Something You Should Know - Why Audiences Behave the Way They Do & The Hidden Benefits of Uncertainty - SYSK Choice

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today on something you should know, the benefits of smelling a Christmas tree and all it can do for you. Then the psychology and magic of an audience. It's interesting how unanimous audiences can be. When something funny happens, you don't like get half the audience laughing and the other half of the audience growling. Audiences tend to pick up energy from the other people and they tend to reach unanimity. Also, three powerful ways that that will help you get more done in less time. And the art and science of uncertainty and why being unsure of yourself

Starting point is 00:00:38 can actually be a good thing. It's a real game changer when you can begin to see that uncertainty is a wonderful signal that you don't know and now you can investigate. In fact, uncertainty is actually highly related to curiosity. All this today on something you should know. Of the Regency Era, you might know it as the time when Bridgeton takes place,

Starting point is 00:01:07 or it's the time when Jane Austen wrote her books. The Regency Era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history. Vulgar History's new season is all about the Regency era, the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal. Listen to Vulgar History, Regency Era, wherever you get 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.

Starting point is 00:01:44 Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. One of the great things about the holiday season I think most people can agree on is all the smells that smell like the holidays. and the one smell I think that universally is loved is the smell of a Christmas tree, a pine tree. The power of pine is supposedly actually good for you. For centuries, some people have gone to great lengths to get access to ancient pine forests for their healing powers. The scent of pine has been found to reduce stress, hostility, and depression.

Starting point is 00:02:23 A 15-minute walk through a local Christmas tree, exposes you to some powerful aromatherapy, the old-fashioned way. Be sure to take some deep, slow breaths as you stroll through the evergreens. That scent of pine can even help relieve chest congestion and supposedly soothe sore muscles. And that is something you should know. You may not have thought about this very much, but I have, and that is the magic of an audience. Think about it. When you watch a movie or a play or some other performance with other people as part of an audience,

Starting point is 00:03:03 it is a very different experience than watching alone. For example, you might watch a comedy in a theater and laugh your head off along with the rest of the crowd, but watch that same movie by yourself in your living room. You're almost guaranteed not to laugh as much. Maybe not at all. Being part of an audience changes things. It is itself an experience. So what is it about audiences?

Starting point is 00:03:29 How did someone even come up with the idea of putting people together in a group to watch something? And then how did the audience members learn what to do when they watched it? Here to discuss the power and the magic and the history of audiences is Robert V. Agas. He is editor-in-chief of Encore Monthly, the National Theater magazine, and he spent much of his career working at Playbill, the iconic theater program company. He's author of a book called Right This Way, A History of the Audience. Hi, Robert.

Starting point is 00:04:02 Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hello, Michael. So I don't remember when I first realized the importance and the significance of an audience, but I do remember there's someone talking about it that it made me think. Like, you know, imagine a TV game show without an audience or a late-night comedy show without an audience. Like, the audience is not just there to watch it. It's part of it.

Starting point is 00:04:29 It's part of the show. And when did you first kind of get in on this? Well, you know, I've been going to see things since I was a kid. And a lot of other people, I think they approach it. They feel like they're fish in water. They don't realize that they're in something, that they're part of something. And yet it's an incredible experience for people. You respond differently when you're part of an audience.

Starting point is 00:04:54 And I noticed this early on. Now, I think I may have mentioned that I've seen more than 2,000 shows just on Broadway alone for my years at Playbill. But I've been a member of movie audiences, television audiences, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm always acutely aware of how I'm experiencing things, not just as myself, but as part of an audience. Yeah, well, and think about how when you watch, say, something funny. When you watch it alone, you almost never laugh. But when you watch it with a group of people, it's funny. Or when you watch a football game on TV by yourself, you probably don't jump up and scream and yell.

Starting point is 00:05:36 But if you have other people in your living room with you, there's something that happens. And I don't know what that is. Do you know what that is? Well, you gather significance from the people around you. Have you ever been like in a show or a movie? They'll say a funny line and the whole audience will laugh. And you didn't laugh because like, I don't get it. But then like one second later, you get it.

Starting point is 00:06:01 And it's the audience that told you that that thing was funny. And so you gather that kind of energy. I mean, look at these people who pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars to see Taylor Swift. Look at Taylor Swift. They could stay home. They could watch her videos. They could listen to her albums. But they feel that there is some kind of special electricity that they get from being around other Taylor Swift fans, being in the presence of Taylor Swift, being having that experience as a group.

Starting point is 00:06:37 Stephen King wrote a really interesting book called Dantz Macab about about, about, Why people go to see horror movies, something that they, you know, the things that are horror in horror movies, you would never want to happen in your own life or to even be present when that happens. But people consider it entertainment. Why? This was King's theory, that people go to measure themselves against what they see. They say, well, this is going to be a really scary Stephen King movie.

Starting point is 00:07:07 I wonder if I could take it. I wonder if I'm strong enough to take it. And they go and they see the movie. And it'll be a horrible murder scene, and you go, ooh, that was awful. That was awful. But I could live through it. I could survive it. Do we have a sense of the history of audiences, like when somebody said, hey, why don't we put on a little show here and get some people to come and sit down and watch us?

Starting point is 00:07:33 Because, you know, it kind of sounds weird when you say it that way, but somebody must have done something like that to say, let's make people watch us do something and see what they think. Well, you know, audiences had to be trained. Audiences had to learn how to be audiences. Back in the days of the Greeks, they loved poetry, and they would have poets who would speak poetry, and they would, most of their poetry was about their gods and about their religion. And they became so popular, they would have one or two, or sometimes three, or sometimes a whole group of people. They would call it, they called it a chorus, and they would all say the poetry at the same time, and audiences love this. And they would say, well, the God Zeus did this and Zeus did that. And then one day, there was one of these people in the chorus.

Starting point is 00:08:21 It was a guy named Phespis. And that name sounds familiar. This is where we get the word Fespian from. Fesbis did something incredibly radical. He walked in front of the chorus. And instead of saying Zeus did this, Zeus did that, he said, I am Zeus. And here is what I did. And people consider him.

Starting point is 00:08:43 the first actor. And I could tell you, audiences were shocked. They were like, he's not Zeus. He doesn't look like Zeus. He just looks like, it looks like Thespus from down the block. But after a while, it was like, well, you know, I don't know what what Zeus sounds like, but I bet he sounds just like that. I think, I think Thespus is doing a good job. And so audiences began to accept that actors, that performers could embody another character. And it's interesting, for a long time, there was only one actor supported by the chorus. Then the playwrights came along and said, I have an idea, we'll have two actors, and they can argue with each other. And that whole idea of a chorus all speaking at the same time, can you imagine going into a movie where all the actors were saying the same lines at the same time? It would sound weird.

Starting point is 00:09:36 Ah, but if you're at a musical, they have, literally have a chorus, and they do exactly what the Greek choruses did, except they sing it. And audiences accept that perfectly well. Audiences have been trained now to accept that. There was a famous French movie that came out at the time when they first had movies. It was called the arrival of a train at La Ciatat. It was a very short movie. And all it was, the audiences were just learning to watch these things and to accept them. It was just a train pulling into a station. And the train was coming right at the audience. but it looked it wasn't a painted train it wasn't you know actors wearing a train costume it was a train and it was coming straight at them and people screamed in terror they thought a train was

Starting point is 00:10:24 coming at them but now but after that people laughed at themselves and they said well you know we we accept now that we could see a picture of a train and we know it's not going to hurt us and gradually over the years many many other things that have been added to the way they create images, the way they create plays, etc. Audiences have gradually learned to respond in certain ways that they think now has always been there, but it hasn't. Is there any sense of when people started applauding? Yes, that, well, the earliest reference that I could find to it is back in the days of the Roman Empire, when a Roman general would be out on a campaign. and it was a successful campaign, which many of them were,

Starting point is 00:11:16 when they would come back into Rome, they would have a parade, and they called it a triumph. That's where we get the word triumph from. They called it a triumph, and the general would march at the front. Sometimes if they had defeated an enemy, the enemy would be dragged along in chains, and people were required to express their approval and excitement

Starting point is 00:11:38 by banging their hands together. Now, if you think about it, it's an odd way to show that you like something, just banging your hands together. But people started to do it and it came to be applied to other things and gradually it became the way that people expressed their approval of things. Similar with, you know, with booing. Things happened early on and there were different ways of booing. People have now kind of come to accept that yelling, booze, is the way to express this. But if you think about it, I mean, it seems so natural, but if you think about it, it's actually kind of a weird way to express disapproval. Yeah, but what would be better?

Starting point is 00:12:20 Because it seems to work now. Well, I'll tell you, for a long time, and you've probably seen this in old movies and things, people would express their displeasure by throwing things at the actors, literally throwing things at the actors. This, even in the days of Shakespeare, when he had what they call the groundlings, the people who would stand right in front of the actors. stage and they would sell them hazelnuts and cockle shells that was the snacks that they would eat and if they didn't like what they saw on the stage they would throw the shells throw the shells at the actors now that is that is one area where they were provided with that by the theater obviously not to throw at the stage but when I see old movies of people throwing eggs at the stage or throwing rotten fruit at the stage you kind of had to know that

Starting point is 00:13:09 the show is going to be bad because who walks around with rotten fruit in their pockets. Right, right. You got to pack your pockets before you leave the house with the tomatoes and. Right. And they didn't have plastic bags in those days. So I imagine that their clothes were pretty much of a mess. You had to really dislike somebody, but dislike them so much that you would pay to show your hatred of them. Once again, a weird audience behavior.

Starting point is 00:13:37 here. We're talking about the psychology and the magic of audiences, and my guest is Robert Viagas. He is editor-in-chief of Encore Monthly, and author of the book, Write This Way, a history of the audience. When they were young, the five members of an elite commando group nicknamed the Stone Wolves raged against the oppressive rule of the Kradarocan Empire, which occupies and dominates most of the galaxies inhabited planets. The wolves fought for free. freedom, but they failed, leaving countless corpses in their wake. Defeated and disillusioned, they hung up their guns, and went their separate ways, all hoping to find some small bit of peace amidst a universe thick with violence and oppression.

Starting point is 00:14:22 Four decades after their heyday, they each try to stay alive and eke out a living, but a friend from the past won't let them move on, and neither will their bitterest enemy. The Stone Wolves is season 11 of the Galactic Football League science fiction series by author Scott Sigler. Enjoy it as a standalone story or listen to the entire GFL series beginning with season one, The Rookie. Search for Scott Sigler, S-I-G-L-E-R, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Adam Gidwitz, host of Grim, Grimmer, grimist. On every episode, we tell a grim. fairy tale. Not the cute, sweet versions of the fairy tales that your children have heard so many

Starting point is 00:15:07 times. No. We tell the real grim fairy tales. They're funny. They're weird. Sometimes they're a little bit scary. But don't worry. We rate every episode Grim, Grimmer, or Grimmist, so you, your child, your family can choose the episode that's the right level of scary for you. Tune in to Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmist, and our new season, available now. So, Robert, have there been other ways that audiences have changed in terms of how they react or what they do or anything like that? Oh, absolutely. I'll give you an example. How much audiences, even here in the United States, have changed over the last hundred years.

Starting point is 00:15:52 Okay? A hundred years ago, there was a form of entertainment called vaudeville, which was a live variety entertainment. actors would come in when there was a comedian there was a dancer and there was a people would juggle people would do special tricks uh they would do rope tricks they had animal acts etc people would come in and watch that but i have to tell you that back in those days um one of the most popular forms of entertainment was ethnic entertainment people would make fun of different ethnic groups they had what they would call um a dutch comedian which was a jewish comedian they would have Irish comedians. They would come in and they would do Irish accents. And there was a tremendous amount of black face. This was one of the, for years, they had, they had a form of entertainment called minstrel shows where white actors would dress up as black actors. They would black up and they would, they would tell, you know, why did a chicken cross the road?

Starting point is 00:16:49 That sort of thing. And this was the most popular form of entertainment in this country. But at that same period of time, if you told a. sexual joke if you told a dirty joke you would be you'd be blackballed you would be not you would not be you would not be able to work in vaudeville they had very strict rules about what kinds of things that you could joke about and what you could not all right that was only a hundred years ago in the last hundred years it has come 180 degrees if you come out and tell a sexual joke people laugh their heads off this children on sitcoms that do sexual humor

Starting point is 00:17:29 But at the same time, if you come out and you do an ethnic character, our sense of humor, what we consider to be funny, has changed so much in the last hundred years. And those are just a couple of examples. One of the things that fascinates me about audiences, and comedians will often tell you this, that you can do the same act in front of an audience and kill one night and the next night, bomb. And yeah, it might be the performance is off a little bit, too. But audiences have a personality, it seems, that some nights the audience is great. Other nights, the audience is not. And I don't know how anyone can explain that. Well, I know that on Broadway, which is my,

Starting point is 00:18:15 most of my experiences is with dealing with Broadway audiences, it is notorious among actors that Friday night performances are always the worst. Friday night audiences are always the worst. Usually they've been working all day, they're exhausted, they may have had a couple of pops on their way in, and they tend to be, they tend to do what it was called sitting on their hands. They don't applaud, they don't laugh. It's very, very hard to get a Friday night audience rolling. Good actors are able to do it, but it's hard. Is there anything else about the kind of the group mentality of audiences that, because you know what's interesting to me is if you go to watch a play or even a movie with a lot of people in the audience.

Starting point is 00:18:59 You become this part of this oneness of the audience. But when the lights come on, you don't go, hey, wasn't that great? You still don't talk to anybody. But during the show, you were all in this together. And then when the show's over, it's, you know, okay, I don't need to talk to you or see you ever again. You become a creature.

Starting point is 00:19:21 It's interesting how unanimous audiences can be. When something funny happens, you don't like get half the audience laughing and the other half of the audience growling. Audiences tend to pick up energy from the other people sitting with them, and they tend to reach unanimity. I remember talking to playwrights. One thing that became very popular in the 90s was to do a play and then afterward have a talk back, where people could raise their hands and ask questions about the play or give comments on the play, et cetera. And I spoke to a playwright who once said, individual audiences are always wrong, but the audience as a group is always right. And that's why a lot of these people, instead of having talkbacks, they'd rather just sit out in the audience and just listen. Movies do this too.

Starting point is 00:20:15 They do audience reaction. They have, instead of just asking one or two people, they will sit there in the back and they will watch the audience. the movie and they've the reaction that they the group reaction is more significant than individual comments because a big audience will somehow reach a magical consensus just from being in the same room together it also seems that the room the theater that the space in which you're watching something has a has something to do with how people react you probably heard in New York they have what's called Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway.

Starting point is 00:20:57 And primarily those are based on how many seats are in the house. And you'll sometimes see a show, they'll open on Broadway, and people will say, you know, this was really, this needed to be in a smaller theater. It needed to be in an off-Broadway house. This is really an off-Broadway show. They should never have brought it to Broadway. There was a Pulitzer Prize winning play a few years ago called Driving Miss Daisy. Driving Miss Daisy only has three characters in it.

Starting point is 00:21:24 When they did it originally off-Broadway, it was in a tiny little theater, a tiny little, a very intimate off-Broadway theater. When it went on tour, it played these big houses that were designed for musicals. And I remember talking to the actors who were performing in it. And they said, we really have to open up our performances. We have to use our bodies more. We have to project our voices a lot more. have to make the characters broader so that audiences could see and they could experience what

Starting point is 00:22:00 the characters were like. I mean, look at the difference between stage performing and movie performing. In stage performing, people, you know, they're sitting out in the house. They're sitting some distance away. Whereas in movies, movies, a camera can get right into the actor's face. And you can see the actor like lifting one eyebrow to express something. If that actor, a lot of times when movie and TV actors try to appear on Broadway, they'll give you that little eyebrow raise in the middle of a performance. And people will be able to see it out to about the fourth row.

Starting point is 00:22:37 And everybody else in the house were like, why isn't he doing anything? In the old days, they used to have a style of acting that was called Del Sart. And Del Sart, they would tell the actors to do certain movements that would express certain emotions. And the audience learned that like when an actor would tilt their head back and put the back of their hand up against their forehead, that meant they're sad. And the audience, and it was something that could be seen all the way in the back of the balcony. You know, it's interesting today when you go to a movie at the movie theater just before the movie starts, they play that little clip that it says, you know, please silence your phone. Please don't talk. Please don't text.

Starting point is 00:23:19 Please don't spoil the movie. People didn't used to have to be told that. but now they do they're so used to like watching things in their living room taking their shoes off if they see something funny they'll explain it to the they'll explain it to the person next to them they've become used to that and it's hard for them to change uh lanes and go into an audience where there are different expectations that they don't know about i wonder how technology is going to change what it means to be an audience member. You know, everybody always thinks that, like, the technology level we've gotten to

Starting point is 00:24:00 is as far as they're going. I am just going to be fascinated to watch the way audiences evolve over the next 20, 30, 40 years. Well, this is fun because I think people, once they hear you, next time they go see something as part of an audience will pay attention to the audience and notice how it reacts as a group, and I think it's really fun. My guest has been Robert Villegas. He is editor-in-chief of Encore Monthly, and he is author of a book called Right This Way, A History of the Audience. And there's a link to that book at Amazon and the show notes. Appreciate you coming on.

Starting point is 00:24:37 Thanks, Robert. Mike, thanks so much for having me on the show. It's a great show. You are a great interviewer, and I had a ball talking about audiences with you, with your audience. Uncertainty. The word itself doesn't feel comfortable. We like certainty. We like people who seem sure of themselves. Lack of certainty seems kind of wishy-washy. But there may be a different way to look at uncertainty that maybe facing the world with a little less certainty might be a good thing. That's according to Maggie Jackson. She's an award-winning author and journalist who's been featured in the New York Times, Business Week, Vanity Fair, the Times of London, and she is author of a book called Uncertain, The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure.

Starting point is 00:25:31 Hi, Maggie, welcome to something you should know. Great to be with you in your audience. So explain what you mean by being unsure, because I think, you know, my initial reaction when I saw it, and I think most people's reaction is, well, what could be good about that? We like people who know what they're talking about or who appear to know what they're talking about, who are sure of everything. So what do you mean unsure? Let's define the term. Well, uncertainty, you're right, gets a very bad rap.

Starting point is 00:26:01 I mean, it's sort of seen as synonymous with weakness and inertia, and yet I'm arguing the opposite. And science is proving that uncertainty is really a path to flourishing and better decision-making. But you're right. It's important to define uncertainty. We often talk about the uncertainty. That is a shorthand for the unknowns out there. We really don't know if it's going to rain despite all the models and forecasts that we have. And that's a kind of uncertainty that we've tackled for hundreds of years through mathematical probabilistic kind of tactics that allow us to get likelihood. I'm talking about our uncertainty. And that is the human response. to the unknown. And so what is, how do we feel or how do we respond when we confront something new, ambiguous, muddy, murky, etc. So give me an example of what you're talking about because I'm not sure I quite get it, but maybe a concrete example would help. Sure. Well, when you perhaps hit the unexpected traffic snarl up and you're in a hurry on the way to a meeting or you're on the first day of a new job, you're faced with something new and unexpected and you

Starting point is 00:27:24 don't know what's going on. And that's precisely the moment when you're unsure. And that is you've reached the limits of your knowledge. You suddenly realize that the old ways of life for your old expectations aren't going to be sufficient, and you need to update your knowledge of the world. That's when we are uncertain. And the science of what really happens in that unsettling moment is fascinating, because it feels uneasy, and we have a tremendous stress

Starting point is 00:27:57 response to uncertainty. That makes sense, because we evolved to need answers. So when we're put in that spot, you know, When we're on the spot with being uncertain, we actually, you know, feel stressed. But while your heart might beat and you, you know, you might sweat a bit. At the same time, there are these astonishing changes in the brain that are remarkably positive. For instance, your focus widens and your brain becomes more receptive to new knowledge. Your working memory actually is bolstered when you're in that uncertain moment.

Starting point is 00:28:32 And so the brain, as one neuroscientist told me, is telling itself there's something to be learned here. So when I'm stuck in traffic and I'm late for my appointment and I'm uncertain how late I'm going to be or what the problem is or why I'm sitting here and I'm getting angry, it doesn't feel like that's a positive anything. Partly because we equate that uncertainty with this negative condition. But at the same time, if you can sort of understand that uncertainty is a moment of vigilance, it's not an easy thing. It's actually challenging to wake up from the status quo from your expectation. You thought you were going to get there on time. You know, you thought that maybe this job wouldn't have a mean boss or whatever, but your expectations are broken.

Starting point is 00:29:21 That's exactly when the human being learns. That's why babies seek out what's surprising in their environment. And so uncertainty, if we don't cut short the opportunity to be uncertain, then we can learn. It's actually the foundation, the stepping stone to learning. And it's really important. And one illustration comes from a study of CEOs in Europe when the European Union was expanding. And two business school professors studied and surveyed and interviewed 100. CEOs in Western Europe about this change, and a great group of them were very sure about what was

Starting point is 00:30:04 going to happen. This was going to be good for their company, or this was going to be bad for their company. They were sure. But a third group in the mix were, they were ambivalent, and they weren't quite sure of whether it would result in more customers or higher prices, et cetera. A year later, the business school professors came back. The ambivalent CEOs had been more resourceful, and they had and more inclusive. They listened to more voices. In other words, they actually inhabited and explored and investigated the space of uncertainty. In other words, uncertainty is about possibility. In order to get the benefits of that that you're talking about, because very often when you're feeling uncertain about something, you're unsure, it doesn't feel necessarily good.

Starting point is 00:30:54 Do you need to get rid of that feeling in order to let the benefits come in, or do both things exist in tandem, or what? Well, uncertainty is a signal. And as I mentioned, it's good stress. It means you're on your toes. It means you're alive to the circumstances. And one of the most important points is that it's not just a preface to good thinking. It's actually an accompaniment. So, for instance, experts, let's just take the example of expertise. We gain expertise by accruing knowledge, you know, putting in those 10,000 hours, so to speak, and we gain mental models of just what to do. You know, the doctor thinks chest pain, that means heart attack. And so that kind of expert, and that's a great thing.

Starting point is 00:31:44 That's really impressive in predictable situations. But when something new happens, and here comes the wakefulness of uncertainty again, actually the more adaptive expert is one who spends more time investigating this new complex, messy problem than even novices, and they also evaluate different options and also don't just evaluate one option. So the adaptive expert is nimble in the crisis because they're inhabiting that space of uncertainty. When I think about uncertainty in my own life and your example of, you know, stuck in traffic and not sure why, it's often accompanied by frustration and anger because you're unsure.

Starting point is 00:32:30 You'd like to be sure. You're not sure. And it makes you frustrated. Do you need to like get rid of the frustration first in order to deal with the uncertainty in a positive way? Or do they kind of go hand in hand or what? There is a difference between being fearful of uncertainty, and that includes being angry at the fact that something's uncertain. There's a personality measurement, a disposition called intolerance of uncertainty. Now, people who are intolerance of uncertainty, who tend to be more rigid thinkers, who tend to dislike surprises,

Starting point is 00:33:08 actually feel like something that is unexpected or ambiguous is unfair. I hear that quite a bit from scientists. Whereas if people are able to lean into uncertainty, and that is see it as a challenge, not a threat, they're actually more flexible thinkers. And that's a really important distinction. So uncertainty always might give us a little prickle of unsettling unease if we can recognize that that's actually helping us think better,

Starting point is 00:33:40 think more widely, you know, be on top of things, things, that's a great starting point. And I guess that's kind of what I was getting at in kind of a weird way, is that there are seemingly people who are so rigid that uncertainty would be much more difficult than people who are a little more go with the flow, well, let's take a look, that it's a personality thing as well as a brain thing, that how you are wired will dictate in some regard how well you deal with uncertainty. Precisely.

Starting point is 00:34:16 And that is a great point, too, because there are a few things I could say about this. One is, yes, we're all, maybe not born, but we're all shaped to be somewhere on the spectrum of, you know, eager, tolerant of uncertainty. However, uncertainty is also, as well as a dispositional trait, it's also situation. So it's really important to understand that when we're tired, when we're in situations where we feel compelled to be in an answer, you know, you're the new person in the room around the conference table and you feel like you really should say something, you're more likely to be intolerant of uncertainty. So you're more likely to make a snap judgment. You're more likely, you know, you're less likely to see the nuances around you, to see the complexity, etc. So it's important to show that each of us has a disposition, it's situational, but at the same time, it's changeable. So as I was mentioning, we can all practice uncertainty. One of the exercises in a program that's going to be starting up in Columbus, Ohio to teach resilience to high schoolers is just have them answer their cell phone

Starting point is 00:35:32 without caller ID. Wow. And that seems so simple, but that's just a great example of how sometimes we build in this day and age, especially with technology, certainty seeking answers into our day, you know, GPS, and you know, on the app for the weather. I mean, I've become an all year round the season, you know, round the year, all season open water swimmer. I moved to the shore during the pandemic. And I can look at the app until I'm blue in the face,

Starting point is 00:36:06 but I don't know what I'm going to get when I'm down by that ocean. It always surprises me. And even in the half an hour that I'm swimming, there are changes. And I now think of it as a daily dose of uncertainty. You know, it's a real game changer when you can begin to see that uncertainty is something that is a wonderful signal

Starting point is 00:36:28 that you don't know. And now you can investigate. In fact, uncertainty is actually highly related to curiosity. And so the component of curiosity, that's probably most important of the curious disposition is, again, this tolerance of the unknown. We think of curiosity as being this childlike, wondrous, almost easy thing to be, but no, it also includes that unsettling discomfort because you are, you know, moving beyond the edge of what you know. I think part of when I think about uncertainty, part of the reason

Starting point is 00:37:08 that I think people don't like it or uncomfortable with it is it doesn't really go anywhere. That at some point you have to make up your mind. You have to be certain about something in order to move onto something else. And to sit with uncertainty like, well, so how long do I sit here? How long do we contemplate this? How long do we stay uncertain before we make a decision? Well, yes. And of course, I'm not arguing for, and no one would argue for irresolution.

Starting point is 00:37:38 and indecision as the goal. It's just that when we sort of shut down on the opportunity to be uncertain, when we close our mind quickly, we're actually shutting down on opportunities to basically explore all the possibilities, or at least many more possibilities than just one. And another component of uncertainty

Starting point is 00:38:03 that's really important, and then also maybe a little unsettling, is that it involves pausing. It does involve slowing down. You know, when a group is collaborating and someone offers a note of dissent that is the best possible path to, you know, better collaboration,

Starting point is 00:38:27 but it slows the group down because it's keeping them from rushing to judgment. It involves deeper discussions, more intense complexity of discussions. It also seems that when we see uncertainty in others, it can drive you crazy. Like if you're at a restaurant and someone takes forever to figure out what they're going to order because they're not certain,

Starting point is 00:38:51 it's like, come on, come on, make up your mind, let's go, we've got to move on, we've got to order and eat here. That when we see it, especially maybe in others, it makes us even more uncomfortable because it's not our uncertainty. it's somebody else's, and I'm already certain what I'm going to order, and they're just hemming and hawing. Yes, and I think that partially speaks to the trade-offs with uncertainty,

Starting point is 00:39:21 that it does demand a certain amount of investment in time, just as anything that gets you past just the first knee-jerk answer does. I mean, maybe we can reframe it. And if you're watching your friend having a little bit of decision, it might come from part of their life. They're in a new diet or what have you. So we can see that uncertainty with compassion. We can also see it as a chance to listen as they debate various possibilities,

Starting point is 00:39:52 even if it's just on a restaurant menu, and they might find something there that you hadn't seen. Because maybe the person who decides first and most quickly at the restaurant is the person who always gets the person. the same dish every time. Well, that's actually not contending with uncertainty. Well, it's interesting how people push back against uncertainty. I guess because if you're uncertain, then you don't know how things are going to work out. But things have a tendency to work out. And we often worry about uncertainty perhaps too much because, well, because

Starting point is 00:40:27 I just said, things have a tendency to work out. Yes, exactly. And I would say that helicopter to parenting is a search for uncertainty that's in vain. Basically, parents are using incredible surveillance techniques, technology, you know, enabled surveillance techniques to constantly keep tabs on their kids. And, you know, we can debate all day about whether the world is unsafe or not safe. And I'm not saying that this doesn't have a place in modern life. But at the same time, are we really trying to search for certainty where there can't be any? And then in doing so, kind of stifling our kids and also not getting to know them. Well, and as I think about it, all the technology that we use today, particularly all of it that's

Starting point is 00:41:19 in our phone, is like this quest to rid ourselves of uncertainty. So you keep track of where your kids are. You know how long it's going to take to get to some place. you know the directions, you know what the weather's good, you know everything. So all the uncertainty is gone. Exactly. And I think we even can question whether or not it's just a facade of certainty that we have. You know, basically when we can realize that even the answer that we gain is provisional in life. even the certainties that we hold dear are really not, you know, etched in stone.

Starting point is 00:42:02 Well, the quest for certainty when you think about it is so elusive because, I mean, think about somebody who checks their phone every 10 minutes because they want to know is somebody trying to get a hold of me. Is something happened? Is it my kids? Okay. Well, that's good for maybe 10 minutes and then you do it again. And then you do it again. And then you do it again. So you're never certain. As soon as you're certain, two seconds later, something could happen and now you're uncertain again. So it's like you can never get it, and yet we never stop trying to get it. Yes, and that's why uncertainty helps us be nimble and agile.

Starting point is 00:42:41 But that doesn't mean we're insecure or feeling that life is quicksand. Rather, it means we grow stronger. as we wake up to life as it is, rather than life as we assume it to be or wish it to be. And that's a really important way to discover a more flourishing life, as well as it's a very important way to relate to one another. I mean, one of the ways in which I have learned from uncertainty in my personal life is that when one of my daughters was upset, you know, my younger, I would try to just give her an answer or sort of, you know, say it'll be okay. And in an essence,

Starting point is 00:43:27 I thought this was, you know, either cheering her up or helping her out. But in essence, I realized in retrospect, it was kind of shutting down her ability to be in that moment and investigate and reflect. And I was shutting down that kind of ability to be in the uncomfortable middle space between question and answer. Well, I like what you said about, you know, this quest for certainty is really an illusion. I mean, we're as certain as we think we are. We're never that certain.

Starting point is 00:44:01 And maybe embracing uncertainty and being unsure opens up other possibilities. I've been speaking with Maggie Jackson. She is a journalist, an author, and the name of her book is Uncertain, the Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. and there's a link to that book and the show notes. Thanks for coming on today, Maggie.

Starting point is 00:44:21 I enjoy talking to you. Oh, thank you. Really wonderful, interesting conversation, and I'm glad to be pushed on the points that you wanted to clarify. That's really helpful for me to understand. Around the holidays especially, but really, any time, it would always be nice to be able to get more done in less time. Well, here are three simple ways to do just that,

Starting point is 00:44:46 from productivity expert Don Wetmore of the Productivity Institute. Three things. First, have a plan. Have a daily plan will make anyone more productive. Yet fewer than one out of four people actually do it. Even a simple to-do list will make a difference. Plan to get a lot done. If you only plan one thing to do, it will take all day to do it. When you pack your day with tasks, it creates a healthy pressure to be more productive. and clean up your workspace. Studies show that working in a messy environment will cause you to waste an hour a day being distracted.

Starting point is 00:45:25 Organize your desk and get that hour back. And that is something you should know. Something I really enjoy and find very helpful and useful is reading the reviews people leave of this podcast. It does a lot of things. It helps our visibility. It shows people that other people are reviewing it. and it also just gives us insight into what people think of the work we do.

Starting point is 00:45:50 So if you have a moment, leave a rating and review on whatever platform you're listening on, and I'll be sure to read it. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. The Infinite Monkey Cage returns imminently. I am Robert Inns, and I'm sat next to Brian Cox, who has so much to tell you about what's on the new series. Primarily Eels. And what else? It was fascinating, though.

Starting point is 00:46:14 the eels. But we're not just doing eels, are we? We're doing a bit. We're brain computer interfaces, timekeeping, fusion, monkey business, cloud, signs of the North Pole, and eels. Did I mention the eels? Is this ever since you bought that timeshare underneath the sagas OC? Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to tell you about a podcast I've been using to help guide my charitable giving decisions. Giving done right is a podcast that's all about how to make an impact with your giving. and tackle the questions every donor is asking, how can I make the biggest difference right now?

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Something You Should Know - Why Audiences Behave the Way They Do & The Hidden Benefits of Uncertainty - SYSK Choice

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