The Mystery of Common Knowledge & Why Some People Are Never On Time

If I showed you some photos of yourself and asked you to pick out the one that most accurately represented what you really looked like – could you do it? Listen as I begin this episode by explaining why you most likely could not. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150623200016.htm?utm_source=chatgpt.com Common knowledge is something that I know that you know, and you know that I know you know it! And so usually, we never discuss it. Sounds confusing but without common knowledge life would be amazingly difficult and tedious as you are about to discover when you listen to my conversation with Steven Pinker. Steven is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and is the author of 12 books. His latest is When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life (https://amzn.to/46oYRdG). Some people are chronically late. It’s as if they have a completely different attitude toward time. Yet their tardiness can infuriate people who are punctual and expect other people to be. Is it rudeness or is it just a different “time personality”? There was an interesting article about this in the New York Times not long ago that got quite a bit of attention. Joining me in this episode is the author of that article, Emily Laber-Warren. She heads the health and science reporting program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York and has been a staff editor at Popular Science, The Sciences, Scientific American Mind, and Women's Health. Here is a link to the NY Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/well/live/time-personality-polychronic-monochronic.html?unlocked_article_code=1.fE8. XJAU.mLoAAuZCOiwU&smid=url-share The next time you are in a bad mood, I have some quick, science-backed suggestions to help you snap out of it and cheer up almost instantly. https://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/wellness/advice/a51333/how-to-get-in-a-good-mood/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now! DELL: Huge savings on Dell AI PCs with Intel Core Ultra processors are here, and they are newly designed to help you do more, faster. Upgrade today by visiting⁠⁠ https://Dell.com/Deals⁠⁠ QUINCE: Keep it classic and cool this fall with long lasting staples from Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! HERS: Whether you want to lose weight, grow thicker, fuller hair, or find relief for anxiety, Hers has you covered. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://forhers.com/something⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you! SHOPIFY: Shopify is the commerce platform for millions of businesses around the world! To start selling today, sign up for your $1 per month trial at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 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, is it possible that you don't know what you really look like? Then we're going to talk about common knowledge. It's an important part of everyday life.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Common knowledge refers to the case where I know something, you know it, I know that you know it, you know that I know it, I know that you know that I know that you know it, ad infinitum. The reason that it's interesting is that it's necessary for coordination, for two people being on the same page.

• 2:12Mike Carruthers?

  Also proven ways to snap out of a bad mood, and a look at your time personality. Some of us are always punctual, while others are not.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  There's a certain amount of stress that we add to our lives with this obsession with punctuality. Obviously, there are moments when, you know, look, you've got to make a train, right? You have to be on time, but there's so many other times when it really doesn't matter.

• 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.

• 4:22Mike Carruthers?

  Now you would think that you have a pretty good idea of what you look like, but it's probably not as good an idea of what you look like as you think it is. Hi and welcome to Something You Should Know. I'm Mike Carruthers and I appreciate you joining me today. So you'd think that if you had to do this, you could pick out a photograph of your face that most resembles what you really look like. But in a study, it appears that that's just not the case. People were asked to choose one of several photographs of themselves that most closely resembled what they really looked like.

• 5:03Mike Carruthers?

  Then strangers were asked to pick the most accurate photos of these people after having watched the people on video. In general, the strangers chose different photos and chose more accurate photos of the people than the people chose of themselves. The researchers theorize that memories of what we used to look like often interfere with our ability to choose images that are good representations of our current appearance. Also, we may be more inclined to choose a flattering picture of ourselves rather than an accurate picture of ourselves. Interestingly, there were better results when people were smiling in the photos.

• 5:46Mike Carruthers?

  Even though current passport guidelines prohibit you from smiling in your passport photo because they supposedly distort the normal facial features, photos of smiling faces are rated as being more accurate, more like a person's actual appearance. And that is something you should know. We don't often stop and think about or talk about common knowledge. You know, the things that everybody knows that everybody else knows, like driving on the right side of the road. I know it, you know it, and I know that you know I know it. It sounds a little circular, but that simple understanding is what keeps the world running smoothly.

• 6:31Mike Carruthers?

  And when you really unpack it, common knowledge turns out to be a powerful force shaping money, power, and everyday life. To explain how, I'm joined by Steven Pinker. He's a Harvard psychologist and bestselling author. His latest book is When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows. Hey, Steven, always great to have you on.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 6:53Mike Carruthers?

  So this topic can get a little complicated and confusing. So let's start at the beginning very simply and have you explain what common knowledge is, and then we'll talk about why it's interesting and important.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, common knowledge in the technical sense refers to the case where I know something, you know it, I know that you know it, you know that I know it, I know that you know that I know that you know it, ad infinitum. And it's necessary, the reason that it's interesting is that it's necessary for coordination, for two people being on the same page. It's, let's say we want a rendezvous and we don't have a way of generating common knowledge. That is, let's say my cellphone is dead. I have to figure out where you're gonna go, but you, and you have to figure out where I'm gonna go, but you can't just figure out, say, that my favorite place to go is Starbucks, because I might be figuring out that your favorite place to go is Pete's.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  And then I might think, well, you know that I like to go to Starbucks, so actually you won't go to Pete's, you'll go to Starbucks. But then I think, well, you know that I know that you like to go to Pete's, so you'll probably go to Pete's after all. And nothing, nothing short of blurting it out, like getting a connection on our cellphone and saying it so that each one knows that the other one heard it. That's what's necessary to get us on the same page. And that happens not just with everyday rendezvous, but in a lot of our large-scale social coordination, where everyone has to do the same thing as long as everyone knows that everyone else is doing it. Like, you know, why do you accept a green piece of paper in exchange for an item of value?

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Well, because you know that your grocer will give you some food in exchange for that piece of paper, and because they know that their suppliers will give them some food in exchange for that piece of paper. Everyone's gotta know that everyone's gotta know it, in the case of, say, a public convention like currency. Or driving on the right. It's not good enough to know that around here, the law says drive on the right unless I know that everyone else knows that everyone else knows it. And that's what gives me the confidence. So coordination on large scales and small scales depends on common knowledge. And of course, you get a headache if you try to think, well, does she know that I know that she knows that I know? I mean, none of us

• 9:17Speaker 01

  can really keep track of that. When something is out there, when it's public, when it's conspicuous, when it's no longer a private secret, that's what really corresponds to our sense, our intuition, that something is common knowledge, even if we don't think through all the layers, it's enough to know that everyone has seen it and everyone has seen everyone see it.

• 9:42Mike Carruthers?

  It's interesting, and driving on the right is such a good example of this, because you have a lot at stake that everybody knows to drive on the right, because it could kill you if everybody didn't know that, and apparently sometimes does. But we never stop to think, well, how did everyone get to know this? How does, we all assume everyone knows, and they, we assume that they know that we know, but how did we get to that assumption?

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and in some cases, just some public observation is enough. So you just, you see all the cars driving on the same side, and you, you figure, you may be wrong, but you figure that's just the way it's done around here. And I can confidently stay to the right, even when I don't see any traffic and know that I won't be, get an unpleasant surprise. And of course, it doesn't hold for walking down a stairway, where sometimes people do collide, or in a narrow corridor, or on a sidewalk, where we don't observe the same convention. There's a joke about a woman who calls her husband on the morning commute and says, honey, be really careful. I was listening to the radio, and they say

• 10:55Speaker 01

  there's a maniac driving on the wrong side of the freeway. And he says, one maniac? There are hundreds of them. So that joke shows that there are conventions that only work when everyone knows that they work. And sometimes they don't work. You know, I mentioned in, you know, on sidewalks and corridors where there isn't that norm. Or even in the case of currency, which I just mentioned a minute ago, you can have hyperinflation, where people no longer believe that currency has a value and it stops having value because no one believes that it has value anymore. So common knowledge is essential, but it can be fragile.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  It exists in people's heads.

• 11:43Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you know what I just, the experience I just had, I went to Costco. And because everybody drives on the right, there is sort of an assumption that people make that when you go up and down the aisles in a store, that you stay to the right as well. But there's no harm typically if you don't. So a lot of people don't. Well, not a lot of people, enough people to disrupt, but, but a lot of people don't. And you can, you can find yourself like going up the wrong way. But who says it's the wrong way?

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, because we have, when it comes to pedestrian traffic, we're, we're kind of libertarians. It's like everyone could do what they want, which, you know, if you have to choose a side, probably in the United States, you'd veer to the right, but it's not, it's not a strong norm.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  So some cases, things really are common knowledge. The whole country of Sweden faced the problem in the 60s. They drove on the left and they started to realize there's kind of a nuisance. We can't import cars from, you know, Germany. We can't export cars, you know, to the rest of Europe. And so they decided to switch to the right to join the rest of continental Europe and the United States. But then the problem is, how do you do it? So that everyone does it at the same time. So they picked a moment, I think it was midnight on December 31st, which popped out in everyone's minds as that's the time.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Not only when you do it, if it was November 14th at 3:27 a.m., there could have been a lot of chaos when no one was, even some people who kept track of it would have done it, but not everyone would know they were doing it. So they picked something that popped out. It would be easy for everyone to remember and everyone to think everyone's obeying it. And it worked. The Swedes all switched over and no one got killed.

• 13:41Mike Carruthers?

  How good are people in dealing with situations where there's a breakdown in common knowledge?

• 13:49Speaker 01

  So let's go back to the original case of, say, two people who are separated. Let's say one of them, the cellphone goes dead. How do they find each other? Well, this goes back to an example, but it's more than 60 years old, from Thomas Schelling. In New York, a couple might both gravitate to the clock in the middle of Grand Central Station, even if it wasn't particularly close to where they were separated, simply because if you have to pick someplace that's likely to pop into the mind of the other person, and more important, they think it'll pop into your mind for the same reason. You pick something that is unique, singular, but conspicuous.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  And there are experiments that show that people aren't bad at doing that. So if I say, I want you to pick a number, any number, but here's the catch. There's someone else. I'm asking him to pick a number as well. If you pick the same number, then I'll give you $50. If you pick different numbers, neither of you gets anything. Now, in that case, you're not going to pick your favorite number, your lucky number. You're going to think, oh, geez, there's an infinite number of numbers. How am I going to pick one that the other guy is also going to pick when he tries to think of what I'm going to pick? And in that case, people tend to pick the number one, just because it pops out. If you have to pick some number and you know that another person's got to pick some

• 15:18Speaker 01

  number, that's the one you pick. Now, the reason that this is important in everyday life, not just in these contrived cases, and even the contrived case of, you know, finding your spouse when your cellphone goes dead. In a famous analogy, the economist John Maynard Keynes imagined a beauty contest where the goal is not to pick the prettiest face from the six that are printed in the newspaper, but to pick the face that the most other people pick, all of them knowing that other people are trying to guess what other people are going to guess that other people are trying to guess. And again, you can say, well, who cares about that? That's such a fake example. Well, Keynes noted, it's not a fake example. That's kind of how investment works.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  A lot of times, people buy a stock not because they think, well, the company is going, is stamping out widgets and everyone wants to buy the widgets, but rather, if I buy it now, just think it might be worth so much more in a year from now because it's the greatest thing, it's the insanely great gadget, it's crypto, and everyone's, no one wants to be left out, there's a FOMO, fear of missing out. And you can get bubbles and crashes and panics and bank runs when everyone is trying to outguess everyone else. A bank run is the opposite. It's, I better get my money out of the bank because other people are taking their money

• 16:46Speaker 01

  out of the bank because they're afraid that other people are taking their money out of the bank and the bank doesn't have enough money to pay us to redeem all our savings, so I better rush and withdraw mine before it's too late. I mean, that's how we got a Great Depression in 1929.

• 17:00Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it seems a lot of things happen that way, and I want to ask you about that. I'm talking with Steven Pinker. He is author of the book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows.

• 17:14Speaker 03

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• 18:11Mike Carruthers?

  So Stephen, when you were talking about what happened during the Great Depression, isn't that also true, like when a hurricane hits and people rush to the store to buy toilet paper because they want to make sure they have toilet paper because they think everybody else is going to go run out and hoard a lot of toilet paper?

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Exactly. It happened during COVID too. With COVID, there wasn't any real shortage of toilet paper until people thought there might be a shortage. And they may not even have thought there's a shortage. They may have thought that other people might think there's a shortage, and so they ran out to hoard it, and that created the shortage. And that may have all begun back in the 70s, a period where there were shortages of occasionally of meat, of gasoline, of sugar, when Johnny Carson said on his opening monologue, and that was an era in which almost everyone watched Johnny Carson, and everyone knew that everyone watched Johnny Carson. And he made a joke about, did you hear about the latest? There's a shortage of toilet paper, which turned out not to be true, until he made the joke. And then there really was a shortage of toilet

• 19:15Speaker 01

  paper because everyone thought that everyone else thought there was. And ever since then, there has been the rumor that toilet paper is something that is in short supply in an emergency. Another case is, and again,

• 19:31Speaker 01

  As we mentioned at the beginning, because you can't really think about other people thinking about what other people think, what other people think, what other people think. But it's enough for something to be public, conspicuous out there, and you can, you just know that everyone knows that everyone knows. And that can happen, it happened when, in the old era of three networks, when almost everyone watched Johnny Carson. But it can also happen for some event like the Super Bowl, where, you know, everyone knows that, you know, the country stops and, because everyone's watching the Super Bowl. And when, a couple of years ago, when the cryptocurrency exchanges tried to gin up enthusiasm

• 20:09Speaker 01

  for buying crypto, they ran ads, which didn't actually say what any, what any advantage to crypto was, like, well, you could buy, you know, drugs, you could buy guns, it'll be a hedge against hyperinflation. They didn't mention any of those. All they said was, don't be like Larry David, don't miss out. Everyone's doing it. The price will increase because everyone thinks that the price will increase, because other people think the price will increase. And it's not a coincidence that they chose the Super Bowl to place those very expensive ads, because a Super Bowl is a common knowledge generator, because everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone watches the Super Bowl.

• 20:52Mike Carruthers?

  You wonder how some common knowledge gets to be common knowledge? Like, somebody had to start it. How did, how did it go from knowledge to common knowledge?

• 21:05Speaker 01

  When something is blurted out in public, and you hear it, and you see that everyone else can hear it, and can see that everyone else, that's enough to generate common knowledge. It's the intuition that something is out there. And that's why sometimes we try to keep, prevent things from getting out there. We, we try not to notice the elephant in the room. We hint, we use euphemism, we use innuendo, we don't say things in so many words, because once it is out there, what I would call common knowledge, everyone knows that everyone knows, that can change everything. And I think that's why.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  When it comes to touchy subjects, we often don't go there. We don't say it. We use euphemisms and innuendos where everyone knows what it means, but they don't necessarily know that everyone else knows that they know. So we don't want to come up for Netflix and chill. Well, you know, any grown woman knows what that means. But does she know that the guy knows that she knows? I mean, could she think, well, maybe he thinks I'm naive? And he could think, well, maybe she thinks I'm dense. And so there, say, platonic friendship can survive if he makes the hint and she rebuffs it.

• 22:24Mike Carruthers?

  Well, what's so interesting to me about common knowledge is it can be, when you think of knowledge, you think of something that is based in fact. But common knowledge can be created out of nothing, as evidenced by the toilet paper shortage during COVID. There was no toilet paper shortage until people decided to make it up and believe there was. But there really wasn't. Only believing it made it so.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  That's why one of the remedies was grocery stores and drugstores posting signs saying, "Max one package per customer." That did two things. One of them is it prevented the shelves from being stripped bare, because, you know, people couldn't buy that many. But the other thing is, is it reassured everyone that other people couldn't strip the shelves bare. And that's why it was important to post the sign. It would have been different if, when you went to the checkout counter, they said, "Oh, I'm sorry, you can only buy one package." The fact that the signs were posted itself generated the common knowledge that there would not be a toilet paper run.

• 23:35Mike Carruthers?

  Do you think this is human nature? That it's human nature for me to think there could be a toilet paper shortage and so if you're gonna buy it, I better buy it because I know that you know. You know what I mean? Is that human nature? Or is that more of a cultural thing or what?

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Well, I would say this is the part of human nature that makes culture possible. What is culture but commonly held beliefs? And commonly held values and customs? You don't work on Sunday or Saturday, depending on what culture you belong to. You don't expose certain body parts in public. You take your turn and you queue up at the grocery store or at the bus stop. There are hundreds of these things that the police don't enforce. You do them because you know that everyone knows that that's what you do. And I think it's part of human nature that we can have common knowledge. But the particular common knowledge that we have is what defines

• 24:39Speaker 01

  one culture as opposed to another culture. And sometimes these norms can change. It's often painful when they change, but that's how cultures change. Why we don't dress, we don't speak, we don't act the way that our grandparents did.

• 24:53Mike Carruthers?

  Talk about how facial expressions, gestures, blushing, maybe blushing's a good one to talk about. How they fit into this discussion?

• 25:04Speaker 01

  You know, we have a bunch of facial expressions. We smile, we frown, we look quizzical. But then there's blushing, where blood goes to our cheeks. Why is that certain state of shame or embarrassment signaled in that way? And I think the reason is that blushing is a common knowledge generator. Namely, you feel the heat from the inside at the same time you reten from the outside. What makes blushing so painful is as you feel the heat, you know that other people know that you're blushing and you know that they know that you know that you're blushing. So it's a common knowledge generator, as is, as are tears. You're seeing the world through your own tears and other people can see the glistening

• 25:48Speaker 01

  or the trickle, laughter, your speeches have been interrupted, you're not breathing regularly and other people can hear it. All these cases, you're recalibrating a social relationship. And in the case of blushing, what you're doing is you're saying, I screwed up, I breached some social norm, but I'm not trying to get away with it. I know that I've screwed up. So I'm not a weirdo, I'm not a psychopath, I'm not a loose cannon, I'm not a lone wolf. I screwed up, I'm only human, everyone screws up, but I know that I screw up. You and I hold the same norms. I think that's what blushing is for.

• 26:28Mike Carruthers?

  And my understanding is that blushing, while it may be very embarrassing to the blusher, people, other people don't judge you harshly for blushing. And it sends a signal that they know that you know that you screwed up and now I know that you know that I know that you screwed up. And so we're good, we're good.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Blushing is endearing. That's right. Even though it's painful to be the blusher, it actually rises, raises your standing and other people think better of you when you blush.

• 26:59Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it is just so weird to think about all the things I know that I know you know that I know you know that I know. And, and yet we never talk about them and, but we just did. I've been talking with Steven Pinker. He is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of the book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Steven, it was great to speak with you.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Thanks so much, Mike, for having me on.

• 27:36Speaker 03

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• 28:36Mike Carruthers?

  There are two kinds of people in the world. People who are always on time and people who are chronically late. And they often drive each other crazy. People who are punctual can't quite figure out why it is so hard to be on time. If you run late, well, just leave the house a little earlier. If you say you're going to be somewhere at 10 o'clock, you should be there at 10 o'clock. It's rude to be late. And people who are late wonder why punctual people are so hung up on punctuality. Why their lives are ruled by the clock. So what's going on here? Well, that's what Emily Laber Warren is here to talk about. She wrote an article for the New York Times about this.

• 29:20Mike Carruthers?

  And there's a link to her article in the show notes if you want to read it. Emily heads the Health and Science Reporting Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. She's been a staff editor at Popular Science, Scientific American Mind, and Women's Health. Hi Emily, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  Thank you so much.

• 29:44Mike Carruthers?

  So I didn't really know this was a thing worth writing about for the New York Times. These differences in how people treat time and people's time personality. But clearly from reading the article, it is something. So how did this come about?

• 29:59Speaker 02

  So I was talking with a researcher at the University of Texas, Austin. Her name's Donna Ballard. And she studies chronemics, which is like, I didn't know there were people who studied chronemics. But it's really the study of time and how time affects the way we function. And she said something to me that kind of blew my mind, which was, "Time is not the clock." And I had never really thought about that. And she, you know, explained that, you know, if you think about it, we haven't had clocks for very long in, in the course of human history. And, you know, some hundreds of years ago, you couldn't say, I'll see you at nine AM on the dot. You know, you'd say, I'll see you in the morning. You know, I'll

• 30:41Speaker 02

  see you when the sun is, you know, whatever. And so this, this intense obsession that we have with scheduling and promptness and all of that is really an industrial kind of thing. So that got me started.

• 30:56Mike Carruthers?

  I remember hearing that, that one of the reasons, or one of the primary reasons that we became very obsessed about time and punctuality and things was trains. Because if the trains weren't on time, and people weren't really keeping track of time, trains would crash into each other because they'd be on the same track at the same time. So we had to get that right.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And then, of course, time zones and all of those things that we had to create, right, to make sure that time didn't get really weird. They couldn't be like, you know, seven PM and the sun was, you know, shining brightly or whatever. So, yeah, absolutely. And I'm not an expert on time, but what really grabbed me about this story was that Dr. Ballard told me about a cultural anthropologist named Edward Hall, who, back in the 1950s, he traveled a lot all over the world. And he noticed that there were certain cultures where people were very comfortable multitasking, like doing many

• 31:59Speaker 02

  things at once. Not, not simultaneously, but more interleaving one thing with another. Interruptions were normal, not bothersome. They could carry on multiple conversations at once. They didn't, they kind of flowed from one task to another. And it was very different from what he was accustomed to, which is a more sort of Northern European, American, Canadian, what he ended up calling a mono chronic.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Society, you know, that's what we tend to be used to here. And it's where people are used to doing one thing at a time, checking them off their list. And interruptions are considered bothersome and not sort of a fun opportunity to like, kind of shift gears in the middle and then get back to that other thing later. So there's a cultural thing. He called it mono and polychronicity. So places in, and this is very, you know, general, but like Latin America, Africa, Middle East, he called those cultures more polychronic as opposed to the monochronic cultures that we see like in the US. But within each culture, there's great variation for individuals.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  So even if you're, you know, born and bred in the United States, that doesn't mean that you personally are monochronic. And one of the things that's really interesting is how there is this great variation in how people relate to time and it causes so many conflicts between individuals. So that was one of the reasons I think this article really caught people's attention because most people have had that experience of being on one end or the other of this conflict about time.

• 33:41Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I certainly have. I mean, I'm punctual. I show up on time and I expect other people to show up on time. And sure, there are times when people are late and I've been late. I mean, things do happen that get in the way. But I'm talking more about the people who are always late, you know, then it just feels rude to me that if you make an agreement, it's an agreement. We're going to meet here at nine o'clock. Well, if you don't show up at nine o'clock, you stroll in at nine thirty, well, you've broken the agreement.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  All right, well, let me see if I can say something that might shift your position a little. You know, your position is very standard in our culture, right? That, you know, time is money and people's, you know, respect for other people's time is really important and being late is a way of being disrespectful. However, In a more polychronic culture, where people value the the interactions that they're having with other people, the experiences they're having in the moment, it would be very rude to say to someone, "Hey, we're having this great conversation," or "I know we still haven't finished dessert, but like, I gotta run, because I have an appointment with somebody else, and I have to go." And you cut off

• 35:00Speaker 02

  a conversation, interaction prematurely, because you have another appointment. And in a, in a, and cer- and you can imagine how, in a certain mindset, a certain culture, that feels tremendously rude. Right? So I think, does that do anything for you to help you kind of, at least open, not change, but open your mind to seeing it another way?

• 35:22Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, I see that as, as a point of view, but I don't see it as any more valid a point of view than my point of view, because of what I said. It's, it's an agreement. Right? If you said, "I might be a half an hour late," or even if you call and say, "Look, I'm running late," but if you just wander in thirty, forty-five minutes late, because, well, it doesn't matter to you, well, th- then I don't see that as valid. Because the people who have this loose grip on time, who claim not to watch the clock, that it's not important to them, I bet when they have to catch a plane, then it's important to them. I bet you they show up on time at the airport, because it's important to them.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  You know, when I talked to like Dr. Ballard and other time experts, um, and they actually, they told me a story that Dr. Hall, you know, Edward Hall, who was, you know, the father of this whole thing, he invented the terms, et cetera. He once intervened in a marriage where he knew, you know, a couple that were constantly at odds over, you know, punctuality. And he just kind of explained that, um, it's not a matter of rudeness. It's really a, just a different relationship to time, a different way of like prioritizing your life. Just to try and help them, it was kind of like an intervention. And apparently, I think it worked pretty well. Not that either of them was going to change or change their minds, but just to not be so offended by the other person. I think it's kind of, I think that's the best we could get here.

• 36:52Mike Carruthers?

  Well, and I don't want to sound like I'm really strict on this. I don't get offended. I mean, I certainly notice it. And there are so many ways to mitigate whether somebody gets offended or not. And that is, as I said, like, call ahead. I'm running late. When people know that you're going to be late and that there's a reason why, that's a lot easier to take than, I don't care and I'll just wander in whenever I get there.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  I mean, another way of looking at it is, you know, if I think of the many, many times that I have been sweating and stressing out because I was going to be three, five, 10, 12 minutes late, to something where, if you think about it, you know, it wasn't a big deal to be late. Just the fact that I knew that you, or a person like you on the other end, was going to be really annoyed or upset or judge me for it. There's a certain amount of stress that we add to our lives with this obsession with punctuality. Obviously, there are moments when, you know, look, you got to make a train. You're going to a performance, right? You have to be on time.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  But there's so many other times when it really doesn't matter, you know? And I did speak to this woman who was so interesting. She didn't make it into the story just for length. But she's Caribbean-American. She says everyone in her, she's American, you know, she's from the US, but she's from Caribbean heritage. And most of her friends are black. And she's like, you know, in her social circle, there is no like, I'm late. You know, she was so funny. She said, white people are always so like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. They're always like apologizing for being like three minutes late. And she says, you know, it's just... befuddling to her. She was, she was like over an hour late to her own wedding.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  And she's like laughing because all of, most of her guests arrived late because they knew that you weren't supposed to come on time, but she had, you know, one couple that didn't realize that. And they were so confused when they got to the church and nobody was there yet. And then they said, but then all of a sudden, everybody started coming and then you came and it was all great. So it just kind of, and for her, you know, it's, it's been really hard to kind of manage that when she's had to deal, you know, at school and work and the kind of punctuality that is expected. And she says it always like astounds her that, you know, a class begins on the dot, you know, like she shows up for a class at, you know, a 10 a.m. class and it starts at 10. She's like, why don't they start at 10:05 or 10:06? Like, isn't there some?

• 39:24Speaker 02

  She started to help me see that it could be seen as harsh to be absolutely punctual. She's like, you know, what if somebody needs to get a, you know, a drink of water? You know, you know, they, their train was a little late, like can't there be a little bit of give? And um, that I, I actually, I'm a teacher, so I actually have thought about that. Cause I've definitely had periods where I started every class like punctually on time, exactly. And now I feel like, oh, those first few minutes could be used in a very different way of just kind of chatting or letting the students chat and just, you know, easing into things. So um, I definitely learned a lot from the reporting.

• 40:02Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I, I get that. And, and I understand that there is what you just said, there is degrees of this. Like, who cares if you're three minutes late? I don't care. You might care if you're, if you're trying to catch a plane and the plane left. And, and people who are not punctual, find a way to be punctual. So they don't miss their plane or their train. So they know how to do it. They just don't do it sometimes and do it others. But, you know, I, I think most people don't care if you're three minutes late. And who's ever thrown a party where somebody shows up like? When the party starts at seven, nobody shows up till 7:30 and yeah, that's kind of the way it is.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  Right, if you show up on time, it's kind of rude to a party. So I think that's a place where people who are on more of the monochronic, you know, side of things can kind of get it, that like, there's times where being on time is actually kind of rude, unless you showed up to help prepare.

• 40:58Mike Carruthers?

  So I want to understand, because I get that, you know, there are people who don't live by the clock, they don't mind if things are a little late, but you live in a world with a lot of people who do mind when things are a little late, and real problems can happen. If you and I are going to meet for lunch, and I only have a half an hour to eat because of my job, and you show up 20 minutes late, well, we only have 10 minutes, so we can't eat. So, how do people who are looser with time make it okay in their head that the other person might just, it's just, that's too bad?

• 41:34Speaker 02

  I don't think anyone, so, the person who I was, you know, who I mentioned before, who was late to her own wedding, some people don't mind, like, she says, in her social circle, there is no such thing as being late, like, you show up when you show up, and it's fine, you know, and I think she was talking more about, maybe like, social events where it's more than one person, you know, a party or something like that, but there's just, people aren't, don't, people don't fume or feel upset if someone comes a half hour late, and, you know, I guess, if it's freezing cold and you're on a street corner, maybe, but so much of the time, it's not like that, you're at a restaurant, you know, you can

• 42:17Speaker 02

  just sit and chill out, you know, read your book, or whatever it is, you know, and the person comes when they come, and it's not a big deal, so I think it goes both ways.

• 42:27Mike Carruthers?

  But someone listening to this conversation might think, it doesn't sound like it's both ways. It sounds like you're making the case that people who are punctual need to lighten up, loosen up, so what if people are late, no big deal, you need to change. I'm not hearing a lot about, well, maybe people who are late a lot ought to try a little harder to be on time, I mean, it seems like there should be a compromise.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Agreed, agreed, and the thing that might be getting lost in this conversation is that it's not all about promptness and punctuality, it's about how you prefer to...

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Um, conduct your life. Like, are you someone who wants to do one thing, complete it, and move on to the next thing? Because that's part of it. It's not all about being on time or being late. It's sort of about a preference. Do you, do you want to delve into one thing until it's done and finish it and then move on? Or are you someone who likes to kind of dip into something and then put it aside and dip into something else and kind of get back and sort of flow in between tasks? And there've been some really cool studies showing that, um, for people who are monochronic, if you give them like puzzles to do, they're gonna excel if you are basically like, you have eight minutes to do this puzzle, and now you have eight minutes to do the next, and then you have eight minutes to do the third.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  But if someone is polychronic, they're gonna do the puzzles better if you're like, okay, you have three minutes on this one, now you're moving to the second one, then you're moving to the third one, you're coming back to the first one for another four minutes or whatever, and you, you allow them to kind of drift back and forth between the tasks, and they tend to be more successful at puzzle solving that way. So, it's really just a recognition that, um, you know, people's minds work differently, and, um, some people are cool with interruptions, and, yeah, I mean, it's, it's not good to be late. I don't think anyone thinks it's great to be late. I think the idea is that there are cultures where, um, lateness isn't a thing, the way we think about it. And it's just, it's helpful to

• 44:36Speaker 02

  realize that it is cultural.

• 44:40Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it's interesting about the puzzles and things, because I think of myself as somebody who likes to do things, well, it, it's situational. So, when, in my work, in, when I put this podcast together, this is my full-time job, I have noticed that if I get interrupted a lot, it takes a long time to get back to where I was, that, that there's a, I have to kind of rebuild where I was if I get interrupted. So, I prefer not to get interrupted. But in other parts of my life, I'm fine with go with the flow, interrupt me here, would, oh, let's switch gears here. It really depends on what I'm doing as to how I would do that.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love that you said that. And that's actually, you know, one of the sort of pieces of advice in the article is really that these time styles are preferences. They're not traits. You do, everyone can, it might not be comfortable, but we all can sort of do the other thing or do the thing that's a little bit different from our natural. And that sometimes the best thing to do is what you just said is think about the context. What's the goal? If the goal is just to have fun and, you know, make friends, then you kind of like can be in a polychronic frame of mind. But if you're at work and you have stuff to get done and you just need to, you know, nail it down, then, you know, get into a monochronic more, you know, state of mind.

• 46:04Mike Carruthers?

  And I would imagine that the people who who don't mind being later or don't see a problem with it are also the ones who can mix and match those puzzles around and not do them one at a time in like a linear fashion.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, correct. Those are the things that go together. Right? If you're polychronic, you tend to be comfortable just, you know, moving between tasks. Maybe you feel more creative. There's also, yeah, you'll be more creative, more productive. And then, you know, for monochronic people, and one of the time experts I spoke to for the story is herself, you know, very monochronic. Actually, two of them were very monochronic. And she loves her monochronic city. She loves, you know, she says that the beauty of it is that you delve deep, you know, you, you, you rule out distractions, you can really dive into something with your whole self and get lost in it and become expert in it. And it's this

• 47:00Speaker 02

  real desire to kind of become one with the task. And she loves that. But ironically, or just interestingly, she studies work teams. She studies the way that like high pressure teams function. And she told me about a time when she was allowed to sit and watch the air traffic controllers. At the Houston Airport as they were bringing planes in for landings and she said it was absolutely amazing to to watch them, you know, with such ease, like go from one plane to another, yell, you know, bark this command, move this over here, tell this person that, right? They were going back and forth um in this very high pressure way. And she

• 47:44Speaker 02

  said it was almost like a ballet, you know, to see really poly chronic people when they are in their, you know, in their element, doing their thing um and doing a job that's truly poly chronic and that requires that. Um so she has full respect for it, but she herself is monochronic and loves it.

• 48:02Mike Carruthers?

  As am I. But I don't know if I love it. It's just, I think it's just the way I'm wired. But I think the important takeaway from this discussion is to realize that other people are wired differently and and we've all got to get along. I've been speaking with Emily Laber Warren. She heads the Health and Science Reporting Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City of New York. And she wrote an article that got quite a bit of attention about this called Always Late: Blame Your Time Personality. If you'd like to read the article that was in the New York Times, there is a link to it in the show notes for this episode. Emily, thank you.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Okay, happy to do it. Thank you so much, Mike. It's good to talk to you.

• 48:45Mike Carruthers?

  Whenever you're feeling grumpy, moody, or just having a bad day, here are some ways to cheer up fast. Have some tea. Simple pleasures really do go a long way. A study in Food Quality and Preferences found that drinking a cup of tea provides an instant shot of feel good. Work out while watching a show. In research from the Journal of Sports, Science, and Medicine, people who enjoyed watching TV while walking on a treadmill for 10 minutes had double the mood boost than people who exercised without distraction. Reach out to someone. Just chatting face to face or even online reduced participants'

• 49:28Mike Carruthers?

  bad mood in research published in Computers and Human Behavior. Humans are an intensely social species. We need to seek and maintain at least a few positive social relationships. Order takeout. Choosing what's for dinner can make you moody if you're already stressed. So, an easier option would be to order takeout and then you don't get moodier. And that is something you should know. I hope you found this episode entertaining, enlightening, and fun, and I bet you know people that would feel the same way. So, please share this episode with someone you know, and that helps us boost our audience, and then everybody's happy.

• 50:10Mike Carruthers?

  I'm Micah Rutherford, thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 50:16Speaker 03

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