The Surprising Power of Notebooks & What Screens Are Really Doing to Us - SYSK Choice

Can someone's taste in music make them more attractive to you? Apparently, it can. The music people listen to can influence how we perceive their personalities, how compatible we think we might be, and even how romantically interested we are in them. So what does your playlist say about you? And why do musical preferences matter when it comes to attraction? We begin with the surprising connection between music and relationships. https://www.medindia.net/news/Music-Predicts-Sexual-Attraction-80223-1.htm Think about how many times you've written something down in a notebook. A shopping list, a brilliant idea, a diary entry, notes from a meeting, or just something you didn't want to forget. It seems like such an ordinary thing to do. But the simple act of putting thoughts on paper has helped change the course of human history. Notebooks have shaped scientific discoveries, inspired great works of art, helped build businesses, and transformed the way people think. So how did something as basic as a blank book become such a powerful tool? Roland Allen joins me to reveal the fascinating history of notebooks, the remarkable things people have done with them, and why writing things down still matters in our digital world. Roland is the author of The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (https://amzn.to/3NGd2B8). We all know we probably spend too much time looking at screens. But what exactly is all that scrolling, swiping, and staring doing to our brains? Is it really changing the way we think, concentrate, remember, and experience the world? And why is it so difficult to look away, even when we know we've had enough? Our brains evolved in a world very different from the one we live in today, and the constant flood of digital information may be more than they're equipped to handle. Dr. Richard Cytowic joins me to explain what's happening inside our heads when we spend so much time on our devices, why digital distraction is so powerful, and what we can do to regain control of our attention. He is a professor of neurology at George Washington University and author of Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload (https://amzn.to/4hsyVBp). Advertisers love to use impressive-sounding claims that don't actually tell you very much. A shampoo promises to make your hair "five times silkier." Five times silkier than what? And how exactly do you measure silkiness? These claims can sound scientific and convincing, even when they're practically meaningless. And they work surprisingly well. Listen as I explain how advertisers use numbers and clever language to make products seem better than they may actually be—and why it's worth paying attention. Source: Charles Seife, author of Proofiness (https://amzn.to/3NL55KY). PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS MONARCH: Write your own money story with Monarch! Use promo code SYSK at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Monarch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get your 1st year of Monarch Core half off at just $50 AIRDOCTOR: Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://AirDoctorPro.com ⁠⁠⁠⁠and use promo code SYSK to get up to $300 off ANY of their select AirDoctor models, plus you will get a 3-year warranty, absolutely FREE! with a 30-day money back guarantee. TREES. COM: Right now, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Trees.com ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠have great deals on planting essentials, up to half off on select plants. And listeners to our show get 20% OFF their purchase when using the promo code SYSK at checkout. VINTED: Ready to clean out your closet and make some extra money? Download the Vinted app for free and start listing! With no seller fees, you keep every dollar you earn and for a limited time, enjoy free shipping in the US on Vinted. QUINCE: Find your next Fall favorites at Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! PLANET VISIONARIES: In partnership with The Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts! INDEED: Get a $75 Sponsored Job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/PODCAST⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

  Hiring the wrong person is expensive, but it's also exhausting. Because now, you haven't solved your problem, you've created a new one. You've spent time interviewing and training somebody, but it's the wrong person. And it's just not working. So when you're hiring, you don't just need a person, you need the right person. And that is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Sponsored Jobs helps you reach candidates with the skills and experience and other qualifications you're looking for, and boosts your job and search results, so the right people are more likely to see it.

• 0:41Mike Carruthers?

  In fact, Sponsored Jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. So give yourself a better shot at finding the right person. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast.

• 1:23Mike Carruthers?

  Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need the right hire fast? Then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Today on Something You Should Know, how the type of music you like can affect your love life. Then, the magic of notebooks, simple notebooks, and how just writing down your thoughts does wonders.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  There is a lot of research on this. I think there is something like more than 1,200 studies, and they all confirm the same basic result, which is writing stuff down about your emotions makes you physically healthier.

• 2:09Mike Carruthers?

  Also, how advertisers try to trick you and how you can prevent that. And just what are the dangers of spending too much time in front of a video screen or smartphone? Well, there are several. Here's one.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Young individuals who have a very high screen exposure show symptoms that are similar to developmental autism. They refuse to make eye contact, they have reduced language, they have reduced social interaction.

• 2:38Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know. Now, here's something that might be worth a minute of your time. How would you like $1,000 to spend on shopping? Especially with the holidays coming. Well, the people behind Shopify have a shopping site called shop.com. And to celebrate the new shop.com, they're giving away $1 million in Shop Cash. But not to one person. A thousand people will each win $1,000 in Shop Cash. And shop.com is actually a really clever idea. It brings lots of different stores together in one place.

• 3:22Mike Carruthers?

  So instead of bouncing around from website to website, you can search across stores, find what you're looking for, and track your orders all in one place. Clothes, electronics, gifts, things for the house, all kinds of stuff. And whether you win or not, it's worth knowing, but with 1,000 chances to win $1,000, I'd certainly take a look. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 4:07Speaker 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.

• 4:22Mike Carruthers?

  You probably like music. Most people like music. But the question that we're going to start with today is, what kind of music? Hi, and welcome to another episode of Something You Should Know. I'm Mike Carruthers, and if you are hoping to find a good relationship, the music you listen to really matters. According to a study in Psychology of Music, men and women with similar taste in music tend to have better sex lives, tend to communicate better, and have longer-lasting relationships. That's because most of us develop specific musical preferences while we're growing up, and our taste in music can reflect our childhood, our emotional connections, and even our values.

• 5:06Mike Carruthers?

  One study even broke down compatibility by music genre, and their findings suggest that devotion to country music makes both men and women less attractive to someone of the opposite sex who does not like country music. Men who liked heavy metal music were found more attractive, while women who liked heavy metal music were not. Guys liked women who liked classical music, while women shied away from guys who liked classical music. And both men and women who like jazz and blues tend to be more open to new experiences. And that is something you should know.

• 5:49Mike Carruthers?

  Whether you're at home, or work, or school, or maybe in your car, wherever you are, I suspect you're not more than a few feet away from a notebook of some sort. A big one, a small one, maybe a diary or a notepad for making lists. There is probably a notebook somewhere nearby, to which you might be thinking to yourself, "Yeah, so what? How is that a topic worthy of a Something You Should Know segment?" Well, it is. It's actually far more interesting than you ever imagined. You see, somehow, early on, humans figured out that they couldn't keep everything in their heads, and they started writing things down in notebooks of some sort.

• 6:34Mike Carruthers?

  And that is where this fascinating story begins. Here to tell it is Roland Allen. Roland works in the book publishing business and has written a few books of his own. His latest is called The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper. Hi Roland, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Hi Mike, thanks for having me on.

• 6:53Mike Carruthers?

  So notebooks are one of those things that you never talk about it as a topic with other people. You never, you never go to a party and go, "Hey Bob, so tell me about your notebooks." I mean, no one does that. And yet, they're everywhere. Everyone's got probably multiple notebooks. You know, a notebook's kind of like a fork or a spoon. It's always there, but you never talk about it. So why are you talking about it?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Well, I guess if I've had one big idea in my life, it's to suddenly notice notebooks. And once you start noticing them, you notice them absolutely everywhere. And I suppose, just thinking about the role, the different parts they play in all of our lives, and the parts they've played in our lives through history, and what the changes that they've made to our lives, I guess that's, that's what got me really into them.

• 7:45Mike Carruthers?

  And is there any idea when the first something like a notebook began?

• 7:51Speaker 01

  The first something like a notebook that we know of is from about the year 1300 B.C., so that's coming up for 3,500 years old. They found it in a shipwreck off the south coast of Turkey. It's called the Uluburun Shipwreck, and it's pretty well-preserved considering how old it is. You can see it in a museum in Bodrum in Turkey. And that was very much a working notebook. It probably belonged to a merchant or some kind of sailor, ship's captain, something like that, and was probably to do with business. And the first notebooks nearly always are to do with business.

• 8:26Mike Carruthers?

  Certainly today here in the U.S., when you say the word notebook, people probably think of school. The notebooks in school are kind of your first official, real notebooks. But notebooks, I mean, how do you define a notebook? What is a notebook to you? I mean, a shopping list is kind of a notebook, but what is it to you?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  It has to be paper. That's the only real definition I have. So an electronic thing doesn't really count as a notebook for me, although you can do lots of the same things. Historically, parchment and paperous things and wax tablets aren't quite the same. You can't do as much with them as you can do with paper. So I think notebooks can be really huge. I think they can be like massive business ledgers. I think they can be absolutely tiny, like the smallest little datebooks. But if they're made of paper and they've got blank pages, then I call them a notebook.

• 9:20Mike Carruthers?

  And why do you do that? Why do you discount electronic notebooks and things like that? Just because you needed to focus the topic? Or you think there's a substantial difference?

• 9:31Speaker 01

  I think there is actually a substantial difference. Yeah, I think the way we use paper notebooks is much, tends to be much more casual, much more immediate. And they, they make a permanent record. You make a thing, you make an object when you fill up a notebook. So you start off with these beautiful blank pages and a lot of people are afraid of the blank page. But when you've filled up a notebook with your own thoughts and even with your own shopping lists or with something as trivial as that or things to do lists, it becomes this unique kind of object which crystallizes a little bit of your personality or your soul in it.

• 10:03Mike Carruthers?

  I know there has been research and, and I know, as do most people know, that there's an intuitive understanding that there's something about writing something down. It makes it more sticky, it makes it more memorable, it, it, there's a magic, there's something to writing things down.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, there's a ton of research about it. Most of it is to do with education. So obviously when you're dealing with students in a lecture theatre, it's, it's really important to know what the best way to get knowledge into their heads and then get it out of their heads as well, get them producing stuff. And they've done a lot of research on this everywhere across the US, Canada, Japan in particular for some reason. And they've found that in a studying context, writing, handwriting by, with a pen or pencil in a notebook is nearly always much, much better than typing. If you write stuff down, you tend to process it in a more involved way. You tend to paraphrase, you tend to understand the material that much better.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  So that's one of the reasons why writing is better.

• 11:08Mike Carruthers?

  When you look back at the history of notebooks, like who, who are the superstars of, of the notebook world?

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Well, Leonardo da Vinci is clearly the superstar. And in all of my research for the book, I, I never found anyone who did better notebooks than him. But I guess a, a really peculiar thing about Leonardo's notebooks is that they turned out to be very private. After he died, no one looked at them really. They went into various libraries around the world and never got opened because they're quite difficult to read. People admired the drawings, but the actual notes he made, which are in many ways much more incredible than the drawings he did, were completely ignored. So fantastic as they were, they had a limited impact on the world. Whereas if you look at someone like Charles Darwin's notebooks, completely the opposite, they're horrible to look at, they're absolutely scrappy.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  But it was those notes which directly led to On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection. And so the theory of evolution, which has completely changed the way we think about the world. And this sprang out of 14 or 15 tiny, tiny notebooks, which together would fit, for instance, in a shoebox without any trouble. So although they're very unspectacular, looking very scrappy, no punctuation, these possibly are the ones which have had the greatest impact on the way we think.

• 12:30Mike Carruthers?

  Do we know when the first notebook was made? Like there's somebody said, you know, people are writing stuff down. Maybe we should create a book, call it a notebook, and then people will have an actual book instead of having to hunt for a piece of paper or however they did it before.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  In terms of a paper notebook, as we would think of it and recognize it with covers and paper pages, you're looking, I think, at Baghdad around the year 800. That seems to be the general consensus because bookbinding, making paper into the shape that we recognize it today, that's a Western thing. Paper is an Eastern thing, came originally from China. And they seem to meet in Baghdad around the year 800 and therefore that's where the first notebooks are going to have been. Very, very few of them, if any, from that era seem to have survived. When they do start surviving in huge numbers for the first time, it is in Italy around 500 years later, and it is particularly in Florence. And that was just a notebook obsessed culture.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  And we have a lot of different kinds of notebooks from there. And that, so that's really an important stage in the story, I think.

• 13:39Mike Carruthers?

  As you're talking, I'm thinking about all the notebooks that I've had, that I've written in from the time I was very young, through, all the way through high school, college, and, and even since then, I've had notebooks to write things down. And wouldn't it be great to, to look in there and see what I wrote?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  I would find it really interesting. And if you do have your notebooks from that time, then that's a sort of window back into the person that you were, you sort of get to meet them again, looking backwards. If you were writing anything down for an educational reason or because you wanted to remember it, then writing stuff down in a notebook is really about the best way to, to remember it. I used to write down song lyrics, for instance, when I was a teenager. And those songs that I wrote down, I can still tell you all of the words to this day. So, I mean, those are, those are just two of the reasons. But also another reason is it probably made you feel better at the time. If you were writing down anything about your emotions in particular, how a given situation or an event or a person made you feel, just the act of writing it down would have made you feel measurably better.

• 14:42Mike Carruthers?

  So when you're writing in a notebook, generally you're writing notes to yourself, for yourself. When you write a letter, you're writing a note to someone else. So which came first?

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Ah, that's an interesting question. In terms of emotional writing, this is interesting. People were writing about their own emotional states in letters for centuries before they were doing it in diaries. So it's quite normal now, it's considered quite normal to write a diary about how your day went, how you feel about things. Like I said, how you, how you feel about situations, people, events. They make you feel happy or sad and you write about it. And that's a very normal thing to do. In the medieval era, in the Renaissance era, it really wasn't. But they would very happily write very personal letters to, to their friends and family, telling, with all of that same stuff in it, how they felt about everything. So I think the letter came first in that sense.

• 15:39Mike Carruthers?

  Our topic today is notebooks and how important they are to all of us. My guest is Roland Allen. He is the author of the book, The Notebook, A History of Thinking on Paper.

• 15:51Speaker 04

  What's on their wish list? It probably smells incredible. Gift them Seoul De Genetto's Shea Rosa Perfume Mist. Light, playful, and delicious scents for every mood and moment. Shea Rosa 62, pistachio and salted caramel. 68, pink dragon fruit and Brazilian jasmine. 40, black amber plum and vanilla woods. Give the gift of Seoul De Genetto's Shea Rosa Perfume Mist. Loved by everyone, perfect for anyone. Shop now on seoldegenetto.com. Hey Spotify listeners. When you travel with American Airlines, you'll enjoy comfort and convenience at every altitude. Before takeoff, unwind in the Admiral's Club Lounge with curated self-serve offerings of hearty bites and refreshments.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  In flight, stay connected with high-speed Wi-Fi, sponsored by AT&T. Your journey is designed to feel easy from the moment you check in to the moment you arrive. No matter where you're going, American gets you there. Book now at aa.com.

• 16:47Mike Carruthers?

  So Roland, there's something I've heard so many times in talking to people, and I know this has been researched, but when you talk to people about writing things down, there's often an answer that starts this way. The simple act of writing it down makes all the difference, or words to that effect. There is something magical that seems to happen when you write something down.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  So, and there is a lot of research on this. I think there is something like more than 1,200 studies and they all confirm the same basic result, which is writing stuff down about your emotions makes you physically healthier. So the first study was done by a professor called James Pennebacker. And he's an American. And he got some of his students to just keep a, a short journal detailing an emotional trauma that they had experienced in their life, which he didn't have to specify what it was. It was just anything which they considered traumatic. So it might have been a bereavement or an assault or something bad which had happened to them. They wrote it down, they didn't do anything with it subsequently.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  And then for the following semester, visits to the doctor in that cohort of students went down by 50%. They were so much less stressed, they were carrying around so much less bad stuff in their heads that their bodies were literally just working better. So 50% lower visits to the doctor. So that's one. There's another, which I think is equally incredible, which is the same process, but imagine that you write a, an emotional diary like that about two weeks before you have an operation. Your body will heal measurably faster, something like twice as fast from that physical operation

• 18:34Speaker 01

  if you've just dumped the bad, unhealthy or unhappy emotions out of your head and onto the page. Whether or not you throw them immediately on the fire or keep them forever or show them to a friend or to a therapist or whoever, it doesn't matter. Just getting them out of your head and on the page will help you recover from an operation. I find that mind blowing.

• 18:54Mike Carruthers?

  It is, it's magical and yet, and it's probably hard to explain why that is so.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  I think, well, everyone says it must be to do with reducing stress in the body. And I think people are coming to understand that stress just has incredible negative effects on, on the, the way your entire body works. But no, I don't understand the mechanics of it. I can't pretend to do.

• 19:16Mike Carruthers?

  Right, because, because I, I mean, I understand the stress part, but just writing it down doesn't do anything. If you're stressed about something... Just writing it down doesn't fix whatever you're stressed about, but yet it has this magical effect.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  It doesn't fix it, but what it does, because you are turning an emotion, a feeling into words, you're turning it into something which you sort of have control over. It stops being a sort of, for instance, a nameless dread or a massive overwhelming fear. When you turn that big analog fear in your head into something which is digital and which is concrete and which is measured by writing it down, that is in fact, in fact, it's a mindful process because you're identifying your feelings and naming them. And that is what reduces the stress.

• 20:05Mike Carruthers?

  What about the, because you know, there's different kinds of notebooks and then somebody had to like formalize that. There's the three ring binder. There's the spiral notebook. There's the yellow legal pad. There's the like, where did all that, or is that just, you know, somebody just came up with an idea or whatever?

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Oh, the glorious variety. I mean, it's fantastic. But since people, since people have started making notebooks, so let's go back to 1300 again. You had huge business ledgers, which were so heavy, sort of pages a foot high and a foot wide, hundreds of pages, which were so heavy, you could barely lift them. But you also had tiny little pocket notebooks for going around and making your everyday records, keeping track of your expenses, for instance. And then over time, notebooks get more and more specialized in different ways. So you start to have the date book and then you start to have the sort of dated journal, which gives you a whole page to, to write about your day. And then you go up like legal pads, which I think at the late 19th century, and then you have spiral

• 21:07Speaker 01

  binding, which is the early 20th century, as people invent these new formats, which are practical in their own way. And it's glorious variety. I love it.

• 21:17Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it would seem like maybe that adding lines to the page must have been somewhat revolutionary or, or not.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  I think so. What I love about it is, for instance, music, musical staves appearing on the page. That made musicians' lives a lot easier very quickly and composers' lives much easier. Putting lines on the page was something that people did anyway, if they wanted to write more neatly, you know, they would rule them by hand themselves. And then what I love about this is that even sometimes when you see lines on the page today, they haven't necessarily been printed. They've been put on by these sort of arrangements of lots of pens in parallel and the paper is moved underneath them. So they're actually drawn on the page rather than printed. And I like that very much.

• 22:02Mike Carruthers?

  But that three ring binder, that, that thing's always puzzled me because it's, you always pinch yourself when you open and close it. And I mean, I get the purpose of it. You can put pages in, take pages out. But why three rings? Why three holes? Why, do we know that?

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Now that there you're looking at a cultural difference, because over here in Europe, we don't have three ring binders. We have two ring binders. So I can't answer that, I'm afraid. Why that is, I've got no idea. But yeah, three ring binders, I find kind of ugly. Two ring binders are slightly more elegant, I suppose.

• 22:36Mike Carruthers?

  And you have a 33 and a third less chance of pinching your finger in that thing.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, absolutely.

• 22:44Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah. Well, that's a real plus because, yeah, well, you wonder why three, because two does the job, as evidenced by you in, in England. And two does the work.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, it's one of those differences. It's like letter paper versus A4 paper, I guess. Why Americans stick with letter and Europeans have moved everything onto A4 and A3 and A0 and so on is, again.

• 23:12Mike Carruthers?

  What is A4 and A3? I don't think I know what that means.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Oh, Mike, this is wonderful. So this is the metric system as it applies to paper sizes. So there is a good deal of math involved, which I will spare you. But essentially, it means that you're dealing with fractions of a square meter of paper. And so you can bring your paper size into, into the metric system, which of course is a really handy way of unifying your weights and your volumes and your lengths and widths and everything like that. So you have, you have a sheet of paper which is slightly taller and skinnier than US letter, but which then turns into a really great system, because you can fold

• 23:59Speaker 01

  it and it's in the same proportions as it originally was, just half the size, which you can't do with letter.

• 24:04Mike Carruthers?

  Letter being eight and a half by 11?

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:08Mike Carruthers?

  I imagine you look at notebooks differently than I do, than most people do. So what is something that really just amazes you about notebooks?

• 24:19Speaker 01

  I think you can think about a notebook as being the nearest thing we had to a computer for hundreds of years. And then think of it as a bit of hardware. And then there's different kinds of software which you can put into it. So for instance, double entry bookkeeping, which every accountant or bookkeeper has to learn today. And so a lot of your, you know, I ask everyone in who's listening now to put up their hand if they've trained in double entry bookkeeping. And that changed the world, double entry bookkeeping.

• 24:50Mike Carruthers?

  What is double entry bookkeeping?

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Okay. So this is how accountancy works, right? So credits and debits and profit and loss and balance sheets and valuing a company, valuing a business, valuing stock, depreciation. All of these financial concepts entirely depend on writing stuff down, writing your numbers down in a careful format and then collecting them. And the only way you could do that for hundreds of years was in a notebook. So everyone who is in any, in any kind of business had to have notebooks, which they kept their financial records in. 1300, back in Italy, this is when they started doing this. And it's at that point that we see

• 25:37Speaker 01

  the first companies. So if you've ever worked for a company, they were invented back then in Italy. But so also were limited liability partnerships. So was futures trading. So were all kinds of really sophisticated financial instruments. The first merchant banks came from Italy at this point. You had international businesses, which were really much better organized than a lot of businesses I've worked in today. And they all used notebooks as their basic technology. And that's the case for hundreds of years. And then you have sketchbooks. And I think sketching is another example of software, which you do in this little bit of hardware, which is a notebook. So people learn to sketch, they learn to scribble and crosshatch their shadows, and they learn to do observational drawing, which is faithful

• 26:22Speaker 01

  to life. And then you get the artists of the Renaissance. I, I find that just a mind blowing idea. And it just carries on and on like that. You know, the, the great scientists, Newton and so on, all made their breakthrough discoveries, basically on the pages of their working notebooks or their lab notebooks.

• 26:45Mike Carruthers?

  Well, as I said, right at the beginning, who would have thought that the story of notebooks would be so interesting? And yet, when you think about it, they are so important to all of us. And yet you can't imagine life without notebooks. I've been talking with Roland Allen. He is, well, he's the foremost authority I've ever met on the subject of notebooks. And he is author of the book, The Notebook, A History of Thinking on Paper. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. This was great. Thank you, Roland.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  So Mike, thanks very much for having me. That was a real pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

• 27:20Speaker 04

  What's on their wish list? It probably smells incredible. Gift them Sol de Genetos Shea Rosa Perfume Mist. Light, playful, and delicious scents for every mood and moment. Shea Rosa 62, pistachio and salted caramel. 68, pink dragon fruit and Brazilian jasmine. 40, black amber plum and vanilla woods. Give the gift of Sol de Genetos Shea Rosa Perfume Mist. Loved by everyone, perfect for anyone. Shop now on soldegenetos.com. Hey, Spotify listeners. When you travel with American Airlines, you'll enjoy comfort and convenience at every altitude. Before takeoff, unwind in the Admiral's Club Lounge with curated self-serve offerings of hearty bites and refreshments. In flight, stay connected

• 28:03Speaker 04

  with high-speed Wi-Fi, sponsored by AT&T. Your journey is designed to feel easy from the moment you check in to the moment you arrive. No matter where you're going, American gets you there. Book now at aa.com.

• 28:19Mike Carruthers?

  How many times have you heard people talk about the dangers, the problems, the concerns about putting a screen, a computer screen, a tablet, or a smartphone, putting a screen in front of your face for an extended period of time? We've heard everything from "it messes up your sleep," to the problem of overstimulation, that people can become addicted to their phones and can't put it down, to who knows what else. The idea is that screens in front of your face for a long time is bad. But why? How is it bad specifically, since so many people seem to do it an awful lot of the time? You're about to find out from this next discussion with Dr. Richard Cytowic.

• 29:02Mike Carruthers?

  He is a professor of neurology at George Washington University and author of a couple of books, including "Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload." Hi, Richard. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me, Mike.

• 29:20Mike Carruthers?

  So first, explain what you mean by "our stone age brain," because, you know, I don't think of my brain as stone age, but, so explain that.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  Well, today's brain is no different from those of our distant ancestors millions of years ago. It hasn't evolved one iota, and so we are still faced with the same restrictions and liabilities that our distant ancestors faced. And this is a problem when we're faced with the overabundance of screens.

• 29:57Mike Carruthers?

  These limitations and restrictions on our brain are things like what?

• 30:02Speaker 02

  I think what's going to surprise most people is that our brain has a fixed limit of energy available. I mean, most people don't think about, when they're saying, "Oh, I'm addicted to my phone," they don't think about it in terms of what their brain is doing. But people like me, who are trained in neurology and neuropsychology, we think about these issues of the brain's point of view all the time. And so, the brain has a limited amount of energy available for it, and no amount of diet, exercise, Sudoku puzzles, or supplements is going to be able to change that. There's a limited amount of energy and attention that you can devote at any one time.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  And the stone age brain evolved in a much simpler time of limited resources and a struggle survival, and now it's being bombarded by this relentless amount of sensation thrown at it, and it simply can't handle it.

• 31:05Mike Carruthers?

  And the symptoms of not handling it are what? And so what happens to us?

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Basically, overload is that we feel exhausted and frustrated and tired all the time, that we can't keep up. So we're asking it to do things that it simply never evolved to do.

• 31:26Mike Carruthers?

  So can you explain why it is that it is so hard for so many people to put their phone down, once they've picked it up and started doing what they're doing? It's really, really hard for them to put it down, and there must be a reason.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  The thing that makes the smartphone so addictive is the companies have really honed in on what psychology calls positive intermittent reinforcement. And this is the same thing that slot machines use, is that, you know, you're playing a slot machine, and you get a minor hit, then you get a medium hit, then you get a larger hit, and you keep putting money into the machine, hoping to get a big jackpot. And this is what scrolling, so the scroll is what I call the infinite scroll. There's no end to the scroll. You just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  So you got a little hit of something interesting, or amusing, or meaningful, or important, and so you keep scrolling, hoping for something bigger and a bigger hit. And it never comes, and that's how they have us hooked.

• 32:41Mike Carruthers?

  I have certainly seen it, witnessed it, especially in younger people. When they're, when they've got a screen in front of them, it is so hard for them to stop, like they just, they cannot stop. But I'm wondering, what does that say about people's lives, that they cannot stop? Because they, they could stop if there was something better to do. They could stop if all of a sudden their house caught on fire, or if somebody gave them a million dollars. I mean, if there was something better to do, they could stop.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  But often for many people, there isn't anything better to do. They're bored, and they're looking for stimulation. I mean, we have associated the phone with pleasure. I mean, it gives us all these really pleasurable things, and in a way, frightening, I think.

• 33:32Mike Carruthers?

  So my observation, when I see people on their phones a lot, or on their tablets, if you were to ask them, you know, "Is this a problem for you?" People would chuckle and go, "Yeah, I spend too much time," but, but I don't think they see it as a problem, problem, in the sense that they can't identify the harm. In other words, if there's no problem, there's nothing to fix. If people don't perceive it as a problem, how are they ever going to want to fix it?

• 34:01Speaker 02

  They won't. Then they have become wholly captive to this tech industrial complex. And so they are now at the mercy of a third party who determines what they will see, what they will think, how they will feel.

• 34:19Mike Carruthers?

  But specifically, what is the harm? Because it's one thing to say that, you know, "This is ruining your life, and your mind is being taken over by tech giants and all that," but all that's kind of vague and doesn't really land right. But what specifically is the harm in spending too much time on your phone?

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Well, one of the things that really concerns me is virtual autism, which you see particularly in younger individuals, and that is, young individuals who have a very high screen exposure show symptoms that are similar to developmental autism. That is, they refuse to make eye contact, they have reduced language, they have reduced social interaction. This has been shown in a number of different studies, that the greater the screen exposure,

• 35:17Speaker 02

  the greater the social isolation, the greater the lack of eye contact, and the deeper the loss of language. And what is remarkable is that unlike developmental autism, if you take the screens away, these symptoms reverse. And these have been shown, you know, kids have been, who have been shipped away to camp, where there's no screens of any kind, and after just five days, all of a sudden, they start talking to one another and interacting socially. So, I mean, I've seen this firsthand. My nephew had a birthday party, and a friend of his, his son was there, and he's playing

• 35:58Speaker 02

  with his games, and he has a battery pack, because obviously, he's big gaming a great deal of time. And the mother says, "Say hello to Richard." He said, "Uh, I did." So all you get is grunts. If you get, if you get any reaction at all, the best you get is grunts. You don't get any kind of human interaction. So that's what I see as one of the biggest kinds of things. And then, some, some parents think that the iPad is marvelous, because their, their kids are interacting with it, and it keeps them quiet, and so mommy doesn't have to worry about it and all that. But the iPad is the worst babysitter of all time.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  And to put it in front of a child, in front of an infant or a toddler, is, I think, a form of child abuse. Because what you're doing is you're blocking the developing central vision that they would normally be experiencing in the real world, by crawling around and putting everything in their mouth, and having a visual apprenticeship with the world. And you're, you're blocking it and replacing it with mediated screen images. And by mediated, I mean, artificial ones.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  So iPad characters, as cartoonish or wonderful as they may be, they don't talk to children, they talk at them. And that's not the same thing as an adult talking to them in full sentences and engaging them one-on-one. To an infant, nothing is more fascinating than a human face. Every parent knows this, their eyes lock on it. And they do not lock on an iPad in the same way. And don't forget that the brain is undergoing a huge amount of transformation in the first three years of life.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  And then, again, around puberty, there's an enormous reconfiguration. Just as the body changes, the brain is changing in the same way. But we never think about it that way. And it doesn't stop until about age 25. So these, putting these artificial devices in front of people, I think, does real harm.

• 38:29Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I don't think anybody who has kids would disagree with anything that you just said. The problem is that the peer pressure of, I mean, to have a kid go to school as a teenager in high school and not have a phone, I mean.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  I know, the peer, the peer pressure is enormous. In DC, we happen to have one of the Waldorf schools and the Waldorf philosophy is no technology until about, I don't know, age 11. And I interviewed the principal and she said, the hardest thing is, is getting the parents to agree to not have any technology. The kids are quite happy doing all their other stuff. And, you know, and the argument that, well, they, they need to learn this for the future, their, their future occupation, et cetera. Well, by the time a, a, a three-year-old or a five-year-old is, is adept at whatever

• 39:27Speaker 02

  technology you're throwing at them, and by the time they get to be ready to, to work,

• 39:35Speaker 02

  that technology is going to be so obsolete that it won't matter. So I don't see the, I don't see the argument that, that one needs to learn how to do this. I mean, President Obama's not many years ago said, oh, kids learn to, need to learn how to code. Learning how to code will be as important as, you know, reading and writing and arithmetic. Well, guess what? Now you could use ChatGPT two and all these AI tools to write code for you. So there's no need to know how to code. So things become obsolete very, very fast. So I think it's hard to predict what, what people will need to know for the future because

• 40:19Speaker 02

  the future is very uncertain.

• 40:21Mike Carruthers?

  Well, also wrapped up in all of this, and it's very hard to untangle these things, is all the, the problems that you're talking about. But there's also a lot of convenience. I mean, there are parents who would say, my kid has to have a phone. I have to be able to get in touch with them. I have to know where I'm picking him up.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  Well, then I'd smack the parents in the face and say, back off. You don't need to be in contact with them all the time. I mean, my parents didn't need to be in contact with me all the time. They knew I'd show up after school or during lunch or after recess and all that. So, and if there's such an emergency, they can call the school office and then the principal will, will bring the kid to the phone. So I think that's just a ridiculous argument. I, I must be in contact. And I think what that, that's, I think, shows helicopter parenting and that the parents are so anxious about losing control. And so that's their problem.

• 41:26Mike Carruthers?

  Right, but it, but it's their perception. And so you're going to have a hard time telling them, you know, let's go back to the good old days when kids didn't have phones, even though.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Well, I think, I think their perception is wrong. And, you know, they, they, they're welcome to have it, but I think it only makes them anxious. And so when you ask like, well, what good, what good does it do you to be so concerned that you have to reach your kid 24 hours a day and monitor them constantly and check on their whereabouts via, you know, app finders? What's wrong with you? Why can't you just let, why can't you just let them be an adolescent or a teenager or an adult?

• 42:11Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I think what you, what you pointed out is when you take phones away from kids, because my son went off to a camp where he couldn't have a phone for a month.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  Oh, for a month?

• 42:23Mike Carruthers?

  He was a different kid. I mean, he was, when he, when we saw him at the end of the month, he was just like, wow.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  But so, and, and this was a summer month, I take it?

• 42:33Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, it was, yeah, it was the month of July.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  So not only did he not have screens to distract him, but if he was there in the summer months, he was probably outdoors a lot of the time and he got a lot of daylight exposure. And this is another thing is that it used to be the parents would say, go out and play. Well, now nobody says go out, go outside. And so kids are not exposed to sunlight. And again, other studies show that like, for example, people have gone away to these camps where the only, where they had like 14 hours of daylight a day. And the only light was the fire light of, in the evening, which is highly infrared.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  And they, they came back entirely changed people and their sleep was so much improved.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  So yes, your, your observation is spot on.

• 43:31Mike Carruthers?

  Well, here's, here's another thing too, is, is I, I can live without my phone and often I don't have it. And, and people get upset. I tried to call you. You didn't respond. You didn't pick up. You didn't text back. And so, so it's not just people who are, who feel like they want to be on their phones. It's other people who think you should be on your phone. So you better have it handy.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  Well, the response to that is, why didn't you text back? Is, I didn't need to. I will do so at, you know, I text back at four o'clock every afternoon or I check my emails at 8:00 AM every morning and that's it. There's no other window. And so the question is, why do you want to let other people dictate your attention span and, and your schedule? So this whole, I couldn't get hold of you. It was, yes, you couldn't because I'm only on during these hours and here's when you can reach me. And basically the question is, what could possibly be so important that I have to drop

• 44:42Speaker 02

  everything and respond to your text or your email? In my own website, I have a way to contact me and I've got the, I think, three ways that says, you know, this is urgent.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  Number two, get back to me within a month. Or three, get back to me if and when you can. And it's amazing. And I said, you know, please be specific about what you want, et cetera, what you want to ask. And it's amazing how people respond to that and they, they, they follow that willingly. You know, once you, once you set out guidelines of how to contact me, people act accordingly.

• 45:25Mike Carruthers?

  Right, well, I've always felt, and it's been my experience, that if, if you respond to people right away, you are training them that you respond right away. And if you respond by taking a day, then people know if you really need to get a hold of him, I wouldn't text him because he doesn't respond right away. So you get a reputation based on how you respond.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  This is like Pavlov's dogs. You know, if you respond right away, indeed, you've trained people to know that you will respond right away.

• 45:56Mike Carruthers?

  So let me ask you, do you practice what you preach? Or might you sometimes pick up your phone and start endlessly scrolling like everybody else does?

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Oh, listen, I, I will be the first to admit that I'm just as guilty as everybody else to these forces. I know, except I know that what's going on, but yes, I will pick it up. I will scroll and I realize that I've spent, oh my God, I've spent, you know, 20 minutes on TikTok, et cetera. And it, it, it takes a lot of willpower to say no to these things and, and ask, you know, is this really what I want to be doing with my time?

• 46:39Mike Carruthers?

  And the answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no. And it is certainly worth asking that question a lot more often. I've been talking to Dr. Richard Cytowic. He is a professor of neurology at George Washington University. And the name of his book is Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Richard, thanks for coming on today.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Thanks, Mike. It's been really pleasurable. It's been a hoot. Thank you so much for having me on.

• 47:17Mike Carruthers?

  When you hear or read, say, a shampoo will make your hair five times silkier. Well, that sure sounds impressive, but what does it actually mean? Well, it actually means nothing. It's one of those numbers used in advertising and by politicians that has no real meaning. Charles Seif, the author of a book called Proofiness, says there is no way to measure your hair's silkiness in the first place, let alone measure that it is now five times silkier than it was before. Or when Vaseline says it delivers 70% more moisture than other leading brands. Well, what in the world does that mean? How do you measure how much moisture something is delivering?

• 48:01Mike Carruthers?

  There is something about a number or a statistic that sounds convincing on the surface, but with a little critical thinking, you can offer uncover the truth about some of these claims, and many of them are meaningless. And that is something you should know. Well, that wraps up this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope if you did enjoy it, you will tell people about this show. In the crowded world of podcasting, it can be a challenge to acquire new listeners. And one of the best ways is to have existing listeners tell their friends and family and it would help if you could do that. I'm Mike Herrothers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 48:43Speaker 05

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 49:10Speaker 06

  What's the secret to being a great host this season? Keeping things deliciously simple, like mixing Simply Cranberry into a festive drink as guests arrive, or serving up a warm mug of Simply Apple on a chilly night. That means less time behind the scenes and more time in the moment with everyone. Crafted with real fruit, Simply juices and fruit drinks make any holiday drink effortless, inviting and completely delicious. Simply, say yes to simple.