Pod Insights Something You Should Know Eleven Inventions That Changed the World & The Right Way to Make Love and Money Decisions - SYSK Choice About this episode The origins of the names for popular food products often make interesting stories. For instance, why are they called marshmallows? Why is Spam called Spam? What do gators have to do with Gatorade? This episode begins with the origin stories of some iconic foods. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/tagged/health/at-home/odd-facts-7-iconic-products-164000529.html
Some inventions have had profound effects on how humans see themselves and our place in the world. For example, the mirror, photography, television, and the smartphone have all significantly changed our perception of ourselves. Here to explain this and the significance of it all is Susan Denham Wade author of the book A History of Seeing in Eleven Inventions (https://amzn.to/3vZdj9k)
The most difficult decisions we most often make are about love and money. So how can we improve our ability to make these important decisions? Here with some great insight and advice is Myra Strober. She is a labor economist, Professor Emerita at Stanford University and author of the book Money and Love: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life’s Biggest Decisions (https://amzn.to/3H34xNO)
Your gym teacher probably told you to stand up straight and suck in your gut. It turns out half of that advice is good – the other half isn’t. Listen as I explain why. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/11/12/how-to-stop-holding-in-stomach/
PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!!
SHOPIFY: "Established in 2025". Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk . Go to SHOPIFY.com/sysk to grow your business!
HERS: Hers is changing women's healthcare by providing access to GLP-1 weekly injections with the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as oral medication kits. Start your free online visit today at https://forhers.com/sysk
INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now!
CURIOSITY WEEKLY: We love Curiosity Weekly, so be sure and listen wherever you get your podcasts!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Mike Carruthers? Gifts mean more when they have the power to give more. They can inspire more discovery, give more confidence, and unwrap more of who you are. This Black Friday, give a gift that goes beyond the box. The Dell XPS 13 Laptop. With a beautiful design and cutting-edge performance, it helps you unlock more possibilities. It's the thinnest, lightest XPS laptop yet, with touchscreen, a backlit keyboard, and long-lasting battery life to power you through your day. Built with a durable aluminum chassis, weighing just 2.2 pounds, and Intel Core processors,
0:42 Mike Carruthers? it's fast, reliable, and portable enough to keep up wherever you go. Visit dell.com to explore the possibilities with XPS. While shopping, you'll also find great perks like Dell Rewards, fast, free shipping, premium support, and financing with flexible payment options. Plus, you can find great deals on monitors and accessories. That means you can score a whole new setup now for less. This Black Friday sale is one you don't want to miss. Head to dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.
1:28 Mike Carruthers? Today on Something You Should Know: The interesting ways some food products got their names. Then, inventions that dramatically changed how we see the world. Television, eyeglasses, the smartphone, even mirrors.
1:43 Speaker 01 And that being able to see their own reflection gave people the idea that they could see themselves as others saw them, got them thinking about, well, who am I? I am actually a different person. I'm not just part of the group.
1:56 Mike Carruthers? Also, you've probably been told to stand up straight and suck in your gut, which turns out to be bad advice. And why do we have so much trouble with big decisions about love and money?
2:09 Speaker 02 The conventional wisdom is that love and money decisions are intertwined. That you make love decisions with your heart and money decisions with your head, and that's just not right.
2:22 Mike Carruthers? All this today on Something You Should Know.
2:27 Mike Carruthers? I imagine most of us shop for clothes online, at least some of the time. And there's always that little mystery. Is what shows up at your door actually going to look like what you think you ordered? We've all had that experience. I know my wife has ordered dresses that look beautiful in the pictures. But when they arrived, eh, not so beautiful. Cheap looking, disappointing. And that's one of the reasons we've become such big fans of Quince. When we order from Quince, we are confident we're going to get something really nice. The quality is consistently good and the prices are surprisingly reasonable.
3:06 Mike Carruthers? I've bought their cashmere sweaters, which are gorgeous, and they start at just $60 for cashmere. My wife buys tons of stuff from Quince and we keep coming back. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, offering prices 50% to 80% less than similar brands. And with the holidays coming, that's a pretty compelling combination. Beautiful clothes and gifts without spending a fortune or wondering what's really going to show up at the door. I really do recommend Quince. It's one of those companies that has earned our trust. Give the gift of quality this holiday season.
3:46 Mike Carruthers? Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was something you should know. It's the best way to support the show.
4:22 Mike Carruthers? Hi and welcome to Something You Should Know. Have you ever been in your kitchen and looked in the cupboards or in the refrigerator and looked at some of the food and wondered, "Why is it called that? Where did that name come from?" Well, here are the origins of some popular, somewhat random, but some popular foods that may be in your kitchen. First of all, Philadelphia cream cheese. It didn't really come from Philadelphia. It started in New York. It was called Philadelphia cream cheese because that city was associated with high-quality food products. Gatorade, as you might imagine, does not contain any alligator in it.
5:03 Mike Carruthers? It was a kidney specialist from the University of Florida who helped develop it for the school's football team, the Florida Gators. So, they named the drink Gatorade. The product name SPAM was chosen for the canned meat from a contest. Now, there is no official explanation for its meaning, but most people assume SPAM stands for Spiced Ham. The Frisbee, the Flying Disc Frisbee, comes to you courtesy of the Frisbee Pie Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut. The empty pie tins were perfect for throwing like a Frisbee. And since it was the Frisbee Pie Company, they became known as Frisbees.
5:45 Mike Carruthers? The first plastic version was called the Pluto Platter Flying Saucer. Whammo bought the rights and stamped Frisbee on it instead. Marshmallows started out as medicine. In the 1800s, juice from the roots of the marshmallow plant were extracted and cooked with egg whites and sugar. It was whipped up and given to children to soothe sore throats. And that is something you should know.
6:15 Mike Carruthers? No, I love it when I see a topic to discuss here that I didn't actually know was a topic to discuss. And that's what you're about to hear. We're going to discuss the history of what we see and how we see it. Because how we see ourselves and how we see the world has changed. And what's caused those changes are certain inventions, certain technologies that alter our vision. I mean, imagine the first mirror. When people could actually see themselves clearly the way other people do, that had to change a lot. It's pretty remarkable. Or the telescope, television, the smartphone. All these things have altered our view of ourselves and the world in some way.
7:00 Mike Carruthers? Here to explain all this is Susan Denham Wade. She's author of a book called A History of Seeing in Eleven Inventions. Hi Susan, welcome to Something You Should Know.
7:11 Speaker 01 It's great to be here, Mike.
7:13 Mike Carruthers? So, explain first how you came up with this idea and formed it into a topic for discussion.
7:20 Speaker 01 Well, the inspiration for the book was the 2014 internet meme that became known as hashtag the dress. This was a photograph of a dress that was bought for a wedding that found its way onto the internet and the dress was striped. And the reason it went so viral and was actually one of the first global memes was because when people looked at the image online, they couldn't agree whether the stripes of the dress were white and gold or blue and black. This went all around Twitter with various celebrities weighing in on their opinions. It was discussed on newscasts.
7:59 Speaker 01 And this really intrigued me and got me to wondering, wow, if people in the same time and place can look at the same thing and see something different, did people who lived hundreds or even thousands of years ago see their worlds differently? And that was the question I set out to answer and that was the beginning of the journey.
8:24 Mike Carruthers? And so where did that journey take you? What did you find from looking at all this?
8:29 Speaker 01 Well, I I found that indeed, people have seen their their worlds differently uh over time, and that there've been a variety of of technologies that mankind has either harnessed, or discovered, or invented, that have really changed the world as we saw it. But not only that, each of these visual technologies have has coincided with a really major inflection point in human history. So, one of the big conclusions that I came to was that the world seen differently becomes a different world.
9:04 Mike Carruthers? So, when you say, as you just said a few minutes ago, that in earlier times, people saw their world differently, what does that mean?
9:14 Speaker 01 Well, if you take, for example, the invention of mirrors, the very first known mirrors were discovered in a proto-town, one of the very earliest settled communities, which is in Anatolia, which is now part of Turkey. And this was a settlement of about up to eight thousand people, which existed between about eight thousand and five and a half thousand years ago. And archaeologists exploring this site came upon these mirrors at a time when the society fundamentally changed, as far as they could tell. Up until the the point that we're talking about, the society, the the archaeologists described it as fiercely egalitarian. There was no, there were no signs of different status,
9:59 Speaker 01 food and other implements were shared, people's homes were more or less the same size. And then, around the layer of the of the site where these mirrors were discovered, archaeologists noted a a shift in the psychology of this community to to identify a much greater sense of individualism, and the emergence of a sense of self, which I think is completely mind-blowing, that we don't know what came first, the sense of self, and then that generated a desire to find mirrors, or whether someone had created these mirrors, and that being able to see their own reflection.
10:39 Speaker 01 Gave people a self-realization, the idea that they could see themselves as others saw them, and that got them thinking about, well, who am I? Am I, I am actually a different person, I'm not just part of the group, I'm an individual. And in later history, with the development of psychology, for example, in the 19th century, the start, well, actually going right back to the Romans, the mirror has become symbolic um as a a tool for exploring the self. But it's incredibly interesting to me that um going right back through human history, it appears that um mirrorless societies tend to be highly egalitarian without much of a sense of individuality.
11:22 Speaker 01 And it's only um that but the appearance of mirrors tends to coincide with that individuality. So this is an example from a long time ago um of how a change in technol- in visual technology and seeing something different caused a fundamental shift in mindset.
11:39 Mike Carruthers? So i- if the invention of the mirror was so transformative and people could see themselves as individuals rather than just part of the group, I mean, imagine what photography must have done, because a mirror, a a look in the mirror is a fleeting thing, but photography lasts forever.
11:58 Speaker 01 All the excitement about photography when it was first announced, this amazing technology that could capture an image permanently, was all about how it was going to represent the great landscapes of the world and the great monuments of antiquity and the works of art. And none of the inventors or promoters of early photography um mentioned the idea of portraiture. But as soon as photography was announced, people set up portraiture studios, and this was the absolute killer app for photography. Um all very well to see the great sights of the world and and the great works of art, but what people really wanted to see was themselves and each other.
12:42 Speaker 01 And photograph studio, photography studios set up all around um Europe and around the USA, um and people for the price of a day's wages could get an image of themselves to keep forever. And the market for it was huge, something like um ninety percent of photographs taken in the first fifty years of photography were were portraits.
13:04 Mike Carruthers? When you see early photography, early portraits, no one's smiling, no one seems to be particularly happy at all.
13:14 Speaker 01 Well, in the earliest photographs, the earliest process was called a daguerreotype. They took about 10 to 15 minutes for the exposure to happen. So people had to stand very, very still in that time. So the photographic studios developed all kinds of props to help people stay still. So if you see people standing up, often you'll see them, there's a pedestal that they've got an arm resting on, or they're sitting on a chair with their slightly unnaturally raised arms. And all of these were devices to help people stand really still for that time,
13:54 Speaker 01 so that the image could take on the film used at the time. And so I guess it's pretty hard to hold a smile for that length of time. So they were probably advised just to keep it fairly serious.
14:09 Mike Carruthers? Another one of these inventions you talk about is the telescope, and which not only changed the way we see the world, but the universe.
14:19 Speaker 01 Usually credited to Galileo, but in fact, the first telescope to be brought forward publicly was from a Dutch spectacle maker, whose name was Lippershey. But he tried to patent his telescope, but he was refused because the patent office decided it was too easy to copy. And unfortunately for him, the patent office was right because people started making telescopes all around Europe. And Galileo was this very talented mathematician and craftsman. And he spent, he got the idea of the telescope, heard about the idea of the telescope, and made his own very, much, much more powerful than the original telescopes that were made.
15:03 Speaker 01 And he trained his telescope on the night sky and saw things that amazed, truly amazed the world and changed forever, really, how people saw their world. What he saw was around the planet of Jupiter, three smaller stars.
15:27 Speaker 01 The planets were called the wandering stars. They were all considered to be stars. But but it had long been observed that the planets move through the night sky in a different way than the others, what were called the fixed stars. But he saw that there was this smaller group of stars that followed Jupiter across the sky throughout from night after night. And this was a radical thought because up until then, the received view of of how the universe worked was with the earth was at the centre and the sun, the moon and all the other planets, the the stars rather, the wandering stars
16:10 Speaker 01 and the fixed stars rotated around the earth. But there had been some theorising in the previous fifty years, most famously by Copernicus, that this might not be the right way to view the universe. Then, in fact, the sun might be the centre of the universe and the planets revolved around it. And but this was a heresy because there were various passages in the Bible that suggested that the earth was the centre and so on. But Galileo's discovery showed that because these the mini-stars followed Jupiter around, he concluded that they were moons of Jupiter.
16:55 Speaker 01 And that demonstrated that the earth wasn't necessarily the centre of the universe. This was radically controversial at the time. And indeed, Galileo eventually was hauled up in front of the Inquisition more than once. And he spent his final years in under house arrest. So it didn't have a happy ending for him. But it did kick off a a whole new way of viewing nature.
17:22 Mike Carruthers? We're talking about some important inventions that have really altered the way that you and I see the world. And my guest is Susan Denham Wade, author of A History of Seeing in Eleven Inventions.
17:37 Mike Carruthers? Well, here's something you should know about your bones. We all hear about calcium and vitamin D, and they're important. But there's another ingredient in healthy bones that hardly anybody talks about: collagen. Think of your bones like a building, right? Collagen provides the framework, while minerals like calcium help give it strength. Here's the problem, though: As we get older, our bodies naturally produce less collagen. That's why I was interested in Native Path Bone Health Collagen. It's not just ordinary collagen. It contains a specialized form called Fortabone. And there's some interesting research behind it. In a study of 131 post-menopausal women,
18:20 Mike Carruthers? researchers saw improvements in bone mineral density after 12 months: up to 7.7% in an important part of the hip. Native Path gives you the same 5 grams of Fortabone used in that research in an easy-to-mix daily formula. I just got mine, because bone health is something I'd rather pay attention to now than wish I had later. And here's a great reason to try Native Path Bone Health Collagen right now: You can save up to 48%, get free shipping, and it's backed by a 365-day money-back guarantee. Now, that's a pretty compelling offer if you've been thinking about doing something
19:05 Mike Carruthers? to support your bone health. Go to GetBetterBones.com/SYSK. That's G-E-T-BetterBones.com/SYSK. If you listen to something you should know regularly, you know we talk about sleep quite a bit here. And one of the things I've learned from those conversations is just how important a good night's sleep is. And I've always been someone who loves his sleep. So I was intrigued when I heard about Beam Dream. It's a delicious nighttime drink formulated to help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed. It contains ingredients-
19:46 Mike Carruthers? Like reishi, magnesium, L-theanine, epigenin, and melatonin. They have lots of great flavors. I tried the cinnamon cocoa flavor and I love the idea of having something warm and delicious as part of winding down at night. And it's less than 20 calories per serving. Dream has improved more than 30 million nights of sleep and they back it up with a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you don't sleep better, you get your money back. And right now, there's a terrific offer. Go to shopbeam.com/sysk. Use code S Y S K and get 50% off during Beam's cyber sale. Only available while flavors are in stock.
20:31 Mike Carruthers? With this incredible discount, that means you'll pay just 83 cents per night for the best sleep of your life. So seriously, think about it. I mean, how much would you pay for a truly great night of sleep? Beam is just 83 cents per night. So go to shopbeam.com/sysk now. That's shopbeam.com/sysk. So Susan, in your list of inventions is eyeglasses. I mean, there is an invention that literally changed the way people viewed the world, the people with vision problems. So, talk about that.
21:12 Speaker 01 The very first eyeglasses were convex glasses, which is the ones that correct for long sight. They were most useful for people who were reaching middle age. So just as today, we reach our 40s or 50s and we find it more difficult to see close up. And convex glass lenses can help us, convex spectacles can refocus our eyes to improve that sort of vision. So if you were born very short sighted, around the time that the first spectacles were invented, around 1278 in Italy, I'm afraid they wouldn't have been much help to you. But what was so important about glasses and the time they were first invented was
21:57 Speaker 01 that they extended the useful life of so many of the artists, artisans, and scholars of that time because they allowed them to keep working beyond a time when ordinarily their failing eyesight would have forced them to stop. Um. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the invention of spectacles, as I say, towards the end of the twelve hundreds, happened just on the cusp of what became the Renaissance, the amazing, and in Italy, the amazing flowering of art, scholarship, architecture, that that happened in the next couple of hundred years.
22:39 Speaker 01 It wasn't until around fourteen fifty that concave spectacles, which correct for short sight, were invented. But obviously, that, again, would have been a massive revelation for people who were born short sighted, although there were many, many fewer short sighted people then than there are now. There's been a massive increase in short sightedness, in particular over the last seventy years, since the invention of television, in fact. And the explanation for that is not that television itself damages our eyes, but ever
23:18 Speaker 01 since televisions came into our lives, children in particular have spent more time inside, and that does damage our eyes. One report suggests that for every additional hour spent outside, your chance of developing myopia, that's short sightedness, reduces by two percent. And that's because even on the darkest day, natural daylight is about ten times as bright as artificial light. And our eyes need daylight for their health, and especially children as their eyes are growing and developing.
23:57 Mike Carruthers? Well, I would think that television is one of the big game changers in your list of inventions, because it not only changed how we see the world, it really brought the world into our homes, good and bad. We could see things we could never see before.
24:17 Speaker 01 Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, television, you know, created the consumer society as we sat watching, happily watching TV shows through the 50s, funded by advertisers, who showed us all the lovely products we could buy and we obediently went out to buy them, whereas previous generations, you know, did without those things. Now, I'm not saying that a lot of those products haven't made our lives easier and better, but they have convinced us that we need a lot of stuff that somehow we managed to live without before, before we saw it all advertised on television. And politics drastically changed by television. You'll, you'll remember, well, probably not yourself, but you'll, you'll know the story
25:00 Speaker 01 of the television debate between Nixon and Kennedy, just before, before the election, presidential election, between those two. Those who listened to it on radio named Nixon the winner of the debate, but those who watched it on television saw Nixon looking a little sweaty, he'd been ill, he had a dark shadow under his, under his makeup of his, of his beard coming through. Kennedy had, who was a much more sickly person on the whole, had spent the morning sitting in the sun, had a crisp white shirt and exuded relaxed
25:40 Speaker 01 good health. And those who watched the debate on television, and it was the most watched programme ever, I think something like 60 million people watched it, declared Kennedy the winner, and sure enough, he won that election. And, you know, more recent times have seen telegenic candidates become president once again.
26:04 Mike Carruthers? And then there is the smartphone, which not only has changed the way we see the world, in many ways it is the world that we see because we spend so much time looking at it.
26:16 Speaker 01 We spend hours and hours a day checking our phones. Many, many people have their phone by their bed, it's the last thing they look at before they go to bed, it's the first thing they look at when they wake up in the morning. It's become the dominant. Feature of our lives, really, increasingly with all the apps available. Pretty much every aspect of our lives can be channeled through this little screen in our hand. It's not just a phone. In fact, the phone is one of the least used features of a smartphone. It's our encyclopedia, it's our car key, it's our bank, it's our email, it's our, it's our encyclopedia.
26:59 Speaker 01 It's our entertainment device. It's, it's pretty much everything that, it's our window onto the world. And what that's meaning, it seems to me, is that we're using our other senses less and less. So we are, I'm sure we're all guilty of sending a text to someone, even if they're in the next room, rather than putting our head around the corner and having a conversation. Or texting a friend or one of our family members, just to say hi and have a little catch up. Just because it's kind of quicker and easier rather than speaking to them on the phone.
27:38 Speaker 01 And this is actually not great for our mental and, and eventually leading on from that, physical health. Because we really need to hear each other. There was a research study done, Wisconsin University, that put a group of, of young girls, schoolchildren, ages, I think, seven to twelve, in a stressful situation where they were asked to give a presentation to some strangers. And after that, and they had them wired up to measure the, the level of cortisol, the stress hormone, in their bodies. And after they'd been put in this situation, a quarter of the girls were allowed to go and be with their mothers and talk to them face to face. A second quarter was allowed to speak to their mothers on the phone.
28:22 Speaker 01 The third quarter was allowed to text with their mothers. And the fourth group had to go and sit quietly alone. And what the researchers found was that the girls who spoke to their mothers on the telephone calmed down as much as the girls who were with their mothers and talking to their mothers face to face. Whereas the girls who just texted their mothers calmed down as little as the girls who just sat quietly alone. And although researchers, serious researchers are very wary about jumping to too many conclusions from what they find, the title of the research was Why We Still Need to Hear Each Other.
29:06 Speaker 01 And if you think about it, verbal and oral communication has been our primary form of communication for tens of thousands of years. This is, you know, language is what, one of the things that made us human. We are, we are hardwired to learn to speak. No child needs to be taught to speak. They just pick it up naturally. It's part of our, it's in our DNA. Whereas everyone has to be taught to read and write. It's not an innate human skill. It's a learnt, learnt ability.
29:35 Mike Carruthers? Well, as I said at the start, this is a topic that I didn't really know was a topic. You actually really created the topic by putting these 11 inventions together and looking at the world through them. And it's, it's been a lot of fun. Susan Denham-Wade has been my guest. The name of the book is A History of Seeing in 11 Inventions. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Susan. This was fun.
30:02 Speaker 01 Well, thank you very much, Mike.
30:04 Mike Carruthers? This episode is sponsored by Vinted. You know, I remember interviewing an organizing expert who offered this really clever trick for figuring out which clothes you should get rid of. You go to your closet and you look at the clothes hanging there. And chances are, the ones toward the middle are the clothes you wear most often. But the clothes pushed way over to the left or the right, some of those you probably haven't worn in years. And yet there they hang, taking up space. But here's the thing, you could turn those clothes into money. That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer wear and make some extra money. Listing on
30:48 Mike Carruthers? Vinted is so quick and simple. And when something sells, Vinted creates a prepaid shipping label for you. And here's what I really like. Vinted charges no seller fees. So whatever you earn from selling your clothes, you keep. Think about that. Clothes that you aren't wearing, taking up space, could be putting money back in your pocket. So here's my suggestion. Take five minutes, go look at the far ends of your closet and see what's hanging there. You might be surprised. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing with no seller fees. You keep every dollar you earn. That's Vinted, V-I-N-T-E-D.
31:31 Mike 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.
32:12 Mike 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.
32:53 Mike 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.
33:16 Mike Carruthers? When it comes to major decisions in your life, there are a couple of categories that are huge. They are love and money. And as you may have noticed in your own life, we tend to struggle with those decisions and end up regretting some of them. So why is that? Why do we mess up some of the biggest decisions in our lives? And how can we make better love and money decisions? Well, here to discuss that is Myra Strober. She is a labor economist and professor at Stanford University and author of a book called Money and Love: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life's Biggest Decisions. Hi, Myra. Welcome to Something You Should Know.
33:58 Speaker 02 Thank you, Mike.
33:59 Mike Carruthers? So I would imagine that everyone listening can think back to a decision regarding love or money or both that they regret. So why do you suppose that is? I mean, why do we mess up what seems to be such an important decision?
34:17 Speaker 02 I think there are two reasons. One is that people don't make these decisions in a systematic way. That's the first reason. And the second reason is that people tend to see money and love decisions as separate. So money decisions concern money and love decisions concern love and never the twain shall meet. But in fact, most life's decisions, especially the big ones, are both love and money decisions.
34:53 Mike Carruthers? But it seems to me it's not only the decision you make because you could make what appears to be the right decision. But things don't always go according to plan. Things don't go the way you think they're going to go. Life has a way of serving up curveballs that... If things had gone the way you thought, that decision would have been great. But but it didn't go that way. So but how would you have known?
35:20 Speaker 02 You certainly can't predict the future, but you can ask yourself when you make your decision, what are the likely consequences of this decision? What are the likely things that are going to happen? So, for example, if you're considering moving to another city for a job and you have a family, you know, you might think this is a money decision, that the money is so much better in this new job. But in fact, it's a love decision, too, because your family is involved. And if, you know, six months down the line, your daughter is depressed because she can't adjust to her new school.
36:04 Speaker 02 Had you thought in advance, what are the likely consequences for my daughter of this decision? You might have predicted that she would have a difficult time. You might have taken some steps to ease that transition. And the situation might be a little bit better had you anticipated the consequences.
36:27 Mike Carruthers? Well, see, that that's a good example of what I mean, that your daughter might have trouble adapting to her new school. She might thrive in the new school. There's no way to know until it happens, and it only happens after the decision. And then you have to deal with the consequences, but you can't have predicted that. I mean, it's kind of a it's kind of a crap shoot.
36:51 Speaker 02 No, I don't really think it's quite a crap shoot. Of course, you can't know everything. For instance, you can't know that the the girl next door to where you moved is going to make life difficult for her. You could you couldn't know that. But you you know your daughter. You know if she adjusts easily to new circumstances or not. You could have a converse, you should have a conversation with your daughter about this move, unless she's, you know, under the age of five. And ask her, what is this going to be like for you? Are you looking forward to it? Are you concerned about it? What are you concerned about?
37:31 Speaker 02 And then you could take steps to try to mitigate the effects of this for her.
37:38 Mike Carruthers? So I guess maybe what my point was is that it is human nature to think about the road not taken. And so you'll always wonder what if, when faced with a choice like what you're talking about. Should I move there? Should I take that job? Should I marry that person? Or that person? You're always gonna wonder, no matter what you choose and how great a decision, what if you had done something different?
38:04 Speaker 02 Well, I think that may be true, but we have a very flexible five-step framework for making these decisions. And what the hope is, is that after you've taken these five steps, you have convinced yourself that this is the best decision that you can make, given whatever circumstances you're facing. So, you know, you might be taking a walk in the beautiful woods and think about what might have happened, you know, had your parents been born millionaires, but you need to deal
38:44 Speaker 02 with reality and you need to convince yourself, and I think our framework helps you do that, that this is the best decision that you could make, given what you knew at the time.
38:54 Mike Carruthers? So what are those five steps?
38:57 Speaker 02 Well, the first one is clarify. Clarify for yourself what it is that you want. What's important to you? And what's important to you, not to your parents, or your spouse, or somebody else in your life. Try to figure out what you really care about. And then the second step is communication. Then you need to communicate that to whoever else is in your life making these decisions with you. And, you know, as you communicate and you listen to the other person's hopes and dreams, you may revise your own.
39:41 Speaker 02 You may start thinking about some issues that you hadn't thought about before. So first clarify and then communicate.
39:50 Speaker 02 And then you need to consider a broad range of choices. So let's go back to the moving decision. You've been offered a job in another city. Your family agrees that you need more money. It's a good career step for you. And you have already clarified that your career is important to you. But what are the other possible choices? Have you looked around in the same city where you are at other possible jobs? Or did this this new job possibility come out of the blue? And it seems so attractive and you're going to take it? So unless you convince yourself that in order to get what it is you're looking for,
40:34 Speaker 02 you must move, you may well be sorry later on because you didn't do the kind of seeking that would give you a broader range of choices. The fourth step is check in. So it's the five Cs framework. These all start with Cs. Clarify, communicate, consider a broad range of choices, and now check in. So you want to check in with family and friends and other people whom you admire and and ask them, have they faced these kinds of decisions? What did they do? How did it turn out for them? Share your thought process with them.
41:16 Speaker 02 I'm doing this because I want more money. I'm doing this because I think my career will be furthered by this. Ask them about family ramifications of decisions that they may have made. And the last step is what I talked about before. Explore the likely consequences. And you need to explore the consequences, both short term and long term. So let's go back to the daughter who is not happy in the new environment. Maybe she's not happy, you know, six months after you move. But maybe she's in a school that's far better than the one that she left.
41:59 Speaker 02 And three years from now, she'll realize that this was a really good move because her school life and her education is far better than it would have been. So, you know, there are short term consequences and longer term consequences.
42:17 Mike Carruthers? Well, your five-step process, it certainly makes sense. It sounds good. But how do you know it works? I mean, is there research? How do you know that doing those five steps are better than any other five steps that somebody would come up with?
42:34 Speaker 02 I taught a course at the Stanford Business School and also in the undergraduate part of the university for more than 40 years on the topic of work and family. And so, over that time, I've had thousands of students who write back to me and say, I mean, not all thousands write back, but many of them write back and say, you know, "Thinking about these issues when I was in your course has really helped me down the line. I feel that I have better decisions. I feel that this helps me. When I have a big decision to make, I think about the class."
43:17 Speaker 02 And in fact, my co-author, Abby Davison, was a student in that class. And the man who took the class with her is now her husband. So, they have used this framework, you know, for their entire marriage, and now they have two young children. And, you know, the anecdotal evidence is that people feel helped by this framework and this way of deciding.
43:44 Mike Carruthers? When people make decisions on their own and don't use your process, where is it you think people tend to go wrong?
43:53 Speaker 02 Well, I think they haven't really gone through steps one and two. They have not clarified for themselves what it is they want. Most of us are stuck for life with, you know, our parents' voices in our heads. And our parents... For the most part, not all parents, but our parents pretty much told us what they want for us. And somewhere along the line of reaching an adult, we need to put our parents' voices in the background, develop our own voices, and make decisions based on our own voices.
44:36 Speaker 02 But I think lots of people still are not making decisions that are going to benefit them as much as might be the case.
44:48 Mike Carruthers? Well, I think that's
44:49 Speaker 02 And the second place they go wrong is in communication. So a lot of these decisions are fraught because couples are in different places in their lives, and they haven't taken the time to come together and figure out what it is they can both agree upon. And I think a lot of these fraught decisions come when couples have other issues underlying this particular decision.
45:19 Mike Carruthers? Well, what you said about really taking the time to figure out what it is you want, not what somebody else wants, that's a step I think a lot of people skip because there are so many other influences, and there's so many assumptions people make about what they want, that they don't really stop and go, hey, wait a minute, let's really stop here. What is it I want?
45:45 Speaker 02 Right. And so, think about somebody deciding to apply to medical school. Their whole life, up to that point, their parents have said, you know, this would be a good career for you. Their older brother is already in that career, and so they talk to their older brother, and their older brother says, you know, this is just a wonderful career. I just love medicine. I love being a doctor. Well, the next step is to talk to some other people who don't like being a doctor, or who thought they might and decided otherwise.
46:22 Speaker 02 You know, if you stack the deck toward a certain decision, you don't really have enough input to figure out if this is the right decision for you.
46:34 Mike Carruthers? Well, and you know, we've talked about it on this podcast before. I think people do tend to fall into that confirmation bias trap where they just look for things that confirm with what they their gut is telling them.
46:48 Speaker 02 Yes, I think that's right. And that's why, you know, you may need help figuring out what you need. But yes, confirmation bias could be a real problem. You do want to talk to some people who have a different perspective and see what you think about that.
47:04 Mike Carruthers? But it would also seem that as you make these decisions, it's not just a snapshot in time. There's got to be course correction because the decision, you know, you decided to take this new job, but then the guy that hired you left and now you've got a new. So there's always things that happen. It isn't frozen in time that I made this decision and now we go forward the way I decided.
47:28 Speaker 02 True enough. I mean, you know, there's an old Yiddish saying that man plans and God laughs because planning only gets you so far. There are things that happen that nobody anticipated. Nonetheless, if you don't plan, you know, you're certainly not going to get what you want. So yes, you have to have course corrections and you and your spouse need or your partner need good communication. So when this new curve ball comes onto the field, you have somebody to talk to about it. And, you know, okay, what are we going to do next?
48:07 Speaker 02 And it's we, even though it's a job decision, it involves love. It involves your family and, you know, they need to be supportive of you and they need to know what they want.
48:23 Mike Carruthers? I can just think back in my own life of some decisions I've made that I didn't really, I kind of like already had it in my head, what the decision was going to be without really going through any process of, it just felt right. It just seemed right. This is an opportunity I can't pass up. I suspect that happens to a lot of people where they just say, wow, I've got to grab this right now and go and never do what you're talking about.
48:52 Speaker 02 Yes, that's what I have learned over the years is that people tend to do that. And you know, it's rare that a decision this big has to be made, certainly within 24 hours or maybe even within a week. And people need to take the time to go through our process, to check in with other people whom they admire and make sure they check in with people who have a different perspective than theirs, and take the time to make these decisions. You know, take the decision, who am I going to marry?
49:36 Speaker 02 Certainly, you have to make that decision in part with your gut. I mean, you don't want to marry someone, never mind marry, but live with them, be a partner with them. It doesn't matter whether marriage is involved particularly or not. But, you know, is this the person I want to spend the rest of my life with? Well, that is surely a biggie, and you want your gut to be involved, but you want your head to be involved too. And you want to think about the financial implications of this decision. And making that decision solely with your gut is not going to necessarily work out.
50:15 Mike Carruthers? Well, it's interesting. We make decisions all day long, and big ones and little ones, and often don't think about the process of making the decision. We just make the decision and then have to live with the consequences.
50:33 Speaker 02 You know, Daniel Kahneman talks about system one thinking and system two thinking. System one, you make the decision with your gut and you move on. System two is more like the framework we are proposing. And you need to make these very big love money decisions using system two thinking. And particularly, I think our framework is helpful. The second thing is that love and money decisions are intertwined. You know, the conventional wisdom is that you make love decisions with your heart and money decisions with your head. And that's, that's just not right.
51:16 Speaker 02 Even when you're deciding, you know, how to invest your portfolio, you might think that that is only a financial decision, but it isn't. Because the question now is, what do you want? What do you want this money to do for you? To whom do you want to leave the money? If there's money left over at the end? And why? And what are their needs? So there are no purely financial decisions and no purely love decisions. They're all intertwined.
51:45 Mike Carruthers? Well, it is so easy, even with, even with really big decisions, to go with your gut. You know, oh, this just feels right. And I enjoy hearing what you say about, you know, there's a system, there's a way to analyze this that isn't quite so romantic as going with your gut, but may yield a better decision. I've been talking to Myra Strober. She's a labor economist and professor at Stanford University. The name of her book is Money and Love: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life's Biggest Decisions. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Myra. I enjoyed the conversation.
52:22 Speaker 02 Thanks, Mike.
52:27 Mike Carruthers? How many times have you been told to stand up straight and suck in your gut? Well, the stand up straight part's probably fine. It's the sucking in your gut thing that could be a problem, even though some people do it all the time. When you suck in your stomach, it prevents you from breathing properly. That shallow breathing can actually lead to anxiety and poor balance and crummy posture. It can also lead to incontinence and a whole host of other problems. So stand up straight, that's fine, but relax your stomach muscles. And that is something you should know. If someone asks you what podcasts you listen to, I hope you'll remember to tell them about this one. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You
53:12 Mike Carruthers? Should Know.
53:14 Speaker 03 Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger. Fresh for everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details.
Previous Why We Like Cute Things & How to Have a Great Conversation Next How to Optimize Your Brain Chemistry & What Would You Do With More Money? Page updated November 5, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated