Something You Should Know - Why Time Flies When You Are Having Fun & What Your Stuff Says About You

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Starting point is 00:00:17 You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Today on Something You Should Know, why does the microwave screw up your Wi-Fi? And how do you fix it? Then we've all noticed how time sometimes goes by very slow and other time, time flies by. Time flies when you're having fun.

Starting point is 00:00:48 When you're having fun, you're not thinking about time, so it's only afterward, when the fun is over, that you realize that time flew. So you're never aware of time flying while you are in it. Also, how much food do you eat in a year? And what's the actual shelf life of a Twinkie? And our stuff and our environment say a lot about who we are. Extroverts are a very interesting group of people because they just like other people. They do whatever they can.

Starting point is 00:01:15 For example, in their offices, they make them more inviting to try and lure people into them. Whereas if people are an extroversion, their places aren't welcoming. They have uncomfortable chairs. The doors aren't open very wide. All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please, read your personal owner's manual thoroughly.

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Starting point is 00:02:07 advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. In our house, we have a lot of internet connected devices. We have desktops, laptops, phones, tablets, and all of them work just fine.

Starting point is 00:02:28 Hook right up to the internet without much trouble. Except when we turn on the microwave. And then nothing works. And if you have Wi-Fi and also have a microwave oven in your kitchen, you may also find that this is a problem. So why? Why does turning on the microwave disconnect and screw up the Wi-Fi? Well, the problem is that both microwave ovens and Wi-Fi operate on the same frequency, 2.4 GHz.

Starting point is 00:02:57 In theory, a properly shielded microwave oven shouldn't leak any radiation, but the reality is that they leak quite a bit of radiation, resulting in electromagnetic interference, and that messes up the Wi-Fi signal. In fact, a lot of things operate at 2.4 gigahertz, so you can get Wi-Fi interference from routers, baby monitors, cordless phones, toaster ovens, electric blankets, ultrasonic pest control devices, bug zappers, heating pads, touch control lamps, as well as microwave ovens. If you want to eliminate the problem, you can upgrade to Wi-Fi equipment that operates in the 5 gigahertz band, but if it's just the microwave, the interference will only last when the microwave

Starting point is 00:03:45 is on, and you probably do what we do and we just learn to live with it. And that is something you should know. Time sure flies when you're having fun. I think we've all had that experience. But why does time fly when we're having fun? And why does it seem to slow down when we're not having fun? Why does time seem to go by faster as we get older? We all experience time, but what is it really? Here to discuss all that is Alan Burdick. Alan is a staff writer and former senior editor at The New Yorker, and he spent 10 years writing the book Why Time Flies. Hi, Alan. Welcome.

Starting point is 00:04:30 Great to be here. Thanks for having me. So after examining and studying time for 10 years to write this book, how do you look at time? What is time to you? I guess the short answer is I started this project with the feeling that time is my enemy and came out of it feeling like time is my friend. Now, maybe I have to feel that way because the book took 10 years to write and in that time, I've got to make friends with time while I still can. But I guess, you know, I came from a place where I really thought of time as this sort of external obstacle that we kind of collectively put in front of ourselves. And I came out of this, you know, really with a much deeper understanding of biology and psychology

Starting point is 00:05:19 and neurobiology of where our time comes from and how we generate it and how it, in a sense, sort of emanates from us. So it's a lot more organic than I ever thought. Is time a real thing or is it just something we invented so we can kind of keep track of stuff? It's both. I mean, I guess I kind of came to think of time as almost like a language in the sense that, yes, time is something that our mind generates. It's something that our bodies generate. I mean, our cells basically have 24-hour clocks in them that are pretty rigidly set by the kind of genetic mechanisms inside the nucleus. So the passing of time is a very real thing that we experience, but it's absolutely

Starting point is 00:06:11 necessary. You can't put your finger on it any more than you can really put your finger on the spoken word, but it's absolutely essential to societal organization, our personal organization. How does science look at time? Does science have a pretty good handle on what time is for their purposes? You know, what time is really depends on what sort of scientists you talk to. There are scientists who try to understand how infants understand time. And, you know, scientists who try to understand how our neurons process time. The fact is that what we call time is actually a great number of different

Starting point is 00:06:54 experiences that we sort of shove under one rug. You know, there's our experience of duration, how long an event seemed to last, like why is that stoplight taking too long? And there's our understanding of, you know, one thing coming after another or before another, what we call temporal sequence. There's your kind of ongoing sense that it's now, right now, and that, you know, the future is in one direction and the past is in another direction. Those are all fairly distinct experiences that come online in our lives at different times. And we kind of lump them together, but they're quite distinct. Is there a good sense or a good explanation of why people have that universal experience that time goes by faster when you're having a good time, time goes a lot slower when you're, you know, sitting in the dentist's chair.

Starting point is 00:07:52 Yeah, and I mean, the answer to that question is, in a sense, a lot more straightforward and maybe less exciting than one might think. The fact is that the more you think about time or what time it is, the slower time seems to go. So, you know, the expression time flies when you're having fun is true because when you're having fun, your attention is focused on what you're doing. You're at a movie or you're out with friends or whatever. You're really not paying attention to the time at all. And then when two hours or three hours or whatever has gone by, you come to the end and you're like, wow, I just noticed the time again.

Starting point is 00:08:37 And a lot of time had gone by. Whereas if you're at a super dull party and you're in a dentist chair and you're spending that whole time thinking, I want this time to end, when does the next event begin? Your memories of that span of time are really flooded with you thinking about the time. A watch pot never boils. Correct. Because the more we think about time, the slower it goes. But it does seem to be a fairly universal experience that time goes faster as we get older. Is that true? I mean, do surveys bear that out? It is, and it's really tricky because, in a sense, surveys do bear it out, so much so that it's not clear that it actually, that that phrase,

Starting point is 00:09:28 time speeds up as we get older, actually means what we think it does. So, you know, historically, the way that this was studied, you know, the idea has been around for a long time. 50, 60 years ago, scientists started to kind of explore it in depth. And they would do these surveys where they would ask people, you know, how much faster would you say time goes for you now than it did 10 years ago or 20 years ago? And people would give some number like, oh, it's twice as fast or three times as fast. And, you know, like 80, 90 percent of people said on the whole, the time goes faster now than it used to. But, you know, keep in mind that the question they were being asked was pretty much a leading question. You know, it sort of assumed that it was, you know, the answer that you got was not really helpful because, you know, if I ask you, how much better does your lunch taste today than it did 20 years ago? You have no idea what you ate for lunch 20 years ago,

Starting point is 00:10:26 much less how you felt about how quickly time passed. So it was kind of a meaningless question in all of those surveys. And now the way they study this question is more like, you know, if I ask you, okay, on a scale of minus two, minus two being very slow, to plus two, plus two being very fast, how, at what speed would you say the past month has gone by? So answer that question for me. How, on a scale of minus two to plus two, how fast has the last month gone by? Pretty fast. I'd say it went by, it's close to plus two. Close to plus two. And how about like the last year?

Starting point is 00:11:07 Same. Yeah. The same. Just, I mean, okay, yesterday. Yesterday my wife and I were talking and we said, you know, I think the cleaning lady who comes every two weeks is coming today. And she said, no, I think she was here last week. And she hadn't been here in two weeks, but time has gone by so fast that we thought two weeks was one week. It, to me, seems like time is just zooming by.

Starting point is 00:11:31 You're actually an exception. Most people say one. It's going fast. And they say one regardless of the span of time. So a year, a month, a week, a day, 10 years goes by fast for pretty much everybody and for pretty much everybody at all ages. I mean, if time really were speeding up as we get older, you would think that older people, more older people would say, you know, one or two than younger people. But in fact, everybody at all ages, reflecting on all spans of time, says that time goes by fast, one. Isn't that interesting, that everybody perceives time as going by fast, but time just goes by? I

Starting point is 00:12:21 mean, time, there's nothing more constant than the speed of time. It goes by as it goes by. It always has, and it, I guess, likely will. But our perception is that it's going, everybody's perception is that it's going by fast. Faster than what? Right. Alan Burdick is my guest. He is a staff writer and former senior editor at The New Yorker. And the name of his book is Why Time Flies. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest,

Starting point is 00:13:19 sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

Starting point is 00:14:05 Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker.

Starting point is 00:14:43 Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Alan, since everybody has that perception at any age that time is going by faster, then is there any way to have the perception, to force the perception that slows it down? Well, you know, what the science shows is essentially that we feel the most like time is speeding up when we are busy or preoccupied. That is not thinking about time. Time flies when you're having fun, right? When you're having fun, you're not thinking about time. So it's only afterward when the fun is over that you realize that time flew. So time, you're never aware of time flying while you are in it. So really the best that you can do if you want time to slow down

Starting point is 00:15:46 is to try to ignore it and dive into what is right in front of you and not think about time at all. And then if you're lucky, when you're done, you can look back and say, wow, time really flew by. Because most of the time when you're sitting around thinking time is going really slowly, it's because you're really desperate for whatever situation you are in to end and, you know, and looking at the clock. But that's sort of antithetical to the kind of slowing down experience that I think you're describing. Well, that's interesting what you just said, that our perception that time flies is always a perception, a judgment that we make about the past.

Starting point is 00:16:31 We never have the perception that right now is flying by. It's always last week flew by. Exactly. But right now, time's just time. I can look at the clock and I see the seconds, and they're going at the same rate that they've always gone. They never speed up. They never do. I remember somebody, this just popped into my head and so I don't even know that you looked into this, but I remember somebody telling me in a discussion about how other animals perceive time. Like, for example, one of the reasons it's so hard to swat a fly

Starting point is 00:17:07 is that the fly's perception of time is different. He sees us coming at him basically in slow motion, even though we think we're going very fast. So he leaps and bounds ahead of you because of the way the fly perceives time, and his lifetime is only, you know, days or a couple of weeks or something. So did you look at that at all? How other animals perceive time? A little bit. I mean, it's a little bit, you know, deceiving.

Starting point is 00:17:37 Like when we think about tortoises or flies or, you know, creatures with kind of different lifespans than ours and different movement rates. And we sort of imagine them like peeping out of their eye holes the way we peep out of our eye holes and things moving at a different rate than it moves for us. But I'm not sure that that's a helpful way to put yourself in the mind of the animal because, you know, for us, time has this whole other layer. You know, psychologists would say that your sense of self, of who you are, is really rooted in your ability to understand that the person that you were yesterday and the memories that you had about yesterday

Starting point is 00:18:20 will belong to you next week and next year, right? Your sense of self is the understanding that your self will remain the same through time, right? Animals just don't have that. I mean, time has this element of consciousness for us that it really doesn't have for animals. So, I mean, it is true that mosquitoes move a lot faster than we do, but I just don't think thinking about it in terms of time is useful because it sort of deceives us into thinking that we can place ourselves in the minds of insects somehow or turtles in a way that they just don't really have the same experience as we do. You know, I've always thought that, well, you know, when a fly is at the end of his two-week life, is he like feeling, God,

Starting point is 00:19:09 I'm just so done. I'm just so tired. Because that seems so odd to me that, you know, it's just been two weeks. It's, you know, you hardly got started and now you're done. It's a pretty slippery topic, this whole thing about time, because it's so hard to, you can't really touch it. You can't see, it's there, and you know it's there, but it's not anything you can kind of put your arms around and say, oh, this is time, and now I get it. I mean, in a way, that's sort of what drew me to this subject in the first place, because it is, you know, it's really all pervasive and yet so non-tangible that I wanted to find a way to really kind of talk about it in a way that, you know, the reader could touch almost. I sort of made a point in the book of really focusing on

Starting point is 00:20:01 experiments and studies that have been done over time, because it's sort of the one way that scientists have been able to start to wrap their, you know, wrap their fingers around what this stuff we call time is. Can you just mention, like, two of your favorite little studies that you found that help explain that? Oh, I spent some really fascinating time in the lab of a developmental psychologist, a guy who works with infants, and began to, you know, try to kind of understand how these, you know, these are babies, basically, you know, looking at monitors in which, you know, they're like talking lips, you know. Basically, he was trying to understand, like, these lips on the screen make noise. There's a voice coming out of them.

Starting point is 00:20:55 And somehow the babies were really good at connecting the sight of the lips moving with the sound that was coming out of them, even if the sound that was coming out of them, even if the sound that was coming out of them was like in Spanish or in another language that the baby didn't know. So how, you know, how could the baby basically synchronize an audio sequence and a video sequence without actually understanding what the content of that stuff was? You know, it's like when we watch, you know, you're watching TV sometimes, and the cable, there's suddenly this lag, and you're like, oh my god, the lips and the voice don't match up anymore. If that lag gets longer than about 80 milliseconds, it drives adults

Starting point is 00:21:38 crazy. But it turns out that babies can withstand like two-thirds of a second of lag between audio and video before they notice that anything's wrong. It's like they have a much more expansive sense of what now is than we do, much more forgiving. Well, it is so interesting that, you know, the old saying, all we have is time. And even though that's all we do have, it's really hard to get your head around it and understand what it is and how it works. But no one's done a better job of trying than you have. My guest has been Alan Burdick. He is a staff writer and former senior editor at The New Yorker. His book is called Why Time Flies. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:22:26 Thanks, Alan. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more.

Starting point is 00:22:55 A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about

Starting point is 00:23:17 the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. And Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong.

Starting point is 00:24:01 And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. You have stuff. Your home is full of your stuff. But what does your stuff say about you? Anything? Can you really tell much about someone by looking at their stuff, their belongings, the things in the back of their closet? Apparently so, says Sam Gosling.

Starting point is 00:24:39 He explores this in his very popular book, Snoop, What Your Stuff Says About You. Hey Sam, so what do you mean you can tell about a person from their stuff? I mean, if somebody has a picture of Diamondhead on their wall, I can tell they probably like Hawaii. And I can tell by looking at their stuff whether or not they're neat or messy. But what do you mean by it? Well, there are a number of different ways things say things about us. Some of those ways are deliberate ways we affect the environment. So if we put up a poster on the wall or we put up a memento from a vacation, that's deliberately expressing something to communicate to others or in some cases to communicate to ourselves.

Starting point is 00:25:17 We also affect the environment by modifying it to make us feel a certain way, creating a relaxing environment or an invigorating environment. And then the final way we affect the environment is by just doing behaviors, and then we inadvertently leave traces of our behaviors in those spaces, and those traces can also tell us about the person who lives there too. But can't you come back from a vacation, let's say, and put a picture from your vacation on your TV set because you like it, it doesn't really say anything about you. It just means you like the picture.

Starting point is 00:25:50 Yeah, you could, but I think that's how most of it works. That's how most of it feels. Most of it feels, oh, I like that picture, or I think, you know, the sofa feels really good over there, or here's a few photos of myself or some people that I'm going to put up on my screensaver. And I think you're right, that is the phenomenology of it. It's just how it feels right. But there is some reason that there were 10,000 pictures you could have got on vacation, and there are 300 places around the house you could have displayed them. What caused you to put those in those places? And so that's really what I'm

Starting point is 00:26:25 interested in. And to be sure, in some cases, it probably is just chance. That's why we look for a sort of broad pattern of behaviors and displays. So can you give me some examples of like what says what about a person? Sure. And well, we find that many different spaces tell you about people. And by spaces, I'm talking very broadly here, not just living spaces, but also office spaces, the musical environments we create ourselves, our playlists, our Facebook profiles, our web pages, and so on. So what we have found, for example, is that people often assume that very, very messy places are a key to high creativity. Well, that turns out not to be true. Messy places are a key to what I call this air traffic controller factor. So as you might expect, people who are organized,

Starting point is 00:27:17 orderly, think before they act and so on. And if you really want to find out if somebody's high on creativity, you need to look for a different set of clues. That is, you want to look for very distinctive spaces and very broad range of items, not 500 books all on the same topic. Say 10 books all on different topics would be more diagnostic. So messy just may mean you're messy. Messy, yeah. Messy may just mean you're messy.

Starting point is 00:27:38 And they're very creative people who are messy and very creative people who are tidy. It's irrelevant to that. It's relevant to some things like this traffic controller factor. But people go beyond that, too. People also think that people who are messy tend to be low on agreeableness. We found that in our studies, that people form that impression. Wait, wait. I didn't understand that.

Starting point is 00:27:58 Lower than what? Low on agreeableness. How nice you are. How, what I call the Mr. Rogers factor, how sympathetic, kind, warm and so on. They think the people with messy spaces are lower on that. And it's an automatic assumption. It's not something people are doing deliberately. They're not saying, you have this, therefore I think this.

Starting point is 00:28:15 But people who have those spaces tend to be rated lower on those traits. But can it just be that you're just a little messy? And that's the beginning and the end of it. There's nothing more to it than that. You can't attach other traits to that. I don't like necessarily to tidy up a lot, so I'm messier than my wife, say, who doesn't like a mess and is much more likely to tidy up.

Starting point is 00:28:40 That's just our natures. But couldn't it be that that's all it says? But that's exactly what I'm trying to find out, your nature. I agree. It is because it's your nature, but that's exactly what I'm interested in finding out. But my point is that couldn't it just end there? That's your nature. Well, it could, but research has shown that it typically doesn't. Research has shown that people who tend to have a certain nature also is associated with a broader array of traits. Of course, not in every case, but on average it is. On average, people who are messy, they tend to be people who don't think

Starting point is 00:29:20 ahead so much. They tend to be a bit more impulsive than others. They often find it harder to be time-oriented and task-focused and so on. Well, you nailed me on that one. There's something interesting on the book, Jack, about how music can help you make friends. So talk about that. Well, we were interested in what sources people use when they are trying to get to know each other. So we ran an experiment where people had to get to know each other over a sort of computer chat session. They'd never meet anyone. And we wanted to see which topics they used. It turns out that they overwhelmingly use music preferences over any other source of information

Starting point is 00:30:01 when they're getting to know each other across a six-week period. And so we then said, well, okay, well, how strongly is music related to personality? People are clearly using it as part of their techniques to try and get to know each other. Are they doing the right thing? And it turns out that music preferences are related to what people like. And so somebody is pretty good at judging you even if they've only heard your top ten songs. So we'd get a bunch of subjects and we'd say, what are your top ten songs?

Starting point is 00:30:29 We'd record them on a CD and then we'd give those to somebody else. And somebody else who had just heard that was pretty good at figuring out some of your traits.

Starting point is 00:30:37 Not all of them, again, but some of your traits shone through in your music collections. And so therefore the conclusion is what? The conclusion is that our music preferences do reveal things about what we're like. And they reveal things not only in terms of the specific

Starting point is 00:30:54 genres. So if I knew what genres you listen to, I could make good guesses at the sorts of traits you'd be higher on, but also in terms of broad themes in that music. So, for example, extroverts are a very interesting group of people because they just like other people. They do whatever they can. For example, in their offices, they make them more inviting to try and lure people into them and just hang out, whereas people who are low on extroversion, their places aren't welcoming. You go in and they have uncomfortable chairs. The doors aren't open very wide, you just don't hang out there very long. But extroverts also like people, they like photos of people, and this is reflected in music. They even prefer, on average, music with voices

Starting point is 00:31:36 in to music without voices in, so you can look for broad themes there. And of course, if you can actually get to look at someone's music collection, you can pick up clues to other traits, too. So, for example, is it organized? Are they somebody who lives with a completely disorganized music collection? Are they somebody like me who occasionally tries to get organized but just doesn't have the personality to pull it off? I thought, and maybe I misread this, but that thing about music and how what people's musical tastes says, I thought what that was saying was that if you want to make friends, that music, your taste in music,

Starting point is 00:32:15 is about as good a subject as there is to help other people understand who you are and find that common ground, if there is any. What it means is that that is a very efficient way of communicating your preferences, values, and attitudes to other people. And do people find that if your taste in music is radically different than my taste in music, that either we don't like each other so much or we're less likely to get along because of that? There is some support for that, yeah. So give me some more examples of what about my stuff tells you what about me. Okay. Well, one of the things I like to do, you know, very broadly when I am looking at a space

Starting point is 00:33:02 is look at an object and think, okay, first of all, what is the object? Then what is its state? The state of the object is very useful because that tells you how it's been used. So I could go into two offices, both of which have a desk calendar, but I shouldn't just say, oh, they both have desk calendars. This means they are punctual and organized. You need to look at the state. So are they both turned to the right day?

Starting point is 00:33:25 One of them maybe turned to 20 days ago, hasn't been used. Are they both filled out? Are they filled out consistently? So is one really being used and integrated into this person's life in a sensible way? So I'd look at the state. And then I also look at the orientation of things. The orientation gives you a lot of clues as to its psychological function. So one of the great examples of this is the photos people have in their offices. Do they have photos that face them? If they have photos that face them, that's what we call sort of a social snack. It's there in order to provide sustenance, emotional sustenance,

Starting point is 00:34:03 while that photo of a loved one or a love pet or a special place, to help you think of those while you cannot be physically in touch with them. Whereas if the photo is turned away and it's facing others, then it's doing something very different. It's making a statement to others about how the occupant would like to be regarded, not necessarily a disingenuous one. So those are sort of the general principles I go in. One of the mistakes that novice people make when they're snooping around a place is they try and do this thing of saying, okay, if you have X, it means Y. They try to make a jump of one thing meaning something else.

Starting point is 00:34:40 And I wish the world was that simple, but it just isn't. Because there are actually many different reasons why you might have something in a space. And we can do that if we look at the items in our own space. So, you know, there was a time where I had a religious musical CD sitting on my desk. Now, you think, okay, does a religious musical CD mean he likes religious music and all the traits associated with that? Well, no, because I had it there because it was for a teaching exercise, not because I liked it. I could have had it there because I was going to give it as a gift to someone. So one of the really crucial things for snoopers to do is not to take a codebook approach that if you have one thing, it means something else.

Starting point is 00:35:20 That simply cannot be done. It's more like a doctor. I think it's a doctor. If you go into a doctor and say, okay, I have a headache, they don't say, oh, well, you have malaria. They say, oh, okay, you have a headache, so that makes me think you might have this range of things wrong with you. Let me ask you some other questions to help narrow it down. Yeah, well, I would hate to go to that doctor who said, oh, you have a headache, you must have malaria. So why is this important?

Starting point is 00:35:47 Well, I think it's important for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is in terms of getting to know others and understanding how others get to know us. So often we do want to get to know what others are like, and I think snooping can help us do that. And indeed, a lot of research shows that people want to be known. And that's one of the reasons I think that offices are so often decorated and homes are often so decorated. It's because people are genuinely trying to get others to see them as they see themselves. So that's one reason. Another reason is it's important to know how others are forming impressions of us. So this example I gave where you have a messy space and people jump to

Starting point is 00:36:24 conclusions about, say, your creativity and how nice you are and your time orientation, it's good to know that people are connected to the spaces around us. So one of the people I talk about in my book, Chris Travis, runs an architecture firm, where he is using this understanding of our connections between our places and the people who live in them to design spaces well-suited to people, very well-designed to what they want, so bringing out their psychological connections. And he finds with his clients that he develops these places that are just people feel fit them very well designed to what they want, so bringing out their psychological connections. And he finds with his clients that he develops these places that are just, people feel fit them very well. And it also has implications, of course, for how we design our own workspaces. When you look and see how important it is for people to express who they are to others, that shows, okay, well, maybe having a clear desk policy and hot desks aren't

Starting point is 00:37:23 such a good idea. Maybe we really need to give people the ability to express who they are to others. Have you found that there are particular hot spots that reveal more that if you wanted to learn about somebody that it's the, you know, the best place to look if you only had one place to look is the living room or the kitchen or the closet or wherever? And what would you look for? Yeah, I would, I like to look is the living room or the kitchen or the closet or wherever? And what would you look for? Yeah, I would, I like to look at places, but also considering sort of what function those places serve. So for example, I like to compare private places with public places, but because that tells you, is the person trying to project one image, but really behave another

Starting point is 00:38:00 way? Do they have all the intellectual highbr, learned books sitting on the coffee table in the living room, but in the bedroom they have all the sort of trashy romance novels or something like that? So you look for a discrepancy between the projection and how they actually behave. But having done that, I like to look at people's personal spaces, like their bedrooms, the places that are more private, because that often shows how they're actually behaving, what's really important to them, to their deeper sense of self. And one of the places I really like to look is the photos people choose to have of themselves. Because in this day and age, you know, we could have thousands of photos. There are many, many different photos we could display.

Starting point is 00:38:41 Why did we choose these particular ones? Why did you choose to have the photo of you meditating on the top of a mountain in India, rather than the one of you, you know, yelling at the camera with all of your friends drunkenly after a night on the town? You know, and some people choose one photo, some people choose the other. And these are really talking about the type of image of the self that the person wants to project to others. But it does seem, too, that people try to project an image that's not them. I mean, I've been in people's homes where the living room is gorgeous and lovely and modern or whatever.

Starting point is 00:39:19 It doesn't really reflect who they are, because I know who they are. And it's not really them. It's beautiful, but it's not really them. But maybe in the bedroom, things could be different. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's right. I think these people who are projecting these images, I don't think they're being disingenuous. I think they're really trying to tell you, here is who I am.

Starting point is 00:39:42 And we know that when they're successful at that, when people are successful at that, when people are successful at getting others to see them as others, as they see themselves, those people tend to be happier, healthier, and more productive. I bet if you asked people who haven't heard our discussion, I bet if you asked people if their stuff tells much about them, I don't think they would think that it tells as much as you think it does. Well, I don't think they are, you know, they're thinking about it consciously. So I think that's one of the things that I have found interesting with this research is that we're constantly crafting our spaces, but we're not consciously thinking, okay, I want to project an image of a sensation

Starting point is 00:40:26 seeker, so I'm going to put up the picture of me parachuting. They're not going through that process consciously. They're thinking, ah, I like this one, and so they put it up. So I think it's only when you sort of begin to think, okay, what psychological function is this serving? That you begin to unpack the various elements in our spaces. Well, this is good to know, because armed with this, you can go into people's homes or in their offices when you're talking to them and look around and get a sense of maybe who they really are compared to who they really want you to think they are. Sam Gosling has been my guest.

Starting point is 00:41:06 The book is Snoop, What Your Stuff Says About You, and there is a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Sam. You don't need to know a whole lot about the food you eat because you assume it's safe and you probably have other things to think about. However, there are some things about food you may want to know. For example, most of the salmon that we eat is actually dyed pink. Wild salmon are pink in color because of the little crustaceans called krill that they eat.

Starting point is 00:41:40 But farm salmon, which accounts for about two-thirds of the salmon we eat, are fed pellets to dye their flesh pink, which is otherwise naturally gray. An ear of corn will almost always have an even number of rows. What's in your peanut butter may shock you. According to the FDA, there may be up to an average of 30 or more insect fragments per 100 grams of peanut butter. And an average of one or more rodent hairs per 100 grams of peanut butter. Ew. Twinkies actually do have a shelf life.

Starting point is 00:42:17 It's about 45 days. Honey does not have a shelf life. It may crystallize and change color over time, but honey never goes bad. Avocados, pumpkins, bananas, and watermelon are actually berries. But strawberries are not berries. Almonds are part of the peach family. And the average American... This shocked me.

Starting point is 00:42:43 The average American will eat about one ton of food per year. And that is something you should know. If you enjoyed this podcast, I invite you to share it with just one other person or with your social media friends. If you share it, people will admire your good taste and be your friend forever, possibly shower you with gifts. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager,

Starting point is 00:43:25 but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law,

Starting point is 00:43:45 her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network.

Starting point is 00:44:08 At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know - Why Time Flies When You Are Having Fun & What Your Stuff Says About You

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