Something You Should Know - Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Why is white the most popular car color? While people like whatever color they like, car color can impact things like resale value and whether or not a car gets stolen. Listen as we begin this episode by delving into the world of car colors. https://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/car-color-facts-and-fictions.html The roots of fast food are here in the U.S. So why is fast food more popular here than anywhere else in the world? What is the appeal? What are the origins of American fast food? Why do we love it so much? While fast food has its critics, it has become part of American culture. How that happened and why we keep going back for more burgers, fries and nuggets is a fascinating story. Here to tell it is Adam Chandler. He is a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and WIRED. HE is the author of the book Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom (https://amzn.to/3QaTCFQ). When you think of a successful person you likely think of someone who is laser-focused and driven to be the best at that one thing he or she is so good at. However, it appears that developing that kind of single-minded focus is not the best strategy for success. That’s according Steve Magness who is a leading expert on personal performance. His research has found that successful people have a different and somewhat counterintuitive approach to life that contributes to their success. And he is here to share that with you. Steve’s work has appeared in The Atlantic, Runner’s World, and Sports Illustrated and he has been featured in The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal and other media outlets. He is the author of a book is called Win the Inside Game: How to Move from Surviving to Thriving, and Free Yourself Up to Perform (https://amzn.to/413zc7U). There are about 74 million pet cats in the U.S. And there are some things about cats I bet you don’t know. Listen as I reveal why cats meow, what they do with most of their time, which cats are more likely to be left-handed and more. https://www.buzzfeed.com/kristatorres/cat-facts PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at https://FactorMeals.com/factorpodcast DELL: Anniversary savings await you for a limited time only at https://Dell.com/deals SHOPIFY:  Nobody does selling better than Shopify! Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk and upgrade your selling today! HERS: Hers is changing women's healthcare by providing access to GLP-1 weekly injections with the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as oral medication kits. Start your free online visit today at https://forhers.com/sysk INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now! CURIOSITY WEEKLY: We love Curiosity Weekly, so listen wherever you get your podcasts! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, on Something You Should Know, things you've probably never considered about the color of your car. Then, the fascinating story of fast food and things about it you never knew. When you see a menu item that is healthier, like a salad on a McDonald's menu, you automatically feel better about everything else you eat there. It gives you the sense that there is something wholesome in everything that you could possibly eat there and therefore it's safer to eat. Also some facts about cats that will surprise you and the fascinating

characteristics of highly successful people. So for example, Nobel-winning prize scientists have more outside hobbies than those scientists a couple rungs below. If you look at entrepreneurs, those that kept their day job tended to perform better than those who quit initially and went all in. All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships, but it's just as important

to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify those qualities so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online and sign up only takes a few minutes. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com. 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.

If you have a car, it has a color. And we're going to start today talking about the color of your car. Hi there, welcome to another episode of Something You Should Know. The most popular car color is white. And there are a lot of good reasons for that. White cars stay a bit cooler in hot temperatures,

and white cars require less care to stay looking good. But there are some other interesting facts about car colors. If you want your car to not be stolen, a very bright color such as yellow is probably as effective as an expensive security device. Unusual colors like orange, brown, green, even red cars are also less likely to be stolen. Why? Well, because thieves want to steal a popular color

because it makes it easier to unload the car after they steal it. Some drivers believe that bright or light colored cars are safer because they're easier to see. That may be true, but it doesn't make much difference at night and there is actually very little research on that subject. One Australian study said a white car is maybe a little less likely to get into a crash during the day than other colors.

It is an urban myth that red cars cost more to insure. According to the Insurance Information Institute, car color is not a factor in determining rates. If you do like an unusual car color, remember that that affects the resale value because the number of people with your similar unusual taste may be limited and that is something you should know. America has a love affair with fast food and while one can argue the health

consequences of that love affair, today we're going to look at fast food from a more fun and historical point of view and look at why fast food is such a dominant part of American culture. An expert on this subject is Adam Chandler. He's a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Wired. And he has written a book called Drive Through Dreams, a Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast Food Kingdom. Hi, Adam. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Thanks for having me, Mike. I'm happy to be here. So it's probably difficult to be really precise about when fast food began because it really depends on your definition of fast food, but people have a sense of what fast food is. It's restaurants like McDonald's and Burger King and fast food restaurants. And so when did that concept, in your view as a historian of this, when did that concept start?

You know, in my specific definition of the origins of fast food as it exists today, the most recognizable form was the origins of fast food as it exists today. The most recognizable form was the birth of White Castle, which is a cult chain with about 400 locations these days that started in Omaha. It started in Wichita, Nebraska in 1919. And that is what I would look at as the definitional fast food place in that it served quick food that was designed to be eaten on the go and served quickly. And we've seen this industry grow around cars and that was one of the big parts of how White Castle initially established itself.

They had these portable sliders that were meant to be sold by the sackful. That was their motto at one point, selling them by the sack. And so it's been really interesting to kind of see how that has become such an iconic calling card of fast food is its association with being mobile and driving and car culture and fast affordability. All of these real American hallmarks that look at convenience and mobility and affordability and a real democratic way of eating that really separates American dining from the kinds of old school, old world European dining that exists in other other parts of the world.

Well, that brings up a good question. When you look at pictures of city streets in Europe and Asia, you see in and amongst the local businesses, you'll see the McDonald's and the Kentucky Fried Chicken. And so how is fast food as big a thing elsewhere? Or is it, as I sense it is a much bigger deal here than anywhere else? Fast food is uniquely American in the way that it interacts with our dining culture and our society. Absolutely.

We do have the greatest concentration of fast food restaurants. We also have the greatest concentration of fast food restaurants. We also have the greatest concentration of drivers. And so those two things really intertwined to make this formula of convenience, roadside dining that is really hard to replicate in other countries that just don't have that kind of relationship with with work or with travel or with their cars. And so, yeah, we really are uniquely a fast food nation to borrow the title of Eric Schlosser's book.

So White Castle starts in the early 20th century. And yet I think most people think of fast food as being something that started maybe in the 50s or so. So it seemed like there wasn't a lot of progress between the early 20th century and the 50s or so. So it seemed like there wasn't a lot of progress between the early 20th century and the 50s and 60s. There was White Castle, but there was no other McDonald's or Jack in the Box or nothing.

Yeah, the growth of fast food was a bit slow at the beginning. I mean, it sort of intersected with the Model T in the roaring twenties, but that eventually was undercut by the Great Depression. So there were a lot of small burger chains that existed during that period, and a lot of them kind of fell by the wayside.

But the real boom of fast food, the recognizable boom of fast food, really dovetails with the post-war boom where we see these prohibitions and restrictions on gasoline and steel be lifted after the war and this economic boom and this baby boom and the building of the highway system, the building of suburbs, people started having commutes in two income households. So all these social forces align that kind of made dining culture become a new thing in American life that it previously wasn't. And that's really what's so fascinating about it is you kind of travel around the

country as I did to write drive through James and you, you spend time in places and you think it's really strange that there are these ubiquitous fast food places. But if you look back, you know, 50 or 60 years, it kind of makes perfect sense that they emerged based on how our society was in the way it was organized and the way that we were sort of living at that time. And it's just become a normal feature of American life.

You know, stats are a little old, but you know, in the recent years, 95% of Americans eat fast food every single year. And that is more than the amount of people who use the internet. It really is a surprising statistic when you think about the sort of ubiquity and adoption of fast food by nearly all Americans.

And that's something that kind of makes it special and unique in ways that a lot of things today, in particular, are divisive and polarizing and not harnessing this mass appeal that we see in the something like fast food. I would imagine most people think that McDonald's is certainly a major player in the development of fast food. They seem like they're in the hall of fame of fast food. That something about McDonald's really jump started the business. Is that a fair assumption?

That's absolutely true. That's absolutely true. That's absolutely true. McDonald's is kind of a shorthand in a lot of instances for fast food. When you talk about fast food, McDonald's is often the first thing that comes up, at least in American fast food. I mean, it's interesting because there

are so many interesting global versions of McDonald's in the world where they serve different food items and the stores look different. And even when you go inside, the feeling of them is different. It's kind of like a special occasion place or a date place in other countries. But here, it has this common casual, everyday kind of thing about it. And that's part of the magic of it. And what's really impressive about the story of McDonald's is that

it really kind of brought this franchise model that we see not just in fast food, but in nearly all industries have these franchise models into the, I guess, the limelight of American business. You didn't have to have a college degree or come from wealth to start a McDonald's in the 1960s or 70s. You could just be willing to work hard and open up a shop and it would do well because it had name recognition.

If you were a small business owner, you could get a loan more easily to open a McDonald's because it was a proven business. So there are all these things around the model of McDonald's that kind of made it this very special thing that no other company had really done in the same way. And it just took off and it got a head start on all the other chains and it never looked back.

One of the things that I think of when I think of fast food and there's a scene in the movie, the Michael Keaton movie about McDonald's, I forget the name of the movie. Sure the founder. Yeah. Where he goes into the McDonald's for the first time and he orders and they hand him his food and he said well wait a minute that it was pre-prepared and that that was the definition of fast or part of the definition of fast food that you didn't come in, order it, and then hang around and wait a while.

They just handed you a bag because there were 50 hamburgers behind them. And they just threw them in the bag and said, here you go. It was seen as technologically advanced. It was seen as a marvel that you could order a burger and have it come out within 30 seconds or 45 seconds. And that's still kind of the standard. They try to keep orders as quick as possible because that's really what people want.

More than the taste, people really value the speed and convenience of fast food. And at the time, we may see that as dystopian today, getting your food in less than a minute or two, at least some people certainly do. But back then that was seen as a kind of a space age marvel that you could create a system where you had so many processes in place that you could create a meal

that would come together that fast. And so that's really a funny unique part of the story is that we were enchanted by this technology that now, you know, in the rise of the foodie era and the slow food movement and all of these different ways of looking at foodways, we kind of look a scant at it now. We're not quite as enchanted by it as we once were. Some people absolutely are, but that was something that initially was seen as one of the huge benefits of it is that you blink and your meal is ready and you can go on your way. Yeah, well, it's still even, you know,

when you go to the drive-thru at McDonald's and there's some snafu or it's not, and they make you go park in that other parking space, like sending you to the corner because you have to now wait for your food because there are people behind you, and we've got to keep the line moving. And people hate that. They're like, but I want my food now.

I don't want to go park over there and wait. And how long do you wait? Like a minute. But it's the expectation that I want it now. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a really convenience-focused entity. And when you buck that model with any slight delay, people get irate.

And it's fascinating to see part of the appeal of fast food is the familiarity of it, the predictability of it, the convenience, knowing basically how long it's going to take, what it's going to cost, and what it's going to taste like. So you can kind of diagram that experience in your mind and wherever you're going, you know that it's kind of going to be the same. Whether you're at a McDonald's in California or you're at a Burger King in Kansas or you're at a Taco Bell in Wisconsin, you can kind of tell what the experience is going to be like. And so when anything deviates from that, it obviously brings up some anger for people who chose a place based on a preconceived notion they have of it. But that's also part of the strength

of the brands of that experience, that you know exactly what you're going to get. And that's very comforting to people. And that's a real meaningful part of why fast food has managed to succeed and managed to stay as this food movement that is so popular and so powerful all these decades later. So fast food has a reputation about its healthiness that I want to ask you about. I'm speaking with Adam Chandler. He's author of the book, Drive Through Dreams, a journey through the heart of America's fast food kingdom. Are you crushing your bills?

Defeating your monthly payments. Sounds like you're at the top of your financial game. Rise to it with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa card the credit card that rewards your good financial habits earn points for paying your credit Card bill in full and on time every month level up from bill payer to reward slayer terms and conditions apply TD direct investing offers live support So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for total fund savings adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. So Adam, one of the questions that I've always had is why is fast food typically unhealthy?

It's deep fried, it's high fat, it's white flour, it's, and that there hasn't ever been a healthy, there's I guess some regional ones, but there haven't been any real breakout, healthy fast food places. And I can imagine the argument is, well, we serve what people want, but do they want it because that's what you serve?

It's a great question. And it's a funny thing because fast food chains have really tried over the years to be steered in these directions to try things that are healthier or use better ingredients. And in some instances they have. A lot of fast food restaurants have made pledges to sort of phase out trans fat or almond oil,

or McDonald's doesn't fry their French fries in beef tallow anymore, which was a big concession that they made. Chicken McNuggets, for example, and the rise of chicken generally is partially because the protein is cheaper. But around this late 1970s, the US Senate passed a huge report and sort of an initiative to tell people, you need to eat less red meat because it's a problem for our

heart health. And we got the chicken McNugget a few years later as a concession to that. And it's funny to think we're eating fried chicken bits instead of hamburgers as a forward thinking way to be healthier. But that's kind of how fast food has worked. And what's interesting about that in particular is McDonald's and other fast food places

put salads on their menus. They've tried to do these measures to offer new things. But when you go to a McDonald's and other fast food places put salads on their menus. They've tried to do these measures to offer new things. But when you go to a McDonald's, you tend not to think about that. You tend not to want, you're not there for salad. And that is a real reason why those menu items tend not to last very long because that's just not the association people have with it.

They think of going somewhere and indulging themselves and relaxing and not thinking about the calorie counts, whether they post them or not. So it's kind of built into the experience that this is something that is an indulgence. Although, you know, this is something that's funny because you'll hear people from other generations talk about it. McDonald's or Burger King or any of these places being a special treat that you went to once in a while. And the reality of it is that a third of Americans will eat at a fast food restaurant every single day. That's basically how the CDC has broken down

the statistics around it. They know that that many Americans are eating fast food on a given day. You know, that's ultimately a bad thing for public health and it's a bad thing for communities and for a lot of other reasons, but it also speaks to the success of what they're offering at fast food restaurants that is affordable

and accessible culinarily, as well as just from a convenience standpoint. Well, it is interesting. You're right. When you think about people who like salad, they don't go, hey, I got an idea. Let's go to McDonald's and get a salad. Right, right.

I've actually had a good salad at McDonald's when they offered them. But again, it's not what you tend to go to McDonald's for. And what's interesting about this also is they've done really fascinating studies around what they call health halos, which we may think of in terms of like Chipotle was seen as a place where you would go

and have something a little bit healthier because they market themselves as being not fast food. They cook the food in front of you where you can see it. And they talk about the ingredients that they you where you can see it, and they talk about the ingredients that they use being better, but it's just as unhealthy, if not more so unhealthy than a lot of other fast food restaurants, but it has this health halo around it. And another study that focuses on consumer perceptions found that when you see a menu

item that is healthier, like a salad on a McDonald's menu or a Burger King menu, you automatically feel better about everything else you eat there. It's a psychological trick that if you go somewhere and you see something healthy, it gives you the sense that there is something wholesome in everything that you could possibly eat there. And therefore it's safer to eat,

which is a fun trick that our minds kind of play on us and that consumer psychologists have become aware of as a way to kind of steer us towards continuing to eat what we want to eat. Something some fast food restaurants do that I want you to comment on is like Taco Bell. They have nacho fries, but then Bell. They have nacho fries but then they don't have nacho fries. And McDonald's has the McRib but most of the time it doesn't

have the McRib. And I know that people get really upset about that. I like nacho fries at Taco Bell and it's always a disappointment when you pull in and they don't have them then. What is that? Is that just to create buzz, create controversy, get people upset? Why do they do that? Exactly, exactly. That's another thing that separates fast food

from a lot of other chains or a lot of other businesses in the restaurant industry is that they have these rotating dishes and standbys, but also new limited time offerings. That's what they're called in the industry that kind of appear and pop up for a minute and they're meant to generate buzz and interest and then they go away. It's funny because you'll see people very passionate about that. There are countless petitions filed when certain items go off of the menus.

Because people are so fond of them, they want them to be permanent. But in reality, they're kind of just to gin up another visit or two out of people who eat fast food pretty regularly. And then there's something like the McRib, which is its own kind of cultural institution. People love the McRib and sometimes only eat McDonald's when the McRib, which is its own kind of cultural institution. People love the McRib and sometimes only eat McDonald's when the McRib comes back on the menu. And that's its own kind of funny subculture. But the limited time offerings is such a funny kind of specific fast food gimmick that I think people really get behind in part because it's just fun.

I mean, it's just something that comes out of nowhere, you know, every few weeks or every few months from your favorite chain. The ideas behind them are so kind of strange sometimes, you know, nacho fries is just being a phenomenon. It's one of the most successful limited time offerings that Taco Bell's ever put out. But it's just French fries with cheese,

with nacho cheese on them. It's not anything groundbreaking, but we're sort of coaxed into believing it's something greater than that. And I think that's what's part of the fun of fast food in this way is it's very unserious. It doesn't take itself too intensely. And the commercials are fun, and the marketing is fun,

and the food is fun. It's just not precious in a way that I think a lot of food culture is precious about itself. What else about the fast food business do you think people would be fascinated by? The founders of fast food are always an interesting story in and of itself. You think about someone like Colonel Sanders

who grew up in deep poverty. He was basically pressed with raising his brothers and sisters after his father died and his mother had to go work. And he went on to become one of the most famous men in the world. There are so many of these stories and in the myth, the myth, in fact, of fast food that really stand out

that I think are so fascinating. You know, Dave Thomas was a of Wendy's fame was a acolyte of Colonel Sanders. So there's this interesting connection there. Dave Thomas was an orphan and had an adopted family take care of him. He was always kind of searching for father figures in his life and Colonel Sanders turned out to be one of them. So these founder stories are really impressive when you look at them. Ray Kroc is another example.

He was the one who took over McDonald's from the McDonald's brothers. And this is someone who failed for most of his life as a salesman trying to find his way into the American dream. And sort of late in his life, he manages to turn McDonald's into this international juggernaut. So what I think is really impressive about this story of fast food broadly is that it really speaks to a time where American opportunity was on the rise. And I think that that's one aspect of fast food that we tend not to think about. Well, it's certainly fun to talk about this. I mean, what was the statistic you gave?

More people eat at fast food restaurants in a year than use the internet. So it's something we all relate to, and I find it interesting to hear the stories and the history behind the whole business. I've been speaking with Adam Chandler, and the name of his book is Drive Through Dreams, a Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast Food Kingdom. Actually, Adam has a new book out that we're going to have him back on to talk about called

99% Perspiration, a New Working History of the American Way of Life, which is really interesting. And we'll have him back on to talk about that pretty soon. Adam, thank you. Appreciate you spending the time with us. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour

for conversations that go deeper with people you really wanna hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at The New Yorker. So join us every week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts. From the podcasts that brought you to each of the last lesbian bars in the country and

back in time through the sapphic history that shaped them comes a brand new season of cruising beyond the bars. This is your host, Sara Gabrielli, and I've spent the past year interviewing history-making lesbians and queer folks about all kinds of queer spaces, from bookstores to farms to line dancing and much more. You can listen to cruising on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes air every other Tuesday starting February 4th. What does success mean to you? Often we think of success

as being about the outward appearances, the awards, the money, the nice car, the good grade on a final exam, job title, plaque on a wall. All of those things may be fine, but perhaps a broader, more interesting view of success could help us all. And here to explore that is Steve Magnus. He is an expert on personal performance. He wrote a book called do hard things

Which he was here talking about in a previous episode He has written for the Atlantic runners world and sports illustrated and he's been featured in the New Yorker the Wall Street Journal And the New York Times amongst others His new book is called win the inside game how to move from surviving toiving to Thriving and Free Yourself Up to Perform. Hey Steve, welcome back. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited. So let's start right out of the box here with an example of how you look at success differently. So for example, you know, often if you look at advice given for obtaining success in the workplace or the sports life,

the advice is centered around things like going all in, being obsessive, finding that thing that you're so passionate about that you can't stop. But what research tends to show us is that in the real world, that's not actually what the most successful people experience. So for example, Nobel-winning prize scientists have more outside hobbies and interests than those scientists a couple rungs below. If you look at entrepreneurs,

there was a wonderful study on 5,000 entrepreneurs that found that those that kept their day job tended to perform better than those who quit initially and went all in. So in your life, I would say instead of focusing narrowly, we need to create a robust and broad sense of self or Mike. So that means not just saying, I am a podcast host and this is all that I do, but realizing that you have hobbies, you have interests, you have these other things that provide status and significance because what that does is it allows you to perform out of a place of joy and exploring your potential instead of fear of like, oh gosh, this is it.

If I don't nail this interview, it's not, I failed at this podcast, but I am a failure myself. And is it your sense that most people are that way, that most people are very narrowly focused like that? It is. And in fact, there's some wonderful research that shows us that we tend to move towards this direction partially because of the culture around us. So, especially in the US,

our culture is that success is self-defining. For much of history, we brushed off our failures. So, for instance, in ancient Greece or ancient Rome, they said they blamed the god of crops if their crops failed. That was to put a little bit of space between their activity and the event, the failure, so that they'd try again. In the 1900s, what researchers found is that with the implementation of bank credit, we actually had to judge people. So banks labeled people good for nothing, meaning they weren't going to be able to pay back the loan. And ever since then, the introduction of And ever since then, the introduction of moving towards like, I am a failure if I can't do the job or complete the success increased in our in our vocabulary. So you can see it as this internalization of the, you know, making success or failure

of virtue. If you've always done that though, if that's kind of your inclination, how do you start to move away from that? How do you start to do what you're talking about? First off, the key is it's really hard. What got you there? It's really hard to pull away from it

because you're probably thinking, well, I've had some success. I've been pretty good at what I do here. But if you look at, for example, when I talked to a wide range of Olympic athletes and then some research actually on Olympic swimmers, what generally tends to happen to us is the narrow world gets us going. But at some point, we face adversity, we face failure, we face something that kind of throws us for a loop. And what research tells us and what the Olympians I talked to told us is if they went that path and they doubled down, it tended to end poorly.

They didn't perform better. They started to see their pursuit as a job and then a chore. But what researchers found is if they shifted their mindset from this performance view and towards a quest view, meaning it's partially about the result. Yeah, the result matters, but it's also about the journey. It's what I'm discovering about myself and my team and my friends and family along the way that also matters. What that does is free you up a little bit. On an individual level, what that means is I'm not asking you to go from I care about outcomes and results to Zen Monk on the other end of the spectrum. What I'm asking you to do is find small ways to let go just a little bit.

Instead of having outcome-orientated goals, start switching towards process-orientated goals. Research shows that this will stoke our intrinsic motivation and allow us to have more resilience over the long haul. What's a process-orientated goal? It's essentially looking at, yeah, where are you trying to go? What you actually want to achieve? Defining those steps. What are the things and activities you need to get there? And then just forget about the outcome whatsoever and just keep coming back to those steps or the process that is the important part. So can you give me like a specific example of that? You explained it well, but I just like, so to shift the goal from result oriented to the process.

Yeah, absolutely. So let's use athletics, sports. It's the easiest way to do this. So let's say you want to win the state championship. That is an outcome goal. Maybe you have to run a certain time or swim a certain time. That could be also the goal as well. But that is defining that outcome. Instead, what you say is maybe with your coach

or your teammates, you say, okay, what are the steps that I need to take that give me the best shot to get there? And those steps might be, well, I need to take that give me the best shot to get there. Those steps might be, well, I need to be in the pool training five days a week for an hour long. I need to maybe twice a week decide that I need to do some strength training or I need to hire a sports psychologist and meet with them once a month. Whatever those steps are that give you the best shot, to meet with them once a month. Whatever those steps are that give you the best shot,

that's what you need to define as the goal and the focus. And then when you complete your season, you don't look back and say, did I win the state championship or not? You say, did I follow my process? If I follow my process, then I did the things that I needed to give myself a shot and win or lose. Like that's all I can ask for. That seems like that might be hard to do if you're somebody who is more results oriented to not look back and go, damn, I lost the championship. I was this close. It is. And again, what I'm asking is not to be a Zen monk, but if you look at some of the research around, for instance,

how athletes handle losses, it's really fascinating. So if you become that person who loses the championship and then stews over it, what happens is our biology follows suit. So we experience higher levels of stress hormones like cortisol. Our cortisol goes through the roof, and then the other hormone that is linked to stress, testosterone, actually decreases. But there's a way we can switch this. It's not saying that losses don't matter, but it's when we put it in the right perspective

and do things that get us out of that ruminative space where that ratio of testosterone and cortisol will flip. So for instance, after we lose that championship, if instead of going on the bus for the car ride or the car ride home and thinking of everything that went wrong, we hung out with friends, that will actually shift us where we have more testosterone, our cortisol will go down. If we go over and evaluate, maybe where we made the wrong decision, we

ran too fast on this lap or slowed down too much on this lap. If we do that with a friend or a trusted colleague or coach, testosterone will go up, cortisol will go down. If we do that with a friend or a trusted colleague or coach, testosterone will go up, cortisol will go down. If we do that with someone maybe we're a little afraid of, or as a stranger, or someone who's intimidated by us, or someone who we value their opinion so much, maybe like a parent instead of a coach, we have the opposite reaction.

Cortisol goes up, testosterone goes down. So what I'd say is it's normal to feel the weight of the loss, but we can do things to kind of switch our biology, which then switches our psychology and allows us to bounce back so we can get back to that process, so we can get back to doing the thing that we enjoy. Well, that's really good insight,

because when I think of times when I've had something go wrong, I tend to drill down deeper and deeper in what went wrong and what went wrong and figure it out. Seldom do I think to step back, involve other people. That's just not the way my brain works. And I think that's true for a lot of people. It is, because that's our tendency.

Our tendency, when we want to perform well, is to get narrower and narrower and narrower. But think of, let's take a non-sported example. I'm a writer. I write books, obviously. What do I do if I get stuck on a chapter? If I keep drilling down, if I keep trying to figure it out,

often what happens is it just becomes a jumbled mess. I can't sort through it. I get to a point where all the words blend together. But so often, if you talk to writers, where do they get that breakthrough? It's when they let go or step back a little bit. It's when I say, you know what, I spent hours staring at the page, I'm going to go for a walk. Or that aha moment comes when you put the work aside and you say, hey, I'm going to go

in the shower, go take a shower. And then all of a sudden you're in the shower, the light bulb moment goes off and you're like, oh my gosh, this is how I connect that paragraph or solve that problem. And that's because often what we need to do is when the world tells us to narrow, we need to broaden, we need to shift our perspective. And that often frees us up to see connections that we can't see when we're increasingly narrow. And everyone's had that experience where you're stuck on something, you take a walk

or take a shower, and boom, there's the answer. But I'm not sure we think about it that, oh, that's how it works, you step away. And it's more, oh, that was just fortuitous and it happened. But what I really need to do is get back to work and solve this problem. Exactly. And you can even broaden this out to career advice. There was some wonderful research out at Northwestern University that looked at one-hit wonders. So we think of them in terms of the songs that come about, right? We get that tune stuck in our head and we think, oh, they never did anything else in their career.

What the researchers found is that often that one hit narrowed those artists so much that they started to think, oh, this is the path, this is the song, I need to copy this again, this is who I am. What they found is that when they narrowed so much, they lost part of their creativity because they saw themselves only through a very small lens instead of this artist who could explore. What some other researchers found is that when they looked at artists or even directors or even scientists who had prolonged of prolonged hot streaks.

So they had periods where they were really, really productive for many years. What they found is they followed this pattern, which is they broadly explored, meaning they dabbled in a lot of different interests. And then once they dabbled enough, they exploited, meaning they used the knowledge and turned that into action. Then they bounced back out again and explore. The director, Peter Jackson, is a great example. Before he made Lord of the Rings,

if you look at his director litany of movies, there were comedies and horror films and fantasies, and it was all over the place. But then he took that knowledge and applied it in narrow field of Lord of the Rings fantasy and was super successful. The concern I have about that though is, I understand the concept, but often as you'll read in the news, explorers will sometimes get lost that you can explore and get too far

away and now nobody knows where you are or who you are. And that's the crux of it. So at the beginning I said success isn't a simple story and it's not the story we're often told. It's one of nuance. You need both. You need to care both about outcome and process. You need to both be able to explore and exploit. And we need to be able to kind of go both directions. So, most of us suffer more from narrowing than we do exploring. But there are some people who go on the other end of the spectrum and would need some exploiting or commitment where you say, yeah, I've wandered enough, I need to turn this into some sort of action. But you advocate that people do more exploring

for the purpose of what? Because if you're really good at something, what is it you're gonna explore? Like if you're a really good baseball player, you're not gonna go explore football and see if I could do that. You're not looking to change what you're doing. So what is the purpose of exploring?

It's the same purpose that you experienced as a child. It's to experience the world, not necessarily with a point or an outcome attached. Because what research tells us is when we look at exploration in that way or when a child explores, what they're trying to do is say, hey, I'm just going to figure out the world a little bit. I'm going to get different experiences that inform me. And then as you gain that experience, you use that information to stoke

your intrinsic motivation, your fire that allows you to take it and achieve at something, if that's your calling. But without that player, without that exploration, what happens is we don't stoke that fire. We don't get that experience. The reason we probably got interested in writing or running or being a radio broadcaster is because at some point along the way we were exploring and dabbling maybe it was a hobby and It just caught us and that interest transformed into a passion and that stoked things And we often lose that as adults So we need to make sure that we have things to broaden our experience and perspective along the way One of the big things about success,

and I'd like to get you to talk about this, because you're this expert on personal performance and people doing their best, but a lot of success isn't about doing your best. A lot of it is luck. A lot of it is who you know. A lot of it is who you meet. It isn't all because you're so smart and you did all the right things

and you explored this and you explored that. You might have just bumped into the right person. There was a wonderful study a couple of years ago that found that when it came to their work's best achievement, so what they do in in in life, a survey of a wide variety of people attributed serendipity to their best achievement. I think it was over 60% of people did. Meaning there was a bit of, we call serendipity a bit of luck, but what I would say is it's more being able to go broad and explore enough to say, hey, I'm open to this opportunity. Right? And we can see this, for instance, with actors. Johnny Depp wanted to be

a musician and he was pursuing that path. And then that musician, being a musician is what opened the door for being an actor and he walked on through it. If he was so narrow and said, hey, I'm only focused on music, I'm not open to this opportunity, he doesn't get his life's work or life's calling. And there's so many examples of that. So, what we need to do is, again, not go all the way and be a wanderer, but embrace that, you know, it's not just about being obsessive on the work, but giving us a chance just in case that door opens to be able to step through it.

Do you find that for people, the door keeps opening or, because as you say, okay, Johnny Depp was a musician and then he walked through a door and became an actor because the door was there and he walked through it. But he hasn't walked through any other doors. I mean, he hasn't changed careers again. He's still an actor. So is he done? You asked the hard questions, Mike. I think this is where it depends on the individual. Some people are going to find the thing and pursue the thing and then explore within that thing. Try different styles of music in the movie business. Be a serious actor. Try some comedies. Go different

routes. That's how they get their exploration in it. Other people are going to jump from genre to genre. Other people might change their jobs. In that research I talked about on hot streaks among directors, scientists, and artists, what was fascinating is that their hot streak or most productive period in their career was not related to age. So some people had these productive periods in their 30s, and some people in their 60s or even 70s. It really depends on how we found our niche where we say, hey, we're just going to explore in this narrow world. Or is that not satisfying? Is that not stoking the interest or that intrinsic motivation enough where we need to go somewhere

else and try something completely different. And for each individual, it's going to differ. Any other last piece of advice from all the research you've done that could really help people in their striving for success in whatever they choose to do? What research tends to show us is that if we feel connection or belonging to others, whether that's friends, family, coworkers, it literally changes our perception of the challenges we face. Some wonderful research showed that when we try to lift a heavy box by ourselves, we judge it to be about 15 pounds heavier than if we just have a friend nearby.

The same goes if we're standing at the bottom of a very steep hill. If it's you alone, you're going to judge that hill to be about seven to eight degrees steeper than if it's you with a friend. When we feel connected, when we feel secure in our world and our sense of belonging, it shifts how we see these challenges. Well, it's a very different and eye-opening way to look at success that I find illuminating and I'm sure everyone else does too. I've been speaking with Steve Magnus and the name of his book is

Win the Inside Game, How to move from surviving to thriving and free yourself up to perform. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Steve, as always, great, great to have you on, thanks. While dogs are the most popular pets in the US, cats aren't far behind. There are 80 million dogs and about 74 million pet cats. Here are some things about cats you may not know.

Cats sleep about 70% of their lives. Adult cats meow only to communicate with humans, not with other cats. Male cats are typically left-handed, or left-pawed. Female cats are generally right-pawed. Cats are not able to taste sweetness in anything they eat. A typical house cat can jump five feet high, which is about seven times its own height. There's research that shows owning a cat can reduce the risk of stroke and heart attack by a third.

And every cat's nose has a unique ridge pattern. It's much like a human fingerprint. And that is something you should know. One very excellent way for you to show your support of this podcast is to leave us a five-star rating and review wherever you listen. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox, while I don't really understand exactly how it works, your reviews factor into some kind of formula that really helps boost the show and make it more visible to other people.

Plus, I like to read them. Please take a moment and leave us a rating and review. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at The New Yorker. So, join us every week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, I am Kristin Russo.

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