Speaker 1: There's something about with the census, like you can't bookmarket,
Speaker 1: you can't save it, you can't binge it. You have
Speaker 1: to do it right here, right now, and then it's
Speaker 1: gone and you could do it again, but that'll be different,
Speaker 1: and like it's all just like it's right here, it's
Speaker 1: right now. This is how you have to experience it.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome
Speaker 2: Gretchen Rubin to the show. Gretchen is one of today's
Speaker 2: most influential and thought provoking observers of happiness and human nature.
Speaker 2: She's a highly acclaimed writer, having sold millions of copies
Speaker 2: of her New York Times bestselling books. Her podcast Happier
Speaker 2: with Gretchen Rubin has more than two hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: million downloads. As the founder of the Happiness Project, Gretchen
Speaker 2: has helped create an ecosystem of imaginative products and tools
Speaker 2: to help people become happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative.
Speaker 2: Her latest book is called Life in Five Senses. In
Speaker 2: this episode, I talked to Gretchen Rubin about connecting to
Speaker 2: the world through our five Our fast paced modern world
Speaker 2: keeps us constantly moving, making us feel disconnected from other
Speaker 2: people and our surroundings. Gretchen shares unconventional ways we can
Speaker 2: re experience the world through seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching.
Speaker 2: She believes that tuning into life's simple pleasures allows us
Speaker 2: to live each day with more appreciation and vitality. We
Speaker 2: also touch on the topics of mindfulness, creativity, learning, and
Speaker 2: individual differences. It's always great fun chatting with the Gretchen.
Speaker 2: She's got a lot of charisma and she really brings
Speaker 2: out a lot of happiness in me whenever I talk
Speaker 2: to her, and I'm sure she'll bring out the happiness
Speaker 2: in you as well, so that further ado I bring
Speaker 2: you Gretchen Ruben. Gretchen Ruben, how are you?
Speaker 1: I am so happy to be talking to you.
Speaker 2: I'm so happy to talk to you too. It's been
Speaker 2: a lifetime since you were last on the Psychology podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 2: at it feels like a lifetime.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: I loved your new book and I learned so much
Speaker 2: from your book about how to you know, lots of
Speaker 2: novel ways of having more transcendence in one life, things
Speaker 2: I hadn't even thought of than in retrospect. I'm like, huh,
Speaker 2: I can totally use that sense more, you know. And
Speaker 2: it's like I needed your book to tell me that
Speaker 2: I you know it, you know, seriously, I took your quiz,
Speaker 2: I took your five senses of quiz, and my most
Speaker 2: neglected sense, I believe is smell is smell it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: which surprised me a little bit, but also it made
Speaker 2: me like energize to think of all the ways that
Speaker 2: I can really incorporate that more into my life. I
Speaker 2: think I have such an aversion to bad smells that
Speaker 2: maybe that sometimes inhibits the potential for there's something deep there,
Speaker 2: you know, that our version of something can maybe a
Speaker 2: get the way of us really appreciating the good aspects
Speaker 2: of it, like great smells. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I'm so glad to hear that it got
Speaker 1: you sort of thinking about yourself, because the whole point
Speaker 1: of the book is not really so much about what
Speaker 1: I did that it's just sort of to help people
Speaker 1: get ideas for what they could do, because everybody's got
Speaker 1: their own complements of senses and their own things they
Speaker 1: want to work on and tune into, and it just
Speaker 1: but sometimes you just need some ideas to get you
Speaker 1: going and to get you sort of thinking in that direction,
Speaker 1: and so so that's great. And see, I'm a big
Speaker 1: appreciator of the sense of smell, but then again, I'm
Speaker 1: my most neglected sense of taste, and so maybe you're
Speaker 1: really into taste.
Speaker 2: You know what's interesting, I'm an HSP, who you know,
Speaker 2: stands for a highly sensitive person. There's like a there's
Speaker 2: a whole highly sensitive Person's scale, and it's just interesting
Speaker 2: how this relates to your work because some of the
Speaker 2: items on the scale are things like I avoid loud
Speaker 2: noises and smells, strong smells, And I've been thinking a
Speaker 2: lot about that, and I think there's a dark side
Speaker 2: to identifying too much as a highly sense of person
Speaker 2: in sort of a rigid way, because that can limit us.
Speaker 2: You know, if we're like, oh, I'm just the person
Speaker 2: that avoids loud noises, loud and strong smells as opposed
Speaker 2: to you know, that's called experiential avoidance, as opposed to
Speaker 2: leaning into some of this, and maybe maybe we're limiting ourselves.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's highly sensitive people are limiting ourselves sometimes.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting because I love categorizing. I'm always like
Speaker 1: trying to come up with categories. I just love that
Speaker 1: way I love having names for things. But I found
Speaker 1: that with my four Tendencies personality framework, it divides people
Speaker 1: into four tendencies because some people really feel like if
Speaker 1: you define, if you define me, you confine me. And
Speaker 1: I think with all these things, we want to make
Speaker 1: sure that they help us, you know, maybe see ourselves
Speaker 1: more clearly in spot ways where we could change if
Speaker 1: we want to change, but we don't want to let
Speaker 1: them become so just so kind of that we just
Speaker 1: then handwave a lot of things saying like, oh, well
Speaker 1: that's just not for me. So I think you're right.
Speaker 1: These can be These kinds of frameworks can be very
Speaker 1: useful and illuminating, but we always want to remember that
Speaker 1: they're not They're not a box that we can never
Speaker 1: step out of, or they don't define some kind of
Speaker 1: you know, artificial limitation that we can't push push ourselves
Speaker 1: against if we want, if we choose to definitely.
Speaker 2: By the way, I love that define not confined.
Speaker 1: It's pretty I did not make that up. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I do like I like a rhyming. I like a
Speaker 1: rhyming motto.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's genius. It's like it summarizes my whole like
Speaker 2: challenge on I like it T shirt version. It summarizes
Speaker 2: my whole like nerdy dissertation, five hundred page dissertation in
Speaker 2: like one thing. That's amazing. Do you know who the
Speaker 2: original sources?
Speaker 1: No? I don't. I think it's sort of you know,
Speaker 1: one of my One of the things that so working
Speaker 1: on life in five senses kind of one of the
Speaker 1: things that did is it sparked my creativity, but kind
Speaker 1: of uncontrolled ways almost. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: I realize is how much I love aphorisms. I love
Speaker 1: quotations that I love aphorisms, and so one of the
Speaker 1: things I collect is aphorisms, but I also collect proverbs,
Speaker 1: which are kind of folk truths, and so I have
Speaker 1: huge library of folk truth and that's one of the
Speaker 1: ones that I came across that is just like you
Speaker 1: spot it, you got it. You know. That's one of
Speaker 1: those kinds of yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you're like a.
Speaker 1: Neurons, neurons that fire together, wire together. I can go, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can keep going, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Why do I love so much? They're great?
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, well then maybe you'll be excited for my
Speaker 1: next book, which is all going to be about aphorisms
Speaker 1: and proverbs.
Speaker 2: Oh good. Have you announced that yet?
Speaker 1: I mean, I talk about it in the book. I
Speaker 1: mean it's still just very much in the playful project.
Speaker 1: But I but I work on it all the time.
Speaker 1: But I got the idea of it as part of this.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the exercises that I do for
Speaker 1: life and five census is I go to the net
Speaker 1: every day, which I still do by I sut out
Speaker 1: to do it for a year, but I still do
Speaker 1: it because I love it so much. And one of
Speaker 1: the things, and this is right up your alley, Scott,
Speaker 1: is it gave me a chance to be bored sometimes
Speaker 1: just gay. I was back in the same gallery I'd
Speaker 1: been a million times, and I was a little bit bored.
Speaker 1: And that's often when you have creative ideas, because you
Speaker 1: sort of your mind is trying to create, is trying
Speaker 1: to amuse itself, and you have sort of unusual associations
Speaker 1: or unexpected juxtaphysicians. And I was looking at something and thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, if something secreted unfailingly makes it more interesting,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, that's a good aphorism. And then
Speaker 1: it hit me, I can write a book of aphorisms.
Speaker 1: And I was just skipping around the marble floors because
Speaker 1: I was so happy with my idea here because of
Speaker 1: the five senses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is you are so cool. I love that idea.
Speaker 2: I love that idea. Yeah, I love that. Like you
Speaker 2: get these moments of inspiration where it becomes like clear
Speaker 2: to you in a second that you need to write
Speaker 2: a book. Oh I love those moments.
Speaker 1: That's feeling best feeling I can tell you with every
Speaker 1: single one of my books to exactly where I was.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, me too. And this is so interesting when
Speaker 2: we talk about, like you know, on this podcast, sometimes
Speaker 2: we talk about cognitive neuroscientists about it just free will exist.
Speaker 2: And look, I don't know definitively you know the answer
Speaker 2: to that question, but I can say that there's still
Speaker 2: some great mystery surrounding where creative ideas come from. That
Speaker 2: Like I'm okay keeping a mystery. Mm hmm, okay, I'm
Speaker 2: okay not knowing the precise sequence of causal events that
Speaker 2: led to that moment, but it's just wonderful that moment happened, right,
Speaker 2: So right, yeah, yeah, right right, So one of these
Speaker 2: I don't know if this counts as an aphorism. Tell
Speaker 2: me if this counts as an aphorism. But you said,
Speaker 2: the more we know, the more we notice. I love
Speaker 2: that is that. I think that does as a yes, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's so true. The more we know, the more we notice.
Speaker 2: And like knowledge, when you think of knowledge, you tend
Speaker 2: to you not think of it as permeating across senses,
Speaker 2: but it does. It can you know, like there's knowledge
Speaker 2: in smell, there's knowledge. I feel like this is like
Speaker 2: a meta knowledge point I'm trying to make is that
Speaker 2: we can wear knowledge by experiencing things, not just through
Speaker 2: like verbal the verbal domain. And I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people thinknowledge. They think, you know, you're learning verbal
Speaker 2: information right right.
Speaker 1: And I think especially touch is really interesting in this
Speaker 1: way because it's like you can grasp it more easily,
Speaker 1: because you can grasp it more easily, like the concrete
Speaker 1: nature of it, or just like being able to like
Speaker 1: visual see an object and maybe even like use an
Speaker 1: object really helps you understand things. And you just think
Speaker 1: of something as simple as like you have a problem
Speaker 1: with your eyes and you go to an eye doctor
Speaker 1: and there's like a plastic model of an eye and
Speaker 1: the doctor is pointing to it as they're explaining it.
Speaker 1: It just you can understand the concept better because there's
Speaker 1: something there that you can actually see, and then if
Speaker 1: you reach out, you know, you would be able to
Speaker 1: see the proportions of it, and the and the scale
Speaker 1: of it and the relationships. And I think that this
Speaker 1: idea of kind of trying to embody ideas, even abstract ideas,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think, you know, in a way,
Speaker 1: maybe that's why we have so many ways that we
Speaker 1: turn abstract ideas is into objects like a flag or
Speaker 1: a judge's robes or you know, a sports team uniform.
Speaker 1: It's like, these are ways that we like, you could say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: of course they're playing They're they're playing football. They're gonna
Speaker 1: wear jersey, so they can tell each other. Part it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: but then why do I have a jersey? Why am
Speaker 1: I wearing a jersey? They don't need to, you know,
Speaker 1: It's because I want to associate myself with sort of
Speaker 1: these ideals. So it's very interesting how the human world is,
Speaker 1: like we're all up in our heads, but then we're
Speaker 1: all also in our bodies and in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought of an obvious pun that everyone's going
Speaker 2: to use when they talk about your book. But like,
Speaker 2: your book really opened my eyes.
Speaker 1: Oh good, excellent. No, nobody says that yet.
Speaker 2: No, I'm hearing it first here get right right for
Speaker 2: the right for the men. But it opened my opened
Speaker 2: my ears, it opened my hands. Your book opened up
Speaker 2: all my senses.
Speaker 1: How did you your tongue?
Speaker 2: Yeah, on the tip of my dock exactly. How did
Speaker 2: you come to your senses? You have a really interesting
Speaker 2: story about Yeah, well, I'll let you tell it. Oh
Speaker 2: you open it up with open the book.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's funny, Scott that you say you sort
Speaker 1: of know the moment, kind of the moment of realization.
Speaker 1: And I this was when my moment of realization came,
Speaker 1: which was so I got pink eye, which is something
Speaker 1: that unfortunately I'm sort of prone to. So I had
Speaker 1: pink eye and it was lingering. So went to the
Speaker 1: eye doctor and and after after I got checked out,
Speaker 1: my doctor said to me, very casually, well, be sure
Speaker 1: you come in for your you know, on time, for
Speaker 1: your next checkup, because, as you know, you're at more
Speaker 1: risk for losing your vision. And I was just like, wait,
Speaker 1: what what are you talking about? I know, I did
Speaker 1: not know that, and and he's like, oh, yeah, well
Speaker 1: you know, you're severely nearsighted, so you're at more risk
Speaker 1: for a detached retina, and if that happens, you can
Speaker 1: lose some of your sight, so we would want to
Speaker 1: catch it right away. And as it happened, I had
Speaker 1: a friend who just had lost some of his vision
Speaker 1: to a detached retina. So that felt very real to me,
Speaker 1: that possibility. So I go out on the street and
Speaker 1: I'm walking home because I live in New York City,
Speaker 1: so I live within walking distance of my eye doctor,
Speaker 1: and it just occurs to me, you know, here, I
Speaker 1: am in this. And of course I knew it any
Speaker 1: time it'll actually I knew that at any time I
Speaker 1: could lose everything, and I knew that I could still
Speaker 1: have a rich, meaningful life if I lost my sight
Speaker 1: or any of my senses. But what I was hitting
Speaker 1: me was this realization like it's all here, it's all
Speaker 1: right now, I have it, now I may lose it,
Speaker 1: and yet I'm taking it all for granted. I didn't
Speaker 1: look at one single thing on my way to the
Speaker 1: doctor today. It's just this fog of preoccupation. I just
Speaker 1: am letting it all pass me by. And then suddenly,
Speaker 1: like in this realization, it was like every knob turned
Speaker 1: up to eleven in my head, and I just had
Speaker 1: this kind of psychedelic experience walking home where I could
Speaker 1: see every leaf on the tree, I could hear every
Speaker 1: sound like picked out, I could smell every New York
Speaker 1: City smell. There's a lot of smells, scott As you
Speaker 1: probably know. Oh yes, yes, you know, and like I
Speaker 1: could just just like everything was coming to me with
Speaker 1: this sort of hyper clarity, and it was so beautiful,
Speaker 1: it was so overwhelming, and I just thought, this is
Speaker 1: all around me all the time, and I am just
Speaker 1: missing out. And then I got home and like I
Speaker 1: saw my family and I was like I don't see
Speaker 1: them either, Like my daughter's like taller, my husband, Like
Speaker 1: when was the last time I really looked at that guy?
Speaker 1: And I just thought, you know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: miss all of this. I want to make direct contact.
Speaker 1: I just felt like I had I was stuck in
Speaker 1: my head and I had drifted out of contact with
Speaker 1: with the world and other people and also for myself
Speaker 1: and so and I, and that that walk showed me
Speaker 1: the way I could get that kind of invigoration and
Speaker 1: connection was through my five senses, through the intensity of
Speaker 1: that kind of that direct link to the physical world.
Speaker 1: And so that's when I was like, okay, and you know,
Speaker 1: and then I realized, and maybe you've had this experience
Speaker 1: with your own work, is you look back and you
Speaker 1: realize this was a puzzled piece that I was kind
Speaker 1: of groping for all along. There was something that I
Speaker 1: was overlooking. There was a piece that I was kind
Speaker 1: of touching on but hadn't really quite focused in on that.
Speaker 1: Now I see, this is what the missing piece is.
Speaker 1: And so for me it was very satisfying because I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, yeah, this is the I'm a feeling
Speaker 1: like I was missing something big. This is what it is.
Speaker 1: It's this direct connection to the world.
Speaker 2: Definitely, definitely did you interview anyone for your book that
Speaker 2: is fundamentally missing it maybe someone's blind or someone's deaf,
Speaker 2: And yeah, they talked about the height the heightened the
Speaker 2: sort of other aspects of other senses that kind of
Speaker 2: come as a ride for that.
Speaker 1: You do, Yeah, you're you're more attuned to them and
Speaker 1: you use them more so. Yeah, the way, uh, people
Speaker 1: with who've lost their sense of sight might use echolocation.
Speaker 1: It's something that all of us could do. It's a human,
Speaker 1: it's a it's not that hard to learn. How did
Speaker 1: you do echolocation? Apparently, or like tune into it. But
Speaker 1: this is something that people don't do, so I have
Speaker 1: heard some people say that they kind of they sometimes
Speaker 1: resist people saying like, oh, well you lost this, but
Speaker 1: it's so great because you've gained all these like sort
Speaker 1: of superpowers. And it's sort of like, yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: get superpowers. You know, you tune into it more. But
Speaker 1: I have heard from people that it's like it's not
Speaker 1: always comforting to sort of reassure people that somehow, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got all this other these other benefits. But no,
Speaker 1: but it is fascinating how and it's fascinating to see
Speaker 1: how technology now there's all kinds of like new new,
Speaker 1: very innovative, interesting ways to help people navigate the world
Speaker 1: more easily in ways that you know, we couldn't have
Speaker 1: done five or ten years ago that are really really
Speaker 1: interesting to see.
Speaker 2: Ye, yes, yes, I love that. And using a lot
Speaker 2: of the principles in your book, how can we develop
Speaker 2: more technology and things to help us heighten our senses
Speaker 2: and operate in all cylinders mm hmm, and through like
Speaker 2: virtual reality like I feel like they need to have
Speaker 2: virtual reality that operates in all five senses.
Speaker 1: M wow. Yeah. I mean it's funny because it always
Speaker 1: seems like smell is the thing that like trips people up.
Speaker 1: Like there's been a lot of efforts to like incorporate
Speaker 1: smell into movies and could you have a smell like
Speaker 1: canister and your computer, and it just never really works
Speaker 1: very well. Smell is very tricky. It's a tricky sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is very tricky, and and it's also
Speaker 2: not standardized, like different smells a list of different triggers
Speaker 2: and reactions for different people. But you do make an
Speaker 2: interesting point in your book that we can all live
Speaker 2: in our own unique sensory world and that can you
Speaker 2: kind of elaborate a little bit about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of the things that just astonished
Speaker 1: me because again, sort of intellectually I knew, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you live in your sensory world and I live in mind,
Speaker 1: and they're different. And of course you can see what
Speaker 1: this one might be. It would be genetics and our upbringing,
Speaker 1: our culture, the environment and you to row. All these
Speaker 1: things contribute. But it's one thing to sort of intellectually
Speaker 1: realize that but in fact, I think I kind of
Speaker 1: had the view like the world is, it's pretty much
Speaker 1: the same. And what I realized is is it isn't.
Speaker 1: Brains are not objective reporters. They tell Gretchen what my
Speaker 1: brain thinks that Gretchen needs to know and is interested in,
Speaker 1: and it's constantly bringing certain things up to the forefront
Speaker 1: and letting other things fade into the background. And one
Speaker 1: of my favorite examples of this is I was doing
Speaker 1: an interview in my apartment and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the interviewer was like, oh, can we stop? And I
Speaker 1: was like, why are we stopping? And she said, because
Speaker 1: of the siren. Don't you hear the siren? And then,
Speaker 1: of course then I heard that there was a siren
Speaker 1: going right down the street in front of my apartment,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't heard it because my brain is like, oh, Gretchen,
Speaker 1: we got sirens all the time. This is not a
Speaker 1: big deal. Just don't pay any attention to this. And
Speaker 1: she said, yeah, if you're in LA, it's helicopters. People
Speaker 1: don't hear helicopters. But of course somebody thinking about audio
Speaker 1: quality is going to be very tuned into like, oh,
Speaker 1: is there some kind of noise intruding into this recording.
Speaker 1: So her brain told her right away. Brain didn't tell me.
Speaker 1: And again, it's like we were both sitting in exactly
Speaker 1: the same room, and it wasn't that I couldn't physically
Speaker 1: hear it, because when she called my attention to it,
Speaker 1: well then I did hear it. But then there are
Speaker 1: situations where you can't you can't experience, like like back
Speaker 1: to smell, we said, smell smell. The smell is complicated.
Speaker 1: So let's say let's say you've been using a really
Speaker 1: strong air freshener in your house for months, Well you
Speaker 1: might get to the point where you don't even smell it.
Speaker 1: You're thinking, does this air freshener even work anymore? So
Speaker 1: you put out another air freshener, thinking I don't even
Speaker 1: know if these things have any strength at all. And
Speaker 1: I walk into your house and I'm like, oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: what is going on in here? Like the pine is
Speaker 1: overwhelming because we can't smell our home the way a
Speaker 1: guess would smell it, because our brain is like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is so familiar, this is such a this is
Speaker 1: such a known quantity. We don't need to bring this
Speaker 1: to the attention, but to a new person, they are
Speaker 1: experiencing that. But if you went away on vacation for
Speaker 1: two weeks and then you came back, well, then you
Speaker 1: might you would experience that air freshener again. But it's
Speaker 1: just fascinating because with the hearing, I could, I could
Speaker 1: hear it once I paid attention to it. But with smell,
Speaker 1: it's like if you're used to it, you have that
Speaker 1: odor fatigue and you can't smell it.
Speaker 2: I mean, let's extractly so what you just said too,
Speaker 2: Like you said you go to the art museum every day, right,
Speaker 2: mm hmm. So with visual aesthetics, obviously, they say art
Speaker 2: is in the eye of the beholder, right, you know.
Speaker 2: I don't know if this is a fair question, but
Speaker 2: as you go there every day, does your perception of
Speaker 2: some of the same paintings that you see like every
Speaker 2: day change? Does it get more nuanced? Like you notice
Speaker 2: new things that you didn't notice before about the same painting.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious, absolutely, one hundred percent and far more
Speaker 1: than I thought. But it's interesting, Like when I started this,
Speaker 1: I didn't really exactly know what to expect. I just
Speaker 1: knew that I was really interested in kind of repetition
Speaker 1: and familiarity and how an experience would change over time.
Speaker 1: For me, I'm really much more interested in the experience
Speaker 1: of the met itself, like the met as like the artwork,
Speaker 1: than in individual painting. So in that way, my perception
Speaker 1: is changing drammatically over time. But you're exactly right, even
Speaker 1: with individual paintings, like one thing is like as I
Speaker 1: go over months and months and years and years, like
Speaker 1: different paintings come into my or sculptures or whatever come
Speaker 1: into my attention in a new way. So I read
Speaker 1: the novel Memoirs of Hadrian and I'm like, oh, let
Speaker 1: me go see if there are any sculptures of antinous
Speaker 1: in the mets. So then I go look at them,
Speaker 1: or it's President's Dan. I'm like, why didn't I go
Speaker 1: see if I could see some paintings of American presidents
Speaker 1: in that, just you know, just something to keep it fun.
Speaker 1: And then from then on, whenever I walk by it,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I noticed it more because they know
Speaker 1: some way it's become special to me. And I really
Speaker 1: looked at it closely because I'm like, oh, this is antinuous,
Speaker 1: or oh this is this is a statue of Abraham
Speaker 1: Lincoln let me really really look at it, and so
Speaker 1: slowly the whole met is kind of becoming more and
Speaker 1: more dense, or like I just went there today with
Speaker 1: a friend and he was like, well, this is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite things. Well every time I see it now,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, oh, this is one of his favorite things.
Speaker 1: And so it does change over time because I bring
Speaker 1: more to it, I get more from it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's some exercise that and I'm going to
Speaker 2: link this because I know you say that this is
Speaker 2: the opposite of meditation, but there's actually a meditate. A
Speaker 2: meditation exercise. I was assigned when I was doing my
Speaker 2: eight week Mindful, the stress based reduction course, and one
Speaker 2: of the exercises was to go to the museum and
Speaker 2: just stare at a particular spot of a painting for
Speaker 2: like an hour and reflect on how it changed, you know,
Speaker 2: your perception of the full painting, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So I'm just I just thought of that because that
Speaker 2: is something that's assigned to me as part of my
Speaker 2: meditation exercise. But you talk in your book about how
Speaker 2: this is in some ways the opposite of meditation, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think so because what you're describing as an attempt
Speaker 1: to discipline the mind, right, it's like I want telling
Speaker 1: you what to do, I'm telling you how to think,
Speaker 1: and you're supposed to and like, of course it's like
Speaker 1: let the thoughts flow by without judgment, but you're meant
Speaker 1: to be disciplining your mind toward that painting for however
Speaker 1: long it is, half an hour an hour, and I
Speaker 1: do exactly the opposite. I walk around, I do whatever
Speaker 1: I want, I think about whatever I want. I don't
Speaker 1: have an assignment, there's no checklist, there's nothing that I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do. So for me, it's much more like recess,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like I'm, if anything, I have like
Speaker 1: an overdisciplined mind. And so what I needed was not
Speaker 1: an exercise to discipline the mind, but to let the
Speaker 1: mind off the leash. And so for me, I'm really
Speaker 1: just like letting it all come. If I felt like
Speaker 1: looking at something for half an hour, I would I
Speaker 1: have to say, that's not the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: appeals to me. I'm not haven't done it, though a
Speaker 1: lot of people have said that I should. I was like,
Speaker 1: I never really feel like doing that. I feel like
Speaker 1: doing something else when I'm there, and maybe one day
Speaker 1: I will. And sometimes people I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people who love meditation, and they kind of want to
Speaker 1: claim everything for meditation. But it does seem to me
Speaker 1: that at the heart of it, meditation is some attempt
Speaker 1: to discipline the mind and to do certain things with
Speaker 1: your mind and not others. Whereas I'm just like, I
Speaker 1: can do whatever I want. I have no attempt to
Speaker 1: do to be I am trying to be. It's the
Speaker 1: discipline of undisciplined, you know, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: It's like going to the gym and bringing in bond
Speaker 2: bonds that you just sit there and eat.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, yeah, because I think people have different challenges, right,
Speaker 1: and so for some people meditation is a really helpful tool,
Speaker 1: but it's not. But but for me, I felt like
Speaker 1: there was a need for something else, and the MET
Speaker 1: just gave me this kind of like perfect And of course,
Speaker 1: I'm incredibly fortunate that I live within walking distance of
Speaker 1: the MET and I have the I have the freedom
Speaker 1: to go every day, one hundred percent. I never take
Speaker 1: that for granted. Literally, every time I go there, I think,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I am so lucky. How did I
Speaker 1: get this? Lucky. But the fact is I lived that
Speaker 1: close to the MET for years and I hadn't gone
Speaker 1: every day, you know, I hardly went at all. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons. I thought, again, just as
Speaker 1: I'm going to regret my site if I lost my set,
Speaker 1: I'm going to regret the Met. If I move away
Speaker 1: from the Met, I'll think why didn't I go? And
Speaker 1: I had the chance? And so it's just it's huge, huge,
Speaker 1: but it's contained. It's full of interesting things, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't really change that. It changes enough, but not that much.
Speaker 1: It's just sort of the perfect you can walk and
Speaker 1: of course, as you know, walking itself is great for creativity,
Speaker 1: going outside and the light is great for creativity. So
Speaker 1: there's so many things built into it that really like
Speaker 1: we're nourishing my mind. And I just love them Met
Speaker 1: so much. I love it more than when I started,
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 2: Why does it seem like there's an uptick in interest
Speaker 2: in immersive exhibits, Like I go to some exhibits, you know,
Speaker 2: the brain, Let's dive into the brain. Yes, yes, oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, that's intense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, immersive ango and you know, Okay, So I
Speaker 1: think it's because of two trends that are actually the opposite,
Speaker 1: but they both point in the same direction of wanting
Speaker 1: us to do something immersive. The first is that experience
Speaker 1: feels flat and two dimensional and drained. We're behind a
Speaker 1: screen and so things feel very flattened. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: sometimes things feel hyper real, ultra process. So I'm eating
Speaker 1: food and so at the one time, it's like both
Speaker 1: overwhelming and underwhelming. So I'm eating food that's been engineered
Speaker 1: to hit every bliss point, but I'm not. I'm just
Speaker 1: bringing takeout into my apartment, so I don't have the
Speaker 1: smells of baking and grilling and caramelizing that would really
Speaker 1: tantalize me and bring all this like greater enjoyment and
Speaker 1: appreciation the flavor to me. Or I go to a
Speaker 1: movie and there's so many images and all this beautiful soundtrack,
Speaker 1: and yet there's no air in my face, there's no smell,
Speaker 1: there's no texture to it. And so I think that
Speaker 1: this is making us have this craving for direct contact,
Speaker 1: like wanting to feel like this is like I'm like
Speaker 1: experiencing it like full body. People like about the metaverse,
Speaker 1: but we're just like give me the universe. I want
Speaker 1: to I want to connect with that. So I think
Speaker 1: it's both of these things combining. But that put us
Speaker 1: in the same the same place of craving that immersiveness.
Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense, and it's also a
Speaker 2: way of improving learning.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah. If I could teach my students basic principles of
Speaker 2: cognitive science and using all five senses, I think it
Speaker 2: would increase their chances of learning the principles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know what, one thing that occurred, but
Speaker 1: this is also has to do with rhyme. But I'm
Speaker 1: kind of surprised that there isn't more effort to you
Speaker 1: for people who have to master a huge amount of
Speaker 1: material to turn it into songs, especially rhyming songs, because
Speaker 1: you can really remember songs and rhyme much better. And
Speaker 1: if it's like, I'm surprised there aren't like album like
Speaker 1: songs after songs, after songs after songs to help people,
Speaker 1: because I think you're right, like, if you tap into
Speaker 1: these other senses a lot of times, it makes it
Speaker 1: learning and other cognitive tasks easier.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I know this guy called Baba Brinkman who's a
Speaker 2: rapper and he writes about evolutionary psychology brilliant.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I'm gonna go look that up right now.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's great, he's very talented. He's very talented. He
Speaker 2: also freestyles about science.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but see, I bet for a lot of
Speaker 1: people they could remember that so much more easily than
Speaker 1: they can remember, you know, like just sort of like
Speaker 1: a page full of notes, yeah talk, yeah, exactly where
Speaker 1: it just doesn't stick as much.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it seems like all the rules have changed
Speaker 2: in the past couple of years with COVID and everything
Speaker 2: in terms of our understanding of you know, like we're
Speaker 2: more wary of using some of our senses right around
Speaker 2: people and out in public. I mean, we have all
Speaker 2: these kind of we feel like we have these restrictions
Speaker 2: on us. How has COVID shifted the way people interact
Speaker 2: with each other and experience that the five senses you talk.
Speaker 1: About, Well, one thing is I think that the COVID
Speaker 1: experience really heightened people's appreciation for the senses, especially the
Speaker 1: sense of smell, because in the West, smell is kind
Speaker 1: of being considered this sort of bonus sense, like it's
Speaker 1: kind of nice to have it, but it doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter that much. But I think because so many people
Speaker 1: lost their sense of smell and then also with you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of their sense of taste and really felt
Speaker 1: what a loss that was, I think it made people
Speaker 1: much more aware of the importance of smell. I never
Speaker 1: lost my sense of some but I have a couple
Speaker 1: of friends who did temporarily. And then I have one
Speaker 1: friend who very significantly lost your sense of smell, and
Speaker 1: she's part of a study because she still has not
Speaker 1: regained her sense. She's like a twenty four percent.
Speaker 2: Now, how long has it been.
Speaker 1: Eleven months or something? Oh? Yeah, and she was and
Speaker 1: we had a long conversation about like what she could smell,
Speaker 1: what she couldn't smell, Like, sometimes smell comes back, but
Speaker 1: it's not this. Things don't smell the same. And so
Speaker 1: I think there's just a lot a much greater awareness
Speaker 1: of like just the tremendous contribution that it makes to
Speaker 1: our sense of connection to other people, in particular that's like,
Speaker 1: it's very important to be able to smell other people.
Speaker 1: But then also just like a sense of where we are.
Speaker 1: Like a friend of mine who lost your sense of
Speaker 1: smell temporarily said how claustrophobic she felt she felt like
Speaker 1: everything was stale. She was like I couldn't get air
Speaker 1: in my like I couldn't feel like I was really
Speaker 1: in a place. I just felt like I was trapped
Speaker 1: in a box. And then feeling yes, absolutely fortunately many people,
Speaker 1: from many people, it comes back. And then this sense
Speaker 1: of touch, I mean this of course people were talking
Speaker 1: about it all the time, like not being able to hug,
Speaker 1: not being able to shake hands, not being you know,
Speaker 1: having to like physically stay away from people. How dramatically
Speaker 1: that affected people's sense of well being and sense of connection.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I don't know about you, but like
Speaker 1: it was just almost impossible. Like I used to at
Speaker 1: the beginning of COVID, I would try to like go
Speaker 1: for a walk with like in that period where we
Speaker 1: were like okay, no, it's okay if you're outside. I
Speaker 1: would try to go for a walk with a friend,
Speaker 1: but to stay separate. And finally I'm like, let's not
Speaker 1: do that. Let's just talk on the phone, because I
Speaker 1: literally cannot. I cannot stay that far away from you
Speaker 1: if I'm with you and not be closer to you,
Speaker 1: Like I just can't. We just can't sustain that. It
Speaker 1: just felt too hard. And weird. But if I'm talking
Speaker 1: to you on the phone, I feel like you're right
Speaker 1: there in my ear. I feel like you're standing right
Speaker 1: next to me. And so I think I think that
Speaker 1: being I mean sadly, often the way that we really
Speaker 1: understand something and learn to value something is when we're
Speaker 1: deprived of it. And I think going through that period
Speaker 1: made people understand just like the human touch, the human
Speaker 1: connection is so important to us. And you know, as
Speaker 1: you say, it hasn't really come back, like we're not
Speaker 1: where we were. Things feel very different. There are things
Speaker 1: I think that like, for instance, in a previous book
Speaker 1: tour for fun, I had little vials I was talking
Speaker 1: about smell back then, because I love smell. I had
Speaker 1: these little vials of smell that I would pass in
Speaker 1: the audience when I gave a book talk, just like
Speaker 1: these sort of like really unusual smells, and people loved
Speaker 1: it and they were laughing, and it was always like
Speaker 1: a big hit with people. But then I was thinking,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I would do that now. I
Speaker 1: don't think people would be comfortable with passing a vial
Speaker 1: of smell and everybody smelling it, passing it through an
Speaker 1: audience and then somebody's like, oh, well you could have
Speaker 1: hand sanitizer. I'm like, well, then we would just smell
Speaker 1: the hand sanitizer. That would be no fun. I mean
Speaker 1: that who wants to sit around smelling like a thousand
Speaker 1: Yeah and so. But it's but it's interesting because something
Speaker 1: that at one time seemed totally culturally permissible now feels
Speaker 1: like something that people would not be comfortable with.
Speaker 2: Taboo. Taboo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it just doesn't. It just doesn't feel right.
Speaker 2: You make that taboo, though there will be a certain
Speaker 2: segment of society that will embrace it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, sure, sure, But if I'm doing a book talk,
Speaker 1: it's like I don't want to even even if five
Speaker 1: percent of the people felt deeply uncomfortable, It's like it's
Speaker 1: not worth it. Yeah no, but I know it is.
Speaker 1: It always sets off that dynamic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, individual differences. So fascinating. Okay, I was fascinated
Speaker 2: with your discussion of ketchup. Mmmm.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: I will never never taste it the same way again.
Speaker 1: Right, it's magical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell people a little bit about so ketchup.
Speaker 1: Ketchup is funny because, on the one hand, we dismiss
Speaker 1: it as kind of this condiment of sort of the
Speaker 1: people who don't have any discernment and like you just
Speaker 1: glop it all over everything and it just covers up
Speaker 1: the taste of stuff. And it's so common. I mean,
Speaker 1: like just a gigantic percentage of people in the United
Speaker 1: States have ketchup in their fridge ofttimes it's science ketchup.
Speaker 1: So we're even using the same kind of ketchup. It's
Speaker 1: not even like, you know, there's a huge variety. If
Speaker 1: you really taste ketchup. I really encourage people just go
Speaker 1: have a taste of it, and you will realize how
Speaker 1: sophisticate and complicated it is. It's so there are five
Speaker 1: basic tastes. I mean, there are arguably more, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of disagreement. Fattiness, calcium, there are all these
Speaker 1: ones that are people are arguing about whether or not
Speaker 1: they are true taste, but they're five. Sweet, salty, sour, bitter,
Speaker 1: and new Mommy are kind of the classic five, and
Speaker 1: ketchup hits all five. That's really hard to do. I
Speaker 1: tried to come up with a list of others, and
Speaker 1: I could only come up with things that have four,
Speaker 1: Like the marga has four, but it doesn't have umami.
Speaker 1: It's hard to get all of them in there, and
Speaker 1: Ketchup does and I think that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why it's just so powerful, because it is. And so
Speaker 1: I had this party. I did a taste test party
Speaker 1: where I had a bunch of I had friends come
Speaker 1: over and we did like taste tests. I'd love taste us, so, like,
Speaker 1: we tried four varieties at apples and like talked about
Speaker 1: what they tasted like and how they were different. It's
Speaker 1: a super fun, it's a super fun thing to do
Speaker 1: with friends. But I gave everybody like just like a
Speaker 1: little spoonful of ketchup, and people were just dumbfounded that
Speaker 1: if you really pay attention, just how complex and sophisticated
Speaker 1: it is. And a friend of mine even said, she's like,
Speaker 1: if I didn't know this was Ketchup, I would have
Speaker 1: thought it was like this exotic, super expensive, rare ingredient
Speaker 1: because it just tastes so like sophisticated. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: the next time I do a taste party, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: turn the lights out and have people taste ketchup and
Speaker 1: maybe they won't even realize it's ketchup because we just
Speaker 1: don't pay it. This is the whole thing. We don't
Speaker 1: pay attention to the very familiar things in our lives.
Speaker 1: It's very easy for familiar things to fade away into wallpaper,
Speaker 1: Worcester your sauce. Try Worcesters your sauce. That is blonkers.
Speaker 1: There's a lot going on in Wcester shre sauce. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things like that where you know,
Speaker 1: like apple pie with cheese or you know, like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: that's just lots of taste happening. But so ketchup is
Speaker 1: so I do. I really was delighted to learn that
Speaker 1: ketchup is so kind of undersung for all of its merits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot going on in ketchup.
Speaker 1: That's there's also for sure, right the aftertaste, the texture,
Speaker 1: the color, the consistency like but you know, another thing
Speaker 1: that was really interesting to me is salt. You know,
Speaker 1: we always talking about, oh, people put salt and everything,
Speaker 1: but there's a good reason for that. You know why.
Speaker 1: Salt is just a flavor enhancer. It makes bitter things
Speaker 1: less bitter, it makes sweet things like it can improve
Speaker 1: sweetness unless there's too much of it. It can add
Speaker 1: to creaminess. It's like it's just it just makes things
Speaker 1: taste better again, kind of kind of a magical substance.
Speaker 1: It's the only rock we eat also, fun fact, and
Speaker 1: we have to have it to survive, So it makes
Speaker 1: sense that it's one of the five tastes that we're
Speaker 1: hardwired to appreciate.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I'm really contemplating the thought experiment of tasting some
Speaker 2: of these really complex things without any semantic categories or
Speaker 2: you know, like being surprised and not knowing what it
Speaker 2: is you're tasting and changes the experience of it. Mmm,
Speaker 2: I'm really curious about that now.
Speaker 1: Well, I had everybody taste red Bull without telling them
Speaker 1: what it was, and at that taste party and people
Speaker 1: were just they were like, this is bananas. What is that?
Speaker 1: Not bananas? Literally, but like this is bonkers? What is this?
Speaker 1: People couldn't figure it out. It was just like because
Speaker 1: it was just such an odd mixture of flavors. If
Speaker 1: you don't know what it is, if you don't know
Speaker 1: what to expect and kind of your brain knows what's coming,
Speaker 1: it's just very hard to make sense of it.
Speaker 2: Wow, I want to do the experiment with ket though.
Speaker 1: You should. Yeah, yeah, Well, turn off the lights and
Speaker 1: get a bunch of unwary subjects and have them taste it.
Speaker 2: See what they say. I can do that. It might
Speaker 2: be a little weird, but in the name of.
Speaker 1: Science, right right, right, right, right, right right, you are
Speaker 1: my guinea pigs, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's fun though, people, you know, but this is one
Speaker 1: of the things, the big things that I learned from
Speaker 1: the book is this is a great way to connect
Speaker 1: with other people. We love to connect with other people
Speaker 1: through sensory experiences, whether it's going to a concert or
Speaker 1: having a meal together. And but you know, you there's
Speaker 1: sometimes there are these unconventional ways, like having a taste party.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, you can have a dinner party, but
Speaker 1: you can have a taste party. And that's just like
Speaker 1: a different way to have fun with your sense of taste.
Speaker 1: I have this book this board game called Follow Your Nose,
Speaker 1: and it's basically it's a bingo game, but you have
Speaker 1: to match sense to like the card, like the identifier,
Speaker 1: and it is just so fun, Like it's harder to
Speaker 1: do than you think, and it's really fun and it's
Speaker 1: just different, you know, It's just like doing something different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like it. What's the name of the game.
Speaker 1: Follow your nose, Follow your nose.
Speaker 2: You don't get any royalties.
Speaker 1: No, I don't. This is now sadly No, Now I
Speaker 1: wish I did, but yeah, I wish I did. But
Speaker 1: there's all there's also these cool samplers. There's one for
Speaker 1: coffee that I have, and then there's also there's ones
Speaker 1: for one. I think there's other ones too, where they
Speaker 1: have vials of smells for like coffees to help you
Speaker 1: pick out the different like all the different elements of coffee.
Speaker 1: So it's like butteriness and chocolate and and again it's
Speaker 1: just another way of like tapping into your sense of
Speaker 1: smell in sort of an unconventional way. It's interesting. But
Speaker 1: then I did some things like I'd always wondered what
Speaker 1: smelling salts were, Like, you know, like you read about
Speaker 1: smelling salts, it's like, what is that. Well, it turns
Speaker 1: out you can. You can get them. Their ammonia Inhalen's
Speaker 1: today is what they're called. So I finally like satisfied
Speaker 1: my lifelong curiosity with smelling cells. And they're very weird.
Speaker 1: It's a very weird. Have you ever smelled smelling salts? No?
Speaker 2: But don't they do that to wake you up.
Speaker 1: They do that. Yeah, that's why they do it. If
Speaker 1: like you're about to faint, they do it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they use it. Athletes now use it. That's the principal
Speaker 1: use of it. Now. I think it's controversial, but some
Speaker 1: people use it. But yeah, it's interesting. It's an interesting sensation.
Speaker 1: It's definitely a sensation more than a smell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet, I bet. Yeah. If it energizes you
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Kind of, Yeah, it definitely wakes you up. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not a bad experience, but it's interesting. It's not one
Speaker 1: that I'm dying to repeat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fair enough, Love, I love your openness to experience,
Speaker 2: at least once. Love, I appreciate that about you. I
Speaker 2: mean that goes all the way back to your happiness
Speaker 2: project work, and you're like, let me try everything and
Speaker 2: see what's going to give me happiness.
Speaker 1: But one thing I found in my writing is that, like,
Speaker 1: it's very easy to give advice, it's very easy to
Speaker 1: make suggestions, but then when I but to take them
Speaker 1: is harder, and you often learn things that you didn't
Speaker 1: expect to learn if you try to do it yourself.
Speaker 1: And so I think that a lot a lot of
Speaker 1: times it's a lot easier and more fun to tell
Speaker 1: other people what to do. So I try to always
Speaker 1: discipline myself to tell myself what to do, and I
Speaker 1: often find kind of surprising things when I do that.
Speaker 2: I love that about you. I love that about you. Like,
Speaker 2: can we talk about hearing for a second, because I
Speaker 2: feel like that's been our most neglected one in our conversation.
Speaker 2: And something that I found so interesting about hearing in
Speaker 2: your book is that silence can be noisy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you're in a place that at least I
Speaker 1: find for myself that if I'm in a place that's
Speaker 1: really really silent, it has kind of a roar to it,
Speaker 1: and it can start feeling very loud. And then then
Speaker 1: if there's just like soft sounds, often that will make
Speaker 1: it seem more still, just like a soft, gentle sound
Speaker 1: that I really love silence. And so yeah, one of
Speaker 1: the things I really loved about this book is it
Speaker 1: gave me a chance to really think about silence. It
Speaker 1: turns out there's this huge literature of people sort of
Speaker 1: in search of silence. People talk a lot about their
Speaker 1: desire to be quiet. Yeah, and it's interesting. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's very restorative, I think as well. Silence.
Speaker 2: I mean, is that does that go through the introvert
Speaker 2: excerpt lines, you know, like the driver quiet.
Speaker 1: Well, that's a fascinating question because there's also one thing
Speaker 1: I realized is that there's silence and then there's human silence.
Speaker 1: And I think often when people want silence, what they
Speaker 1: really are saying is they want human silence because maybe
Speaker 1: you could be introverted and you have music playing all
Speaker 1: the time, but when people are talking to you, you
Speaker 1: find it exhausting. I don't know, that would just be
Speaker 1: what it would be really interesting to see like how
Speaker 1: those how that plays out with large numbers of people.
Speaker 1: I'm an ambrovert myself, so I sort of tap into
Speaker 1: both of those. But I did find that, like I
Speaker 1: gave myself sort of a weekend of silence by sending
Speaker 1: my whole family away and just like having a silent meditation,
Speaker 1: a silent retreat at home, and it was very very interesting.
Speaker 1: But I realized that that was more of what I wanted,
Speaker 1: is I just didn't want to be talking or listening
Speaker 1: to other people, even like a podcast. I just wanted
Speaker 1: like no no talking, but just having and I didn't
Speaker 1: want cacophony. But that was that was less I realized
Speaker 1: of what I was seeking. So I think maybe there's
Speaker 1: a distinction there. There's different kinds of silence perhaps, and
Speaker 1: then there's you know, some people when they want silence,
Speaker 1: they actually want white noise or brown noise or pink noise,
Speaker 1: so they want some kind of They don't want pure
Speaker 1: silence because it again and as with with when it's
Speaker 1: very quiet, any noise really distracts you, so you sort
Speaker 1: of want that muffling effect. So it's this is one
Speaker 1: of these things where I think it really it really
Speaker 1: behooves people to think about, well, what is the environment
Speaker 1: that I like? What's my ideal sensory surroundings? And maybe
Speaker 1: you can't always get it because we don't always have
Speaker 1: perfect control obviously, but maybe they're maybe there are things
Speaker 1: you can do, and it may be that if you
Speaker 1: haven't thought about it, you're trying to jam yourself into
Speaker 1: someone else's IX figure. Like so here's Scott, here's a
Speaker 1: question for you when you're trying to focus deeply, Like
Speaker 1: let's say you're working on an original piece of writing,
Speaker 1: which to me is like the most demanding. What sound
Speaker 1: environment do you like? Do you like music with words,
Speaker 1: music with no words, silence, busy home, like in a
Speaker 1: coffee shop, Like what helps you like write and focus?
Speaker 2: I have very specific playlists, oh for that occasion, okay,
Speaker 2: and to be here. I have piece I want to think, peaceful,
Speaker 2: peaceful piano playlist, like literally one three hundred and eleven
Speaker 2: peaceful piano songs. I have cello music I think, so
Speaker 2: it's basically something very transcendent gets me into a nice
Speaker 2: I also have jazz in the background. A great point,
Speaker 2: that's my playlist called jazz in the background. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I would never do that, yeah, fair enough. No, would
Speaker 1: never never do that. I want silence or if I
Speaker 1: don't have silence, like a busy hum but I would
Speaker 1: never choose to listen to music. But again, this is
Speaker 1: just like just because something works for me doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it's going to work for you. And I think when
Speaker 1: sometimes we get into trouble is like you're a boss
Speaker 1: thinking like, well, we need this for everybody to be
Speaker 1: able to focus. Well, no, it may be people are
Speaker 1: very different, or like maybe I'm a parent and I'm
Speaker 1: telling a child, oh, you shouldn't listen to music while
Speaker 1: you're studying. But if that child is doing well, and
Speaker 1: they're saying that they do better with music, Well, maybe
Speaker 1: I need to think about that child's experience, because just
Speaker 1: because it's not what I would choose, it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that it wouldn't be the right choice for someone else.
Speaker 1: So I think we, on the one hand, we want
Speaker 1: to show consideration for others and realize that their sensory
Speaker 1: environments are not what we would necessarily choose for ourselves,
Speaker 1: but then also just pay attention to our own likes
Speaker 1: and dislikes. Because I was just astonished by how little
Speaker 1: I knew about my own preferences. You almost might think like,
Speaker 1: how could you not know? You're just hanging around in
Speaker 1: your own body all day long? How do you not know?
Speaker 1: But I realized I just didn't notice. I wasn't paying
Speaker 1: attention to things like what kind of environments helped me
Speaker 1: to focus, what kind of environments helped me relax? What
Speaker 1: do I do when I'm trying? Like one thing I
Speaker 1: realized about myself and a lot of people do this
Speaker 1: is that they use touch to calm themselves, just like
Speaker 1: little children will have like a toy, like a little
Speaker 1: lovey toy that they'll hold on to comfort themselves. Adults
Speaker 1: do this too, So sometimes it's like a fidget toy
Speaker 1: or a fidget spin or something that's expressly like that.
Speaker 1: But like I realized, I hold a pen if I'm
Speaker 1: like going to a cocktail party where I don't know anybody,
Speaker 1: or I'm like backstage before I'm giving a big talk,
Speaker 1: I'll hold onto a pen. That just helps me. And
Speaker 1: I didn't even realize that I did it until I
Speaker 1: started thinking, why do I do that. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to take a note, there's no paper, right, why do
Speaker 1: I do this? And then I asked around and like
Speaker 1: people said, yeah, like I hold a clipboard, or I
Speaker 1: hold a water bottle full of ice water, so it
Speaker 1: makes me feel grounded in my body. Or a teacher
Speaker 1: said that during COVID, when she was anxious about teaching
Speaker 1: on video for the first time, she would move a
Speaker 1: rock from one hand to the other and she had
Speaker 1: to have that for teaching. Other people told him, mug, like,
Speaker 1: there's something about having something in her hands and so,
Speaker 1: But this was something I hadn't even noticed about myself.
Speaker 1: This was a pattern that I had followed for a
Speaker 1: long time. I don't even know when I started. And
Speaker 1: yet not only did I not understand why I did it.
Speaker 1: I literally hadn't even really noticed that it was a
Speaker 1: pattern in my behavior. But now I can do it deliberately.
Speaker 1: Now I'm like, oh, I'm going to be nervous. Let
Speaker 1: me make sure I have I don't want to go
Speaker 1: in there without my pen. Let me make sure I
Speaker 1: have a good one so I can hang on to
Speaker 1: it while while I'm going through this experience.
Speaker 2: Well, that's that's just the thread that runs through the
Speaker 2: whole book. Is it like not taking for granted? Yeah,
Speaker 2: things we have and like it's like fish and water,
Speaker 2: you know, yes, Like how can we have the fish
Speaker 2: appreciate the water more?
Speaker 1: Right? What is water? Yeah? What is what? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: now no, it's really true. How do you? I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of times that is through deprivation, that's what
Speaker 1: can make us more attune to it or like leaning
Speaker 1: into like really stimulating it. That can also do it.
Speaker 1: Like you know that that can work to something like
Speaker 1: a sound bath can help you become more attuned to
Speaker 1: your sense of sound just because it's just a very intense,
Speaker 1: very specific experience, and then that kind of helps you
Speaker 1: dial into that that sense more kind of afterward as well.
Speaker 2: I think on your scale, I move the slider all
Speaker 2: the way to the right for the sound bath.
Speaker 1: Option you do, and what is it that you love
Speaker 1: about them? Oh?
Speaker 2: Man, I don't know. I think it's just the way
Speaker 2: the way I feel, the way I vibrate, the way
Speaker 2: my soul vibrates. To be poetic about it.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we don't know. Sometimes we can't articulate why we
Speaker 2: enjoyed some things more than others.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Right. I was thinking about this because my
Speaker 1: sister also loves sound baths and I did one because
Speaker 1: she loves them so much. I really wanted to experience it.
Speaker 1: And I remember her saying, she said to me, I
Speaker 1: find them much more relaxing and enjoyable than a massage,
Speaker 1: because I love a massage and she's not so much,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I'm like, now, I don't even
Speaker 1: know if those are analogous, if you would say, like
Speaker 1: there's one on one hand and one and the other.
Speaker 1: But it was interesting to me because like one is
Speaker 1: extremely touch centric sensory and one is more hearing centric,
Speaker 1: and so that's also true, and that maybe these experiences
Speaker 1: because I think sometimes people feel like there's something wrong
Speaker 1: with them if they don't have the same response as
Speaker 1: somebody else, Like, what's wrong with me that I don't
Speaker 1: love a sound bath the way Scott loves a sound bath.
Speaker 1: And it's like, nothing wrong, Yeah, there's nothing wrong with you.
Speaker 1: It's like it's good to give things to try because
Speaker 1: you never know, and maybe you want to try it
Speaker 1: more than once, because often we don't like things the
Speaker 1: first time when they're really unfamiliar. The brain is like
Speaker 1: working so hard to understand what's going on. It's like
Speaker 1: sometimes a little bit of repetition helps us to enjoy something.
Speaker 1: But you know, but like every you know, no tool
Speaker 1: fits every hand. And that's okay, totally okay.
Speaker 2: It correlates with me and the kind of music I
Speaker 2: listened to when I write, you know, sound baths. You know,
Speaker 2: it's just like I love that kind of relaxing sort
Speaker 2: of tones. Yeah, it just really uh snaps me into
Speaker 2: a certain state of consciousness.
Speaker 1: But here, and here's the thing about the senses. So
Speaker 1: when you go to a sound bath, like you're in
Speaker 1: a room, you feel the vibrations in your body, you
Speaker 1: have the air in your face, you have the presence
Speaker 1: of other people. You can tell that one bowl is
Speaker 1: further from you than the other because you change. You
Speaker 1: can sense these subtle variations. There's like the breeze coming
Speaker 1: in through the door, there's the smell of like the
Speaker 1: floor disinfectant. Like there's so much happening, and it's just
Speaker 1: not the same as like popping in a sound bath
Speaker 1: meditation on YouTube and putting on your headphones and listening
Speaker 1: to it. Like not that there's anything wrong with that,
Speaker 1: but I do feel like there's something about with the senses.
Speaker 1: Just like you can't bookmarket, you can't save it, you
Speaker 1: can't binge it. You have to do it right here,
Speaker 1: right now, and then it's gone and you could do
Speaker 1: it again, but that'll be different. And like it's all
Speaker 1: just like it's right here, it's right now. This is
Speaker 1: how you have to experience it, and it's not something
Speaker 1: that we can put off or just like constantly replicate.
Speaker 1: And and I think that's part of the intense value
Speaker 1: of it, you know, is that you have to experience
Speaker 1: it in the body, in the present.
Speaker 2: I love that. No, you're absolutely right, and yeah, you
Speaker 2: can't just yeah, it's not it's not the same as
Speaker 2: listening to calmly meditation music.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, And it's it's which is value, which can
Speaker 1: be valuable, it's just that it's not the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now that's a good point. I'd be remiss if
Speaker 2: I didn't discuss with you how we can use our
Speaker 2: senses to enhance our creativity. And there's various ways in
Speaker 2: your book you talk about that. I believe there's this
Speaker 2: one part you talk about how you used your hand
Speaker 2: to improve your imagination. Mm hmm, that's up my alley.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, creativity. Yes, one of the things I was
Speaker 1: very interested in is like how you can make abstract
Speaker 1: ideas tangible or like you know, make them concrete in
Speaker 1: some way. And in my own life, I had the
Speaker 1: I have all kinds. I just kept dozens and dozens
Speaker 1: of sort of projects that I work on in the
Speaker 1: background all the time. And I had this thing which
Speaker 1: in my mind I called indirect directions, which were these
Speaker 1: sort of short phrases that were meant to spark create
Speaker 1: like if I if I felt like stuck, that they
Speaker 1: were supposed to kind of help me loosen up my
Speaker 1: thinking because every because often I would come across one
Speaker 1: of these sort of like in the wild when I
Speaker 1: was feeling stuck, and it would solve a problem for me.
Speaker 1: So I started writing them down, thinking like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't want to just count on the fact that I
Speaker 1: will just coincidentally hear them or like when the student
Speaker 1: is ready to teach or appears type thing. But I
Speaker 1: want to just like make a list of them. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, when I was working on my book about
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill, I was just so overwhelmed with information, just
Speaker 1: like such a vast amount of information, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to write a short, accessible book and I couldn't figure
Speaker 1: out how. And then a friend of mine said that
Speaker 1: when she was writing her pH d thesis, she had
Speaker 1: a sticky note that said down with boredom, and she
Speaker 1: was writing about if she was an anthropology person, and
Speaker 1: she just if she came to a boring part of
Speaker 1: her thesis, she would just figure out a way to
Speaker 1: write around it. And this just like was the biggest
Speaker 1: revelation of all time to me. And so one of
Speaker 1: my indirect directions is skip the boring parts, which is
Speaker 1: something that I think about all the time. Just skip
Speaker 1: the boring parts, and nobody ever complains, So skip the work.
Speaker 1: So I had dozens and dozens of these indirect directions.
Speaker 1: I was collecting them all the time, but they were
Speaker 1: just it was just a document in my computer, and
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, this thing is just going to
Speaker 1: crash or I'll just forget that I'm working on it,
Speaker 1: which happens, I'll I'll write hundreds of pages and then
Speaker 1: just kind of forget about it and move on. And
Speaker 1: I did want that to happen. So then I thought,
Speaker 1: let me make this into an object. Let me make
Speaker 1: this something that I can use in my hands, and
Speaker 1: that will even be better for creativity because they'll be
Speaker 1: this tangible quality, concrete quality. So I had recently seen
Speaker 1: my father's ancient Rolodex, which is just like the most
Speaker 1: satisfying object of all time. I begged my parents to
Speaker 1: give it to me so they could like have it
Speaker 1: just as an object. And so I bought a new
Speaker 1: Rolodex and wrote my indirect directions on the on the cards.
Speaker 1: And so now like if I'm stuck and I or
Speaker 1: want a little flash of inspiration, I can just spin
Speaker 1: it and I pick one at random. Love picking things
Speaker 1: at random, right, It makes you feel like the universe
Speaker 1: is telling you something. Yeah, yeah, and then you and
Speaker 1: then I would just ponder it and a lot of
Speaker 1: times the answer doesn't become clear right away. And the
Speaker 1: funny thing that happened was my first thing was what
Speaker 1: should I call this thing? Because I was calling it
Speaker 1: indirect directions, but I didn't like that. I thought that
Speaker 1: was boring. And then I was like, well, I could
Speaker 1: call it the Rolodex of Ideas, but I thought that
Speaker 1: was pretty boring too. It's like, okay, what do I do?
Speaker 1: So I spun the Rolodex around and I picked a
Speaker 1: card and the card said choose a fresh metaphor. I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, I don't okay, I don't even have
Speaker 1: at I don't even have one metaphor, but I'll choose
Speaker 1: it fresh metaphor. Put it on my bulletin board. So
Speaker 1: I saw it from time to time and would sort
Speaker 1: of think about it. And then when I was in
Speaker 1: the met I was looking at this object, one of
Speaker 1: my favorite objects, which which is this inkstand from I
Speaker 1: don't know, the fifteenth century. It's a very elaborate inkstand
Speaker 1: with all kinds of drawers and cubbies, and it's covered
Speaker 1: with the god Apollo and the muses and some like
Speaker 1: famous poets. And I looked at it and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: That's the perfect thing for a writer, right, that's what
Speaker 1: you need. You need the inkstand like with all the
Speaker 1: muses on top of it for you. And then I thought,
Speaker 1: that's what I'll call my rolodex. I'll call it a
Speaker 1: muse machine, because now I have I could just evoke
Speaker 1: my muse whenever I want, so ammuse machine. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I was so thrilled when I had that spark of
Speaker 1: a creative solution. And I'm sure that it's because I
Speaker 1: just had this thing running in my mind and I'd
Speaker 1: seen the card, and I'd held the card, and I'd
Speaker 1: chosen the card, and it just had a lot more
Speaker 1: power than if I had like looked in a document
Speaker 1: or like hit some link where it just like randomly
Speaker 1: spit up a direction. There was sort of more power
Speaker 1: to it, and I think it worked more effectively for
Speaker 1: me creatively that way.
Speaker 2: Well, that story makes me think of people who have synesthesia,
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, tend to be more creative and basically reinforcing
Speaker 2: your point that if we can combine multiple senses, we
Speaker 2: can really enhance our creativity in lots of ways.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: I read somewhere Kanye West said he has synesthesia, but
Speaker 2: maybe we shouldn't use that example.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh so here's an interesting fact. So one of the
Speaker 1: things that was striking to me in my study the
Speaker 1: five senses is often people won't realize maybe eachil they're
Speaker 1: like young adults, that they are how different they are
Speaker 1: from other people. So, for instance, it's not uncommon for
Speaker 1: people to have synesthesia, to not be able to smell,
Speaker 1: or even to have quite significant hearing loss and not
Speaker 1: realize it.
Speaker 2: It's such a good point. Do you know that there's
Speaker 2: a certain I don't. I don't want to use their condition,
Speaker 2: a certain way of being where you can't actually imagine anything.
Speaker 1: Oh right, yes, you just you can't picture.
Speaker 2: And as adults, they don't know any other way of being.
Speaker 2: So when they hear that there's they have this thing,
Speaker 2: they're like, oh well, so what but it's not like
Speaker 2: they know anything different.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Studying all this made me think I think people's
Speaker 1: probably their their experiences are much different from what we think.
Speaker 1: Like there's something in math that I cannot do. I
Speaker 1: don't know what it is, but I know there is
Speaker 1: something that other people understand that I don't understand. Like
Speaker 1: I remember in high school, like I said to them,
Speaker 1: I'm like, why did I do so badly on like
Speaker 1: the National Math Exam? And and they were like, well, Gretchen,
Speaker 1: it's like you just learn the rules and then apply it.
Speaker 1: You don't really understand how to do math. And I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't understand what you mean about how
Speaker 1: to do math other than to apply their rules. What
Speaker 1: are you even talking about. I'm wondering, like, do I
Speaker 1: have some sort of deep math sense that other people
Speaker 1: have that I just don't have it? And like you say,
Speaker 1: says I don't have it, I don't miss it, I
Speaker 1: don't know it. But every once in a while, I'll
Speaker 1: come across something I'll be like, that's interesting because that
Speaker 1: I don't think that way, or like like my daughter
Speaker 1: has a very bad sense of direction, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: maybe she really like there's something that she just doesn't have,
Speaker 1: and so she's learned to compensate and we hardly notice it.
Speaker 1: But every once in a while, you're like, she'll just
Speaker 1: be disoriented in a way where I'm like, huh, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: So again, I think we just want to show a
Speaker 1: lot more consideration for each other and just say like okay,
Speaker 1: like let's figure this out so we can all thrive,
Speaker 1: and maybe we need to think outside the box a
Speaker 1: little bit to make this work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. When I took ballet class in college, I
Speaker 2: realized I don't have the ballet sense.
Speaker 1: Ah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah really yeah.
Speaker 2: I think I like the idea of applying senses to talents.
Speaker 2: That means, you know, and different means. You know, some
Speaker 2: people have the comedic sense. You know, I have a
Speaker 2: writing sense. No, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, No, that's interesting. That's interesting. Like about like
Speaker 1: the sense of timing. Do some people have like a
Speaker 1: very acute just the way like you would say a
Speaker 1: top basketball player has a you know, outstanding sets appropriate reception.
Speaker 1: Maybe to be a comedian you need like a superpower
Speaker 1: of timing because so much of humor is timing and pace,
Speaker 1: and maybe they just you know, it is sort of
Speaker 1: this innate it is. I think we're all we're all
Speaker 1: wired more differently. I mean, one thing that's just sort
Speaker 1: of burst onto the scene is ASMR, which is kind
Speaker 1: of it hasn't been studied that much because it's only
Speaker 1: sort of recently been identified. But I definitely know people
Speaker 1: that are like, oh, one hundred percent I have ASMR
Speaker 1: and I never knew what it was. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that other people had it. I remember being seven years
Speaker 1: old and realizing what this was whatever, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about, you know, I
Speaker 1: just don't get it.
Speaker 2: But you know, yeah, well that's the beauty of individual differences.
Speaker 2: And then it is you know, and then the extent
Speaker 2: to which we can cultivate some of these things if
Speaker 2: we want to, Yes, And then I think that's where
Speaker 2: I'll leave us. So people will buy your book if
Speaker 2: we've let their appetite, Yes, we've let their appetite. Please
Speaker 2: read Gretchen's wonderful book. She has a whole section on
Speaker 2: things you can do, prompts and things for each of
Speaker 2: the senses to cultivate it. Even if we don't have
Speaker 2: the knack for it, you know, you can still we
Speaker 2: can still develop some of these things. Hopefully all these
Speaker 2: all these things to us degree. Gretchen, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for being on the Psychology Podcast. Eight years later,
Speaker 2: I want.
Speaker 1: To say, yes, has it been that long?
Speaker 2: It could have been we need to look back, but
Speaker 2: I think it might have been twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: Wow. In the scene, it's just yeah, yeah, Oh I
Speaker 1: thought it was like three years, but yeah, time flies. Well.
Speaker 1: I so enjoyed the conversation Scott. We're interested in so
Speaker 1: many of the same things. It's as such a pleasure
Speaker 1: to talk to you.
Speaker 2: Likewise, thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Speaker 2: the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some
Speaker 2: way to something you heard, I encourage you to join
Speaker 2: in the discussion at thusycology podcast dot com. We're on
Speaker 2: our YouTube page thus Ecology Podcast. We also put up
Speaker 2: some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well,
Speaker 2: so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being
Speaker 2: such a great supporter of the show, and tune in
Speaker 2: next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.