Something You Should Know - The Best Way to Find Someone to Love & How to Come Up With Better Ideas

Episode Date: February 12, 2018

So the dentist has you open your mouth wide and while he is poking around in there with sharp instruments, he asks you a question. Why? You can’t really answer. I’ll explain this and other fascinating things that go on in the dentist’s office. Since it is Valentine’s week, I think you’ll enjoy hearing my discussion with Helen Fisher, author of the Anatomy of Love A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray (http://amzn.to/2EvFAvd). Helen has been studying how people connect, fall in love and stay in love and she has some great suggestions on where to go to find love and how to keep the spark alive in the long term. Why do retail prices still end in 99 cents - as in $29.99? Do retailers still think we don’t know that $29.99 is closer to $30 than $20? It turns out that pricing strategy still works and I’ll explain why. Everyone has creative ability. It’s just a matter of understanding your particular creative process and how to use it. That’s according to Roger Von Oech, author of the book, A Whack on the Side of the Head (http://amzn.to/2nT7XK7). Roger has been studying, researching and speaking about creativity for years and he will help ignite your creative thinking to come up with better ideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, why does your dentist ask you questions when you can't answer because there's sharp instruments in your mouth? There's actually a reason. Plus, it's Valentine's Week. So what's the very best way to find someone to love, and how do you make it last? The later you marry, the more likely you are to remain married, and if you marry the right person, we've been able to prove in the brain you can remain in love and happy long-term.

Then, why do retailers still price things like $59.99? Do they still think we don't get it? And how do you tap into your own creativity? You first have to understand your personal creative process. If I have a motto that describes mine, mine is look for the second right answer. I think most of the problems and issues we deal with in life have a lot of right answers. But if you stop with the first right answer you find, all the good alternatives will atrophy. All this today on Something You Should Know.

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 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.

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Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. So I went to the dentist the other day to get my teeth cleaned. I love getting my teeth cleaned. I like that feeling afterwards. You know, you don't want to eat anything because you don't want to get food on your teeth.

It feels so clean. But anyway, so I'm sitting there in the dentist's chair and thinking of things and coming up with questions of why things are the way they are in the dentist's office and did a little research. And I bet you've asked yourself these questions too, so let me share them with you. Why does the dentist ask me questions when I can't really talk back? And the reason they do that is primarily as a distraction. So it gives you something to think about so you're not thinking about every little poke

and prod in your mouth. And they also get pretty good at understanding you even though... What is that smell? Have you noticed that all dentist offices tend to smell the same? It turns out to be a mixture of latex gloves and fluoride gel that creates that very telltale smell. Is there a fish tank in your dentist's office? There's a good chance there is. There is in my dentist's office. And that's supposed to relieve anxiety in patients.

For a long time, a lot of studies have shown that people who look at fish swimming in an aquarium kind of lowers their heart rate and calms them down. Do they deliberately hide all the dental instruments? Well, it turns out they do, especially from kids. Seeing sharp, pointy things and needles that are about to go in your mouth really doesn't do anybody any good. Is everything really sterile in the dentist's office?

Haven't you wondered, like, what if they forgot to clean that thing after the last guy? Well, they're pretty good at that. Chances are everything is sterile, except maybe the bib clips that they attach the bib to you. A study did find that they're often not cleaned frequently and can contain bacteria, so you probably want to avoid touching them. And that is something you should know. With the spotlight on Valentine's Day and romance this time of year,

I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how romance has changed. How people meet, where they meet, who asks who out. And maybe more importantly, how do these changes influence the long-term success of relationships, if at all? For example, are you more likely to find a well-suited match from an online dating service because they have all these algorithms that are supposedly better at pairing people up? For many years, Helen Fisher has been exploring and conducting research about romantic love. She's kind of a love anthropologist, and she looks at how it all works and why it sometimes doesn't work. She is a consultant for Match.com,

and she also has a book that was first published in 1992 and is now revised and updated called Anatomy of Love, a natural history of mating, marriage, History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray. Hi, Helen. So right off the bat here, how and where are people looking for love, and where are they meeting people today? I do an annual study called Singles in America. We poll the American single population, so it's a representative sample based on the U.S. Census, and as it turns out today, 6% of singles meet in a bar. That's gone. We meet our friends in a bar now. We're not going

to pick people up. About 25% of singles meet somebody through a friend, and about 40% of singles have met their last first date on the internet. So there's no question about it that we're using technology to find love. And in many respects, I'm very in favor of it. But it does seem that a lot of the rules of dating and romance have changed, that there was a time when, you know, a woman would never ask out a man. There was a time when it was just assumed that a man would pay for everything, and now that's not necessarily going to be the case. So talk about that. Talk about some of the changes in the rules,

things that people do today, that if you did them some years ago, people would say, you know, what? You did what? In these studies at Match.com, 91% of men that I've surveyed, I've got data now on 35,000 singles, not on Match, but regular people, 91% of men that I've surveyed, I've got data now on 35,000 singles, not on match, but regular people, 91% of men are perfectly willing to have a woman invite them out. And women won't do it. Only about 24% of women have ever asked a man out. So it's women that are, oddly enough, holding on to more traditional values than men are. Why do you think that is?

You know, throughout the animal kingdom, it's often males that make the first clear move. I mean, women actually make a lot of first moves. I mean, we flirt, and we bat our eyes, and we smile, and we ask questions, and we get carefully dressed and put makeup on. And so we make ourselves available. But there's something called initiative transfer. And at some point, the male knows his job. And that is to say, you know, would you like to go out?

Or would you like to see a movie? Or would you like to have a hot dog? Or would you like to take a walk in the park? It's called initiative transfer. And women like to know a movie or would you like to have a hot dog or would you like to take a walk in the park? It's called initiative transfer. And women like to know that the man is interested. I mean, the man's got the harder job. It's the woman that can do the rejecting or the accepting. It's the man that has to put himself out there and express it.

But women still want men to pay the bill, probably for an ancient reason. For millions of years, women needed a partner to help them raise their babies. And they wanted a partner who could provide and protect. And that's basic to women. They want a man who can provide. They want a man with some resources. And as a result, it's men that are killing themselves at work, not women. But isn't that changing with women in the workplace

and them making their own money and having their own resources? I did a study of it. 80% of men are perfectly comfortable dating a woman who has more money, who makes more money than they do, has a considerably higher education than they do, and is considerably more influential. Women are the picky sex, for good Darwinian evolutionary reasons. I mean, for millions of years, women had to carry the baby for nine months. Childbirth has always been a dangerous experience, and around the world, women spend the vast amount of the first four years of raising a child. Men spend their time getting to work to provide for the house and the family, etc., but it's women who are doing the daily job of diaper changing, etc.

So women are the picky sacks. Every single time I do this Match.com study, I see the same thing, that women are less likely to go out with somebody from a different religion, less likely to go out with somebody of a different ethnic group, less likely to go out with somebody of a different political orientation, etc. It's men who are the less picky sex. Well, I've heard men talk about this. I don't know if women talk about this. But, you know, the sense that, you know, women want to be able to ask men out and they want to have, you know, equal say in the relationship,

but they want the man to pay., equal say in the relationship, but they want the man to pay. Right. I guess it's more than just the money. They want the expression that this guy's going to be powerful and going to keep on helping them raise their children. So I do think that, you know, I give a lot of speeches, too. I wrote a book called The First Sex, The Natural Talents of Women and How They're Changing

the World. And they are. They're really bringing a great many of very fine skills into the job market. So I give a lot of speeches on that subject. And it's often to very high-power women in high-power companies who are trying to understand gender differences so that they can do better in the office. And I find very regularly that a very high power woman will marry a man who's a violinist or a psychiatrist or teaches childhood education in some way. People who don't actually make very much money. And they're marrying them for different reasons. They're saying,

I got the money, but I'm going to need you to do this, this, this, and this. So as women's roles are expanding, men's roles are expanding, too. They no longer have to be the main financial winner. And as a matter of fact, in America today, among people who are married and the woman works, about one-third of those, or more, I think, these days make more money than their husbands do. And I ask these women, how do you handle it? I mean, how do you handle this, you making more money?

And some of them say, well, I just give them my credit card or we have a shared bank account. Or I knew this when I was going into it. We worked on this before we married. So no question about it that this powerful trend of women potting into the job market is changing relationships, just as technology is enabling us to court differently. But basically, we will just continue doing it.

You know, I mean, I put people in brain scanners and study the brain circuitry of romantic love, and this brain system is not going to die. I mean, it lies down in brain regions with drive, with focus, with motivation, with energy, with obsession. In this case, the motivation to win life's greatest prize, a mating partner. So romance isn't going to die. Love isn't going to die. We're just approaching it differently. I'm speaking with Helen Fisher. She's author of the book, Anatomy of Love, A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray.

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.

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What I think we're really doing is extending the pre-commitment stage. You know, where marriage used to be the beginning of a relationship, now it's the finale. We have this long period, often from, period often from about age 18 to almost age 30 in which we're trying out people and we're having one-night stands and we're having the friends with benefits and we're living with somebody long-term. It's the extension of the pre-commitment stage is what's going on. And with that, people are learning about themselves.

They're learning about handling relationships. They're getting rid of the things they don't want so that by the time they walk down the aisle, they know what they got, they know they want what they got, and they think they can keep what they've got. So, in fact, I'm so positive about this now that I did a study of 1,100 married people to see whether, well, you know, if you're married much later, are you going to have a more stable marriage? And so I asked 1,100 people a lot of questions about love. But one of them was, would you remarry the person you're currently married to?

And 81% said yes. commitment stage, what I call slow love, is enabling people to understand more about what they're looking for, what they want, how they feel, how to express themselves, and how to date in court. And I think we're going to lead towards more stable marriages rather than less stable ones. And ultimately, that's what really matters. I mean, we can talk all day long about what attracts people to each other and what brings them together, and that people aren't necessarily looking for the same things that they did before, and they don't necessarily date in the way they did before. But the big question is, how does it turn out? It's fine to connect differently, but how do those relationships turn out? A psychologist will tell you all kinds of things about what makes a happy marriage.

They're all good. They're all perfectly fine. But this is what the brain says. I'm just trying to add what the brain says about a long-term happy marriage. And among these people, we put in the brain scanner, we gave them a lot of questionnaires. We looked at those who were in a long-term, very happy marriage, still showing activity in brain regions linked with romance. And we found activity in three brain regions. These are the three brain regions linked with a long-term, happy partnership.

A brain region linked with feelings of empathy for your partner. A brain region linked with controlling your own stress and your own emotions. And a brain region linked with positive illusions, the ability to overlook what you don't like about somebody and focus on what you do. So we're marrying later. I've looked at marriage and divorce data through the demographic yearbooks in 80 cultures. The later you marry, the more likely you are to remain married.

And if you marry the right person, we've been able to prove in the brain you can remain in love and happy long-term. What about the interest just in marriage? Do we see people saying, you know, I don't need marriage. I'd rather just have a boyfriend or a girlfriend. I'm too busy to be married. Yeah. I've asked that question, too, on this match data.

And something like 57% of singles, their real response is, why do I need marriage to prove that I love her? 67% of people who are living together long-term say that they have not yet married because they are terrified of divorce. They're terrified of the economic, social, and personal fallout of divorce. So they're trying to get to know the person absolutely totally before they tie the knot it sounds like you know the desires are all kind of the same and the end goal is pretty much the same it's just how we get there that keeps changing that's right that's very well said absolutely so if you helen fisher were going to go out in the dating world now

knowing what you know how would you do it differently than, say, somebody did it 10, 20, 30 years ago? Maybe start online, because that seems to be where a lot of the action's going on. Well, the first thing that I would do is tell all my friends, and have my friends tell their friends, because it is nice, it's still very nice to meet people through people that you know. But the bottom line is, you know, a great many people are divorcing in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, or their partner dies, and, you know, they already know everybody in their social circle. That's not going to change. They know everybody at work.

They know everybody in their golf club or their bridge group or whatever they're doing. So friends aren't going to be a great deal of use. And then I would definitely say go on to the internet. I've done it. I happen to have a boyfriend right now, and I did not meet him on the internet, but I've done it at times. And I met wonderful people, but you've got to get out there and meet them. The beauty of it is it's cheap, it's safe, and you can do it in the middle of the night in your pajamas. Think a little. I mean, you know, courtship is about winning. It's about winning.

You've got to put your best foot out there. It does take work. There's no question about it. But in many respects, it takes a little less work than it used to. I mean, in the past, you had to go sit in a bar all night and go out every night and spend a lot of money and hope that somebody will walk by who first with you and then you fall in love with them. These days, we can do it through the internet. I know you're a consultant for Match.com, so clearly you're pro-online dating, so your answer might be a bit biased here, but

if you could take that hat off for just a moment. Do you think, really, knowing what you know, do you think that dating sites in general are using algorithms and things and are really serving up people that are better qualified than people you would meet in a bar, or you would meet through a friend, who are just available people who happen to be in your circle. Is there really an advantage to the people you think online dating delivers? I certainly hope so. I certainly work in that industry,

and I and an awful lot of other people are working very hard. Look, we can give you somebody who's the right background, right ethnic group, right educational background, same general level of good looks, same religious and social values, but you can walk into a room, and all of those people, it's the same thing. You walk into a room and all those people have the same, you know, they're basically the same socioeconomic background, same level of intelligence, same level of good looks, and you don't fall in love with all of them. It doesn't matter where you meet somebody.

Meet them at church. Meet them in a bar. Meet them at work. You know, romantic love is like a sleeping cat. It can be awakened at any minute. You are carrying around in your head one of the most powerful brain systems the human animal has ever evolved called romantic love and feelings of deep attachment to a partner.

It doesn't matter how you meet them. You just have to get out there and start. So I don't think it's a throwing darts at a board anymore. I think it depends. I mean, I suppose if you were to stand in a bar, you've got to stand in the right bar if you're going to have the right kind of person come by. And who knows? The right kind of person might not go to that bar that night.

I don't know. I just think that the Internet is hardly a crapshoot, hardly a throwing darts at a board. It is a sophisticated tool that enables you to meet a pile of new people. You've written a profile saying what you're looking for. We're trying to give you as close to that as we can,

but then you've got to do the job of taking a look at that person. We can't do that for you. Helen Fisher has been my guest. Helen is a consultant for Match.com, and her book is Anatomy of Love, Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray. And there's a link to that book in the show notes.

Thank you, Helen. 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.

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get your podcasts. Creativity and innovation. Those words get tossed around a lot. Businesses want to innovate, and that takes creative people. But what does it mean to be creative? Are some people born that way and others not? Is there a formula for being creative? Is a creative person someone who comes up with a great idea, or someone who merely recognizes one? Or is it both?

In any event, if you are more creative, that certainly seems to give you an advantage in today's world. Roger von Eck has been speaking and teaching the concepts of creativity for a long time, often to some of the most innovative companies in the world, including Apple, IBM, Microsoft, and many more. He wrote one of the first legendary books on how creativity works called A Whack on the Side of the Head, and I think he'll have you thinking differently about your creativity by the time our conversation is done. Hey, Roger, so in a nutshell, what is creativity to your way of thinking? Well, I think you could probably, and your listeners probably could come up with their very own as well, probably could come up with a hundred different definitions, but my favorite is basically looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different. So taking an idea, a concept, an object, and putting it in a fresh context,

like I'm holding a pen in my hand, and it's a writing instrument, but if I say, oh, well, what other context can I put it in? It could be a pointer, a hole punch, a back scratcher, an advertising medium. And so that's pretty much my quick and dirty definition of creative thinking. Now, I'd also add to that that I think it's fairly easy to come up with new ideas. I think if you're going to make a difference, it's also important to implement the ideas, to apply the ideas. And obviously not all ideas should be implemented, but if you're going to be a creative doer as well as a creative

thinker, it's important to think different and also try to apply the ideas if you can. Right, because everybody has a good idea. Everybody at a cocktail party will tell you about their good idea, but not everybody does anything with it. Well, that's absolutely true. I have a model of the creative process, a fairly simple one, that people who are able to generate, manage, and apply new ideas are able to adopt different mindsets in the creative process. Early on, they think like explorers. They look for ideas and information all around them. Then they think like artists, and they ask what if and why not,

and they make new combinations and come up with a new idea. And then you have to think like a judge, and you say, is this idea any good? Do we have the resources to implement it? Is the timing right? And then finally, you have to get the idea into action, and that means you become a warrior, and you get rid of your excuses, and you focus your thinking, and you sell the idea, and you get picked up when you get knocked down. And not everybody's able to sell their ideas.

Not everybody is able to pick themselves up when they get some rejection. So it's important to know what you're good at and try to improve the areas where you're weak. But that being a judge part that you just described, isn't that difficult? Because it's hard to judge your own ideas. Plus, it's easy to get really wrapped up's hard to judge your own ideas, plus it's easy to get really wrapped up and carried away with your own ideas, even though objectively they may not be so great. That's an excellent point. And that's why it's important to have people you trust around to give you good, honest feedback on your idea, saying, this is really something. I hadn't really

thought of it like that. I can see a lot of opportunities. Or to say, you know, the world's already doing that. Or this is more of the same. Or they're not really the resources or the technologies available to implement that. And, you know, I personally, using the model I just gave you, I think I'm a pretty good explorer. I'm a good artist, too. I'm able to, you know, crank out new ideas. My weakness is my judge suit,

and so that's where I have developed a network of people that I say, what do you think of this? What do you think of this? And I trust that. And I would say that whoever you are, if you find that you're less good as an artist, well, try to surround yourself with people who can give you the idea to say, well, add this or reject that or twist this a different way.

And, you know, I think a key thing of being a, but I think that some creative people may not necessarily be good at coming up, dreaming up an idea out of nothing, but they can recognize a good idea. And I think that's golden, to be able to tell a good idea from a bad idea. It's like that judge thing you were just talking about. That's true. And I've seen it happen with a lot of people where you can just continually, say you develop an idea and you continue to spin on it and spin on it and spin on it

and add things to it. And it's really important to get it out and to show it to people if you can. A rule of thumb in design is prototype early and prototype often. And so you can see what's working and what's not, and you need an objective point of view to do that. But some people don't feel safe doing that.

They feel that people are going to steal their idea or run off with it and so on. I found that's not typically the case, and it's better to see if you can show it to people and see what they think. That is something, though, that seems to stop a lot of people. They're so worried that someone's going to steal their idea that they have to keep it under wraps. But by doing so, nobody sees it, and then it never goes anywhere. I think you make a valid point. I would encourage people, if you have an idea, try to show it to colleagues, peers, and say, what do you think of this? How can this help the company?

How can this help our interests here? Everybody's got their own creative thinking style, certain things they're better at and less good at other things. And one thing that I'm good at is I'm taking my own ideas at a fairly early stage and just going up to random people on the street, like in a mall or in a store, and just say, what do you think of this? You know, does this make sense or does this excite you? Does this captivate your imagination? And not everybody is able to do that,

but I find that useful for me to find out if I'm just stewing in my own juices, or I have something that's, you know, objectively valuable for more than just, you know, an audience of one person, which is me. You know, there's that theory about brainstorming, that, you know, there are no bad ideas, that to come up with a good idea, you have to have lots of ideas. Are you a disciple of that thinking? I believe that. I believe, well, you look at a professional photographer, if he or she is shooting an important subject, they won't take just one or two photos. They'll take a lot, maybe 100, maybe 200, and out of that there may be four or five that will satisfy the client. As I see it,

one of the chief things that differentiates creative people from lesser creative people is that creative people tend to pay attention to their small ideas. They can have five or ten of these a day, and by paying attention to these, they turn them into medium-sized ideas, and by manipulating those, they turn them into something bigger. It is interesting how everybody gets ideas from wherever they get them from, and everybody's different. I mean, ideas can pop into your head, or you see something that sparks something. I mean, it does seem to be very individual.

I recommend people, as I was saying earlier, try to have an understanding of their own creative process. And if I have a motto that describes mine, mine is look for the second right answer. I think a lot of our education emphasizes looking for the one right answer. You think of all the tests you take going through school where there's multiple choice and there's one answer that's correct. That approach is fine for certain mathematical problems, maybe even some technical problems, but I think most of the problems and issues we deal with in life have a lot of right answers. But if you stop with the first right answer you find, all the good alternatives will atrophy.

So the motto I've had in my life and in my business and what I recommend in my book, A Whack in the Side of the Head, and when I'm doing seminars, is if you can, look for the second right answer. The same thing's true when you're manipulating ideas. You know, say, well, I've got this. What can I add to it? What can I take away? What can I reverse? By looking for the second right answer when I'm evaluating ideas, my typical way of evaluating ideas is to say what's wrong with them. If I say the second way of approaching this, I'll say, hey, what other problems does this solve? What are the unintended consequences of this idea? And when I'm implementing ideas, not everything you try is going to get out there.

It's going to work. And so you have to say, well, what's another approach to make this happen? So I think one of the key elements of creative thinking and creative doing is look for the second right answer. What do you say to people, and I'm sure they say this to you, yeah, I'm just not the creative type? If you've got that mindset, that's probably true. I think that in a whack of the side of the head, I talk about 10 mental locks that prevent people from being more innovative, such attitudes as you always need to follow the rules or play as frivolous or to err is wrong or one we've been talking about, there's one right answer. These ideas make sense for a lot of what we do, but when we're trying to generate ideas, they get in the way. And the one mental

lock that I think is probably most important that short-circuits people's creativity is the belief, I'm not creative. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, if you don't think you're creative, you're not going to put yourself in situations where you can take a few chances or maybe be a little crazy or ask what-if questions or be unsure of the outcome. You know, if you don't think you're creative, you're not going to try a lot of different things. So I think, you know, the key thing is, you know, to develop that mindset. And some people think the only creative people are people like Einstein and Beethoven and Steve Jobs, you know, these super luminaries of the creative firmament.

And, you know, they've had big ideas, but most of the time they didn't get these big ideas out of the blue. They got them from paying attention to their medium-sized ideas and manipulating them and turning them into something bigger. And the same thing goes for these medium-sized ideas. They didn't come out of the blue. Most of the time they came from just small ideas that they had or they paid attention to that other people had. And then they said, okay, maybe there's something here. Let's try it. Let's play with it, see where it leads. And probably 95% of

the time, they don't lead anywhere. But sometimes they turn into something bigger. But if you have the mindset, I'm not creative, you're never going to get there. So that's probably the most damaging of all the mental locks that get in the way. When I hear discussions about creativity and innovation, you don't often hear people talk about the problems along the way. We talk about how to be creative. Well, okay, great. So you're being creative, and you're in your creative process, and you're developing your idea, and you get stuck. You're there, but you're being creative and you're in your creative process and you're developing your idea and you get stuck.

You're there, but you're stuck. So what do you do? Wow. Well, I'll tell you what works for me. I love using humor as a way of stimulating my creative thinking. I often find I get stuck when I'm getting too serious on something, whether it's on product design or writing or dealing with a client. And so I found over the years that there's a great relationship between the ha-ha of humor and the ah-ha of creative discovery. And I found that if you can laugh at a problem or a management structure or an advertiser or whatever, it frees your thinking up from a lot of deeply embedded assumptions.

And one thing I love doing with my clients, especially in my longer seminars, is have them make up offbeat and irreverent mottos for their products or organizations as a way of opening their thinking. And I'll give you a couple examples. I'd love to share these with you. For example, I worked with a group of vice presidents at Bank of America, and I said, make up an offbeat and irreverent motto for Bank of America. And their motto for B of A was, Bank of America, where you're not alone until you want to loan. Or IBM, I did the same exercise, and

their offbeat motto for IBM was, IBM, where creative people meet and meet and meet. Or Microsoft, we're arrogant and we should be. Or General Mills, their offbeat motto was, where innovation is acceptable just as long as it's been tried before. And I find that when companies do this, if you can laugh at yourself, you're not quite so tied up in your current position, the place where you're stuck. And it gives you a little more flexibility to say, well, is there another right answer? Is there a third right answer? Is there a fifth right answer?

And so that's one thing I'd recommend. And the other thing I found is that over the years, typically when I've been stuck on things, that's because I've been in love with the approach I've had, you know, in dealing with the problem. And I found that probably one of the best pieces of advice I got in business was about 30 years ago when I was just starting out. And I asked a lot of people, you know, what does it take to be a success in business? And the best advice I got came from my printer, who said, Roger, if you want to be successful in business, don't fall in love with type styles.

I said, what are you talking about? He said, well, I've seen a lot of designers fall in love with a particular font and use it in places again and again, over and over, even in places where it's inappropriate. And, well, I didn't listen to him, but pretty soon I fell in love with Palatino Semi-Bold, and I started using that font everywhere. And after a while, my design looked schlocky and unimaginative.

And I've been able to generalize this man's advice to the idea, don't fall in love with ideas, because as soon as you fall in love with one approach, you want to use it everywhere, even in places where it's not appropriate. So in my own case, I've found that in my writing, for example, if I've been in love with a particular example or a particular metaphor or quote, if I let go of that, everything tends to flow from there. So I would say find out what you're in love with in your current idea or your current situation,

and if you can allow yourself to let go of that, imagine your ideas will flow a little bit more freely. You know, I remember reading your book several years ago, A Whack on the Side of the Head, and over the years I've used a lot of the things you say. Not everything, because I do think that creativity is very individual, and sometimes some things work for some people and some things don't. But really, you clearly have studied this a long time and have a really good

sense of what it means and what it takes to be creative. So thanks. Roger Von Eck has been my guest. He is author of the book A Whack on the Side of the Head and his website is creativethink.com, creativethink.com. There's a link to his book in the show notes. Have you ever wondered why retail prices still end in 99 cents? I mean, do retailers still think that we don't know that $59.99 is closer to $60 than $50? Well, it turns out that pricing strategy still does work on us. Economist Tim Hartford described something called the left-digit effect.

And that's the theory that we as consumers really can't be bothered to read the whole price. We see that 5 at the front of $59.99 and we think 50, not 60. And that's exactly why retail stores still price things that way. But it gets more interesting. Two professors of marketing conducted experiments and found that different prices are evaluated in different ways. For instance, consumers are more inclined to buy luxury or recreational products if they have prices that are rounded to the nearest dollar. So consumers prefer a $40 bottle of champagne rather than a bottle priced at $39.72. However, for purchases that are more utilitarian, like a calculator,

participants in the study were more likely to buy at higher non-rounded prices, like $29.99 instead of $30. In another experiment, participants were told that a camera was purchased for either leisure, like for a vacation, or for a class project. And the participants preferred rounded prices when it was for a vacation, but non-rounded prices when the camera was for a class project. And that is something you should know. If you haven't yet, I need you to leave a rating and review of this podcast on iTunes,

or wherever you listen to the podcast, Google Play or TuneIn or Stitcher. On iTunes, we're trying to get to a thousand ratings and reviews, and maybe you'll put us right over the top. 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 D. Montz, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong?

We're serving up four 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. But wait, there's more. Check out See You Next Tuesday, where we reveal the juicy results from our listener polls from But Am I Wrong.

And don't miss Fisting Friday where we catch up, chat about pop culture, TV and movies. It's the perfect way to kick off your weekend. So if you're looking for a podcast that feels like a chat with your besties, 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. 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.