Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Your Mind and Your Money

Episode Date: December 28, 2019

There’s nothing more embarrassing than those awkward moments in life – when your fly is down or there is spinach in your teeth or you embarrass yourself accidentally. But how you handle those moments is what really matters and that is topic number one on today’s podcast. http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2015/11/23/the-science-of-awkwardness How you think about money – and how money plays tricks on is a fascinating topic everyone needs to understand. Claudia Hammond, a broadcaster for the BBC in London is author of the book Mind Over Money (https://amzn.to/2EXto4N) and has some amazing insight on how you handle money and make financial decisions – and how others use little mind games to get you to part with more of your money. Being aware of these things can really help you not fall victim. There is great power in expressing appreciation – yet most people think they don’t get enough of it. The result of that lack appreciation creates all kinds of havoc in relationships and organizations. Listen as we explore the power of appreciation and how to make it work for you. http://www.drpaulwhite.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, how to deal with those embarrassing, awkward moments we all have that make us want to crawl into a hole. Also, how money affects your mind.

It's often so totally irrational. In one experiment, they gave people a menu for a restaurant called Studio 19 and asked people how much they'd be prepared to pay for a meal there. And then they gave exactly the same menu to another group of people and told them it was called Studio 97. Suddenly, people were prepared to pay much more to eat at the restaurant with the higher number in its name. And if you want to sock away money in a savings account and not touch it,

put it in a bank that sounds far away, like the Bank of Scotland. Because even though you can just get that money online, it feels as if it's further away. It means people are likely to leave it there for longer. So in a way, you can trick yourself. And the power of appreciation. You'll have a whole new appreciation for appreciation when you hear this. All this today on Something You Should Know. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast

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

Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. This is episode 360. And let me point out that actually few, if any, of the 360 episodes of Something You Should Know are dated. Unlike, say, a news or a sports podcast, the content of Something You Should Know episodes are, it's really timeless, evergreen. So if you're relaxing or you'd like something to listen to as you go about your day, just remember we have a large collection of episodes for you to go back and listen to whenever you like. First up today, tell me this hasn't happened to you. Okay, you're standing there and you're shaking hands and you're saying goodbye to

somebody and you're going to walk away and then you both realize you're walking together in the same direction because your cars are parked in the same parking lot. Or this, you burst into a meeting room only to find that it's not your meeting. Or you're in one of those conversations, you know, those conversations where it's more silence than dialogue. It's just awkward and there's nothing going on. Well, those are all awkward situations, and they are a part of life. And if you're the one who made the mistake, you might feel like crawling into a hole. But it's important to note that typically, it's not the awkward moment that's the problem, it's how you interpret it.

Joshua Clegg is an associate professor of psychology at John Jay College City University of New York, and he's researched this whole phenomenon of awkward moments, and he has some advice for dealing with those awkward moments. Know that they're normal, first of all, and don't assume you've ruined everything, because you really, you probably haven't. Everyone's done this. You're not an idiot. Everything is going to be fine.

He also suggests that you call it out, that you say, oh, this is awkward. Uh-oh, awkward. Acknowledge awkward moments for what they are, and it often just, it just lightens things up. Don't run away. Diffuse the situation now, because if you don't, it will always be awkward whenever you see that person or those people again for all of eternity.

And get out of your own head, because when someone says you have spinach in your teeth, it bothers you a lot more than it bothers them. They're not particularly offended by the spinach in your teeth. They're just wanting you to know that you've got spinach in your teeth. You're just a little freaked out because it's now the topic of conversation, but it will pass and no one will remember. And that's something you should know. So every time you go by a gas station, you see the sign with the prices and the price for gas always ends in nine-tenths of a cent. And you've probably thought to yourself, you know, do they really think I'm that stupid that I don't see what they're doing here? Clearly, they want us to see the price as a penny less, or specifically nine-tenths of a penny less than it really is,

that we see the big number and we think that's the price. And the fact is, we all do fall for that to some extent. Not because we're dumb, necessarily, but it's because our brain processes money and financial information differently. It's really quite fascinating, and it's more than a little odd. And someone who's really explored this is Claudia Hammond. She's a broadcaster for BBC Radio in London and author of the book Mind Over Money. So Claudia, what is it about

money and finances that makes us think and do such odd things? I think money is difficult because when you've got money, it gives you lots of opportunities and that's great. But I think that money is something that we find endlessly perplexing. And I think that we tend to all think that we're good at spotting, say, what's good value and what isn't, just as most of us think we're above average car drivers. And yet we can't all be above average drivers because somebody's got to be average and somebody's got to be below average. But likewise, we think we're really good at spotting deals and it turns out that we're not very good at spotting deals. And so all sorts of other things can influence the decisions that we make about money and about price. So in one experiment, they gave people a menu for a

restaurant called Studio 19 and asked people how much they'd be prepared to pay for a meal there. And then they gave exactly the same menu to another group of people and told them it was called Studio 97. And suddenly people were prepared to pay much more to eat at the restaurant with the higher number in its name, which isn't a rational thing, but something that we all do. So I think we're almost aware that we don't always behave rationally with it, and that makes us all the more obsessed with it. Well, that's really stupid to think that you would spend more money at Studio 97 just because it's 97. Yeah, it's extraordinary, but it's a thing called anchoring, and it's a psychological process that's been

really well demonstrated that irrelevant numbers can make a difference tooring, and it's a psychological process that's been really well demonstrated, that irrelevant numbers can make a difference to us, and that we will make predictions based on those, which just does seem like the weirdest thing. But, for example, in a study looking at car auctions, if a really expensive car had just been sold, then even if the next car was a cheap type of car, it would go for more money. So if you had a Rolls-Royce and then the next car was a cheap type of car, it would go for more money. So if you had a Rolls-Royce and then the next car was a Mini, the Mini would go for more money just because there was a Rolls-Royce before it, which again shows just how irrational but often in predictable

ways we can be. Well, but we're also fighting the people who know this stuff and use it against us, right? Yes, that's absolutely true. So there are plenty of strategies that shops will use to try to get us to part with our money. You know, they want us to spend their money. And so one of the things you often see is that items in shops and online are often laid out in threes. And there'll often be a cheap one, one that's a little bit more expensive and then sometimes a really expensive one if you think of something like laptops you get a cheap one then next to it a kind of mid-priced one and then a really sleek and shiny beautiful one and the only reason that expensive one is there is to try to persuade you to go for the middle one instead

because that seems a good compromise so in experiments if you only have the cheaper two half the people will choose the very cheapest and half will choose the other one. But the moment you put in a third really expensive item, suddenly that sways people's opinions and twice as many will go for what is now the middle item when they were never intending to spend that much money. And so we do need to be really careful when we're shopping and to watch for the strategies that might be being used and whether there are other things around that are influencing us on whether we think something is good value or not. Yeah, I remember hearing that restaurants do this with the second most expensive wine. Yes, yes, yeah. Often people choose the second most expensive

wine because they don't want to look as if they're choosing the cheap one. They don't want something really expensive. You know, lots of us don't know very much about wine and don't necessarily want to spend more on it. And so people don't want to look mean. So they often choose the second one thinking, oh, well, that must be good. And actually, because restaurants know this, they often, the second price one isn't very good value because so many people will go for it. And in fact, if a place is any good, then their house wine, they should be choosing something that's perfectly nice. And so now, I often go for the very cheapest wine of all now, just assuming, well, it's probably going to be fine. And nine times out of 10, it is. Yeah, right. So what are some of these other things

that people need to be aware of that happen automatically and unconsciously, and yet we fall for it pretty much every time? Yeah, there's all sorts of things where we get things slightly wrong. I mean, one is called the endowment effect, which is where we overvalue things that we already own. We like things that we already have. So people would rather trade in their car for more money and then spend more money on the car they're replacing it with than trade theirs in for less and save money on the new car. And there's no good reason for doing that. But we really like things that we already own. And so this means that when people are trying to sell things online, for example,

people will often put a reserve on and they'll often overvalue the thing they're trying to sell because we assume that because we have it and we liked it and we wanted it and we already have it, it must be worth more and that other people will also think that when, of course, people won't necessarily think that. Another mistake we make is when it comes to saving, we tend to think that, all of us tend to think that in the future, we'll earn more, we'll save more, and we'll be better at spending less. And, you know, gradually, if people get promoted, they might earn more in the future.

But, you know, who knows what will happen with different industries in the future. But when it comes to saving more and spending less, that's probably not going to happen at all unless we change. So just as we all tend to think that we'll have more spare time in the future and we'll be more organized versions of ourselves in the future, that won't happen either unless we change something about ourselves

and the way we behave and make a very conscious decision to do that. And so that means that people tend to save less now because they think, oh, we're going to do it later on. It'll all be fine. I'll do that later on. And chances are we won't. We don't really change our habits very easily unless we make a really conscious effort to do so. Is that just optimism? We think things will be fine, so we just go on our merry way. Yeah. One of the strongest cognitive biases as we call them is the optimism bias that we just hope that things will be fine and think things will be

fine we often also think that the future is quite far away and just the way you phrase it can make a difference to that so if someone's going to retire in 10 years time that feels like quite a long way off time to save up and sort things out but if if you think of it as, I don't know, 3,652-ish days instead, that sounds, although it's a bigger number, it sounds quite close, 3,000 days. It sounds quite soon. And research has shown that if you frame things in a different way like that, if you just change the wording, it can make the future seem nearer, and then you'll start to plan and save up more instead.

So we're entering the holiday season, and so what about traps that we fall into when we're buying gifts and things, which is, you know, this time of year when we buy probably more gifts than any other time of year? Yes, I think, I mean, I think when it comes to buying gifts, particularly at the last moment, people can, you know, find themselves panicking and not necessarily buying the thing that a person will really like and actually want and value. And that maybe buying things like experiences can make a difference and more of a difference to people's well-being. somebody to a nice day away somewhere could be more effective if you like in making them feel happier which is what we all want than buying them an item buying the material goods and there's there's really good evidence that that's

the case I mean the good thing about buying gifts is that also if you look at the evidence on well-being it does show that spending money on other people is a good thing and that's giving gifts to other people does make us feel happier that in one experiment they gave people at nine in the morning they stopped people in the street and they gave them an envelope with twenty dollars in it and they said to them you've got until 5 p.m to spend this and half of them were told they must spend it on themselves and half of them were told they must spend it on someone else or give it to charity and they measured people's mood and at the end of the day at 5 p.., they had to meet up again.

And they measured their mood again. And the people who had spent it on someone else actually felt happier and had a better day than the people who spent it on themselves. So the good thing about the gift season is that buying things for people and giving nice things to other people does make us happier. But I think it's easy to panic and to think that you need to buy the thing that looks expensive rather than the thing that's more thoughtful that they might really, really want, which is what they'll really care about.

One of the things parallel to that that I've heard recently is that we should spend more money on experiences than things because we get more satisfaction from that. And then I've heard that, well, maybe that's not always true. I guess it depends on the experience and what the thing would have been. Yeah, it depends on whether it goes well, obviously. You know, a bad experience is not going to be a good thing. And it does depend on the thing because sometimes the thing can lead to more experiences. So if you didn't have a car but then get a car,

then that could enable you to connect with other people more and to visit people that you've not had a chance to or to go out to the countryside and have a nice time. That could lead to experiences. So that might be a good thing to buy. But, yeah, it's absolutely true that the evidence does show that experiences improve our well-being more than owning things. And one of the reasons is that with an experience, we anticipate it more.

We spend more time thinking about what it will be like. You think about what a weekend will be like more than you might think about what it would be like to have a bigger TV. You might want a bigger TV, but you're not going to think about the experience and imagine it in the same way. And also, experiences often connect you with other people. So you might be away or out for the day with them. And then when you get back, you've got warm memories to look back on. So even though it seems like, you know, all the money's gone in one

go, whereas the thing you could be still enjoying, on the whole, the experiences are giving people more pleasure. And what's really interesting is that, you know, the group they're calling millennials now, the younger people are now spending more money on experiences than on things, which the evidence suggests that they're doing the right thing. I'm speaking with Claudia Hammond. She is a broadcaster for the BBC in London, and she's author of the book Mind Over Money. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you

might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him,

but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now. 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.

So, we've talked about how we're all kind of deluded and mystified and manipulated by some of these thought processes and how we think about money. But how do we use this to our advantage? Yeah, definitely. So I think to try and save more money, you know, one of the things you can do is to try to reframe the way you think about the future. And also, it's been shown that sometimes financial advisors will say to people, you should just start afresh, you know, start again with a clean sheet. And from now on, you'll save lots of money but research has shown that actually it's more real people make more realistic plans that they're more likely to stick to if they do look back to work out at the past to work out why didn't it work the last time they tried to save up were there some what were the unexpected expenses that crop up that always do and could they take that into account somehow

and come up with a more realistic way of saving? There's been a really clever experiment in the U.S. that the psychologist Richard Thaler did, which was called Save Money Tomorrow, where people committed that when their salary went up in the future, they would save a little bit more money. And people, we don't mind promising future money. We don't like promising money now. But we love the idea of pay rise in the future, they would save a little bit more money. And people, we don't mind promising future money. We don't like promising money now. But we love the idea of pay rise in the future. So we think in the future, we won't care if we save a bit more because we'll have that extra money. So it'll be fine. It won't feel like a penalty now. And so they got people

to commit to saving in the future. And it was really successful. And people were able to save much more. Another thing people can do is to that if people's money is in an account with a name that sounds geographically far away from where you live, then people are less likely to dip into that money. Because even though you can just get that money online, it feels as if it's further away. So anything that makes the money feel less accessible and more of a bother to get means people are likely to leave it there for longer. So in a way, you can trick yourself. So just naming the account my Yugoslavian account makes it harder to get? You could call it that or choosing a bank that's got the name. You know,

choosing a bank that's got the name of a state that's miles from where you live will make it seem as if it's further away. Because we tend to still have this idea that in our minds, we slightly imagine that our money is actually there in the bank and that our little pile of money is somewhere and that it's not all just mixed up in a load of figures on a screen like we know in reality it's like that. But we imagine that our little bit is there. And so if you can imagine it further away, you're less likely to dip into it.

It is so weird how we process this kind of information when if you really sat down and stopped to think about it, it's nonsense. It's crazy. Yeah, it is. It is. And there are always little cues and little, you and little things that we don't actually notice consciously that are affecting the decisions that we make all the time. And we go around looking for information that confirms what we already think. We notice that information more. And that can make a real difference to what we end up saving, what we end up spending,

and the sorts of judgments we make about money. Well, just the idea of name brands has always fascinated me, that people will spend more for a name brand, sometimes lots more, when, you know, the generic brand is exactly the same thing. Yeah, it is really interesting. And there's been some actually really interesting experiments with wine and with painkillers. And so with wine, they put people in a brain scanner, and they fed them some wine through a straw, probably not the best way of drinking wine, but they fed them it through a straw. And then they told, sometimes they told them it was a $90 bottle of wine. And other times they told them it cost only five dollars and people not only said that they liked the wine that they thought was expensive better um but their brains actually

liked it better as well so there was more activity in the reward centers of the brains when they thought the wine was expensive so they actually were weirdly were enjoying it more if they thought it was expensive so you know the lesson from that maybe is to encourage your friends to bring cheap wine around, but to tell you it's expensive wine. And then with painkillers, there was a fascinating study where we know that, you know, the generic and the branded versions are very open about, they say the ingredients, and they are the same ingredients. So you might have, you know, the same amount of ibuprofen or paracetamol that's in a tablet

it's exactly the same thing but one is a brand and we'll have you know lovely fancy box now what's really extraordinary here is that actually if people thought that they had the branded medicine it did give them more effective pain relief they gave them uh tests of their pain thresholds and they had to put their arm in a bucket of ice water, and they could actually keep it there longer if they had the branded drug and thought they had the branded drug. And so there, the placebo effect was being harnessed, and the fact that they thought it was more expensive made a difference. So weirdly, with that one, if your headache is really, really bad, maybe you should buy the more expensive one, because then it will be really effective, or you need to get somebody else to give it to you and tell you it's the expensive one.

One of the things, and I think maybe this applies more to women than men, but that, you know, handbags, for example, or certain things that have status because they are such and such a brand that people will pay. And men do it too, I guess, with suits and things that just seem so ridiculous. Yeah, we do pay a lot of attention to the status that a brand can give us. And I think that that seems to be increasing more and more. And if you look at the amounts now being spent on more money than ever before is being spent on luxury brands that are really, really, really expensive.

And so, and I think it does apply to men as well. And it may be different, sometimes different things. But, you know, people will like the brand of a certain brand of car more than another or a certain brand of watch or anything that they think increases their status. But if you look at the research on materialism, if people want to buy something expensive in order to generate envy in other people and in order to get power, then actually it's not going to work

and it's not going to make them feel any better or any better about themselves. If people want to buy the really expensive branded thing because they genuinely like it and think that that thing is really nice and will get pleasure from using that thing, then it can increase their well-being a bit. But it all depends that that thing is really nice and will get pleasure from using that thing, then it can increase their well-being a bit. But it all depends on what it is you're reading into those brands. You know, we spend so much money and time trying to impress other people with the

things we buy. And I want to ask you, I want to ask you if it works. But first, let me remind everyone that you are listening to Claudia Hammond. She is a broadcaster at the BBC in London and author of the book Mind Over Money. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong,

which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week

with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing

we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. So I think that, at least for some of us, we tend to buy things, you know, to impress other people. So if I buy, you know, a $20,000 watch, are people actually impressed by that? Are other people thinking, wow, look at that. I don't know that I would know a $20,000 watch if I saw one. Exactly. See, I wouldn't know what's a fake and what personally, I wouldn't know which is a fake and which isn't. So it would just look like a kind of, you know, big flashy

watch to me, but it could still be a cheap, a cheap flashy watch. So I think if somebody actually knows well enough to be able to spot which is a real one, then maybe somebody might be impressed that all this means they must have lots of money. They must be very successful, but they're probably more likely to just know that from other things about them. You know, they might know what their job is, or they might know what their successes are. So I don't think trying to kind of, I don't think it's an effective way of trying to fool people into thinking you're successful. One of the things that people say is one of the dumbest things people do with money is buy lottery tickets.

But then again, you know, somebody does eventually win. So, you know, it could be me. It could be just as well could be me as the guy that won. Exactly. And it's absolutely true that, you know, the chances of winning we all know are really, really, really, really small. And I think that people to say it's really small and i think there that people uh to say it's irrational is in a way forgetting that people like the the fun of that and they

like the permission to imagine that they might win and the moment when the numbers come up and they're looking at the numbers and gives them a little while to you know imagine fantasize about what that would be like and what they would do with the money and you know improve their well-being temporarily at that moment i think the problem is if people then have to feel they have to carry on and on doing it. So I think if you are going to buy lottery tickets, what you shouldn't do is buy the same number every week. Because if you always buy the same number, you've got to carry on doing it because otherwise you'll have the regret. If you found out one week that you hadn't done it and then it had won you would know that because of the number and you'd have a massive regret about that and we

really really hate regret there's a very strong psychological aversion to to regret and so if you always do something different then it means you don't have to do it every week and you don't have to uh worry about that i mean some places have got around this in in holland there's a fiendishly clever lottery that puts automatically puts everyone's postcode, their zip code, into the lottery. And so you can either buy a ticket, in which case you could win with your postcode. But if you don't buy a ticket, you couldn't. But you're always going to know which it is. And also, all your neighbors might win and you might not.

So it's a very clever way of getting people to buy tickets. Yeah, I remember, I think it was the California lottery here that had a marketing campaign that I thought was very effective that said, what would happen if your numbers won without you? But that's a brilliant, that's a genius campaign, because there's very strong evidence that we really hate the regret of what might have happened. And that is something that's prompting people into buying tickets for lotteries. I would never check. If I forgot to play my numbers that week, I would never go look and see because what if...

Never look, never check. I wonder if that's ever happened. I've never heard of that happening, but I wonder if anyone ever did always play and missed once and their numbers won. Oh, I'm sure there are. I'm sure there are stories like that, just as you get the stories of the people who, you know, put it in the washing machine and then they try to find it and they try and piece the pieces back together and know that their numbers came up, but that they've missed out. Yeah. Anything else? You've covered so much, but any other little things that you find when you did the research for this

that was really fascinating that people may not realize? One thing I think is really interesting is that paying friends for favors is not a good idea. And it seems like a nice idea because they're doing a favor for you, and then you're giving them some money, which sounds kind. But actually, it's a mistake because the moment you do that, it reframes their nice piece of altruism as a financial transaction. And so then the other person will start looking and thinking, well, was this a good amount? I'm helping them change their tire and they're offering me $20, but actually they'd have to pay a mechanic much more than that. And maybe it'll take me quite a long time because it's quite a tricky one

and I could earn more maybe doing something else and have they given me the right amount. Whereas if you just thank them for doing the lovely thing and then maybe buy them a present later, you know, not money but a present, you know, some flowers or some chocolate or something they might like later on, then everything will work much better and it doesn't bring money into the friendship. It just allows people to be kind to each other, which is a nicer thing. So I think that's a quite good tip that's come out of some US research that's really interesting. That is interesting. But you know, it's so right on when I think about that. I mean, when you say I'll give you 20 bucks to change my tire, you're putting a value on that

that maybe is unfair, and it's better not to put a value on it at all. Yeah, so weirdly, it's another case where it might seem irrational because you think surely getting $20 is better than getting no money. No, in fact, they'll leave feeling better if they got no money. Well, it's interesting to spend a few minutes talking about money and how we relate to it and how money plays tricks on us. Claudia Hammond has been my guest. She is a broadcaster for the BBC in London, and she's author of the book Mind Over Money. You'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Claudia. You're a good interview. Thank you. Well, good questions, too. So thank you very much for having me.

And finally today on Something You Should Know, appreciation. We tend to show our appreciation for other people more this time of year than other times of year. And while giving gifts and throwing parties is great, appreciation is something that works all year round, both in relationships and at work. Consider the fact that appreciation is one of the top reasons people leave relationships and friendships, and it is the number one reason people quit their job. So giving appreciation is really, it's kind of the glue that holds relationships and organizations together. In a work environment that fosters a culture of appreciation, the payoffs are big. According to consultant Paul White, when employees feel appreciated at work, people show up, they show up on time, there's less turnover,

there's an increase in customer satisfaction, there's less conflict, there's more positive work environment, and there's just a zillion benefits to doing it. If you have any doubt about the power of appreciation, go home tonight and start appreciating everything about your partner and watch what happens. And that's the podcast today. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you did, please share it with a friend. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new you should know. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church

for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth.

Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.