Something You Should Know - Why We Often Expect the Worst & The Science Behind the Fonts You Use
Episode Date: August 17, 2023How many times have you heard that exercise is good for you? But specifically, how? This episode starts with an explanation of precisely how exercise benefits you physically and mentally – and they ...are pretty compelling benefits. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/fitness/in-depth/exercise/art-20048389 When you worry, it is often because you are expecting the worst. We imagine trouble and danger are brewing about something that has yet to happen. Often times that worry is completely unwarranted. Still, the anxiety that drives the worry is a powerful force. How can you get a handle on your worry? Here to discuss that and offer some proven advice that can turn down the volume on worry is David Carbonell, he is a clinical psychologist and therapist who specializes in the treatment of anxiety disorders, and he is author of the book The Worry Trick: How Your Brain Tricks You Into Expecting the Worst (https://amzn.to/44b5MTJ). There are zillions of fonts you can use when you type an email or letter or report . And according to some solid research, the font you choose can have a significant impact on the reader. Everyday you are influenced by the typefaces used on menus, products, signs, posters, everything! And you probably don’t even know it. Joining me to discuss the science of fonts is Sarah Hyndman. She is a graphic artist and author of the book Why Fonts Matter. (https://amzn.to/3DTCvlA). Is it possible to be addicted to music? Apparently so! At least in the sense that music can make you feel good in much the same way as a drug. Listen as I explain what it is about music that creates such powerful feelings in us. https://www.dancemusicnw.com/study-proves-music-addiction/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Sometimes in life we’re faced with tough choices, and the path forward isn’t always clear. If you’re thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It’s entirely online, so it’s convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. Let therapy be your map, with BetterHelp Visit https://BetterHelp.com/SOMETHING today to get 10% off your first month! With HelloFresh, you get farm-fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Go to https://HelloFresh.com/50something and use code 50something for 50% off plus free shipping! Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk today! Zocdoc is the only FREE app that lets you find AND book doctors who are patient-reviewed, take your insurance, are available when you need them and treat almost every condition under the sun! Go to https://Zocdoc.com/SYSK and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Your business was humming, but now you're falling behind. Teams buried in manual work. NetSuite gives you the POWER of having all of your information in one place to make better decisions and now has an UNPRECEDENTED offer to make that possible! Right now, download NetSuite’s popular KPI Checklist, designed to give you consistently excellent performance - absolutely free, at https://NetSuite.com/SYSK ! Discover Credit Cards do something pretty awesome. At the end of your first year, they automatically double all the cash back you’ve earned! See terms and check it out for yourself at https://Discover.com/match U.S. Cellular knows how important your kid’s relationship with technology is. That’s why they’ve partnered with Screen Sanity, a non-profit dedicated to helping kids navigate the digital landscape. For a smarter start to the school year, U.S. Cellular is offering a free basic phone on new eligible lines, providing an alternative to a smartphone for children. Visit https://USCellular.com/BuiltForUS ! We really like the Masters of Scale podcast! Check it out at https://mastersofscale.com OR search for it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Today on Something You Should Know.
Sure, exercise is good for you, but specifically how?
I'll explain that.
Then, worry.
Why do we often worry way too much?
One of the phrases I hear so often from my clients, it helps if I expect the worst.
Well, actually, it probably doesn't, but they have that sense.
If I'm not worrying, then I'm treating life too casually.
Also, can you be addicted to music?
And do you know which fonts, which typefaces are best for emails or letters?
For example, a lot of people use Times New Roman. Times New Roman would be better if you switched
to Georgia. Times was designed for the Times newspaper, for those very, very narrow column
widths of the newspaper, so it's quite condensed. And as soon as you're actually spreading it out
all the way across a page, it starts to become a little bit harder to read. All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad for better help.
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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.
Hello. Welcome to Something You Should Know.
So, we all know that exercise is good for your health.
But what does that mean exactly?
I mean, good for your health. It's such
a vague phrase. It's hardly motivating. So specifically, how is exercise good for your
health? Well, according to the Mayo Clinic, here are a couple of very specific reasons to get up
and exercise. First of all, teenagers who exercise are more likely to graduate and less likely to develop a brain tumor.
Men who exercise vigorously are two-thirds less likely to experience erectile dysfunction as those who don't.
Women who exercise tend to have fewer mood swings and better sex lives.
Seniors who exercise three times a week are much less likely to develop dementia.
People suffering from depression can lessen the symptoms by over 40% with aerobic exercise.
The bottom line is that people who exercise for an average of 15 minutes a day generally live
longer and enjoy a better quality of life than people who don't.
And that is something you should know.
You may have noticed, if you think back, that a lot of the things you worry about,
you probably didn't need to worry about.
Not everything, perhaps, but it does seem that we tend to worry about things more than we should.
Some people really over-worry.
There just seems to be something that compels us that when we don't know something for sure,
we assume the worst.
Why do we do that?
And why do we hear so much today about worry and anxiety?
Well, here to help understand all this better and maybe find a way to worry less is David Carbonell. He is a clinical psychologist who specializes in the treatment of anxiety disorders as a therapist.
And he's author of a book called The Worry Trick, How Your Brain Tricks You Into Expecting the Worst.
Hey, David, welcome to Something You Should Know.
Oh, hi, Mike. Thanks for having me.
Sure. So first explain what worry is, and I'd like to know what's the difference between worry
and anxiety. Worry is basically the cognitive part, the thinking part of anxiety. A person
could have anxiety in several forms. They might have physical symptoms, shortness of thoughts, typically intrusive
what-if thoughts.
What if this meeting goes poorly?
What if I catch a disease?
What if my son flunks out of school?
What if we lose the house?
That kind of thing.
And so those, collectively, those thoughts, mostly not always set up by the presence of
the what-if clause.
That's the form of worry that most people struggle with.
And oftentimes, it seems, we worry about things that we probably never needed to worry about.
But sometimes we worry about things, and it was a good thing we worried.
So clearly, worry has a role.
But so when is it a problem?
Worry can be useful if it tips me off to something that I have to do, that I have to tend to.
Gee, what if I'm not ready for that meeting next week and I haven't prepared?
Well, it tells me prepare.
And then once having gotten that message and having prepared, well, then I don't need the message anymore. And hopefully, ordinarily, that message
will drop off my radar once I've taken the necessary precaution of preparing for the meeting
or arranging a doctor appointment or whatever. All too often, though, even if I have taken the
message and made my preparation, or even more commonly, when
there really isn't any preparation to do, the worry persists.
And it functions like an annoying neighbor who keeps coming around, tapping me on the
shoulder.
Have you thought about what will happen if you die next month?
And there's nothing I can do with that information.
The neighbor's just annoying, and I have to figure out what's a good way to relate to this thought because since it's not a neighbor, I can't tell him to go home.
The thought is in my own mind. And then that's the challenge for people dealing with chronic worry.
How can I relate to the presence of this intrusive, unwanted reminder of something
that probably isn't going to be an issue? So why is it, do you suppose, that some people handle worry so much easier and other people
see trouble where it's just not there?
Well, there seems to be strong indicators that there are genetic predispositions to this,
that right from birth, some people are born better candidates than others to have trouble with this.
Some people come to having a panic attack or chronic worry episodes rather naturally,
and other people seems like, gee, they couldn't have a panic attack if you paid them to do it.
They just don't have the temperament.
They'll have other difficulties in life, but not that.
So first off, the bad predisposition that anxiety disorders tend to run strongly in families. And if you find one person in this generation who's had trouble with an anxiety
disorder, odds of finding others back a generation or more are something like three to four times as
high as if you looked at a random person on the street. So there's genetic predisposition,
and there's the learning of what happens to them. How do they deal with their first episode?
Did they get help?
Did they have good information?
They might outgrow that first episode immediately.
If they didn't, they might labor in secrecy and fear and doubt.
And that's the breeding ground for a chronic problem.
Well, certainly there are children who suffer with anxiety problems,
and I imagine if they don't get some help, that that's not going to go away by itself. Or maybe
does it ever just go away by itself? Probably not. Not going away by itself in the sense that
parents don't recognize it, nobody does anything differently, and it just fades away.
Now, it's very common for children to have, you know, ordinary childhood phobias. Those tend to
be outgrown, you know, fear of the dark, fear of the lion in the closet, and so on. Those are
developmental stages that kids tend naturally to grow, outgrow. But a child who
in particular has a tendency to worry, a child who watches health commercials, public health
messages on television and worries about those diseases that they're talking about, who sees the
message from the Cancer Society looking for donations
and begins to worry, what if my family gets cancer?
That's probably not going to be outgrown.
A child who has that habit, that habit's probably going to stick unless something happens to
help them set that aside.
Is there a sense of why, you know, somebody can hear the same information, you know, that I
tried to call mom and she didn't pick up the phone. I'll try her again later. She must not be near her
phone. And then someone else hears that and assumes, well, she must've been in a car crash.
She's probably dead or in a ditch. And what happens in the mind that that story goes one way with one person and the other
way with the other person? Well, one way of thinking about it is people who have this tendency
towards anxiety and worry, they're much more susceptible to doubt than the average person. And that's a big highlight of worry. People experience doubt
and they treat it like danger. And so the person oriented to worry, mom or my spouse doesn't pick
up the phone the first time I call, it's not going to occur to them that there are other explanations. This is dangerous. I have
to remove that doubt. I must be sure. Whereas other people are more prepared to roll with the
uncertainties. Well, if I can't reach her now, I'll probably be able to reach her in a half an hour.
So it's that misunderstanding of doubt and treating it like danger that's at the heart of this.
It seems to me that when somebody is a worrier, if so, if they're worried that, you know,
mom's not picking up the phone, so something horrible must have happened, and then they find
out nothing happened, it was fine, she just wasn't near her phone. The next time it happens,
you know, that person doesn't think back, well, the last time this happened, it was nothing.
So this time it'll be nothing.
We don't learn from experience that we over-worry.
No, no.
The repeated experience of discovering the thing I worried about didn't happen will not really do anything to soothe the chronic worrier.
And partly that's because they tend to do things in
response to the thoughts they have of doubt. Maybe they'll drive past mom's house and see
does the car seem to be there. Maybe they'll call others. Maybe they'll literally try and
talk themselves out of it. They'll respond in ways which most of us can recognize, gee, that wouldn't do anything
to enhance the safety of a close relative, but they'll still think, well, maybe it helped somehow.
And then so, then they're caught in a bind. They have to keep repeating these, what we call safety
behaviors, each time they experience the doubt. Doesn't do anything to make anybody safer,
but they're afraid, gee, if I let go, if I treat it so casually as to not drive by mom's house,
what if that is the thing that triggers a really bad event here? And so they get caught up in the
idea that they've somehow prevented
a bad outcome with their worrying and that motivates them to worry more yeah
see that I think there is that tendency to think that if you're worrying about
something you're working on it exactly you know one of the phrases I hear so
often from my clients it helps if I expect the worst.
Well, actually, it probably doesn't help if you expect the worst, but they have that sense.
If I'm not worrying, then I'm treating life too casually.
And if I am worrying, maybe I'm preventing the problem from ever happening or working on the problem to help it somehow.
Yes, yes, somehow.
And of course, if you ask them to pin it down, it becomes hard to figure,
well, how are you actually helping?
But that's a powerful belief that at least I care enough to worry about it.
My sense is that most people who you would consider worriers, people who get anxious
and worry, wish they didn't so much.
Absolutely.
That's exactly right.
People do not enjoy their worry.
They wish they had less of it.
Unfortunately, that leads them to oppose and resist their worry in ways that are counterproductive, that make them more prone to worry rather than less.
We're talking about worry, and my guest is clinical psychologist David Carbonell.
He's author of a book called The Worry Trick, How Your Brain Tricks You Into Expecting the Worst.
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So, David, if you do worry or you are worrying about something, how do you stop it?
Well, the paradox here is you can bring it in for a soft landing by not struggling to stop it.
That you cultivate a relationship with these thoughts of acceptance,
even of playing with, rather than trying to stop it.
So if I asked you, take 20 seconds and don't think about the moon you'd probably find it hard to do that because now you see a big glowing
orb in your mind space they do the similar thing they tell themselves don't
think about it and of course it leads them to think about it more so what we
want to do is help people develop a more playful,
accepting way of having the thoughts. They don't have to treat them seriously,
but they need to allow the thoughts to be there rather than oppose them.
So what does that look like? Give me an example of being more playful with the thoughts.
You know, I had a conversation with a man who was a
broadcaster and he described to me an instance. He was taping his show and he had this sudden
terrible thought, what if I need to pee during the show? And that grabbed all his attention and he
had a lot of trouble focusing on his job, getting past the thought. Later on, we talked about it.
You know, what else could he have done? And I suggested to him, well, how's this for a response?
Gee, I wonder if I can hit the front row from here. That's a way of taking the thought and
joking with it, playing with it, and then moving on to the next thing rather than arguing or struggling with it.
One very useful technique a lot of chronic worriers that I work with use, I'll ask them
to do their worrying if they have another language, if they're bilingual in any way,
I'll ask them to do their worrying in the weaker language. And just that changes it enough that now they have to stop and think,
well, how do you say choke to death in German?
And it changes the whole context, the way they relate to the thought.
It doesn't change the content at all,
but it has big changes for how they relate to it.
It seems like, just from experiencing and watching this, that the more you worry, the more you worry, the more you worry, that it compounds on top of itself.
Yes, that's exactly right.
And the way it compounds, the mechanism is you worry and you try to stop.
And you worry some more and you tell yourself, that's silly, stop that.
And you worry more.
That's the method of compounding.
It's I worry and I oppose it.
And so the whole focus on helping a person worry less is on helping them let go of that resistance.
Not to struggle, but to play with the content of the worry.
Something I've, because I know people who are like real worriers, and I think if they
stop worrying, who would they be?
Because they, that's what they do.
That's kind of like, how would they fill up their day?
Because they spend so much of it worrying.
Yes, well, this is a real issue for people, you know, who may be working in therapy to become less of a
worrier. And it's true, that's become part of their identity. And they will have worries about,
gee, if I don't worry so much, what am I going to do? And you know what, one of the most interesting
things that will happen is as they start to worry less, and maybe they've had a theme that they
worry about, be it health or money or family, as they start to worry less about that, guess what's
going to happen? They're going to go through a phase where they worry about the fact that they're
not worrying. That's how integral the act of worry is. As they worry less, they're not worrying uh that that's how integral uh the act of worry is as they worry less
they're going to worry uh oh am i am i not taking life seriously enough now perhaps i should be
worrying more i'm not comfortable when i'm not worrying it seems like a never-ending cycle it
just feeds on itself well it's true it is a cycle. It does feed on itself. It's not that it's never
ending. When we talk about what could someone expect as they work on this, I always like to
talk about a recovery rather than a cure, that this is a habit you learn to inhibit rather than
a disease that you overcome and leave behind. It's much better
thought of as a habit. And some people are much, much more prone to it than others.
So the next time, let's say I'm worried about something, overly worrying, because I think
people who worry too much know they worry too much, but that doesn't help them stop it.
So if you're worrying about something,
if there is such a thing, kind of the first aid, is there a way to stop it in its tracks? Is there
a way to slow it down? Anything. One good first step in slowing it down is postponing. Now,
I don't want to have anybody tell themselves, stop worrying and oppose
it. That doesn't work. Something that often works a lot better. Well, I see I keep thinking about
problem XYZ. Let's see. How about I come back to this in half an hour? I'm going to set an
appointment. I'm going to actually set a little alarm on my phone. And half an hour from now, if I feel the need to worry about it, I'll do it then.
In the meantime, I'm going to go on about my business. Postponing is a powerful way that
people can influence this. There's a good chance that when the time comes that they set for the
appointment, it's no longer going to be first in their mind.
And they're going to be more likely to be able to say, I don't care about that.
I don't think I need to keep this appointment with worry now.
So that's a very good first step.
Let me postpone this.
If this is important, it'll be important in an hour and a half.
I'll come back to it then.
I've often wondered if people who worry,
that one of the rewards for being a worrier is that when you worry about something
and whatever you're worried about doesn't happen
or the resolution is somewhat different
than the horrible thing you've been thinking,
that that feels so good that it's
worth worrying about so that you feel good when it doesn't happen?
Well, there's some of that.
It feels good for it to stop.
And they also have, in all sincerity, a sense that somehow they played a role.
If I hadn't worried, maybe it wouldn't have turned
out so well. So they get the relief and they also feel like I've been the best person I could.
I worried and therefore my child is okay. I worried and therefore this project turned out
all right. It's not just that they get the relief. They also feel like I authored the better outcome.
Well, this has been really insightful because I think a lot of us have worried about things that we never needed to worry about.
And yet we went through that whole process, as you described, how our brain tricks us into thinking there's danger.
And then we expect the worst and we're ready for a fight.
And it's all so pointless. And yet it's so hard not to do.
I've been speaking with David Carbonell.
He is a clinical psychologist who specializes in the treatment of anxiety disorders, and he is author of a book called The Worry Trick,
How Your Brain Tricks You Into Expecting the Worst, and you will find a link to that book in the show notes.
I appreciate you coming on.
Thank you, David.
Oh, thanks for having me.
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Have you ever opened up Microsoft Word or whatever word processing thing you have
and look at all the possible fonts you can use and then wonder,
why? Who uses some of these strange-looking fonts?
Where did they come from? And maybe more importantly, do the type styles, the fonts that we use,
does it have an impact on the people reading what we write? Do you send a message by the font you
use? Well, the short answer is yes, And there is a lot of interesting research into this
that we're about to discuss with Sarah Hindman. She is a graphic designer who specializes in
exploring how fonts influence people. And she is author of a book called Why Fonts Matter.
Hi, Sarah. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
Is there research regarding, I assume there
probably is, about just the everyday use of, you know, in emails and memos and things about which
fonts do what and even type sizes. I know some people like to use little tiny type sizes and
I don't know if that's good or bad or like, or is it all just preference?
There is loads of research and especially as technology,
things like eye tracking technology and fMRI scanning,
neuroscience scanning gets more and more accessible.
We are understanding so much more firstly about how we read, how, how our eyesight changes over time.
So if you're a teenager, you can read that tiny, tiny little type.
But once you get past the age of about 35, your eyesight starts to change.
So when you go to, when you look at an email in teeny writing,
you're going to have to enlarge it.
Or for me, the classic is you go to a restaurant
and everybody's got their phones out with their torches on
because they can't quite read the menu because it's in teeny letters in a kind of quite dark lighting.
And there is lots of research to show that size matters, the space between the letters matter.
Some typefaces are much more readable than others, but a lot of the, it depends on who the audience is. There is no one right
typeface, one right font for everybody. Sometimes it needs to make an emotional connection. It needs
to be what you expect to see in that context. Other times, it needs to be incredibly readable
at a first glance. So there's research into typefaces on car dashboards where you need
to just really quickly be able to see the information and not have to think about it
for any length of time because you need to make a split second decision. So huge amounts of research
into this. Are there fonts that are basically considered easy to read for just about everybody?
If you want a font that would be standard on your email,
there is some research that was done in the last couple of years
by the team who was researching for a new BBC typeface.
And they worked out that of the ones on your email,
if you use Vedana and you make it a decent size,
then that's probably about the most readable choice
that you can make.
There is other research to show
that if you want to come across
as a little bit more intellectual
or talking about or knowledgeable,
that if you use a typeface like Georgia, because it has the
little feet, the little serifs, then we associate that with knowledge and history. So you've got,
both of them are quite easy to read, but they have a different emotional connections that they're
going to make with you. But the emotional connection is in the mind of the reader or
is in the mind of the sender? It's going to be interpreted by the mind of the reader.
So both of you have an idea, but it's like the clothes that you decide to wear.
I know what I want to communicate, but it's down to the people looking at me as to whether they think it's appropriate.
I don't know, for me to be wearing my pajamas down to my local shop.
Well, the two fonts you just mentioned, Verdana and Georgia,
aren't ones I think I see a lot.
I mean, I see Arial a lot, Times New Roman a lot,
and maybe it's just default, and maybe people pick a default.
That's exactly that.
Times New Roman was the default for a long time,
then Arial was the default for a long time.
So unless you really want to think about
fonts or you really want to um care about them a lot of the time you'll just use whatever's
there in front of you because it's all about just writing and communicating um and it's only once
you want to start once you once you start thinking about it then you will play with them a little bit
more but are those good choices i mean does the the research show that the you know ariel times new roman that just if if you
just want to send out a memo and get people to read it no problem times new roman would be better
if you switched it to georgia times was designed for the times newspaper and it was designed for
those very very narrow column widths of the newspaper, so it's quite condensed. And as soon as you're actually spreading it out all the way across a page,
it starts to become a little bit harder to read. And the same with Arial, it's not designed for
readability so much as the more modern typefaces like Verdana, which have been designed with
characters that make them look different from
each other so at a glance you can you can read them much more easily can you trace back the
origins of all these fonts or or do some of them they they're so old they there is no story or what
so printed type i mean the very first printed typefaces appeared in China and Korea centuries before they started to be used in Europe.
And the first printed typefaces in Europe were designed in Germany in the mid 1400s.
Lots of people were trying to invent mechanical handwriting because there was so much demand for written books.
And it was a man called Johannes Gutenberg who's generally credited with printing the first ones.
Although, as I said, lots of other people were trying to,
and he also had a team around him.
So he printed in what were really kind of Gothic typefaces.
If you think of a heavy metal record cover,
those kind of really spiky Gothic typefaces
you might see on that.
But at the time, this is what handwriting looked like.
So he just printed, he made metal printing type out of what looked like the handwriting of the day.
So in a way, this would have been the most readable. This was like the Times New Roman
or the Arial of the 1400s because it was so familiar. And then gradually as time has gone
on and different technologies and also different aesthetics have come along. So a few decades later,
that spiky typeface was just not fashionable anymore. So the new printers decided, oh, we want
a new, simpler typeface for a modern era. So we're going to be influenced by ancient Rome,
which we think is the height of civilization.
And then you come to the 1950s, when again, serifs, anything kind of historic has fallen
out of favor. So suddenly this new, very minimalist typeface called Helvetica and
lots of other styles like Helvetica were suddenly incredibly popular because they
mirrored the aesthetic of the moment so they develop through
both through technology but also it's what what society the tastes that we kind of
that we appreciate at any moment in time isn't that interesting that fonts go in and out of
style like like clothes is it is there any evidence that there's a difference in in terms of
the way a reader reads something if it's a serif or sans serif type if the letters have that the
little feet at the bottom or they there or they don't have little feet at the bottom
well on a very very basic level if a typeface has got serifs on it you will assume that what you're reading is
a little bit more intellectual a little bit more um more researched a bit more academic maybe
there was a really fun study where two groups of people were given exactly the same article
from the new york times one one group read it in a serif typeface the other one read it in a serif typeface. The other one read it in a sans serif typeface, so without the feed.
So in fact, I think it was New York, I think it was possibly Times New Roman versus Ariel.
And they were asked how satirical, so how witty they thought the article was, and the people who read it with serifs thought that the article was actually more satirical than those who read it without serifs.
So it creates a mood that can kind of influence or flavor how you read the article that you're reading.
What about type size?
When you're reading an article, as you pointed out, you know, sometimes when you read you read a menu you can't read it it's too dark and too small and but but also you know i don't want to read
articles where the type is really big either i mean is there a sweet spot for type size yes i
mean type size does matter in the teeny tiny type doesn't work for everybody unless of course you're
creating something for the teenage market and you don't want the grownups to read it.
And as it gets bigger, it yeah, absolutely.
It starts to shout. I mean, these days, because we look at things on our screens, you never quite know what size type is going to enlarge or shrink down to.
But there is a sweet spot which designers or you can see for yourself when you're looking at when you're looking at a screen and it also depends on whether you're looking at a computer
screen or your phone because you'll hold one much closer to your face than another so if you're
holding it closer you can have much smaller type so you take lots of things into consideration and
at the end of the day the type has to be tested in the circumstances that you're going to read it in. So
there's no point saying, oh, you should always use 12 point type because that's not going to
apply across everything. Well, that's an interesting point because how you send it may not be how it's
perceived by the other person because they may be looking at it on their phone. They may be looking
on it on a huge computer monitor.
You don't know how they're reading it.
So is there any kind of like default, no matter how they read it, this is probably going to work best?
Definitely don't go and use that fancy new font that you've just downloaded from somewhere.
Because if they don't have it on their machine, it's just going to default to Arial or to Times New Roman.
Don't shout at people. Uppercase letters, all caps, it just shouts. So I think that for me
would be one of the big things not to do. You know, when you get an email and it's all caps
in the subject and it's just stop shouting at me. Unless I guess they want to shout at you.
If you want somebody to read your email, maybe you don't really want to shout at you if you want somebody to read your email maybe you don't really probably not so if
i sent you if i sent you an email let's just say to confirm this interview and you responded what
would i be reading what i what what type face and what size would it come back at what do you use
mine would come back to you in Georgia,
because I know that you're going to have it on your system. And I want the serifs because I want
you to know that I'm a little bit of a nerdy kind of type. And it's going to be, I would imagine,
in 12 or 13 point, I set that as a default a long, long time ago, so I don't go and change it every time.
But if you've set your browser to default to something else, then it's going to translate
it and make it look, you might have set your, you might have set your email to only to convert
everything into bright magenta comic sans in 16 point. And I have no control over that.
Yeah. I can assure you I didn't.
It would have given me quite a comedic voice though.
In fact, I wouldn't even know how to do that.
So I wonder, you know, you hear rules like,
like if you're writing a resume or something,
you know, don't use a lot of different typefaces that,
and you know, what about all that?
What does the mind do when there's lots of bold or lots of
underlines and lots of different typefaces on a document i mean my sense is it's kind of cluttered
and hard to read but is there research on that there's a really a great study where they actually
measured how much people frowned when they looked at different types of designed pages.
And when there were too many fonts and too many different, some of them arranged left,
some of them were arranged to the right, and it was really hard to read, they found people frowned
much, much more. And when environments were much easier to read, so they had more space,
they had fewer fonts, and it was much easier to navigate so they had more space they had fewer fonts
and it was much easier to navigate around the page they found that people didn't frown
and in fact it made them feel happier and they were much more likely to then respond to the email
whether it was replying to it whether it was buying something so i really like the idea that
somebody actually sat there and measured frowns for this and I
completely agree if there's lots going on on the page it's like being in a really noisy nightclub
everybody's clamoring for your attention you don't really know which words to read because
all of them are shouting at you when I look at Microsoft Word and I look at all the fonts there
and you say that's just a tiny sliver of all the available fonts in the world
who created those i mean i don't mean by name but generally who are the people that create fonts and
do they make money because they're now part of microsoft word or like do they get royalties
from that sadly i don't think any type designers get royalties from putting their fonts on Microsoft Word.
They do. So there are lots of different places that as a designer, I would get fonts from.
There is a lot of your listeners might use Adobe products and Adobe fonts come built into their products.
And the type designers who design those fonts, they definitely get royalties.
So the big type foundries who will also basically lease you the fonts that you can use, it's a little bit like the record industry.
So they're like the record companies and the type designers are like the musicians and each of their fonts is like the record that they release.
So they're published by these big type foundries. And so it's a really
flourishing business, especially as technology is changing and lots of people that are becoming
much, much more aware of all of the different fonts. We're really enjoying using all of the
different ones that we have accessible to us. What are some other examples of how fonts
influence us? Because I just don't think people think about it you know
when we read words we think that what's important and i guess it is is what's being said but explain
some examples of how the fonts influence us as a reader there i think there would be some really
easy examples so if you took your cola of choice and you just saw even a sliver of each of the logos,
you would know from the style of the lettering, from the style of the font on the can,
which brand it was without even reading it, without even reading the word that it said.
And also movie posters, you know exactly what kind of movie you're about to go and see
just from the style of the font.
You know, if it's kind of a science fiction or if it's going to be a horror movie or romance movie, just from the letters that you read again before you've even read the title.
Or even if you do read the title, the letters, the meaning, the thing that they mean, the thing that you're reading, the ideas, they get beamed straight into your head.
So you go straight from looking at something to ideas and imagination or songs or flavors.
And actually how they got there is not something that you ever really need to think about.
I know you've done a lot of research yourself and work in this. Is there anything else that
people would find really surprising or interesting in terms of the way fonts influence us?
So I'm really interested in how different typefaces interact with our different senses.
And one of the very early pieces of
experiments I did was looking at how if I give you two identical jelly beans to eat and I get
you to look at either a curved typeface or a jagged typeface, how you will actually perceive
the jelly bean as tasting sweeter or sourer. And that's now been published as a study,
which I find really exciting because I'm a graphic designer, not a scientist.
So when the scientists take my work seriously, it's great.
But then I decided to get really clever and I thought, OK, we know if a product's expensive because you have a really expensive looking font on it.
You know kind of what an expensive looking font looks like. It's very skinny. It might have some very sort of hairline details on it, whereas a very cheap font looks kind
of almost like childish.
It's very round.
It looks a little bit more like it's been drawn with a child's marker pen paintbrush.
So I thought, OK, I bet I can make chocolate taste much, much more expensive. And I went along to an event and
I tried putting chocolate in either expensive or cheap typefaces. And then I asked people how it
tasted. And the first day it went brilliantly. I had expensive chocolate. People rated it as
tasting more expensive. They enjoyed it more. And then the second day, I ran out of chocolate because
it turns out your experiments are really popular if you give away free chocolate. So the second
day, I did the same thing again, but I took on some really cheap chocolate this time.
But at the end of the day, I tallied up the results again. And I was really a little bit
disappointed, surprised, because not only had it not worked, but actually the people
who'd eaten the cheap chocolate to the expensive typeface, the expensive font, rated it as tasting even cheaper and nastier.
And then when I went along and asked the scientists, what on earth had I done wrong?
They said, oh, it's because you tried to convince people that something expensive or something, sorry, that something cheap was expensive. And when the anticipation
and the actual experience didn't match, it amplified the cheapness of what you were trying
to give them. So I think the moral at the end of this is a typeface, a font can nudge your
perception a little bit. It can add a tiny little bit of sweet sprinkles to something,
but it can never convince you that something is what it's not. Well, this is such a great example of a topic, of a thing that
we all use all the time, either as a reader or a writer. Typefaces are influencing us and
influencing the people who are reading our stuff. And we know so little about it. Now we know a
little bit more. I've been talking
with Sarah Hindman. She's a graphic designer and author of the book, Why Fonts Matter. And there's
a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Sarah. This was really interesting. Thank you
very much. It was a pleasure talking to you. Have you ever found yourself craving your favorite song or favorite artist?
Well, it really is a craving.
In fact, music is, in essence, addictive.
Because listening to our favorite tunes or catchy new songs
triggers the brain to release dopamine.
And we all love our dopamine.
Have you ever listened to a song that literally gave you the chills?
That's your brain releasing large amounts of dopamine.
Kids who were hooked up to an MRI scanner provided some real evidence to the fact that music is addictive.
Scientists could actually predict a future hit song by reading the activity in the pleasure centers of the brain when the right chords were struck. The most addictive songs were those that had a predictable melody, a catchy chorus, and
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And that is something you should know.
I would love it if you would tell someone, or two people, or maybe three people, about
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I suspect they'd enjoy it as much as you do.
I'm Mike Kerr Brothers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.
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Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural.
It had a pretty good run. 15 seasons, 327 episodes.
And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times,
we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again.
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It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible.
The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him,
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