The Surprising Science of Enjoying Food & Why We Need to Know Why

We all have vivid memories of major events from our past — moments we can picture so clearly that we’re certain we remember exactly what happened. They’re known as “flashbulb memories.” But here’s the strange thing: even when those memories feel crystal clear, they may not be very accurate and there is an interesting reason why. https://dictionary.apa.org/flashbulb-memory Why are some foods simply more fun to eat than others? Why does restaurant food often seem to taste better than what we make at home? And is there actually a right way to build the perfect sandwich? Dan Pashman has spent a lot of time thinking about questions like these. He is host of the culinary podcast The Sporkful (https://www.sporkful.com/), which TIME named one of the 100 Best Podcasts of All Time. He also invented his own pasta shape, cascatelli — and there’s a great story behind that. Listen as Dan explores the surprisingly fascinating details that can turn eating from something we have to do into something we really enjoy. He is also author of Anything’s Pastable: 81 Inventive Pasta Recipes for Saucy People (https://link.amazon/B0geSlwHB). Humans have a powerful need to understand why. We’re constantly asking for explanations and giving them to other people — but some explanations click immediately while others leave us more confused than when we started. So what actually makes an explanation satisfying? Why are some people naturally better at explaining things? Tania Lombrozo is a professor of psychology at Princeton University and author of Why We Ask Why: The Science of Explanation and the Human Drive to Understand (https://link.amazon/B0fYNqZiB). She reveals the fascinating science behind our need to understand — and how we can all become better explainers. You probably like to think you can spot something that sounds suspicious or simply isn’t true. But there’s an amazingly simple technique that can make even skeptical people more likely to believe a false claim — and it’s used all the time. Listen and see if you recognize it when I tell you what it is. https://www.sciencefocus.com/advertisement-feature/psychological-tricks-hackers-everyday 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Do you want to hear about visionaries creating a better world? People working in conservation, exploration, science and tech alongside storytellers imagining and creating a better future? I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation, bringing you season six of Planet Visionaries. This season, I speak to guests like National Geographic photographer Tom Pechek and Anna Rattman, executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute, USA, in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Watch Planet Visionaries on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:32Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, why some of your most vivid memories may not be accurate, then the reasons you enjoy some food more than others. One reason is texture.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Think about pretty much every candy bar, right? You have like a chocolatey shell and then you get inside and there's something chewy and maybe there's something gooey and then there's nougat in there. So it's crispy, it's crunchy, it's chewy, it's gooey, all in one bite. That's really great.

• 1:00Mike Carruthers?

  Also, what makes some statements seem believable even when they're not true? And what makes a great explanation and why we may not be as good at explaining as we think?

• 1:12Speaker 03

  One of the most universal phenomena that sadly probably holds for all of us is that we're susceptible to a phenomenon called the illusion of explanatory depth, that we often overestimate our own explanatory understanding of how things work.

• 1:27Mike Carruthers?

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• 2:52Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:08Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:21Mike Carruthers?

  You have memories, very vivid memories etched in your mind that you're sure are accurate, that likely are not. How can that be? That's what we're going to start with today. I'm Mike Carruthers and this is Something You Should Know. So think about a major event from your past, a shocking news story, or an accident, or some unforgettable moment in your life, and you may be able to picture exactly where you were and what you were doing. Psychologists call especially vivid memories like these flashbulb memories. But here's the unsettling part. Your confidence in the memory doesn't guarantee that it's accurate.

• 4:03Mike Carruthers?

  Research shows that even highly vivid memories can change over time while still feeling completely authentic. New information, even repeatedly imagining something can alter what we later remember, which means that when two people argue that they both remember exactly what happened, they can both be completely sincere and one or both of them can be completely wrong. And that is something you should know.

• 4:36Mike Carruthers?

  There's a lot more going on when you eat something than whether or not it tastes good. Why is some food just more fun to eat than other food? Why does food at a restaurant often taste better than the same thing at home? Is there actually a right way to build the perfect sandwich? And why are certain foods shaped the way they are? And does that shape change how they taste? These are the kinds of questions that Dan Pashman thinks about for a living and the answers are surprisingly fascinating. Dan is host of the culinary podcast, The Sporkful, which Time named one of the 100 best podcasts of all time.

• 5:17Mike Carruthers?

  He even invented his own pasta shape called Cascatelli and he is author of a cookbook called Anything's Pastable: 81 Inventive Pasta Recipes for Saucy People. His knowledge of food is extraordinary and I think what he has to say may change the way you look at your next meal. Hey Dan, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Hey Mike, thanks for having me.

• 5:40Mike Carruthers?

  So first of all, I want to ask you about your pasta shape that you invented, Cascatelli, because I didn't know that was a thing, that we have our classic pasta shapes that we all know and there aren't new ones that come along every once in a while. That just isn't something you do.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of people didn't, and even the people who knew that in theory it might be possible, said it was a terrible idea to try, including my wife. But first off, I have these three criteria that I use to judge all pasta shapes. So one is forkability, how easy is it to get a good bite on your fork? Sauceability, how well does sauce stick to the shape? And tooth sinkability, which is like how satisfying is it to sink your teeth into it? I think a lot of pasta shapes out there maybe get one or two of those, very few nail all three. So like spaghetti barely gets one. So I was like, let me set out and see if I can get, make a pasta shape that would check all three of those boxes. I started just by eating every obscure shape I could get my hands on. I ordered from, went to specialty stores around the New York area.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  I ordered pastas from Italy and around the country and was just trying different ones and trying to isolate variables like, do I like long shapes or short shapes? Tubes or flats? Ruffles or ridges? And I picked out in particular ruffles. I ate this shape called Mifalda, which is kind of like fettuccine, but with ruffles along the edges. And I was just like, more shapes should have ruffles. Ruffles hold sauce really, really well, better than tubes do. People think tubes can hold sauce, they don't. Better than ridges, plus they sort of create this playful, fun texture in your mouth. And so that was my first big thing was like, it must have ruffles. But after a lot of refining and a lot of things going extremely wrong and a lot of

• 7:22Speaker 02

  supply chain issues and a lot of rejection, I ended up with the shape that I now call Cascatelli that has these two parallel ruffles. And when the sauce goes in there, it like, it can't escape.

• 7:34Mike Carruthers?

  So you mentioned that those ridges in that pasta shape hold the sauce and they're fun, it's fun to eat.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Ruffles, ruffles, Mike, sorry to correct you, but yeah, big, ridges are like the thin lines on the outside of a rigatoni. Ruffles are like, if you picture like Napoleon Dynamite's tuxedo, you know, like a ruffled tuxedo shirt, that's what I'm talking about.

• 7:55Mike Carruthers?

  Well, is that the same theory behind some potato chips?

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Sure, like ruffles potato chips. You know, anytime that you increase surface area, it's going to change a lot. Any food, surface area to volume ratio, which I learned about in AP bio class in high school and never, ever thought I would use. Shout out to Mrs. Danner. Turns out to be very important. Like think about like french fries. All right, if you have a, just a classic steak fry, it has a certain amount of surface area. Now you could take, even if it's a big, thick fry, it has only so much exterior in relation to potatoey interior. Now turn the exact same quantity of potato into a, into a waffle fry.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Waffle fry has so much more surface area, even though it's not any more potato than some other fries. So more surface area means more surface touching that oil, meaning more crispiness, and more surface area to absorb and hold seasoning, which means more flavor. So that's why waffle fries are so frigging good. And yeah, it's the same thing with potato chips. You know, if you look at a flat potato chip or a ruffled potato chip, like the diameter is roughly the same, like at a glance, they look like they're the same size, but one of them has twice as much surface area, the ruffle. So that's going to hold, it's going to just hold a lot more flavor. It's going to be crunchier and it just sort of creates like, I think a more dynamic texture in your mouth.

• 9:20Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, but then you also have to fold in personal preference because I personally like flat potato chips better than ruffled potato chips. It's just a preference and I'm holding on to it.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And look, you know, there's an old fancy old Latin saying that I like, "De gustibus non est disputandum." In matters of taste, there can be no dispute. So I have my opinions, there's certain things that I think are right, but a lot of other things are like, this is how I like it. If you like it a different way, that's okay too. Like eat what you like. One quick thing, sorry Mike, to add, like again, if you like flat, that's great. But the other advantage of increased surface area, especially with something like a potato chip, is that it's better for dipping because more surface area means it will have more grip. And so if you, especially like if it's a very thick dip, it probably won't matter. But if it's a thinner dip, if you dunk a ruffled potato chip into a thinner dip, it will come out with more dip on it than a flat potato chip.

• 10:19Mike Carruthers?

  Wow, you've really investigated this.

• 10:24Mike Carruthers?

  And so it brings up the idea that there are things that are more fun to eat because they have more surface area, because they have ridges, it feels better in your mouth. There's crunchy things and crispy things and like, for example, a potato chip is more fun and flavorful to eat than a boiled potato, but it's the same thing. It's a potato. So what is it about, you know, those kinds of things that make it so, that make it so much more fun to eat?

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, look, I mean, I think anything you can kind of pick up and quickly pop into your mouth is kind of fun. Certainly when you fry something and make it crispy, that adds a whole other element. We love crisp and crunch. Years ago, I did an episode of the Sporkful podcast where I interviewed someone from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. And she taught me about this, this term called dynamic contrast, which is the idea that you have multiple textures together in the same bite. Like, think about pretty much every candy bar, right? You have like a chocolatey shell and you pierce through that sort of hard shell, hard-ish shell, and then you get inside and there's something chewy, and maybe there's something gooey, and then there's nougat

• 11:37Speaker 02

  in there. So it's crispy, it's crunchy, it's chewy, it's gooey, all in one bite. And when we can have bites like that, like, that's really great. And that's why, I love tortilla chips, but when you get like melted cheese on top of the chip, then it's two textures, you know? I love home, like, sort of, if you can find them in a restaurant where they do their own potato chips, house made, and sometimes they're just ever so slightly not crispy in the center. I love that. Or like a good chocolate chip cookie, like, the very outside perimeter of the cookie should be like dark brown and crispy. And then as you move towards the center, it should be like chewy. And then you get into the very middle, and ideally, for me at least, it's like a little undercooked. And so it's sort of more

• 12:21Speaker 02

  gooey, and the chips, the chocolate chips there are kind of melty. And so you bite through it, and you get the crispy, you get the chewy, you get the gooey, and all together. And that's, to me, that's the mark of a great cookie.

• 12:32Mike Carruthers?

  So let's talk about the architecture of the perfect sandwich, because...

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Oh, Mike, you really, this is one of my favorite subjects.

• 12:38Mike Carruthers?

  All right, well, dive in.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  I mean, there's so much to cover, Mike. Do you have a favorite sandwich? Is there one sandwich that you think, if done well, is like the perfect sandwich architecture?

• 12:49Mike Carruthers?

  No, no, I haven't ever given it. I've had, like, really great sandwiches, but I've never thought to think, well, what makes that true? What, I just, you know, it's a great sandwich, and I'll eat it. But, but I've never really thought about how it goes together, other than, you know, you don't put the wet ingredients right on the bread, you put some lettuce or cheese first, or something. But you're the, you're the artisan in this, so go ahead.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  I guess not everyone lays awake at night worrying about sandwich construction, Mike.

• 13:19Mike Carruthers?

  Do you?

• 13:20Speaker 02

  I have laid awake at night thinking about delicious sandwiches and how I would make them if I was gonna make them, for sure. The two most basic principles of sandwich construction are, are like, my version of like Newton's, I think it's his first law of motion, force equals mass times acceleration, which I interpret to mean that you want to build a sandwich such that the force of the bite does not cause the mass of the sandwich to accelerate out the back. And there's two things you gotta really be thinking about. One is, how crusty is this bread? How much bite force will be required to pierce the bread and get into the center of the sandwich? And then the second variable you want to consider is how slippery are the sandwich fillings? And, and where, when they are slippery,

• 14:03Speaker 02

  can we keep the, keep multiple slippery components from being on top of each other? How can we add friction to prevent slippage? And, and also, at the same time, as you say, Mike, we also need to be worried about sogage. You do not want your bread to turn soggy. Nobody wants a soggy sandwich. So you have to be thinking about how much moisture and liquid is inside the sandwich? How is it layered to prevent sogage, and also to increase friction and reduce slippage? And then what kind of bread is going to complement this? So in other words, the more slippery things you're gonna try to get into this sandwich, the softer the bread has to be, so that you don't have to bite hard on it. If you have a really crusty baguette, you're gonna really need to sink your teeth into, then you can't

• 14:45Speaker 02

  have like tomatoes on cucumbers on avocado up in there. All right, that's already a disaster waiting to happen. You need to have, you know, I love like a roggola or frise, a high surface area, dry green. If you put those in between your tomato and cucumber, maybe you got a shot. And that, but like iceberg lettuce, though, is not gonna increase your friction. Iceberg lettuce is very slippery, especially if you have like a spine, an iceberg lettuce spine, or a romaine lettuce spine. I mean, that's like, that's like a track, a slippery track that you're gonna slide on. It's like a, like a luge track or something. So I would think very carefully about, you know, and like, let's, let's say you're gonna make a sandwich that's something very soft, like, you know, supermarket white bread. You

• 15:27Speaker 02

  know, on one hand, that'll be easy to bite through, but that's also gonna turn soggy very quickly. So it's this constant push and pull, because like, like a crusty bread with a thick crust, like a baguette, can also withstand more liquid before it turns soggy. Supermarket white bread is going to turn soggy at the first hint of liquid, and it's gonna fall apart soon afterward. So to me, I'm always thinking about layering, and that, you know, hitting that sweet spot of like, how much moisture, how slippery are the fillings, and how much bite force is going to be required. So that's sandwich architecture. Now, should we move on to like the layering as it pertains to flavor, Mike?

• 16:06Mike Carruthers?

  It must take you about four hours to build a sandwich.

• 16:11Mike Carruthers?

  My God, the checklist itself is, just goes on and on and on.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  It's a little bit much for some people.

• 16:19Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah.

• 16:22Mike Carruthers?

  Well, when I said, when I said I didn't think you, anybody would lie in bed at night thinking about sandwiches, clearly you do.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  I do. I, I've missed exits on the highway, because I was thinking about sandwich construction.

• 16:36Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you just said something that I think is very comforting to sandwich eaters. I want to ask you about that and a lot more when we come back after this. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday, I'll have a place to wear that. Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility: sell it. Every day, people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty painless. Take what you don't

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• 19:22Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about food with Dan Pashman. He is host of the podcast The Sporkful and author of the book Anything's Possible. So Dan, your explanation about how a sandwich should be put together. I think you've given hope to people in this way because every time that I eat a sandwich and it falls apart and stuff comes out the sides in the back and everything, I think it's my fault.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  No, it isn't.

• 19:51Mike Carruthers?

  I'm not eating it correctly. I didn't, I'm not, I'm not a good sandwich eater. It's up to the eater to make sure that the, the things stay inside. And yet what you're saying is no, a lot of it has to do with the construction of the sandwich as to how well it stays together.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. No, a well-made sandwich should, look, there are some sandwiches are just going to be kind of messy and you just got to live with that. But yes, I would say it's mostly on the sandwich maker to construct a good sandwich.

• 20:19Mike Carruthers?

  Why, I wonder, I think I know the answer to this, but, but very often food that you make at home tastes better in a restaurant and it, and why is that?

• 20:31Speaker 02

  I mean, a lot of it has to do with the fact that they're putting like way more salt and fat and oil and sugar than anyone else would, than you ever would at home. You know, there's this scene, I don't know if you're familiar with the Michael Pollan book Omnivore's Dilemma that came out years ago that's very influential. And there's this great scene I was thinking about, he's interviewing this chef, some farm-to-table chef, I don't remember what the point of this, of this scene is, but the chef is cooking some soup while they're chatting and the soup simmering on the stove. And he, the chef, takes a taste of the soup to see if it's good. And he's like, mm, it needs a little more butter. And he then takes an entire stick of butter and drops it into the soup. And Michael Pollan writes, so that's how they do it. You know, it's like, that's the trick, you know?

• 21:13Speaker 02

  And so, and I feel like restaurant food has gotten even more, especially salty. So many times I come home from a restaurant meal, it just, I'm so, so thirsty. But that is, that is a big part of it is just, I mean, some of it is, is technique. Some of it is that they have ovens that get hotter and stuff like that. And there are small, small things of technique that you and I as home cooks might not have and that the chefs know better. But a lot of it is just that they're more aggressive with the seasoning than you would be.

• 21:43Mike Carruthers?

  Foods that seem to go together so well, peanut butter and jelly, bacon and burgers and fries, bacon and eggs, chips and salsa. Why? Is it again, just tradition or what?

• 21:56Speaker 02

  I mean, I think, I think it's some combination and it's, it's hard to tease apart tradition and like logic. So a lot of these things are tradition. We've always had these things together, like you and your potato chips, Mike, you like flat potato chips because it's what you grew up with. So a lot of it is association. But sometimes there is good logic to it, you know? Like I think that cheese on top of meat is delicious. Like there's a lot of food, there's a lot of cuisines where that happens. So I don't think that cheeseburgers are like some, just a tradition. In fact, originally there was hamburgers, adding cheese came later. So I think it's a mixture of, of, of tradition slash nostalgia, and then also some logic to it that makes it actually better.

• 22:37Mike Carruthers?

  What are some things that people often may not think about that can make food taste better? For example, you know, toast the bun before the, you know, have the burger and it does seem to make it better, but there are little things people can do. And what are some of those?

• 22:54Speaker 02

  I mean, I think the first thing, I think people don't often, don't always like taste their food. Like if you're cooking something, taste it before you declare it done and really concentrate on how it tastes and think like, does it need more salt? Does it need more pepper? To me, like if it just tastes a little bit flat, it's like it's salty, but it's just missing something, it's often you need like acid, a little squeeze of lemon juice or lime juice in there can take it to the next level. So contrast, you know, Sami Nasr has that great book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Like that's what you need. So taste your food and think about bringing together contrast, whether it's fat and acid and salt, or whether it's crisp and crunch and, and gooeyness, as we talked about with texture. Bring in different components.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  And if your food, if whatever you're eating tastes a little flat, then try to think about like which of those things is not here and how can I incorporate it?

• 23:44Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah. And, and I know that like, if you have like a, something cold and you add something hot to it, like you're having a salad and you put some hot meat on it or something, there's something about hot and cold mixed together that seems to help.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  That, yeah, I mean, again, contrast, you're exactly right. And temperature contrast, texture contrast, flavor contrast. That's often, it doesn't need to be all the contrast, your food doesn't need to be in a fight with itself, but sometimes just like a little touch of something that contrasts the main note makes a huge difference.

• 24:16Mike Carruthers?

  And lastly, and maybe this, this is a question that gets the same answer you just gave, but what, what about the, the perfect bite? What to you is the perfect bite of food?

• 24:28Speaker 02

  I don't know that you ever really attain perfection in anything. And I think that's sort of what makes life fun and interesting is, you know, like pursuing perfection and knowing you're never really going to get there is, is worthwhile and rewarding. And each time you get a little bit closer, it's a little bit better. But sometimes there can be a plate in front of you and you take one bite and you're like, oh my God, that's the greatest bite ever. But then like you thought that was the perfect bite, but then maybe later you have a different bite and that one's actually better. So is that one perfect? Someday you might have something better than that. We don't, you wouldn't even know it was the perfect bite if you had it, is the truth. So I say, um, just, you know, my life is a never-ending quest for the perfect bite and I'll probably never get there.

• 25:12Mike Carruthers?

  Well, what's the closest you came? What's the closest you've come?

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Oh geez, Mike.

• 25:18Mike Carruthers?

  Oh, here's a, here's a good question though. If you were stranded on a desert island and you could only have three things to eat, because I know what I would choose, but I wonder what you would choose?

• 25:30Speaker 02

  What would you choose?

• 25:32Mike Carruthers?

  Marie Callender's fresh strawberry pie.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 25:36Mike Carruthers?

  Trader Joe's white cheddar popcorn.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 25:40Mike Carruthers?

  And a bottle of Santa Margarita Pinot Grigio.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Oh my God, I love that. That's so funny. When I waited tables at Legal Seafoods a hundred years ago, I sold the crap out of that wine. That was my go-to because it was a good price point. And I'd be like, our featured wine tonight is the Santa Margarita Pinot Grigio. I found that everyone always loved it, even though it wasn't actually the featured wine. We didn't do such a thing, but it was a great way to get people to buy it. And anyway, shout out to that wine. I love it. I mean, really good, fresh homemade flour tortillas are probably my favorite food in the world. If you want to ask me a perfect bite, I mean, it's very hard for me to say perfect, but the, the bite that's coming to mind for me, that I think will kind of put a nice bow on everything we've been talking about, because it incorporates all the contrasts that we've talked about, is there's this salad called the fettuccine salad at a restaurant

• 26:29Speaker 02

  called Shuka in New York, one of my very favorite restaurants. And this salad has greens and it's got a ton of herbs. So it's like lettuce, but also mint leaves and other, other herbs on top. And then it has these big cubes of fried halloumi cheese, which is a very firm cheese. And it's got crumbled pita chips and other spices and seasonings and like an acidic vinaigrette. I'm not, I'm not listing all of it, but you get the fresh, the freshness of the greens and the herbs. You get the crunch of the pita chips and then you get the acidity and the zing of the vinaigrette. And then you get this fried cube of cheese, which is crispy and gooey and salty and fatty,

• 27:14Speaker 02

  which is in perfect contrast to the light freshness of the greens and the herbs. One bite of this salad, if you get all of it, the greens, the herbs, the dressing, the pita chips and the fried cheese, has every flavor and every texture you could ever want in a bite of food. It's like the singularity right there. It's got it all.

• 27:31Mike Carruthers?

  Perfect.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  And so that, that's, that's what comes to mind as I sit here today as my perfect bite.

• 27:38Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this has been great. I learned a lot and you're a fun guy to talk to. Dan Pashman's been my guest. He is host of the podcast The Sporkful and author of the cookbook Anything's Possible, 81 inventive pasta recipes for saucy people. There's a link to his book and his podcast in the show notes and Dan, it was great to have you.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Thanks, Mike. Really appreciate it.

• 28:00Speaker 05

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• 29:25Speaker 06

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• 29:58Mike Carruthers?

  Human beings have this almost irresistible need to know why. Why did that happen? Why does that work? Why did someone do that? We don't just want the facts. We want explanations. And when we get a good one, there's something remarkably satisfying about that. It turns out, there is an entire science behind explanation. Why we crave explanations. Why we're so eager to give them. And how our drive to understand why has helped move human knowledge and progress forward. So what actually makes an explanation good and satisfying? Why are some explanations convincing while others leave us scratching our heads?

• 30:43Mike Carruthers?

  And how can we all become better at explaining things? Here to explore this is Tania Lombrozo. She is a professor of psychology at Princeton University and author of the book, Why We Ask Why: The Science of Explanation and the Human Drive to Understand. Hi, Tania. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 31:07Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you know, I must admit, I've never really thought much about explaining explanations as a topic for discussion. Explanation seems very self-evident. You explain when you need to explain, and you listen to an explanation when you need to listen to one. But beyond that, why are we talking about this? Why is this important?

• 31:29Speaker 03

  I think it is self-evident that we are incredibly motivated to explain. We all have the experience of being humans who seek explanations, who find some more or less satisfying. But like many psychological phenomena, when you try to look under the hood and understand why it is that we're motivated to explain some things rather than others, and what it is that makes some explanations more satisfying than others, and why it is we're so motivated to explain at all, I think those questions don't have obvious answers. Those are questions that we need the tools of cognitive science to address and understand.

• 32:05Mike Carruthers?

  So is explanation the result of people's desire to explain? Or people need an explanation? Or a combination of both? Or none of the above?

• 32:16Speaker 03

  I'd say it's a combination of what you said. We know that humans have a lot of what are sometimes called epistemic emotions or epistemic feelings. These are the emotions and feelings that regulate the process of learning. And so when you experience something like curiosity about why something is the case, that's something that's going to motivate you to seek an explanation. And when you experience something like explanatory satisfaction from a good explanation, or dissatisfaction from a bad explanation, that's going to give you a signal that your explanation is being successful or not being successful. So that's part of the story about some of the immediate features of our experience that lead us to explain.

• 32:58Speaker 03

  But I think there's a broader question about why we are creatures who bother to explain at all. And I think the answer to that is that explaining is part of our distinctively human capacity for learning. It plays an incredibly important role in how it is that we acquire understanding of the world, and how it is that we share that understanding with each other.

• 33:17Mike Carruthers?

  Well, think about how much of your life you spend explaining things, especially if you have kids. I mean, you spend a lot of time explaining things. And, you know, people are very different in their explaining skills. I mean, it is a skill, and some people are really good at it, and some people are not so good at it.

• 33:37Speaker 03

  So we definitely know that there is substantial variation across people in how good they are at explaining. There's also variation across people in what features of explanations they find most satisfying. But one of the most universal phenomena that sadly probably holds for all of us is that we're susceptible to a phenomenon called the illusion of explanatory depth. And that phenomenon refers to the fact that we often overestimate our own explanatory understanding of how things work. And that holds for things like how zippers work, how flush toilets work, how microwaves work, and so on, but also things like how particular political policies might work, and so on. And so if you ask people how well they could explain one of these things, often they will

• 34:22Speaker 03

  give you a pretty high estimate that outstrips their actual ability to explain it. But one of the remarkable things that researchers have shown is that the very process of trying to explain it can help you become better calibrated, so that you start to appreciate that maybe you don't actually understand it as well as you thought you did.

• 34:41Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that's kind of strange, isn't it? We sense that we understand something until we try to explain it, and then realize we don't know what we're talking about.

• 34:51Speaker 03

  That's right. And I think it points to an experience that many of us have had. So many of us have had the experience of thinking we understand something pretty well, and then trying to explain it, be it to somebody else, or perhaps we're writing a paper, perhaps we're just trying to explain to ourselves. And in the course of trying to explain it, we actually start to recognize the gaps in our own understanding, right? We thought you understood it. Your child asks you how tornadoes work, or how electricity works, and you start to explain, and then you realize like, oh, gosh, I really don't understand that as well as I thought I did. And that's an incredibly valuable process for learning for at least two reasons. One is that it helps you become better calibrated about what you do and don't know, so that

• 35:35Speaker 03

  you're not overestimating your understanding. The second thing is that it gives you guidance about what to do next if you want to learn effectively, right? So you're not going to know what questions to ask, what information you need to look up, what you need to give more thought to, unless you're pretty well calibrated with respect to what it is you already do and don't know.

• 35:53Mike Carruthers?

  So when I think of an explanation, I normally think of a person talking. But really, explanations come in many forms. I mean, sometimes a picture is a better explanation than words, because you can see the picture and go, oh, yeah, now I get it, sure. And also, the way people take in an explanation has a lot to do with the explainer, right?

• 36:16Speaker 03

  It really depends on the details. I would say that broadly speaking, we use explanations to figure out things about what is being explained, but also things about the person doing the explaining, right? So if I ask you why the sky is blue, and you offer me an explanation, I'm going to be simultaneously trying to figure out what's true about the world, based on what you're telling me, why it is that the sky really is blue. I'm also going to be drawing inferences about you, right? Are you trustworthy? Do I think you're knowledgeable about this domain, and so on? And so one of the things that psychologists have tried to do is identify the kinds of cues or properties of explanations that people use in order to try to figure out, do I accept this or not? Is this satisfying or not? Do I trust this person or not?

• 36:59Speaker 03

  And it turns out that we rely on a lot of these. There's not just sort of one cue across all contexts. And most of them are imperfect, right? We do our best, based on the information we have, to try to figure out what's true and who's trustworthy. But some of the time, we're going to rely on cues that are not perfect, and we're going to get things wrong.

• 37:18Mike Carruthers?

  Well, what makes, if you're able to actually say this, what makes a satisfying explanation?

• 37:27Speaker 03

  There are lots of features that tend to lead to more satisfying explanations. So one thing is that people really like explanations that feel informative, and like they've taught them something new, right? So giving people new information that makes them feel like they've learned. One way that you can accomplish that is often by using things like jargon or technical language. You don't want to have so much of that in there that people don't understand, but some of that can actually signal that you're giving them real explanatory content that comes from a place of expertise. We also know that people tend to prefer simpler explanations, not in absolutely all contexts, but in many of them. And we know that people like explanations that appeal to functions or purpose, right? So for example, if you ask me, why do zebras have stripes?

• 38:12Speaker 03

  And I give you a detailed explanation about the genes that are involved in their stripes, and about the pigments that are involved in the stripes on their skin, and so on, but I don't tell you whether or not the zebra stripes serve some function or purpose, like maybe camouflage, for example. If I leave that part out, you might be less satisfied, because you really want a function or purpose for many of the things you're trying to explain.

• 38:34Mike Carruthers?

  I know how I would answer this for myself, but I'm wondering, what you say is, is an explanation that involves more than just talking typically more satisfying, particularly if it's a more complicated thing? Like, if you show me a graph, or show me a map, or show me a picture, along with your verbal explanation, am I going to be, I think I'm going to be more satisfied than if you just talk?

• 39:01Speaker 03

  Typically, people do find explanations more satisfying when they have more information, more cues to expertise, and more features that are going to give you a sense of understanding. And part of what's going to drive a sense of understanding is having something seem familiar, and easy, and intuitive. And so I think often, there will be cases where having that extra figure that makes something seem sort of more obvious to you is going to be more satisfying, because it gives you a greater sense of having learned, because it gives you a greater sense of familiarity, and so on. And I think where this gets really tricky is that the features of an explanation that lead to a greater sense of understanding aren't the same features that necessarily

• 39:46Speaker 03

  lead to actual understanding. They're not necessarily the features that promote learning most effectively. And that means that some of the explanations that we find most satisfying, because they're intuitive and familiar, are actually not the ones that are going to teach us the most about how, for example, a counter to intuitive scientific phenomenon works.

• 40:02Mike Carruthers?

  You said something earlier about we tend to like, although there are differences, but we tend to like simpler explanations. And boy, that, I mean, that's certainly true for me. I get very irritated when people go on and on and on and complicate the whole thing. And I'm asking you questions, you're giving me very clear, simple answers. I understand exactly what you're saying. And it does seem that that simplicity, as simple as you, even a complicated thing, the simpler you can make it, the better.

• 40:37Speaker 03

  A lot of evidence in psychology backs that up that people really do prefer simpler explanations with a couple of interesting caveats. So one that I'll share is that for phenomena that people think are really complicated, there's perhaps a preference or expectation that the explanation will be correspondingly complicated. Right? So if you're thinking about something like inflation or poverty, right? These are really complicated things. And that might mean that you actually are suspicious of an overly simple explanation because it's the kind of complicated process that you expect to have a somewhat complicated explanation. So even though we do tend to have an overall preference for simplicity, there are some exceptions to that.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  And where you really get the controversy among psychologists is in trying to give a good account of why, right? Why is it that we prefer simpler explanations?

• 41:27Mike Carruthers?

  And so why do you study this? Is this because it's something interesting to observe and contemplate? Or is there an outcome to this that maybe we could be better at this? Or maybe we... What's the end game in your work?

• 41:46Speaker 03

  I think there are several end games. Part of what drew me to study explanation is that on the one hand, it's just this pervasive aspect of human experience. And on the other hand, it plays a really important role in theoretical accounts of how it is that humans learn, how it is that we communicate, how it is that we develop and share understanding. Part of the value of better documenting explanation and the role that it plays, for example, in human learning and communication, is that we can be better explainers, right? So if we can document systematic explanatory biases or errors that we fall prey to, like, for example, preferring simpler explanations when we shouldn't, then we can be on guard for those and try to prevent ourselves from falling prey to those sorts of explanatory

• 42:31Speaker 03

  illusions. I think we can also become better explainers and as a result of that, become better learners. And one of the contexts where that's most important is thinking about education.

• 42:41Mike Carruthers?

  An example of that would be?

• 42:43Speaker 03

  Let me tell you about a phenomenon that's called the self-explanation effect. And this is the finding that when students, or really anybody, explains to themselves as they are learning, they tend to learn better and remember the material more effectively than participants or students in a control group who, for example, are just studying for a matched amount of time or perhaps thinking out loud rather than engaging in explicit explaining. So we know that explaining is an incredibly powerful tool for learning. And that's something that can be used in our own everyday learning, right? If you're just reading a book and want to understand it better, just prompting yourself to try to explain as you go can be a really effective way to do that.

• 43:26Speaker 03

  But I think for students, whether they're in formal or informal learning contexts, trying to incorporate the process of explaining into learning can be incredibly powerful.

• 43:35Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, that makes all the sense in the world because think about it. When you try to explain something... I know exactly what you mean. When you try to explain something, you somehow... Something goes on in your head where you start to understand it better. I mean, everybody, I'm sure, has had that experience, but I've never really paid much attention to it and wondered what it is.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  That's right. I mean, you just gave a great characterization of the self-explanation effect, right? The phenomenon that by explaining to yourself, you do understand better typically. Sometimes that understanding takes the form of recognizing that you thought you understood and really didn't, but that itself is a kind of progress.

• 44:16Mike Carruthers?

  Is there a outline of a good explanation? Like, should you repeat the question? Should you... I mean, that kind of stuff? Or everybody's different and they explain in their own way?

• 44:28Speaker 03

  There is variation. I think a lot of the guidelines for good explaining are going to be the same as the guidelines for good communication. And one important piece of that is understanding what it is that the question asker is really trying to get at. And that goes beyond the actual words they say in all sorts of ways. So let me give you just one concrete example to illustrate this point. So take a question like, "Why did you order the chocolate chip ice cream?" Seems like a very simple request for an explanation. But there's... Somebody could ask that, those very words, and have different sorts of contrasts or alternatives in mind, right? So for example, suppose I ask it as, "Why did you order the chocolate chip ice cream?"

• 45:13Speaker 03

  I seem to be sort of saying like, "You could have ordered the pistachio. You could have ordered the double chocolate. You could have ordered the cookies and cream. Why did you order the chocolate chip?" Right? And that's going to have a particular answer. It's different from asking something like, "Why did you order the chocolate chip ice cream?", where maybe the alternative would have been to order the chocolate chip cookie. Right? So it's the very same question in both cases. But in the first case, I seem to be asking you to explain to me why you chose that flavor of ice cream rather than a different flavor of ice cream. In the second case, I seem to be asking you why you ordered the chocolate chip ice cream rather than the chocolate chip something else. So I think part of being a good explainer is doing the work to figure out what it is the question asker is really asking.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  And often, we do this really intuitively, you know, so intuitively and automatically that we don't even realize that we're using context and our own expectations and so on to fill in these unspecified parts of an explanation request. But I think it's something that we can often do better by thinking more explicitly about why somebody is asking this, what they're really asking, and what the goal of giving them an explanation is.

• 46:22Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that's a great example of something that I would really like to hear what you have to say. So let's say I go... You and I go out to the ice cream store and I order chocolate chip ice cream. And you say, "Well, why did you get chocolate chip ice cream?" I don't know. I mean, it wasn't a big thought process. I just... I saw it. I thought, "Yeah, that's fine, and I'll get chocolate chip ice cream." There's no explanation to come because there's no big story here.

• 46:53Speaker 03

  I think you're pointing to an interesting and well-documented psychological phenomenon, which is that often, we're not very good or very accurate at reporting why it is that we do the things we do. But the fact that we often want such explanations, I think, is informative and reflects something about why explanations are so valuable, right? So it was a one way I like to think about explanations, that they're something like the mind's QR code, right? So if you think about what a QR code is, is it takes a lot of information and it compresses it into a form that makes it easy to transmit from one person to another. So if we're talking about whether it's something relatively simple, like, "Why did you order the chocolate chip ice cream?", or something that might be incredibly complicated, like,

• 47:37Speaker 03

  "Why is there inflation?", when you give an explanation, you're sort of taking your own complicated understanding of this facet of the world, you're compressing it down into sort of one explanation or story to transmit to another person, which they are then going to unpack to try to create their own understanding of what they're trying to explain.

• 47:55Mike Carruthers?

  What do you think are some of the big mistakes people make when they make them about explaining things?

• 48:02Speaker 03

  One thing that we know from research in the cognitive science of explanation is that people sometimes make errors of underexplaining. That is, of explaining... Failing to explain when they really should and would benefit from explaining. And they also make errors of overexplaining. So let me give you an example of each. An example of underexplaining would be that, for example, if you are a student who is trying to work through some material, perhaps it's sort of physics problem sets or something like that. We know that in contexts like that, students who are explicitly prompted to explain to themselves as they study will learn more effectively. And so that's a case where people are spontaneously underexplaining, right? Nothing is preventing the students who are in the control conditions of those experiments

• 48:46Speaker 03

  from explaining to themselves, but they tend not to. So we know that in a lot of learning contexts, humans make the error of underexplaining, failing to explain when they would benefit from doing so. An error of overexplaining, somewhat more speculatively, would be something like a conspiracy theory. So many conspiracy theories have the feature that they take lots of independent pieces of evidence that are perhaps just a coincidence, just happened by chance, but try to come up with some systematic way that they're related to each other to make it make sense in terms of a common explanation. And that is plausibly an example of overexplaining, right? Sometimes things don't have an explanation. They're just due to chance. There's nothing further to understand there. And so that's a case where we're making the opposite kind of error.

• 49:31Speaker 03

  And so I think one part of the art of being a good explainer is being sensitive to when you should and shouldn't be seeking explanations.

• 49:39Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you have explained the science of explaining, and the bar was pretty high since you're the expert. You've explained it really well, and it's something I've never really thought much about, so I appreciate the insight. Tania Lombrozo has been my guest. She's a professor of psychology at Princeton and author of the book, "Why We Ask Why: The Science of Explanation and the Human Drive to Understand." There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Tania. Thanks for explaining explaining.

• 50:09Speaker 03

  Thanks, Mike. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

• 50:15Mike Carruthers?

  Here's something worth remembering the next time you're scrolling through social media. Repetition can make a statement seem more believable, even when the statement isn't true. Psychologists call it the illusory truth effect. When we encounter the same claim repeatedly, it becomes easier for our brains to process. And that feeling of familiarity and fluency can get mistaken for truth. What's especially interesting is that being intelligent or generally skeptical doesn't necessarily make you immune to it. So when you catch yourself thinking, "I've heard this somewhere before.

• 50:55Mike Carruthers?

  There must be something to it," that's exactly when it's worth asking, "Where did I hear it and what was the actual evidence?" And that is something you should know. Something You Should Know is produced by Jennifer Brennan, Jeffrey Havison, and the executive producer is Ken Williams. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 51:17Speaker 06

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• 51:49Speaker 07

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