Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Weird Things that Influence What You Eat & How to Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck

Episode Date: March 14, 2020

If you were to stand in downtown Detroit and start walking south for as long as it took, what is the first foreign country you would encounter? This is one of the fascinating questions/facts that I know you will find interesting – and might even win you a drink in a bar bet. Then, it is so weird what things influence your opinion and enjoyment of the food you eat. You might like to think you are too smart to be fooled by things like the color of the plate, or the music being played or the weight of the silver ware. But you are. Researcher Charles Spence, author of the new book, Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating (http://amzn.to/2sk9L3f) will amaze you with what he has discovered. You often see celebrities who claim that drinking gallons of water is what keeps them looking so youthful. But is that really true? Listen and find out. http://www.womenshealthmag.com/beauty/drinking-water-for-better-skin Listen as film director and writer Steve Stockman, author of How to Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck (http://amzn.to/2trbnrR) offers some brilliant and simple techniques that will help you take better, more interesting video that people will actually enjoy watching. This Week's Sponsors -Grubhub. For $10 off any order of $15 or more (for new diners only), download the Grubhub app and use promo code SYSK Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, some fascinating facts that might at least win you a drink in a bar bet. And it is strange and amazing what influences the foods we like to eat. For example, we do not like foods much if they point towards us. So imagine you've got a slice of pizza or a

slice of chocolate cake. If you want to serve it to somebody with a pointy end in the middle of the cake pointing towards them, they'll give that cake a lower rating than if you turn it around so it's pointing away. Also, does drinking water really keep your skin looking younger? And how to shoot better video that people actually want to watch? I always tell people, don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes. You know, if you're shooting people's faces and you can't actually see what their eyes look like, you're missing all the emotion and the communication and the feeling of the video because you're just too far away.

All this today on Something You Should Know. 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.

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. As you might imagine, being that I'm the host of this podcast, I like learning, gathering fascinating facts and things. And so I'm going to start the program off today with some fascinating facts that, if nothing else, could probably, some of them could probably win you a free drink and a bar bet now and again, if you remember them. So let's start with, if you were to stand in downtown Detroit and start walking south, due south for as long as it takes, what's the first foreign country you would come to? The answer is Canada, and it would only take you a few minutes. If you were to spell out the numbers, starting with 1,

you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, on what number would you first encounter the letter A? And the answer is 1,000. There's only one nation in the world that begins with the letter A but does not end with the letter A. And that is Afghanistan. All mammals can jump except one. Although I've heard some recent information that this may not be true anymore,

but supposedly elephants cannot jump. Why are the staircases in firehouses circular? Well, this is interesting. Early fire trucks were pulled by horses that were stabled downstairs while the firefighters lived upstairs. The horses learned to walk up regular stairs, so the stairs were changed to circular to keep the horses from coming up. And that is something you should know.

The decisions you make about what food to eat, what you think of the food you eat, how much of it you eat, and how much you like what you eat aren't entirely based on the food itself. Your other senses come into play probably in ways you never realized. In fact, when you hear how easily you are influenced, I think you'll find it amazing. Charles Spence is the head of the Cross-Modal Research Laboratory at the University of Oxford, and he's done a remarkable amount of research into this. His book is called Gastrophysics, the New Science of Eating. He's on the line from Salzburg, Austria. Welcome, Charles. So right off the bat here, just give me an example of how easily we're influenced into believing food is better than it actually may be. So one thing is the weight

of the cutlery, the knife and fork or spoon that you hold. We have done research in hotel restaurants where half the diners have been eating a dish with light kind of canteen knife and fork. The other half of the diners in the same restaurant on the same day were served exactly the same food but with a heavy knife and fork. And those who had something heavy in their hands rated the food as better and were willing to pay more for exactly the same dish. And that's something we see in lots of situations, be it heavy glasses, heavy bowls, heavy cutlery, do seem to help enhance our experience of food and drink more than we realize. Intuitively, maybe sometimes chefs say, oh, now you mention it. Yeah, I guess I kind of knew that sort of,

but rarely do you have the kind of evidence to back it up. And these intuitions sometimes seem silly and strange, and so you don't put too much weight in them if you'll excuse the pun other examples are things like um changing the color of the lighting um we've done experiments with over 3 000 people uh where we gave them a glass of red wine and a black tasting glass so they couldn't see the contents put them in a room uh ask them to say how fruity or fresh that wine was under normal white lighting, then flick the light bulbs to red, and ask them to do the same thing again, tell me how fruity or fresh, how much you'd like that drink, and all of a sudden we see a sort of 15% increase in fruitiness and liking simply by turning red

lights on, and then when we switch the lighting to green instead, suddenly the wine starts tasting just that little bit more sour instead and is liked a little bit less. Same wine, same glass, same person, but simply the lighting in the background having an impact on what we taste. For some people, when they experience this, they're like, wow, I never believed it would work. Or even those who thought it would work sometimes were surprised by just how immediately, when the light color changed,

the taste in the glass also changed. I wonder if, and maybe you looked at this, if you tell people what you're doing and then do the experiment again, in other words, does the knowledge of knowing that these things are affecting you then make them less effective? That's a good question and something that we do worry about. And I think it's definitely not the whole story. So maybe we know even now from research on the placebo effect that knowing that you're taking a placebo medication can on occasion help reduce symptoms and pain,

even though you know you're being in some sense tricked. In our work, sometimes when we do experiments very carefully in the lab, I can think of examples where we change the color of fruit drinks, and you'll come into the lab and you'll see maybe 180 different colored liquids in glasses, and have to taste each one but before you taste any of them we say explicitly these colors are meaningless they're kind of randomly assigned we just they have no bearing on what you're about to taste keep your eyes open so you don't spill the drink but ignore

the color as best you can knowing it's's not informative. And yet, even when you know the color is there to mislead you, you find it impossible just to focus on the taste. I guess in this case because our brains are kind of geared up to try and predict the taste, the flavor, and the nutritional value properties of foods that we see. And that's whenever we see a drink in a glass, the color is already within the blink of an eye setting expectations automatically, and those expectations then kind of help to anchor the experience when we actually do come to taste.

What about sound, music, noise, that kind of thing? How does that affect us? Again, a lot more than most of us realize, and this has been a big part of our research for the last decade now starting with work looking at the sound of food itself so showing how if you boost certain frequencies when people bite into potato chips

they'll perceive them as crunchier and fresher than if you cut out certain sound frequencies and from there we've gone on to the sound of packaging why potato chips often come in such noisy packets and And does that sound affect the taste? Yes, it does. And from there on to the sounds of making the sounds of coffee machines. Do they set expectations about the taste of the brew you're about to receive? They do too. And out from there through to the sounds of the environment in which we eat and drink. So what about loud noises, unpleasant, distracting loud noises that you often hear in restaurants?

Coming out of a lot of Northeast USA restaurants, in fact, where music's played very loud in the kitchens to help sort of preparation time pass, and some of those chefs are thinking, hmm, if we like this music in the kitchen, maybe our diners will like it in the restaurant as well and when you put that really loud music together with the kind of the trendy decor these days where where curtains and cushions and carpets are out and they're replaced by kind of hard reflective surfaces you find um if you take your sound level

meter into these restaurants that you might be exposed to over 100 decibels of noise so loud that it's probably having detrimental impact on the long-term serving staff and also so loud that it's suppressing our ability to to taste and smell the food and hence you have to add more sugar and more salt and you see that in restaurants but you also see it um there's one chapter in the book all about uh in the air, and there in an airplane, you're probably exposed to about 80 to 85 decibels of engine noise, and that too suppresses, sweet suppresses our ability to taste salt, but for some mysterious reason, enhances the taste of umami, the taste of tomatoes. That's, I think, why so many people go for a tomato juice or bloody mary uh in the air and finally what we're seeing now um is this whole world of sort of sonic seasoning it's called um which is the idea that

you can pick music um from your music device or you can even compose music with particular sound properties and when you listen to that music while tasting, you can use it as seasoning to bring out, to enhance sweetness, sourness, bitterness, creaminess, spiciness, in a way that's really surprising because music played over the tannoy. Why would that change what I taste when I'm in a restaurant? But we recently published a study with one uh chef from a restaurant in nashville tennessee uh she made a spicy uh salad um and we had half the diners eating the salad with one piece of music the other half eating the same salad but with some spicy uh tracks in the background

and those who were listening to the spicy music rated their um salad as tasting just that bit spicier. So this is, again, it's a kind of like seasoning. I think it's exciting to chefs, to mixologists, to baristas, but also to composers and musicians and creatives and artists who are thinking how can we bring the senses together in new and exciting ways, hopefully to enhance the experience and maybe, ultimately, if I can find music that will make things taste sweeter, that might allow me to reduce the sugar in food a little bit,

but keep the perception in the mind of the consumer or the diner the same. And that's kind of the hope that a number of researchers are now aiming towards. I'm speaking with Charles Spence. He is a researcher and author of the book, Gastrophysics, the New Science of Eating. brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating

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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. So Charles, one thing that restaurants do well that we often don't pay much attention to at home is presentation,

making the food look good on the plate. And I'm wondering, are there things people, if they did this at home, if they understood the principles of some of that, could actually get the kids to eat their vegetables or something. So I think that's definitely a possibility. And I mean, the restaurants themselves, if you go back to the 1960s, even near the height of French cuisine, where the chefs quoted, say, you know, we just served it as it came out of the kitchen, as you might do at home, just plonked it on the plate with no thought to eye appeal but nowadays it's all changed I think

especially as more and more of us when we go out to eat can't help but take pictures of the dish and share them on social media sites and as that happens more and more in the UK I think there's 40 percent of diners when they eat out share images of the food that they have been served that's kind of driving the chefs the restaurateurs to more visually impressive stunning beautiful designs what sort of things

when we work with those chefs sometimes taking their signature dishes putting them on the internet putting them in science museums and giving real people the choice to say if you're going to this restaurant tonight how would you like that dish served um which of these two orientations or platings works best for you and what we've found is that those chefs out there who are uh enamored with asymmetric plating putting all the food just on one side of the plate and leaving a big blank bit of plate with nothing on it that

will make you look seem more creative as a chef but it won't add to people's willingness to pay they'll actually pay a lot less uh in our studies at least when food is asymmetrically plated another thing that many chefs uh are taught in culinary school is that if you've got to serve um something like a seared scallop say and make sure you serve an odd number on the plate, not an even number. So serve them three or one, but not two or four. When we tested that with thousands and thousands and thousands of people at the Science Museum in London,

we found that people don't actually care about whether there's an odd number or an even number of things on the plate. What they care about more is how much food it appears they're going to get to eat, and that's the primary driver of which plate you'll prefer. A couple of final suggestions that have come out of the research. One is that we do not like foods much if they point towards us. So imagine you've got a slice of pizza or a slice of chocolate cake.

If you want to serve it to somebody with a pointy end to the middle of the cake pointing towards them, they'll give that cake a lower rating than if you turn it around so it's pointing away. We think because there's some evolutionary old mechanism in our heads that whenever we see angularity, we think danger and that's transmitted to the food. And the last one that I'm sort of fond of and we're researching at the moment is to, if you have a long line in the plate, think of something like, I don't know, a spring onion or a celery stick or a langoustine. Then if you orient it so it kind of starts in the bottom left of the plate and goes all the way up to the top right

like a kind of successful results graph then people will like that dish more than if you serve exactly the same thing but have it rotated so it starts down at the bottom right and ascends to the top left instead and that's uh we're not quite sure why we see it in some of kandinsky's artwork we see it on plating of various foods and it may have something to do with the fact that when we see foods, if our brains can imagine eating that food, then the easier we find to imagine eating it and actually to eat it,

the more we will like the food. And maybe when it goes from bottom left to top right, that just makes it easier for us as right-handers to attack the plate. So is it safe to say that, at least at the very basic level, that plating food like you gave some thought to it rather than just plopping it on the plate makes it more appealing than just plopping it on the plate?

That's right. Of course, it takes somebody some time to actually do that thoughtful stuff. But it's not just about um being thoughtful it turns out when we in this sort of they have this kandinsky salad uh my colleague and chef charles michelle serves that we've been testing 31 elements uh when he turns it into a replica of kandinsky's uh painting 201 hanging in the museum of modern art in new york then it's effortful it's beautiful people like it they're willing to pay more, and they'll eat more. When we take those 31 elements that go into making the dish, and we just line them up side by side, like soldiers, and we serve that versus the tossed salad version, then you can see

it took a lot of effort to arrange all those 31 things lined side by side, exactly spaced. It's just not very aesthetically pleasing, and you don't like that one as much. So I think it is partly about the effort, but it's also partly about how pleasing to the eye the end result is. Is there any sense that people in general tend to just like the same things over and over? Are we adventurous eaters or is everybody individual? So I guess there certainly are individual differences, but there also are commonalities. And that's where kind of the psychology and the gastrophysics coming in, looking for the trends that unite many of us. And I guess we differ as individuals. Some of us are

more neophilic, willing to try new foods, interested in the latest food trend, fad, a regional kind of cuisine. Others are a little bit more neophobic. They sort of know what they like, not so keen on trying something new. Lastly, about the packaging, and I know you talk about, for example, how when Coca-Cola changed and came out with the Christmas can, people thought they'd changed the formula when, in fact, it was just the can.

So clearly, packaging affects our perception that's right um and i think sort of packaging is sort of the kind of forgotten element really um it's often seen just as a means of you know portion control and preservation of the of the of the product nothing more than that maybe somewhere to plonk your your visual logo but that's it um and from our research and from that of others thatk your your visual logo but that's it um from our research and from that of others that are that i um see and that's reviewed i think packaging is so much more than that it's really part of our experience of food and drink why so in part because uh the studies suggest we probably eat about a third of the stuff that we consume direct from the package, from the crisp packet, the yogurt pot,

the can, the bottle. And if you make bottles or cans heavier, things taste better. If you change the color of the can rather than changing the color of the drink, you can also change the taste. If you add texture to, say, a packaging, we find we can bring out gingery notes in a biscuit or in a drink simply by having people feeling something rough on the packaging. We can make a noise as well. We think about sort of the Snaffle Pop was one famous example, distinctive product sound. We think about those potato chip packets.

Why is it that potato chips, a very noisy food, comes in noisy packaging? We go back to the very start, back in the 1920s or 30s, when the first packaged potato chips were available, even then they came in a noisy pack. It's not about preservation. I think it's about sort of an intuitive marketeer picking up that noisy food maybe tastes better with noisy packaging. It sets the expectation. It's congruent. It matches.

And now it's something that we've come to expect and should not be ignored because whenever we look at it, the packaging is there, and it influences us in a way that we don't realize, but it's a substantial influence. And now some of the bigger food and drinks companies are starting to recognize that, the importance of the packaging. Does the color of the plate that I serve my food on at home really affect whether people like the food I'm serving? It certainly does. So, you know, you can't literally taste the plate, but changing the

color of the plate on which you serve food can change what people say about it um sounds bizarre um when we first tested this back in 2012 with um for an adria another world top chef with his research foundation the illicia foundation in spain we served a kind of pinkish strawberry mousse to 60 people and they had to taste it from a black plate versus from a white plate um and the result kind of amazing result that came out was that those who tasted that strawberry mousse from a white plate said it tasted seven percent sweeter thirteen percent more flavorful and nine percent more liked the same people eating the same food but from a black plate instead that was 2012 when you first get a result you're sort of thinking is it is it really true that a fluke are we what's going on here but since then in the last five years at least 30 other published studies from research groups around the

world have come to much the same conclusion the paul baccouz cookery school in france we worked with them and they showed that plate color affected the taste of their desserts in their very fancy restaurant and many other countries from far east newfoundland are showing the same kind of result. What will make it taste best? I mean, there isn't like a perfect plate color. I think it depends a bit on the color of the food that you are serving. And if you can enhance the contrast between the food and the background, that will look good. Porridge from a white bowl is no good.

Thai green curry that's mostly white on a white plate won't look as good as if it's got a high contrast black plate behind it. You can bring out spiciness in tofu by serving it from a red plate, according to work from Taiwan just out. And so it goes on. The color of the plate matters. The material matters. Even the shape matters. Round white plates are much, much sweeter than angular black plates or slates, for example. And again, this is something that might have seemed bizarre, but now it's becoming increasingly well-recognized, and chefs are using the findings. But I think this maybe has more impact for us at home

and for those who are serving food to, say, patients in care facilities and in hospitals who very often are not eating as much as they should, and where the research suggests simply by enhancing the color contrast between the food and the plate, you can see patients in hospital eating up to a third more, which aids their long-term recovery. It's somewhat troubling to hear that we're so persuaded by such simple things. I think we'd like to think that we're smarter or more perceptive than that. Yeah, I think, I mean, I sort of realize that no matter how many of these results I talk about or share, somewhere in all of

our minds, whether we be psychologists, food critics, chefs, or just average consumer alike, we all think, that's not how it seems to me. I really can taste what's in the glass, and I wouldn't be fooled by or have my judgments influenced by the music in the background. And that's where the research comes in,

to not rely on our intuitions, but get the evidence from tens, hundreds, thousands of people show that this really does make a difference. Nevertheless, I think we'd all like to think that we're not so easily swayed, but it's certainly interesting to hear. Charles Spence has been my guest. His book is Gastrophysics, the New Science of Eating.

There's a link to his book in the show notes for this episode of the podcast. You can find that at our website, somethingyoushouldknow.net. Thanks, Charles. Thank you. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice.

Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover.

We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone shoots video now. It's as easy as can be because you've got a smartphone that shoots pretty good quality video. But there's a big difference between just pointing your phone and shooting video

and taking really interesting video that people actually would want to watch. Steve Stockman is a film writer and director, and he is author of a book called How to Shoot Video That Doesn't Suck. Hi, Steve. So people shoot a lot of video, and I bet a lot of it never, ever gets watched. You know, you shoot your son's soccer game because, well, that's what a good parent does. You want to take video at your son's soccer game because, well, that's what a good parent does. You want to take video at your son's soccer game. But nobody ever watches it because it's too long and the camera's too far away.

You can't tell who anybody is. And I bet a lot of video is like that. It never gets watched. We understand it incredibly well. We've been watching videos since we were babies. There's almost no one alive today who hasn't watched TV since infancy. And we understand how video is supposed to work. We comprehend the language of video, but we don't speak it very well. And until the last few years,

no one has asked us to speak it well. We had professionals speak it for us. We had directors who did videos. Now everybody has a camera in their pocket that works better than, you know, what Steven Spielberg shot Jaws with. And suddenly we're asked to think about shooting video, and it turns out speaking it is more complicated than just listening to it or watching it. Well, that's an interesting point. You know, we know what video is supposed to look like when we watch it, but shooting it is a whole other story. It's the difference between knowing what a great piano song sounds like and being able to play the piano.

What are some of the basics of shooting video that maybe would help right off the bat? I think the first thing that people need to understand is that video that you watch is always done in short shots. So when you're watching video, you will see in a detective show, you'll see the detective bring the suspect into the box so that they can coerce a confession. And then you'll see a shot of the suspect's handcuffed wrists. And then you'll see a shot of the two detectives who are behind the one-way glass watching to see if the suspect will crack. And the story is told in all of these short shots. What they don't do is turn the camera on, run it for 30 minutes

while the actors do stuff in front of the camera, and then turn it off. That's an editing issue then. It is an editing issue and also a thinking issue. Because as soon as you realize that video is shot in short shots, you realize that no one in the universe is ever going to watch that 45 minutes of you shooting your son's soccer game where you just point the camera, let it run, and wave it back and forth. It isn't always just editing. It's also, how are you thinking of the story and what is it that you actually want to show people?

Yeah, because most people aren't going to edit their video. It'd be nice if they did, but they don't. And so it's really then in how they shoot it to begin with. Yes. And even professional directors don't just turn the camera on in the morning when they get to the set and turn it off at the end of the day. They're still doing their shots intentionally, and they're only shooting as much as they actually need to because later you have to pay an editor to sit there and watch all the garbage and pick out the good stuff. The less garbage there is, the cheaper that is. So in movies and television, you know, we also don't run the camera all day. So the first thing to think about if you're

shooting your own video is what do you want to shoot? Who is this story about and what is the story? You know, if it's a birthday party, are you going to focus? Who is this story about and what is the story? You know, if it's a birthday party, are you going to focus on the subject of the birthday party? Are you going to focus on their wife? Are you going to focus on the presence? And it almost doesn't matter what decision you make. If you decide to focus on something or someone in the video you take,

your videos will be way better. So think in terms of stories rather than, oh, I've got to get a picture of that. Yeah, absolutely. Now you can make a very nice video if you think of your video as a still camera and you point your video, say you're on vacation, you point your video at a beautifully composed shot and you roll it for about five seconds and then stop. And if you do that several times an hour during your touring day, at the end of every day you'll wind up with about 60 seconds of really beautiful footage. And even though it's sort of random, it's going to look pretty cool if you set it to music.

So that's another way to do it. But the more story that you can think of as you do it, you know, do I want to be shooting shots of my kids when I'm at Disneyland? Do I want to be shooting shots of the adults in the party who are exhausted by the kids when I'm at Disneyland? Those are two different stories. Either one is going to be good if you focus on it and better than just waving your camera around, hoping it hits Mickey Mouse. As you say, no one's going to watch your 45-minute video of your soccer game, but you don't know when your son's going to make a goal. So you got to run the camera the whole time because otherwise you'll miss, you'll always, it seems that you'll miss

that moment that you wanted because you turned it off. Yeah, either that or you have to decide that that's not really what the video is about. I mean, if you think about your son, in five years, your son is going to be totally different. He's going to think differently. He's going to look different. He's going to have different interests. I would argue that the video that you want to be shooting about your son's soccer game is about your son and his teammates playing soccer, in which case you want to do things like show the coach, which your son will remember in five years. You want to show the looks on their faces. You want to interview them about the soccer game. And you don't really want to spend your whole time glued to the screen in hopes that your son shoots a goal because that keeps you from enjoying the soccer game. So think about telling a story

and think about the things that you and your son are going to want to look back on five or 10 or 15 years from now and shoot those things. And don't bother with the action on the field, which let's face it, for most eight-year-olds is going to be all that exciting, except for a shot or two of it. So you can remember what it was like. Well, that brings up a really interesting point. It seems like there's two kinds of people. There's people who, when something happens or they're at a special place, they pull out their camera and that becomes the important thing, is to make sure they get a shot, a video or a photo. And then there are other people who think that if you do that, you're missing out on the experience because you're too worried about taking videos or photos.

I'm the latter. I never think to take out my camera. I'm more interested in what's going on in the moment. And where's the balance if that's the desired thing? What do you do about that? Well, I think this is where you think about what's really interesting to you. I mean, if you're going on vacation and you're going to someplace beautiful like the Grand Canyon, you could decide that what you really want to do is beautiful pictures of the Grand Canyon. And you could look for those amazing pictures and shoot some short shots of incredible Grand Canyon vistas and, you know, beautiful camera moves or you take your drone out there or

something. And then in the times that you're not doing that, you might just enjoy the canyon. Or similarly, you could decide that the story is your kids seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time and hiking down a ways into it. And you could cover that story the way a journalist would. And you would talk to your kids about what they're doing. You would get the reactions to the Grand Canyon. You would cover the preparation for hiking and what happens when you got to the bottom. And by doing that, you would get a story about your

vacation on the Grand Canyon, and the rest of the time, you wouldn't have to pick up your camera, and you could just enjoy what's going on. So I would argue that adding story to things gives you a clue about that balance between being in the moment and being behind your video camera. That filling the frame idea, which I've heard photographers talk about as well, that people are usually way too far back from what they're shooting, that you can't tell who's in the picture or what it is exactly. Do you find that's the same problem in video as well? People are reluctant to get close to the action because they feel, especially if they don't do this a lot, like it makes them the center of attention.

And so we don't like to put our camera right in someone's face, and we don't like to put ourselves close to the stage when we're shooting the high school graduation. I think that if you practice, you get over that. And I think the other thing that you have to realize is if you're far away from the action, your video feels far away from the action. So you're going to feel removed from what you're doing.

I always tell people to don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes. You know, if you're shooting people's faces and you can't actually see what their eyes look like, you're missing all the emotion and the communication and the feeling of the video because you're just too far away. Since people take so much video on their phones and now there are all these new gadgets that you can attach to your phone, do you recommend any of them or any of them worth it? I think learning to shoot great video is like learning to ski. If you are just starting out, just take what they give you and play with it for a while. You don't have to have the super fancy racing skis on your first day on the mountain

because all you're going to do is fall over anyway. So what I would recommend is use the iPhone that came in the box or use the Android phone that came in the box and go out and play with it and experiment with it and see if it came with any apps or if there's any free apps that a friend uses, just try it. If you practice shooting video, you will learn what you don't like about the equipment that you have, and then you can investigate new equipment. But if you're at the point where you really can't tell the difference,

use what you got, and you'll figure it out. What about editing? Do you think most people's videos are not worth the time if they shoot them right in the first place, or will editing always improve any video? Well, editing in its simplest form is simply cutting out the things that aren't any good. And any time you take a video and cut out the things that aren't any good, by definition it gets better. And if it isn't a whole lot better, it's at least shorter. So it's less torturous.

So I recommend editing wherever possible. However, there are, as you said before, two kinds of people in the world. There are the people who will edit and the people who don't. In my work, I edit all the time. But what that really means is there are people called editors who sit in my office and work on the footage that I've shot. My own wedding video is still in a box, and I haven't touched it since the wedding, which was, my kids are in college now. So I would recommend if you're shooting with your iPhone that you try to shoot stuff short enough so that you don't need to add it and long enough so that you get the stuff that's really interesting. What about events like weddings and graduations and things, which tend to be, if you weren't there, it's kind of boring to watch.

Is there any way to spice it up a little bit? Well, there again, I think you have to realize what people need to see and what they don't need to see. At a wedding, they hand out a shot list when you sit down. I'm sorry, it's not really a shot list. It's a program, and it tells you what's about to happen. And since you know what weddings are like because they're a ritual, which means that they're pretty much the same all the time, and you have that program in your hands,

if you want to shoot the wedding, you know when people are going to walk down the aisle and when they're going to kiss the bride and when the rings are going to be presented and those kinds of things that are part of every wedding. So if you plan those things and think about them for three minutes when you're sitting in your pew waiting for the wedding to start, you can decide what you're going to shoot and what you're not. And you can go up and just shoot the stuff that you'll get a good shot for. And that makes the difference. It again, a wedding is one of those things where you don't really have to see

every moment. You just have to see the important moments or the story moments and the rest. You can just sit back and enjoy. Now, I just need to remember to do all those things. But I think that just the one thing you said about shooting in short shots will go a long way to help anybody shoot better video. Steve Stockman has been my guest. Steve is a film writer. He's a director. And he is author of the book, How to Shoot Video That Doesn't Suck. There's a link to his book on Amazon in the show notes for this episode of the podcast, and you can get that and all kinds of other things at our website,

somethingyoushouldknow.net. Thanks, Steve. Sure. Thanks, Mike. How many times have you seen some ageless celebrity on television talk about how much water they drink, and all that water is what's responsible for their youthful appearance. Well, there actually isn't much research into whether or not water is good or not good for your skin. Since nobody can really make any money from water as a skin treatment, no one has ever funded any studies on that. So we really don't know if drinking water is good for your skin. However, Women's Health Magazine surveyed several dermatologists to get their take on it. And it seems that the general belief is that hydrated skin does look

better. Without water, the skin can look dull and wrinkles and pores appear more prominent. And that's because water plumps up the skin. However, drinking a lot of water today doesn't mean your skin will look better for years to come. The benefits are mostly in appearance and they're temporary. In other words, as long as you drink water and your skin is hydrated, it looks better. But if you stop drinking the water, the benefits disappear quickly. Eight to ten glasses of water spread throughout the day

should do the trick. That's the podcast today. I'm Mike Carruthers. Remember, you can always email me with any questions, comments, or suggestions. I love hearing from listeners. And my email address is mike at somethingyoushouldknow.net. Thanks for listening 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. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth.

Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. Listen to Chinook wherever of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity.

Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.