Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Why Great Ideas Fail First & Compulsion Investigated

Episode Date: June 26, 2021

Do you know what happens to your brain when you are sleeping? In a sense, a cleaning crew gets in there to clean out all the toxins so that your brain works better the next day. I know it sounds weird but it is exactly what happens. Listen as I begin this episode with that explanation. http://ens-newswire.com/2013/10/18/brain-cleans-itself-of-toxins-during-sleep/ Failure is often part of success. In fact, most great breakthrough ideas fail first and then get modified before they became a success. It often happens multiple times. Being open to learning from those early failures and being able to adapt your ideas is what helps make ideas prosper according to Safi Bahcall. Safi is a physicist and biotech entrepreneur and author of the book, Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases and Transform Industries (https://amzn.to/2GsXA8u). Listen as Safi offers insight and great examples of how important inventions and breakthroughs have happened by learning from failure and how we all can do it. Often the reason you get upset or stressed out is because things aren’t the way you think they SHOULD be… Traffic should not be so heavy, your doctor should not keep you waiting – that type of thing. Listen as I explore how to change that thinking to relieve yourself of unnecessary frustration. http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2015/04/frustrated/ When I think of compulsive behavior, I think of people who wash their hands a lot or check to see if they locked the door or turned off the coffee pot 50 times a day. While that seems to be extreme compulsive behavior, how is it any different than checking your smart phone 86 times a day? (That’s the average). Science writer Sharon Begley has explored this in her book Just Can’t Stop: An Investigation of Compulsion (https://amzn.to/2IAUnHj). She joins me to reveal why compulsive behavior isn’t necessarily bad and explains at what point it does become a problem and what to do about it. PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Hims is helping guys be the best version of themselves with licensed medical providers and FDA approved products to help treat hair loss. Go to https://forhims.com/something Save time, money, and stress with Firstleaf – the wine club designed with you in mind! Join today and you’ll get 6 bottles of wine for $29.95 and free shipping! Just go to https://tryfirstleaf.com/SOMETHING Learn about investment products and more at https://Investor.gov, your unbiased resource for valuable investment information, tools and tips. Before You Invest, https://Investor.gov. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I want to go to Jack's place today. I'll just take the car. Don't wait up, okay? Kids go from 0 to 18 in no time, don't they? At Intact Insurance, we insure your car so you can enjoy the ride. Visit Intact.ca or talk to your broker. Conditions apply. Today on Something You Should Know, something amazing happens to your brain every night while you're sleeping. I'll explain that, then what it takes to turn your great ideas into reality.

In our culture, we tend to emphasize sort of skill and genius, and we miss the fact that so many of the great breakthroughs have a very large component of luck. And what you want to do is cultivate your own luck. Then, how to stop being stressed and frustrated when life doesn't go the way you think it should. And a lot of people have compulsive behaviors. You do if you check your phone a lot. Not being able to leave it behind, not being able

to turn it off, that's a compulsion. It's not a mental disorder, but it definitely is a compulsion. And the reason is that we feel that if we are not always looking at it, we'll miss something. And that triggers an anxiety that many people find intolerable. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat.

Download Bumble and try it for yourself. 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. to getting a good night's sleep every night. But those benefits may go beyond what you even imagined. It seems that while you sleep, good things happen to your brain. For one thing, it seems that sleep is essentially like bringing in the overnight cleaning crew to clear out the toxic waste proteins that accumulate between your brain cells during the day. The co-director of the Center for Translational Neuromedicine at the University of Rochester

has studied the mechanism that underlies these functions, and she says that it's like a dishwasher. And just as you wouldn't want to eat off dirty dishes, why would you want to settle for going through the day thinking with a dirty brain? So a good night's sleep helps to clean your brain. Since sleep is so important, it's worth mentioning also that your afternoon coffee may be messing up your sleep. A study from Wayne State University and Henry Ford Hospital concluded that when taken even six hours before bed, caffeine can decrease your sleep by as much as one hour per night. And that is something you should know.

It's always interesting to hear the stories of where great ideas come from. And perhaps even more interesting are the stories of where great ideas go, how they're nurtured from idea to reality. As you probably know, a lot of great inventions and breakthroughs seemingly come out of left field or from some other completely unrelated idea. This process of making ideas into something real is what Safi Bakal has studied extensively. Safi is a physicist and biotech entrepreneur, and in 2011 he worked with President Obama's Council of Science Advisors, and he is the author of a new book called Loon Shots, How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, C, cure diseases, and transform industries. Hi Safi.

Thanks, delighted to be here. So this is such an interesting way of looking at ideas because although you talk about big, great, and grand ideas, this is more about learning from failure than it is coming up with the next big thing. Well, it's interesting. There's this sort of popular myth that the great inventors and the great entrepreneurs are the ones that come up with the best ideas. But in the time that I've spent with scientists or entrepreneurs over the last probably 20 or so years, one of the most

consistent things that I've seen is that what it takes to be a great, whether it's an entrepreneur or a great creative, writer, designer, whatever you imagine, is less about creating new ideas and it's more about investigating failure. And here's what I mean by that. Any good idea will fail many times before it succeeds. Essentially every idea, despite sort of revisionist histories you might read about the big breakthroughs, they fail many times before they succeed. Even Facebook, social networks, the idea of social network failed many times. The people who are really good, the one group that ended up investing in Facebook, for example, what they were really good at is investigating failure.

I mean, peeling the layers behind why did something fail? Was it a true fail? It's a bad idea, or something you might call a false fail. It was a flaw in the experiment or the measurement, but the underlying idea was good. Yet so often we never hear about the failures. We hear that, you know, so-and-so did something and as if it was just out of the box and it wasn't. It was fail, fail, fail, then bingo. We mentioned Facebook. I'll give you an example. So when Mark Zuckerberg was taking that idea around to investors, there had been maybe a dozen, two dozen social networks, all of which had failed. And right around that time, there was another social network called Friendster, which had been very popular. It was getting to, I don't know, maybe a million users or so.

And then it was just starting to fail as users were leaving that site and going to a new one called, I think it was called MySpace. So all the investors that Zuckerberg took his idea around to said basically, well, social networks could never work. You know why? They're fads. People will stay on one just like they stay on a clothing brand, like a pair of jeans, and they'll switch to another one the next season. That's what we see happening. But one guy, a guy named Peter Thiel, an investor in Silicon Valley, said, is it really just like a social Fed? Is it really a bad business idea? And so he started investigating Friendster. And he asked the team behind Friendster if he could see their logs of how long users were staying on the site. Because he knew the site was sort of crashing and having some problems. And he was stunned by what he saw. People kept staying on this site, even though it was a pretty poor website and kept crashing, people were staying on it for hours. So he realized it wasn't a bad idea.

It was just a bad software glitch. So he put in half a million dollars and sold it eight years later for a billion dollars. So that's an example of a false fail. It's an example of the power of investigating failure. And how do you do that? How do you investigate failure and be objective about it? Because it seems that you could look at a failure and say, well, the reason it failed is this, and you could be right. Or you could say the reason it failed is this, and you could be right. Or you could say the reason it failed is this, and you could be wrong. So how do you do this well and objectively and accurately? No, that's a great question. So anybody who is pursuing some kind of crazy idea,

some kind of ambition, and people say, I don't think it's going to work. There's one takeaway that I found incredibly useful, and it's something that the best, whether they're entrepreneurs or creatives or writers, seem to regularly do. I remember it with an acronym, LSC, Listen to the Suck with Curiosity. And here's what I mean by that. have an idea, a passion project that you're pursuing and you show it to either an investor or let's say you're a writer, you show it to a publisher or an editor and they tell you they don't like it and they start telling you all the bad things about it. The great reaction, the ones that the reaction that the people who end up doing amazing things regularly do is to listen to that bad message with curiosity, meaning investigate, set aside the emotions, the urge to punch them in the face and dismiss and reject them. They're

idiots. They don't know what they're talking about. Set all that stuff aside and ask them, help me understand. What is it exactly that doesn't quite resonate for you with this idea or this product or this business? And if you keep pulling on that thread, because a lot of people actually don't want to say. There's not a lot in it for them to offer you negative feedback, because if they're friends of yours,'re gonna resist that you might damage your friendship But that's exactly what you want to do you want to take off that hat of being rejected or Feeling depressed and you want to pull on that thread like an in like an investigator like Sherlock Holmes

But you put on your Sherlock Holmes hat and say help me understand you keep pulling on that thread And you might find a little piece of gold at the end. That's a nugget that you never thought about. That little nugget could be the key to turning your idea into a home run. So I think of that as LSC. Listen to the suck with curiosity. Set aside your resentment. Keep pulling on the thread. It's hard to hear that no one likes your baby. It's even harder to keep asking why. When people have ideas, how do you think the best way is to approach them, evaluate them, decide to fish or cut bait? What's the process? I think of it as wearing two hats. And it's very important

to remember which hat you're wearing. One hat is the artist. That's the one that's trying to have as many creative ideas as possible. The other hat is the soldier. That's the one that's trying to narrow them down and focus on getting things done on time, on budget, on spec. So one thing that I found incredibly useful, and I have a number of entrepreneur, writer friends, creative friends who have been doing something sort of similar. I actually physically keep two hats, one with sort of wacky feathers on it and one is sort of a military cap. When you put on your wacky feather creative artist hat, the secret is speed. You just want to quickly go through ideas and generate as many ideas as you can. That's number one. Number two, attention. You want to look for that tiny little, I think of it as like a red sparrow, like you're

running through a dense forest and it's full of lots of stuff, whether it's your story options or your business options. And you're looking for that tiny little red sparrow that's the secret that will take you into a beautiful place. So you want to run as quickly as you can through that forest or on the edge of that forest. Number two is attention. You want to look for that red sparrow. And number three is courage. When you see that red sparrow, follow it. So the secret to the first hat, the artist hat, speed, attention, courage.

And then you want to take off that hat. When you are done creating as many crazy, wacky ideas and you want to, there it's really about quantity, not quality. That's the secret to really creative, wild ideas, is go as fast as you can, throw out as many ideas as you can. When you are done with that process, you take off your wacky feather artist hat, and you put on your military cap. Okay, let's prioritize. Let's think, let's say, across two dimensions.

Ease and value. How difficult is this? How easy is this? Value. How much value is this in this idea? Is it a pretty valuable big idea or is it sort of incremental, maybe not that valuable? And you kind of prioritize stuff based on ease value and the stuff that's in that kind of top right quadrant of kind of high ease and high value. Those are the first things you go after. Safi Bakal is my guest. He

is a physicist and biotech entrepreneur, and he's author of the book, Loon Shots, How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy.

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So Safi, a moment ago you described a process of going after your big ideas. Can you give me a real-life example of that theory in practice? This was maybe 10 years ago. I worked with a guy named Judah Folkman who probably would have won the Nobel Prize had he lived a few years longer. But when he was in his early 30s, he was a head of surgery at Boston Children's Hospital. He came up with a pretty crazy idea for treating cancer. His idea was, you know, when tumors grow, they need nutrients. They need oxygen and blood. Just like when you're building a house, you have to bring in supplies. What about if we try to treat cancer by blocking those pipes,

taking away the nutrients from a tumor as it needs to grow? And at the time, the only things that we had were chemotherapy and radiation, and people thought he was crazy. He said, hey, look, you look at these tumors in patients because he was operating. He was a surgeon. He said they're surrounded by these blood vessels. They said, well, that's just inflammation, irritation. He worked on that for 30 years. Almost every year, he was told he was nuts or ridiculed or dismissed. One year, I remember, an article

appeared in the Wall Street Journal, famed cancer researchers, results cannot be replicated. Most people would react by angrily criticizing either the newspaper or the sources. Instead, he picked up the phone. He called the lab that was the source for that article, and said, help me understand. What exactly are you doing? Walk me through the steps that you are doing. As he went through those steps, he realized that the material that they were using, the stuff that he had shipped them, had been damaged by the shipping process when they freeze it down and unfreeze it. By pulling on that thread, he uncovered a very important nugget, that there was something in the freezing process. He learned not only how to fix that, but that actually gave him new ideas about his work. So that's an example of LSC, listen to the suck with curiosity, rather than reacting angrily or defensively. He kind of put

on an investigator hat and sort of dispassionately listened to what the other side was telling him. You don't hear those kind of stories too often of somebody who's, you know, tried for 30 years to do something and failed before they succeeded because everybody likes a winner. So many of the big ideas that we, in hindsight, take for granted, failed many times along the way. Let's take, for example, Google Search. When Google was going around trying to raise money for their idea of a search, they were also dismissed.

Why? There had been, again, 15 or 20 different search portals, and none of them made any money. They'd all failed. So they thought quite carefully about why did they fail. They came up first with a new algorithm for prioritizing search rankings because they said, well, all these things have failed because they're not really giving users the sort of prioritized results that they really care about. And they came up with a clever tweak, not a very big tweak, a small tweak, just prioritizing by number of links that really improved the usefulness of their search compared to others. And then everybody said, nah, there's no way you can make

any money. It's just a service. Anybody could do it. So they came up with an idea and they said, well, why don't we auction off the real estate on the page to the highest bidder after these searches? It doesn't sound like a wild idea, but now, pretty much as a result of those two things, Google's almost a trillion dollar company. But sometimes the idea is a bad idea. Sometimes it isn't going to work. I guess it's hard to understand. How do you know when it's really a question of thinking for yourself, what is the difference between stubbornness and persistence? And the litmus test I use for myself is when I start to get negative feedback, which will happen all the time if you have an idea that's challenging accepted beliefs and all the good ideas challenge accepted beliefs. If you're getting negative feedback on that, what's your reaction? Do you dismiss and say, well, these people are idiots, they don't understand? In that case, the needle might be pointing towards stubborn, might be pointing towards

time to move on. Or do you react when you get that same negative feedback of taking off the dismissing rejecting hat and putting on the Sherlock's home Sherlock Holmes hat and saying to help me understand I find that with the ideas that end up working I'm still always putting on the Sherlock Holmes hat and digging for the nugget. When I'm just being stubborn is when I'm just dismissing negative reaction as a bunch of idiots. And so for me, that's like a temperature check. How am I reacting to negative feedback? When you look at successful ideas, things that really, you know, hit it out of the park and you drill down into the story.

There's oftentimes something in that story that is not about the idea and the market research and the product development. There's a magic. There's some magic that happens. In our culture, we, with our revisionist histories of great breakthroughs, tend to emphasize sort of skill and genius. And we miss the fact that so many of the great breakthroughs have a very large component of luck, of serendipity. The really great breakthroughs are do one part to skill and one part to serendipity. And what you want to do is be aware that luck plays an enormous role and do what you can to cultivate your own luck. It seems to me, and I'm so glad

you said that because I think I've always thought that so much of the success that we see is in large part luck. It was, and I can think of so many stories of people who just happened to be sitting next to that other guy who knew a guy, or you, you were sitting across the table from someone who could help you out, that those things are so much more powerful in success than anybody wants to talk about. Even the story of some of the most famous legendary creators, stories like Steve Jobs, so much of that story was luck. Like when he found the Macintosh project or when he bought Pixar, he bought it for a computer and who knew that they were making some movies. It turns out that the movies that they were making in that little company made him a billionaire. And because of that, he was able to go back to Apple. So much of that Apple story and Steve Jobs story was serendipity. Of course, there's some role of skill, but a very large part of that was serendipity.

What's the Moses trap? The Moses trap is the idea that we have that's kind of created by the press and popular images and these business magazines that have these cover stories of these great leaders, these innovators. And it's the idea that the great leaders are the ones who stand on top of a mountain like Moses and raise their staff and anoint the chosen project, the holy loonshot, like Steve Jobs, for example, with the iPod. The problem with that, the reason it becomes a trap is that that might work once or twice. If that's a leader's model of how they manage their business, whether it's a small business or a large business, that they stand on top of a mountain and make the big decisions. That might work once. It might work twice. But eventually, as I show with

some of those stories, whether it was Edwin Lander Polaroid or even Steve Jobs when he was younger, one trip to build Pan Am, that might work once or twice and maybe, if you're really lucky, three times. But eventually, you make a mistake because the mohsus up there and some competitor will eat your lunch. A very different way to lead, and when you look at the past, the sort of revisionist histories of great leaders, a very different way to lead is more like a careful gardener. You have these two groups, the artists that work on the creative new ideas and the soldiers that get things done on time, budget on spec the gardeners manage the touch and balance between these two groups they focused on the biggest failure point inside companies inside teams and that is the transfer creatives and soldiers

don't speak the same language most projects fail because of the transfer between those two. So the gardeners are the ones that are figuring out when to bring the baby ideas out of that little idea nursery, not too early, not too late, and making sure that they're okay when they're on the other side and bringing them back when they need some extra help. So that's what I mean by the Moses trap. And the lesson is be a gardener, not a Moses. So what's what I mean by the Moses trap. And the lesson is, be a gardener, not a Moses. So what's the takeaway from all of this? From all you've talked about and all the research you've done, what's the one, two, or three things that people can take away from this?

Here are the three things. Number one, LSC. Listen to the suck with curiosity. Keep pulling on those threads and search for that nugget of why is it that people are rejecting your idea. Number two, get two hats, artist hat and soldier hat, and be very mindful which you're wearing when. And number three, be a gardener, not a Moses. Great. Safi Bakhal has been my guest. He is a physicist and biotech entrepreneur and author of the book Loon Shots,

How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Safi. Thanks, Mike. It's been a pleasure. 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 guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes.

Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more.

A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of 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. When does normal behavior become compulsive behavior? How many times a day do you have to check your phone for that to become compulsive. Why do people avoid cracks in the sidewalk? Is that compulsive behavior or is that just playing a game? Why do we all, or most of us anyway, why do we do things that other people might consider a little weird? Sharon Begley decided to investigate this with some interesting and surprising results.

Sharon is a science writer for the science website STAT, and she's a former science columnist for Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal. She's author of a new book called Just Can't Stop, An Investigation of Compulsion. Hi, Sharon. Welcome. Thanks for having me, Mike. So when I think of compulsive behavior, I think about, you know, OCD, washing your hands a million times a day, or checking to make sure you lock the door two dozen times. What is your interest in this? Why investigate this? The tipping point, as it were, came when, so I'm a reporter, I've covered science and medical issues for many years. And a few years ago, as many people have experienced, I began to see that nobody could go anywhere, including to

the ladies' room, the men's room, lunch, whatever, without not only holding their phone, but having it in their face, looking at it all the time. And for my colleagues, that was because if some news broke, and these, again, were fellow reporters, and if they didn't jump on it in that very nanosecond, they would be in all sorts of trouble. And the reason they, therefore, could not leave their phone behind, the reason they couldn't stop looking at it, was simply anxiety. And anyway, so that sort of touched off my interest in this,

and I began to explore all sorts of forms of compulsions. And yes, to answer your question, once I began to understand what they were, I identified a few in myself as well. So what is a compulsion? How do you define it? Where's the line between normal behavior and compulsion? So that obviously was the first thing I had to figure out. And there's sort of three things that come under the general umbrella. Compulsions, impulsive behaviors, and behavioral addictions. So, you know, without getting too much in the weeds here, what emerged was that a compulsion is a behavior that we engage in over and over and over again.

It's driven by one thing and one thing only, and that's anxiety. The reason we engage in the compulsion is because it's the only way we have to alleviate the anxiety. So in the case of somebody with classic OCD, obsessive compulsive behavior, they engage, they wash their hands multiple times a day, they can't leave the house without returning to see if they've left the stove on. All of those manifestations of OCD are driven by anxiety, as is every other compulsive behavior. And where it tips from sort of functional and helping you in your life

and just sort of maybe quirky or eccentric into something that's an actual mental disorder is when it starts interfering with your life or causing distress. So looking at your phone, especially since everybody does it these days, is for the most part not considered a mental disorder. It's a sort of normal compulsion. But somebody who has OCD and who can't get through a day without washing her hands a hundred times until they're red and raw and bleeding, or somebody who has OCD and can't leave the house without returning to see if the stove is on,

that is obviously interfering with their life. So that's when it tips over into a mental disorder. And where do they come from? I know that you say that it's because of anxiety, but they probably didn't always do that. So where does it come from? Every individual has a certain degree of resilience. And, you know, we all know people who, you know, for whom life's difficulties just sort of slide off them like, you know, water off the back of a duck or something. And other people are more fragile emotionally and mentally.

And the anxiety really does leave its mark on them. And one way it does so, or one way it comes out, is through these compulsions. So let me also keep trying to answer your question by getting back to something you asked earlier, which is whether I have any. So I didn't think I did, but again, once I started getting into the subject,

I sort of took stock, as it were, and I'm really, really worried about how much money I spend, to the extent that I'll look for, you know, bargains, and even, you know, years ago, when they existed, grocery store coupons, etc. I would berate my poor husband if he spent more on something than he thought he should have. So I began to look at that, and, you know, without belaboring the point, I realized that the reason I act that way is because I'm just really worried that one day I will, you know, be poor and homeless and be living on cat food. So it's not disabling, but it's just what I would consider a behavioral quirk,

and anyone looking at me would not say I have, you know, disabling compulsions. But it's one, you know, little thing that I do, and it absolutely, you know, drains away some of the anxiety, I feel. So I would say that, you know, the vast majority of people who have compulsions absolutely do not have a mental disorder. If you label every compulsion as a mental disorder, then we're all crazy. And clearly that can't be the case. Does everyone have a compulsion, do you think? You know, I haven't asked 6 billion people, but my guess would be no, again, because there are just some people who, no matter what life throws at them, they just don't feel anxious. But I would say more people have a compulsion than we probably recognize. Again, you know, if you look at

yourself, as I did, I would have said originally, I do not have one, but with a little bit more introspection, I began to recognize that I do. And I would say also that with the, you know, the takeover of our electronic toys, especially smartphones, not being able to leave it behind, not being able to turn it off, even overnight, having to look at it first thing in the morning, which a growing percentage of people say they do, that's a compulsion. It's not a mental disorder, but it definitely is a compulsion.

And the reason is that we feel that if we are not always looking at it, if we're not always checking, we'll miss something. And that just sort of triggers an anxiety that many people find intolerable. And when you look at your phone and realize that there is no emergency, nothing horrible has happened, everything's fine, it's a big relief. It is a relief, but you've also put your finger on something crucial. How many times, you know, when you're scrolling through text or checking Facebook posts or, you know, any of the, you know, countless other things that we do, you find basically nothing but dreck, right? I mean, it's somebody's status update. And, you know, honestly, you could have gotten through your day without knowing that.

But every once in a while, there's a gem. There's this, you know, amazing tweet's this amazing tweet that makes you laugh or makes you see life differently. There's a status update from someone you really care about, and you're really glad to know that he's engaged or something. And that form of reward or reinforcement, as psychologists call it, it's called variable and intermittent, which simply means most of the time what you get is forgettable and you didn't need it and you could have done without it and better you should have not even bothered to look. But every once in a while, there's something that you're really glad that you saw. And because you have no idea when those

gems are going to land, that's why we check over and over and over constantly, just in the hope that there will be something, you know, if not life-changing, then at least, you know, interesting or fun or important to our lives. But because we don't know when it will come, we have to check all the time. It's like a slot machine. That's why slot machines are so, why people play slot machines so compulsively, because you never can tell when those three cherries, you know, will show up in the little window. Well, because so many people have the compulsion of checking their phone over and over and over again every day, it would seem that although it's a compulsion, it's hardly abnormal

anymore because pretty much everybody does it. And it's interesting, too, that the phone, looking at the phone relieves the anxiety, but having the phone causes the anxiety. If we didn't have smartphones, there would be no anxiety, and perhaps those people would have no compulsions. Very possibly because, again, the variable intermittent reward nature of our electronic toys, especially smartphones, just taps into something very primal in the brain. But let me give you another example, Mike, of where something that is a very common behavior,

because it arises from a feeling that we all have, can tip over into a compulsion, and that's with hoarding. So I spoke to one woman who lives near Cleveland about why she hoards what she does, and what she hoards is basically everything. But the main contents of every room in her home are things from when her children were young, and boxes and boxes and boxes. And she was, when she and I spoke, dealing with a building inspector who was about to say that her home had to be condemned. So I tried to draw her out on what might have caused her to behave this way when it was going to be so damaging to her life. And so, you know, without going through every detail, she had a difficult life.

She had a number of miscarriages. Her husband had PTSD after service in Vietnam. They were never financially very well off. She would save things from magazines like a pretty gazebo that people, you know, that was being sold to put in your pretty suburban backyard, or stories about exotic vacations. And I asked her why she kept them. And she said, I never got the gazebo. I never got to go on the vacation. But at least I can keep the pieces of paper about them. And it was really hard to bring up my children, and now they're gone. But all I have are the stuff that I used to make Little League parade floats, and their Cub Scout stuff, and their school projects. So my children

are gone, but at least I have their stuff. And what she had the most of, and this is where I start to choke up, because her husband never made a great living and she was always a homemaker, he didn't really bring her many gifts, even on anniversaries, birthdays, nothing. But for some reason, he kept bringing home boxes, just, you know, empty cardboard boxes. He thought maybe she would be able to use them. And she said that was the only thing he ever brought her. He is now deceased. And she keeps all the boxes. They are now piled to the ceiling,

so much so that her home has goat paths, as they're called, because they're really skinny, you know, paths that sort of wander through the piles of hoarded, you know, possessions. And she says, I keep those boxes because it's all I have of him anymore. Anyway, so I tell you that long story because all of us, I think, have stuff that we really would be devastated to let go, to get rid of. We don't have as much as Bonnie does, and it's not wrecking our lives and causing the building inspector to come over. But if I were to go to where you live and look at stuff and say, God, why do you still have this? I bet the answer would be it would really hurt me to lose that.

It's my only connection to the past, or it reminds me of something important. So that's simply to say that I think all of us have the emotions, the feelings, the motivations that many hoarders do, and that other people with debilitating compulsions do, but they just don't go as far. The anxiety that causes compulsive behavior, and just anxiety in general, for many people seems like it's a necessary part of who they are. That, in other words, if you got rid of their anxiety, that would make them more anxious because they need that anxiety somehow as their fuel. Well, I must say that I resonate to that. And I would call myself an anxious person.

And that's, I think, sort of part of the profession that I'm in. You need some amount of that to, you know, make it all work out. And I have been asked, you know, wouldn't you like to do something to alleviate your anxiety a little bit, you know, whether pills or meditation or deep breathing, whatever. And my answer is no, for me, anxiety is not a bug. It's a feature. It's, you know, it's how I run and I need it. And as long as it's not causing me problems in my life, I'm good. So yeah, you know, it's how I run, and I need it. And as long as it's not causing me problems in my life, I'm good. So, yeah, you know, whether they're evolutionary arguments or just people, you know, looking inside themselves and figuring, you know, what they actually value and what makes their life work, whatever.

But, yeah, it's an interesting question that science is only beginning to wrestle with. Well, and that's the test, right? I mean, if you have what others consider a mental disorder, but it's not particularly interfering in your life, then maybe it isn't a mental disorder. Well, so we could go down a rabbit hole here. For psychiatric illnesses, of which there are hundreds, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, which is the field's Bible, you can have, so there are lists of symptoms.

Let's say there are six, and if you have five of them in three months or six months, whatever, there are criteria. And if you tick off all these boxes, then you have this mental disorder only if, however, it causes you distress and or impairment. So if you, again, have your McMansion and a vacation home and everything else, and you have the same amount of stuff as someone else, but you don't care, so it's not causing you distress, and you have the room, so it's not causing you impairment, identical behavior, different circumstances. One would be diagnosed as having a mental illness, the other would not.

Yet you can have the same behavior. If it doesn't bother you, if it's not messing up your life, then guess what? You don't have a mental disorder. So do you think that people like, what was her name, Bonnie, the hoarder? Bonnie, yeah. Do you think Bonnie or other people who hoard like she does, there are some of those people who are just perfectly fine with it? Or does it cause her and does it really, do they wake up every morning going, why am I like this, why do I do this? Or do they go, another day in paradise? Bonnie was perfectly content

with living in a house that had goat pads through it. Literally, when I was speaking to her, this was by phone, the building inspector was coming up the front pathway. And I just couldn't get my mind around it. I kept asking, but Bonnie, you don't want to be thrown out of your house because then, first of all, you would lose your stuff in all likelihood. And she said, no, I just like having it all around me. It's fine. So she would be categorized as not having distress.

She did not feel distress. But the outside observer would say that she's impaired because losing your home counts as an impairment. But absolutely, I spoke to hoarders who were, please, how can I get help? And there are ways to get help. And there are others who are like, you know, could society just leave me alone and stop judging?

I'm fine with the way I am. It's not hurting anybody else. So just leave me alone and stop, you know'm fine with the way I am. It's not hurting anybody else. So just leave me alone and stop, you know, trying to tell me that I'm crazy. So yes, you're absolutely right. I can't think of a better way to end this conversation than with me being absolutely right. So we'll end it there.

My guest has been Sharon Begley. She is a science writer for STAT and a former science columnist for Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal. And her book is Just Can't Stop, An Investigation of Compulsion. There is a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes. And I appreciate it. Thank you so much for being here, Sharon. Thank you so much, Mike. It's been a great time talking to you. You don't get frustrated because of events. You get frustrated because of your beliefs. That's the idea behind psychologist Albert Ellis' theory

on how to never, ever be upset again. And here's how it works. You get upset because you're stuck in traffic. Yet we all know traffic happens. But you think it shouldn't happen to you. And the thing that's making you miserable is the word should. The next time you get mad or upset at a person or a situation, it may help to look for beliefs with these three troublesome words. Should, ought, must. Traffic shouldn't be this bad. Well, it's not

rational because traffic is what it is. Life is not perfect. People are not perfect. And having the belief that they should be the way you want them to be can cause you a lot of unnecessary suffering. And that is something you should know. The reason that the Something You Should Know podcast has become so successful is because you and people like you tell their friends to listen, and they tell their friends, and that's what is the primary engine

to grow this audience to the size it has. I just want you to know how much I appreciate that, and I hope you keep it up. In fact, while you're thinking about it, share the link with a friend and tell them to listen. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong?

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

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