ask me what my favorite color is, I would probably say blue, too, as I guess most people do. But I don't know that it's really my

favorite. I mean, I like all the color. I don't have any big allegiance to blue. I mean, what often happens, you know, there's something called availability bias that psychologists talk about. Sometimes the thing that's most obvious in our minds is the thing that springs to mind when we're asked a question like that. So, but this kind of ties into what one theory is to why we might like the color blue the most, which is that, it's called the ecological valence theory, and that's just a fancy way of saying, basically, we like the colors most of the things we like the most in the world. And blue, you know, has some pretty good things going for it.

You have the sky, water. The images of blue are quite positive. Red is the second most popular, and that has some good things too, but they've done experiments where if you kind of show people pictures of negative red things, like wounds with blood, people's liking for red will go down slightly. And you can play with this in all sorts of pretty fun ways, showing Republicans blue, Democrats red,

and especially if you're on election day, those likes and dislikes will go up for each of those colors. So when somebody likes, say, a movie or a book or a TV show and somebody else doesn't, what's going on there? What is it? I mean, objectively, you should be able to say this is good and this is not so good, but we all differ on all these things. I mean, this is why philosophers, you know, since David Hume, going back several hundred years, I've just been wrestling with this question of taste. And we all know the expression,

there's no accounting for taste. And usually when we say that, we're never talking about our own taste. We're talking about someone else's taste because we think they like something that, you know, shouldn't really be liked. Well, there's no accounting for taste. But no, this is the mystery. And a company like Netflix, you know, has put so much energy into trying to come up

with mathematical equations that will determine your own, you know, help guide you through the huge world of all the movies in the world through some kind of mathematical way based on what you've seen before, based on what other people who seem to like the things you like have also seen and kind of mix this up in this huge stew

but sometimes at the end of the day you just cannot tell. There are things that movies that an algorithm on Netflix would tell me that I things that movies that an algorithm on Netflix would tell me that I really should like that were kind of underwhelming for me. Maybe there's something that was kind of a surprise-like for me. So if it were really that predetermined, companies would have a lot easier time. But at the end of the day, there is still this kind of question of just personal taste,

and especially in things like art and books. It's a lot easier to go on Amazon and you're buying a laundry detergent or something, and it's kind of easier to say, well, four and a half stars, a lot of people like that laundry detergent. It must be pretty good. It's harder to do that with a movie, because even if a lot of other people liked it, you still might not like it for your own quite personal reasons. But if something on Amazon has four and a half stars, that means somebody didn't like it or didn't like it as much as everybody else liked it or it would have gotten five

stars. So something went wrong there. Exactly. And there's some interesting dynamics that people who have analyzed all this data that is on Amazon, all those sorts of thumbs up and stars, for example, when a book wins a big award, something weird happens on Amazon where after it wins, excuse me, this is actually on Goodreads where people review books,

but when that book wins the award, the stars for it on Goodreads actually go down. So you think, well, this book was great. It was chosen as the best book of the year. But what happens is one of two things the researchers speculated. One is that it kind of lifts the expectations, like, wow, this is a book that's amazing. I really better like this because it's an award winner. So sometimes people go in with these inflated expectations.

The other thing that happens is just the news of that award kind of puts the book out there in the world and brings more people to it that might not have chosen to read that book otherwise. And it might not be their sort of cup of tea as much, and they're kind of more disappointed by it. So this is where sometimes publicity can be a bad thing for an artist if it sort of brings them a lot of people who actually, in the end, don't really like what they're doing.

So just another one of the complicated dynamics that's out there. One of the things that always fascinates me is things like restaurants where they're very popular and then they're not. And, you know, they're or they're very expensive. But really, you know, the food is is good, but it's you know, it's not that much better than, you know, the neighborhood bistro. And tastes seem to change, and people like a restaurant, and they don't like it. What's that all about? I mean, there's so much going on there. I mean, you know, now, because of things like Yelp and the Internet,

we have so many chances to read about something before we go. Before, it was a little bit of a hazier process. Maybe one friend told you it was good, but now we can sift through 500 reviews of that. So, you know, maybe you're reading all these reviews that have built up this place again. And maybe those reviews from a little while ago, maybe the service, maybe it's become so popular, the restaurant, that their service isn't quite keeping up. So you go and you kind of have like, you're like, wow, why do people like this so much? You know, sometimes even the price of a place, you sort of go to an expensive restaurant,

prepared to pay a lot of money, and just the thought that you're paying all that money, you kind of think in the back of your head, well, this must be pretty good. So you're swayed by that. I mean, we've seen this with you know economists have done these blind taste tests of wine and this is pretty famous but you know sometimes the cheap bottles actually do better than the more expensive bottles in in blind taste test i mean does this mean that people are stupid to pay the higher price i mean it's a complicated question because if you if you drink it in a non-blind taste test and you see that, oh, it's this wine from 1976 in this region of France,

I mean, that kind of helps you like it even more. I mean, taste, what I'm trying to say is taste is not just about what's on your tongue. I mean, there's a lot going on in your brain that can help you like something or help you not like something. And so to say, you know, maybe you should only drink cheap wine. It's a tricky question. How much weight does a personal recommendation, either positive or negative, weigh against 500 reviews on Yelp? Psychologists use this example with food. If you're eating an apple and suddenly there's,

it's been the best apple you've had, but all of a sudden at one of the last bites you see a worm, that's going to sort of color your experience of eating that apple, and it's not going to be a great experience in the end. So it is funny how, you know, just one review can really throw off. I mean, I think people generally go with the aggregate. If you see five stars, but one of the last reviews was negative, especially with things that are a little bit more personal, people will look for reasons why that person had that, you know,

had that one reaction that was so different from all the other reactions. It might be that something kind of a little bit vague, like, well, the hostess just wasn't that nice. I mean, you know, it seems like a lot of other people thought the hostess was fine. But this is kind of life nowadays. We have to try to sit there and disentangle all these things and try to figure out who is telling the truth and whose opinion really matters. Sometimes by the time I've read through 500 reviews, not that I usually do that many,

but I don't even want to go to the place anymore because I just can't decide. So this is one of the problems. Well, I've heard somebody recommended that when you read reviews for a restaurant that you don't read the five stars and you don't read the one stars. You read the ones in the middle because that's where you're going to get the real info. That's a great point. Yeah, I mean, clearly often the one-star people are grinding some kind of ax. The five-star people might be either their standards are just too kind of easy or it might, I mean, here's the other

problem, it might just be a completely planted review, a fake review. Yelp's own filters reject about one quarter of all reviews that are posted. So, you know, people trying to prop up their business or drag down another business. And so, yeah, I mean, that's, yeah, what you described is that like three to four, two range is kind of where the most honest opinions I think are being, and usually most useful, kind of the mixed, the mixed review. I want to talk about, because it's the title of your book, that whole concept of you may also like, which happens whenever we buy something online before we check out, we're given this array of things we might also want to buy before we check out. It must be effective or they wouldn't do it, right? Absolutely. Because I mean, people say, well, you know, an algorithm, a machine can't

tell me what my taste is. But all these algorithms are really just math that's using people's past decisions, people that actually in their buying habits work sort of like you. So they're not just, people often think it's a computer coming up with some, you know, kind of idea on its own. It's not the case at all. So, you know, the thing I discovered is, you know, people are really pretty predictable in their tastes. I mean, you know, if you look at, well, you can go to google.com, their ad preferences section, and they'll sort of tell you who they think you are based on your browsing history. And it's pretty accurate. There's all sorts of things like this online now.

One of my favorites is called What's Your Stereotype? It's something that Spotify does. And you can type in your listening habits. They'll actually just automatically generate your listening habits based on what you've been listening to, and they'll give you a little funny caricature of who you are. Mine was called Hipster Barista, and they showed this guy in a coffee shop, and that pretty much was pretty spot on as far as describing me.

Is it your sense that these algorithms and these you may also likes, are these reflecting tastes or are these steering tastes? I think both. I mean, I certainly have been pointed to things that I wouldn't have thought otherwise through that. So, you know, again, in this age of endless choice, it's hard for us to really ever have a sense of everything that's available to us. I mean, the number of new products that are released in any category, books, just to name one, goes up every year. There's now something like 50,000 new books released a year. How would you ever, average American, I think, reads one book a year.

So how would you pick that one book out of 50,000? You really need to be pointed to these things. I mean, there are problems. Sometimes you get things that are just so widely recommended, they're kind of useless. You have a kid in your house, so you bought a Harry Potter book, and then you kind of get recommended other Harry Potter books. It's not really that surprising of a recommendation. I think where the strength comes out is when it's pulling out things that you may really not have found in another way. And that's where I think, that's where I really try to use it the most.

When the dust all settles from this, as you look at all this research and all these tactics that retailers use and all these choices we have, I mean, has your buying decisions, have they been altered now? Do you are you like on to them kind of thing? A little bit, I think. But, I mean, the real takeaway for me was just basically trying to figure out strategies for ways to like things more and to be happier with the choices I made. Because there's just, again, reading these reviews, you can sort of buy something, and then suddenly you read a negative review, and you're like, did I make the wrong choice? But trying to find a hotel, spending an hour looking through things.

So I've just been trying. I mean, one of the best pieces of advice I got was from a judge at the Great American Beer Festival. It's a big craft beer festival where they sample hundreds of beers. So I asked them, you know, you guys know the entire world of beer. There's hundreds of beers out there. How do you ever figure out what you're going to drink, what you're really going to like drinking, what you're, you know, what you're going to enjoy the most? And one judge

said, well, people ask me all the time, what's your favorite beer? And he said, you know, I don't have a favorite beer. It's the beer that happens to be in my hand at the moment, because that's what sounded good to me. And so at the end of the day, I think you do have to kind of go back to what your own, you know, impulses is and just try to, you know, be happy with that. And, you know, we can still use all these tools to great advantage, but, you know, at the end of the day, you need to make your own decisions. Lastly, what, if we haven't talked about it already, was the most interesting or useful or fascinating tidbit that you discovered in looking at all of this?

There's an estimated estimate that there's about 200 food decisions we make in a day. You know, what to eat, how much to eat, did we like it? And, you know, it's so kind of second nature to us, I think, you know, we often sort of forget these things. But just, you know, interesting phenomena, like one of my favorites is called sensory-specific satiety. That basically means, you know, the moment you begin eating something, your liking for that thing actually begins to decrease. It's kind of cruel, really. I mean, you gear up for a meal that you're excited about, and you're very excited, you're happy, you start to eat it, you begin to become a little bit full, you know, your body is telling you, okay, you've had enough of this,

time to move on to something else, you get enough nutrients. But, you know, it definitely kind of, you know, you wish the pleasure could just kind of keep on going and keep on going. But, I mean, the good news is at the end of a big meal, because of sensory-specific satiety, you're still happy to have dessert because it's something different. You know, as full as you are, satiety, you're still happy to have dessert because it's something different. As full as you are, dessert with this nice sugar still sounds pretty appetizing. Which kind of gives credence to the idea that there's a lot to the anticipation of it all

because once you get it, it quickly becomes less desirable. Exactly. So much of our liking our, our kind of liking of experiences is either anticipation or memory and, you know, how we kind of feel about both those things. And, and one, one researcher suggested to me, you know, when you go to a restaurant, if you want to, you know, create something memorable, order something new, because that's going to leave a stronger memory. If you want to sort of anticipate and enjoy the experience more in the moment, order something you've had before, because it will be familiar, and you don't have to sort of think about what it is.

But for a more memorable experience, go with something new, and this probably applies to all kinds of things besides food. Yeah. Well, it sure isn't black and white at all, is it? I mean, there's lots of shades of gray to all of this. Tom Vanderbilt is author of the book you may also like, Taste in an Age of Endless Choice. There's a link to Tom's book on the show notes page for this episode of the podcast. Thanks, Tom. All right, sure. Thank you. Of course, you know that diet and exercise are important for good health and long life,

but equally important is your answer to this question. Is it a pleasure for almost everyone that you are alive? This is according to Dr. Paul Pearsall, author of the book Write Your Own Pleasure. He says that being helpful, patient, and kind is directly related to health and longevity. Think about the oldest living relative in your family. Chances are they did not go to aerobics class or eat a particularly low-fat, high-fiber diet. But odds are he or she was a nice person.

Solid research shows that relaxing and enjoying your life and helping others enjoy theirs is great medicine for you and the people in your life. And that is something you should know. And since this episode is being published on New Year's Eve, I hope you will make it one of your New Year's resolutions to share this podcast with someone you know so they too can hear all the fascinating things we talk about. And I wish you a very, very happy and healthy new year. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks.

And me, Melissa DeMonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? We're serving up for hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you. And don't blame me. We dive deep into listeners' questions, offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's perspective, we've got you. Then switch gears with But Am I Wrong?, which is for listeners who didn't take our advice and want to know if they are the villains in the situation. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events and present situations that we might even be wrong in our lives. Spoiler alert, we are actually quite literally never wrong.

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