Gloria Mark (on attention spans)

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair, expert, experts on expert.

[1] I'm Dak Shepard.

[2] I'm joined by Monica Mouse.

[3] Hi.

[4] Hello.

[5] We have a very fun expert on today.

[6] Gloria Mark, she is the chancellor professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine.

[7] She received her Ph .D. from Columbia University in psychology and has been a visiting senior researcher at Microsoft Research since 2012.

[8] She has a new book that we talk about in -depth, called Attention Span out January 10th.

[9] pre -order it for a loved one for the holiday season attention span finding focus and fighting distraction this is a really great topic and all of us no matter who you are are deciding minute by minute what you will give your focus and attention to while you've been talking i've been looking at that green thing on the floor the carpet is fucking destroyed i've been distracted i was distracted during the fact check there's every kind of food dirt hair I'm surprised there's no band -aids on this carpet That's like the last thing it needs Yeah the green thing was shimmering And I thought oh, it's like a unicorn poo -poo And then I looked closer and it was a salad It was a salad lettuce Yeah It got loose while you're eating your goop salad This episode's brought to you by Goop No don't do that because We hope we wish Do they advertise?

[10] They don't need to They got her at the Queen Bee Anywho please enjoy Gloria Mark.

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[13] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[14] He's an armchair expert.

[15] Writer left.

[16] That doesn't matter.

[17] I would probably leave the cable on this side of you saying I can tangle them.

[18] You don't want to spend your vital mental resources fighting with that cable.

[19] Right?

[20] That's a U -Tile.

[21] That's an ounce of the gasoline out of the fuel tank.

[22] The new update has text at the bottom of the screen, which I find interesting.

[23] I did not opt to do the update.

[24] Oh.

[25] You did.

[26] Or maybe mine auto did.

[27] It auto does.

[28] It auto did.

[29] Yeah.

[30] Gloria, are you an iPhone or an Android?

[31] Oh, I already know this.

[32] Oh, iPhone.

[33] Oh, okay, wonderful.

[34] Yeah.

[35] Because you're in the rack with Microsoft in some capacity.

[36] I could see where you feel encouraged to use that Android system.

[37] When I used to work there in the summer, I was like the only person that had a Mac.

[38] So not only do I use an iPhone, but not.

[39] I like that defiant.

[40] You have to.

[41] You have an art background.

[42] I do.

[43] The Macintosh is the artist's machine, right?

[44] It is.

[45] Are you from Ohio?

[46] I am.

[47] You are whereabouts?

[48] Cleveland -ee?

[49] Cleveland -ee.

[50] Parma.

[51] Okay.

[52] So that's the Southwest.

[53] Is that close?

[54] To what, Cedar Point?

[55] Yeah.

[56] Of course, it's what, we are an hour and a half from Cedar Point?

[57] Yeah.

[58] I remember as a kid going to Cedar Point.

[59] Back when they probably only had the blue streak in the Gemini.

[60] Yeah.

[61] And none of the now record -shattering offerings.

[62] Coasters?

[63] When's the last time you've ridden a roller coaster?

[64] Oh, my God.

[65] I hate roller coasters.

[66] I am definitely afraid of roller coasters.

[67] Always or recent?

[68] I have been on them a few times, and that just confirmed how afraid I am.

[69] Okay.

[70] Yeah.

[71] It's a heights issue or it's a very important.

[72] Vertigo.

[73] It's an equilibrium.

[74] I'm very afraid of heights.

[75] And also it's this feeling of being out of control.

[76] And you're just barreling down.

[77] There's no breaks.

[78] Yes.

[79] Yes.

[80] Did you see there's going to be a new coaster?

[81] That comes off the tracks?

[82] Yes.

[83] Yes.

[84] Is that real?

[85] Is that like an onion article?

[86] I can't tell.

[87] Have you seen this, Gloria?

[88] I would be so freaked out.

[89] Right?

[90] Just thinking about it.

[91] Yeah.

[92] Imagine a loop -de -loop and then just imagine the top third of that loop is missing and apparently it's going to leap from one track to another but one has to imagine like a strong gust of wind would throw it off its trajectory pretty easily I might ride it I'm over roller coasters but now that there's a real threat control that's a lovely place to start is it the same for a painter so I was I think very drawn to writing because I'm in charge of every single thing that happens in the world people will act how I want them to act I can predict it all is painting similar of course you have control of the painting because you're the creator.

[93] The only way I can imagine a person would not have control is if they listen to the critics.

[94] And then they change their direction because they don't feel the critics are appreciating it.

[95] I think a lot of artists don't seek control.

[96] They seek chaos in the abyss and discovery.

[97] But that's still control.

[98] If you're seeking chaos, you're still in control the chaos.

[99] Oh, true.

[100] You're right.

[101] is a little different than chaos you're the victim of.

[102] You're right, yeah.

[103] It's actually a cool place to explore.

[104] It's almost like BDSM.

[105] A safe place to explore.

[106] Scary stuff.

[107] Scary, chaotic.

[108] As his writing, we interviewed Chuck Palinuck.

[109] He wrote Fight Club, very anarchistic type of spirit in his writing.

[110] A hundred percent opposite human being when you meet him.

[111] This guy wrote all these crazy.

[112] He gets to be this wild version of himself.

[113] He would never be in real life.

[114] That's almost the appeal of it.

[115] Yeah.

[116] Artists can collaborate with each other.

[117] When you collaborate with another person, you give up some kind of control.

[118] That's true.

[119] I point to her.

[120] You're giving it up.

[121] Yeah, we give it up to each other.

[122] It's a compromise.

[123] That's right.

[124] And we're both controlling.

[125] Big time.

[126] Yeah, big time.

[127] Who do you think's more?

[128] Oh, wow.

[129] Well, you've heard the show.

[130] I guess you'd be better soon.

[131] Yeah, why don't we rope you into saying who's more controlling?

[132] I take the fifth.

[133] Yeah, that's wise.

[134] Okay, so you get a BA in Fine Arts.

[135] BFA.

[136] Where's the school?

[137] It's in Ohio, that's why I asked.

[138] Cleveland Institute of Art. I got to mention just for shits and giggles.

[139] Kristen's entire family's from Cleveland.

[140] Oh, really?

[141] Yes.

[142] I don't know if you've run into some bells, there's trillions of them.

[143] And then I did a movie in Mentor, Ohio one time, and I was very charmed by the experience.

[144] And I think there's a very, very similar vibe in Cleveland to the Detroit suburbs as well.

[145] kind of similar stock yeah people in ohio are so nice so whenever i go back i'm just kind of amazed at how nice people are they want to help you we're not used to it i mean i've lived in new york for a long time i've lived in california yeah i've lived in germany i'm not used to people being so nice but that's what i grew up with yeah germany's a huge fascination of mine mine too tell me what part of Germany did you live in?

[146] So I met my husband in the States, and then we moved to Germany.

[147] He's Austrian, but he got a really good job, a professorship, which is really hard to get in Germany.

[148] So we first moved to Constance, and my kids were born there, and then we moved to Bonn.

[149] I have two daughters.

[150] Okay, that's the perfect amount.

[151] Oh, same, same.

[152] That's perfect.

[153] Yeah.

[154] Congrats.

[155] Thank you.

[156] Congrats to you.

[157] And then we moved to Bonn where I, took a job at the German National Research Center for Information Technology.

[158] My husband also got a job there.

[159] And then about five years after we came back to the U .S., we went back to Berlin on a sabbatical.

[160] Okay.

[161] Very different than the rest of Germany.

[162] Right.

[163] Very bohemian, very messy, unscheduled.

[164] Berlin is electric.

[165] It's the Paris of Germany.

[166] It is.

[167] And there's It's conventionally legalized prostitution, a decriminalized drug use.

[168] It's very out there.

[169] It's like a reaction to the rest of Germany being so...

[170] It might be.

[171] There's a self -selection process.

[172] So Germans who really are uncomfortable being in the rest of Germany, they head to Berlin.

[173] San Francisco as well.

[174] We could call it the San Francisco.

[175] Okay, so I obsess on this.

[176] And we've had a lot of different professors on that actually study either in the workplace, different cultural norms between countries and there's all these different great little metrics they use to assess people's national personality type here's my experience of germany i go there i'm blown away everything works these buildings are 300 years old and they're cleaner than my house that was built last year you're in awe of it and everything works perfectly it's a trade off and i'm not talking about berlin but other parts of dormity yes it's clean things work you can predict when a train is going to come.

[177] Talk about control freaks.

[178] That's where we started.

[179] But there is a lot to be learned about bedside manner and friendliness.

[180] And I shouldn't generalize.

[181] I have so many good friends.

[182] And Berlin is very, very different.

[183] But I've had my share of people who did not have good bedside manners.

[184] Yes, very direct.

[185] Weirdly has given me gratitude for the U .S. I'm very critical often of where we live.

[186] It's, I think, our duty as citizens.

[187] But it seems seems to be a spectrum.

[188] I don't know how you get the incredibly well -run, super clean aspect of the human nature and the zesty, vibrant, passionate side to coexist.

[189] I've weirdly come to believe that we're some kind of a nice mix of those two things.

[190] I think so.

[191] Germany has all these implicit norms and you have to live there your whole life or a very long time or your parents have to be Germans who learn.

[192] the norms from your parents.

[193] But when I first came to Germany, you know, I was this foreigner and I didn't know any of these norms.

[194] I'll tell you a story.

[195] You know, first time I went to a supermarket, I had no idea that customers are supposed to bag the stuff themselves.

[196] Oh, sure.

[197] And so I had this long list of items, and it took me a really long time to find them because I didn't read the language.

[198] And I had to really figure it.

[199] out.

[200] I get onto the supermarket line and I unload all my things and I'm just sitting there as the cashier is ringing things up.

[201] Oh no. And you're supposed to really quickly put things in a bag and the cashier just started throwing it on the floor.

[202] No. Oh, good for them.

[203] On the floor?

[204] That's so rude.

[205] And I didn't speak any German and the people in the supermarket did not speak any English.

[206] And I start screaming what are you doing why are you throwing this on the floor and nobody pointed out to me that you're supposed to bag your own groceries from their point of view they're like look at this entitled human being yeah what are you staring at me for put your shit in the bag let's get moving here we've got a pace to adhere to so I bagged my own groceries now when I go shopping they infected you yeah okay so rewind you graduate from art school and you quickly realize you're not going to be making any kind of a living pursuing art and now you start i'd imagine a pretty crazy process where you're like now what am i doing by the way this is the same outcome for an anthropology major what does one do with that exactly i say my backup plan was the only thing that was harder to get than a job in anthropology which was be on tv all right so you're kind of surveying the world in how on earth do you land in psychology at U of M of all places.

[207] I did a lot of soul searching.

[208] I just didn't have a clue.

[209] What could you do with an art degree?

[210] You can't go to medical school.

[211] You have to go get a whole new bachelor's degree.

[212] And I didn't want to do that.

[213] I took a couple of classes, testing things out.

[214] But, you know, I was always good in math and science.

[215] And I realized that I can make a living doing something related to this.

[216] So I looked around and I thought, okay, I will just get a master's degree in something related to math or science, that's going to enable me to get a job.

[217] Maybe I'll do art on the side.

[218] I found this graduate program at Michigan.

[219] Fortunately, they didn't care about your bachelor's degree.

[220] So I got in.

[221] And then when I was there, I applied for a job because I had to work.

[222] I applied for research assistantship with a professor named Manfred Coaching.

[223] What a name, Manfred.

[224] That's wonderful.

[225] Yeah, you don't meet a lot of Manfred.

[226] Yeah, he was from Austria.

[227] Oh, my gosh, is this your husband?

[228] No, no, no. I thought that would be juicy.

[229] This was exciting.

[230] This was a twist.

[231] That came later.

[232] That came a long time.

[233] A lot of Australians in your life, though.

[234] Yeah, the universe was throwing Austrians in your lap.

[235] Total coincidence.

[236] So I go and apply for this job and Manford coach.

[237] And he started asking me, do you know Fuzzy Set theory?

[238] No. Can you do queuing theory?

[239] No. Can you do coding?

[240] No. So I just picked up my.

[241] backpack and started to walk out.

[242] And he said, wait a minute.

[243] What can you do?

[244] Still lives.

[245] I can paint.

[246] Yeah.

[247] And he said, before he went to MIT to get a PhD in math, he studied at the Art Students League in New York.

[248] And so then we had this wonderful conversation for a couple of hours about art. And then at the end, he said, I have this grant to study the discovery process.

[249] Do you think you could study that about artists.

[250] And I said, oh, sure I could.

[251] Discovery is a very broad term.

[252] What specifically do you mean?

[253] How cognitively you would make a discovery, how you would really come up with some new idea, some new concept.

[254] I got you.

[255] And of course, I knew intuitively how artists did it.

[256] I just didn't know how to write this in a language that could be academic.

[257] Cochin said, okay, I'm going to take a chance on you.

[258] So I read every article I could find that was related to this idea in cognitive psychology.

[259] And I just began to love psychology.

[260] Really quick, because your master's there is in biostatistics.

[261] Yes.

[262] So what is that looking at?

[263] Is it literal as fuck?

[264] Bio statistics?

[265] Is it accumulating data?

[266] It's a very applied field.

[267] And it's analyzing data, people who work for the CDC or the EPA, would be using biostatistics.

[268] Is it safe to say there's no overlap from what Manfred has just deployed you on and the biostatistics, or is there some overlap?

[269] There is a very loose overlap.

[270] Okay, a sliver on the Venn diagram.

[271] Very much as a sliver.

[272] Just maybe the edges touching.

[273] Yeah.

[274] In this degree program, I could take electives.

[275] And so I took my electives in psychology courses.

[276] Okay, so psychology just really blows your dress up.

[277] You just love it.

[278] Would you say even that at some point, you're like, oh my God, I like this as much as I ever liked painting.

[279] It's really interesting because coming from an art background into science, I took a lot of the mental processes that I used in art and applied it to science.

[280] You know, after I got into science, I realized it was the best training I could have had.

[281] Because when you're in art, you do lateral thinking, where you take two seemingly really different ideas and you find some way to connect them, and that creates a new idea.

[282] Oh, great.

[283] So I was going to ask you, you said you knew intuitively what the creative process was.

[284] Discovery was for an artist, and I was meaning to ask, what is it?

[285] So that's it.

[286] Does that artist to artist, or that's for you personally, or just in general, that's pretty common?

[287] So I would say in general, it's common.

[288] Yeah.

[289] And actually, when I worked for a coach, and I went a little bit further, and I wrote about how artists create a kind of structure for whatever it is they're creating, even if it's abstract, and then you break out of that structure.

[290] And so the creative process is kind of this back and forth process of creating this structure and breaking out of the structure until you feel happy with what you produced.

[291] But when I made the move from art to science, I took that lateral thinking process with me, being able to think of crazy ideas and thinking out of the box.

[292] And then I realized that people who are trained in science for the most part, it's a kind of linear logical reasoning.

[293] And people aren't always trained to think of some really different idea and figure out how you might make a connection.

[294] How does it work in visual art?

[295] I'm not artistic at all visually, so it's hard for me to imagine this.

[296] I did abstract expressionism.

[297] And it's harder for me to explain it because it's really very abstract.

[298] But maybe a better example would be Marcel Duchamp's creation where he stuck this bicycle wheel in a stool.

[299] Do you know that?

[300] I don't.

[301] Dada is, you know, would take two very different objects and place them in juxtaposition.

[302] There's this famous art piece and I don't know who the artist is.

[303] It's a cup made out of fur.

[304] It's lined with fur, right?

[305] So, of course, you're not going to want to pour hot coffee into the fur.

[306] Yeah.

[307] That gives me an emotion, like disgust.

[308] Yeah, I don't like that.

[309] Yeah, the notion of drinking from a furry cup is really as bad as it gets.

[310] I was at the Guggenheim in Spain, and there's the flower puppy.

[311] It's a coons.

[312] Oh, Coons, yeah.

[313] Yeah, the huge dog.

[314] It's a big blow up.

[315] It's made of flowers.

[316] But does it look like balloon art?

[317] It's not one of those?

[318] No. It's just this enormous, as tall as the house, dog, but made of flowers.

[319] Oh, real flowers or fake flowers?

[320] I think real.

[321] I don't know.

[322] So there's only, there's a season you can see this bizarre.

[323] They'd have to spray.

[324] They're straying it.

[325] But I guess that's two different things coming together.

[326] Well, I think a really cool physical example you can see of this.

[327] If you ever find yourself in Barcelona, there's a great Picasso museum.

[328] And prior to me being at this museum, I was like, I don't think I buy it, this whole Picasso thing being the greatest genius of all time.

[329] I'm thinking, you know, a kid could draw that coming from that Philistine point of view.

[330] There is one room dedicated to, I guess it's about nine paintings.

[331] And it starts with this kind of very famous Middle Ages portrait of a castle.

[332] There's a couch, there's furniture, there's a dog, there's all these objects in the room.

[333] And he first starts by making a perfect.

[334] copy of it.

[335] And right there I was like, oh, I guess I didn't realize he could do that.

[336] It's a Xerox copy of the first painting.

[337] Then the next one is a step further in his cubism.

[338] And then you follow these paintings around the room until you get to what we would know as a Picasso.

[339] And now when you're looking at it, you're like, oh, it's all there.

[340] Because I got to see it go slowly.

[341] And then I was like, oh, this is the greatest artist that ever live.

[342] I was totally sold on it.

[343] Yeah.

[344] And he was the first to do cubism along with George Brock.

[345] And who would of thought of it at the time.

[346] Art was very, very different and he comes along and he just revolutionizes it.

[347] Which, by the way, I knew what Cubism looked like, but I didn't even realize until maybe eight months ago.

[348] I actually read what it really is.

[349] So, and correct me, you would know, but artists use a point in their painting to do perspective, right?

[350] We've all done that in an art class.

[351] You draw a little dot and then everything's got to be extending towards that dot.

[352] He enters a second dot or a third dot.

[353] What cubism is is multiple dimensions.

[354] Oh, interesting.

[355] Yeah, I didn't know that.

[356] And it's more than that.

[357] It's also portraying some object over time.

[358] Oh, interesting.

[359] If you're moving around an object, you're seeing it from different perspectives and you're seeing it over time.

[360] Oh, wow.

[361] Well, that's a very Einsteinian.

[362] Very space time.

[363] Yeah, very space time.

[364] We were kind of obsessed with space time lately.

[365] We're about six years from actually understanding it, but we feel like we're on the path.

[366] Okay, so you teach informatics at UC Irvine, which informatics, what a tasty word, what is informatics?

[367] Our department has been doing a lot of self -searching about why did we choose that name?

[368] We chose it because it made sense at the time, and the idea is to convey the intersection of studying technology and people.

[369] Okay.

[370] That was the intent.

[371] We didn't realize that people outside of our department would have a hard time picking that up.

[372] Yeah.

[373] And understanding it.

[374] But it is a good description of what our academic department is about.

[375] Right.

[376] And so your book, Attention Span, Finding Focus and Fighting, and Fighting Distraction, It's all about how we are interacting with our modern technology and how we're splitting up our attention, our most vital resource.

[377] why we split it the way we do, what are some myths.

[378] So it's a very juicy book.

[379] I can't imagine there's a human being listening that doesn't interact and isn't currently interacting with a device.

[380] Ooh, I'm going to earmark the fact that I believe we're the anecdote to all this, but I'll save that towards the antidote.

[381] Yeah, when I say anecdote, I did the attic thing.

[382] Just change.

[383] I think we're the antidote.

[384] Ooh, ding, ding, ding.

[385] Okay, so let's first talk about, some of the myths surrounding our relationship with technology and how we pay attention and what that means to pay attention.

[386] Let me start with William James.

[387] William James is known as the father of psychology.

[388] Not Freud?

[389] Freud started a whole different flavor of psychology, right?

[390] He's the Mick Jagger.

[391] He's maybe the Mick Jagger.

[392] But William James would be who started rock and roll.

[393] It has to be given to Chuck Barry.

[394] Elvis ripped off Chuck Barry.

[395] He would be maybe the Chuck Berry of attention.

[396] Boom, love it.

[397] Analogies, ding, ding, ding.

[398] Yeah, I mean, psychology, it's a very young science.

[399] It's not like chemistry or physics or biology.

[400] And so William James had a very philosophical approach to psychology.

[401] So William James says everybody knows what attention is.

[402] It's the taking possession of the mind.

[403] That's intuitive.

[404] Of course, we all know what attention is.

[405] When our mind is filled with something, we're paying attention to it.

[406] But it turns out that there are other kinds of attention, other than attention that's where we have a willful intent to focus on something.

[407] Yeah, you say conventionally, attention's goal -oriented.

[408] You want to make this piece of toast.

[409] You need to pay attention to the getting the bread out, the butter out the toaster, blah, Right.

[410] But there's also attention that's automatic.

[411] So when you hear a chime on your phone, right, a new text is coming in, you jump to it and you grab your phone.

[412] That's automatic attention.

[413] Because you've been doing that so much.

[414] It's not even under your willful control.

[415] Yeah.

[416] Driving.

[417] Would we say driving?

[418] Driving is automatic.

[419] Okay.

[420] Until somebody swerves in front of you or honks their horn.

[421] Then all of a sudden, you switch your attention.

[422] That's why we can talk and drive at the same time because driving is so automatic.

[423] Yeah.

[424] Yeah, it's all happening in the background.

[425] Yeah.

[426] Yeah, so no one has the goal, to my knowledge.

[427] I want to pick my phone up every 12 minutes.

[428] Nobody that I know.

[429] It has that goal.

[430] Yet we all pick our phone up every six minutes or whatever.

[431] Even if you have the opposite goal you're doing.

[432] It's so strange.

[433] Okay, so your attention, I guess that's the essence of mindfulness, is really like, hey, notice that your attention is your most valuable thing and you're in charge of it and you need a game plan.

[434] If you just wait to find out what grabs your attention, inevitably at the end of the day, it probably won't be the things that you were hoping would have grabbed your attention.

[435] I would say that's right.

[436] So first, I think it's important to get into how much debunking you've done of multitasking.

[437] You know what's really funny is I bet I've been referencing you for the last five years and not even knowing until I was researching you that I'm referencing you.

[438] Because it became pretty headlining a few years back that no one multitasks.

[439] Tell us about multitasking.

[440] Tell us the fallacy of multitasking.

[441] And what really happens when one multitask.

[442] Right.

[443] People think that when they multitask, they can do more.

[444] I'm going to be this superhero and multitask.

[445] But you're actually doing less.

[446] First of all, what is multitasking?

[447] it's not literally doing two things at the same time unless one of those things you're doing uses automatic attention like driving and trinkum or driving and talking as long as one of those things is automatic but if there's two different activities and they involve controlled processing controlled attention you can't do them at the same time what you're really doing is you're switching your attention very rapidly back and forth maybe you can do it rapidly but you have to acknowledge there's a buffer between the switching, the little gap between switching.

[448] It's bigger than that.

[449] It's exponential.

[450] It's not just that you pick up where you resume.

[451] There's like a reboot time.

[452] Yeah, there's a disruption cost.

[453] The way to think about it is that if you're working on something, you have this internal representation.

[454] So let's say I'm writing.

[455] I have this internal representation of this thing I'm writing.

[456] I'm thinking of the information, thinking of the topic.

[457] I'm thinking of the words I'm trying to use.

[458] and then suddenly I shift and I check my email.

[459] And it's like we have this inner whiteboard and you're erasing that whiteboard.

[460] You're erasing what you were thinking of.

[461] And then you rewrite and you rewrite this new representation.

[462] So in my case, it would be email.

[463] Let's say I shift to checking the news.

[464] So then I'm erasing the whiteboard and I'm writing some internal representation of the news.

[465] Yeah, by the time you return to the thing you were writing, even if you hung on to the info, you still be like, Wait, how was I laying, right?

[466] It's back to page one.

[467] That's right.

[468] You have to reorient to where you were.

[469] You have to try to reconstruct that internal representation.

[470] And the time that it takes to do all of that, that's a disruption cost.

[471] You write in the book, there is a switch cost.

[472] The time loss, because whenever you switch your attention, you need to reorient to the new task at hand.

[473] The cost would not be so high if you immediately picked up an interrupted project.

[474] But unfortunately, our data show that we don't.

[475] Rather, we switch our attention to at least two other projects with over a 25 -minute lag before we return to the interrupted task.

[476] Oh, God.

[477] Yeah.

[478] 25 minutes.

[479] 25 and a half minutes.

[480] Oh, and a half.

[481] Wow.

[482] So let me explain what that's like.

[483] So first of all, when we're talking about shifting attention, you can be thinking about shifting at a really low level, like shifting from typing to doing email to talking in the phone.

[484] But you might say, maybe it's not so bad if it's all within the same project, right?

[485] Sure.

[486] So I imagine if you're prepping for a guest, let's say, you're maybe reading the book of the guest.

[487] You might be talking on the phone with Monica.

[488] You guys are talking with each other.

[489] It's all the same project.

[490] So maybe it doesn't matter that you're switching these low -level activities.

[491] If we think more broadly and think about switching projects, in your case it would be switching from prepping one guest to prepping another guest.

[492] It happened this morning.

[493] So I'm researching you, I get a text.

[494] We can't release the photos of another guest that's time to promote.

[495] Like, this is the real -life example that happened to me this morning.

[496] Oh, my God.

[497] It's like, what are we going to do now in place of not having a foot, right?

[498] We're talking about armchair expert, but no. And then I returned to your research, and I got a backtrack.

[499] You have to figure out where was I?

[500] Yeah, where was I?

[501] What was I?

[502] That's the 25 minute.

[503] This is the general pattern.

[504] So when you're interrupted from a project, it's 25 and a half minutes on average before you resume work on that interrupted project.

[505] Now, you're not daydreaming.

[506] You're not looking out the window for 25 and a half minutes, although you might be, but generally you're not, generally you're keeping busy and then you switch and you start working on another project.

[507] And then you switch again, work on another project, switch again.

[508] We're talking about on average.

[509] You start to work on another project and then you go back to the first one.

[510] Yeah, I want to say that I saw you lay it out like there's an A project, a B project, a C project.

[511] And then a D project.

[512] Generally, you're like four would be maybe the average before you cycle back to that A project.

[513] So you can think of it as interruptions are nested.

[514] You're getting interrupted and then you're getting interrupted from that and interrupted from that.

[515] So it's no wonder that people are getting exhausted.

[516] It's no wonder they have a disruption cost because there's a lot of information to keep track of.

[517] Yeah, you say yet another cost of multitasking is that it is associated with negative emotions, anxiety, stress, and burnout.

[518] Email, one of the main culprits for distraction, is especially associated with stress.

[519] And you've done experiments where you had workplaces get rid of email.

[520] Yes.

[521] And what happened?

[522] Email is so pernicious.

[523] Is that the real word?

[524] email, but how would we survive?

[525] I know.

[526] I have a solution for it, but I've pitched it to you.

[527] You didn't like it.

[528] I was determined to see if we could create an environment where people could be better focused and less stress.

[529] And I thought the way to do it is let's cut off email for a while.

[530] And this enables us to look at causality.

[531] You have a condition, you change something, and then if you see some kind of difference, you know it's because that thing you changed, caused it.

[532] So I was looking for six years to find an organization willing to let me cut off email.

[533] Fuck up their whole business for a week.

[534] At least just some people.

[535] Yeah.

[536] And things just kept falling through.

[537] And I was pretty upset.

[538] So finally, I get invited to do a talk at this one organization.

[539] And when I was there, I thought, ah, this would be a good place to make a pitch.

[540] Yeah.

[541] They already believe in you.

[542] They invited you.

[543] Yeah.

[544] And they were complaining.

[545] about email.

[546] And they kept saying, oh my gosh, email is the worst thing.

[547] It's hurting our productivity.

[548] I thought, perfect.

[549] So it turns out that the executive committee was meeting the next day.

[550] And they agreed to let me make a pitch.

[551] I stand in from this long conference table with heads of all the departments along the side.

[552] And the director of the organization was at the other end.

[553] And it was this person who was an ex -military officer.

[554] I was just going to say, let me guess.

[555] He's a white male.

[556] It was a woman.

[557] Oh, yay.

[558] I'm glad to be there.

[559] And she had a really commanding presence.

[560] And so I start to give the pitch.

[561] The ex -military officer starts shaking her head.

[562] No. And all the heads along the side just starts shaking their heads.

[563] So that's a halo effect.

[564] Yeah.

[565] I was so desperate.

[566] You know, I had tried for six years.

[567] So I did a Hail Mary pass.

[568] And I said, it's like the military.

[569] What if a soldier is taken out in the field?

[570] How can the rest of the people in the unit reconfigure and communicate?

[571] And I said, it's like email.

[572] You know, you take one person out of email.

[573] How can the rest of the team reconfigure and communicate?

[574] And she got it because she was thinking like a military commander.

[575] And she started nodding.

[576] And everybody, of course, takes their cue from her and they start nodding.

[577] And that's how I was able to get permission to cut off email.

[578] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[579] We've all been there.

[580] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[581] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[582] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, who's post.

[583] body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[584] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[585] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[586] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[587] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[588] Prime members can listen early and ad -free on Amazon Music.

[589] What's up, guys, it's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good.

[590] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[591] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[592] And I don't mean just friends.

[593] I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[594] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[595] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[596] In this example that I read about, what's so logical and obvious, once it's pointed out, the goal would have been bosses would have to walk to their employee's desk or call them on the phone and talk to them if they needed something done.

[597] If they wanted to unleash a task onto somebody, they'd have to kind of get up and go see them to do it or call them.

[598] And so what happened?

[599] The task just went right down, right?

[600] That's right.

[601] There was this one example of this person I talk about.

[602] His job was actually setting up lab experiments in this organization was a little bit unusual for the rest of the work there and he never had like a two -hour block of time to be able to set it up because he would get work delegated to him when email was cut off his boss could have just walked down the hall and given him the task and he didn't yes that's the problem with email there's no barrier of entry there's no cost associated with Any whimsical idea you can have fired off in two seconds.

[603] Even the minimum, like, is this worth me walking across the hall?

[604] Even that cost analysis isn't even in the mix.

[605] And if you just introduce walk across the hall, half of your ideas aren't going to be deployed.

[606] That's crazy.

[607] Yeah.

[608] I read that and I was like, am I abusing anyone over email?

[609] Like, are there things that if I had to pick up the phone and call, Rob, I wouldn't then.

[610] But I don't think I'm abusing it too much.

[611] But I can see where you would just get in a pattern of every little whimsical thought you have.

[612] you send off an email?

[613] So the burden is on the recipient of the email because things are being asked of the recipient.

[614] The sender gets the benefit.

[615] The sender asks you for information, asks you to do work.

[616] And the recipient, this poor person, is inundated with all these requests.

[617] That's why email, at least for people who work in what's called a knowledge workplace, email represents work for them and stress.

[618] It's a symbol of work.

[619] My thoughts on email are because it's always happening, it's not scheduled.

[620] And then you have a great bit of statistics involved in one of your presentations.

[621] You compare from 1965 to now how often people were at their desks in 1965 versus how often they were in meetings.

[622] Now, time at their desk has doubled.

[623] It's more than doubled.

[624] So this actually was studied back in the 60s and 70s.

[625] People shadowed people in the workplace and timed them.

[626] and looked at what proportion of their day they sat at their desk.

[627] And it was something like 35 % of the day.

[628] So people walked around a lot more.

[629] They were at face -to -face meetings.

[630] And in 2019, just before the pandemic, we did a study where we had tracked 750 people for a year.

[631] And we used wearable sensors.

[632] Biometric stuff.

[633] Yeah.

[634] So we could get their step count.

[635] We used other sensors so we could see if they were at their desk.

[636] in the office.

[637] And we found that about 90 % of the time they were at their desk.

[638] So it's jumped.

[639] What's changed in the meantime?

[640] Well, so much technology has come on the scene.

[641] And so a lot of what had formerly been done in face -to -face meetings is now being done on the desktop, desktop conferencing, through Zoom, through email, through Slack.

[642] That's replaced a lot of these formally scheduled face -to -face meetings.

[643] Okay.

[644] Now, and then this seems to me with the price that you would pay is that if I'm a boss and I need all these things executed, right?

[645] And I have a meeting at one.

[646] The burden's on me. I compile everything I got to tell Jill or Sarah or Michael in that meeting.

[647] So I myself am responsible for assessing everything I need from this person.

[648] I got to dedicate a chunk of time to it.

[649] And I got to go, oh, I need these nine things done the next 24 hours, 48 hours this week.

[650] So now I've compressed everything that I need into one message.

[651] And then for the recipient, it's scheduled so they know it's coming and my pitch and I remember saying this to you Monica when the emails were just super overwhelming before we had any help and this is how I do it I have time slots so my morning starts at seven I do all these different things writings involve whatever I don't pick up the phone until the writing's done the meditation's done the whatever's done so now I have a block because I got to take my kids at school so that is my block to deal with emails and then I have another block that's about an hour long post interviews i can't do anything in these interviews that's why i fucking love this job is i can't respond to anything i have allowed myself to have a bubble i exist in for hours at a time and i really just give myself two periods of emailing a day i know people will say well so much stuff is time sensitive great stuff isn't really as time sensitive as anyone thinks first of all and again that goes to the burden that should be on the sender of these emails they too should be compressing everything until one email, that's one list of the nine things I need you to do.

[652] I just think one of the solutions is everyone just needs to schedule this and not be at the whimsy of the sender and the endless plug -in.

[653] I totally agree.

[654] And I think organizations should have a certain time allotted to electronic communications.

[655] This is the time when you do your electronic communications.

[656] And then after that, forget it.

[657] Yeah, like maybe you get twice a day.

[658] like before lunch you're allowed to send one out and the end of the day you're allowed to send, whatever, but you're only allowed to send emails between, you know, 11 and 12 and 3 and 4.

[659] So we found that people, on average, check email 77 times a day.

[660] We logged their computer activities, so we were able to get objective measures.

[661] The first year we did it, we found 74 times a day checking.

[662] The second year we did it, 77 times.

[663] So if email were sent out twice a day, People wouldn't be checking 77 times a day.

[664] Their attention would be focused for maybe two times a day.

[665] But it is dependent, because like you said, for this show, if we're recording, yeah, then I'm checking email five, ten times.

[666] 22 times.

[667] But if it's a day where we're not recording, I'm just refreshing it to make sure I'm not missing something all day long.

[668] But I guess that's what this job has taught me. I'm super privileged.

[669] But once you build, and this is essentialism, that book, Essential.

[670] Once you decide you have an apex priority, for me it's being present in these interviews, you come to find out all the things that everyone thinks are so time -sensitive.

[671] They're just not.

[672] It's an illusion of time sensitivity.

[673] I agree.

[674] And if you read your email in reverse chronological order, you realize how information ages really fast.

[675] It's not beneficial to look at your email as soon as it comes in.

[676] Wait until the end of the day.

[677] And then you'll see the problem has been taken.

[678] care of.

[679] Yeah, but this to me is a top -down problem because if you're at a big corporation, you are evaluated on how good of an employee you are is based on how quickly you're responding, how on top of it you are.

[680] And you're getting compared to other people and it does make a difference.

[681] Who's getting promoted?

[682] I see it happen around me. And what can you do if it's not coming from the top?

[683] That's what's great about Gloria.

[684] She's pushing for a cultural shift because she'll be quick to point out, If you are available, it means you're shittier at your job that you've really been hired for, right?

[685] The solution has to come at the organizational level.

[686] Actually, it should come at the societal level.

[687] But organizations need to have some common time for all employees.

[688] This is when you do electronic communications.

[689] Then no individual is penalized for not checking.

[690] You're great at pointing out they have the data.

[691] So, of course, an employer wants an immediate response from their employee.

[692] That's appealing.

[693] unless they find out by making your employee available, the job you've hired them to do is suffering.

[694] So the real task, the A, B, C, and D tasks of the day are getting worse.

[695] So you, yourself, as the employer, you just have to prioritize what thing is more valuable to me, constant communication or them executing the job I hired them to do.

[696] And I think that's a cultural mindset that has to be exposed, explained.

[697] There is a cost benefit.

[698] They're actually losing money.

[699] I totally agree.

[700] But let me push back on something you said about.

[701] The senders should list all the nine things that they want you to do.

[702] Are you going to read an email that's this long that has nine different things for you to do?

[703] I probably would not.

[704] I might do three or four of the things.

[705] Well, here's why I suggest that is so often you're responding to the one thing.

[706] You finish that.

[707] An hour later, it's this thing.

[708] You realize you could have grouped three of those things.

[709] Oh, I was already across the street at the clients.

[710] have brought up these three things, right?

[711] You are now empowered to organize what their cumulative wish list is for you.

[712] You can at least put them in sections where they become more efficient.

[713] But if it's go get me coffee, also do this thing, also blank, well, I was already out.

[714] I could have got your lunch when I got your coffee.

[715] A totality of the responsibilities allows you then to plan with some efficiency.

[716] I think what you're saying is that the burden should be on the sender to do the work.

[717] They should do the work to organize requests in such a way that it's cognitively easier, it's more efficient on the recipient.

[718] I accept your pushback.

[719] So then you're saying as well, learn to edit.

[720] Is that what you're saying?

[721] Learn to think more comprehensively.

[722] I don't want to blow by the thing you just said to because I guess I'm quoting you on that too and I've never known.

[723] But someone pointed out to me, they gave me this great tip, which is if you're on vacation for a week, a lot of people can relate to this.

[724] And you come back, your instinct is to go through it chronologically, start on the day you left.

[725] But someone told me, if you read them in reverse, everything's been handled.

[726] That's fine.

[727] You really, 5 % of the requests are still remaining.

[728] And then what the book Essentialism argues for is people actually really respect people who have those boundaries.

[729] You think you're going to be a shitty employee and get a bad review and that this is all going to be detrimental to you.

[730] But in fact, there's some good data to suggest, no, people want to work with people with boundaries.

[731] They respect them more.

[732] They value their opinion more.

[733] Ultimately, in a long -term view, it's beneficial to have those.

[734] Yeah.

[735] It may be hard for some people to construct those boundaries.

[736] And so if you had organizational norms changing, it would make it a lot easier for everyone to be able to construct those boundaries.

[737] Some individuals might be able to do it very easily.

[738] But others might be more of a challenge, so they need some scaffolding.

[739] Yeah.

[740] So that's one thing.

[741] That's emails, which of course are large.

[742] driven by your clients or your employer or whatever but the technology itself you have a great quote in here a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently so we live in a paradigm that gives us a lot more responsibility or will be victims to it now every single thing is available it creates a new problem so what are some other distractions people find themselves being pulled towards yeah by the way the quote is from Herb Simon, the Nobel Prize winner.

[743] He won the Nobel Prize for economics, but he worked as a computer scientist.

[744] Manfred.

[745] Herbert.

[746] You're hitting us with all the turn -of -the -century names today.

[747] So what are the other common distractions?

[748] Well, the big one is social media.

[749] Oh, yeah.

[750] You know, I've studied people in the workplace for a long time, and they talk about being distracted by social media.

[751] media.

[752] For some people, it's more of a pull than others.

[753] It's hard to stay away from it, but it's also hard once you're in it to pull yourself out of the rabbit hole.

[754] So I talk about it in the book as an attention trap.

[755] There's different attention traps that we find on the internet, and that's one of them.

[756] Would this be your third myth?

[757] This is what this falls into.

[758] The third myth is that the distractions, interruptions, and multitasking we experience while on our devices are due primarily to the notifications receive and to our own lack of discipline.

[759] We receive social rewards when we interact with others.

[760] We bow to peer pressure.

[761] We respond to power and we want to maintain a net positive account of social capital with our colleagues and friends, which in turns drives us to keep checking email on social media.

[762] So I still think we really underestimate how important social standing is to us as a species and how much it's driving.

[763] So it feels stupid social media is life or death wiring.

[764] If you don't have a social network, you're not reciprocating resources and you're dead.

[765] Yeah, the myth that I talk about is people say the reason why we're distracted is because of targeted algorithms and notifications and because our lack of willpower.

[766] And it's true.

[767] I'm not going to argue against that.

[768] Those are reasons why we're distracted.

[769] But there's so many other reasons as well.

[770] And you hit on one of them.

[771] The idea that we have social natures, and there's so many social aspects that are involved in using the Internet.

[772] For example, social capital, the Internet, it's a marketplace of social capital where I get resources from you.

[773] You want resources from me. We do this trading in social capital influence.

[774] We're influenced.

[775] Everyone wants to increase the number of likes that they get when they post something.

[776] Our identities are wrapped up in the internet.

[777] Irving Goffman talks about how we present ourselves to others.

[778] We do impression management.

[779] In the physical world, you get it.

[780] You understand the impression that you can make on other people, right?

[781] Let's say you go to a party, you're careful and what you wear and who you talk with.

[782] But on the internet, people do impression management in their profiles that they create, in who they interact with.

[783] And of course, power.

[784] There's social power on the Internet as well.

[785] So us as social beings is also a very strong reason for why we're distracted.

[786] Yeah, we always talk about it in such a negative way, myself included.

[787] But if you think about it, there is something kind of democratizing about finding your social standing on the Internet.

[788] Because if the three of us walk into a room, I'm six too.

[789] As us little primates, us monkeys, the other people in the room subconsciously, I have a different impact on them.

[790] That's not fair just because you guys were genetically born shorter or you're female, all these social constructs that we walk in.

[791] That's one upside of the internet world and social capital is that you can kind of create something.

[792] Anyone can be a star.

[793] Yes.

[794] I like that movie The Social Dilemma where they say it's both utopia and dystopia.

[795] On some level, it's kind of great now that people get to be a little more in charge of the impression they make.

[796] Yes.

[797] You have it in your control, the way you.

[798] You want others to see you.

[799] Yeah, if you've got a big limp, us primates, you walk in and everyone's going to observe that.

[800] That just becomes a whole thing.

[801] No one can avoid that.

[802] But you don't have to have that on social media.

[803] That's right.

[804] There's something sweet about that.

[805] But then you're distorting your true set.

[806] That's why everything's so curated.

[807] It's not you.

[808] It's the best version or the prettiest version or you without a limp.

[809] We all have limbs.

[810] I agree.

[811] But then if you think about it where, okay, that's not you, but also bullshit you.

[812] live in a society where that's against you for your whole life.

[813] It gets people to try out the world without having a limp.

[814] Yeah.

[815] What would the world be like for me?

[816] And that part's kind of sweet.

[817] It is.

[818] I think what the result is is ultimately bad, which is everyone's distorting themselves.

[819] Well, I think what's bad is, yeah.

[820] There's nothing authentic, really.

[821] It makes it less and less appealing to go into the real world because you are doing better in this virtual world.

[822] But what's great is, like, the high school quarterback.

[823] from my high school, he probably sucks at social media.

[824] Like, he's probably taking it at a wrong angle.

[825] His background's messy.

[826] It's kind of great that he doesn't have an upper hand on social media.

[827] That part is kind of leveling.

[828] I guess.

[829] If we point out one good thing about it.

[830] That's true.

[831] Or simple chronic holotosis.

[832] We talk about that.

[833] You have no clue who has simple chronic colotosis.

[834] Yeah, but I want to know about that.

[835] Not if you're just interacting.

[836] If you go on a date, yeah.

[837] Yeah.

[838] Anything's short of a date?

[839] Why do you care?

[840] I still care.

[841] So I don't think, we should get rid of social media like a lot of people claim.

[842] You know, it's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[843] There are positive aspects to social media.

[844] The fact that you can connect with people who you haven't seen for years.

[845] You can get resources.

[846] Let's say you want to find an apartment or you want to know where to go on vacation.

[847] You ask people in your social network.

[848] You get a much wider set of responses than you would if you just called up one person.

[849] We tend to only focus on the Kardashians, but we don't focus on the fact that 30 % of people who are so introverted, they would have had no connection in life.

[850] They're joined in the party.

[851] That's a great part of it, I think.

[852] Yeah, I agree.

[853] Okay, so one of the other myths that I found interesting is flow.

[854] So we've kind of fetishized the state of flow.

[855] I'm the biggest proponent of fetishizing it because I happen to have a job where flow happens about six, seven times a week.

[856] So I love it.

[857] I'm a disciple of flow.

[858] But tell us about the concept of flow and how it doesn't really lend itself all that well to all kinds of different occupations.

[859] That's right.

[860] Flo was named by the psychologist Mihaliyi Shiks and Mihaliy.

[861] Now that one takes the cake for names today.

[862] It took me a while to nail it, but I got it.

[863] So Shiks and Mihaliy as a child was interned in a camp in Italy because his father worked for the Hungarian government and Hungary was implicated in the war.

[864] And so this was a traumatic experience for the young child.

[865] And so to kind of shield out the horrors of the war, he played chess.

[866] And he learned to play chess and he got so immersed in chess.

[867] And then after the war, he came to the U .S., eventually went to the University of Chicago, got a PhD in psychology.

[868] but he was influenced by his chess playing experience and he wanted to understand what is it that makes people do things that they just love they're so intrinsically motivated to do even risk -taking activities like rock climbing what would lead them to do it and this is what set him off to study the idea that eventually became called flow and flow is the optimal experience flow is about using your skill in an optimal way.

[869] So if you don't use your skill enough, you're not going to go into flow.

[870] If something becomes too hard, you don't have the skill to be able to do that activity, you're not going to go into flow.

[871] There's some optimal point.

[872] You know, if you're playing sports, imagine you're playing soccer and everything is like magic.

[873] Everything just works together.

[874] You're at your optimal level of skill.

[875] in flow.

[876] I would say, I think these are components of it.

[877] For me, an abstraction of time is always like a great clue that I'm in a state of flow, right?

[878] When I experience time much differently and or lose complete sense of time, which is heavenly.

[879] Exactly.

[880] That's one of the main components of flow.

[881] You just become completely unaware of the passage of time because you're so immersed in this activity.

[882] It's the most euphoric state.

[883] It's great.

[884] And when I was an artist, I got into flow very often.

[885] And I lived in Ohio when I was in art school.

[886] I had a shortwave radio that picked up Radio Havana in the middle of the night.

[887] Oh, wow.

[888] And I used to listen to the songs on Radio Havana, and I'd be dancing and painting.

[889] And I was just in flow.

[890] And time just passed by.

[891] I would paint through the night.

[892] In fact, during this period, I kept a journal.

[893] And then I went back and read this journal years later, and I don't have a clue what I was talking about.

[894] It made absolutely no sense to me. I read that, and that made me sad.

[895] Yeah, but I have no idea.

[896] But whatever it was, I was in this, like, flow state.

[897] Fast forward, and now I do research, and I use a very different kind of thinking, and I rarely get into flow.

[898] I use analytical thinking.

[899] I plan studies.

[900] I collect data.

[901] data, I analyze data.

[902] Once in a while, I'll get into flow.

[903] So if I'm brainstorming with people, might get into flow.

[904] Sometimes if I'm analyzing data and I just kind of go off on my own, I might get into flow.

[905] But for the most part, not.

[906] Is it bad?

[907] No, it's not bad.

[908] It's different.

[909] It's different.

[910] And I don't expect to get into flow for the kind of work I do now.

[911] It doesn't mean it's a bad thing because it's very rewarding what I do.

[912] And that's the important thing for it to be rewarding.

[913] So are you saying it's wrong to chase flow?

[914] I'm not sure.

[915] Well, if we're dispelling a myth and flow is one of the myths.

[916] It's very tied to the nature of the work you're doing.

[917] And the myth is that people who are doing knowledge work, for the most part, should not expect that they're going to get into flow because of the nature of the work they're doing.

[918] There might be some aspects of your work where you can get into flow, but chances are, you know, you're going to be using sustained attention, but that doesn't mean you're getting into flow.

[919] It just means you're focusing, you're concentrating.

[920] It's not accessible necessarily for every single career or passion.

[921] Right.

[922] Okay, the fourth one is really fun too.

[923] The fourth myth that is widely shared is that the rote mindless activity we do on our computers and phones has no value.

[924] This was a bit of shocking data, I thought.

[925] The happiness was heightened.

[926] That was a little bit shocking.

[927] Tell us about the different activities that one does at work and that being one of them and how they differ.

[928] When I was studying attention, I realized that there have to be different kinds of attention.

[929] Philosophers and psychologists have talked about different kinds of attention.

[930] But there seems to be this common narrative that there's just two states of attention.

[931] You're focused or you're unfocused.

[932] You're focused or you're distracted.

[933] And I thought, well, it has to be more nuanced than that.

[934] Because if you're engaged in something, you could be engaged and challenged, like if you're reading something.

[935] You could also be very engaged in something and not challenged at all, you know, playing some mindless game.

[936] You use Candy Crush as your example.

[937] I use Candy Crush, although I don't play a Candy Crush.

[938] Me either.

[939] One of my favorite writers, Maya Angelou, she talked about having.

[940] Big mind and little mind.

[941] And her big mind, this is her thinking when she would do her deep creative work.

[942] And her little mind was the simple route activity she did.

[943] She would pull up in a hotel room and do her writing.

[944] And she'd bring with her crossword puzzles and a writing tablet.

[945] And her little mind was when she would do these crossroad puzzles.

[946] It kept her mind engaged, lightly engaged.

[947] But she was not doing anything challenging.

[948] And so Little Mind was really important to her creative process.

[949] It played a supporting role.

[950] And it was through Little Mind that she was able to achieve her great work.

[951] And you see this a lot in different writers and scientists.

[952] The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said that when he peeled potatoes, he had his greatest thoughts.

[953] Poiling potatoes, that's just broke.

[954] Yeah.

[955] I have a fun one for you.

[956] Buster Keaton.

[957] So he had his own studio.

[958] And at the studio, he had all the sets he could shoot.

[959] But they didn't really work off scripts.

[960] They would just come up with really complicated set pieces and bits for him to do physically.

[961] So they'd shoot for a while and they'd run out of ideas.

[962] And his two things where he had a baseball diamond at his studio.

[963] And so everyone would go play baseball.

[964] And while they're playing baseball, they'd start thinking of new bits.

[965] And then his other thing was Pinnacle.

[966] So they'd either break to play baseball or play Pinnacle.

[967] And for him, those were the sources of all these.

[968] these ideas that he'd end up shooting.

[969] That's such a perfect example.

[970] And studying attention, what we would do is we would send them these probes.

[971] A probe is simply just a really short questionnaire, like two questions.

[972] And we would send them to them on their computers or phones and say, for the thing you're doing right now, how challenged were you and how engaged were you?

[973] You know, just report for the thing you were doing right now.

[974] We collected this data and then we found that there do seem to be these different attentional states.

[975] We're able to find differences.

[976] Sometimes people are engaged and challenged.

[977] Sometimes they're engaged and not challenged.

[978] Sometimes they're not engaged and not challenged, in which case they're bored.

[979] Or you're really challenged and you're just not engaged.

[980] We label that frustrated.

[981] And then we looked at when were people the happiest?

[982] And they were the happiest doing this kind of rote, simple, very lightly engaged, mindless activity.

[983] Engaged but not challenged.

[984] Right.

[985] Yeah.

[986] And that's counterintuitive a little bit to me. I guess I would have expected people when they were engaged and challenged to be happiest.

[987] But that's like the narrative self.

[988] They'll be happiest at night, but not experientially happy while they're doing it.

[989] Maybe you might feel more fulfilled.

[990] But at the time you're doing it, you're happiest when you do it.

[991] something mindless.

[992] Like shopping.

[993] Watching your videos, your cooking videos.

[994] Yeah, shopping.

[995] Yeah, that too.

[996] Monica's Apex happiness is cooking videos and online shopping.

[997] Those are pretty rote.

[998] If it makes you happy, why not?

[999] But it also gives you a chance to replenish your cognitive resources, your attentional resources, because maybe you're just drained.

[1000] So it's time to pull back from doing that focused work and do something light.

[1001] Yeah, take a little break.

[1002] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[1003] So you have a term you use kinetic attention, and you've studied now a lot of the amount of rapidly shifting attention people have.

[1004] What is it that you found?

[1005] What's the average length of time people are really focusing on a screen?

[1006] When we first started measuring this, This is all measured empirically, objectively.

[1007] Back in 2004, we found the average attention duration on a screen to be two and a half minutes.

[1008] More recently, we find it to reach a steady state of about 47 seconds.

[1009] This has been replicated by other researchers as well.

[1010] My graduate student, right before the pandemic, studied 50 information workers, for a period of 30 days and found the average span to be 44 seconds, which is roughly the same.

[1011] What does that mean?

[1012] Like, they'll open a different tab.

[1013] They'll go over to their email.

[1014] They'll go to a different website.

[1015] Yes, it could be any of these things.

[1016] So you're staring at the same screen, but you're not staying.

[1017] No, you're actually shifting screens.

[1018] You're switching browser tabs.

[1019] But same device.

[1020] Same device.

[1021] But looking at a very different screen.

[1022] And the real kicker is that people are almost as likely to self -interrupt to do this switching as they are to be interrupted by some external source, like a notification, a person calling, someone coming into your office.

[1023] We're trained.

[1024] What they call a one -to -one ratio?

[1025] Self -interruption is about 44 % of the time.

[1026] And that's your urge to check social media or you have this memory to do something, but something is just compelling to switch your thinking.

[1027] You'll probably push back on this, but do we think it's potentially, I don't know if you read Anna Lemke's book, Dopamine Nation, it's so good, but that we're all living in an extreme dopamine deficit disorder.

[1028] In about every 47 seconds, your body needs more dopamine.

[1029] You're being driven by a drop in your dopamine.

[1030] That could be it.

[1031] I think a lot of this is conditioning.

[1032] The reason I say it's conditioning is that we looked at the external interruptions and internal interruptions on an hourly basis.

[1033] And we find that when external interruptions drop your self -interruptions compensate, it's like we're just determined to keep interrupting ourselves.

[1034] If we're not getting it from something outside of ourselves, we're interrupting from within ourselves.

[1035] We're so habitual.

[1036] We just get into these patterns and then we don't even know we're in them.

[1037] That's why I refer to attention as being kinetic and dynamic.

[1038] Well, here's a great hack.

[1039] You didn't suggest it in your book, but now that I'm thinking about it.

[1040] You should read your email out loud to yourself.

[1041] And it takes more than 44 seconds.

[1042] You've got to know they're not getting through it.

[1043] Oh, that's a good call.

[1044] That's very good.

[1045] Yeah, you're the best you're going to get out of somebody is 44 seconds of their attention.

[1046] So you better, you better come out swinging.

[1047] You better get to the point quickly.

[1048] That's not good for this show.

[1049] They're two hour -long shows.

[1050] Thank you.

[1051] I earmarked it and I never came back to it.

[1052] So I think that shows like this, long -form things are a little bit of an antidote.

[1053] I think they're great for our attention spans.

[1054] You have an experience that, although you're engaged in this, it's likely a 90 minutes of freedom from the checking.

[1055] Sometimes people do something else while they're listening to podcasts.

[1056] They're driving or they're working now.

[1057] But if you tried, I've been listening to a podcast and try to look at Instagram.

[1058] and I have to stop.

[1059] I actually can't do both.

[1060] That's true.

[1061] So I think if you're actually listening in the whole episode, I've not met the person I can do both.

[1062] Truly, where you got to focus on both.

[1063] Or they're just missing chunks.

[1064] Which could be fine, too.

[1065] There's tons of chunks of this.

[1066] Yeah, we probably get rid of.

[1067] We try our best with the edit, but certainly there's some fat.

[1068] And that's where we get into the kind of prescriptive element of the book, which is you urge people to think of their attention as having a fuel tank.

[1069] And there's ways to fill the fuel tank and there's ways you deplete the fuel tank.

[1070] fuel tank.

[1071] Yes.

[1072] Sleep number one fills the fuel tank, right?

[1073] We wake up, hopefully, after a good night's sleep with a pretty full tank.

[1074] And then you also point out that we have optimal hours of work.

[1075] There are rhythms we found when people have focused attention.

[1076] And we found that, you know, this is on average.

[1077] People tend to be at their peak focus late morning around 11 a .m. And then there's another peak in the afternoon about 3 p .m. My first thought was like, okay, well, kind of is our schedule, luckily.

[1078] If we do two a day, it's generally at 11 and then at 2.

[1079] And so we blow through both those areas.

[1080] But I was also thinking about like if you have to pitch somebody something.

[1081] If you're trying to sell a product to somebody and you have any say over what time of day you'll be pitching them, obviously you should be aiming at 11 or 3.

[1082] Yeah.

[1083] That's generally speaking when most people are at the peak of their attentional capacity.

[1084] Now, people have different chronotypes.

[1085] If you're an early type, you might peak much earlier.

[1086] If you're a late type, your peak is much later.

[1087] So, you know, of course, it's individual.

[1088] How would someone without being studied in one of your experiments discover their own rhythm?

[1089] There's a survey you can take to find out your chronotype.

[1090] Oh.

[1091] It's called a morningness, eveningness questionnaire.

[1092] And there's a link to it in the book.

[1093] Oh, amazing.

[1094] We'll do it on the fact check.

[1095] Oh, that would be great.

[1096] I already know mine, but yes.

[1097] Okay, but I'll pretend I don't know mine.

[1098] You might be surprised.

[1099] Okay.

[1100] So that's one thing, but you can also, you know, I had my students do this as an exercise.

[1101] They did the same kind of probing for themselves that I did for participants in the workplace.

[1102] Now, you know, these are computer science students, so they're very savvy and they could program probes to come at random times.

[1103] But you can just set a little timer every hour or so.

[1104] And just evaluate what's your level of cognitive resources.

[1105] If you want to be more precise, you can ask how challenged or engaged you are.

[1106] Uh -huh.

[1107] Interesting.

[1108] Okay, great.

[1109] Lastly, we're going to talk about the goals people could set for themselves in this very, very challenging landscape.

[1110] Again, good luck to everyone.

[1111] It's all so appealing and there's noises and lights.

[1112] You know, it's a slot machine.

[1113] But you have some specific goals, balance being maybe the objective.

[1114] Could you walk us through what someone should try to set for themselves or aim towards?

[1115] Yeah.

[1116] What I argue for is to reframe our discussion when we use our devices instead of trying to achieve the utmost productivity to think about achieving well -being.

[1117] It's called psychological homeostasis.

[1118] It's when you have two components of your autonomic nervous system, the parasympathetic and sympathetic system.

[1119] The sympathetic system is your fight or flight component where you're really stressed.

[1120] And when that dominates, it's just really bad for your system.

[1121] And it's bad for mental health.

[1122] It can lead to hypertension.

[1123] And so let's think when we use our devices of ways that we can use them so that we can achieve positive well -being, a net positive at the end of the day.

[1124] And know when you should pull back.

[1125] Know when you're starting to feel exhausted, pull back, replenish yourself.

[1126] Ideally, you want to take a walk, but if you can't, then do some road activity.

[1127] And then you also say learn to observe when your mind's wandering away.

[1128] Yeah, meta -awareness.

[1129] So when the pandemic hit, my university offered a free course in mindfulness, mindfulness -based stress reduction.

[1130] And I found this course really interesting.

[1131] It made me think, how can I apply this to my behavior when I use my device?

[1132] And so I realized that I can.

[1133] When you do mindfulness, it's about keeping your attention in the present, focusing on your breathing.

[1134] You're not thinking about the past where there's regret.

[1135] You're not thinking about the future, where there is anxiety, but staying in the present.

[1136] And I realize that if people could stay in the present and really focus on their actions, what they're doing on their devices, it's about bringing unconscious activity into our conscious awareness.

[1137] So if I am very tempted to, let's say, go on a news site or I'm tempted to go to social media, I can keep asking myself questions.

[1138] Do I really need to read the news right now?

[1139] or if I'm reading the news, okay, have I gotten enough value from reading this article?

[1140] If not, stop, get back to work.

[1141] This is a new obsession of mine, mostly I'm at my mother.

[1142] I think a great question to ask yourself when you're interested in the news is, what will I do with the information once I get it?

[1143] If there's nothing for you to apply and or you can admit you're not going to apply, you're not going to stand up and go march to Congress and hold a sign, if you can be honest with yourself and just ask yourself, what will I do with the information I'm about to receive?

[1144] Will I just get angry?

[1145] Is that the outcome of it?

[1146] Will I get encouraged?

[1147] Will I go to a dinner party and get them angry about it?

[1148] What will be the outcome of me having this information?

[1149] I think is just a responsible question to ask yourself.

[1150] That is so great.

[1151] I love that.

[1152] I'm going to try to ask myself that.

[1153] You did.

[1154] So, you know, the thing is, what I do for a living is observe people.

[1155] I'm a professional observer of behavior.

[1156] And so when I started thinking about this idea of meta -awareness, I really thought of how can I become a professional observer of myself, of my own behavior.

[1157] And the way to do that is to keep yourself in the present, keep asking yourself questions, and especially to ask yourself questions about your level of cognitive resources.

[1158] Where am I?

[1159] Am I exhausted?

[1160] If so, take a break.

[1161] Go do something else replenish.

[1162] Otherwise, I would work myself through to exhaustion.

[1163] Well, also, it gets harder and harder to recognize that as you get more and more drained.

[1164] You say, the more drained you are, the more distractible you are.

[1165] So if you don't stay on top of it when you have the mental resources and capacity, you actually can lose the ability to assess that as you get more and more stressed and drained.

[1166] That's right.

[1167] And you also lose the ability to guard against distractions.

[1168] There's this really interesting study that was done, they gave people over a six -hour period a series of tasks and really hard tasks, like remembering numbers, and they had to do it over the course of the day.

[1169] And then they gave people periodically throughout the day a choice, which was just like the marshmallow test.

[1170] You could get an immediate reward of monetary value, or if you wait a little bit, you would get a higher reward and as the day wore on and people were doing these hard tasks their delay of gratification waned their ability to delay got weaker and weaker and at the end of the day they were just taking the immediate rewards you know this is a interesting road all recovering addicts have to cross what took me a very long time to admit to myself is that sober decks can create a perfect game plan for the evening.

[1171] That's very easy for me to do.

[1172] But Dax with two drinks has a much different point of view of the third drink than sober Dax had.

[1173] And then Dax with three has an even different point of view, what, four and five and six years?

[1174] And to recognize that, oh, when I do this, the person I think is in charge will no longer be in charge.

[1175] So I need to have a plan.

[1176] Like, that's a relevant aspect.

[1177] And the drinking is just a metaphor for what the day does to you in a sense.

[1178] Yeah, that's such a great way to put it.

[1179] Another A. Oh, my God.

[1180] Oh, goodness.

[1181] Oh, my goodness.

[1182] I might not need to do any extra correct.

[1183] Well, according to you, maybe a 5 .0.

[1184] Okay, then the last thing I want you to talk about is Parkinson's law.

[1185] This is another thing I don't think we're necessarily aware of at all times.

[1186] So if you allot 30 minutes for a task, you'll probably do it in 30 minutes.

[1187] If you allot four hours, you'll use the four hours.

[1188] This Parkinson's Law is kind of a fascinating thing.

[1189] I think most people don't even have a target for anything.

[1190] Like I do think we a little bit stumble along our day.

[1191] And when we don't have the target, we then blow right past it.

[1192] Being conscious and mindful of what you're about to do and thinking about what time allow me you're going to give it is imperative if you want to execute.

[1193] You know, we can deceive ourselves.

[1194] And let's say you have to write a report.

[1195] You can buckle down and do it in 30.

[1196] minutes if that's your goal.

[1197] But if you know you've got four hours, you might be very tempted to go off to social media, check your email, because you've got four hours to do it in.

[1198] You know, do five minutes here, then I'll do eight minutes there.

[1199] Yeah.

[1200] It's better to be efficient and blast through that task as long as you're not getting yourself exhausted.

[1201] That's really important.

[1202] And then you can reward yourself.

[1203] Yeah, cocaine.

[1204] Whatever your preference, Your reward preferences.

[1205] No, we're not going to push cocaine.

[1206] Okay.

[1207] Also, just the last thing is, because I found this to be a little bit encouraging.

[1208] Every time we talk about AI, it's under the veil of total scariness.

[1209] And I'm in general a little bit scared about it.

[1210] But you did say it will eventually start handling the simple problems and leave us to deal with the ones that humans are good at, which are the ambiguous nuanced ones.

[1211] So what does that future for us look like?

[1212] Well, I would say it is a little bit mixed.

[1213] It's good news that we won't have to do boring, mundane, repetitive work.

[1214] We can do more thinking tasks.

[1215] But at the same time, it's probably going to be more taxing on our attention because we're going to be faced with a lot more difficult problems to do.

[1216] That's what humans are good at.

[1217] It's probably going to be a mixed bag.

[1218] It's almost like as we incorporate all this technology, there's some things we're going to have to rethink.

[1219] So in that event where you've offloaded half of your job to AI, it's conceivable to me that maybe the work day, which used to be an eight -hour day, maybe since it is high -level, high -stress, high -demand, challenging, thinking we're going to do that.

[1220] Really, we might only have the capacity for six hours a day of work.

[1221] Possibly.

[1222] What a cultural shift that would have to be.

[1223] Yeah.

[1224] 30 -minute work days from now on.

[1225] That seems a little short.

[1226] I'm declaring it.

[1227] Well, I mean, when you think about it, maybe we want to, a lot.

[1228] lot longer blocks of time, especially to spend in contemplation of a task, right?

[1229] Yeah, when you read about some of the most impressive thinkers we've got, a common thing for them is to schedule free time, absent time.

[1230] I know Bill Gates has days, you know, weeks in the month.

[1231] That's just his time to sit on a couch and think.

[1232] And it's so vital being able to claim these areas because you recognize they do have a value that ultimately the net result will be very positive and more efficient and more productive as counterintuitive is to think like I'm going to schedule an hour a day on a couch.

[1233] It's hard to declare that, but the rewards might be there.

[1234] Oh, absolutely.

[1235] Well, I got to tell you something, Gloria.

[1236] This was a blast.

[1237] I'm not shocked.

[1238] You're a neighbor from Ohio.

[1239] They try to pit us against each other in that Ohio State game, but we're not going to allow it.

[1240] Are you from Michigan?

[1241] Yes, I'm from Michigan.

[1242] Oh, the hell is what I know about Cedar Point.

[1243] Of course.

[1244] Yes, Sandusky, Ohio.

[1245] Well, it's been a total pleasure getting to talk to you.

[1246] I hope everyone checks out attention span, finding focus and fighting distraction.

[1247] It's rare that someone comes in and has a book that pertains to 100 % of the listeners, right?

[1248] Yeah.

[1249] It's almost impossible, but we are all interacting with all of this.

[1250] We should all have a game plan.

[1251] This has been so much fun.

[1252] I just really enjoyed it.

[1253] Oh, good.

[1254] I hope everyone checks out attention span, and I hope we get to talk to you when you write your next book.

[1255] Please come back.

[1256] Thank you.

[1257] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1258] Oh, we just had a heartwarming.

[1259] My heart is full.

[1260] Yeah.

[1261] It really is.

[1262] And I've prepared a song to capture that feeling.

[1263] Okay.

[1264] Oh, the weather outside is frightful.

[1265] But the fire is so delightful And since we've no place to go Let it snow Let it snow, let it snow Man, it doesn't show signs See that, I lost it Okay Yeah, oh The next line, can you hit that line?

[1266] I'm not gonna But you know the cadence of it It should be the same as the first one, right?

[1267] But it's not.

[1268] Listen, I just want to get to this line Oh, okay And I brought some corn for Pip, pip popping.

[1269] I just think it's, what I like about these old Christmas songs is like, it's also a glimpse back into the 30s or whenever they were written.

[1270] Yeah.

[1271] Like, this dude was pumped because he shows up with fucking corn for popping.

[1272] It's so simple.

[1273] Like, oh man, I can't wait for Roger to get here.

[1274] You know he's bringing corn for popping.

[1275] We love that.

[1276] I know.

[1277] We love that now.

[1278] No one has ever shown up to my house and they're like, I brought some corn.

[1279] corn for popping we don't gather around the hearth and put it on a skillet and pop the corn you pop it in the microwave it's in a fucking disposable bag it's a piece of shit experience if you're doing it correctly you are popping it on the oven stove you're putting yours in the oven stop it you're popping it on the stove yeah sometimes you add some crumblies okay okay not grumblies no oh that's a earmark that okay Listen, I have been watching White Lotus at Cali and Max's, and a couple times ago, I brought corn for popping.

[1280] You did?

[1281] Yes.

[1282] Oh, my God.

[1283] We didn't pop it.

[1284] Maybe you should write a Christmas song because you have the vibe.

[1285] Okay, what are we earmarking about grumblies?

[1286] Oh, here's a quick one, though.

[1287] The following line is, the lights are turned way down low.

[1288] They didn't have dimmers back when you were bringing corn for popping.

[1289] That's a curious line.

[1290] Oh.

[1291] How did they turn that?

[1292] the lights down low they either turned him on or off so he might this is what the line should say you can lower the gas right to lower it was fire oh you're saying that they're like a lanterns that's how far back this goes well that that would work oh my god but what if this is if the song was truthful it'd say this and i brought some corn for popping the lights are turned all the way off let it snow let it snow I'm glad you got to do that Again, this is the part where it's not fun, but it's liable to get fun.

[1293] Oh, my God.

[1294] This is just like the guests we had.

[1295] You got to keep walking forward.

[1296] It opens up possibility.

[1297] No, that was fun from the beginning.

[1298] No, I know, but he's saying as a life directive.

[1299] Oh.

[1300] You can't be looking for the immediate result.

[1301] You want this to be instantly funny.

[1302] Don't turn his beautiful words into yourself.

[1303] You want this to land immediately, and it might take a while.

[1304] We might have to work for it.

[1305] Also, one part he forgot to say is sometimes.

[1306] it's best to just not go there.

[1307] Like the meme you sent me, which is like go home, fucking quit.

[1308] It was an Indian guy.

[1309] You know?

[1310] Doing an Indian accent.

[1311] Well, I don't know if he was doing an Indian.

[1312] I think that was his accent.

[1313] I hope.

[1314] Actually, now that, now I'm worried, what if it was a white person doing an Indian accent?

[1315] Could have been a white person.

[1316] Some of these white people are really good at it.

[1317] It's hard to tell.

[1318] Speaking of my dad's back from India.

[1319] Already?

[1320] Yeah, he only went for one week.

[1321] That feels too short with the amount of travel.

[1322] involved?

[1323] I agree.

[1324] How was his trip?

[1325] What did he do?

[1326] Did he confirm or can he deny that Molly is in great abundance over there?

[1327] Remember that's what I heard about Carol?

[1328] You said that and I found no information about that and then it's hard to.

[1329] He didn't say, I didn't ask.

[1330] Was he rolling the whole time?

[1331] No, but he went to visit his brother and then he went to a temple, to a family temple.

[1332] And it was lovely?

[1333] He had a good time?

[1334] He said it was really good.

[1335] Okay, great.

[1336] Yeah.

[1337] I'm dying to know what the weather was like.

[1338] I guess it's on the equator, right?

[1339] So it's the same no matter what.

[1340] Really, you look it up what it is today, temperature -wise, in India?

[1341] It's probably frightful.

[1342] Carol, I'll tell you what it's not as frightful.

[1343] That was good, Robby's very quick.

[1344] You know, he'll get you with that how uncommon when we saw common at the airplane.

[1345] You love that one so much.

[1346] It's 91 degrees in Mumbai right now.

[1347] A balmy.

[1348] That is hot as hell.

[1349] How hot is it?

[1350] in carola though because that's a little you're going to get some coastal breezes k -e r a -l -a don't do that you dare do that why are you doing that i just when i pushed my nose that turned into that k -e -r don't make me a monster oh no this is the unlikable robot no i don't want to meet him stop dax don't do this my name is bruce the robot i think you met my cousin he's my much cuter than me. I'm kind of clumsy and stupid.

[1351] Oh, no. They mostly use me to shovel heavy things.

[1352] Oh.

[1353] Sometimes I work on the engines.

[1354] I do a trick where I drink the motor oil.

[1355] Oh, God.

[1356] People say I smell.

[1357] I wouldn't know because I don't have a nose.

[1358] Listen.

[1359] He's kind of...

[1360] I'm sad about him.

[1361] I know.

[1362] Let's not think about Greg.

[1363] It's Bruce.

[1364] It's 79 degrees.

[1365] That sounds more like it.

[1366] 79 and carola.

[1367] High of 86, low, 77.

[1368] Because, you know, Sheff's kissy.

[1369] Beach weather.

[1370] Beach weather, that coastal lifestyle.

[1371] Mali, Molly, Molly.

[1372] There's no Molly there.

[1373] There's so much Molly.

[1374] He's swimming in it.

[1375] He prayed for us, I think.

[1376] Me, but you by extension.

[1377] There's no way.

[1378] Do you think he goes there to put more coins in the simulation?

[1379] I mean, he does, he did, he does go for.

[1380] Spiritual reasons.

[1381] Yeah.

[1382] Obviously, that's why you go to a temple.

[1383] I'm going to ask him if he...

[1384] Nope.

[1385] What?

[1386] Let's keep rolling.

[1387] What?

[1388] Okay.

[1389] If your father might have had an experience down there, would you be happy for him?

[1390] Molly experience?

[1391] Or sexual?

[1392] Well, like, maybe a Molly orgy.

[1393] No. You wouldn't want that for him.

[1394] I would want for Laura to be in a Molly orgy.

[1395] great if she enjoyed it sure yeah i'm not you i know i was just trying to find out how much i don't want that i mean i want him to uh be fulfilled right but um he has some addictive qualities i don't want him to get into get him hooked on drugs yeah at 60 whatever he is like seven um or nine oh my god he's getting old i hate this okay do you think you went down there because it was 69 69.

[1396] You got to make a pilgrimage when you're sick.

[1397] Stop.

[1398] You're so nasty.

[1399] Speaking of my dad, in the last fact check that we didn't do facts because we had Neff Campbell on, one of the things you said was that my dad came when he was 29 and he was 25.

[1400] Okay, great.

[1401] Just want to.

[1402] That's important.

[1403] Right.

[1404] Okay.

[1405] Now, we have something really fun to do today.

[1406] Oh, what is that?

[1407] A quiz.

[1408] Oh.

[1409] So we're going to do a quiz.

[1410] quiz that will tell us about our morningness, eveningness, sensibilities.

[1411] Oh, okay.

[1412] We haven't done a quiz in a long time.

[1413] Did you just fart?

[1414] Big one.

[1415] Big one?

[1416] Big boy.

[1417] I didn't hear it.

[1418] I had to elevate myself off the chair a little bit to make space.

[1419] You know how they say make space now?

[1420] Everyone says to make space.

[1421] I'm not sure why that's so triggering to me because I'm sure I agree with the intention of that thing is.

[1422] Yeah.

[1423] You just think it's for a lot of softies.

[1424] No, it's just so word of the day.

[1425] It is.

[1426] I agree.

[1427] I agree.

[1428] I'm just going to make space for you.

[1429] Well, anyways, I physically and literally needed to make some space between myself and the lazy boy.

[1430] I didn't hear anything.

[1431] And I was really confident it would be odorless, and so far I was right.

[1432] Thank goodness.

[1433] How could you say it's a big one if it's silent and odorless?

[1434] Well, again, I think because I lifted myself up, there wasn't any resistance.

[1435] Right.

[1436] And so I think I was able to just drop the pocket.

[1437] of air.

[1438] Oh, that sounds gross.

[1439] No, let's go back.

[1440] I'm leaving that in.

[1441] No, cut it out.

[1442] It sounded like a fucking pig.

[1443] That's what you're, that of all the things.

[1444] the butt fucking stuff and the Somali orgy, that stuff's fine.

[1445] Your father engaged in his 69 pilgrim.

[1446] Stop.

[1447] It's all clean.

[1448] But yes, the fact that I said, what I say, pocket of hot air.

[1449] Pocket of air.

[1450] It's like, that's rank.

[1451] Too far.

[1452] You're canceled for that.

[1453] Your barometer is all askew.

[1454] Ascute.

[1455] All right.

[1456] Normally, when you fart, in order to make sure it doesn't stink, you would not lift up.

[1457] If there was, you were on a fabric that was absorbent.

[1458] I'm on leather, so it would just reflect right immediately back.

[1459] Well, it would just go back in your butt.

[1460] But I thought you were about to say what a wise man once said, which is, if you fart in church, you sit in on pew.

[1461] Which is a great, it's a great observation.

[1462] It's one of the best.

[1463] Also wise men once said If you go to bed with an itchy butt You wake up with a stinky finger Ew, God It's way worse than pocket of air No, I think pocket sounds gross All right, let's take our question now Okay, ready?

[1464] Okay, approximately what time would you get up If you were entirely free to plan your day?

[1465] There's brackets, there's like 5 to 6 .30 a .m. What a joke.

[1466] Yeah, I know.

[1467] 6 .30 to 7 .45.

[1468] 7 .45 to 9 .45 a .m. 9 .45 to 11 a .m. 11 to noon.

[1469] And then noon to 5.

[1470] Okay.

[1471] So if you're on night shift, I guess.

[1472] Noon to 5 a .m. I don't think this is too talking out of school.

[1473] But you know, do you know this about Travolta that he lives like a vampire?

[1474] Oh, no. I didn't know that.

[1475] Yeah.

[1476] He lives like a vampire.

[1477] And the whole family does.

[1478] It's kind of how they roll.

[1479] And a friend of mine who produced one of his movies, one of the script meetings they had was like started at 1 a .m. Oh, my God.

[1480] And I asked him because I worked with him.

[1481] I'm like, how do you arrange like the day?

[1482] Yeah.

[1483] And he broke it down for me. But yeah, they're on a schedule.

[1484] But not when he's on set.

[1485] Right.

[1486] But he thrives during night shoots, which this was.

[1487] Weird.

[1488] Okay.

[1489] So what about you?

[1490] Well, this has evolved over the years.

[1491] Generally, like for most of my life, my dream sleep schedule would be 2 a .m. to 10 a .m. Okay.

[1492] I don't think it's.

[1493] Right now, it'd probably be 1 a .m. to 9 a .m. But I don't live that way, right?

[1494] I wake up at 7 every morning.

[1495] But I think if there were no more obligations and I just fell into a pattern, it'd be 1 a .m. sleep time, 9 a .m. Well, this is what time would you get up?

[1496] Yeah.

[1497] So let's put me at 9.

[1498] 7 .45 to 9 .45 a .m.?

[1499] Yeah, that includes that.

[1500] What's yours?

[1501] We'll have to do that another day.

[1502] Mine would be in that bracket as well.

[1503] Mm -hmm.

[1504] Because I think you're not, we're going to have the same answers.

[1505] I guess this is where I'm leading is that this is probably going to spit out an answer for both of us.

[1506] Okay.

[1507] Well, but I don't definitely don't want to sleep at one.

[1508] I ideally would sleep at 11 and wake up at 9.

[1509] Okay, so 10, nice 10 hours stretch.

[1510] Yeah.

[1511] That's great.

[1512] I never get it, but.

[1513] Who does?

[1514] Yeah.

[1515] Approximately what time do you go to bed if you were entirely free to plan your evening?

[1516] So you want to do 1 a .m. bracket?

[1517] Yeah.

[1518] So you want 12, 30.

[1519] to 1 .45 a .m. Wow.

[1520] Okay.

[1521] So we're already not on the same.

[1522] But that's fine.

[1523] We've diverged.

[1524] Yeah.

[1525] If you usually have to get up at a specific time in the morning, how much do you depend on an alarm clock?

[1526] Entirely.

[1527] Very much.

[1528] 100%.

[1529] Okay.

[1530] How easy do you find it to get up in the morning when you are not awakened unexpectedly?

[1531] It is easy for you to get up.

[1532] These are, this is a tricky quiz because it really changes throughout your life.

[1533] I've noticed the older I get, the easier it is to wake up.

[1534] And in fact, I can't even sleep as long as I want to.

[1535] But we're doing you now.

[1536] We're not trying to do you as a wee boy.

[1537] It's a 25 -year -old.

[1538] Yeah.

[1539] Okay.

[1540] So actually, do we already fuck it up?

[1541] No. No, because that is my dream.

[1542] Okay.

[1543] That's what I would want.

[1544] It's a medium now getting up in the morning.

[1545] It's medium hard.

[1546] Very easy, fairly easy, somewhat difficult, very difficult.

[1547] Somewhat difficult.

[1548] How alert do you feel during the first half hour after you wake up?

[1549] up in the morning very fairly slightly not at all i know i'm giving too much information but maybe that is the point of these things yeah okay so as long as i'm playing by the rules yeah what's tricky is i meditated every morning before i'm allowed to have coffee i first meditate right yeah but here's the other thing one time on my favorite podcast nobody's listening right they tried to do a quiz and uh they had to stop because they kept doing this it got too frustrating and i was like just answer I got to go medium, whatever the medium answer is.

[1550] How alert do you feel?

[1551] Okay, you feel slightly alert?

[1552] Yeah.

[1553] How hungry do you feel during the first half hour after you wake up?

[1554] Zero.

[1555] Okay.

[1556] Not at all hungry.

[1557] Not at all.

[1558] I'd rather die than eat when I wake up.

[1559] Okay.

[1560] If you had a plate of bacon and a knife on another plate, I'd take it and kill myself.

[1561] During the first.

[1562] You know what's happened?

[1563] and the listener doesn't know it, but the last interview was really kind and sweet and I had to be really, really patient.

[1564] Yeah, you're rebelling.

[1565] I'm rebelling.

[1566] You're seeing like the swing, the energy I couldn't unleash in the interview because it had a cadence and it required a delicateness.

[1567] And now I'm a bull in a china shop.

[1568] Just swinging my horns everywhere.

[1569] Yeah, and you know what's really fucking unfair?

[1570] At the end of it, he gave you a compliment that is only pertains to that two hours of that time because that's not.

[1571] Now it's the opposite.

[1572] If you think about his compliment, it's spot on.

[1573] No, he said you restrain.

[1574] Yes, he could tell this is who I am.

[1575] Yeah.

[1576] And that I was restraining that.

[1577] Well, no, that you do restrain it, but you don't.

[1578] You just did that one hour.

[1579] The reason I love the fat check, fat check is because it's so fat.

[1580] Because we get the calipers out.

[1581] We find out our BMI.

[1582] No, because it's time to unleash to let the tiger out of the cage to create space.

[1583] for yourself to fart to talk about Ashok's deviant behaviors Okay, during the first half hour after you wake up in the morning How do you feel?

[1584] Very tired, fairly tired, fairly refreshed, very refreshed.

[1585] Fairly tired.

[1586] If you had no commitments the next day, what time when you go to bed compared to your usual bedtime?

[1587] Oh, an hour later.

[1588] Okay.

[1589] Is that an option?

[1590] Yeah.

[1591] One to two hours later.

[1592] Yep, one to two hours later.

[1593] That's bullseye.

[1594] Sometimes it's 90 minutes and it feels so good.

[1595] good to me. Be up late.

[1596] Like on a Friday night.

[1597] Normally I have to be book on eyes closed by 1114 because I wake up at 7 .14.

[1598] Yeah.

[1599] And Friday night when I don't have to wake up to take the kids to go, I'm like, I might watch a little more TV.

[1600] Oh, my God.

[1601] But the problem is how are you, maybe this is because you have to get up for the kids so your body's more regulated.

[1602] Mm -hmm.

[1603] But my.

[1604] By the way, that is solely what it is.

[1605] Because before kids, I was not nearly as predictable.

[1606] It was all over the map.

[1607] Right.

[1608] And also, like, I can't control it.

[1609] It's not like if I, okay, I got to go to bed at eight tonight.

[1610] I can't.

[1611] I get in bed, but I'm not asleep until midnight.

[1612] Totally.

[1613] But I'm taking sleep aids, non -narcotic.

[1614] Right.

[1615] Non -narcotic.

[1616] And yeah, back before I had commitments, if I was able to sleep for a very long time, I would embrace that because I don't sleep very well.

[1617] Yeah, exactly.

[1618] So, you know, every, like, fourth day my body's finally like, we need to put you unconscious.

[1619] for nine hours, ten hours, and I would cling to that.

[1620] Yeah.

[1621] But I don't have that option anymore.

[1622] That makes sense.

[1623] Yeah.

[1624] Okay.

[1625] You have decided to do physical exercise.

[1626] A friend suggests that you do this for one hour, twice a week.

[1627] And the best time for him is between 7 and 8 a .m. Baring in mind nothing but your own internal clock, how do you think you would perform?

[1628] That's too early for me. Okay.

[1629] So would find it difficult or would find it very difficult?

[1630] would be in reasonable form Would be in good form Reasonable form Oh, okay And not difficult at all No I can't answer that and seem humble Okay, I'll leave it You picked it Yeah I'm in good physical shape Yeah You can look at me at 3 a .m. It's not talking about your shape It's like But that has a huge impact Like if you can barely do the workout Then yeah the time of the day Is really significant But you can wake me up at 3 a .m. I can go hike Griffith in 45 minutes I've been practicing.

[1631] Okay.

[1632] At approximately what time in the evening do you feel tired and as a result in need of sleep?

[1633] Okay, so never.

[1634] Is that an option?

[1635] I never feel tired.

[1636] When I feel tired, it's so exciting.

[1637] Whatever the least amount is, though.

[1638] Well, it's not, no, it's approximately what time.

[1639] So it's between 8 and 9, 9 and 10, 15, 10, 15, and 12 .45 a .m., 12 .45 and 2 a .m. Boom.

[1640] That's the window all actually feel tiredness.

[1641] Okay.

[1642] That's why I want to sleep at 2 to 10 because then I actually feel tired.

[1643] Yeah.

[1644] I want to sleep 2 to 10.

[1645] You said what?

[1646] 1 to 9 now, yeah, yeah.

[1647] Okay.

[1648] You want to be at your peak performance for a test that you know is going to be mentally exhausting and will last two hours.

[1649] Oh, it's too long for a test.

[1650] You are entirely free to plan your day, considering only your internal clock.

[1651] Which one of the four testing times would you choose?

[1652] 8 to 10 a .m. 11 to 1 p .m. 3 to 5 p .m. 7 to 9 p .m. 11.

[1653] That's our, that's our sweet spot recording time.

[1654] Yeah.

[1655] Yeah.

[1656] If you got into bed at 11 p .m., how tired would you be?

[1657] Not at all tired.

[1658] Yeah.

[1659] For some reason, you have gone to bed several hours later than usual, but there is no need to get up at any particular time in the next morning.

[1660] Which one of the following are you most likely to do?

[1661] We'll wake up at usual time, but we'll not fall back.

[1662] asleep.

[1663] We'll wake up at usual time and we'll doze thereafter.

[1664] We'll wake up at usual time, but will fall asleep again.

[1665] We'll not wake up until later than usual.

[1666] Number one.

[1667] Not fall back asleep, but wake up at usual time.

[1668] Correct.

[1669] Yeah, I never fall back asleep once I'm up.

[1670] You won't sleep.

[1671] I wish.

[1672] No. Once I'm up, I'm up.

[1673] But I'm also...

[1674] No, but will you, will you wake up naturally a little bit later?

[1675] Not significantly no. Okay.

[1676] One night, you have to remain awake between four to six.

[1677] I am to carry out a night watch.

[1678] Ooh.

[1679] This is what I just say that.

[1680] Oh, this is due to the hike you woke me out for.

[1681] Right, but this is a night watch.

[1682] Yeah, I can't go to sleep on your watch.

[1683] You have no time commitments the next day.

[1684] Which one of the alternatives would suit you best?

[1685] Would not go to bed until the watch was over.

[1686] Ugh.

[1687] Would take a nap before and sleep after.

[1688] Would take a good sleep before and nap after.

[1689] A good sleep before.

[1690] sleep.

[1691] Would sleep only before the watch?

[1692] Number one, I would, I would just stay up.

[1693] Till 6 a .m.?

[1694] Yeah, I love that.

[1695] If I ever, anytime I have an excuse to go through the night, I'd love it.

[1696] It happens so infrequently.

[1697] It's generally like when I'm driving or something.

[1698] Oh my.

[1699] God.

[1700] God.

[1701] I would take a good sleep before and the nap after.

[1702] A good sleep.

[1703] Really, I would take a good sleep before and a good sleep after.

[1704] Yeah.

[1705] Okay.

[1706] You have to do two hours of hard physical work.

[1707] You are entirely free to plan your day.

[1708] Considering only your internal clock, which one of the following times would you choose?

[1709] I kind of already asked us, didn't they?

[1710] No, that was for, that was a test.

[1711] Yeah, mental.

[1712] This is physical exertion.

[1713] I guess, yeah, just for me, they peak at the same time.

[1714] Okay, so 11 to 1?

[1715] Yeah.

[1716] You have decided to do physical exercise.

[1717] Wait, I already...

[1718] What?

[1719] They're going to have you do it again.

[1720] You've decided to do physical exercise.

[1721] A friend suggests that you do this for one hour twice a week.

[1722] The best time for her...

[1723] Oh, the best time for her is between 10 and 11 p .m. Bearing in mind only your internal clock, how well do you think you'd perform?

[1724] Would be in good form, would be in reasonable form, would find it difficult, we'll find it very difficult.

[1725] Reasonable form.

[1726] I'm sorry.

[1727] I'm sorry.

[1728] I don't want to lie to make you happy.

[1729] Hold on a second.

[1730] That answer can't shock you.

[1731] I said you could wake me up at 4 in the morning to hike.

[1732] So why on earth would 10 to 11 be bad?

[1733] We already know the answer to that.

[1734] But you're still disappointed.

[1735] This is a test where it's just like how many times can you disappoint someone with the exact same information.

[1736] Suppose you can choose your own work hours.

[1737] Assume that you work a five -hour day, including breaks.

[1738] Your job is interesting.

[1739] Wow.

[1740] And you're paid based on your performance.

[1741] Oh, my God.

[1742] This is it.

[1743] At approximately what time when you...

[1744] Why don't they just say you're a host of armchair expert?

[1745] At approximately, what time would you choose to begin?

[1746] Five hours starting at...

[1747] 11.

[1748] Five hours, ten.

[1749] Okay.

[1750] So between nine and two, that's the options.

[1751] Wait to start?

[1752] That's a big window.

[1753] That's five hours.

[1754] No, that's the time frame.

[1755] Between nine and two.

[1756] It says at approximately what time would you choose to begin.

[1757] Oh, right.

[1758] Okay, so nine.

[1759] Five hours starting between nine and two.

[1760] What's the next?

[1761] Five hours starting between two and five, hours starting between five and four a .m. Five hours starting between 8 a .m. and 9 a .m. 5 hours starting between 4 a .m. and 8 a .m. I guess the first one.

[1762] Was that 9 .2?

[1763] 9 .m. and 2.

[1764] That's the one that has 11 or 10 in there.

[1765] Although that's weird because that's a five -hour increment.

[1766] So that's very confusing.

[1767] Poor question.

[1768] No, they probably have data that that's a similar energy thing.

[1769] Okay.

[1770] But at approximately what time of day do you usually feel your best?

[1771] 11 a .m. Oh, my God.

[1772] Yeah.

[1773] The options are weird, but I do, they're specific.

[1774] So it must mean something.

[1775] It's one is between 5 and 8 a .m. 2 is between 8 and 10 a .m. 3 is between 10 and 5.

[1776] 10 a .m. and 5 p .m. This is not.

[1777] That is crazy.

[1778] The one window is 3 hours.

[1779] The next is 2.

[1780] The next is 6.

[1781] And you think that means there's a flaw.

[1782] And I think that means there's actual signs around that grouping of time.

[1783] Yeah, they just generalized that big grouping together.

[1784] That means something.

[1785] because number two only had a two hour window.

[1786] I take number two.

[1787] I take door number two.

[1788] What?

[1789] Because the third option was crazy.

[1790] The third option is your...

[1791] Is that what I like?

[1792] Yeah.

[1793] I'm picking the third.

[1794] Because now you just start trying to be stubborn.

[1795] I'm not.

[1796] One hears about morning types and evening types.

[1797] Which one of these types do you consider yourself to be?

[1798] Evening.

[1799] Definitely an evening type.

[1800] I'm just trying to think of what the answers to that question could be.

[1801] what do you mean people are either morning people or evening people would you describe yourself as a loves bicycles B performs best at noon C loves popsicles what you even do you get what I'm saying Rob yeah yeah okay you do what is he saying the answer is too random to yeah but nothing about I know I get what you're saying also.

[1802] He's right on the fence.

[1803] This poor guy, he has to sit in between the spectrum every day.

[1804] It makes sense.

[1805] Okay.

[1806] Your score's 43.

[1807] Blah.

[1808] Okay.

[1809] That's not even a D. Your morningness, evening.

[1810] This type is considered to be intermediate.

[1811] Oh, my God.

[1812] That was a long walk to find.

[1813] Right.

[1814] Right.

[1815] The middle.

[1816] Okay.

[1817] Morningness evening, the score is ran from 16 to 86.

[1818] Scores of 41 and below indicate evening types.

[1819] Oh, you're close to that.

[1820] Cusp.

[1821] scores of 59 and above indicate morning types scores between 42 to 58 indicate intermediate your score allows us to estimate when your brain begins to produce the nighttime hormone melatonin which normally occurs between two to three hours before you are ready to fall asleep we estimate that your melatonin onset occurs at about 10 .30 p .m. We estimate that your quote natural bedtime is about 12 .15 a .m. Oh, okay.

[1822] And now you love it.

[1823] school and see if they can move the start time.

[1824] There you go.

[1825] All right.

[1826] So that was that quiz.

[1827] Let's see what else I have here.

[1828] Okay.

[1829] The famous art piece, the cup that has fur, is by Merritt Oppenheim.

[1830] Furline teacup it's perhaps the single most notorious surrealist object.

[1831] It's subtle perversity was inspired by subtle perversity.

[1832] Yeah.

[1833] Ooh.

[1834] It's subtle perversity.

[1835] That's you.

[1836] Okay, this is great.

[1837] I'm overt perversity.

[1838] Mm -hmm.

[1839] You're subtle perversity.

[1840] Yeah.

[1841] You're pervy.

[1842] You like poop and stuff.

[1843] Stop.

[1844] What?

[1845] I hate poop.

[1846] Oh, my God.

[1847] You like throw up.

[1848] You want your lovers to throw up.

[1849] Just depends who's poop.

[1850] Thank God I can just cut it.

[1851] It's subtle perversity was inspired by a conversation between Oppenheim, Pablo Picasso, and the photographer Dora Marr at a Paris Cafe.

[1852] This is it.

[1853] Cafe Flora.

[1854] Oh, ooh.

[1855] So gross.

[1856] Yeah.

[1857] Okay, this is the flower poopie.

[1858] What?

[1859] Flower puppy.

[1860] There was a bit of your subtle perversity.

[1861] No, Callie Max, and I call it the flower poopie.

[1862] Okay.

[1863] Because there's a documentary on art and when the guy had an accent and a white person accent.

[1864] Oh, okay.

[1865] And they said flower.

[1866] So you guys had a good laugh at the white man. Yep, I sure did.

[1867] Ha, ha, ha, white man. And they are real flowers and they get.

[1868] changed out.

[1869] Oh, my gosh.

[1870] That's an expensive art piece to own.

[1871] Oh, no. You want to know how much it costs?

[1872] No, I don't.

[1873] That thing's valueless to me. That's homework.

[1874] I loved it.

[1875] It was beautiful.

[1876] Oh, it was beautiful.

[1877] It was great to witness it, to spectate, but to be the owner of it and have to maintain it?

[1878] No, thank you.

[1879] Fifty -five million dollars.

[1880] Is what?

[1881] High -end estimate suggests it would sell.

[1882] Of the cup or the dog?

[1883] The dog.

[1884] Oh.

[1885] The dog.

[1886] Well, that makes sense.

[1887] That's also Coons.

[1888] Are waiting.

[1889] Yeah.

[1890] It is Coons?

[1891] The flower poopie is He had a sculpture Similar that sold for 58 million What if when the greedy pig got excited He just said it out Let me send you something My only phone except Except Oh my I just sent Dax a picture of me in front of the flower Poohie At first this is hard to tell who's who It's me and Callie I know I know I didn't even look at the flower puppy or monica.

[1892] I didn't even look at the flower puppy.

[1893] Why would I ever look at the flower puppy?

[1894] There's two beautiful women in front of the flower puppy.

[1895] But from back, initially, you can't see any skin tones.

[1896] It's a black and white photo.

[1897] You're on the right, but it takes a second, which I would have never, because you guys from the front so distinct.

[1898] Yep.

[1899] I didn't realize Kelly was shorter than you.

[1900] She's not.

[1901] She's not.

[1902] than me. That's a weird angle, I guess.

[1903] Forced perspective.

[1904] Yeah.

[1905] Optical illusion.

[1906] But also, I mean, she has white skin.

[1907] It is a black and white picture.

[1908] But it's hard to tell.

[1909] Yeah.

[1910] It's hard to tell who's who.

[1911] I think it's hard to tell because my hair looks really good in this picture.

[1912] Well, it's also up in a bun.

[1913] Yeah, but it's like a really good bun.

[1914] Uh -huh.

[1915] By the way, it looks like they this sculpture was due for a flower change.

[1916] No. When you guys arrived.

[1917] No, no. Doesn't it look like half of them are dead?

[1918] No. That's just the color.

[1919] It looks like the dog has mange.

[1920] You know how that's a thing.

[1921] Dogs have mange.

[1922] I know.

[1923] But it's because it's a black and white picture and it's the discoloration.

[1924] Like, look at this one with the color.

[1925] See how the dark pink.

[1926] That's why.

[1927] Yeah, it really does something.

[1928] Yeah.

[1929] Extraordinary.

[1930] This is a great photo.

[1931] It looks like you guys are in Paris in the 50s.

[1932] And I love it.

[1933] I can't believe Kelly's someone shorter than you.

[1934] This is a huge reveal.

[1935] Is she shorter than money?

[1936] No. By a lot.

[1937] I'm going to send you the picture.

[1938] Rob.

[1939] You can be the joke for yourself.

[1940] Who's who?

[1941] I mean, you already heard me saying what, but Is it confusing to you?

[1942] I haven't got it yet.

[1943] Okay.

[1944] Oh, yeah, that is.

[1945] That is confusing.

[1946] You don't immediately like...

[1947] No, no. I mean, clearly she's on the right, but you don't immediately...

[1948] But also clearly not.

[1949] Well, black and white.

[1950] You never have your hair up in a bun either.

[1951] You were only doing that in Europe?

[1952] No, I wear my hair up all the time.

[1953] In a bun?

[1954] Yeah.

[1955] Are you sure?

[1956] Not that much the way it is.

[1957] Yes.

[1958] This is a little higher bun.

[1959] This is a Euro look.

[1960] I think you're feeling the...

[1961] No, I do do do it.

[1962] It's just not.

[1963] Not every day.

[1964] You gotta post this picture now, Rob, try to remember that.

[1965] She's so short.

[1966] I don't know she's short.

[1967] She's like, judging from this and knowing that you're 5 '1, I'm now know Kelly is 4 '10.

[1968] When people want to know what it's like to be the only woman around men.

[1969] Oh, you got to frame everything with your sexism.

[1970] Yeah, it is.

[1971] No, if you were a boy here and you sent Rob and I a picture of you and another boy, and you were a boy who was 5 -1, and the other boy was smaller than you in the photo.

[1972] I'm not 5 -1 even.

[1973] I'm trying to build you up.

[1974] You're 5 .5.

[1975] Yeah.

[1976] 5 .6.

[1977] 5 .5, which is 5 .5 and a half inch tall.

[1978] Yeah.

[1979] Right.

[1980] Which, I guess, puts Callie at 4 .10 and a half.

[1981] Point is, if you were a boy, Monica, in fact, it'd be even worse.

[1982] Whatever.

[1983] I just sometimes, like, just not, there's too much pile on.

[1984] Just shut up.

[1985] You know what you're saying.

[1986] Just shut up.

[1987] She's 5 .2 or 5 .3.

[1988] By the way, I taught the girls, like, five days ago.

[1989] I don't shut up.

[1990] I grow up.

[1991] I want to look at you.

[1992] I throw up.

[1993] Your mom comes around the corner.

[1994] and licks it up.

[1995] Ew.

[1996] They had never heard that.

[1997] I've never heard that either.

[1998] What?

[1999] Oh, Kristen and I both knew it inside now.

[2000] When you're on the playground, someone says, shut up.

[2001] You go, I don't shut up.

[2002] I grow up.

[2003] And when I look at you, I throw up.

[2004] I've never heard that.

[2005] And then an advanced add -on was, and your mom comes around the corner and licks it up.

[2006] That's disgusting.

[2007] Yes, it's supposed to absolutely annihilate the person that told you to shut up.

[2008] It's your defense against shut up.

[2009] And then they hear that, and they're like, oh, gross, I guess I'll never say shut up to them again.

[2010] It's effective.

[2011] Wow.

[2012] Mm -hmm.

[2013] Someone says, shut up.

[2014] I say.

[2015] What do you say?

[2016] Let's try it.

[2017] Okay.

[2018] You start talking.

[2019] Okay.

[2020] Is William...

[2021] Shut up.

[2022] Hey, that's so...

[2023] That hurt my feelings really bad.

[2024] Didn't I tell you to shut up?

[2025] Oh, that hurt.

[2026] That was so mean and actually, when I was saying it hurt.

[2027] My eyes are welling up.

[2028] I know.

[2029] That was really, really, really mean.

[2030] Good acting, though.

[2031] Thank you.

[2032] Oh, that one...

[2033] He's been meaning, he's been wanting to say that for five years.

[2034] That's how I just found out I was a good person, because that hurt.

[2035] The first shut up I love just because I think I have a funny shut up if I want to have one.

[2036] Go ahead.

[2037] Let me just hit you a shut up one more time.

[2038] You want to do this again?

[2039] No, just the first part.

[2040] Okay.

[2041] And then I'll play along with your part.

[2042] Evolution of an app.

[2043] Shut up.

[2044] Hey, what?

[2045] I was just talking.

[2046] Why'd you do that?

[2047] Well, I thought when you were talking, you were trying to, you were trying to.

[2048] to minimize me. And then so I overreacted and I should have just asked you to stop talking about me, but instead I said shut up.

[2049] And I apologize, but I learned a lot from this interaction.

[2050] Thank you.

[2051] I'm going to tell the teacher anyway.

[2052] Wait, no. Do you think that's a good shut up, though?

[2053] Yeah.

[2054] Can you hit me with a shut up?

[2055] Anyways, I walk into aisle 6.

[2056] I'm expecting to find the dog food.

[2057] That's always where the dog food's at, right?

[2058] Well, when I look up and there's paper towels I'm missing.

[2059] You're cute.

[2060] I can only improv for so long.

[2061] Are you serious?

[2062] Anyways, have you been to Gelson's lately?

[2063] Apparently, they've absolutely juggled all the aisles.

[2064] Shut up.

[2065] Did you say something?

[2066] No. I thought I heard something, but I didn't hear.

[2067] No, I didn't.

[2068] I wasn't talking to you.

[2069] Oh, anyways.

[2070] Okay, great.

[2071] I got to go.

[2072] I don't tell people to shut up.

[2073] Your shut up is like an excuse me. I know, because I don't feel right doing it.

[2074] I'm going to do yours now.

[2075] Okay.

[2076] Okay.

[2077] Okay.

[2078] Okay.

[2079] So you are 42 on the...

[2080] Shut up.

[2081] Um, shut up?

[2082] Excuse me?

[2083] I know.

[2084] I don't feel...

[2085] Seen?

[2086] This is what women do.

[2087] Oh, you're right.

[2088] The fucking lecture on gender equality.

[2089] It is.

[2090] It won't stop.

[2091] All right.

[2092] Hit me. Hit me. No, fight back.

[2093] You're a fighter.

[2094] You're a rascal.

[2095] I'm not.

[2096] Women can't fight back.

[2097] They...

[2098] Women get tired of fighting after a while and then do just get railroaded.

[2099] Yeah.

[2100] Yeah.

[2101] This episode was brought to you by misogyny.

[2102] It's everywhere, folks.

[2103] Look around.

[2104] Happy holidays.

[2105] You're probably experiencing it right now.

[2106] Okay.

[2107] William James, yes, is the father of psychology.

[2108] And that's pretty much.

[2109] Well, I looked into the new coaster that comes off the tracks.

[2110] That's not real.

[2111] but I think there is a patent.

[2112] Oh, patent pending.

[2113] Mm -hmm.

[2114] Disney, it says, has a patent for a roller coaster that jumps across open space.

[2115] But then I click and it says, sorry, this page isn't available.

[2116] Okay.

[2117] So I think it's just fake.

[2118] I do too.

[2119] Yeah.

[2120] I think it was just supposed to get everyone excited on the internet and they succeeded.

[2121] Yeah.

[2122] It really did.

[2123] Oh, William James and Wilhelm von.

[2124] They're both the founders of psychology.

[2125] Wilhelm Wolt?

[2126] Yeah.

[2127] Two men working in the 19th century are generally credited as being the founders of psychology as a science and academic discipline.

[2128] That was distinct from philosophy.

[2129] Their names were Wilhelm Woltz and William James.

[2130] You know, I think about Freud sometimes.

[2131] What are your thoughts on Freud?

[2132] I don't think of him much because so many of his theories are outdated and have been proven wrong.

[2133] If I'm right, and I am so ill -versed in this, but I want to say a lot of the criticism revolves women, rightly so.

[2134] Oh, yeah.

[2135] Oh, like the adipat.

[2136] No, that stuff's fine.

[2137] It's the hysteria.

[2138] That like there's all this like hysteria stuff and sexual, being related to their sexuality and all this different stuff.

[2139] I think my conclusion or I think my current thoughts are people are really, actually pretty good at figuring out their brain and they can see in other people's brains similarities with theirs and you can carve out some truths about your brain I was just with somebody and they said what's an opinion you have that you knows on the other side of the political spectrum it's a fun question I said well I have a lot I guess I'm really a centrist at this point but at any rate he said okay mine is is, I don't think men and women can have plutonic relationships.

[2140] He says that.

[2141] Yeah.

[2142] And I said, well, what I think would be braver of you to say is that you can't have.

[2143] Exactly.

[2144] Exactly.

[2145] And then maybe even further, which would be even harder to admit and to be brave about, would be to say, you're not interested in women unless they are attractive.

[2146] Mm. And in his defense, he didn't, like, immediately get defensive over.

[2147] He was kind of like, huh.

[2148] But I guess I walked away from that going, that is human nature.

[2149] So because he can't and he doesn't think he's abnormal, he naturally assumes all men are that way.

[2150] And I got really, it's so funny because generally if someone says something and I ruminate on it, I know one of the sources of rumination is generally like it triggered an insecurity of mine or it, you know.

[2151] And so that's not the case with this one.

[2152] I have so many female friends and so many plutonic friends.

[2153] It's crazy.

[2154] So that's, I know it's not that.

[2155] The other thing I'll get locked into is justice.

[2156] So if I feel like there's something kind of cosmically unjust about an opinion, I'll kind of stew on it, right?

[2157] And the way I stewed on this was like, okay, so if men and women can't have plutonic relationships, what does that do for women in the workplace?

[2158] You have to be friends with your coworkers if you want to advance.

[2159] in any organization.

[2160] Half of the stuff that will be generated will be done at a bar, out at a fucking event, being social, being friends.

[2161] Even just in a writer's room.

[2162] Basically, then what?

[2163] Women are completely fucked in the workplace, given that men have the power and men can't be friends with them.

[2164] Like, that opinion has implicit in it a complete dead end for women in the workplace.

[2165] Yeah.

[2166] Additionally, I think that opinion is about only three steps remove from women have to cover themselves up completely because us men can't control ourselves so it's on you to cover your whole face and body it's it's only three steps away from that no but now you're on my side of the misogyny spectrum you're defending women which you should that's right and that is what a lot of women are up against for sure I agree with that and it's shitty I guess maybe he's he can't have like a close, like a close relationship with a woman and not...

[2167] It was really clear what he was saying.

[2168] Men can't have plutonic relationships with women.

[2169] They'll want to have sex with them.

[2170] Right.

[2171] There wasn't any nuance to what he was saying.

[2172] But there might have been in a workplace.

[2173] Like, taking it into a workplace might be a little different.

[2174] But then I would say that's a cop -out.

[2175] You can't say that that applies to life.

[2176] And then when you walk through the door, doors of a corporation that vanishes.

[2177] You either think that's true or you don't.

[2178] Yeah.

[2179] There's no like magic force field around a business.

[2180] Well, there is often.

[2181] That's why there's like HR.

[2182] I mean, you do often in most workplaces have some boundaries around your relationships.

[2183] I'm saying it can't change who you are.

[2184] No, no, it can't.

[2185] But maybe I guess the thought could be you could still have a good working relationship with someone and not be attracted to them and also not like they're not it's not a relationship you're pursuing so much as a work well exactly and i think that would be that person's argument yeah but i call bullshit on that because you're actually friends with the people you work with and in fact you're friends with the people you do the best work with friendship it's not a work relationship you're friends people gravitate to one another they develop friendships they eat lunch together at work well it's also how you climb a ladder it's friendship so yeah it's all relationships so if if if the two can't have relationships unless they're fucking.

[2186] That's a big problem for the workplace.

[2187] I agree.

[2188] I totally agree.

[2189] Yeah, that's bad.

[2190] And I do think a lot of men do feel that way.

[2191] Well, Mike Pence certainly does.

[2192] Yeah.

[2193] That's who you're talking about, right?

[2194] I was hanging out with Mike Pence.

[2195] We had grabbed some food and then we were driving in the car.

[2196] Yeah, anyway.

[2197] Anywho.

[2198] The weather outside is frightful.

[2199] But the fire is so delightful I'm going to look over at the coffee machine Oh, okay I brought some corn for popping Nope, that's not the right time Not there yet Let it snow Let it snow, let it snow Is it snowing anywhere right now In this great United States?

[2200] Yes, it is It is?

[2201] Yeah, there is absolutely nothing fun to do So we'll watch this corn pop Life in the 30s is a drag.

[2202] All we have is fire and corn.

[2203] All right.

[2204] Oh, cute, love you.

[2205] Love you do.

[2206] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[2208] or on Apple Podcasts.

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