Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Why Adulting is Often So Scary & Understanding Traffic

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, is sitting really that bad for you? And if so, why? Then, it used to be kids couldn't wait to grow up and become adults. But today, many kids dread it. And I think we have to ask ourselves, why is it that adulthood or adulting looks so unattractive to young people now? What has changed about what adulting looks like, such that they feel that way? Also, is music

Starting point is 00:01:00 just something you like to listen to? Or is it actually good for you? And understanding how traffic flows on the roadways and how we could make it flow better. Things would move better if we tried to sort of coordinate ourselves better, meaning not jumping car queues. If we just sort of drive a little bit more, let's call it defensively, then things will work better.

Starting point is 00:01:25 All this today on Something You Should Know. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks and free fast streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy.

Starting point is 00:02:01 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 carothers hi welcome to something you should know do you remember a couple of years ago there was this headline somewhere and people were repeating it and saying this phrase that sitting is the new smoking. And I remember thinking, well, maybe. Seems a little overstated, but it does turn out that sitting is worse for our health than we once thought. And not just on long airplane flights or for couch potatoes. Sitting is pretty much bad for everyone. According to Dr. Barry Braun at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst,

Starting point is 00:02:54 we pretty much have taken sitting as our default position, but our bodies just really aren't made for that. Sitting slows down the action of an enzyme that breaks down fats in the blood, like cholesterol. If we add up all the time we're sitting in our cars, at the computer, watching TV, it's just way too much for most of us. And experts say that simply exercising during your usual non-sitting time isn't going to help much either. The recommendation is to just sit less, a lot less, and switch your sitting positions from time to time, or even better, recline. And that is something you should know.

Starting point is 00:03:36 What does it mean to be an adult? For many generations, young people longed to grow up and get out of the house and see the world. But that seems to have changed. Becoming an adult, something people used to look forward to, has become, for many young people, something to dread. So what's caused this? What can we do about it? How and why did the fear of growing up and moving on become a thing? That's what Julie Lithcott Hames set out to discover. Julie's a writer, former college dean, former attorney, and author of the book, Your Turn to Be an Adult.

Starting point is 00:04:15 Hi, Julie. Welcome. Hi, Mike. Thanks so much for having me. So briefly, in broad strokes here, explain this thing, this thing that didn't used to be a thing, this thing that didn't used to be a thing, this fear of becoming an adult. I think my heart swells with compassion for millennials, first and foremost. I was a dean at a university working with the millennial generation,

Starting point is 00:04:36 hearing students on my campus lamenting, I don't know how to be an adult. I don't want to be an adult. Adulting is scary. I scanned the national landscape and quickly saw that this wasn't just my students. It was really an entire generation of people expressing trepidation or reluctance to enter a stage of life. I think the older set just entered without as much thought. And I didn't come with a critique of them. my response was instead, wow, what has changed in our society, in our world, what changed about how they were raised or what they confront as young adults, such that they're feeling discomfort at approaching a stage of life I frankly, and perhaps you also, looked forward to. Yeah, I guess that's why I find this so

Starting point is 00:05:22 interesting because I left home basically as soon as I could. After high school, I went away to college. I went far away to college and I really was looking forward to that of, you know, the world is opening up. My life is ahead of me. And I looked forward to it. So maybe what it means to be an adult is different now. So what is I couldn't wait and yet young people now are feeling trepidation or reluctance, what has changed about what adulting looks like such that they feel that way? The definition, the old definition, Mike, was simple. Five things more or less in this order. Finish school, get a job, leave home, marry and have children. It harkens back to an era where everyone was presumed to be straight, where women were the property of their dads until they were the property of their husbands. Their job was to have children. And that was really their primary, if not sole purpose. We have so many more freedoms now. And it may be impossible for you to move out of your

Starting point is 00:06:40 parents home today because your wages slash salary have not kept up with the cost of a one-bedroom apartment in the town in which you are employed. And so there are some macroeconomic realities that make the old definition very out of date. So I have come up with a different definition. Adulting is simply the knowledge that when you wake every day, you are more or less responsible for yourself. In contrast, in childhood, you are more or less the responsibility of someone else. So it's not about you're a lone wolf, you're a lone actor, but it is that intrinsic knowledge that, yeah, it's pretty much on me to take care of my bodies, my bills, my business, my belongings. And guess what, Mike? That feels deliciously satisfying, right? There's a high, there's a hit we get from knowing, hey, I accomplished something. Not I'm the most amazing

Starting point is 00:07:38 person in the world, but just simply that sense of, hey, I handled what I met today and I'm absolutely fine. And so what is it that younger people who are entering adulthood are afraid of? I think on the one hand, we who have raised them, and I'm a mom, I want to say. I have a 22-year-old son, a 20-year-old daughter. I'm very in it. And we who have raised kids who are older Gen Zs and millennials tended to have been incredibly involved, incredibly needing to know their every move, watching them constantly at the park and as they played and knowing every little detail about their schooling and attending their every practice of soccer or clarinet. We were just so

Starting point is 00:08:28 hypervigilant. We have seemed so stressed out and worried as adults, like every single aspect of childhood matters. Everything is of consequence. I think that has to have something to do with why adulting looks so unattractive to them. They're like, why would I want to grow up and be as stressed out and worried and anxious all the time as my parents are? But I think that has contributed. I know that that has contributed. Anecdotally, I know that has contributed to many young adults feeling like,

Starting point is 00:08:56 hey, why would I want that? The other thing is if we've over-parented, Mike, we've deprived our kids of developing the very skills they need to have if they're going to thrive out there. So if we've always our kids of developing the very skills they need to have if they're going to thrive out there. So if we've always tied their shoes, unscrewed their juice drinks, cut their meat, prepared every meal, filled out every form, argued with every teacher, argued with every coach, we have deprived them of the small experiences in childhood, which in the aggregate would have led to a sense of confidence within them that, oh, hey, I can make it through a day.

Starting point is 00:09:30 Oh, I can problem solve. Oh, I can handle that. Oh, I can make a choice. OK, if we've over parented, we've undermined the development of the very basic sense of I know I can agency or self-efficacy that every human has to have in order to make their way forward. Well, there's a lot in what you just said, because you can see it. I mean, you can see this kind of over-parenting in a lot of cases. And in fact, if you're a parent who doesn't over-parent, you kind of stand out like a

Starting point is 00:10:00 sore thumb. And certainly cell phones have added to the problem because now you can track and find out where your kid is every second. And so parents do. And also, it seems like we've trained kids to be afraid, you know, stranger danger, that everybody is a potential threat. And when you think that way, I mean, there's a lot of stress in that. And I want to be super clear, Mike, I don't blame the kids. The kids didn't ask for this childhood. They didn't ask for this kind of upbringing.

Starting point is 00:10:29 They may have asked for a cell phone, but not so that their parents could track their every move. So you and I can sit here and say back in the day, I was allowed to play freely. My parents said, come in when it's dark or come in when we call you for dinner. Kids today don't know what to do with themselves. If they have a free 15 minutes, they feel like something's wrong because they're accustomed to being scheduled. They're accustomed to being told precisely what to do and how to do it. And they're accustomed to being checked up on to see if they did do it. They just, when I've talked

Starting point is 00:10:57 with young adults about making use of downtime so that they can imagine and create and brainstorm and dream. They look at me and they say, that would terrify me. Downtime would terrify me. And that makes me so sad. And so what do we do? Because you can't just flip a switch and say, OK, you're on your own. Good luck. Let me know how things work out.

Starting point is 00:11:23 There are two things. There are two answers. One is what should young people do? The other is what should parents do? With respect to the parents, I would offer this. We were supposed to have gradually let go, meaning gradually taught them to do more and more for themselves in the years from, say, two to 18. We need to make up for lost time. You don't just wish a skill upon a person, you're supposed to teach it. And there's a four-step method for teaching any kid any skill, which is first you do it for them, which we're really good at. Next, you do it with them,

Starting point is 00:11:55 meaning they're there, they're watching you do it. Maybe you're narrating to how you do it, teaching. Step three is where we need to get to, which is you watch them do it. You say, hey, kid, it's your turn to make this meal or make a grilled cheese on the stove. I'm going to watch you do it. I'm going to be here in case, you know, I don't want you to set the house on fire, but I'm here just in case. And then step four, they can do it themselves. So we've got to move from steps one and two to steps three and four with every single skill a kid needs to learn. And that's what I want any parent listening to think about. Ask yourself, what is your kid not capable of at whatever age they are, yet you were capable of that very same thing when you were their age? What are three

Starting point is 00:12:36 things you can decide to teach your kid this weekend or this month or this semester, depending on how intricate the skill is, okay? We're supposed to be building skills, handing the reins over to them, so to speak. For young people listening, it's please know that this is your life, not anybody else's. You are not a project of somebody else.

Starting point is 00:12:59 You are not a pet on their leash. You are not the evidence of their worth. You are a precious individual. This is your one wild and precious life. And here I'm quoting the late poet Mary Oliver, who said in her poem, Summer Day, tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? And I want young people to hear that, Mike. It is your one wild and precious life. What does wild mean? I think it means untamed, unplanned, unscheduled. It will be, it'll make of itself what it will, anything is possible. So please be curious about who you are, what you're good at, what lights you up, where you feel joyful and in what kinds of environments you thrive and

Starting point is 00:13:47 with whom you feel a sense of belonging. We are talking about growing up and being an adult and why so many young people today have a real problem with that concept. My guest is Julie Lithcott-Hames. She is author of the book, Your Turn to Be an Adult. 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. So take a moment and think about what you're building for. We've got the financial tools to help make it happen. Wealthsimple,

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Starting point is 00:15:01 Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. So Julie, it's one thing to help kids understand that they need to do things for themselves. They can make their own breakfast. But there are times, I think, where it gets really hard is when life smacks your kid in the face and to let them handle it. That, if you haven't been doing that, to watch your kid have to suffer and figure it out is really hard. Absolutely. And look, I'm not a sadist or a masochist. I'm not trying to watch my kids suffer.

Starting point is 00:15:40 I'm trying to help my kids learn how to do for themselves because one day I won't be here to do it for them. We're supposed to give them the opportunities for all of that learning while being there to prevent them from drowning, falling off a cliff, and in some other way, harming themselves. So here's the more practical example. When the kid constantly oversleeps and you are still waking up your eighth grader and now you're waking up your ninth grader to get them to school, you have to ask yourself, am I going to be waking up my college student? Am I going to be waking this kid up when they're in the workplace? No, that would be absurd. I'm supposed to teach my kid to be accountable to an alarm clock. And you think to yourself, well, but it's eighth grade. The stakes are so high.

Starting point is 00:16:24 I'm here to tell you the stakes only get higher. You are undermining your kid's ability to wake up when they need to. You have made yourself the solution, which is an impermanent solution. So you have to say to your kid, hey, kid, you know, I'm always waking you up. You always miss the bus or you're this happened to me with my kid in the seventh grade, my daughter, Avery. Sure enough, two days later, she overslept. I made breakfast. She wasn't there. I let her sleep. Someone knocks on the door. It's her friends. They're like, is Avery ready? I was like, no, I haven't seen her. They race upstairs. They bang on Avery's door. They get Avery. She's mad. She's throwing things. She's, you know, muttering. She comes downstairs, glares at me, leaves the house. She was never, ever late for school again. She learned that

Starting point is 00:17:06 lesson and it was a little hard to teach. And if the friends hadn't come by to bang on the door, I would have had to say, what do I do now? Let my kid just sleep in and discover it's 10 o'clock and she's not at school. Yes, that was the right answer in that moment. Here's the thing. If your kid, however, has failed to wake up for this standardized test that they've studied for, for weeks, if not months, that's not the day to teach that lesson. That would be cruel. We want to be helpful. We want to be useful, of course. And in those moments of big consequence, we should bring the forgotten clarinet so they can play in the recital, drive them to the SAT. But in the run of the mill everyday moments, we need to say, oh my gosh, you forgot your clarinet. That must be so frustrating. Oh, how do you think you're going to handle it? And that tells the kid's developing brain,

Starting point is 00:17:56 it's mine to deal with. And my parent thinks I can. And that's the most undermining aspect of over-parenting, Mike. Every time we rescue, we're telling them, I don't think you can, so I will. I don't think you can be successful at algebra, so I'll fix it and make it better. I'll do your science project. That tells your kid, you're not capable. Don't worry, I've got it. It undermines their sense of agency, which undermines their chances for good mental health. All of this is connected. You know what I wonder is why my parents and the parents in that generation of my parents didn't struggle with this. They didn't have to hold themselves back from over-parenting and for doing everything for their kids and being overly involved with their kids, it somehow seemed easier for them to be at arm's length. Something that I've read that really intrigues me is there's a preciousness about children today. We tend to have two of them instead of five or eight. We often go to some lengths to conceive them today.

Starting point is 00:19:04 So if we've been watching them at the stage of sperm, egg and embryo, you're going to be damn sure we're going to keep an eye on them. That is hover over their every move and take their temperature constantly and measure every poop and pee and and all of that once they're born and out into their toddlerhood and out into their elementary school years. So I think there's something to it. But also a parent's ego is involved today in our children as that project, as that pet, as that evidence of what we can do. So there is this societal pressure around, let us see what your child has achieved, and we will decide how we feel about you accordingly. And that feels like a very, very contemporary concern. I wonder if parents see this in themselves. In other words, I think people are aware that there is this over-parenting and that kids are having trouble developing, and people see it on a societal level, but do they see it in their own house?

Starting point is 00:20:09 Or do they rationalize and say, well, things are a little different in my house. My kid's a little different. He needs a little more help. But I'm not contributing to this problem because, you know, I've got it under control. And people don't recognize that they are contributing to the problem. What do you think? I was an advocate for other people's kids at the college level. I've got my own, as I said, 22 and 20. And I am here to say, it turns out I was over-parenting them. I didn't realize it, Mike. I was railing against the problem while simultaneously contributing to the problem in my own house. I was cutting my against the problem while simultaneously contributing to the problem in my

Starting point is 00:20:45 own house. I was cutting my kid's meat when he was 10. And that was when I realized, oh no, I am that parent who's doing way more than my parents ever did. Therefore, I'm depriving my kid of building skills. How am I going to let go of him at 18 when he can't even cut his own meat at 10? And I began to try to repattern in my own house. And I'm still hard at work at that. My son has given me permission to share, he's now 22, that we have been hard at work at this through family therapy during the pandemic.

Starting point is 00:21:16 He came home after two years of college, had had some serious mental health issues. And we read this really damning article out of the Atlantic that came out in May of 2020. It was the cover story, and it's on anxiety in children. My son suffers from anxiety as well as it deals with ADHD. And this article out of the lab of Ellie Leibowitz at Yale shows that when parents over-accommodate a kid's fear, we can end up fomenting full-blown anxiety, or we contribute to the creation of full-blown anxiety in our kids. And over-accommodation

Starting point is 00:21:53 looks like this. When they're afraid of the dark, and we say, don't worry, you'll never be in the dark. When they're afraid of being alone, and we say, don't worry, you'll never be alone. When they only eat certain things, and we say, I'll make sure you always have that food you like wherever we go, we think it's loving. Turns out that that behavior on our part of accommodation can lead to this inability of the kid to cope in circumstances that are difficult. They have a lot of fear. What our over-accommodation has taught them is, hey, that thing you fear is so legitimate, I'm going to curate your environment so you never experience it. What we're supposed to do is empathize and empower. I can see that's hard for you. I'm

Starting point is 00:22:34 here for you. Do you want to talk about it? Listen, listen, listen. Empathize with their feelings and then empower. Say, you know what? I know it's hard now, but I know it's not always going to be this hard. You smile and you walk away. That's what we're supposed to do. So I have experienced that reality in my own life. I was that parent over-accommodating my kids' sensitivities, I would call them. I thought it was the loving thing to do. But now the evidence is increasingly clear. That short-term solution of, I can't handle my kid's sad feelings or feelings of discomfort or what have you, such that I will swoop in and handle, undermines his ability to handle for himself. So I am actively undoing that with great results. Now I'm able to look at my 22-year-old

Starting point is 00:23:18 when he's dealing with a difficulty, and instead of feeling responsible for sorting that difficulty out, I look at him like, wow, that looks like it's really tough. If you need my help, I'm here. But you know what, kid, you do hard things. And I smile and I walk away. And he comes back to me with this look on his face like, I do hard things, mom. I took care of that, you know, and I can see him building that agency, which leads to a degree of mental health and wellness we all long for. And those of us who have been jostled awake by our kids' depression, anxiety,

Starting point is 00:23:51 we know we have to turn this around. And we who have seen it are motivated to stop the over-parenting. And so I do see so many people shifting, so many people saying, I'm not taking a chance with my kids' mental health. I don't need that outcome so badly for them that I'm going to undermine their mental health and wellness. Something else that I've noticed, and I have no data to support this, but another contributor to this problem that I have seen is that I think parents are friendlier with their kids today than in previous generations.

Starting point is 00:24:25 I mean, you know, I'll lie on the floor and watch TV with my kids, but my father would have never done that with me. I listen to the same music as my kids do, but I didn't listen to the same music that my parents listened to. That there's a blurring of the lines, that parents today are friendlier with their kids. And being friendlier, you want to help them out. And it just it seems like that contributes to the problem. It's a beautiful thing to picture you on the floor watching a show with your kid.

Starting point is 00:24:57 I think anybody listening who's in their 40s and 50s can relate to how differently we are with our kids versus how our parents were with us, right? We've come out, we're long past the era of children should be seen and not heard. We're long past the era of my way or the highway authoritarian parenting in the main. We do care and love in a way that is so evident and beautiful there is a friendship and a friendliness and an awareness and a caretaking right we're we're we're so involved we your parents probably couldn't remember the name of any of your teachers we know not just every teacher's name but the homework that they've assigned right we We know every other parent on the soccer team, we've created quite a presence for ourselves in the lives of children, and that has yielded

Starting point is 00:25:52 so many positives. But yes, to your point, I think maybe we have swung a little too far. We need to go for that friendly, present, loving connection. Connection is so good. It's such a protective factor against the world's ills. But we must never lose sight of the fact that our primary job is to make sure they can do more and more for themselves. So as we're sitting there watching the movie, we've got to then say, all right, kiddo, take care of the dishes, please. I'm going to go take out the trash, like invite them into take care of the dishes, please. I'm going to go take out the trash. Like, invite them into the work of the household. Expect them to contribute by way of doing chores.

Starting point is 00:26:31 Hold them accountable for the things they need to learn. Both are possible. Well, it's an important discussion about a topic that really didn't used to be a topic a generation or two ago where people don't want to grow up or don't feel equipped to grow up. So it's really important to understand what's going on and what we can do. Julie Lithcott-Hames has been my guest, and the name of her book is Your Turn to Be an Adult, and you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful, as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert, as trains can pass at any time on the tracks.

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Starting point is 00:28:39 No matter where you live, there have been times when you have been stuck in traffic and wondered why, and wished you weren't. I know I've thought about it, and I've wondered, for example, how does traffic on a multi-lane interstate highway, how does it just come to a stop all by itself? Unless there's an accident or something blocking the road, how in the world does traffic just stop? And then sometimes, miraculously, just start up again? or something blocking the road, how in the world does traffic just stop? And then sometimes, miraculously, just start up again? How does our driving behavior affect traffic patterns? If we drove better, or if we drove differently, could we make traffic better?

Starting point is 00:29:20 Or is it really just a matter of too many cars? These are some of the questions I want to ask Jonas Eliasson. He's an internationally known expert on traffic patterns. He's director of transport accessibility for the Swedish Transport Administration and a visiting professor of transport systems. He also has an interesting TED talk about how to solve traffic problems. Hi Jonas, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi. So I've always thought when I'm driving and all of a sudden everything slows down and maybe stops and there's a traffic jam, I kind of assume it's somebody's fault. Somebody did something wrong. There's some jerk up there who screwed this up and now we're all stuck here.

Starting point is 00:30:04 Some of the times, but not most of the time, there are jerks just sort of clogging up the streets. But most of the time, this is really a very sort of normal or standard behavior of flows. Traffic works in much the same ways as flows through a pipe. When you gather enough sort of, from a physical point of view, random particles that move about and sort of interact with each other. What you get then is some kind of congestion. But the difference between

Starting point is 00:30:31 flowing through a pipe, random things flowing through a pipe, and traffic on a highway is that there is behavior going on. People are doing things because this guy's in the wrong lane, this guy wants to go in that lane. Somebody's going too fast. Somebody's going too slow. Somebody's driving like a jerk. So is it those behaviors that are causing the trouble? When you think about car queues that sort of just randomly occur on the freeway, more or less out of thin air, once you are sufficiently many cars on the same place. These are just sort of very, very small, essentially random disturbances that cause

Starting point is 00:31:10 some driver to brake and some other driver to then catch up into the other driver and that one has to brake and then the other one speeds up and so on. And these sort of micro disturbances, which are really, really small, they quickly get amplified by the traffic patterns. And it's because there are so many cars that there's no real margin for error, unlike, say, on a rural road where the cars may be, you know, a thousand feet away from each other. There's plenty of time to correct. Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 00:31:42 Exactly like that. And then there are, of course, also congestion and crowding that are caused by things like incidents and cars breaking down or some accident is happening. And then there is also car queues that depend on some particular bottleneck, like a traffic signal not having enough capacity and things like that. But then on top of that, even if you have no bottlenecks and no incidents, then once you have enough traffic on one particular freeway, then you will still have car queues sort of appearing out of thin air just because of these random variations in the flow. Do chronic traffic problems train drivers? And what I mean by that is, let's say in your town you have a traffic light

Starting point is 00:32:25 that doesn't stay green long enough to let all the cars through. So consequently, the cars back up and back up and back up, and it becomes a real problem. So I would imagine that drivers over time see that and go, well, then that's not the way I want to go. I'm going to go find a different way to get where I'm going that doesn't involve this traffic light. And so the problem kind of self-corrects because a lot of drivers go a different way. Yes, more or less. I mean, to a fairly large extent, people seem to be rather well-informed and rather rational when it comes to driving behavior or travel behavior in general, for that matter. Sometimes people believe that if we just could get better information out to people, then carcass would disappear.

Starting point is 00:33:12 This is typically not true. People are actually quite well informed about the best route to their particular destination, for example, or the best time of day to go, for example. So in that sense, they are fairly rational and fairly well-informed. So if there, for example, will be a traffic signal that doesn't work very well, then enough people will try another route the next day. If you, for example, increase capacity by adjusting or optimizing that particular traffic

Starting point is 00:33:40 signal, that will also attract more drivers because they will, after a while, realize that here's a really well-working traffic signal that will also attract more drivers because they will after a while realize that here's a really well-working traffic signal. So they'll take that route instead. So what happens is then is something that we call latent demand that is people shifting from other routes over to this new improved route. So after a while, you will tend to have the same congestion regardless. And isn't that exactly what happens when roadways are widened to add lanes and then people find out, well, there's new lanes, so let's get more cars over there because now there's new lanes and then everything slows down again? Yes. Yes, exactly like that, actually. So only increasing capacity when you have a road network that is already sort of filled up to capacity is almost pointless, at least in many situations.

Starting point is 00:34:29 I mean, there are exceptions to this, but a lot of time it's exactly like you say that if you improve one junction or one traffic signal or one particular lane, for example, then what happens is both that you shift people over from other roads. And it also, it sometimes means that they can just get even faster to the next bottleneck and then arrive earlier to the next queue and haven't really gained anything. We mentioned before that, you know, every once in a while, there's some jerk that does something, speeds through, cuts people off, that kind of thing. Do those people have any kind of real effect on the overall traffic or those are just like little random aberrations and the traffic fixes itself pretty quickly? They actually do. They actually disturb the traffic flow when people do it like that.

Starting point is 00:35:16 It's really only relevant when you are at what we call the critical capacity. When you are in the traffic flow that is almost causing a queue, then if people do like that, you know, cut queues and change lanes right in front of other people and so on, then you can switch from right below the critical capacity where traffic is actually flowing quite well to the other point of the critical capacity where queues start to form instead. When you already have a long car queue, then it actually doesn't matter so much.

Starting point is 00:35:50 And of course, if you don't have a congestion, it doesn't matter so much either. But when you are at this sort of critical point where things almost work well, then that kind of behavior is really disturbing. One of the things that I've always wondered about is those phantom traffic jams. And then you get to that point, you know, where you're on the brakes for 10 minutes. You're barely moving at all. And then all of a sudden, it opens up. And there was nothing there.

Starting point is 00:36:20 There's nothing there now. And all of a sudden, you can go Zoom. Why? Why there? Why now? What happened? Yeah, so it usually starts with some kind of small, almost random disturbance in the traffic flow. It can be something as small as two cars getting too close to each other, so one has to brake. And then when one car brakes, then the car behind that one will have to brake as well. And then the next car will have to brake and so on. And that's what we call upstream propagation. This car queue becomes longer be there because it gets fed from upstream.

Starting point is 00:37:10 New cars are then arriving towards the end of the queue. And as long as there are enough new cars coming into the end of the queue, then you will be there, despite that the original cause for the queue isn't there anymore. So the point at which, you know, when you're in those phantom traffic jams and everything opens up, that point keeps moving backwards then, yes? Yes, exactly like that, exactly. I would imagine, and I imagine people like you do this, if you look at traffic from above, like from a helicopter, you can probably see a lot of really interesting things about how it flows. Yes, absolutely. And this is really interesting. So, I mean, if you ever get the chance to watch

Starting point is 00:37:52 from a traffic control tower or something, you should really do this. And one thing that strikes you is that there are large areas of any given particular road that is actually empty because cars tend to bunch together. They form in long queues. But that also means that right before that queue, the road often actually seems rather empty. And this is because the same phenomenon that when cars sort of bunch together, they are standing almost still in one area, but then right in front of that queue,

Starting point is 00:38:22 then the road can actually seem almost empty because, well, almost by definition, the cars which are in the queue can't get to the empty space on the road. Are there traffic jams because people expect traffic jams? And what I mean by that is if you drive to work every day and at this one particular spot every day, the traffic always slows down. Will it slow down even if the traffic doesn't require it to slow down just because the people who drive it every day are slowing down because they always slow down? Not so much, actually. There is usually something causing this, but these things can be really, really small. It can be something that the road turns slightly so you can't see so far ahead as you could earlier.

Starting point is 00:39:12 Then people tend to slow down. And just this slowing down can be one of these sort of random disturbances which causes a queue. There's also a big difference, for example, just when it becomes a little bit darker or if it rains or something like that that will almost subconsciously mean that people are slowing down and just slowing down a little bit can be that kind of small disturbance that means that the queue is formed i'm curious you would probably know this are there big differences in the way people drive the driving behaviors of people differ from country to country

Starting point is 00:39:46 or are drivers drivers well there is actually a fairly big difference between between different countries traffic cultures and the easiest way to see that is actually the number of accidents because accident is something that we can measure just looking looking at traffic patterns, you can almost see things as well, but there is a huge difference between different countries in terms of traffic accidents or traffic fatalities per driving kilometre, for example. Some of that difference is due to safer cars, safer roads, slower speeds and so on, but there also a huge difference in in driving culture actually there are uh countries where the where the cultural behavior when you drive is much more aggressive for example which tends to uh cause many more accidents than other countries where people tend to drive a little bit more careful and which which countries are which? Well, maybe I shouldn't point fingers here.

Starting point is 00:40:47 No, point fingers. No, go ahead. Point fingers. Actually, Sweden happens to be one of those places where people actually drive rather carefully. We also tend to have very safe roads and very safe vehicles. We actually have, for a very long time, going decades back, we've had this conscious effort to teach people when they take the driving license, for example, to drive a little bit slower than they think that they should and to try to give way a little bit more often than they think. US, I seem to sort of observe the same things between if you're in a really, the really big cities, their people tend to drive a little bit more aggressively than when you drive in the rural areas. This just happens to be, I should say, my own personal observation from driving in the US. But it seems to be borne out by the number of accidents per car kilometer. One thing I've noticed is how people will cooperate with other drivers unless they decide they don't want to. And then, you know, one guy wants to move over,

Starting point is 00:41:51 he's in the wrong lane and he needs to get over there. And some people will let him in. And some people will just like take that stance like, uh-uh, no, you're not coming in. And yet if the roles were reversed, you would want the guy to let you in. But sometimes people like getting on the freeway, you know, people are merging on the freeway and some people slow down, let the guy in. And other people, they block him. And I thought, well, what's the point of that? It's a rather curious behavior, actually. Most of the time, we seem to be reacting on a sort of a tit-for-tat matter.

Starting point is 00:42:26 That is, if we think that the other guy is actually, he's done an honest mistake, for example, or he has some right to get in, then most people will let him in. But then on the other hand, if we feel that someone is trying to jump the queue, for example, or has done some other sort of unfair thing, then people will have this sort of tendency to try to punish the other guy a little bit not letting him in and so on. My own actually personal impression is that since it's so much harder to drive in a really complicated urban setting then people tend to be a little bit more

Starting point is 00:43:01 forgiving towards other people's mistakes if you are driving in a really complicated city, as opposed to if you're driving in a smaller town where people sort of expect everyone else to know where they are getting, which lane they should be driving in and so on. If you drive in, well, let's say New York or for that matter, Stockholm, which is a reasonably large city, then people know that, you know, this time it was you that did the mistake, but next time it might be me. So I might just as well forgive you. Something that fascinates me about driving is how people are so impatient sometimes and they'll take pretty big risks to pass you or make a big, you know, noise, blow their horn to go by you.

Starting point is 00:43:46 And yet 30 seconds later, you're both at the same stoplight up ahead. And they got nothing for their effort other than to probably waste gas and put their life at risk. And yet people do that all the time. Yes, it's absolutely true. It's absolutely true. And I think we have this sort of psychological drive for instant gratification. It's the same kind of psychological mechanism that makes it so, so, so hard to not eat that piece of chocolate that you have in front of

Starting point is 00:44:19 you, even if you're not particularly hungry for chocolate. But if you have chocolate in front of you, then this sort of urge for instant gratification is very, very strong. And it takes conscious effort not to do this. So if you think that you see an opportunity to get ahead, for example, then you almost have to sort of slow down consciously, not to sort of leap ahead and get that opportunity,

Starting point is 00:44:44 that piece of chocolate or your place in the car queue or something. So this sort of urge for, as I said, instant gratification or to get something without thinking, I think that we're sort of hardwired psychologically to react in that way. Knowing what you know and from looking at traffic from above, are there things we could do better, that drivers could do better, that would help everyone? Or do we do pretty well the way it is? Well, things would definitely move better if we tried to sort of coordinate ourselves better meaning not jumping car queues not you know driving first really really fast and then really really slow and having to sort of panic break and so on so if we just sort of drive a little bit more let's call it defensively

Starting point is 00:45:38 then things will work better and then of course i mean ask yourself, do I really need to go on this particular trip at this particular time at this particular route? Because I mean, most of the trips that we do, they aren't really voluntary. Many things that we do, we have to do because we need to get to work on time. But then there is this sort of fraction of trips that we make that we could ask ourselves, could I perhaps change my departure time to avoid contributing to the Jews? You know, when you're on the freeway and there's a sign and it says, you know, lane closed one mile ahead for construction. And so people start to move over. Well, are you better to move over early or wait until the lane is you're just about to the closure

Starting point is 00:46:23 and then move over and use up that lane until it does close? As long as the traffic is moving, then it's actually better to try to merge well ahead before the lane closes. Once you have a car queue, it doesn't really matter because once cars are standing still, then you have to merge and the speed of that merge doesn't really matter really, not anymore in a way. But as long as you are before that point, this so-called critical capacity, when traffic is still moving, then you're actually better off, at least as a collective, to try to merge while you're still driving rather than wait to the absolute last second and then create one of those, as I mentioned earlier, one of these small disturbances which tend to build up a few upstreams behind you. Is there anything about

Starting point is 00:47:10 traffic that people don't seem to understand that you know from your experience and your studying this problem that you wish people had a better grip on? Well, there might be two things actually. One is that I think that people underestimate how much they could avoid queues by just shifting their departure time a relatively small bit. I mean, typically you would have severe congestions between, say, seven and nine or something like that. But if you have real congestion between seven and nine, then just, you know, arriving to the same point, maybe 6 30 or even 6 45 or something might be that congestion might be way better uh than than between seven and nine

Starting point is 00:47:52 or whatever times are applicable to your particular city the other thing that that i don't think that people is sort of aware of is how much of traffic that is not trips to and from work. Typically, things like, I mean, something like 25 or 30% of car traffic is trips to and from work. And obviously, it varies depending on the time of the day, for example. But that also means that there is an opportunity to change traffic patterns if people can do all the other things that you do. I mean, go shopping or go to the cinema or go visit friends and so on, and just shift the departure time or maybe shift the route to some other place

Starting point is 00:48:32 than just at the particular time where so many people are getting to and from work. Well, for reasons that aren't really clear to me, I've always been fascinated by traffic and what it does. And it's interesting to talk to somebody who studies it and has the real facts on why it and what it does. And it's interesting to talk to somebody who studies it and has the real facts on why it does what it does. Jonas Eliasson has been my guest. He is an internationally known expert on traffic patterns, director of transport accessibility for the Swedish Transport Administration. And he has a TED Talk, an interesting TED Talk about how to solve traffic jams.

Starting point is 00:49:05 And there's a link to that TED Talk in the show notes. Thanks, Jonas. Thank you very much. It seems that just about everyone enjoys music. And that's a good thing because music turns out to be good for you. Hundreds of studies have been done on the effects of listening to music, and here's what some of those studies have discovered. Music can help with pain.

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Starting point is 00:50:30 And to get them to listen to it, all you have to do is tell them about it. Have them search Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn, CastBox, wherever they listen. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle.

Starting point is 00:50:56 On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed. I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle, what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched in cooler temperatures. You got this.

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Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Why Adulting is Often So Scary & Understanding Traffic

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