The Human Need We're Neglecting & The Mystery of Great Ideas - SYSK Choice

Have you ever forgotten a phone number, birthday, or why you walked into a room because you knew your phone would remember it for you? Many people joke about "digital dementia." While it isn't a real medical diagnosis, researchers are becoming increasingly concerned that our growing dependence on technology may be changing how we remember, think, and solve problems. https://www.neurocenternj.com/blog/digital-dementia-how-screens-and-digital-devices-impact-memory/ Most of us pay attention to our physical health and, increasingly, our mental health. But what about our social health? Research suggests the quality of your relationships may have a profound impact on your happiness, resilience, and even how long you live. Yet many people today have fewer close connections than ever before. Kasley Killam explains why social health matters so much and how to build stronger, more meaningful relationships. She has advised organizations including Google, the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the World Economic Forum, and is author of The Art and Science of Connection: Why Our Social Health Is the Key to Living Longer, Healthier, and Happier (https://amzn.to/4cynFRi). Where do great ideas come from? Is imagination something you're born with, or can you actually develop it? According to Albert Read, imagination is more like a muscle than a mysterious gift—it grows stronger the more you understand and use it. In this conversation, he explains how creativity works, why ideas sometimes seem to appear out of nowhere, and how anyone can become more imaginative. Albert is Managing Director of Condé Nast Britain and author of The Imagination Muscle: Where Good Ideas Come From (https://amzn.to/4cw9xrw). Sending flowers to someone who is sick or recovering from surgery seems like a thoughtful gesture. But can flowers actually help someone heal? Surprisingly, research suggests they may do more than brighten a room—they may have measurable effects on mood, stress, and recovery. https://www.floweraura.com/blog/healing-power-get-well-soon-flowers-scientific-perspective PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS WAYFAIR: Ready to upgrade your home for way less? Head to ⁠https://Wayfair.com⁠ right now to shop all things home and get your space ready for less. RULA: Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Rula.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get started. QUINCE: Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! SHOPIFY: It's time to turn those "what ifs" into CHA CHING with Shopify Today! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 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.

• 0:02Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, what digital dementia is doing to your brain and everyone else's. Then, having close friends makes you healthier and happier, and there are a lot of ways to make those connections.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  First of all, people like us more than we think, right? There's what's known as the liking gap, which shows that we underestimate how much other people view us favorably. And so, we would all do well just assume that people like you.

• 0:32Mike Carruthers?

  Also, do Get Well Flowers actually help people get well? And what does it mean to use your imagination?

• 0:41Speaker 02

  We think of the imagination, if we think of it at all, as something that's bestowed upon us from above. And some people have it, some people don't have it, or some people have a little of it, some people have a lot of it. For me, the imagination is a muscle. It's something you can work out. It's something you can develop.

• 0:56Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 1:01Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:46Mike Carruthers?

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• 2:26Speaker 03

  Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

• 2:39Mike Carruthers?

  Hi, let me ask you a question. Do you know your own phone number? A lot of people don't. Especially young people don't know their own phone number. Now, I know my own phone number and I know my wife's phone number, but I don't know my son's phone number off the top of my head because I don't have to. It's in my phone. And that's the problem. There's something called digital dementia. It's not a real medical diagnosis, at least not yet, anyway. And a simple example of this is how people don't know their own phone number because the phone remembers it for them. We know that rapid advancements in technology have had a profound impact on our attention spans and our mental activity.

• 3:24Mike Carruthers?

  In fact, there was a study done some time ago by Microsoft that found that attention spans decreased from 12 seconds in the year 2000 to less than eight seconds in the year 2013, which is shorter than the attention span of a goldfish. And it's likely that hasn't gotten better in the last 11 years when the study was done. This decrease has been attributed to the constant use of digital devices and the constant bombardment of information. Chronic sensory overstimulation from excessive screen time can also result in memory and concentration problems. Extensive technology use has been linked to decreased brain connectivity and lower cognitive performance.

• 4:09Mike Carruthers?

  There's reason to believe that digital dementia may even lead to real dementia later in life. The only real solution appears to be cut back on technology use. Cut back on screen time. More physical activity and more time outdoors. And that is something you should know.

• 4:30Mike Carruthers?

  How is your social health? Are you socially healthy? Meaning, do you have friends and family you're close to that you do things with, that you confide in? Because the concern is that a lot of people don't. We have social media and online friends and maybe acquaintances at work. But it seems that people today have fewer deep, quality relationships than in the past. So why is that? And what is so important about these relationships? Well, here to explain that is Casely Killam. She is a recognized expert on the topic of social health. She's worked with organizations such as Google, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the World Economic Forum

• 5:15Mike Carruthers?

  on creating more socially healthy products, workplaces, and communities. She's author of a book called "The Art and Science of Connection: Why Our Social Health Is the Key to Living Longer, Healthier, and Happier." Hi, Casely, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

• 5:35Mike Carruthers?

  So why is this idea of social health important? I mean, sure, it's nice to have friends and family, and you don't want to be lonely and have that sense of loneliness. But why is this such a big deal?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  The research shows that you cannot be fully healthy without close friends who you can confide in and without seeing family members for more than once a year. All of those relationships, the data shows, aren't just about happiness. They actually determine how long we live. They determine how healthy we are while we're alive.

• 6:09Mike Carruthers?

  Is there any sense as to how that works? How being socially connected makes you live longer? Like, what's the mechanism that makes that so?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. So one of the leading theories on that is that connection actually buffers against the stress response in our body, which would otherwise weaken our immune system. So if you think about a stressor that could be, you know, a lion charging at you, or it could be a fight with a coworker or disagreement with your spouse. Those trigger stress responses in our body. And when that's prolonged, that cortisol and other things going on weaken our immune systems and lead to greater susceptibility to diseases. So in contrast, connection and feeling supported and cared for and loved

• 7:01Speaker 01

  actually assuages that and helps to prevent that whole downward spiral from happening and improving our immunity in general. So for example, there was a great study done a while back where the researchers infected different people with cold viruses. And those people who felt more supported and received more hugs during the study, they had fewer symptoms of the cold. So we can see that even at that level, our immune systems benefit from affection and from love.

• 7:36Mike Carruthers?

  So how do you know if you have that? I mean, you can, we've heard of people who have other people in their life, but still feel lonely and that, and that I think generally people think, even though they may have friends, that other people have more friends than they and that they're somehow lacking in social connection. So how do you know what's enough?

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a really great question. And it is subjective, right? In the same way that the number of calories I need to eat may be different than the number of calories that you need to eat. The amount of interaction or the number of friends that I need might be different from you. And so there is this level of subjectivity that takes some reflection and we can experiment with it in the same way that we experiment with different types of exercise, right? I've tried running, I've tried Pilates and some things I like and some things I don't. And so It's really about being intentional and paying attention to how we feel in general, right? Asking yourself, do you tend to feel more lonely or do you tend to feel more connected?

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Do you have people who, or at least one person, who you can reach out to when you're going through a tough time and just need to talk it through? Are you spending time in person with people as much as you would like or not? And so really kind of reflecting on those different questions and thinking about what feels fulfilling to you, right? Do you feel energized after you leave a certain interaction or do you feel drained? Really taking the time to reflect on that because it is a subjective experience, right? Our social health, there isn't one measure you can take at the doctor's office. It's about how do you feel? Do you feel connected or not?

• 9:22Mike Carruthers?

  Well, and there's also that issue, or maybe it's an issue of, you know, whether you're an introvert or extrovert, that if you're an introvert, maybe you don't need a lot of social connection, or at least you don't need a lot of people, you just need someone or occasional, or how does that fit into the recipe here?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I love this question because I am an introvert and I think it's important that an introvert wrote the book called The Art and Science of Connection because if an extrovert wrote this book and was just telling everyone you need to socialize all the time, that would not resonate with about half the population, right? Many of us, that that just doesn't, that's not fulfilling and in fact, that's draining. So for me as an introvert, it's really about balancing the time I spend socializing with time spent in solitude where I can recharge my batteries and connect with myself. That's as much a part of our social health as connecting with other people. It really starts with that foundation.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  And so if you think about it as kind of an equilibrium, what feels nourishing to me is a higher percentage of time alone than an extrovert. An extrovert wants more, more frequent interaction, right? And so it really comes down to that cadence. However, I will say that in general, quality is more important than quantity, right? So aiming for meaningful relationships and meaningful interaction should be an ideal that we all strive toward rather than just socializing for socializing sake.

• 10:52Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it does seem. That, and maybe this is more for introverts than extroverts, that it's also just the knowing that there's someone you can call or go see or go hang. You don't have to be with them, but knowing you can be with them,

• 11:10Mike Carruthers?

  that, just that in and of itself does something.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. The deep yearning that we all have is to feel like we're cared for, to feel like someone out there thinks we matter, right? And so, even if we don't talk to that person very often, it's knowing that we could reach out and knowing that someone does love us. That makes all the difference in the world. And in fact, some studies of children and youth show that even just having one person, one adult, one guardian who cares for a young person, that's enough to have lasting effects throughout their life in terms of their well-being. So, you're completely right. It's really just about knowing that someone cares about us.

• 11:58Mike Carruthers?

  And I like being completely right, so.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Don't we all?

• 12:04Mike Carruthers?

  So, thanks for saying that. I feel so much. The situation, though, is for many people that they don't feel that. They don't have that. And to say, "Well, you should go get that." Well, if they could, they would have done that already. So, it's very hard, if you're feeling lonely, if you're feeling unconnected, to, you know, and the advice is, "Well, you know, say hi to the barista, or, you know, say hi to the guy at the grocery store in line in front of you." But, you know, I don't know that that really does a whole lot to make you feel connected. So, how, what's the prescription?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And if we look at the statistics on isolation and loneliness in the US, but also around the world, we can see that a lot of people feel that way, right? And so, it is a very common experience. And what I would say to everyone who might be feeling that way, and by the way, we all do at some times, is that in the same way that you can go from being malnourished to well-fed, Or from being exhausted to well rested. You can go from being lonely and disconnected to having the support and the meaningful relationships that you desire. There are absolutely ways to go about that, but there's no quick fix, right?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  It does take time and effort to to build the kind of sense of community and belonging that we all crave. So one thing I would suggest is to start small, you know, it can feel really daunting and I hope that everyone takes their social health seriously because the stakes are high. We know that we live longer if we have meaningful connections, but also not to be hard on yourself, right? It it takes time. And so a simple thing that people can do to get started are to set connection goals and think about what does that look like for me? You know, if if you want to make one new friend, that's a great goal right there. And then, of course, it's about taking action to

• 14:04Speaker 01

  continue fulfilling toward that, right? Once you set a goal, you have to work toward it. And there are many ways that we can go about it, but it starts with that intention, right? We're not going to be socially healthy unless we decide that it's a priority to us.

• 14:18Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I've always thought that one of the reasons especially that grownups have adults have trouble is that connecting as a as a kid is so much easier. Everybody's a potential friend. Everybody, oh, you like Transformers? Me too. And now you're friends. And and it just doesn't work that way when you're a grown up.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a great point. And I actually think we would all benefit from adopting a bit more of that youthful mindset around friendship, right? Why can't it be as simple as you like Transformers and so do I? So now we're friends. We get, things just get more complicated as we get older, but they don't necessarily need to, because the fact of the matter is that Everyone craves new friendships and wants to connect over shared interests and feel like they're making new vibrant relationships, every single one of us. And for some reason, we have social norms where it's just not socially acceptable to necessarily do that, but it doesn't have to be that way.

• 15:26Mike Carruthers?

  I guess I'm guessing at this, but it seems that the fear of rejection, the worry that if you try and someone rejects you, then why bother, so I don't, gets in the way a lot.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Definitely, absolutely. And we see that when people experience rejection or they feel lonely. However, the research on this is really interesting because studies have shown that, first of all, people like us more than we think, right? There's what's known as the liking gap, which shows that we underestimate how much other people view us favorably. And so we would all do well with assuming that people are going to like us in given situations. And I love, there's advice from psychologist Dr. Marissa Franco, who talks about just assume that people like you, because chances are they like you more than you actually think.

• 16:22Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that's interesting. I want to talk a little more about that. I'm speaking with Kasley Killam. She's author of the book, The Art and Science of Connection: Why Our Social Health Is The Key To Living Longer, Healthier, And Happier. So Kasley, what you said about people like us more than we think, that's really a big deal, because that's not people's experience a lot of the time, that especially if something goes wrong in the conversation, people think, well, that's the end of that, because you blew it.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it turns out that most of us are preoccupied with worrying about how we come across, and the other person is paying less attention to the mistakes we make and more attention to the mistakes they make. So we can certainly do well with a little bit of more kindness and patience toward ourselves. There's also great research showing that we underestimate how much our Outreach means to other people. So if you send a text out of the blue to a friend and say, "Hey, I was just thinking about you. Miss you. Hope you're doing well." Or maybe you express gratitude to someone out of the blue. That means so much more to them than we can possibly imagine. And we can relate to this if you think about being on the receiving end of that, right?

• 17:36Speaker 01

  When someone expresses a sincere compliment to you or out of the blue reaches out and says something nice, it feels really good. It's such an instant kind of easy boost to how we're doing and to how connected we feel to that other person. So sometimes it can feel like we have to go out of our way and totally disrupt our lives in order to develop meaningful friendships, when in fact, really simple steps can still be very meaningful.

• 18:05Mike Carruthers?

  Well, imagine, you know, when you get a thank you note in the mail, in the real mail, like how good that feels and it took so little effort for the person to send it. And yet, it's, it's like, oh, wow, that's nice.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 18:18Mike Carruthers?

  It's the same thing.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's huge. I love getting mail in the actual mailbox, not so much my email inbox.

• 18:27Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, and handwritten mail, too.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  For sure. It's the thought behind it, right? It's a signal of someone cares so much about me that they took the time to do that and to express that, and that's huge.

• 18:40Mike Carruthers?

  This seems to be, I don't know what the statistics are, but this seems to be a bigger problem now than it used to be. Or maybe that's not true. I don't know.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are quite a few worrisome trends, I would say, that have emerged in recent decades. So as one example, the number of friends that people have has actually declined. So for example, in 1990, only 3% of Americans said they have no close friends.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  And in 2021, 12% of Americans said, say that they have no close friends. In contrast, back in 1990, about a third of Americans said they have 10 or more friends, which is quite a few, if you ask me, 10 or more close friends. And then that has fallen to, in 2021, down to 13%. So we have fewer friends. And at the same time, we're spending less time with the friends that we do have. So in fact, the amount of time that we spend with our friends has decreased by an average of 20 hours per month in recent decades. So that's one example. And then, of course, there's the very alarming statistics on loneliness specifically.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  And last year, the US Surgeon General issued an advisory about the epidemic of isolation and loneliness. And unfortunately, this isn't just centered in the US, right? Worldwide, about one in four people report that they feel fairly or very lonely overall. So disconnection is, is quite a huge issue. The fact that we have fewer friends, people belong to community groups less than they used to, these are different signals of poor social health. And it's an indication that we really need to prioritize our social health like we do our physical and mental health.

• 20:32Mike Carruthers?

  It also seems, just from my observation, that because of social media, people communicate on social media. And I compare it to like eating junk food instead of eating real food. Like, like it sort of satisfies something in you, like, oh, like connected with Bob, so everything's okay. But it doesn't really have the same effect as if you and Bob really went out to lunch and, or played golf, or did what you and Bob should really be doing as opposed to chatting on Facebook.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I think the junk food analogy is perfect, right? It can be helpful, right? Technology is a tool. And so if we're using it to stay in touch with people, or to keep tabs on, you know, photos from different events that our friends are going to, or things like that, it can be a useful tool. But as we're seeing, and as most of us feel, it's not fulfilling in the way that a conversation one-on-one with a friend in person is.

• 21:34Mike Carruthers?

  Does this affect people differently in the sense that because maybe younger people are more used to online, maybe more superficial connections with people, that this lack of friendship or this lack of connection doesn't bother them as much as older people or not?

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Certainly, it feels like young people today, and myself included as a millennial, it's easier to feel like people are your friends when they're not truly, you know? I think you're on to something. I also will say that youth today, so Gen Z and kind of teenagers and young adults, show the highest levels of loneliness, even higher than older adults. And I know typically, we kind of have a stereotype of older adults after they're retired, being alone and very lonely. But it turns out that, no, in fact, it's young people today who are experiencing the highest levels of disconnection. So there's something

• 22:35Speaker 01

  there, right? Where our social lives are so different today than they were in past generations, and those ramifications are still being understood.

• 22:44Mike Carruthers?

  Something I know you've looked into and I want you to talk about, because I have a hard time getting my head around this, is that people are using artificial intelligence, becoming friends with, basically with fake people, and perhaps even romantic partners, with artificial intelligence people. Really?

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Yes, yep. There are, there are a lot of people who, millions of people around the world, who, who have AI wives and partners and husbands. And it's very interesting. And I, I think that increasingly, we're going to have to ask of ourselves, what role do we want technology to play in our social health? For a lot of these people, they feel like they can't find meaningful connection, or the kinds of conversations that they want in the real life. And so they're turning to artificial intelligence to get that and to fulfill that need.

• 23:49Mike Carruthers?

  And since you've looked at that and you researched that, how's that going? How fulfilling is that?

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Well, the research is mixed. I would say some people swear by it. And and I I want to be careful to have a really compassionate and humanistic lens on it. Because while it's not something I relate to, a lot of people are finding comfort through this. There is some data suggesting that if people use AI as kind of a training ground to practice conversation and their social skills, that can be helpful, right? If you're socially anxious in real life, maybe you can learn your way through that in AI and then take those skills into the real world. However, I do worry about people who are solely connecting with AI

• 24:41Speaker 01

  and not eat and being overly dependent on it, right? Because ultimately, fundamental belonging that's core to our health and our well being and the point of being alive is real human connection.

• 24:55Mike Carruthers?

  But I have to ask, because when you said that they're having like husbands and wives AI like marriages, but usually in a marriage, there's a physical element involved that, how does that work?

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Right. Well, I don't know too much, but there it is just a chatbot in that case. And so there isn't a physical element in that same way, right? They can't have the AI chatbot out for dinner or have them over to their home. So I think it's it's primarily an emotional and a conversational relationship. But these people truly, I mean, a lot of the people who I learned about who are using AI as a companion in this way, they genuinely feel like they love their AI companions. I mean, there's true human emotion behind these relationships. That's not fake, even if the AI is not a real person.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  The feelings that they're experiencing are very, very real.

• 25:56Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it sounds almost science fiction-y, but as you say, you know, if it can help people to communicate better and relate better to real people, then it might be quite a tool. I've been speaking with Kasley Killam. She is a recognized expert on the topic of social health, and she is author of the book, "The Art and Science of Connection: Why Our Social Health Is the Key to Living Longer, Healthier, and Happier." There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for stopping in and talking about this. It was really enlightening.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Mike. It has been a pleasure. I enjoyed chatting with you about this, and thank you.

• 26:36Mike Carruthers?

  What does it mean to use your imagination? What is your imagination? How does it work? Why do some people seem to have a more fertile imagination than others? Can you develop your imagination, or do you already have as much imagination as you're ever gonna get? Well, here to shed some light on your imagination, and how it works, and maybe how to make it work better, is Albert Reed. He's managing director of Conde Nast in Britain, where he oversees British Vogue, GQ, Wired, and Conde Nast Traveler. He's author of a book called "The Imagination Muscle: Where Good Ideas Come From." Hey, Albert, welcome. Glad to have you on Something You Should Know.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Hi, Mike. Great pleasure to be here.

• 27:22Mike Carruthers?

  So I love this topic, because, I mean, how often in life has you had to do something or get something done, or tackle a project, and someone will say, "Just use your imagination." And I've always wondered, well, what the hell does that mean? What does that mean? So what is your imagination? It's not a thing.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Your imagination is, can be described in so many ways, but really, it's seeing what is not already there. It's being able to conjure up something new. And you're right, people don't really think about it that much. It's something that we all know we possess, but we don't really think about. What it is or how we can get more of it, how we can develop our own imaginations. We, we think of the imagination, if we think of it at all, as something that's bestowed upon us from above. And some people have it, some people don't have it, or some people have a little of it, some people have a lot of it. For me, the imagination is a muscle. It's something you can work out. It's something you can develop. And in the way that we pay

• 28:25Speaker 02

  attention to our physical health and our emotional well-being, we should do the same with our imagination. We should pay attention to our imaginative health.

• 28:35Mike Carruthers?

  And why should we? What's the payoff to doing that? Why do we need to be more imaginative day to day? What's the point?

• 28:44Speaker 02

  On a personal level, all the studies show that being imaginative, being creative, paying attention to our imaginations makes us happier. And we've come to the point in society where we tend to outsource our imaginations to artists, to script writers. Whereas in more traditional societies in the old days, the imagination was something where everybody plays their part. So what I'm trying, what I'm advocating is that we go back to something along those lines where we all participate imaginatively. And the, the results are that we are happier, we're more, we're more fulfilled, we form communities, we feel closer to each other. And this, I believe, is something that we risk losing in modern society.

• 29:25Mike Carruthers?

  So when are you, when are you using your imagination? Because there's this idea of, you know, coming up with these wild creative ideas, but, but on a day to day basis, okay, so I sit down and I do an episode of a podcast and I look at your stuff and I think of questions to, am I, questions to ask you? Am I using my imagination or am I just working?

• 29:48Speaker 02

  You're using your imagination. The way that I see it is the imagination exists on three levels. You have Level one, the base imagination where you're imagining what you're going to have for dinner that night, you're thinking of what to buy in the shop on the way home from work. There's that very base level of imagining like breathing. And then you have the second tier, what I call the Pegasus imagination, which is where you're joining things together that didn't previously exist. And this is where most of the imagining takes place that we think of as making new connections, having ideas, putting things together that that didn't happen before. And then there's the third tier of imagination, which I write about and I call it fusion,

• 30:28Speaker 02

  which is the very summit of imaginative activity, the great works of art, the great works of poetry, the great masterpieces of music. So I see the imagination as being these three different levels. And really, we exist to begin with on level one, and then we spend what we think of as our imaginative activity on level two. And then very occasionally, the great imaginative mountaineers, the great artists, the great scientists, the great philosophers, have ideas which can be put into the third category where completely new things emerge, great masterpieces of art and music and literature.

• 31:04Mike Carruthers?

  And those people who are really the masters of imagination, I think of, you know, great painters like Leonardo da Vinci and all the things he did, or Albert Einstein or Thomas Edison seem very imaginative. Do they have, or did they have, something special that the rest of us only hope to one day have, much, much like a, like an Olympic athlete? I mean, all of us can run, but not, we can't run like that.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  We can't, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try and run. And we do run. We take exercise, even though we know we're never going to win the 100 meters. And the examples of Leonardo and Albert Einstein are two very good examples in two entirely different ways. If you think of Leonardo, he was... Somebody who could think across boundaries. He was the ultimate person who was a scientist and an artist. And he could take his work in science, in his very acute observations of the human anatomy, which you would get from his, the incisions he'd make while studying human corpses at night, and then you go paint the Mona Lisa and capture the fine detail of the smile by knowing exactly how the smile in a real person worked. So you have this person in Leonardo who could, who could think across boundaries.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  He could study things in one area and take them to another area. And one of the things that we need to remember is the people who make breakthroughs often do so by thinking across boundaries. We are, in our education system, we are boundaried. We are sent into, into, into forrows of specialty where we are scientists, we are doctors, we're artists, we're, we're, whatever it may be, journalists. And we become very, very narrow in our thinking, whereas in the 18th and 19th centuries, people would quite naturally move from one boundary to another. So you'd have a philosopher who would become a scientist and a scientist who'd become a philosopher.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  And really this power of seeing things in different corners of your life and bringing them together and making connections for me is the great magic and power of idea and ideas generation. So what I want to try and bring back and encourage is this idea of thinking across boundaries. And that comes to Einstein. He, he was a scientist, but he was also a musician. And what, what I find fascinating is if you look at the Nobel Prize winners in science, they tend to have a disproportionate interest and activity in the arts. So if Einstein played the violin and Isaac Newton was a painter and a poet.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  And Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, was a member of the Arts Club in London. So you have these minds that roam effortlessly and, and with, with great curiosity across these different disciplines. So that really is something that we have to try and engender in our own ways of behaving and thinking.

• 33:58Mike Carruthers?

  But it all seems so vague, you know, it's, it's not like if you do this, then this will result. It's like, do a little bit of everything and try a little bit of this and think a little bit about that. And maybe you'll come up with a good idea.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  Well, it is a bit vague, but that's that's the way the mind works, you know, it it wanders around and occasionally it stumbles across something magical. But in but the important thing is to allow the mind to wander. And the world we exist in at the moment is very much attuned to to being on the receiving end of information. If we stand in a queue waiting to get on a bus, we we take out our phones, we check our emails, and we we look at videos and we look at social media. And what I want to try and remind people of is, before we had social media, before we had mobile phones, these spaces in between, these gaps in our lives, were very powerful moments for us to have thoughts, which in

• 34:53Speaker 02

  some cases would lead to great breakthroughs. There are stories of mathematicians who broke who came up with great formulas while waiting for a bus. There are musicians who came up with great compositions while queuing up to buy a ticket. And we we risk losing something by ironing out these spaces and making life smooth and seamless, and every gap filled in by more information absorbing.

• 35:19Mike Carruthers?

  It's fascinating to me how, like, for example, there's a place that I one of my favorite places to go walking is is around a lake in Vermont. And it's just so quiet and peaceful, and you hear the birds, and it's just like, your mind just does wonderful things. But I often walk around that lake and see people, you know, on their phone. And I think, well, what are they? They're missing the whole point here. They're they're on their phone talking, or they're watching something and or playing a game. And I think you you missed the whole point.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  Completely agree. And if you look at the the great poets like William Wordsworth in England, you know, he he walked every day, and he walked for miles. And and walking was his way of gently jostling ideas into view into into into the front of his mind. And there are lots of techniques which lend themselves to to imagining more, to having other ideas that that you wouldn't normally have. I mean, being in a shower, having a shower is is the famous one. Walking is another one. But there are less obvious ideas that

• 36:32Speaker 02

  That writers and poets have come across in their lives. And Ivan Degenya, the Russian novelist, would write his novels with his feet in a bowl of warm water. And Schiller, the German poet, would have a tray of rotten apples in his bottom drawer. And every now and then, in order to seek inspiration, he'd open the drawer and breathe deeply from the drawer and inhale the ethylene, this gas that emerges naturally from rotten apples.

• 37:03Mike Carruthers?

  It seems, from what I've heard other people talk about and from listening to you, that a lot of people typically think that, okay, so if I have something to do, what I need to do is sit down and work on it and try to solve it and focus on it. And it's like you're saying, no, maybe not. Maybe go do something entirely unrelated and see what shows up.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  I think you'll find, and the evidence suggests this, that if you have a problem, the best thing you can do is to study the problem and then go away and do something where your mind is distracted, whether it's sleeping or walking or taking a shower. You'll find yourself coming back with a... Sometimes the unconscious has done the work for you. We have this very, very powerful force within us, which is the unconscious. And that does a lot of the work that is required to solve problems, to have ideas. But the key, the difficult bit, but the important element of our lives, is how to remain in touch with the unconscious, how to have a kind of a line to the unconscious, which

• 38:12Speaker 02

  isn't just wild dreaming, but is a fertile shore between the sea of the unconscious and the rationality of wakefulness, where you have this halfway point, where you have the best of both worlds, where the rational mind can absorb and digest and interpret these very powerful and interesting things going on in the unconscious.

• 38:34Mike Carruthers?

  So how do you do that?

• 38:37Speaker 02

  You do it by walking, where your mind is disengaged from the here and now. You do it by finding this moment in the morning when you're not quite asleep, not quite awake. You do it by... Vladimir Nabokov used to sit in a parked car at the end of a long journey because your mind is, you know, you've been on this, in this, in this moving state and suddenly you're still. And so you find these kind of interstitial moments in your day when your mind is disengaged. It's like the gear stick being put into neutral. And for a moment, for a time, your mind is not fully absorbed in the, in the, in the present. It's somehow in neutral. And, and that, that's a very, very important and somewhat magical moment in, in, in, in the day for the human mind.

• 39:22Mike Carruthers?

  You mentioned earlier, and it's the case for me, that the shower seems to be like a really kind of great place to get ideas for me and for a lot of other people. But what is it about the shower? What, what, what's going on there that it seems so universally good at generating ideas?

• 39:43Speaker 02

  The shower's a moment when you're, you're, you're awake, but you're not really thinking about anything. And it's a combination of, of, of being in a, in a waking trance, if that's the best way of describing it. Plus, you have the warm water on the back of your head, which, which relaxes the, the brain. So it's one of these in-between moments in the day when you're not working, you're not talking, you're not doing anything, but you're just standing there and you're just absorbed, you know, you're bathed in warm water. And it's just, it's just a, a moment of release, a moment of respite, when the brain just goes back into neutral, just for a few minutes. And that, and that's when things happen. Aaron Sorkin, the, the writer of The West Wing, would take several showers

• 40:27Speaker 02

  a day when he's writing, in order just to relax his mind, to have ideas. And, and I think if you're writing, if you're doing anything artistic, just pay attention to the moment when you get up and go and get a drink of water or walk around the block. You'll find, at least I find, that that's when you have ideas, that those are the moments when you step away from your work, just for a few minutes. And you just, just pay attention to what happens in your mind.

• 40:56Mike Carruthers?

  I find, and I'm sure most people do, or many people do, that the morning is better than later in the day. And I just have always assumed that that's because maybe you've slept and your mind's been sleeping and that, you know, you wake up fresh, ready for the day. And so that's when new ideas come. But do we know any science here?

• 41:17Speaker 02

  I think the science is not consistent. The science would tell you that each person is different. And some people I know, and I include my wife in this, work very well late at night. So I think it depends on energy levels. It depends on what sort, what kind of circadian rhythms you have in your, in your sleep. But the, the times that seem to be most creative for people are the mornings and the evenings when the mind again is disengaged. They're not busy. The phone isn't ringing. Their emails aren't arriving. So it's that ability to find a calm space, free of external stimulants that, that really yields the interesting ideas.

• 41:56Mike Carruthers?

  And since you've looked at what makes some people more imaginative and come up with more ideas than others, what do you find? What's the answer to that question?

• 42:07Speaker 02

  There are a few answers. One of the answers is adopt the mindset of a beginner. Be somebody who's open to new ideas. And something that happens to our minds as we get along in our lives is they become increasingly closed new to new ideas. And so it is that you see the great bursts of creativity, the great works of art, and music and literature have a tendency to be produced by people in their late twenties or early thirties. And that's because you're, you're, what you're getting at that point in your life is a meeting point of experience and the beginner's mindset. You're still open to new ideas. You're still

• 42:46Speaker 02

  receptive to the world around you. And the key for us as people is to try and retain that beginner's mindset throughout your life. And that's something that, that can be done and is done. And you see it with certain artists and writers who carry on producing great works of art into their seventies and eighties and even nineties. So the beginner's mindset is one thing that I think is very important for anybody who wants to, to retain their imaginative capability.

• 43:19Mike Carruthers?

  What about imagination? The whole subject of imagination? Have we not talked about that you think people would find surprising?

• 43:26Speaker 02

  The thing we haven't discussed is the role of society in promoting imagination. If you think of how cities are built, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that cities can foster the imagination. So if you think of where you want to go when you visit Paris, you want to go to the artistic quarter. You don't want to go to the financial center. And we crave certain types of structures of cities with imperfect corners and and rambling streets. And what I think we don't do enough of is when we design cities and we design offices and we design working environments, we don't think enough about how do we build these for the generation of ideas?

• 44:11Speaker 02

  How do we build cities for the future where, given that most people live in cities and increasingly people are moving to cities, how do we create cities of the future which generate innovation, ideas, meeting places, areas where people can congregate? This, for me, is a very important element of society which we don't really think about enough.

• 44:35Mike Carruthers?

  Well, what would that look like? I mean, what, what? Why do you think that there aren't places to congregate in cities now and that and could be better?

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Because I don't see it in the way that cities are being built in places like China. The global city dwelling population is projected to increase by two and a half billion people before 2050 with most of the growth coming in Asia and Africa. I mean, China's on course to build 300 new cities, each of over a million people over the next 25 years. And around one in eight of us is going to live in a in a megacity of more than 10 million inhabitants. And the point I really want to make about cities and the imagination is that the ideas we have in the future will therefore largely arise within these city environments and urban surroundings. And yet, despite millennia of experience, despite

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Cities, despite the agora of Athens, despite the backstreets of Paris and the Renaissance cities of Florence and Venice, we don't, we still build cities in blocks, in grids. We don't really understand what it is that makes a city imaginative, and we don't systematically approach city planning, where we say to ourselves, imagination feeds growth, ideas are our salvation, but how do we design a city above all for ideas?

• 45:55Mike Carruthers?

  When you talk about the people with the great ideas, the very imaginative people, Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein, it's a very, I think of them in a very solitary way, but I also know that I've been in situations where two imaginations are better than one, that the collaboration of imaginations produces something bigger than two single imaginations.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  The great imaginative geniuses of history have tended not to have grown up on their own, they have tended to come out of groups of other geniuses or of other brilliant minds. If you think of Shakespeare, if you think of Isaac Newton, all these clusters, all these groups of people have emerged by being somewhat competitive with other people. If you think of Steve Jobs, the story of the coffee house, which started in the Middle East, but then came to London in the 17th century, and the coffee house became the great meeting point of great minds in the Enlightenment.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  And that really was an enormous boost for innovation, for ideas, for wealth, for exploration, for trade. Certainly in the worlds of biotech, they think a lot about this. How do we bring people together in ways that will spark ideas and spark the imagination? And this comes back to cities and designing serendipitous encounters, creating environments where people meet. And this is crucial to the propagation of ideas and innovation.

• 47:34Mike Carruthers?

  Well, using your imagination, I hope it's an experience that everyone has had where you come up with something, your imagination dreams up something and it just works. And it's magic and it's so satisfying when that happens. And it's such a great topic to talk about, your imagination. I've been speaking with Albert Reed. He's author of the book, "The Imagination Muscle: Where Good Ideas Come From." And if you'd like to read it, there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Appreciate you coming on. Thank you for being here, Albert.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  Great, thanks, Mike. Good to talk to you.

• 48:11Mike Carruthers?

  It's customary, when someone is sick, to bring them flowers to cheer them up, especially if they're in the hospital. And it turns out that flowers do have some real benefits. Numerous studies have demonstrated that exposure to nature, including floral displays, has a positive impact on our mental state. The mere presence of flowers has been shown to induce feelings of happiness and reduce anxiety and enhance relaxation. Other research indicates that the presence of flowers in an environment can lead to a significant reduction in stress levels and can combat feelings of sadness and anxiety.

• 48:51Mike Carruthers?

  The presence of get-well-soon flowers in a room also reminds the patient that someone cares and can help reduce feelings of loneliness and isolation. And that is something you should know. Every episode of this podcast is the result of hard work by people like Jeffrey Havison and Jennifer Brennan. They're our producers. Ken Williams is our executive producer. And I am Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.