Something You Should Know - Why You Are Predisposed to Worry & How Fonts Influence Our Feelings - SYSK Choice

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Starting point is 00:01:45 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.

Starting point is 00:02:13 Times New Roman would be better if you switch 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 the page, it starts to become a little bit harder to read. All this today on Something You Should Know. Toronto, there's another great city that starts with a tea, Tampa, Florida. Fly to Tampa on Porter Airlines to see why it's so terrific.

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Starting point is 00:03:28 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.

Starting point is 00:03:51 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, live longer and enjoy a better quality of life than people who don't. And that is something you should know.

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Starting point is 00:05:19 You may have noticed, if you think back, that a lot of 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 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

Starting point is 00:06:05 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 breath, pulse picking up. They might have unpleasant emotions, feeling apprehensive on edge. They might have anxious behaviors, biting my nails, avoiding something that I dread.

Starting point is 00:06:50 and they can also experience anxiety in the form 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 collectively those thoughts, mostly not always, set up by the presence of the what-if clause, that 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?

Starting point is 00:07:33 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

Starting point is 00:08:26 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 go home. The thought is in my own mind. And 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

Starting point is 00:09:01 people see trouble where it just is just not there? Well, it's, 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 bat, predisposition, that anxiety disorders tend to run strongly in families.

Starting point is 00:09:50 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.

Starting point is 00:10:21 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 phobia. Those tend to be outgrown, you know, fear of the dark, fear of the lion in the closet and so on.

Starting point is 00:11:09 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,

Starting point is 00:11:56 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 have 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.

Starting point is 00:12:33 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.

Starting point is 00:12:56 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 warrior, 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.

Starting point is 00:13:28 The next time it happens, that person doesn't think back, well, the last time this happened, it was nothing, so this time it'll be nothing. That 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 warrior. And partly, that's because they tend to do things in response to the thoughts they have of out. 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,

Starting point is 00:14:12 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

Starting point is 00:14:56 they're worrying, and that motivates them to worry more. Yeah, see, 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.

Starting point is 00:15:26 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 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.

Starting point is 00:16:01 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,

Starting point is 00:16:30 how your brain tricks you into expecting the worst. Book club on Monday. Gym on Tuesday. Date night on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday. Quiet night in on Friday. It's good to have. a routine. And it's good for your eyes too. Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at

Starting point is 00:16:54 Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexavers.caver's to book your next eye exam. I exams provided by independent optometrists. Hey, it's Hillary Frank from the longest shortest time, an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. We talk about things like sex ed, birth control, pregnancy, bodily autonomy, and of course kids of all ages. But you don't have to be apparent to listen. If you like surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships and, you know, periods, the longest shortest time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or at longest shortest time.com. 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 soft landing

Starting point is 00:17:47 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 a 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 him 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.

Starting point is 00:18:40 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 response? gee I wonder if I can hit the front row from here that's a way of taking the thought and then 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

Starting point is 00:19:27 chronic warriors that I work with Hughes 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 week 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.

Starting point is 00:20:12 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 work. 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

Starting point is 00:20:52 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'll happen is

Starting point is 00:21:19 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.

Starting point is 00:21:41 That's how integral the act of worry is. As they worry less, they're going to worry. Uh-oh. 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.

Starting point is 00:22:00 Well, it's true. It is a cycle. It does feed on itself. It's not that it's never ending. You know, 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,

Starting point is 00:22:26 and some people are 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 they that doesn't help them stop it but so if if you're worrying about something what's the you know if there is such a thing kind of the first aid like how do you 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 them so stop worrying and oppose it. That doesn't work. Something that often works a lot better.

Starting point is 00:23:10 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,

Starting point is 00:23:48 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

Starting point is 00:24:39 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

Starting point is 00:25:27 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. This episode is brought to you by Square. You're not just running a restaurant. You're building something big, and Square's there for all of it, giving your customers, more ways to order, whether that's in-person with Square Ciosk or online. Instant access to your sales, plus the funding you need to go even bigger. And real-time insights so you know what's working, what's not, and what's next.

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Starting point is 00:26:45 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?

Starting point is 00:27:10 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 a, exploring how fonts influence people. And she is author of a book called Why Fants 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,

Starting point is 00:27:41 in emails and memos and things about which fonts do what and 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 in 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

Starting point is 00:28:35 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 time 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

Starting point is 00:29:26 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 Vodana 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 typeface like Georgia, because it has the little feet, the little serifs, then we associate that

Starting point is 00:30:21 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 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 see Ariel a lot, Times New Roman a lot, and maybe it's just default and maybe people pick a

Starting point is 00:31:09 Exactly, exactly that Times New Roman was the deport for a long time, then Ariel was the default for a long time. So unless you really want to think about bonds or you really want to 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. And it's only once you want to start, 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 research show that, you know, Ariel Times New Roman, 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.

Starting point is 00:31:57 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 Ariel. It's not designed for readability so much as the more modern typefaces like Vodana, which have been designed with characters that make them look different from each other. So at a glance, you can read them much more easily. Can you trace back the origins of all these fonts? Or do some of them, they're so old, 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.

Starting point is 00:32:42 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 handswerexed.

Starting point is 00:33:24 handwriting of the day. So in a way, this would have been the most readable. This was like the Times New Roman or the Ariel 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.

Starting point is 00:34:05 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 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 clothes? Is there any evidence that there's a difference in terms of the way a reader read something if it's a seraph or sans seraph type, if the letters have the little feet at the bottom or they don't have little feet at the bottom?

Starting point is 00:34:49 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 research, 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 group read it in a serif typeface, the other one read it in a sans serif typeface, so without the feet. 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 and 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.

Starting point is 00:35:51 What about type size when you're reading an article? As you pointed out, you know, sometimes when you read a menu, you can't read it. It's too dark and too small. 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.

Starting point is 00:36:19 And as it gets bigger, 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 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

Starting point is 00:36:52 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 on 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 Ariel or

Starting point is 00:37:35 Times New Roman. Don't shout at people. Upper case 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 first. Probably not. So if I sent you, if I sent you an email, just say to confirm this interview and you responded, what would I be reading?

Starting point is 00:38:09 What typeface 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

Starting point is 00:38:50 magenta comic sands 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 and 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 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 type faces on a document? I mean, my sense is it's kind of cluttered and hard to read, but is there research on that?

Starting point is 00:39:29 Oh, there's a really 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 the more arranged light to the right and it was really hard to read, they found people frowned much, much more. And when typeface environments were much easier to read, 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.

Starting point is 00:40:12 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?

Starting point is 00:40:52 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 build. 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

Starting point is 00:41:33 release. So they're published by these big type foundries. And 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 font. influence us as a reader.

Starting point is 00:42:12 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 a 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 actually tell you what it's going to be. But exactly, as you say, we don't think about that, because when we read, rather than looking at the shapes of the letters, the meaning, the thing that they mean,

Starting point is 00:43:01 the thing that you're reading, the ideas, they get beams straight into your head. And 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 curb typeface or a jagged typeface, how you will actually perceive the jelly bean as tasting sweeter or sourer.

Starting point is 00:43:52 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 okay 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 for 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, okay, I bet I can make chocolate taste much, much more expensive.

Starting point is 00:44:36 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 experience are really popular if you give away free chocolate. So the second day, I did the same thing again, but I took along some really cheap chocolate

Starting point is 00:45:06 this time. But at the end of the day, I tallied up 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 fault 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.

Starting point is 00:45:44 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, and 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.

Starting point is 00:46:24 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.

Starting point is 00:46:53 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 left kids craving more and wanting to hear it again. And that is something you should know. I would love it if you would tell someone or two people or maybe three people about this podcast and ask them to give a listen,

Starting point is 00:47:34 I suspect they'd enjoy it as much as you do. I'm Mike Her Brothers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. Hey, it's Hillary Frank from the longest, shortest time, an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. There is so much going on right now in the world of reproductive health, and we're covering it all. Birth control, pregnancy, gender, bodily autonomy, menopause, consent, sperm, so many stories about sperm, and of course the joys and absurdities of raising kids of all ages. If you're new to the show, check out an episode called The Staircase. It's a personal story of mine about trying to get my kids school to teach sex ed. Spoiler, I get it to happen, but not at all in the way that I wanted. We also talk to plenty of non-parents,

Starting point is 00:48:22 so you don't have to be a parent to listen. If you like surprising, funny, poignant, stories about human relationships and, you know, periods, the longest shortest time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or at longest shortest time.com. You might think you know fairy tales, and you might think that they are cute and sweet and boring, but the real grim fairy tales were not cute at all. They were very dark, and they were often very grim. On grim, grimmer, grimist. We tell a grim fairy tales. We tell a grim fairy tales. We're not cute at all. They were very dark, and they were often very grim. On Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmist, we tell a grim fairy tale to a bunch of kids. Perfect for car rides or screen-free entertainment. Grim, Grim, Grimmer, Grimmist activates kids'

Starting point is 00:49:05 imaginations and instigates fun conversations, because fairy tales speak to all of us at a very deep, primal level, and they raise interesting topics and questions that are worth chewing over together as a family. Every episode is rated grim, grimmer, or grimist, so you, your kids, your whole family can choose what is the right level of grim for you. Though, if you're listening with Grandma, she's just going to go for Grimmist. Trust me on this one. Tune in to Grim, Grimmer, Grimmist, and our new season, available now.

Something You Should Know - Why You Are Predisposed to Worry & How Fonts Influence Our Feelings - SYSK Choice

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