Speaker 1: And now, o muses dwellers in the mansions of Olympus,
Speaker 1: tell me for your goddesses and are in all places,
Speaker 1: so that you see all things, while we know nothing
Speaker 1: but by report? Who were the chiefs and princes of
Speaker 1: the Danaans. As for the common soldiers, they were so
Speaker 1: that I could not name every single one of them,
Speaker 1: though I had ten tongues, and though my voice failed,
Speaker 1: not and my heart were of bronze within me, unless you,
Speaker 1: o Olympian muses, daughters of Egists bearing Jove, were to
Speaker 1: recount them to me. Nevertheless, I will tell the captains
Speaker 1: of the ships and all the fleet together, Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your mind from How Stuffworks dot Com. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to stuff to Blow your mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going
Speaker 1: to be taught talking about lists. So that opening was
Speaker 1: from the Samuel Butler translation of the Iliad, and it
Speaker 1: proceeds a section of the Iliad that's often known as
Speaker 1: the Catalog of Ships. If you remember, Iliot has a
Speaker 1: lot of sections where it kind of lists things. This
Speaker 1: is like the most famous list in it um. It's
Speaker 1: this long list of the ships and the leaders of
Speaker 1: the Achaean expeditionary force called the Denayans in that passage,
Speaker 1: and so to get a sense of the many items
Speaker 1: of the lists that follows, I think maybe we should
Speaker 1: we should read a couple more of them. They've got
Speaker 1: a lot of tricky Greek names, but we'll do our
Speaker 1: best for them. I'll take the first one. Okay, Escalaphus
Speaker 1: and Almana, sons of Mars, led by people that dwelt
Speaker 1: in Asplodon and or common Us, the realm of Minnius.
Speaker 1: A Styachy, a noble maiden, bore them in the house
Speaker 1: of act Or, son of Asius, for she had gone
Speaker 1: with Mars secretly into an upper chamber, and he had
Speaker 1: lain with her. With these there came thirty ships. It
Speaker 1: sounds a big gossip, he doesn't. I thought, you're just
Speaker 1: naming ships, and now you're you're having to tell me
Speaker 1: who's sleeping with who as well. Well, they're naming like
Speaker 1: the captains and the numbers of people and where they
Speaker 1: came from. But they also got to slip in a
Speaker 1: little bit of like a divine rumor. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: it continues. The fierce Abantes held Via with its cities Calcus,
Speaker 1: Rita Historia, rich in vines, Corinthus upon the sea, and
Speaker 1: the rock pushed town of Beam. With them were also
Speaker 1: the men of Caristus and Steira. Elephin Or of the
Speaker 1: race of Mars, was in command of these. He was
Speaker 1: son of Calcodon and chief over all the Abantes. With
Speaker 1: him they came fleet afoot and wearing their long hair, behind,
Speaker 1: brave warriors who had ever strived to tear open the
Speaker 1: corsets of their foes with their long ash and spears.
Speaker 1: Of these there came fifty ships, and they that held
Speaker 1: the strong city of Athens, the people of great Erecttheus,
Speaker 1: who was born of the soil itself. But Jove's daughter
Speaker 1: Minerva fostered them and established him at Athens in her
Speaker 1: own rich sanctuary. There year by year the Athenian youths
Speaker 1: worship him with sacrifices of bulls and rams. These were
Speaker 1: commanded by Menestheus, son of Peteus. No man living could
Speaker 1: equal him in the marshaling of chariots and foot soldiers.
Speaker 1: Nestor could alone rival him, for he was older. With him,
Speaker 1: there came fifty ships, but there are a lot of
Speaker 1: these in the poem. Uh. This passage in the Iliad
Speaker 1: is interesting because there's a lot of debate about its
Speaker 1: origin and authorship, like is it part of the original poem?
Speaker 1: Is it a later insertion? Is it maybe a gradual
Speaker 1: accretion as audiences of the epic song in every locale
Speaker 1: wanted to hear their own local tribe and legendary hero
Speaker 1: incorporated into the story. But it's also something that calls
Speaker 1: attention to itself simply be cause it is a list.
Speaker 1: It's a list of so it's a list and accounting
Speaker 1: of things, a list of numbers of ships, of their commanders,
Speaker 1: of the numbers of soldiers they brought. And it is
Speaker 1: right in the middle of a poem. Uh. And we
Speaker 1: might not often think of like a list of forces
Speaker 1: as having a very like literary or poetic quality, but
Speaker 1: I guess they're They're also scholars who would disagree with that.
Speaker 1: For example, Umberto Echo, the medievalist and Simiatitian and author
Speaker 1: including of the Name of the Rose, which I just
Speaker 1: read for the first time this year, and I loved. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but Echo loved lists. He was pretty much obsessed with lists,
Speaker 1: and he clearly considered them not like a deviation from
Speaker 1: poetic form, but a really valuable form of art and
Speaker 1: object of study, So much so that in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: when Echo was invited to curate an exhibition at the Louver,
Speaker 1: the subject of the exhibition he put together was the list.
Speaker 1: I wish I could have seen that, and umberto Echo
Speaker 1: curated exhibit on lists. But he was interviewed that year
Speaker 1: by Der Spiegel and ended up talking a lot about
Speaker 1: his fascination with the power of lists. In the interview,
Speaker 1: one of the central examples he talks about is the
Speaker 1: catalog of ships from the Iliad. So Echo says in
Speaker 1: the interview, quote take Homer for example. In the Iliad,
Speaker 1: he tries to convey an impression of the size of
Speaker 1: the Greek army. At first, he uses similes, and he
Speaker 1: quotes as when some great forest fire is raging upon
Speaker 1: a mountaintop and its light is seen afar. Even so
Speaker 1: as they marched, the gleam of their armor flashed up
Speaker 1: onto the firmament of heaven. But Echo continues, but he
Speaker 1: isn't satisfied. He can't find the right metaphor, and so
Speaker 1: he begs the muses to help him. Then he hits
Speaker 1: on the idea of naming many many generals and their ships.
Speaker 1: And then later in the interview, he says, quote Homer's
Speaker 1: work hits again and again on the tow posts of
Speaker 1: the inexpressible. People will always do that. We have always
Speaker 1: been fascinated by infinite space, by endless stars, and by galaxies.
Speaker 1: Upon alexis, how does a person feel when looking at
Speaker 1: the sky, He thinks that he doesn't have enough tongues
Speaker 1: to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopped
Speaker 1: describing the sky, simply listing what they see. Lovers are
Speaker 1: in the same position. They experience a deficiency of language,
Speaker 1: a lack of words to express their feelings. But do
Speaker 1: lovers ever stop trying to do so? They create lists.
Speaker 1: Your eyes are so beautiful, and so is your mouth
Speaker 1: and your collarbone. One could go into great detail. And
Speaker 1: I think there's something interesting in what Echo says there.
Speaker 1: What he says makes me think of other poems like
Speaker 1: the Song of Solomon and the Hebrew Bible and uh
Speaker 1: like you know, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, how do I love
Speaker 1: thee Let me count the ways I love you in
Speaker 1: the morning and in the afternoon. I'll love you in
Speaker 1: the evening underneath the moon. Oh yeah, I will not
Speaker 1: eat it with a goat them, eat it on a boat,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Well, even in Sam I Am and the
Speaker 1: Green Eggs and Ham, I think there's something going on
Speaker 1: there with the use of a list to try to
Speaker 1: convey what cannot be expressed in in simple language. The
Speaker 1: idea that, like one's discussed, is without bounds. You know,
Speaker 1: you have infinite disgust for the idea of green eggs
Speaker 1: and ham, and so all you can do is start
Speaker 1: listing all the ways you would not eat it, right,
Speaker 1: But then ultimately, like each one is, is each argument
Speaker 1: against trying the green eggs and ham is just as
Speaker 1: ridiculous is the last, because the whole argument is we'll
Speaker 1: try it, give it a try, and eventually he does.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's it's it's there's a lot of listing
Speaker 1: in that particular, But there's a lot of listing, I guess,
Speaker 1: and kind of lyrical um fiction, lyrical children's books especially.
Speaker 1: Another example that came up they will probably bring up
Speaker 1: again is the is the night before Christmas the naming
Speaker 1: of the reindeer, Like all the reindeer must be named
Speaker 1: and listed as part of this. There's there's almost kind
Speaker 1: of a magical spell quality to it. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the recitation of figures of qualities. Another one I think
Speaker 1: of a great list in in poetic form that sort
Speaker 1: of conjures a magical environment of inexpressible quality is The
Speaker 1: Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti. Yeah, that's a fun one.
Speaker 1: We actually helped record a reading of the Goblin Market
Speaker 1: for movie. It was then food Stuff, now known as
Speaker 1: a Saver the podcast hosted by a Lauren Vogel bomb
Speaker 1: In any Reese Well have to include a link to
Speaker 1: that on the landing page for this episode. That was
Speaker 1: a really fun episode. But it what what? What is?
Speaker 1: What happens in that poem? So the basic plot of
Speaker 1: the poem is it's about some a pair of sisters
Speaker 1: who are corrupted by these goblins who are selling sort
Speaker 1: of supernatural fruits at a market. But there there are
Speaker 1: these long sections where the goblins are just listing all
Speaker 1: of the fruits, and it goes on and on and
Speaker 1: on more and more fruits, and it eventually has this
Speaker 1: cumulative quality where it suggests that the fruits are infinite. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are there are a lot of encind of this,
Speaker 1: a lot in uh, you know, rich descriptions of places
Speaker 1: and settings, um where where the author will just just
Speaker 1: dive in head first and just describing one thing after
Speaker 1: the other, just really really list the sights and sounds
Speaker 1: of a particular uh scene. Yeah, exactly. And so it's
Speaker 1: interesting that there's uh the use of lists and in
Speaker 1: the literary sense, I feel like has completely opposite usages
Speaker 1: in which it works both ways. One way is an
Speaker 1: author can use a list to sort of suggest infinity
Speaker 1: and inexpressibility, like qualities that are beyond measure and beyond
Speaker 1: counting can be suggested by listing. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you can use a list to start to make understandable
Speaker 1: and make manageable something that otherwise is is completely chaotic
Speaker 1: and doesn't make sense to you. Like another quote of
Speaker 1: Umberto Echoes in that interview is he says, quote, the
Speaker 1: list is the origin of culture. It's part of the
Speaker 1: history of art and literature. What does culture want to
Speaker 1: make infinity comprehensible? It wants to create order, not always
Speaker 1: but often. And how is a human being does one
Speaker 1: face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible
Speaker 1: through lists, through catalogs, through collections and museums and through
Speaker 1: encyclopedias and dictionaries. Well, certainly if you begin to list
Speaker 1: something and it gives you the ability to then break
Speaker 1: up that list into consumable parts. Like, for instance, the
Speaker 1: list of all organisms on the planet is an ongoing
Speaker 1: list that has not yet been finished. Uh, we continually
Speaker 1: add new species to it, and yet by subdividing that list,
Speaker 1: we have a really good idea of of what the
Speaker 1: basic shape of life on planet Earth consists of. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can construct an evolutionary tree by making lists of
Speaker 1: organisms and then listing their characteristics and then comparing your lists.
Speaker 1: You know, I think of making a list is often
Speaker 1: similar to um, there's a process at the beginning of
Speaker 1: cleaning a messy room, you know, where at first a
Speaker 1: mass is sort of a singular quality. It's just like
Speaker 1: a thing that you are faced with, and it has
Speaker 1: this unified evil, magic and aura that cannot be penetrated.
Speaker 1: And the best way to deal with it is start
Speaker 1: just sort of like making a catalog of Okay, what's
Speaker 1: actually here, and sometimes you'll make piles of things and stuff.
Speaker 1: Essentially you're sort of physically making a list out of
Speaker 1: individual elements. From what was originally just a mess. Oh absolutely,
Speaker 1: with a with a proper list of a task that
Speaker 1: would otherwise seem insurmountable can seem beatable. Be it something
Speaker 1: that does have a definite end to it, say, like
Speaker 1: a like a long legal process, like say an adoption process.
Speaker 1: That was my experience. It was a very very long
Speaker 1: process to reach the endpoint. But you know, you divided
Speaker 1: it up, and indeed the first step is just like, well,
Speaker 1: let's look at the list. Likewise, though, we also take
Speaker 1: this same thing and we apply it to such situations
Speaker 1: as say, human mortality. And if you take just the
Speaker 1: bucket list, well, not just that, but say Aubrey De
Speaker 1: Gray's approach to actual mortality, like, you know, how can
Speaker 1: we beat death? Well we can, Well, let's start by
Speaker 1: just dividing it up into winnable avenues, like winnable battles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even though so Aubrey de Gray, if you're not familiar,
Speaker 1: he's like a gerontologist and general a smart guy, I think,
Speaker 1: but he he's tried to address the problem of aging
Speaker 1: and said, hey, let's not treat this as an inevitability.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can scientifically beat aging and stop you know,
Speaker 1: death from Old Age, from Happening Um and the way
Speaker 1: he approached it. I think, though a lot of people
Speaker 1: disagree with his confidence in his you know, prediction that
Speaker 1: we can beat the problem. The way he approached it is,
Speaker 1: let's break death and aging down into a list of
Speaker 1: all of the things that go wrong. And that's a
Speaker 1: that's a brilliant way of looking at it. Even if
Speaker 1: he's wrong about what we can do. Just seeing the
Speaker 1: like actual number of problems in aging in new a
Speaker 1: rated and named it gives you suddenly this feeling of
Speaker 1: power over the problem that you didn't have before. Yeah said,
Speaker 1: you start thinking, well, maybe this wizardy looking guy does
Speaker 1: have a point. Maybe we can beat death death It
Speaker 1: isn't isn't that big of a deal. He does have
Speaker 1: a magnificent beard, he's like he's like a resputant of life.
Speaker 1: And so I think maybe this should lead us to
Speaker 1: make a distinction. That's an important distinction when it comes
Speaker 1: to lists. I was thinking about, like finite versus infinite games.
Speaker 1: There's also a big difference in in the way lists
Speaker 1: play roles in our lives depending on whether they're finite
Speaker 1: or infinite. Lists. Like we make finite lists of things.
Speaker 1: I think in order to better understand something, so like
Speaker 1: a list of organs in the human body. And then meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you make an infinite list in order to try to
Speaker 1: begin to address an infinite problem, like, you know, how
Speaker 1: do you express an unbounded feeling of love for somebody?
Speaker 1: You start listing the ways or how do you live
Speaker 1: your life? Well, one way to do that is to
Speaker 1: try to make it to do list. Ideally, a to
Speaker 1: do list is not something where you're like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: done with all my tasks and I can just stop
Speaker 1: living now. It's just something that you're trying to prioritize
Speaker 1: the whole future you have in front of you. I
Speaker 1: have to admit that the the idea of infinite lists
Speaker 1: here is is maybe a little confusing to me, because
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, like, is there really an infinite number of
Speaker 1: reasons that once they loves their spouse? I mean, there's
Speaker 1: there's probably a finite list of things. I mean, the
Speaker 1: the human experience is only so varied, right, Well, I
Speaker 1: mean you could keep breaking down reasons into smaller and
Speaker 1: smaller sub reasons. I guess, so, yeah, that's right. You
Speaker 1: could sort of of what you know, a foot race
Speaker 1: with Achilles. Yeah, you can pull that number off. I mean, likewise,
Speaker 1: you could say the stars in the sky, to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, the human experience, there's sort of a small
Speaker 1: eye infinity there, though of course there is there is
Speaker 1: there is a definite, finite number out there. So I mean,
Speaker 1: in the same way you could say there is no
Speaker 1: such thing is an infinite game, because eventually we'll have
Speaker 1: the heat death of the universe and nothing can go
Speaker 1: on forever. But I mean things that are things that
Speaker 1: are for your purposes infinite, like you never to do
Speaker 1: list is something you might cross all of the items
Speaker 1: off of, but that doesn't mean you've run out of
Speaker 1: things to do, all right, fair enough, fair enough. But
Speaker 1: then on on the other side of lists, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I often think about is how how
Speaker 1: funny it often is to me, just how funny listicals
Speaker 1: are to me. We've both worked in web publishing, and
Speaker 1: oh man, there was a period. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: listicles are actually still popular, like they do well on
Speaker 1: YouTube and end on, you know, on social media and
Speaker 1: all that. But but back in the day, I remember,
Speaker 1: especially like for Google Search and like homepage optimization, trying
Speaker 1: to make trying to make the house Stuff Works homepage clicky.
Speaker 1: It was. It was listicals all the way down. Oh yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and some of them are were quite good. I remember
Speaker 1: even when we're putting out a bunch of towing articles
Speaker 1: at the time, there was one top ten that they
Speaker 1: spun out of that effort to a top ten Heaviest
Speaker 1: Things Moved by Man, which is a fun little article. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, I mean I can enjoy good listical.
Speaker 1: I know, Robert. I think even the past expressed your
Speaker 1: love for for a good cracked listical, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have enjoyed some of some of those cracked listicals in
Speaker 1: the past. I also really like some of the um
Speaker 1: the ClickHole listicles. Those are amazing. Like I think it's
Speaker 1: like five or ten signs that your therapist is about
Speaker 1: to go to six flags after your session, you know,
Speaker 1: stuff like that I'm always on board for. Well, that's
Speaker 1: what ClickHole is great for, is like just highlighting the
Speaker 1: bear absurdity that lies underneath the Internet content strategies. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember back in the day, like around two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten, some of the listicles going up on Discovery
Speaker 1: and TLC were so funny to me. It was like
Speaker 1: it would be things, you know, like ten backyard games
Speaker 1: your Golden Retriever will love. Yeah, I think so. So
Speaker 1: there are a few different appealing aspects of the top ten, right,
Speaker 1: I Mean A big one is that it's easily absorbed,
Speaker 1: the ideas that I'm I'm not I'm in a hurry.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't even really want to read this article,
Speaker 1: but it's a top ten. So at the very least
Speaker 1: I could scan the ten items and I kind of
Speaker 1: instantly want to know what made the list and what didn't.
Speaker 1: I think that's very Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Scannability is a big part of it, right, especially with
Speaker 1: things that are because so there are different types of
Speaker 1: top ten's obviously or ten or list based things. Sometimes
Speaker 1: there are a process. For instance, the so many wiki
Speaker 1: how articles that are a list of ten steps to
Speaker 1: do something including there there. I found one the other
Speaker 1: day for faking your own death, so it's everything from
Speaker 1: fixing a toilet to faking your own death. My favorite
Speaker 1: eh how article of all time that I ever found,
Speaker 1: I think I checked recently. It's not still up, but
Speaker 1: it was how to pray for money. Um, yeah, so
Speaker 1: that so there's that area, and then there's the ranking
Speaker 1: of things like the ten best superhero movies, um or,
Speaker 1: and so you want to click on that because you
Speaker 1: just want to Maybe you're just you're comagined and you
Speaker 1: just want to notice what they didn't include and and
Speaker 1: shame them for what they did include. Well, the top
Speaker 1: ten ranking thing is I think popular for multiple reasons.
Speaker 1: Number one, I mean, humans, even though we don't like
Speaker 1: to admit this, we clearly look to other people to
Speaker 1: form our own tastes, right, you know, we we start
Speaker 1: to think, I should have my own ideas of what's
Speaker 1: the top ten movies in next category, and then like
Speaker 1: looking at other people's ideas gives you something to react to,
Speaker 1: either to base yours on theirs, or to react against
Speaker 1: it or whatever. But it's also popular, I think for
Speaker 1: the same reason that like You're doing it wrong articles
Speaker 1: are popular. It feels like an aggressive, opinionated statement that
Speaker 1: is highly tempting to argue with. Right, yeah, and and
Speaker 1: certainly sharing like five five films that shaped you or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever the current version of it that's going
Speaker 1: around on social media is a great statement of self.
Speaker 1: You know, it's say it's it's a way of sort
Speaker 1: of summing up your character in a selection of films
Speaker 1: or books or albums or what have you. Yes, at
Speaker 1: the same time that it's easy to share by it's
Speaker 1: easy for audience members to share because you know, it's
Speaker 1: fun to say, I disagree. How could they leave off
Speaker 1: you forgot X? Yeah? We we could. I mean, we
Speaker 1: even we don't do top ten episodes, but one of
Speaker 1: the most common types of emails we get is I
Speaker 1: can't believe you forgot to mention X when we're like
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, giving a selection of examples of something.
Speaker 1: Whenever we do a list. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: sometimes we do really forget to mention things, or we
Speaker 1: you know, we have them in the notes and we
Speaker 1: don't mention. The other times we just don't know about them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the the other problem about trying to make any
Speaker 1: kind of fully inclusive list. Yeah. So, I think for
Speaker 1: the rest of this episode, we we should try to
Speaker 1: think about what what is the role of the list
Speaker 1: in human culture? And for a couple of things we're
Speaker 1: going to focus on. I think one should be the
Speaker 1: to do list and the psychological power of the to
Speaker 1: do list. The other one would be the idea of
Speaker 1: a list as a type of literature media. Why is
Speaker 1: it so popular? Why why does it work? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting to think of lis even just purely
Speaker 1: in an entertainment um and and even outside of the
Speaker 1: necessity their necessity and things like crafting, mixology, cooking, building
Speaker 1: a Lego kid. I mean, those are the things where
Speaker 1: you you need a series of steps to follow in
Speaker 1: order to get it right. Oh man, what is the
Speaker 1: Is there like a visual version of a s MR?
Speaker 1: I don't know what when you just get like goose bumps,
Speaker 1: like seeing an image of a toy from your childhood.
Speaker 1: For me, it would be Lego instructions and they've only
Speaker 1: gotten better, Joe. That's the thing when when I read
Speaker 1: let current Lego kit instructions versus older Lego instructions, that
Speaker 1: they're just they's they're so clear and precise, that can
Speaker 1: follow them so easily. Um, they should do instructions for everything.
Speaker 1: You're just mocking me, like I should leave the studio
Speaker 1: and go buy some Legos to play with right now.
Speaker 1: You should go buy yourself Hogwarts and and have at it.
Speaker 1: That one. That one has a lot of steps to it.
Speaker 1: I keep saying I think one of the best things
Speaker 1: about having kids has got to be that you get
Speaker 1: to play with legos again. Yeah, and then step on
Speaker 1: legos again. The Harry Potter sorting hat, by the way,
Speaker 1: specially painful to step on. That's probably the most painful
Speaker 1: lego I've ever stepped up anyway. Outside of children's play things,
Speaker 1: you also find a lot of lists in um you know,
Speaker 1: in in in and say video games for all ages. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of video games are highly acquisitive in nature,
Speaker 1: you know, you accumulate stuff in them. Oh yeah, Like
Speaker 1: the main example, UM I I have right now is
Speaker 1: Fallout seventy six because that's that's a game I'm currently playing.
Speaker 1: And uh I stopped though to think the other day
Speaker 1: is as we were talking about doing this episode, that
Speaker 1: there's man man. There sure are a lot of lists
Speaker 1: in this game because you open your inventory and what
Speaker 1: is it a series of lists like there's a great
Speaker 1: there's a big list, and then you can break down
Speaker 1: your list into sub lists of the various weapons are humors,
Speaker 1: bits of scrap, junk notes, uh, hollow tapes, etcetera. So
Speaker 1: it's just one big list. And then when you when
Speaker 1: when it comes to the things you're trying to do
Speaker 1: in the game. There are a whole there's a whole
Speaker 1: other like wide array of to do lists. You get
Speaker 1: your like your main quest items, your side quests, your
Speaker 1: daily quest. Uh, it's just a game full of lists.
Speaker 1: The story is a list of mission objectives and what well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I haven't played seventy six. I assume it's
Speaker 1: like the other followut games. Oh yeah, basically the same concept. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's just a list of things you have
Speaker 1: to have to get done, which is kind of weird
Speaker 1: that we we sometimes retreat from our real life of
Speaker 1: to do lists and then we go into a fantasy
Speaker 1: world where we have, you know, another list that we
Speaker 1: have to do, and it's not necessarily this just simple
Speaker 1: equation of well, your your your real life list is
Speaker 1: harder to do and you have it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: the video game is a world in which everything is simplified. No,
Speaker 1: sometimes the to do list is impossible in the video
Speaker 1: game world as well, Yeah, for for varying reasons. But
Speaker 1: but yet we we go to it and we expect
Speaker 1: it to be there now here. Here's another question though,
Speaker 1: aside from like internet content type listicles, I mean, like
Speaker 1: lists within broader works of fiction or or something. What
Speaker 1: What is it that makes a list inherently entertaining? Some
Speaker 1: lists are boring and other lists are really engrossing. I
Speaker 1: remember looking at lists of things in my like Star
Speaker 1: Wars Illustrated Encyclopedia when I was a little kid, and
Speaker 1: I was like, this is a good list. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: When it when it comes to the lore and the
Speaker 1: glossary of any kind of created world, and I'm instantly
Speaker 1: on board for any of that, Like things like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the appendix to The Lord of the Rings
Speaker 1: or Dune. The Dune Glossary is almost as good as
Speaker 1: the novel itself. Absolutely, The Dune Encyclopedia, even though it's
Speaker 1: not technically Cannon was one of my favorites when I
Speaker 1: was younger. Um, yeah, pretty much any book that I
Speaker 1: really get into, the Second Apocalypse saga or the Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones books, you know, like give me, give me
Speaker 1: an alphabetized list of all the names, places, and things
Speaker 1: in a given universe, and I'll just I'll read through it.
Speaker 1: I'm currently reading the Harry Potter Monster Book to my son.
Speaker 1: Or it's an alphabetical listing of various magical beasts from
Speaker 1: the setting. He does he get down with lists two
Speaker 1: um I will. I don't know if he's as down
Speaker 1: with lists as I am, but he's really into Harry Potter,
Speaker 1: so that works. But but yeah, outside of that though,
Speaker 1: like like, for instance, Lord of the Rings, Okay, like
Speaker 1: it's kind of built around a whole list, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I mean you kick off the whole novel with this
Speaker 1: list of rings and who has them, and it's vital
Speaker 1: to the the basic setup of the entire saga, even
Speaker 1: better than it's a rhymed list though. Yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: whole three rings for Elphin King's under the sky, seven
Speaker 1: for dwarf lords in their Halls of Stone. It's usually
Speaker 1: read with some degree of drama, but I often wondered, like,
Speaker 1: what if it what if it was just this was
Speaker 1: just written on a like a cocktail napkin, and Sauron
Speaker 1: just had it on hand. He's like, all right, what
Speaker 1: am I making today? Okay? I gotta make three rings
Speaker 1: for Alvin kings under the sky, seven for dwarflords in
Speaker 1: their Hall of nine geez, nine for mortal men doom
Speaker 1: to die. That's a lot. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: said nine, okay, with the one for me on my
Speaker 1: dark throne right here in more door, etcetera. But then,
Speaker 1: of course, because he's the lord of mort Or, the
Speaker 1: to do list just ends up gloating right and in
Speaker 1: the darkness behind them. Yeah, I've never thought about it
Speaker 1: that way. I like that it's it's Saron's to do
Speaker 1: list from before the rings were made. So I think
Speaker 1: that should steer us into talking about the power and
Speaker 1: nature of to do list. But first we should take
Speaker 1: a break and we come back. We'll discuss some of
Speaker 1: the psychology of to do lists. Than all right, we're back, Robert.
Speaker 1: Do you find to do lists useful? Yeah, to a
Speaker 1: certain extent. I mean, so sometimes it's a matter of
Speaker 1: just having a reminder, right, Like on my hand, I
Speaker 1: have the remnants of it to do list for today
Speaker 1: that include picking up two items from from various stores,
Speaker 1: Otherwise I might forget them if I didn't have them
Speaker 1: written on my hand. And likewise, if I have more
Speaker 1: than two items to pick up at a given store,
Speaker 1: I need a list of those otherwise I'll forget them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean a LISTA lists are necessary for
Speaker 1: tackling various larger projects. And especially if you're approaching something
Speaker 1: from a project management standpoint, uh, something like say launching
Speaker 1: a podcast. That's the kind of checklist we see a
Speaker 1: lot around here when there's a new podcast that rolls out.
Speaker 1: When we roll that invention for existing for for instance,
Speaker 1: there was a standardized list of things that needed to
Speaker 1: be done, that needed to be figured out, that needed
Speaker 1: to be started or assigned to somebody else, and you
Speaker 1: you would not have a finished product until you've finish
Speaker 1: that list. So, I mean, I have to like to
Speaker 1: do list because they are one way that things get done. Well,
Speaker 1: you're clear right, I think that there is clearly a
Speaker 1: difference between good lists and bad lists. When you're trying
Speaker 1: to come up with a to do list and it's
Speaker 1: sort of like you know it once you're in it.
Speaker 1: To like, you like, this isn't a good list, it's
Speaker 1: not working for me. But I was trying to think,
Speaker 1: what are the actual characteristics that make it to do
Speaker 1: list helpful rather than something that just hangs over you
Speaker 1: like a wraith that's making you feel anxious and depressed. Well,
Speaker 1: they need to be things that you can easily check off.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like a no brainer, but they
Speaker 1: need to be things that are achievable in the short term.
Speaker 1: So like, you can't have a checklist that says like
Speaker 1: sarrance checklist wasn't enslave Middle Earth and check it off. No,
Speaker 1: he started small, building various magical rings to work up
Speaker 1: to this. In fact, maybe he should have started even smaller.
Speaker 1: Uh he should maybe should have been thinking about the
Speaker 1: individual materials he needed for the ring, and like making
Speaker 1: the mold and all that. Uh So we'll get into
Speaker 1: this in a minute. I was wondering, like, obviously there's
Speaker 1: a million self help books and productivity seminars and all
Speaker 1: that about about like how to have better to do
Speaker 1: lists and and be more productive. But I was wondering,
Speaker 1: is there anything that draws on actual psychology research. Um.
Speaker 1: One thing I came across was a chapter about to
Speaker 1: do lists in a book about willpower by one of
Speaker 1: the authors was the psychologist Roy Baumeister. Uh So it
Speaker 1: was by Baumeister and Tyranny, and I thought some of
Speaker 1: their points were were kind of interesting, some of them
Speaker 1: were kind of obvious, others I was interested in the
Speaker 1: reasoning behind them. So one of the things that they
Speaker 1: point out in this book is that studies show that
Speaker 1: often when we get asked to like list out our
Speaker 1: goals and priorities, a lot of our goals are in
Speaker 1: conflict with one another. And this this is something that
Speaker 1: I don't know should be kind of obvious to us,
Speaker 1: but it's clear that we just don't really think about
Speaker 1: it this way until we like list things out and
Speaker 1: realize things are in conflict. A common example is like
Speaker 1: when you have two different goals that are both competing
Speaker 1: for time you don't have. So like, you're already busy
Speaker 1: and you're asked to make a list of your goals.
Speaker 1: And your goals include things like, you know, spend more
Speaker 1: time on ex personal project and also spend more time
Speaker 1: with family, and so like, those goals are obviously in
Speaker 1: competition with each other for an already scarce resource. Or
Speaker 1: things can be like that with money. You know, they're
Speaker 1: competing for a limited pool of finite resources that you have.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't help me. Be reminded of of
Speaker 1: a ClickHole headline I saw recently, uh titled the only
Speaker 1: thirty one thing standing between you and your dreams. I'm
Speaker 1: scrolling through it now, Uh, it's gout entries like your
Speaker 1: dog crippling doubt your past. See that's that's a wonderful,
Speaker 1: terrible list because you're including some things that are reasonably
Speaker 1: specific but just also huge and vague and totally not actionable. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so in this book a great example of of
Speaker 1: like when you know, how our goals can come into
Speaker 1: conflict with each other. So the authors talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin was obsessed with maximizing his life. He was
Speaker 1: a maximize er, sort of a life hacker type dude,
Speaker 1: and he tried to do this by making to do
Speaker 1: lists about everything, like huge to do list for daily
Speaker 1: virtues to fulfill, so like one every day you'd have
Speaker 1: to fulfill, like like a frugality and industry. But he found,
Speaker 1: of course these things came into conflict because he's trying
Speaker 1: to be frugal, so he ends up having to spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time like doing things for himself instead
Speaker 1: of paying somebody else to do them. But then that
Speaker 1: prevents him from doing work, so he finds he's less industrious.
Speaker 1: So you know, these things are large in general, and
Speaker 1: the goals are actually fighting each other. And so the
Speaker 1: authors point out that like psychology and neuroscience, research does
Speaker 1: not always show that thinking about lists of goals is helpful.
Speaker 1: It's only helpful in some cases given certain kinds of
Speaker 1: lists and goals. Like the psychologist Robert Emmons and Laura
Speaker 1: King demonstrated in a series of study, is that that
Speaker 1: quote the result of conflicting goals is unhappiness instead of action. Again,
Speaker 1: that might seem kind of obvious, but how many obvious
Speaker 1: things do we get stuck in a rud over all
Speaker 1: the time? Uh So, First of all, they found when
Speaker 1: people when people make a list of goals and and
Speaker 1: think about them, if the goals are in conflict, First
Speaker 1: of all, people end up worrying a lot. They end
Speaker 1: up The psychological term for this is rumination. And that's
Speaker 1: the word that just means like repetitive negative thought patterns,
Speaker 1: worrying cycles. The second thing is they actually get less
Speaker 1: done when they think about these lists of goals. People ruminate,
Speaker 1: not only ruminate, but they ruminate instead of acting to
Speaker 1: get things done. And productivity on reaching goals decreases. And
Speaker 1: then finally, physical and mental health suffers. People report more
Speaker 1: negative emotions, more depression and anxiety, and more physical sickness.
Speaker 1: So thinking about lists of your goals listing out the
Speaker 1: things you want itself is not enough to make you
Speaker 1: become happier, more active, and all that. It really matters
Speaker 1: what those goals are and how they're formulated, and when
Speaker 1: they're in the wrong format, it could leave you worse
Speaker 1: off than before. Who reminds me of a bit of
Speaker 1: wisdom that I've seen numerous times about New Year's resolutions,
Speaker 1: You know, about how you set too lofty and new
Speaker 1: Year's resolution and you're just you're you're kicking your own
Speaker 1: self in the pants, like there's that's not going to
Speaker 1: do you any good. You've just you've just gone ahead
Speaker 1: and made this formalized version of your own impending failure.
Speaker 1: Well when really you should you should scale it back
Speaker 1: more and make something that's again more actionable and more
Speaker 1: achievable and fits in with the the other commitments in
Speaker 1: your life. You know, I wonder if sometimes we set
Speaker 1: really ambitious goals for New Year's resolutions because subconsciously we
Speaker 1: want to make sure that we will have an excuse
Speaker 1: to quit trying sooner. I tell you one I always
Speaker 1: hate is I forget what it's called, but it's like
Speaker 1: a challenge to write an entire novel manuscript during the
Speaker 1: month of no November nano remo. Yeah, which is the
Speaker 1: with the I can't scarcely think of a worse month
Speaker 1: to try and commit to a daily writing project. The
Speaker 1: November that you're getting right into the holidays, there's Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: You're trying to to get a lot of work done,
Speaker 1: like they should do it. More like I'm thinking it's
Speaker 1: like in April. Maybe it's a challenge to go swimming
Speaker 1: outdoors every day of January or something. I mean, everyone
Speaker 1: smile is just gonna vary. But that is always my
Speaker 1: my realization is like I say, oh, that that thing
Speaker 1: going on, and I'm like, oh, it's no, it's November.
Speaker 1: This is this is a complete waste of my time.
Speaker 1: I'm just remembering what our November last year was, like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: somehow I didn't have time to fit in writing a
Speaker 1: novel while we were also launching an extra podcast. Right,
Speaker 1: uh so, But anyway, so if sometimes goals are in conflict, right,
Speaker 1: sometimes this just happens, and thinking about those goals can
Speaker 1: paralyze you make you unhappy. How do you resolve this?
Speaker 1: I mean, you would think one way would be to
Speaker 1: reformulate your list of goals in order to remove conflicts.
Speaker 1: So one way to do this is think about the
Speaker 1: time horizon of your top goals. I think it's probably
Speaker 1: easier for things on your list to remain in conflict
Speaker 1: when they're more general and when they're more long term time.
Speaker 1: Thinking about time helps you think about like, Okay, what
Speaker 1: do I really care about this month? What do I
Speaker 1: really care about this week? For instance? Come up with
Speaker 1: an idea for a novel in November? You go and
Speaker 1: and that time horizon thing really does matter in multiple ways,
Speaker 1: like Some studies show that short term goals are more
Speaker 1: effective at at causing action and improvement than long term goals,
Speaker 1: can sometimes be better than no goals at all. One
Speaker 1: example side it is this research conducted by the psychologist
Speaker 1: Albert Bandura and Dave Schunk on kids from seven to
Speaker 1: ten who are taking this self directed math course. So
Speaker 1: the kids are trying to learn how to do certain
Speaker 1: kinds of math problems, and they're separated into four groups.
Speaker 1: One group gets this set short term goals. Their goal
Speaker 1: is to do six pages of math problems in every
Speaker 1: one of seven sessions. And then a second group has
Speaker 1: a second has a different goal. It's to complete forty
Speaker 1: two pages of math problems at the end of seven sessions.
Speaker 1: So these two goals, if both completed, should give you
Speaker 1: the same level of progress. And then there was a
Speaker 1: third group that didn't have any particular goals, in a
Speaker 1: fourth group that didn't do math exercises, and the results
Speaker 1: were the kids in the short term group did a
Speaker 1: lot better. They completed more problems, they were better at
Speaker 1: solving problems at the end of the course. Kids in
Speaker 1: the long term group who were just like, Okay, get
Speaker 1: it all done at the end of the course did
Speaker 1: no better than kids who had no goals at all.
Speaker 1: And if you think back to your own childhood or
Speaker 1: maybe your own adulthood, you can you can probably see
Speaker 1: that that really rings true. At least it does to me,
Speaker 1: like if I didn't have work broken into smaller chunks,
Speaker 1: I would never get it done now. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: at the same time, there's research that's found that particularly
Speaker 1: an older students around high school age, thinking about long
Speaker 1: long term goals is associated with better outcomes like academic
Speaker 1: performance overall. And a common explanation here that that might
Speaker 1: be going on is that once you're older, it's easier
Speaker 1: for you to see a connection between your long term
Speaker 1: goals and your short term work, like short term tasks
Speaker 1: are sort of they're given a motivation boost when you
Speaker 1: think about what your long term goals are. So you
Speaker 1: could maybe think about these two results sort of in conflict,
Speaker 1: but I don't think they're necessarily in conflict, because the
Speaker 1: possible takeaway is it's good to keep long term goals
Speaker 1: in mind to help motivate you as long as they're
Speaker 1: not conflicting. But you also, in order to get stuff done,
Speaker 1: you need to chunk things down. You've got to put
Speaker 1: your you've got to formulate your to do list items
Speaker 1: in small, discrete chunks of work with clear goals. And
Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about with sour On earlier. You know,
Speaker 1: if it's just conquer all of the lands, that that's
Speaker 1: not going to work as well. You've got to separate,
Speaker 1: break it into smaller tasks. Right. But likewise, having having
Speaker 1: that overall goal of subjugating Middle Earth probably helped him
Speaker 1: put even more effort into making that one ring really dope,
Speaker 1: you know, I think so. Yeah, So it's like visualize
Speaker 1: the end, but focus on what you have to do
Speaker 1: right now. The very next thing. Another important insight that
Speaker 1: they side is just it's important to be flexible. Like
Speaker 1: if you try to over rigidly plan out to do
Speaker 1: lists of things, uh that can that can actually get
Speaker 1: you bogged down. In one example they side is research
Speaker 1: that found that people who made monthly plans for goal
Speaker 1: attainment did better than people who made rigid daily plans
Speaker 1: for goal attainment, just because the day to day things
Speaker 1: come up, you get you get sidetracked. You need to
Speaker 1: have a plan that has has some some wiggle in
Speaker 1: it if something comes up today and you can't do
Speaker 1: your thing today. Yeah, yeah, I guess I can definitely
Speaker 1: see that with bigger projects. I'm if I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think on a day to day basis, something's going to
Speaker 1: wreck that plan. But if I'm thinking more weekly and monthly,
Speaker 1: like by the end of this month, I will have
Speaker 1: reached this point more or less, then that's it. That's
Speaker 1: it that tends to work. Yeah, totally, though, I would say,
Speaker 1: like each day within a monthly goal setting thing, it's
Speaker 1: good to like plan out more minute parts of the
Speaker 1: day as you get You shouldn't wait till right then
Speaker 1: you get into like do your forty two pages by
Speaker 1: the end kind of thing. You just never do it. Okay.
Speaker 1: The next big thing that these authors bring up about
Speaker 1: to do lists is going back to something we've talked
Speaker 1: about on the podcast before, which is the Zigarnic effect. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: we've discussed this, We've discussed in our Tetris episode. And uh,
Speaker 1: there was another one too. I'm trying to remember the
Speaker 1: the incomplete unfinished one. Yes, yes, about various bits of artwork,
Speaker 1: etcetera literature in which there is some incomplete aspect to
Speaker 1: the thing. Right, Well, it certainly applies to that, because
Speaker 1: the Zigarnic effect is the brains tendency to be brought
Speaker 1: back to incomplete tasks and to remember them better than
Speaker 1: complete tasks asks. So it was. It was a concept
Speaker 1: originally expressed and studied in the nineteen twenties, I think
Speaker 1: in nineteen seven by a Russian psychologist by the name
Speaker 1: of bloom O Wolfovna Zigarnik who lived nineteen hundred to
Speaker 1: ninety eight, and supposedly this came about after she and
Speaker 1: a colleague were discussing watching waiters in a restaurant and
Speaker 1: how the waiters could remember all of the details of
Speaker 1: the order one of their tables until the check was cleared,
Speaker 1: and then once the check at that table was cleared.
Speaker 1: It was like their brains were just wiped. They forgot everything.
Speaker 1: The task is complete, and therefore the the information, Uh,
Speaker 1: the various road signs to completion are no longer necessary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly so uh to to sum it up in a
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight social psychology textbook by Roy Bauminster
Speaker 1: and Brad Bushman, uh the author's right quote, the Zigarnic
Speaker 1: effect is a tendency to experience automatic intrusive thoughts about
Speaker 1: a goal that one has pursued but the suit of
Speaker 1: which has been interrupted. That is, if you start working
Speaker 1: toward a goal and fail to get there, thoughts about
Speaker 1: the goal will keep popping into your mind while you're
Speaker 1: doing other things, as if to remind you to get
Speaker 1: back on track to finish reaching that goal. So, given this, like,
Speaker 1: the Zigernic effect is often cited as an explanation of
Speaker 1: what we talked about earlier, rumination, you know, unproductive patterns
Speaker 1: of recurring negative thoughts. Uh. The Zigernic effect can kind
Speaker 1: of like just pull you out of whatever you're doing
Speaker 1: right now and make you start thinking about that thing
Speaker 1: you're worrying about the goal. You haven't attained the task
Speaker 1: you haven't finished, but it's also used to describe more
Speaker 1: mundane stuff like earworms and music, like, if you hear
Speaker 1: part of a song play, your brain may try to
Speaker 1: keep completing the task of the song until you actually
Speaker 1: are able to listen to the whole thing. And as
Speaker 1: personal anecdotal evidence of this, you ever notice how, at
Speaker 1: least if you're like me, you're more likely to get
Speaker 1: a song stuck in your head if you hear it
Speaker 1: in an unfocused way, like playing in a grocery store
Speaker 1: or on the radio in a car, as opposed to
Speaker 1: a song that you like, sit down and listen to. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. It certainly it makes for more more of
Speaker 1: a chance encounter. Yeah, um, not a deliberate encounter, but yeah,
Speaker 1: those will be the times where I leave the grocery
Speaker 1: store and then there's this song stuck in my head.
Speaker 1: I feel like, literally, at least seventy percent of the
Speaker 1: time that somebody says to me, why are you singing
Speaker 1: that song? I don't even realize I was singing it.
Speaker 1: And then what I realized is it was playing in
Speaker 1: the store. But that seems perfect because like in the store,
Speaker 1: you walk in and out, you're not really paying attention
Speaker 1: to the music. You hear a bit of it and
Speaker 1: it just gets lodged in there, and then your brain
Speaker 1: is like trying to play it back and and and
Speaker 1: complete it um. But we should note that it appears
Speaker 1: that the Sigartic effect has a sort of mixed replication history,
Speaker 1: like some studies replicate the effect, others fail to. So
Speaker 1: if we assume that it is real and based on experience,
Speaker 1: I think it does at least somewhat seem to be real.
Speaker 1: There may be conditional qualities to it that we don't
Speaker 1: fully understand yet, and one complication to the effect, for instance,
Speaker 1: seems to be related to creating to do lists. So
Speaker 1: I just want to mention one study by Roy Baumeister
Speaker 1: and E. J. Massa Campo called consider It Done. Plan
Speaker 1: making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals, and
Speaker 1: this was in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven. So this paper, they they recount
Speaker 1: a number of studies that the authors did to test
Speaker 1: the persistence and intrusiveness of thoughts about an upcoming finished
Speaker 1: task like an exam in school, and a few examples
Speaker 1: of how to test things would be like testing how
Speaker 1: often people became distracted while trying to read something after
Speaker 1: being made to think about that upcoming task, or testing
Speaker 1: how primed this. The subjects were to complete a partial
Speaker 1: word puzzle with a task related solution word, so like,
Speaker 1: if you're given like e x blank, do you complete
Speaker 1: that as exam or as something else? So they found
Speaker 1: evidence of the Zigaric effect that people who had been
Speaker 1: made to think about an upcoming task and it wasn't
Speaker 1: something they had finished yet, it did become an intrusive,
Speaker 1: repetitive thought for them. But they found that you didn't
Speaker 1: actually have to go complete the task in order to
Speaker 1: find it less intrusively occupying your thoughts, less likely to
Speaker 1: cause rumination and distraction. You just had to come up
Speaker 1: with a concrete plan basically a to do list of
Speaker 1: concrete steps about how you would solve the problem. Uh So,
Speaker 1: to quote from their abstract quote. Allowing participants to formulate
Speaker 1: specific plans for their unfulfilled goals eliminated the various activation
Speaker 1: and interference effects. Reduction of the effects was mediated by
Speaker 1: the earnestness of participants plans. Those who ultimately executed their
Speaker 1: plans were those who also exhibited no more intrusions. So
Speaker 1: it's not just that the people who made the concrete
Speaker 1: steps uh did better with eliminating the zigonic effect intrusions,
Speaker 1: also the ones who actually ended up being successful in
Speaker 1: their plans that was correlated with it. So it's like
Speaker 1: it's almost like your brain can tell whether you're taking
Speaker 1: your own plan seriously. And to quote more from their
Speaker 1: abstract quote, committing to a specific plan for a goal
Speaker 1: may therefore not only facilitate attainment of the goal, but
Speaker 1: may also free cognitive resources for other pursuits. Once the
Speaker 1: plan is made, the drive to attain a goal is suspended,
Speaker 1: allowing goal related cognitive activity to cease, and is resumed
Speaker 1: at the specified later time. Well, this makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense of certainly when when compared to experience, because
Speaker 1: I can think of definite times in my life where
Speaker 1: there's been like some big thing I've got to start,
Speaker 1: and just by starting it, just by safe, for instance,
Speaker 1: looking at the list of things to do and then
Speaker 1: calling it a day, you know, which ultimately doesn't really
Speaker 1: it doesn't really get that much done on the task,
Speaker 1: but you began the process, and just by doing that,
Speaker 1: you know, you can feel better. You can feel like
Speaker 1: you have more control of the situation. Oh well, thinking
Speaker 1: about or or making a list of things to do.
Speaker 1: I would say that is really getting something done. That's
Speaker 1: maybe the most important part of what you've got. But
Speaker 1: but in another way, you didn't actually do anything. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like cleaning cleaning the room. An essential step
Speaker 1: is formulating a game plan and deciding what you're gonna
Speaker 1: tackle first so that you can act. But you haven't
Speaker 1: actually cleaned anything yet. Yes, but but it's it's a
Speaker 1: crucial part. And in fact it's good enough to not
Speaker 1: only help make you more likely to get the project
Speaker 1: done in the end, but also to make you worry
Speaker 1: less about it until you get there. It's a twofold benefit,
Speaker 1: more actual success at goals and less rumination in the meantime.
Speaker 1: And I think this also makes sense from a sort
Speaker 1: of imagining, like a cognitive neuroscience point of view, because
Speaker 1: if you think about it, so like the Zigaric effect
Speaker 1: is sometimes interpreted as like, uh, the unconscious mind sort
Speaker 1: of pinging the conscious mind with like an outstanding problem.
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, remember this, you need to get on that.
Speaker 1: Hey remember this, And but what it really is asking
Speaker 1: for is the help of the conscious mind, and the
Speaker 1: conscious mind, we tend to think, is linked to the
Speaker 1: part of the mind that has executive control. Executive control
Speaker 1: is good for what planning, Like, the conscious mind is
Speaker 1: good at coming up with a list of steps of
Speaker 1: things you need to do to solve a problem, something
Speaker 1: that the unconscious mind is not very good at. And
Speaker 1: this is where executive time comes in, right, the amount
Speaker 1: of time we spend each day in executive time. No,
Speaker 1: that's the exact opposite. That's like period time. So you
Speaker 1: rope in the conscious mind for for executive action. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think it appears that across this stuff like
Speaker 1: that that very specific concrete plans are more useful and
Speaker 1: more psychologically satisfying. Uh So. One of the things that
Speaker 1: you know, productivity experts often observe is that say, like,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to, like, you know, fix some stuff
Speaker 1: around your house, don't have a step in the plan
Speaker 1: that's like fix the shower. The step in your plan
Speaker 1: should be the very specific first concrete step you need
Speaker 1: to do to fix the shower, like go to Lows
Speaker 1: and buy this part that I need and have the
Speaker 1: name of the part, or you know, and if you
Speaker 1: if you're not at that stage. Yet the thing should
Speaker 1: be find out what part I need on the shower
Speaker 1: by going to by looking it up on the internet.
Speaker 1: I do think that's a useful insight. Like if you're
Speaker 1: finding if you've got to to do list, but you're
Speaker 1: stuck and you're not getting through it, probably one way
Speaker 1: that you can get unstuck is take the items in
Speaker 1: the list and try to break them up into smaller
Speaker 1: parts figure out how they can be subdivided. All right,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a quick right,
Speaker 1: and when we come back more on lists and why
Speaker 1: we love them. Thank you, thank you. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So clearly, as we mentioned earlier on lists are huge
Speaker 1: in web content, right, we know the power of list uh,
Speaker 1: this is something that web traffic analysis clearly shows. Enumerated
Speaker 1: list type articles have an extremely powerful appeal. They're clicky.
Speaker 1: Why Well, like I said earlier, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of it is ease of absorption and or action. So
Speaker 1: it's like ten images or names, uh, you know, and
Speaker 1: you probably don't even have to read the rest of
Speaker 1: the text. You can just scan it. But then also
Speaker 1: like ten steps being a big thing, like ten steps
Speaker 1: that sounds doable. I can do ten steps. What you know, what,
Speaker 1: what's the offering? Is it ten steps to a better life,
Speaker 1: ten steps to a cleaner house? Uh, ten steps to
Speaker 1: a better marriage? I mean these are all uh you
Speaker 1: put it the phrase it like that. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's try it. Well, I mean yeah, ten steps
Speaker 1: I think are very popular. They're popular maybe for a
Speaker 1: different reason than a lot of other kinds of enumerated articles.
Speaker 1: Are useful because the steps thing is like a to
Speaker 1: do list. It says, this is not an infinitely complex,
Speaker 1: impossible problem. This is a problem with ten parts, and
Speaker 1: you can do one part at a time. It makes
Speaker 1: it seem like, oh, yeah, I could actually begin this
Speaker 1: right and like that alone can be empowering, even if
Speaker 1: you have no intention of following entities just no, even
Speaker 1: just not even reading the list, just knowing that that
Speaker 1: process could be broken down into ten steps can feel
Speaker 1: kind of liberating. Yeah. So nine rings for men doomed
Speaker 1: to die. Okay, so that's one step, or maybe that's
Speaker 1: the third step. I don't remember what order they come in,
Speaker 1: but Elvin King's our first joke. First, the elves are
Speaker 1: picky if you don't take care of them first, they
Speaker 1: asked to see your manager. But but to come back
Speaker 1: to the scannable nature of list, I think that's big too,
Speaker 1: because it's really important. Yeah, because there there have been
Speaker 1: recent studies. In fact, there was the most recent one
Speaker 1: just came out in the last few weeks. I think
Speaker 1: looking at how we easily overestimate our understanding of a
Speaker 1: topic based on say a headline of an article or
Speaker 1: an article preview and Facebook, Um well yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there's like you remember the the illusion of explanatory depth episodes,
Speaker 1: where that's somewhat different, But it's that you know, there
Speaker 1: can be a thing that we're familiar with because we
Speaker 1: are exposed to the concept of it a lot, and
Speaker 1: it gives us the false impression that we understand how
Speaker 1: it works. Like you know, you're you're around bicycles all
Speaker 1: the time, so surely you can draw one with all
Speaker 1: the parts accurately placed, right or can you? It seems
Speaker 1: so simple, But it turns out a lot of people
Speaker 1: can and it's just like, yeah, you see them enough
Speaker 1: that you just think, well, I must understand this. And
Speaker 1: I think the same is true for more abstract conceptual topics,
Speaker 1: like you know, issues in politics. You think you understand
Speaker 1: how it works because you've seen the name referenced in
Speaker 1: headlines right or you've or maybe you've seen something broken
Speaker 1: down on a list of talking points, etcetera. Uh Now,
Speaker 1: speaking of social media, it's also worth pointing out that
Speaker 1: something like your Facebook or your Twitter feed is it's
Speaker 1: not enumerated, but it is essentially a list. Yes, it
Speaker 1: is also not a fineite list because they're designed to
Speaker 1: be infinite, infinitely scrollable. But but these are lists, and
Speaker 1: many times a day we're probably checking in to see
Speaker 1: what the list is offering us this time. Well, I
Speaker 1: think that also goes to the fact that lists are appealing.
Speaker 1: Listical type articles are appealing on the Internet because they're
Speaker 1: easily scannable for content, in the same way that your
Speaker 1: news feed is easily scannable for content. You know, like
Speaker 1: on Facebook, if you're just sitting there scrolling and letting
Speaker 1: Facebook ravage your brain, you are not You're not reading
Speaker 1: everything you're scrolling past. You know, You're just like scrolling
Speaker 1: until your eye hits something and you look at that
Speaker 1: for a second and you're like, oh, there's that, and
Speaker 1: then you keep going. So I think maybe it's not
Speaker 1: always the numbered and nature of a listical that's important.
Speaker 1: Like in many cases, I think the numbers don't matter.
Speaker 1: Maybe what's important is that we know to expect a
Speaker 1: listical to have headers. Actually, header is very important because
Speaker 1: they help you quickly identify the meat of the content
Speaker 1: to know what the things on the list are. You
Speaker 1: don't really have to read the paragraphs if there are any.
Speaker 1: You can just like look at the headers and say,
Speaker 1: do I want to go deeper on this one? Knowing
Speaker 1: just scroll past right and you know exactly. You know
Speaker 1: pretty much how long the article is going to be.
Speaker 1: It's like ten items, that's it. Maybe there'll be some
Speaker 1: honorable mentions at the bottom, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: I have a general length in mind. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: your relationship with the listical type thing is usually pretty mercenary, right,
Speaker 1: It's less dedicated than a relationship you might have with
Speaker 1: other types of written texts. I think it's also appealing
Speaker 1: because a list promises discrete chunks of information that are
Speaker 1: desired for some understood reason, like they're either practically useful
Speaker 1: useful like steps and how to or um practically useful because,
Speaker 1: like say ranked products, you know that these are good
Speaker 1: versions of this product that you might want to remember
Speaker 1: and look for when you're shopping, or because they're interesting
Speaker 1: and you want to have bits of interesting information to remember,
Speaker 1: like the the eleven craziest Baffamet statues, or there's something
Speaker 1: else that you feel compelled to know, like those best
Speaker 1: of lists that people sort of used to help form
Speaker 1: their taste. I was reading an article in The New
Speaker 1: Yorker by Maria Knakova, science writer who I like is
Speaker 1: she She wrote a good book called The Confidence Game.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed that one a lot. One of the things
Speaker 1: you mentioned is the idea of that the lists basically
Speaker 1: benefit from processing fluency. And we've talked about processing fluency
Speaker 1: on the show before, but processing fluency is a really
Speaker 1: underrated influence on our mental lives. Like we spend a
Speaker 1: lot of energy trying to spend less mental energy on
Speaker 1: things like a lot of energy trying to optimize our
Speaker 1: information environments for processing fluency, which means we're trying to
Speaker 1: make sure the information coming into our brain is not
Speaker 1: too challenging and it's easy to process. And there are
Speaker 1: a ton of ways you can look at the world
Speaker 1: around you and understand that we're trying to shape our
Speaker 1: environments to favor processing fluency by having these biases for
Speaker 1: processing fluency fluency, like remember the example of the the
Speaker 1: illusory truth effect. Oh yes, absolutely, Yeah, we're more likely
Speaker 1: to what recall something if we've heard it before, and
Speaker 1: even more if it's not true, even if it's an
Speaker 1: outright lie. Exactly, I've heard it before, and therefore we
Speaker 1: we echo it. Yeah, we're so we're primed to understand it.
Speaker 1: It's easier to process because we've heard it before. And
Speaker 1: so there's scientific backing for the idea for the notion
Speaker 1: that if you hear something often enough, you start to
Speaker 1: believe it's true. And one possible explanation for this is
Speaker 1: that it's caused by a bias favoring processing fluency. You
Speaker 1: hear something for the hundredth time, it's just way easier
Speaker 1: to process than when you hear something for the first
Speaker 1: time and it's new and unfamiliar. Another example I randomly
Speaker 1: came across as a study uh by a Grifhenator at All,
Speaker 1: which is a great name in social psychological and personality science.
Speaker 1: In two thousand ten, there was a series of studies
Speaker 1: that just revealed, um, when people are grading handwritten essays,
Speaker 1: there's a strong bias in favor of the ones that
Speaker 1: are easy to read and against the ones that are
Speaker 1: that are more difficult to read. That might not be
Speaker 1: that surprising, but even people who don't think they're biased,
Speaker 1: in fact are You're biased by the fact that something
Speaker 1: that is easier to read and it's easier to take
Speaker 1: in just feels better to you. And so I think
Speaker 1: this is clearly work with like list type content because you, uh,
Speaker 1: number one, lists are pre categorized, you know, like so
Speaker 1: you don't have to wonder, like what what box am
Speaker 1: I going to put this in? In my mind? Like
Speaker 1: you already you know based on the title of the
Speaker 1: list what you're going to be getting out of it.
Speaker 1: You're not going to be categorically surprised. You've you've already
Speaker 1: got a schemata going in for where to put everything.
Speaker 1: And then also there's just simple stuff like kna Covid
Speaker 1: points out that lists naturally naturally lend themselves to spatial categorization,
Speaker 1: like there's vertical placement on a page, and there's ters
Speaker 1: to denote placement of information um there in like large
Speaker 1: blocks of normal text aren't as clearly spatialized, but that
Speaker 1: we remember things better when it's spatially formatted in a
Speaker 1: way that's clear. Like think about the memory palace. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, people can remember things better if what they
Speaker 1: like imagine a physical space. Yeah, using these yes, spatial
Speaker 1: um of processing to understand something that may just be
Speaker 1: a list of numbers even Yeah, like a top ten
Speaker 1: list is basically taking a concept and putting it in
Speaker 1: the format of a Mortal Kombat challenge tower, you know,
Speaker 1: where you have a list of opponents and at the
Speaker 1: top you've got you know, you've got Shaalcan or whoever,
Speaker 1: and that's the main boss, that's the number one ranking
Speaker 1: goes all the way down to the who are the
Speaker 1: easiest person to beat? Is So if you can take
Speaker 1: anything be it you know, global politics or environmental concerns,
Speaker 1: break it down into a Mortal Kombat challenge tower, and
Speaker 1: then just about anybody can can at least get like
Speaker 1: the surface level unders standing of what you're trying to relate.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. I mean another way of putting
Speaker 1: it is that like, uh, lists tell you the tell
Speaker 1: they explicitly tell you what's the important part of what
Speaker 1: you're reading. You know, like this is a thing that's
Speaker 1: like difficult for younger readers often is like to like
Speaker 1: read a passage and then identify what's the thesis sentence
Speaker 1: or the most important sentence in this paragraph or in
Speaker 1: this page. And like a lot of times it's it's
Speaker 1: harder for younger readers to do that. To figure out
Speaker 1: what's the point a list, you don't have to wonder.
Speaker 1: It tells you here's the point. And that's another big
Speaker 1: thing about about lists and ranking is we're often going
Speaker 1: to skip to the end. Like Pitch for It comes
Speaker 1: out with like top one albums of the year, I'm
Speaker 1: going to look at the top ten. Maybe they intentionally
Speaker 1: stagger the page nation to make that harder to do. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to. Like, of course, you have to click
Speaker 1: through a bunch of pages rights part of the game.
Speaker 1: You like can't click to the last page from the
Speaker 1: first page. You can only click to the like third
Speaker 1: to last page from the first page age, and then
Speaker 1: you have to click down from there. It's nonsense. People
Speaker 1: people get mad about that. But anyway, bringing back to
Speaker 1: umberto echo, like, I think there are some some clear
Speaker 1: easy reasons to see why, Like, you know, listical type
Speaker 1: content on the internet is highly popular, But what about
Speaker 1: the appeal of the list to somebody like Umberto Echo
Speaker 1: and or in in something like the Iliad. One of
Speaker 1: the things that Echo mentions is he just says that
Speaker 1: lists are sort of a suggestion of immortality, because he says,
Speaker 1: you know, we have this discouraging limit on our lives.
Speaker 1: We know we're going to die, and that we like
Speaker 1: to assume that things go on without end, and so
Speaker 1: a list of creating these big lists, like the catalog
Speaker 1: of Ships, it's kind of a way of escaping thoughts
Speaker 1: about death because we like to make He says, we
Speaker 1: make lists because we don't want to die. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it comes back, you know, probably one of
Speaker 1: the most direct things. We can think of it as
Speaker 1: a bucket list or a reading list of viewing list. Uh,
Speaker 1: these are all the things we're going to a common
Speaker 1: plush in our lifetime. Yeah, which, of course I have
Speaker 1: to sadly admit that I still have a couple of
Speaker 1: Umberto Eco novels on my two to read list, a
Speaker 1: couple that I haven't haven't gotten around to just yet.
Speaker 1: Well I've only read one now. Oh yeah, they're uh.
Speaker 1: He has some other great ones of Co's Pendulum, Island
Speaker 1: of the day before Bartolino. Those are the those are
Speaker 1: the ones I enjoyed the most. I've got to check
Speaker 1: that out. Name of the Rose was awesome. It's oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a easily now a top ten book for me,
Speaker 1: I think, really really awesome. And by the way, speaking
Speaker 1: of the name of the route, Name of the Rose,
Speaker 1: of course, it's said in the medieval period with like
Speaker 1: monks who are you know, a lot of times dealing
Speaker 1: with these philosophical debates about the nature of things and
Speaker 1: dealing with these in cycling medieval encyclopedias, which is just
Speaker 1: like the best things that were, you know, the bestiaries
Speaker 1: and all that um. And that one of the things
Speaker 1: Echo talks about in this interview is sort of the
Speaker 1: difference between understanding something by defining it versus understanding something
Speaker 1: by way of list uh, and that these are different
Speaker 1: ways of approaching knowledge and of seeing the world. When
Speaker 1: you define something, you try to like put into a
Speaker 1: sentence the essence of what the concept or the thing is,
Speaker 1: whereas the other way, I guess is the more like
Speaker 1: inductive way of understanding a concept, which is making lists
Speaker 1: of examples of it or making lists of its characteristics.
Speaker 1: You know, This reminds me of the TV Tropes website
Speaker 1: that I enjoy using from time to time, especially especially
Speaker 1: if we have an episode coming out and there's like
Speaker 1: a concept in the show and I would like to
Speaker 1: acknowledge or remind myself of either know either sci fi
Speaker 1: that I've I've read before or I'm familiar with, or
Speaker 1: something I am not familiar with it someow ties into
Speaker 1: the concept. You can go to TV tropes and you
Speaker 1: can look at the various tropes and a given property,
Speaker 1: um so, and on one level, it's it's it's fulfilling,
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, it feels very very much
Speaker 1: like a reduction of these things, you know, like let's
Speaker 1: just Adam is a film or a novel or a
Speaker 1: comic book down to familiar tropes that have appeared elsewhere. Well,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I would say they kind of
Speaker 1: TV tropes that site kind of um I don't know,
Speaker 1: validates or immortalizes strange cliches and conventions by showing you
Speaker 1: just how many examples of it there are. When you
Speaker 1: thought you you see something in like one movie and
Speaker 1: you're like, that's kind of odd, But it feels bigger
Speaker 1: than that to me. It feels like a cliche. And
Speaker 1: sometimes you look it up on TV tropes and you
Speaker 1: find out, oh, yeah, this is in thirty things. You know,
Speaker 1: it's in a bunch of anime, and you have it.
Speaker 1: But sometimes that thing that has appeared thirty Other times
Speaker 1: it's it's so well executed, or it's executed in a
Speaker 1: way that feels unique, or or or when other elements
Speaker 1: are creative sufficiently creative that it it doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: one of thirty things, it feels like the thing. Well.
Speaker 1: I think one of the great talents of a writer,
Speaker 1: especially comedy writers more than anybody else. But but one
Speaker 1: of the great talents of a writer who has a
Speaker 1: good sense of irony is the talent for picking out
Speaker 1: one example of a thing that communicates that thing well,
Speaker 1: whereas somebody else would have to write a complex definition
Speaker 1: or give a list of many examples. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, Like the great talent for picking out
Speaker 1: the one example that perfectly encapsulates the spirit of something
Speaker 1: like if you were to say, and I'm not even
Speaker 1: sure exactly what this would mean, but if you were
Speaker 1: to say so, and so is the Highlander two of
Speaker 1: people exactly Yes, I'm not sure what I would. I'm
Speaker 1: saying if I were to pass that judgment on someone,
Speaker 1: part of it would depend on obvious aspects of that individual.
Speaker 1: But it that I'm still saying something that seems pretty specific.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it works for H two, but
Speaker 1: it's but but yes, you're on the right track, that
Speaker 1: is what I mean. Now, another way of thinking about
Speaker 1: lists is just the nature of list making and list using,
Speaker 1: as it's comparable to just how we use language, especially
Speaker 1: written language. UM So, if we go back far enough
Speaker 1: in time, we get back to the roots of cuneiform writing,
Speaker 1: which developed around the eighth millennium BC. So this featured
Speaker 1: a system of clay tokens to represent individual units of
Speaker 1: various commodities. So like one uh, you know, sheep, One
Speaker 1: sheep would be one sheep token because it was that
Speaker 1: simple and uh, these were pretty useful for keeping track
Speaker 1: of of of these commodities as we're dealing now with, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, with with cultures that that had a surplus
Speaker 1: of things in there there was trade going on. Um.
Speaker 1: These tokens remained in useful around umt BC, when more
Speaker 1: complex tokens came into play, and you would have clay
Speaker 1: envelopes which were eventually developed to hold these tokens, and
Speaker 1: then you would stamp those envelopes to indicate the contents,
Speaker 1: and this stamping would eventually lead to solid clay tablet
Speaker 1: writing and pictograph writing, logo grams or word signs, and
Speaker 1: in sequential writing systems. But written language in this emerges
Speaker 1: from counting technology, from the systems of making lists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've read this theory before, I uh, and this is
Speaker 1: really interesting. The idea that like the first written language
Speaker 1: emerged from trade and originally was more pictographic, but but
Speaker 1: became more symbolic as time goes on, and this led
Speaker 1: to phonetic alphabets. Right now, a great deal of what
Speaker 1: we do with written language is highly sequential. Even in
Speaker 1: the case of say, nonlinear narratives and fiction, there is
Speaker 1: still is an order to what you're being presented with,
Speaker 1: even if that order is is altered, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's maybe not chronological anymore, but there is still an order,
Speaker 1: Like there is a sequence that you're presented with, and
Speaker 1: that sequence presumably means something, whether you're presenting something in
Speaker 1: in reverse chronological order or you're skipping around in time,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And of course we also ultimately experience, remember,
Speaker 1: and anticipate the universe as a series of sequential events.
Speaker 1: So this is one of those areas where it begins
Speaker 1: to sort of you know, hurt the brain a little bit,
Speaker 1: but like you know what comes first, right, Like to
Speaker 1: what extent is the Is this sequential experience the linear
Speaker 1: existence of of life? Is it dictated by our language writing,
Speaker 1: list making nature or is it the other way around? Well,
Speaker 1: that is a great question. I mean, the physics of
Speaker 1: time is no different for other animals, right, I mean
Speaker 1: their experience of time might be different than ours, but
Speaker 1: like it's not the case that like, uh, chimpanzees live
Speaker 1: their lives out of order, they also experience an order
Speaker 1: of events. They might not perceive it like we do.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I do wonder about that. With language, are
Speaker 1: we like, are we homo album us or whatever? The
Speaker 1: list the list making ape? Is that what we are? Well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this, Uh, list making apes have have
Speaker 1: achieved an awful lot when it comes to making lists.
Speaker 1: And one of the one of the hallmarks of this
Speaker 1: that I think we we both found kind of independently
Speaker 1: in our our searching, is that there is an actual
Speaker 1: Wikipedia article out there that is a list of lists
Speaker 1: of lists. It is so good. The intro to this
Speaker 1: page reads as follows. This is a list of articles
Speaker 1: that are lists of list articles on the English Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: In other words, each of the articles linked here is
Speaker 1: an index up to multiple lists on a topic. Some
Speaker 1: of the linked articles are themselves lists of lists of lists.
Speaker 1: This article is also a list of lists. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not surprising that Wikipedia is where you would encounter
Speaker 1: a list of lists of lists, because Wikipedia is an
Speaker 1: example of encyclopedic thinking, which is an attempt, however feeble
Speaker 1: on our part, to impose order and understanding on a world,
Speaker 1: on a world where you know, things do exist in
Speaker 1: relation to each other, but order is sort of it's
Speaker 1: it's our attempt to master the chaos of reality to say, like, okay,
Speaker 1: here's how we can put things into categories. It's also
Speaker 1: sort of the project of Aristotle, right, I mean Aristotle
Speaker 1: like to divide things and put them in categories and
Speaker 1: make lists of lists of things. You could say that
Speaker 1: list making is in one way sort of deep at
Speaker 1: the core of the scholastic impulse. It's, you know, when
Speaker 1: you're thinking about what it means to be a scholar
Speaker 1: to study the world. It's to like put things in
Speaker 1: boxes where they conceptually go and organize the boxes, or
Speaker 1: to wander out in the into the garden and name
Speaker 1: all the animals. Right. Yeah, Well another funny thing mentioning
Speaker 1: the garden is um the authors of that book I
Speaker 1: was talking about earlier. They point out that Genesis one
Speaker 1: is essentially a list. On the first day, it is
Speaker 1: a to do list. It's just like, seriously, it is
Speaker 1: a divine to do list, and then it gives way
Speaker 1: to like listing animals and stuff and says that the
Speaker 1: first task give to man when he was created is
Speaker 1: to name all the animals, which is to create a
Speaker 1: list make more lists. Now I have somebody to make
Speaker 1: lists with me. That was the major accomplishment there. Well,
Speaker 1: that is until that somebody broke the only commandment on
Speaker 1: the list of thou shalt not so yes. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: oh goodness. Getting into rules and laws though, that's a whole.
Speaker 1: That's a whole another area of list making that we
Speaker 1: didn't really get into here, just the the the essential
Speaker 1: nature of of law, like and really that's that's part
Speaker 1: of the same process going on. Like it's one thing
Speaker 1: to say you there subject, uh do right, or you know,
Speaker 1: behave yourself. That's this one thing. But if you say, actually,
Speaker 1: here's a here are the ten steps to not be
Speaker 1: executed by my high guard. Here are ten steps to
Speaker 1: not be cast outside the city gates and consumed by
Speaker 1: the jackals and h and then you're like, okay, I
Speaker 1: can probably do these things. Well, it's a way of
Speaker 1: making like virtue or righteousness. You can divide it in
Speaker 1: the same way Echo does us with He's like, okay,
Speaker 1: you can give a definition of something, or you can
Speaker 1: give a list of examples of it. You can do
Speaker 1: the same thing with like righteousness or the law. You
Speaker 1: could say you give somebody a principle like do unto
Speaker 1: others as they would do unto you or something, or
Speaker 1: you can give them just a long list of rules
Speaker 1: like don't do this, don't do that, do this. Both
Speaker 1: our approaches humans have used, and I guess they both
Speaker 1: have their advantages, right, because like the the more like
Speaker 1: single principle based system feels more flexible and takes into
Speaker 1: account more of the you know, the diversity of human
Speaker 1: life and the different things you'll experience. Is less legalistic
Speaker 1: and intolerant, and on the other hand, the list of
Speaker 1: rules is less ambiguous. You're like, like, if you just
Speaker 1: follow a gigantic list of rules, you're less likely to
Speaker 1: accidentally get into trouble, right, Like, you're more likely to
Speaker 1: give a list of commandments to say a robot or two,
Speaker 1: or to robocopp er whoever, as opposed to a principle,
Speaker 1: or at least you give them rules alongside the principle.
Speaker 1: All right, So there you have it, the world of lists.
Speaker 1: I would say, bekase, Sorry, we just ended up like
Speaker 1: trying to list all the different ways that you can
Speaker 1: use a list or think about a list. I think
Speaker 1: that's what this turned into. This episode, by the way,
Speaker 1: one of the top ten episodes we put out this month.
Speaker 1: I would, I would say, just to pat ourselves on
Speaker 1: the back. Um, obviously, this is gonna be a topic
Speaker 1: that a lot of people have thoughts about out there.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have varying degrees of success with with to
Speaker 1: do lists, You're gonna have varying thoughts on top ten lists,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Just sort of the list obsessed nature of
Speaker 1: our culture, and we would love to hear from you
Speaker 1: about it. What are your top thirty seven reactions to
Speaker 1: this episode. Yes, lists them, rank them, share them with us.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out more
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over
Speaker 1: to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership.
Speaker 1: That's where you'll find all the podcast episodes. You'll find
Speaker 1: blog posts. You'll find some lists on there from back
Speaker 1: when we were doing more text based content. You also
Speaker 1: find links out to our various social media accounts. If
Speaker 1: you want to support the show, there are a few
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Speaker 1: first of all, spread the word. Let other people know
Speaker 1: about Stuff to Blow your Mind. You know, post about
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