Always in a Hurry: The Illusion of Urgency & What You Never Knew About Your Neck

Would you like to be more persuasive? Listen as I reveal what one expert says is the key to winning people over to your side. Source: Rick Maurer author of Why Don’t You Want What I Want? (https://amzn.to/4j7xgBX). Time anxiety is that feeling of always feeling pressured because there isn’t enough time to get everything done and always worrying you are going to be late. But wait! What if everything didn’t really need to get done? What if this sense of urgency you have is an illusion? I want you to listen to Chris Giullibeau. He has taken a hard look at this strange way we view and manage our time and has some startling revelations that should make you feel a lot better. Chris is the author of the book Time Anxiety: The Illusion of Urgency and a Better Way to Live (https://amzn.to/4cqGBlC) Your neck is a biological marvel. It is the tunnel that connects your head to your torso and what it does is rather amazing. The neck also has a lot of cultural significance from how we adorn the neck with jewelry, ties and collars to its role in sexual attraction. Here to discuss the amazing world of the neck – human and otherwise is Kent Dunlap. He is a professor of biology at Trinity College in Hartford, CT and he is author of the book, The Neck: A Natural and Cultural History (https://amzn.to/4lu0yw4). There seems to be a link between using bleach in your home and health issues in children. If you use bleach to clean your home and you have kids around, you’ll want to listen to this https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25838260/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at https://FactorMeals.com/something50off TIMELINE: Get 10% off your order of Mitopure! Go to https://Timeline.com/SOMETHING INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now! SHOPIFY: Nobody does selling better than Shopify! Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk and upgrade your selling today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 0:42Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:28Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, a way to instantly be more persuasive in any situation. Then, how to stop that feeling of time anxiety and take back control of your time.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  I walk out of movie theaters. If I don't like the movie, I'll leave. I will sit down at restaurants, and if I don't like the menu, I'll get up and go somewhere else. It doesn't matter if I've already sat down. And I think it might feel a little bit strange to some people at first, but it's going to also bring you relief, and you're going to feel proud of yourself.

• 1:55Mike Carruthers?

  Also, if you clean with bleach in your house, you need to hear something. And your neck. It's a biological wonder, and it says a lot.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  The neck has played an important role in sexual communication in many different ways. Males have a neck that's about 50% bigger in volume than that of a female. Certainly, in many, many cultures around the world, they value a long neck in estimations of feminine beauty.

• 2:21Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 2:27Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:52Mike Carruthers?

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• 4:23Mike Carruthers?

  Who wouldn't want to be more persuasive? And in a moment, I'll tell you how. Hi, and welcome to another episode of Something You Should Know. If you've ever tried to persuade someone of something and they don't like your idea, you probably think it's because they don't like your idea. But not necessarily. According to Rick Maurer, who wrote a book called Why Don't You Want What I Want? There are three and only three reasons that people fail to be persuaded by your ideas. Number one, they don't get it. Number two, they don't like it. Or number three, they don't like you.

• 5:05Mike Carruthers?

  If you listen carefully to how people respond, you can determine which of those three reasons the person is using and then address that to try to change their mind. It takes careful listening, but it can greatly improve your ability to persuade other people. And that is something you should know. When I say the term "time anxiety," you know exactly what I mean. It's that constant hounding voice in your head telling you, "You've got too much to do, you don't have enough time to do it, you're going to be late for that thing you need to get to, time is your enemy." Well, what if all of that is just a myth?

• 5:49Mike Carruthers?

  What if that pervasive sense of time scarcity stems not from a lack of hours in the day, but from your unrealistic expectations and misaligned priorities? What if, in fact, the world won't end if you don't get to that thing? You don't have to get it all done when you think you do. Here to talk about this, and he's got the proof to back up what he says, is Chris Guillebeau. He's been here before talking about how to start a side hustle and how to launch your own small business. And he has a new book out, and he's really done the research on this. The book is called Time Anxiety: The Illusion of Urgency and a Better Way to Live. Hi, Chris, welcome back.

• 6:33Mike Carruthers?

  Always good to have you on Something You Should Know. Hey, Mike, thanks for having me back. So I don't think I've heard the term "time anxiety" before I saw it on your book, but as soon as I saw it, I thought, "Well, yeah, I have that. That's me." I have a problem that, you know, everything is equally urgent. It's got to get done right away. Time's running out. And if, if that's wrong, tell me why I'm wrong.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  When I came up with the concept for this book, Mike, I think it's, you know, I've been writing books for 15 years. I don't think I've had anything that is as universally resonant. You know, if I would talk to people and they're like, what are you working on? You know, time anxiety, pretty much every person was like, I have that or I identify with that. Or they would immediately start describing what it looks like to them. So I think it's, you know, I think it's very common. I think it's in the culture. I think there are two types of it. One type is what I call existential, where it's kind of like time is running out. You know, there's not enough time in my life. And the other kind is, is that day to day, you know, what should I do next? There's not enough time to do everything. I can't make decisions. I'm just struggling because there's so much to do.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  So you, you said like, are you wrong? I think, well, I think you might have some cognitive distortions that affect your working process, but I don't think you're unusual to feel like, wow, there's this time pressure that I feel all the time. And, you know, what is the best remedy for that? People look at all sorts of productivity advice, and I think that's kind of counterproductive to actually dealing with the real problem.

• 8:10Mike Carruthers?

  So when I think about this, the symptom or the experience that, that I have that I don't like, and that I think, think a lot of people have is you wake up in the morning and you, you know, you have some things to do. And in my head, they have all equal importance. And yet in reality, they do not have all equal importance. They, and some of them could probably disappear. And, but I feel that wave of, oh my God, there's so much to do. What do I do with that?

• 8:44Speaker 01

  A great thing to do, whether it's, maybe this might not work when you first wake up, but any point during the day is to just kind of look back, I call this your last 40 minutes. Okay, so you look back and like, how did I spend the last 40 minutes? I like 40 minutes rather than an hour for some reason. It's this really specific amount of time and you can just ask yourself, was that time valuable? And valuable doesn't only mean productive, you know, it can mean like you can find value in lots of different ways. But you look back and like, did I spend that time well? And if so, great, you know, and if not, well, there's all kinds of times during the day that we realize maybe that wasn't the best use of time, that I'm going to kind of regroup and do something else. And as for like, waking up and there's all these, all these things, yeah, I mean, that's like,

• 9:29Speaker 01

  that's the modern world that we live in. And I think we live in this culture in which there is only one speed. You know, there's only one pace, like if you, if you're getting directives from different people or you're working collaboratively with folks, then there is this kind of insistence that everything is urgent. And as you said, obviously, everything is not urgent. And so beginning to understand what is truly urgent, which is a very small, you know, number of things and what could be done at any point. And that third category, I think you clued into this as well, when you said some stuff might just disappear. The third category of stuff you could just not do. I think that is a really helpful thing to begin, like finding some relief in this process. There's so much I have to do, but what actually really matters here? What is something that I probably should do at some point, but the time of it is not that important?

• 10:14Speaker 01

  And what could I just not do? And maybe it'll, it'll go away and not come back to me.

• 10:19Mike Carruthers?

  Well, another part of it, I think it's part of it, is this idea that people are expecting me to do something. They're waiting to hear from me or that the ball's in my court and I need to hit it back. And maybe they're waiting for me, but probably they're not sitting around going, God, where is, where's he been? I really haven't heard from him.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  You know, even if they are, Mike, you know, I guess this is time, this is one of those things where it's like, it's helpful to have a big picture view of like, imagine that they actually are. Nevertheless, you know, what is the goal of your life? You know, is the goal of your life to be the most responsive person for every person who's waiting for you to hit the ball back? And, you know, if you get really good at doing that, then you're going to have more balls coming your way. That's the whole problem with this process of like, I'm just going to become super efficient and I'm going to use all these tools and now we have AI and, you know, and I like some of this stuff, but like, just making it your mission to become hyper responsive is kind of like the mission of accumulating wealth. Like, it's good to have money, right? But if you, if your life goal is to accumulate

• 11:25Speaker 01

  as much wealth as possible, I think that's not ultimately a very satisfactory goal. So the same thing with, with being responsive. It's much better, big picture to goal to be like, what do I actually want to do with my life? What is the purpose of my life? How can I then try to align my day to day with that as much as possible while recognizing that of course, there are expectations in me and I'm going to need to respond to some of them. But I don't want to start with the goal of like, I need to be as responsive as possible because that is ultimately a losing battle.

• 11:52Mike Carruthers?

  Talk about your idea of the eighth day of the week.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  I have this, this whole other activity about the eighth day of the week. Like, imagine you get an extra day every week. So it's not just your perfect ideal day, like you experience one time in your life, but it's a recurring day. And on, on this eighth day, we can also say like, nobody's expecting anything from you. Like, you have responsibilities, you know, family, work, otherwise. But on this eighth day, like, it's a bonus day. Everybody else has kind of gone away. You can do anything you want. I started asking people about this, and the number one thing that they said they would do on their eighth day was catch up. They're like, I feel so behind. And the thing I want to do most of my life is to catch up on my email or catch up on, you know, whatever these responsibilities are. So you

• 12:38Speaker 01

  can see how much of a burden it is, you know, how overwhelming it can become. And ultimately, catching up is an elusive goal. So we have to somehow let that go because it's impossible. And if we really think, what would we do with that eighth day? Then that's where things kind of get interesting. And that's when you realize, this is how I want to spend more of my time.

• 12:54Mike Carruthers?

  So I, I buy into all of that. And then when you say, and somehow we have to let that go, therein lies the problem. I don't, sure. How?

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, let's do big picture and then let's do details. So, big picture, you pointed to it right at the top of our conversation. Like, I don't think you put it in these words, but I would say someday you're going to die. And it's actually very helpful to be mindful of that. You know, I had, I had a previous book where I looked at people who pursued big quests, did all kinds of stuff like I did about going to every country in the world and so on. And one commonality was they had this emotional awareness of mortality. And everybody has an intellectual awareness, like, yeah, everybody dies. But an emotional awareness is more personal. It's more like, yeah, someday I'm going to die. And the interesting thing is when you have this mentality,

• 13:47Speaker 01

  I mean, it can sound kind of like overbearing or scary, but it actually can feel very purposeful. Because you're like, okay, someday I'm going to die. Time is running out. Therefore, that might actually, that knowledge might actually help me let go of some of those things. Maybe not all those things that you mentioned, but when I, once I understand, you know, it kind of gives you this like built in excuse for anything you, you don't want to do. You know, if somebody asks you to do something and you don't want to do it, you're effectively like, no, thank you, I'm gonna die one day. You know, like, hopefully not tomorrow, but I don't know, right? And we might not use that exact language, but my point is the framing of understanding your mortality can be very helpful in making decisions.

• 14:25Mike Carruthers?

  I wonder how much, and you know, this gets more into the psychological part of all of this, but how much of a person's day is taken up with things that you do because you don't want to face your marriage or your troubled child? Or so you fill your day up with things to keep you away from that because that's a problem?

• 14:50Speaker 01

  Well, I think avoidance is a, is a huge strategy and practice. And, you know, I come by it honest, you know, I can avoid with, with the best of them. I have some stories in one of the chapters about, there's this guy in the UK who was going to prison for fraud. I think he had like a, you know, two year sentence and he Avoided his sentence, at least for a while, by pretending to be in a coma. And it's very difficult to pretend to be in a coma, you know, for a long period of time. He was even hospitalized.

• 15:18Mike Carruthers?

  So how do you do that?

• 15:19Speaker 01

  For like, yeah, how do you do that? Right? And obviously, he eventually gets found out when CCTV finds him, you know, doing some grocery shopping and such. And there's stories of like, the runaway bride, you know, didn't want to face, you know, the wedding. And so got cold, but cold feet. But instead of having a conversation, you know, actually like disappeared. And then it becomes this nationwide thing. So avoid, people will do a lot of things, right? To, to avoid. And simply facing some of those things, I know that's not easy, but simply facing some of those things can be so helpful and provide so much relief. One thing I do is I have a to dread list, right? Which is like, just like it sounds, you've got your to do list, your to dread list is like, these are the things I am putting off. And I'm just thinking about it here in real time as we're having this conversation. I'm like, okay, there is actually a conversation I need to have with someone that's a little bit difficult.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  And I don't want to do this, but it probably needs to happen. And it's not going to be out of my head. Like, if I don't do it, it's, I'm still thinking about it. So the energy that it's consuming, you know, it's going to be in my best interest to somehow find a way to, to face that. So I saw this sign once that was like, you know, face everything, avoid nothing. And I really liked it, but I also thought it was kind of ambitious because I was like, I'm probably going to be avoiding some things. So I don't know what the, like, the downsized version of that is, but like, face more things, right? Avoid fewer things. Facing things can bring relief. So the to dread list is very helpful for things you don't want to do. Like you're, you've got something to do for your tax return. You got some, that conversation that's difficult or, you know, the thing that's delayed.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Like you need to write a response that begins with, I'm so sorry for the delay. You know, just the more you can do that, then the better you will feel.

• 16:53Mike Carruthers?

  My God, that is the best piece of advice I've heard in, I don't know how, have a to dread list.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:00Mike Carruthers?

  I'm speaking with Chris Gilbo. He's author of a new book called Time Anxiety: The Illusion of Urgency and a Better Way to Live.

• 17:09Mike Carruthers?

  This episode is sponsored by Vinted. You know, I remember interviewing an organizing expert who offered this really clever trick for figuring out which clothes you should get rid of. You go to your closet and you look at the clothes hanging there. And chances are, the ones toward the middle are the clothes you wear most often. But the clothes pushed way over to the left or the right, some of those you probably haven't worn in years, and yet there they hang, taking up space. But here's the thing, you could turn those clothes into money. That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer wear and make some extra money.

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• 18:35Mike Carruthers?

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• 19:20Mike Carruthers?

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• 20:02Mike Carruthers?

  is just 83 cents per night. So go to shopbeam.com/YSK now. That's shopbeam.com/YSK. So Chris, when I think about my dread list that I've just been compiling in my head here, I think about what a weight off your shoulders that would be instead of carrying around these thoughts of these things that you keep putting off doing.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  You will feel physically better. It's not just about, you know, having something marked off your list. You know, it's not just about your intellectual process. You're gonna like feel a physical sensation of relief even as you start to do it. And so maybe one thing is like the simplest thing you can do towards that task. If it is like a difficult email or something, you just kind of open the email because you've been avoiding it. Like you know it's there, but you've been avoiding it. So you just open it and you just write the first line. "Hi Mike." You know, and like you just start, okay? And then like as you work through it, as I said, like relief is relief is on the other side of working through the through the to dread list or the to dread items.

• 21:08Mike Carruthers?

  You say not finishing things is one of the great joys of life and I have a hard time grasping what that must mean.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Do you finish every book? I know you read a lot of books. Do you finish every book that you read? Do you ever watch a show on streaming TV or movies that you, you know, start watching and then don't finish? Like, are you a completionist or not?

• 21:32Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, yeah, there's plenty of those, yeah.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Right. Well, I think I do hear from people, and it's across all media, it's like, some people who believe that they should not, you know, stop. If they start a book, they should finish it. You know, this is like a point of pride. And I just, you know, I think there's so many great books in the world. If you start reading a book and you read thirty, fifty pages and you're not into it, that book is just not for you at this point in your life. And that's great. So stop and get back all those hours. You know, these days with entertainment, it just kind of drags on and on. With TV shows, if they're making money, then they just keep going. It should have been one or two seasons. But now it's seven or eight seasons. So you think, well, I'm locked in, I'm hooked, I'm invested. But can you not just say, well, I enjoyed that story for a little while, and now I'm ready to do something else? So that's media and entertainment, which is easy. But you

• 22:19Speaker 01

  can also think about this in all parts of your life. You know, if you're starting a business, if you're starting your own creative project, like writing a book, it's actually, I think, a really important skill, in fact, to be able to say, I'm going to stop doing this and do something else. I, you know, I will, I walk out of movie theaters. I don't go to movie theaters too often these days, but whenever I do, if I don't like the movie, I'll leave, you know. I'll, I'll sit down at restaurants, and if I don't like the menu, I'll get up and go somewhere else. It doesn't matter if I've already sat down. And I think this is also something that might feel a little bit strange to some people at first, but it's going to also bring you relief, and you're going to feel proud of yourself. You're like, oh, I actually realized that I would rather have that hour, you know, doing something else. And just because I paid for the movie ticket or whatever, it doesn't,

• 23:02Speaker 01

  doesn't matter. I want, I want to have my time back.

• 23:06Mike Carruthers?

  You know, I've only walked out of one movie, I think, or maybe two, maybe two. But, but it's a weird feeling because of what you just said. Because, well, I paid for the ticket. Am I cheating myself? But I, I don't like this movie. I, I don't get it. I don't know what's going on. I don't know who that guy is. And

• 23:26Mike Carruthers?

  It's a weird feeling because you're like, yeah, okay, I'm claiming my time back. But what about that movie?

• 23:33Speaker 01

  I mean, it's a sunk cost, you know?

• 23:34Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, right.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  And, you know, it's a sunk cost. And I think it's not just about the financial cost that people get hung up on. They're like, I have already started this thing. I'm already in this thing. So somehow I'm, I'm not doing a kindness, you know, to my past self or something. But I think you're actually doing a kindness to your future self in making these choices. Another thing is people tend to say yes to requests. If, if those requests are referring to a far off time period. If somebody's like, hey, will you, you know, go to this wedding with me in three months or something? And, you know, most people without thinking, they'll probably kind of agree, even if they're not sure about it. One thing that's really helpful is whenever you have this far off request, just consider if, if the event,

• 24:17Speaker 01

  whatever it is, was happening tomorrow or the next day or sometime in the very near future. And then decide like, then see like, how do I feel about this? And, and if it, if your answer is, oh, that's great. I would love to do that tomorrow, then, okay, great. You know, I would love to do that in three months. But if you think about it and you're like, actually, I don't, but I want to do that tomorrow or this week, you're probably not going to feel any different in three months or however long the time period is. So do yourself a favor, do your future self a favor and think about those commitments as if they were happening sooner. And you'll probably start saying no to more of them.

• 24:49Mike Carruthers?

  So Chris, how does time perception fit into this discussion? Because, you know, I think it's pretty well established. People agree that as you get older, it seems that time goes by faster. And that is our time perception.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's ultimately just a perception because obviously time is constant. But if you think about when we're kids, everything is unfolding. It's a great pace in some ways, but it also feels very slow, like the time between significant moments. You know, when, when you're waiting for your next birthday or you're waiting for, you know, to go to middle school or high school or all these milestones, you know, getting your driver's license, graduation and so on. It just feels like so far off, right? And your parents feel so old, like you can't possibly relate to them. And then as we get older, we notice, we perceive, you know, that the time is passing a lot quicker. And there are fewer of those milestones. We begin to kind of appreciate time more.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  And I think this is just something that, this is just one of these interesting natures, interesting characteristics about time, that as we become more mindful of time, then perhaps, you know, we might think more about how to use it. One thing I noticed in the research, I was talking to lots of people, different ages and backgrounds, and there was a lot of commonality, like a lot of people would use the same phrasing. People would say, there's something I should be doing right now, but I don't know what it is. And I have this like low-grade angst, you know, about it. Another thing they would say is, I feel like I'm too late for something, like I have missed something in life. And we tend to associate that with people who might be older. By older, I just mean adults or middle age.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  But even people who, you know, people in their twenties, people in their late teens, they would say almost exactly the same thing. And so for those of us who are older, it's easy to say, well, like you have your whole life in front of you. You know, you're in college or whatever. But it's a very constant thing of feeling like I've missed my chance somehow, or I wish I could go back and do something over. And so I think it's important to maybe consider, you know, some relief for that as well, to understand that this is somewhat universal, like we all have a certain amount of regret in life. And, you know, what matters is not what lies behind us, but what we can do with the time that's to come.

• 27:07Mike Carruthers?

  If somebody's feeling time anxiety, how do you put your toe in the water? If you really want to get a handle on this, where's the best place to start?

• 27:17Speaker 01

  First thing is to start paying attention. Just start paying attention to how you spend your time. And so today, tomorrow, this week, notice, like where does my time go? How do I respond to different requests? When I have free time, how do I spend it? And by doing this, you don't actually have to make any decisions differently. You're just noticing. You can also ask like this question of more of this, less of that. What do I want more of? In my life, what do I want less of? And again, by doing this, you're probably going to make some different decisions even without getting really strategic about it. It's a very low pressure, easy thing to do. Another thing that I think is important, especially if you're feeling really overwhelmed, because people often want to rewrite their whole lives. That's difficult, like when you're in the midst of stuff.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  So something to do is start by giving yourself more time. Like, what can you do to give yourself more time? You know, there's this whole decluttering thing, and I think that's great in some ways. But I think it's actually more helpful to practice time decluttering. Like, rather than just cleaning out your closet or your sock drawer, it's like, what can I do to look at my calendar over the next few weeks? And can I remove, just going to challenge myself to remove two or three items? And as you do that, notice how it feels. And don't just immediately fill that time, but clear that space and consider, what do I want to do? And how do I want to spend this time? And so for most people, like buying back their time or just giving themselves time in some way, it tends to feel pretty good.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  So those are some things you can do like right away. And then, of course, you can get more detail later.

• 28:51Mike Carruthers?

  Talk about the difference between leisure time and more structured work time, say. Because there is this theory that you should schedule your leisure time, but there's resistance to that. I don't want to schedule all my leisure time. I like to have some time to do nothing or whatever. What do you say about leisure time?

• 29:15Speaker 01

  I wrote this story in the book about this guy from Amsterdam who, every Wednesday for 20 years, would take a trip. And he would go to Schiphol Airport, and he would fly somewhere in Europe. You know, he'd fly to Stockholm or Barcelona or somewhere, and he would just wander around the airport, and he would fly back the same day. Basically, Wednesday was his day to take this little day trip. And he never really went outside the airport, at least on those trips. And I thought that was such a really interesting story, because, you know, a lot of people would say, well, what a waste that is, and like, all that traveling without any real travel. But the point is, he had found something that made him happy. It was a pretty simple and easy thing. There's all these budget airlines, you know, it costs less than a hundred dollars every time he did it. And he did it, as I said, once a week for most of his life.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  And so if you can find something that makes you happy, even if it seems kind of weird or odd to someone else, and practice doing that, then I think that's a good start, whether it's scheduled or not.

• 30:09Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, that's, I must say, that does sound like a rather odd thing to do to just go wander around an airport. But hey, if that's what makes him happy, who am I to say?

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Right. There might be something unusual that you like to do.

• 30:23Mike Carruthers?

  I'm sure there is.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Right?

• 30:25Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, there is, yeah. Well, I feel better hearing you say that really, everybody suffers from some time anxiety to some extent and at some point in their life. So, you know, there's comfort in numbers. But also, you've given some great ways to combat time anxiety, which is a waste of time. Chris Gilibow has been my guest. He's author of a book called Time Anxiety: The Illusion of Urgency and a Better Way to Live. There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Chris, hey, thanks. Thanks again. Well, I'm sure you'll be back.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Thanks so much, Mike. I really enjoyed it.

• 31:02Mike Carruthers?

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• 32:25Mike Carruthers?

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• 33:18Mike Carruthers?

  If I were to ask you to make a list of the most interesting body parts, ones that would warrant a discussion on something you should know, my guess is that the neck would not be very high on your list. But that is probably because you don't know much about the neck. It is the highway or the tunnel between your head and your body. And if you're a giraffe, well, that's a pretty long tunnel. A lot goes on in your neck. And here to explain what it is, is Kent Dunlap. He's a professor of biology at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he teaches physiology and anatomy. And he's author

• 33:58Mike Carruthers?

  of a book called "The Neck: A Natural and Cultural History." Hey Kent, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here. So why the neck? I guess we have to start there because, you know, I've done, I've done thousands of interviews and never once has the topic of the neck been pitched to me or come up in conversation. Your neck's just your neck. So why are we, why are we talking about the neck?

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Well, I think that you put your finger right on it is that it's a very underappreciated part of the body and we tend to focus, of course, on the importance of the head and of course, the head is really important and also the torso, which houses our heart and lungs, which are obviously important, but the part in between, the neck, is often overlooked. And I think that it has some really important and crucial things that are going on biologically and it also carries with it a lot of cultural weight, too, a lot of cultural significance. So it was these two aspects of that, both the culture and the biology of it, really got me interested in it and so I started looking around at across animals and across

• 35:09Speaker 02

  cultures to see how the neck is represented and how it's used and it became fascinating to me.

• 35:14Mike Carruthers?

  Well, then the giraffe must have a really big chapter in your book.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  It doesn't have its own chapter, but it certainly makes appearances in several different places. So, for example, one of the places where I'm talking about the pumping of blood by the heart up to the brain, giraffes are remarkable because they have to pump their blood up, you know, approximately six feet up into the air, which, if you think about it, is about six times as far as how we have to pump our blood. So that involves a lot of amazing adaptations for the heart and the blood vessels and so forth. Another place the giraffe comes in is in the supposed evolutionary explanation for the giraffe, which is that giraffes evolved their long necks so that during periods of drought, they

• 36:02Speaker 02

  could reach high leaves up in the trees. That may very well be true, but in the past couple of decades, people have also posed a different function of the giraffe neck and that is, it appears that the giraffe neck also plays an important role in sexual interactions. That is, males bash their heads against each other using their neck in competition for females.

• 36:26Mike Carruthers?

  I'm glad we don't do that. I'm so glad.

• 36:30Mike Carruthers?

  So you said that it has fascinating biology to it and fascinating cultural aspects to it. Can you just give me, before we dive deeper, but just like an example of what you mean by both of those things?

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Sure, so one of the things that is phenomenal in the human neck is our larynx and our ability to produce speech. And so all of the things, from common things that I'm doing right now with you, to all of the great speeches and songs that humans can produce and so forth, all begin there in the neck, in the throat. And so there's clearly a lot of biology in how the larynx produces sounds, how it produces vibrations that travel up through the throat and out the mouth. But then, of course, there is all of this interesting production of culture through the voice as well, in terms of great speeches and songs and so forth.

• 37:24Mike Carruthers?

  What does the neck do? I mean, other than, like you said, it's like a path, passageway from the head to the torso, but, and it has things like the larynx in it and all that, but does it have other functions that I might not be aware of or that are not obvious to me, other than, you know, holding my head up?

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Well, that's certainly one of the most basic, but yes, I would also call the neck one of the great multitaskers in the whole body. So, most body parts have one or two things that they are doing, but the neck does so many different things. You've listed a couple of them, that is, transport all these vital fluids, that is, air and blood and food between our head and our torso. And it also then serves as a instrument of sensation, because it moves our head and our eyes around so that we can scan the environment. It's got internal sensors in it, which allow us to detect the carbon dioxide levels in our blood.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  It's got lots of lymph nodes in it, which are important in fighting infection. It's got the larynx, which does this amazing thing called speech and song. Those are some of the multi-functions of the neck.

• 38:38Mike Carruthers?

  For things to pass between the head and the body, and it goes through the neck, where is that? Like, my sense is that it's like in the back of the neck, like things come up from the spine and...

• 38:54Mike Carruthers?

  As opposed to like in the front of my neck where it doesn't seem like there's a lot going on there.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Well, this is one of the very interesting things about the neck and really one of the cruel things about the neck too is that we have at least at least two different pipes that are going down there. One is the windpipe and the other is the esophagus, that is the food pathway. And the cruel thing about these two pipes is that they cross and consequently sometimes in rare occasions, the food can go down the wrong tube and it start head toward the lungs. And that's a bad news and it will result in us choking. So there's an extreme vulnerability associated with this crisscross of the tubes. That is the windpipe and the esophagus, the food tube. There's at least one other set of cords that are really important is that the spinal cord.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  So the spinal cord goes up through the spine between the backbone and the the brain. And any damage to that can very quickly result in death.

• 39:55Mike Carruthers?

  My neck is pretty good at turning, like I can turn my head. I can't turn my head all the way around like I I see many birds do, but I can turn pretty far. And and how come that doesn't bother anything in my neck?

• 40:10Speaker 02

  That's a really good question. Yes, our neck is one of the most complicated joint systems in the whole body. So we have seven bones there in our, you know, backbones, vertebrae in our neck. But they articulate at about thirty seven different places. So there's very complex joints in there which allow us to rotate quite a bit. It's true that there are some important arteries that run up in there, but they tend to be housed in pretty big spaces and also they are relatively stretchy. So even though you turn your head to the left and right, these two, these critical vessels don't get stretched all that much. If you did twist it too much, yes, they certainly could burst and in extreme cases,

• 40:54Speaker 02

  this will happen when that neck is twisted too far.

• 40:57Mike Carruthers?

  And let's cross over to the the cultural part for a moment. And is the neck, is a neck a neck or do we like?

• 41:07Mike Carruthers?

  Maybe unconsciously look at someone and we don't think, God, they have a beautiful neck, but there's something about the neck that's appealing, or is there any of that going on?

• 41:16Speaker 02

  Well, I think that has many answers. One is that certainly a neck is a place where we display a lot of our personal self-expression. And this is in the case of how we move our head or hold our head. We all know that head movement is really important in nonverbal communication, but it's also a signpost where we adorn ourselves in all sorts of personal ways, with necklaces, with ties, with clerical collars. We identify occupations at the neck, that is, blue collar and white collar workers. So, yes, it's a place of great expression in all sorts of ways, both in how it moves and what it holds there.

• 41:56Mike Carruthers?

  But when we're looking for a mate, do we take the neck into account? Is there attractive and unattractive necks, even though I don't consciously think about that?

• 42:07Speaker 02

  There certainly is, and the neck has played an important role in sexual communication in many different ways. One is that the neck is very different between the sexes. That is, males have a neck that's about 50% bigger in volume than that of a female. Yet, the way we're often talking about feminine beauty is a long neck. And certainly, in many, many cultures around the world, most cultures, they value a long neck in estimations of feminine beauty.

• 42:38Mike Carruthers?

  Well, we've been talking, what, about nine minutes, and this is the longest conversation and the longest time I've ever spent thinking about the neck. It's just not something I think about. But what about the human neck versus the neck of other animals? Like, are we, are they more spectacular than we are when it comes to our necks?

• 43:00Speaker 02

  So, some animals, like that you mentioned, a giraffe, are extraordinarily long. Some are extraordinarily flexible, like owls. Some mammals actually have a fused neck that don't allow them to move their head at all. And in all those cases, often, the neck and the capacities of the neck match the lifestyle of those particular animals. A good case in point is owls. I think you've mentioned owls before. They can twist their head more than...

• 43:30Speaker 02

  360 degrees around, and they need to be able to do this because their eyes in their head are actually not mobile. And I won't go into it at length, but their eyes, as being nocturnal predators, they have to have very large eyes. And with their large eyes, they're unable to move those eyes around in their skull. So in order to compensate for that, they have extraordinarily flexible necks that they can turn all around even the and see all around themselves, even though their eyes are fixed within their skull.

• 43:59Mike Carruthers?

  The human neck, though, is is somewhat fragile, right? I mean, if you break your neck, that's that's not good.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  That's absolutely right. There are so many different vulnerabilities in there. And we've mentioned that you can choke there, you can cut an artery right there, or you can snap your spinal cord, and all those would quickly result in in death. Sadly, this is also a feature of the neck that has been taken advantage of by a lot of political entities. That is, this is a the neck is a place where we control people politically, either by hanging them, by decapitating them with a guillotine, or by shackling them as well. So cultures in their dark past have used the neck as a place to control and oppress people.

• 44:51Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you know, I never thought so much about, but you just mentioned it a moment ago, about how we decorate the neck with necklaces and ties and, you know, priest collars and things like that, that that's a place where we we kind of announce our status in some ways.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  That's right. I kind of think about the neck almost as like a frame on a portrait. So typically, what you do is when you're looking at a portrait of a painting or a photograph, you will see a person's face and spend a lot of time looking at their face. But then, right there below the face, is this area that we can use to advertise our membership in the different groups. For example, you might be wearing a tie that indicates what your alma mater is, or what branch of the service that you serve. Or you might display features of your financial status, that is, how expensive and gaudy

• 45:48Speaker 02

  your jewelry is there. So it's a it's a very important place for for broadcasting these emblems of status and membership.

• 45:58Mike Carruthers?

  And what else culturally is interesting about the neck? Because when you think about it, your neck is really right there. I mean, you don't hide it much, you decorate it, but it's there for everyone to see. So it must have other cultural significance.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  One place that you see its use a lot, as I mentioned, is in portraiture. So you can be aware of this, actually, almost any public place you go now, because there are people snapping selfies of themselves. And you'll notice when you, when you look at those people, that they almost never look straight into the camera. They're almost always holding their arm outstretched above them, tilting their head up and to the side. And it seems that, at least in the Western cultures, that humans really avoid this head-on view of a face. We almost always turn our head. This is not the case in all cultures and at all times. And if you look in, in art museums, for example, you'll see that in Western cultures, since

• 47:01Speaker 02

  about the Roman period, the neck is always, always turned in art. But if you look at other cultures and at other times, you will see that forward, face-on posture.

• 47:12Mike Carruthers?

  Isn't that interesting, how we tend to turn our neck? But it's not like I do it deliberately.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  I, I think it looks more inviting and appealing and softer to have, and to have our neck square on our, I mean, tilted or twisted compared to being square on our shoulders. Other places that you see that head posture being really important is in depictions of authority. So one place, for example, that you might see it is on a marine, that is part of a marine recruiting poster, where the, the symbolism is supposed to be of strength. One place you see it, for example, is in the Statue of Liberty, where the Statue of Liberty is a very strong figure and she has her head straightforward. You'll see portraits of kings and queens with their heads straightforward.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  But other characters that want to exude more warmth or personality will almost always tilt their head or turn their head in some way.

• 48:10Mike Carruthers?

  Do people study the neck? It doesn't, I mean, it doesn't seem like it to me. I don't hear about a lot of neck research going on.

• 48:19Speaker 02

  I think if anyone said that we understood the neck fully, they would be a big liar or pretty ignorant, one of the two. Because, yes, there's always things to learn. One feature of the neck which is very at the forefront now is this whole phenomenon of text neck. That is, people having sore necks because they spend so much time with their head tilted over a device, a computer or a phone. And so there's a lot of research going on now in terms of what you, what are the actual pathologies that go on in the neck when people bend over a device for so much time and what you can do to avoid that. There, another area of research is that there are just practically infinite shapes and sizes of necks across the animal world. And some of those have been studied a lot,

• 49:04Speaker 02

  like owls and giraffes that I've mentioned. But there are others which are only just now beginning to be studied a lot. One example of that is whales. And the whales, even though their neck bones are often fused together, they have an amazing throat which allows them to take in a lot of water into their mouth, but then not swallow it down into their gut. And just in the last few years, they've, scientists have discovered this valve that separates the mouth and the esophagus, the food tube, which allows them to do this remarkable thing.

• 49:41Mike Carruthers?

  See, I never think of a whale as having a neck.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  It barely does in terms of the neck bones that separate the skull and the rest of the backbone. But it has, down in the front of the neck, that is what we would call the throat, there's all sorts of complicated anatomies there involved with their feeding behavior.

• 50:01Mike Carruthers?

  And we have, we have expressions like pain in the neck, like, like, why, why, why that?

• 50:08Speaker 02

  That's right. I think that that's a good example of sort of the vulnerability of the neck that we all know very deep seated. And when we want it, we can live with it. Often people do live with it if they've slept on their pillow wrong or something. But it's something that they persist through, but it's a constant nagging to them. Yeah, there are all sorts of expressions with the neck. For example, a very close competition is a competition that's neck and neck. If you are dealing with a really ruthless person, they might go for the jugular. There are many other expressions that include the neck.

• 50:43Mike Carruthers?

  Let me ask you, you're a professor, you teach biology. There's lots of parts of the body you could have taken a closer look at. Why the neck for you?

• 50:54Speaker 02

  One of the things that drew me to the neck that I found very interesting is that why is it that this structure that's in our body is so vital and so crucial for existence? And yet it's also so vulnerable? That is, why wouldn't natural selection and evolution sort of eliminated all those vulnerabilities? And one of the things that's interesting is that the many features that the neck does, the many functions that the neck does are sometimes competing with each other. So you can't optimize everything at once. Let me give you one example. That human speech is possible in part because we have a larynx, a voice box, which is situated relatively low in our throat compared to other animals.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  And this position of the throat has, it gives humans the capacity to make many, many different kinds of speech sounds. But on the other hand, this position of this low position of the larynx also gives us a lot of space above the vocal cords, above the voice box, which is susceptible to collapse. And a remarkably high number of people have sleep apnea. That is, periods during their sleep when their breathing stops. And we inherit this vulnerability to sleep apnea because we have this descended larynx, leaving this space above the larynx that is so susceptible to collapse when we sleep.

• 52:17Mike Carruthers?

  You said in the beginning, and I've been thinking about it as you've been talking, that the giraffe has, you know, a six-foot neck, that to get air and blood and nerve endings and whatever else you have to get through that distance is, that's remarkable.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  It is remarkable, and it even brings to the marvels of the respiratory system, too, because it's actually hard to suck a lot of air down a very long trachea, a very long windpipe. We know this is sort of true because we can't breathe out of very long snorkels. You may have noticed that all snorkels are relatively short. We don't dive 20 feet down underwater with a snorkel, and that's because it's really hard to pull enough air, fresh air, down that long pipe to get to our lungs. So this has been a big question about how very long-necked animals can pull in enough air down through that very long trachea.

• 53:14Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this is more about the neck than I thought I would ever know, and I'm glad you came on, because I would have never thought to, like, seek this information out, but it's really interesting. I've been speaking with Kent Dunlap, who is a professor of biology at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and he's author of the book "The Neck: A Natural and Cultural History." There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Great, Kent. Good job. Thanks.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  Thank you very much, Mike. It's been a pleasure.

• 53:48Mike Carruthers?

  Do you use bleach to clean inside your home? If so, you might find this interesting. There seems to be a connection between passive exposure to bleach and increased infections and respiratory problems in children. Researchers looked at 9,000 children in the Netherlands, Finland, and Spain. At the time of this study, use of bleach in homes was common in Spain, 72%, and rare in Finland, 7%, and all Spanish schools were cleaned with bleach while Finnish schools were not. After taking into account influential factors like passive smoking at home,

• 54:28Mike Carruthers?

  parental education, the presence of household mold, and use of bleach to clean school premises, the findings indicated that the number and frequency of infections were higher among children whose parents regularly use bleach to clean their homes in all three countries. This is what is called an observational study, so no big conclusions came from it, but there does seem to be a relationship between the use of bleach to clean homes and childhood illness, and that is something you should know. One of the things that keeps this podcast visible and on the charts so people can see it, which helps us get new listeners, one of the things that's important is ratings

• 55:13Mike Carruthers?

  and reviews. Five-star ratings are most welcome. Wherever you're listening, there's a way to leave a rating and review, and if you would take, what would it take, 30 seconds to do that, we'd appreciate it. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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