Something You Should Know - The Real Reason You Buy What You Buy & How to Have That Difficult Conversation and Still Be Friends

Episode Date: March 8, 2018

Handwriting analysis sounds like it might be scientific. After all some courts allow it during trials and it has helped to convict defendants. But how reliable is it really? When put to the test, do handwriting experts do better in spotting a forgery or confirming a signature than you or me? We’ll discuss that. (http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Tests/grapho.html)  You like to think that when you buy something, you do it for sound smart and logical reasons. And maybe YOU do. But most people don’t. Marketing expert Harry Beckwith, author of the book, Unthinking: The Surprising Forces Behind What We Buy (http://amzn.to/2FoSOHk) explains why we usually buy for reasons that have little to do with logic – even though we think otherwise.  All alcoholic drinks are not created equal. Some get you drunker, some are more likely to give you a hangover and one in particular is more likely to land you in a hospital emergency room although no one is really sure why. If you enjoy a cocktail, this is worth hearing. (http://www.menshealth.com/health/4-secretly-dangerous-drinks)  Ever go in to a conversation with the intent of changing someone’s mind? As you probably discovered, it almost never works. So perhaps that should not be the goal according to Celeste Headlee of Georgia Public Radio and author of the book We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter (http://amzn.to/2oXH1Zk). She discusses a different way to approach difficult conversations so they don’t end in arguments and maybe actually accomplish something.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, how does handwriting analysis work? Is it a real thing, or is it just guesswork? Then, why do you buy the things you buy? You'd like to think you make objective, good buying decisions. But there's not much time that we can necessarily take to make objective, good decisions. After all, you run into get some toothpaste and you really can't afford to sit there and debate. You just buy the one that you've been buying over and over again. And it's not a wrong decision. Also, if you enjoy an occasional cocktail, there are a few you may want to stay away from. Plus, have you ever had a political or other difficult conversation that didn't go well?

If you enter these conversations hoping to change someone's mind, you're probably destined to be frustrated. That's one of the reasons these conversations become arguments, because it's really hard to change somebody else's mind. It's really hard. All this today on 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. 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. 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. I get a lot of emails from all over the world. This week I got an email from Flora in Taiwan.

Amin in Iran, another one, I think it was from Egypt. What's interesting is a lot of the emails from foreign countries, from non-English speaking foreign countries that I get, are people saying that they use this podcast to help them learn English. I never thought my English was that good

that I could teach people, but apparently it is. And I got an email this morning, I must share this with you because it was just, it just kind of made my day, from a gentleman named Steven. And it says, I just have to say that this is the best podcast I have ever heard. Just phenomenal and life-changing. Thank you. Now, I've gotten other emails that kind of start out that way. Love your podcast. It's great, but... and then they take issue with it. But he just said it's great and left it at that. And I'll leave it at that as well. First up today, we're going to talk about handwriting analysis.

It's been used as evidence in court trials and has actually helped send some people to jail. But is handwriting analysis really legit? Well, first you have to understand there are two types of handwriting analysis. There's forensic handwriting analysis, and that's when an expert testifies that two signatures were made by the same person, or that a signature is or is not a forgery, stuff like that. Sounds simple enough, but two Supreme Court cases, one in 1993 and one in 2001, have cast grave doubts on the validity of this type of analysis. Because there's no standardized way of testing, and any analysis appears to be very subjective. One study compared so-called experts with average people in analyzing handwriting samples,

and the experts did no better than the average people. Both groups were wrong 52% of the time. Graphology is the other kind of handwriting analysis, and this is where someone tries to figure out a person's personality based on their handwriting. In France, about 70% of employers use this as part of their screening process for new employees. But there's absolutely no evidence scientifically that there's any validity to it. In fact, one of the basic principles of handwriting analysis is that, like fingerprints, everyone's handwriting is unique and different. But that's

never been proven. It's never been demonstrated. It just doesn't appear that your handwriting has very much to say, except for the actual words you write. And that is something you should know. How many buying decisions do you make in a day, or a week, or a month? I mean, you buy food, you buy toothpaste, you buy gasoline, clothes, medicine, cars. You're always buying, or thinking about buying, or looking back at the things you bought and wondering why you bought them. So why is it that you buy what you buy? Why do you buy one toothpaste but not the other? Why did you get the car you drive instead of a different kind of car? Harry Beckwith is a marketing consultant.

He's director of Beckwith Partners and has worked with companies like Target, Wells Fargo, Merck, and IBM. And he is also the author of several books, including Unthinking, The Surprising Forces Behind What We Buy. Hey, Harry, thanks for being here. So even though it's a pretty big, complex question, and it depends on what it is you're buying, is there a simple answer to the question, why we buy what we buy? We buy with our hearts.

I think that's the best summary of what we do. Rather than with our heads, we're often lambasted for seeming to be irrational and buy things we don't need and things we don't want. But if you look deep inside, there's some desire that it fulfills, and it's not the intellect that's doing it, it's our heart. So if that's true, if we're making buying decisions with our heart and not our head, shouldn't companies be appealing to our heart and not our head, not telling us that this detergent cleans better or this glass cleaner makes your windows sparkle,

but they should be appealing to something else. Well, some do and some don't. You know, the Procter & Gamble of the world spends so much time on researching the kind of things that I write about, perhaps more simply, that they have a very good understanding of the motivations and the triggers. An awful lot of people in other lines of work, especially people who are inclined to be, think of themselves as rational and analytical thinkers,

assume that it's all rational and analytical thought that goes into it, and they're the ones that make more of the mistakes. But if you're in marketing for any length of time, you begin to recognize how utterly human we are. But using your example of Procter & Gamble, I mean, most people would think, well, the way they sell and the way they appeal to people is, you know, Tide, get your clothes cleaner. And you're saying that that's not why people buy Tide, to get their clothes cleaner? Well, how would they know?

In other words, Tide appears over and over again on television and appeals to us. But in many cases, if you look at the people who buy Tide, they're the people who grew up with Tide. It's just familiar to them. They associate it with family in the same way that we have a familial connection to coffee because most of us grew up with the smell of that roasting or percolating in our mother's kitchen. So clean becomes a way of justifying the decision. But if you looked at them side by side, you couldn't prove that tie gets clothes cleaner. So a lot of the reasons we think we buy are more justification to ourselves than they are.

Sure, yeah. Well, you need to think you have a justification, and so you give yourself one, or you'll announce one. And even when you do market research, you'll find that people give a particular answer for why they bought something, but it becomes clear that that isn't the reason at all, so you have to probe deeper. But I imagine somebody listening to this, and myself included, would say, but wait a minute. I like to think I'm smarter than that, that I do make those kinds of decisions. Maybe this applies to everybody else, but no, no, no, no. When I buy my detergent or my whatever it is, I'm buying it because, you know, I've done the research, I know, and this is an objectively good decision. Yeah, but there's not much time that we can necessarily take to make objective, good decisions.

After all, you run into the, you run into, get some toothpaste, and you really can't afford to sit there and debate. You just buy the one that you've been buying over and over again. Again, and it's not a wrong decision. All toothpaste, I think, works. I think you'd be hard-pressed to see any significant change in people's teeth using Pepsodent versus Gleam versus whatever else is out there. But you believe that it works well. I don't know that you necessarily believe it works better.

It's just that you're not going to take the time to do the exploration. It just requires too much time. And we need that time to do other things. Do they still make gleam? I'm not sure. There's so much toothpaste. But here's the thing. There's so much toothpaste out there that you can't even really, you can't even check. There are, I don't know, how many different kinds? There must be about 11 different kinds of crest now. Right, right. You can sit there and be an avid crest buyer

and then just not have any idea what to do. Maybe I should get the crest with everything, but gosh, if it has everything, then maybe it doesn't whiten as well as the one that just has whitening. I mean, what kind of a decision is that? Tartar control, but tartar control plus breath freshening. Let's see.

But does that... Is it better to get just the pure breath freshener? Does it freshen breath more than one with the added tartar control? I mean, you start to think about it, your head spins. Well, is that good marketing to make people so confused and head spin that... I mean, what's the point of that? Shelf space. The name familiarity, the more different product line that you carry,

the more shelf space that you can own. And so you can start to squeeze off your competitors into smaller and smaller spaces. Then people come in and see that Crest has all this and whatever else. And especially if you're new to this country, they'll go, wow, gosh, Crest must be the best toothpaste in this country because they've got all this space. It's a real battle for shelf space in stores, and that's as good an explanation for the proliferation as anything else.

And a valid one, too. I mean, that shelf space is pretty powerful stuff. Well, absolutely, yeah, yeah. If all you can see is Crest, you're much more inclined to buy crest. And I remember that old Jerry Seinfeld routine about pain relievers. Do I want long-lasting or do I want fast acting? And it's, I don't know, why not both? It's the stuff of humor.

But it's unthinking. It's not irrational, just non-rational. It's the stuff of humor, but it's unthinking. It's not irrational, just non-rational. It's emotive. There's something. It comes from our past. Our parents have it. We've seen it millions of times. We feel comfortable with it.

Maybe we just like all of the things being equal. We just like the package without even knowing that. What's the reason. My guest is Harry Beckwith of Beckwith Partners. He is a marketing consultant and author of the book, Unthinking, The Surprising Forces Behind What We Buy. You know, eating family dinner together on a regular basis is really important. We've talked about it on this program.

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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. So Harry, this talk about buying a car is like the perfect example of what you're talking about, because there is no one best car. People choose a car, and they say they choose it for things like reliability and mileage and color and looks and all that, and maybe they do, but there's probably a lot of cars that would fit that bill. There probably are some cars that fit the bill better than the car you choose.

So there's obviously something else going on. There's more than just that logical, I picked this car because it gets so many miles per gallon and the other cars don't. Well, again, you just had the experience where you tend to buy within the brand repeatedly until you have a bad experience. And so you buy Fords, and you buy Fords, and you buy Fords, and the Toyota buyer buys Toyotas and buys Toyotas and buys Toyotas. But we tend to repeat it as long as it's a highly satisfying experience. Why not? And we initially bought that for some elemental reason.

If we look back at it, whatever that choice of cars was, there was something about it. I switched to Toyotas when I changed careers. I didn't have the money I had when I was practicing law and buying German cars. And I bought a Toyota, and I bought it because the one I looked at looked kind of sporty, and I heard that they were very reliable, and I was having a lot of reliability problems with my German cars. And I was impressed with the car when I tested it, and I didn't want to have to try to test anymore. It was just one of the first ones I tried, and I tried one or two other models, and then I was done. That's all I needed to do. But wait, wait, wait, wait. That's a very objective decision-making process.

You're not buying because your dad bought a Toyota, and you're not buying because you feel warm and fuzzy. You bought it for reliability. Well, I felt warm and fuzzy because reliability was a nice justification to give for it, but it was the coolest looking of the three cars. It was the sportiest and sexx it looking but how do you know that that the main yeah but how do you know that the kids the coolest and sexiest

car wasn't the secondary you know the i bought it for reliability and it happened to be a cool and sexy car as opposed to i bought a cool and sexy car and it happened to be reliable yeah reliable isn't you know know, the most compelling. When you're a guy who's about, as I was about 32 years old, reliable is a really nice feature, but the sexiness of how it looks works a lot more strongly on you.

I just didn't want a non-reliable car. There were a number of reliable cars from which I could choose. It was the sexy-looking one. But a lot of people worked their way into the finals of that, and the sexy car won. So when the dust all settles from this, is this a message to marketers, or is this a message to consumers, or both, or what?

Well, I'm not necessarily delivering a message so much as I'm delivering a story about how fascinating we are. I begin the book by saying this is a book, I'm thinking of the book about the most fascinating subject on earth, us. And we demonstrate how fascinating we are by the decisions we make, and all kinds of decisions we make. And so my book talks about the movies that we watch, the movie actors that we like, the television shows that we watch, things that you don't necessarily think of as buying decisions. The introduction of the Beatles to America, and why were they successful? Because it's an insight into us that you could use in whatever way you want to, or just to be entertained and charmed by the human race.

Why were the Beatles so successful here? Well, they did a very good job of making the audience feel that they were singing to them. That was a big part of it. All their lyrics, if you listen to all the lyrics in their early albums, they're directed to you. They don't sing about Peggy Sue, but they sing to you, and they say, I want to hold your hand. So that was a major part of it. And then, of course, the incredible brand-building publicity that they got just by being on the Ed Sullivan show

was helpful to them. And then when people saw how strongly the audience was reacting, they felt there must be something there. And we have a tendency to look toward others, so we follow the crowd, and the crowd was wowed by them, and we took in some of that feeling to watching it. But they were very cleverly marketed. It's interesting to note that Dick Clark, the supposedly expert on American pop music at that time, said that they would never succeed. And his reason for saying that was what? I think that, well, one, it's the tradition of habit. We fall into ruts, we fall into patterns, and we fall into rules.

And there was a rule in the music business at that point that British acts don't sell. And so he fell into the trap of thinking, well, if British acts hadn't played well here, then this British act wouldn't. He was just, you know, guilty of that stereotypical thinking. But the American audience didn't care. They were looking for something fresh and new, especially in the wake of the Kennedy administration, I think. Yeah, but, you know, the Beatles did sing I Want to Hold Your Hand, but they also sang Me, Shell, My Bell, Hey Jude. I mean, they did songs about other people.

Yeah, those came later, though. If you listen to the lyrics of the first album, Meet the Beatles, within the first two stanzas, they used the word you in almost every single song on the album. Then once they built that audience, and that's what they were... Epstein was trying to say, he was trying to say, we're one of you. Even the title of the album, Meet the Beatles. I mean, what an odd idea. You know, how does one do that? Once they'd established themselves, the Beatles could sing anything that they wanted. And you can't sing about you over and over again. So they changed that and they changed genres and they adapted, but they introduced themselves by talking to us as individuals. How do you know, though, that you're not just looking at how products are marketed or how the Beatles were marketed,

and just kind of coming up with a plausible explanation that fits the success or failure of that particular product? How do you know what you're saying is true? Oh, you can't be certain, except that you see this technique used in advertising and marketing all the time. USA Today does it. Malcolm Gladwell writes books and addresses them specifically to you. We have a great interest in ourselves. And when we think, as Dale Carnegie said, and many of your readers would

know, and how to win friends and influence people, he said, the most beautiful word in the English language to any person is their own name. Use it often. And so you see that again and again. Advertising typically says, do you want this? Do you want that, as if it's speaking to you. And the Beatles followed the same technique. There was more to the Beatles' success than just that. But that was an explicit strategy on Brian Epstein's part to try to win them over because he was worried that Dick Clark was right. Well, and with good reason. I mean, Dick Clark did seem to have his finger on the pulse of popular music.

Well, and by the way, when the kids first heard the songs, when he played them on the Dick Clark show, they gave it really low ratings. They used to have something called a Raider record. I remember that, right. Yeah. Yeah, Dick, I'd give it a 9. You can't really dance to it.

Exactly. It was, well, can you dance to it? I think they gave, and I think it was She Loves You, and I think they gave it a 78. I have it in the book, and I'm not sure of that. And when Dick Clark showed them the pictures of the Beatles, they laughed. So their initial reaction was extremely negative. So what changed? All those influences. I said the influence of being on the Dick Clark show, the audience reaction, the invitation to meet these innocent kids. they also had that look of innocence initially about them that made them palatable.

And they were just different enough. But interestingly enough, they sang a lot of familiar songs. They were very influenced by American rock and roll and by Chuck Berry. And so their songs weren't really that different. They were actually quite familiar, but there was an unfamiliar element of this Britishness and this hair that gave them a freshness that some other American act singing similar songs may not have had. Well, I didn't want to talk all about the Beatles, but it is fascinating.

But getting back to the idea of why I buy what I buy, what you're saying is that when I make a decision to buy a car or to buy, you know, a certain can of beans over another certain can of beans, there's something else going on beyond just my objective criteria of, well, this car's got, you know, this, this, this, and this, and this other car doesn't, so that's why I'm choosing. There's more to it than just our objective checklist. I'm not ruling out some objective criteria you have at all, nor am I ruling out that there are, as a segment of the population, less than 10% who are truly objective and analytical or try to be. It's hard to keep your heart out of it, but there are people that do it to a considerable degree. But our heart is always for the rest of us, the other 92% or whatever it may be.

It's high. Our heart is very much in that. And so, again, it's an act of unthinking. There are feelings about it. There are associations we have with that product, with that color. And its advertising, by the way, is not the least bit irrelevant to it. No matter how much we say we're not influenced by advertising, we are. And all of those influences compound. And it's more complex than just the objective characteristics of the product.

Well, maybe just knowing that, knowing that there are these other influences that go into our decision-making process, some of which we may not even be aware of, maybe knowing that will help us make better decisions. Harry Beckwith has been my guest. He's a marketing consultant, a director at Beckwith Partners, and he is author of the book, Unthinking, The Surprising Forces Behind What We Buy.

There's a link to his book in the show notes for this episode of the podcast. And thanks for being here, Harry. You know, a great website can say so much. It can be the focal point of your business or organization or your passion or your hobby. But you're likely under the impression that building a great website is hard. You've got to find somebody who knows how to do it and all kinds of things can go wrong and it takes forever. But none of that is true anymore. Not with Squarespace. And this comes from my experience.

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conversation? How do you do it? Celeste Headley is somebody who's really taken a hard look at this. Celeste is the host of a daily news show on Georgia Public Radio. She spent more than a decade with National Public Radio, and she is author of a book called We Need to Talk, How to Have Conversations That Matter. Hi, Celeste. Welcome. So what, in your view, makes a difficult conversation difficult? How do you define difficult conversation? Difficult conversations can, almost anything can be difficult, right? I mean, anything in which either your feelings might be hurt or someone else's are, or someone has to be vulnerable, can be risky. Now, nationally, we're having a problem with a certain few issues. One of those is race. That's one we tend to have a lot of trouble talking about.

We have some trouble talking about gender issues. And guns is the number one most polarizing issue in the United States. Those are the topics that we often avoid discussing. And my contention is that that's really hurting us. You know, our strategy in the past has been to avoid those things. It's kind of the cliche of Henry Higgins saying, stick to the weather and your health. But that strategy has gotten us where we are now, where we're more polarized than ever before, where we don't understand one another and we're not making any progress. So I would say

that the first thing, the first strategy for difficult conversations is to stop avoiding them. Well, but one of the reasons people avoid them, one of the reasons I avoid political conversations is I just don't want the blowback. I don't want the nasty comments, the, you know, you're an idiot kind of for believing what you believe. I'd just rather not. And I absolutely get that. Oftentimes when we enter into these conversations, our intent is to change somebody's mind or to challenge what they say.

Or sometimes it's just to figure out at all moments whether we agree with them or not, right? Every single thing they say, we're deciding in our heads, do we agree with that or do we not agree with that? And then we tell them what they think. It's much, much better if we just set that entire thing aside, set that burden down of trying to educate somebody else or change their mind. And instead, go into these conversations intending to learn

something from them. Because no matter how strongly you disagree with them, you can still learn something from their point of view. You know, if you enter these conversations hoping to change someone's mind, you're probably destined to be frustrated. That's one of the reasons these conversations become arguments because it's really hard to change somebody else's mind. It's really hard. So the best outcome of these conversations is that you learn more about where they're coming from and maybe you're able to share your thoughts in a non-confrontational, open way. And so they learn about your perspective,

and you walk away, and perhaps as you walk away and digest what you've heard, it might end up changing your perspective or changing your mind, and the same for them. But it's not going to happen because of some great argument that you've made. Which is what people think, that, aha, I've got you now, and then the big slam dunk, here it comes, and the other person says, no, that's not true, and you're an idiot. Exactly, that's exactly right. So now where do you go? You have to remember, they're trying to do the same thing, right? They're also trying to convince you, and so all you're doing is frustrating each other. Well, exactly. That's what these conversations always are, are very frustrating,

and people both end up leaving feeling frustrated, and nobody's changed anybody's mind, and what was the point of that? Right, and frankly, I don't think there is a point of that kind of conversation. You know, like I said, that's always going to disappoint you and anger you because you will not achieve your goal. But if your goal is to learn something from that other person, you can always, 100% of the time, achieve that. Always. The problem, the issue here is that we often approach conversations thinking about how can we change the other person. And I don't just mean change their minds. The most common question I get, and this is everywhere, not just the United States, is how do I change someone else's behavior?

How do I stop them from interrupting me? How do I stop them from raising their voice or whatever it is that they're doing? And I always have to say, you can't. I hate to tell you this, but there's nothing you can do to change someone else's behavior. But the good news is you can change your own. And research shows us there's probably room for improvement there. And by modeling good conversational behavior, and because human beings are already just primed to learn by modeling, you can actually effect change just by doing better yourself, being a better listener yourself,

yourself using curiosity and good questions to sustain a civil and engaging conversation. And the other part of that, of course, is that you have control over whether you learn something for the other part of that, of course, is that you have control over whether you learn something for the other person. Is it your sense that if you approach a conversation the way you just suggested, that that helps prevent it from getting out of control? That if you model good behavior, the other person is less likely to lose it, too? Oh, absolutely. And there's really good evidence of that. I mean, I can give you examples from my own life. One of the things I share in my book is that, you know, I'm a mixed race person. I moved to Atlanta three and a half years ago, the last time my family was

here. We were owned on a plantation near Milledgeville, Georgia. And I'm a journalist, which means that when the massacre happened in Charlotte, I had to talk about the flying of the Confederate flag. I had to speak to sons of the Confederate veteran and ask them why they felt it was their right and the right thing to do to fly that flag, which was personally offensive to me. But the way that I get through that is going into it, hoping to learn something from them. And it didn't become an argument, and I had nothing but respect for them. And quite frankly, I did learn from them.

It was a good conversation. And I feel as though I understand better where they're coming from. You know, there's a jazz pianist named Daryl Davis, and i i there's actually a pbs documentary about him i think it's called accidental courtesy and in his off time when he's not playing jazz his hobby is to convince men to leave the kkk and he's really good at it so good that he he pretty much uh dismantled the kkk operation in the state of Maryland. Oh, I think I saw that. I think I saw that. Yeah. And when you ask him, when they ask him, how do you do this, right? Because he's black.

How on earth is this guy convincing people to leave the KKK? He says he doesn't try to convince them. That's the opposite of what he does. What he does is he goes and he listens to them and he asks questions and he responds to them. And he says, listen so it puts a face on what the KKK is so against, and they melt. Yeah, exactly. And he's a great listener. That's how he befriends them. He asks them questions,

not in a confrontational way, but in a curious way. He really wants to know, where do you come from? Where did this start? Tell me about how you got to this place. And they are happy to be heard. And it ends up forming a bond, the kind of bond that most of us have sort of lost touch with because we're stuck behind these social media platforms

where, like you say, all we do is call each other names. And you get rewarded for calling people names, right? You get more tweets and more likes when you're insulting and tearing other people down. Right. And I see people that I could probably have a conversation with, but they tweet stuff and post stuff on Facebook that is so inflammatory and probably things they would never say face to face. But they hide behind that or not that they're hiding, but somehow they use that platform to make these very bold and provocative statements that they probably would never do in person. Absolutely. It's a different persona. And I like to think of it as code switching. Code switching,

obviously, is what we do. We become a slightly different personality in every environment we're in, right? You're different when you speak at home with your partner or spouse than you are when you speak with your kids or your friends from high school or at work, right? So that's normal. And that's what we're doing when we go on social media. We're code switching and switching into this different personality. The sad part is it's not a particularly pleasant code. It's not nice. And that's another thing, you're not going to be able to change. Like that's what social media is. So I think it's just healthier for us to just recognize that that's what social media is, recognize that that's the kind of person that other people become, and that frankly, we probably become as well. And so leave social media alone if you want an actual connection with

a human being. Call them on the phone or see them in person. The average American at this point spends almost a half an hour texting and only six minutes on the phone. Yeah, to me that is crazy. It sounds like you're saying that rather than go into a conversation with the goal you'll never reach of changing the other person's mind, go in with a different expectation. Go in, don't make that the goal, because that's probably never going to happen.

That's exactly right. And that's why you get frustrated. That's why the other person gets frustrated. And that's how it leads to arguments. You have this goal in mind and you keep pushing for it. And it tends to make you more argumentative and it makes the other person more argumentative. It's not working for you.

And so you're just constantly trying to hammer in a screw. So instead, choose a goal that you can achieve. And coincidentally, that goal that you can achieve. And, you know, coincidentally, that goal that you can achieve, and by that I mean learning something about another person, has all these other benefits for our mental health, our emotional health, and our brains. You know, listening to somebody else talk about their own personal experience is one of the most effective ways we know of to increase your empathy. It's one of the ways that you actually become smarter. You know, Larry King once said,

I will learn nothing from what I say today. I can only learn by listening to other people. So what is this about the mere presence of a cell phone hurts a conversation? What is that? How can that be? I'm not sure we actually know why. What we have are these particular studies, and I'll mention just one that occurred in the UK. They had a whole bunch of people come in, strangers, sit down and talk to each other, and in half of those conversations, they placed a cell phone on the table. Didn't belong to either of the people, didn't make any noise. But what they discovered was that when those people came out and they

asked them about the conversation, they were like over 60% more likely to say when the cell phone is present that the other person was unempathetic, untrustworthy, and unlikable. So even when the cell phone's just present, it's having an effect on our brains. We don't have the answer yet to why or how that mechanism works. We do know, though, that your brain is distracted by your phone even when it's making no noise. You know, that's true because just the other day, I forgot to take my phone with me. I left it at home. And everything was different because since I didn't have it, it was like, oh, I can relax now. I mean, I can't check my mail.

I can't check my... So I can't. So it just seemed like life was easier. Right? Yeah. And in fact, neurologically speaking, it was easier. Right? Yeah. And in fact, neurologically speaking, it was easier. It was easier to focus because your brain power wasn't sitting there worried about your phone. What else affects our conversations, things like that, that maybe we don't even realize has an effect,

but if we knew, maybe could help things go a lot easier? So one of the things is that we have a hard time focusing on what other people are saying. And the reason for that is that our brains are in constant motion. You know, people say clear your mind, which is just crap. You cannot, it's impossible to clear your mind. Your brain is thinking all the time. The average person, the average speed at which a person speaks is somewhere around 150 words per minute. But your brain can think between four and 450 words per minute. So it's filling in all those other words, right, as the other person is speaking. And sometimes those thoughts are more interesting than what we think we're listening to. And we get distracted by them. They pull us. And so we stop listening.

And we're just thinking about what we're going to say next. And that's one of the major obstacles for us in listening to other people. You know, Stephen Covey said, you know, we're always listening not with the intent to understand, but we listen with the intent to reply. And that's one of the biggest issues that's blocking us from having good conversations. Well, I like your message, and I really think that people have to think about it. If the point of going into a conversation is to try to change somebody else's mind, it's almost destined to fail because

a conversation is unlikely to do it. But going in to learn, that's a whole other story, and you've given some great strategies to do that. Celeste Headley has been my guest. Her book is We Need to Talk, How to Have Conversations That Matter, and there's a link to her book in the show notes. Thanks, Celeste. Thanks so much. Have a good one. Not to take the buzz out of your evening cocktail, but there are a few drinks you should be a little wary of. For example, Jack and Diet Coke.

The artificial sweeteners in diet soda ease the path of alcohol to the small intestine, according to research from Northern Kentucky University. As a result, people who drank hard liquor mixed with diet soft drinks registered higher blood alcohol concentrations than people who drank hard liquor mixed with non-diet mixers. Red Bull and Vodka The high caffeine content in energy drinks like Red Bull offset the sedative quality of the alcohol. The result is you can drink a lot of Red Bull and Vodka without

feeling like you're hammered. Why is that a problem? Because if you drink a lot of it, you are hammered, but you're still more likely to drive, swim, or take other risks you normally wouldn't because you think you're fine. Any brown liquor. Most distilled liquors contain something called congeners. It's a natural but slightly toxic byproduct of the fermenting process. But dark colored liquors like bourbon and whiskey have about 30 times more of these organic molecules than vodka, gin, or other clear liquor. As a result, you will feel more hungover after drinking dark booze, according to research from Brown University. And finally, malt liquor. While malt liquor makes up less than 3% of the beer sold in the U.S., a study from Johns Hopkins University found that roughly 46% of people admitted to the ER for alcohol-related injuries in a year had been drinking malt liquor.

Yes, it typically contains more alcohol than regular beer, but it's not clear why drinking it makes you more likely to end up in the emergency room. And that is something you should know. We've been getting a lot of new Facebook and Twitter followers, and I invite you to join them if you have not already, because we publish not only what is in the show, but we publish a lot of additional intel and information that doesn't make it into the show that I think you'd find interesting. So please follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and you can always email me at mike at somethingyoushouldknow.net. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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