Why Audiences Behave the Way They Do & The Hidden Benefits of Uncertainty - SYSK Choice

Who doesn’t love the smell of a fresh Christmas tree? That unmistakable pine scent isn’t just nostalgic — it may actually have measurable benefits. We start this episode with a look at why the aroma of pine can lift your mood, help you relax, and enhance your holiday season. Source: https://www.foxnews.com/health/the-healing-power-of-pine Audiences are remarkable. Whether it’s a play, a movie, or a concert, something special happens when people gather — a shared energy that shapes how we feel and how performers respond. But how did audiences become “a thing”? Why do we applaud? And how did we learn the unspoken rules of audience behavior? Theatre historian Robert Viagas, Editor-in-Chief of Encore Monthly and longtime Playbill veteran, joins me to explore the fascinating evolution of audiences. He’s author of Right This Way: A History of the Audience. (https://amzn.to/46F8lOS) We love certainty — confident leaders, clear answers, and firm decisions. Yet uncertainty can be surprisingly powerful. Journalist Maggie Jackson explains how not knowing can spark curiosity, deepen thinking, and ultimately lead to better choices. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Business Week, Vanity Fair, and Wired.com. She’s the author of Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. (https://amzn.to/3Gli42b) Want to get more done in less time? We wrap up with three simple but highly effective productivity techniques from expert Don Wetmore that can help streamline your day and boost your efficiency. Source: https://productivity-institute.com/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! AURA FRAMES: Visit ⁠⁠⁠https://AuraFrames.com⁠⁠⁠ and get $45 off Aura's best selling Carver Mat frames by using promo code SOMETHING at checkout. DAVID GREENE IS OBSESSED: We love the "David Greene Is Obsessed" podcast! Listen at ⁠ https://link.mgln.ai/SYSK⁠ or wherever you get your podcasts. QUINCE: Give and get timeless holiday staples that last this season with Quince. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! DELL: It’s time for Cyber Monday at Dell Technologies. Save big on PCs like the Dell 16 Plus featuring Intel® Core™ Ultra processors. Shop now at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://Dell.com/deals ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ AG1: Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://DrinkAG1.com/SYSK ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get a FREE Welcome Kit with an AG1 Flavor Sampler and a bottle of Vitamin D3 plus K2, when you first subscribe! NOTION: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Notion brings all your notes, docs, and projects into one connected space that just works . It's seamless, flexible, powerful, and actually fun to use! Try Notion, now with Notion Agent, at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://notion.com/something⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ PLANET VISIONARIES: In partnership with Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative, this… is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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

• 0:29Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, the benefits of smelling a Christmas tree and all it can do for you. Then the psychology and magic of an audience.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  It's interesting how unanimous audiences can be. When something funny happens, you don't get half the audience laughing and the other half the audience growling. Audiences tend to pick up energy from the other people, and they tend to reach unanimity.

• 0:55Mike Carruthers?

  Also, three powerful ways that will help you get more done in less time. And the art and science of uncertainty, and why being unsure of yourself can actually be a good thing.

• 1:08Speaker 03

  It's a real game changer when you can begin to see that uncertainty is a wonderful signal that you don't know, and now you can investigate. In fact, uncertainty is actually highly related to curiosity.

• 1:23Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 1:29Mike Carruthers?

  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. 1,000 people will each win $1,000 in Shop Cash.

• 1:58Mike Carruthers?

  And shop.com is actually a really clever idea. It brings lots of different stores together in one place. 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 a thousand chances to win a thousand dollars, 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.

• 2:42Mike Carruthers?

  That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 2:54Speaker 04

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

• 3:07Mike Carruthers?

  Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. One of the great things about the holiday season, I think most people can agree on, is all the smells that smell like the holidays. And the one smell I think that universally is loved is the smell of a Christmas tree, a pine tree. The power of pine is supposedly actually good for you. For centuries, some people have gone to great lengths to get access to ancient pine forests for their healing powers. The scent of pine has been found to reduce stress, hostility, and depression. A 15-minute walk through a local Christmas tree farm exposes you to some powerful aromatherapy,

• 3:52Mike Carruthers?

  the old-fashioned way. Be sure to take some deep, slow breaths as you stroll through the evergreens. That scent of pine can even help relieve chest congestion and supposedly soothe sore muscles. And that is something you should know.

• 4:11Mike Carruthers?

  You may not have thought about this very much, but I have, and that is the magic of an audience. Think about it, when you watch a movie, or a play, or some other performance with other people as part of an audience, it is a very different experience than watching alone. For example, you might watch a comedy in a theater and laugh your head off along with the rest of the crowd, but watch that same movie by yourself in your living room, you're almost guaranteed not to laugh as much, maybe not at all. Being part of an audience changes things. It is itself an experience. So what is it about audiences?

• 4:52Mike Carruthers?

  How did someone even come up with the idea of putting people together in a group to watch something? And then how did the audience members learn what to do when they watched it? Here to discuss the power and the magic and the history of audiences is Robert V. August. He is editor in chief of Encore Monthly, the National Theater Magazine, and he spent much of his career working at Playbill, the iconic theater program company. He's author of a book called, "Right This Way: A History of the Audience." Hi, Robert, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Hello, Michael.

• 5:28Mike Carruthers?

  So, I don't remember when I first realized the importance and the significance of an audience, but I do remember there's someone talking about it that made me think, like, you know, imagine a TV game show without an audience, or a late night comedy show without an audience. Like, the audience is not just there to watch it, it's part of it, it's part of the show. And when did you first kind of get in on this?

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I've been going to see things since I was a kid, and... A lot of other people, I think they approach it, they feel like they're fish in water. They don't realize that they're in something, that they're part of something. And yet, it's an incredible experience for people. You respond differently when you're part of an audience. And I noticed this early on. Now, I think I may have mentioned that I've seen more than 2,000 shows just on Broadway alone for my years at Playbill. But I've been a member of movie audiences, television audiences, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm always acutely aware of how I'm experiencing things, not just as myself, but as part of an audience.

• 6:41Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, and think about how, when you watch, say, something funny. When you watch it alone, you almost never laugh. But when you watch it with a group of people, it's funny. Or when you watch a football game on TV by yourself, you probably don't jump up and scream and yell. But if you have other people in your living room with you, there's something that happens. And I don't know what that is. Do you know what that is?

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Well, you gather significance from the people around you. Have you ever been, like, in a show or a movie? They'll say a funny line, and the whole audience will laugh. And you didn't laugh because, like, I don't get it. But then, like, one second later, you get it. And it's the audience that told you that that thing was funny. And so you gather that kind of energy. I mean, look at these people who pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars to see Taylor Swift. Look at Taylor Swift. They could stay home, they could watch her videos, they could listen to her albums. But they feel that there is some kind of special electricity that they get

• 7:49Speaker 02

  from being around other Taylor Swift fans. Being in the presence of Taylor Swift, having that experience as a group. Stephen King wrote a really interesting book called Donc Macabre about...

• 8:05Speaker 02

  About why people go to see horror movies. Something that they, you know, the things that are horror in horror movies, you would never want to happen in your own life. Or to even be present when that happens, but people consider it entertainment. Why? This was King's theory. That people go to measure themselves against what they see. They say, well, this is going to be a really scary Stephen King movie. I wonder if I could take it. I wonder if I'm strong enough to take it. And they go and they see the movie. And like, it'll be a horrible murder scene and you go, oh, that was awful. That was awful. But I, but I could live through it. I could, I could survive it.

• 8:44Mike Carruthers?

  Do we have a sense of the history of audiences? Like when, when somebody said, hey, why don't we put on a little show here and get some people to come and sit down and watch us? Cause you know, it kind of sounds weird when you say it that way. But somebody must have done something like that to say. Let's make people watch us do something and see what they think.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Well, you know, audiences had to be trained. Audiences had to learn how to be audiences. Back in the days of the Greeks, they loved poetry. And they would have poets who would speak poetry and they would, most of their poetry was about their gods and about their religion. And they became so popular, they would have. One or two, or sometimes three, or sometimes a whole group of people. They would call it, they called it a chorus and they would all say. The poetry at the same time and audiences love this. And they would say, well, the god Zeus did this and Zeus did that. And then one day. There was one of these people in the chorus. It was a guy named Thespis. And that name sounds familiar. This is where we get the word thespian from.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Thespis did something incredibly radical. He walked in front of the chorus and instead of saying Zeus did this, Zeus did that, he said. I am Zeus and here is what I did. And people consider him the first actor and I could tell you, audiences were shocked. They were like, he's not Zeus. He doesn't look like Zeus. He just looks like a, it looks like Thespis from down the block. But after a while it was like, well, you know. I don't know what, what Zeus sounds like, but I bet he sounds just like that. I think, I think Thespis is doing a good job. And so audiences began to accept that actors. That, that performers could.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  embody another character and it's and it's interesting for a long time there was only one actor supported by the chorus then they playwrights came along and said I have an idea we'll have two actors and they can argue with each other and that whole idea of a chorus all speaking at the same time can you imagine going into a movie where all the actors were saying the same lines at the same time it would sound weird ah but if you're at a musical they have literally have a chorus and they do exactly what the Greek choruses did except they sing it and audiences accept that perfectly well audiences have been trained now to accept that

• 11:13Speaker 02

  there was a famous French movie that that came out at the time when they first had movies it was it was called the arrival of a train at La Sia tat it was a very short movie and all it was the audiences were just learning to to watch these things and to accept them it was just a train pulling into a station and the train was coming right at the audience but it looked it wasn't a painted train it wasn't you know actors wearing a train costume it was a train and it was coming straight at them and people screamed in terror they thought a train was coming at them but now but after that people laughed at themselves and they said well you know we we

• 11:55Speaker 02

  accept now that we could see a picture of a train and we know it's not going to hurt us and gradually over the years many many other things that have been added to the way they create images the way they create plays etc audiences have gradually learned to respond in certain ways that they think now has always been there but it hasn't

• 12:17Mike Carruthers?

  is there any sense of when people started applauding?

• 12:22Speaker 02

  yes that well the earliest reference that I could find to it is Uh, back in the days of the Roman Empire, when a Roman general would be out uh on a campaign. And uh was a successful campaign, which many of them were. When they would come back into Rome, they would have a parade and they called it a a triumph. That's where we get the word triumphant from. They called it a triumph and the the general would march at the front. Sometimes if they had defeated an enemy, the enemy would be dragged along in chains. And people were required to to express their approval and excitement by banging their hands together. Now, if you think about it,

• 13:05Speaker 02

  it's an odd way to show that you like something, just banging your hands together. But people started to do it and it came to be applied to other things. And gradually it be became the way that people expressed uh their approval of things. Similar with with, you know, with booing. Things things happened early on. And there were different ways of booing. People have now kind of come to accept that yelling boo is the way to express disapproval. But if you think about it, I mean, it seems so natural, but if you think about it, it's actually kind of a weird way to express disapproval.

• 13:41Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, what but what would be better? Because it seems to work now.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Well, I'll tell you, for a long time, uh and you've probably seen this in old movies and things. People would express their displeasure by throwing things at the actors, literally throwing things at the actors. This even in the days of Shakespeare, when he had uh what they call the groundlings, the people who would stand right in front of the stage and they would sell them um hazelnuts and cockle shells. That was the snacks that they would eat. And if they didn't like what they saw on the stage, they would throw the shells, throw the shells at the actors. Now, that is that is one area where they were provided with that by the theater, obviously not the throw at the stage. But when I see old movies of of people throwing eggs at the stage or throwing rotten fruit at the stage,

• 14:30Speaker 02

  you kind of had to know that the show was gonna be bad, because who walks around with rotten fruit in their pockets?

• 14:36Mike Carruthers?

  Right, right. You gotta you gotta you gotta pack your pockets before you leave the house with the tomatoes and um.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  Right. And they didn't have plastic bags in those days, so I imagine that the clothes their clothes were pretty much of a mess. You had to really dislike somebody. But dislike them so much that you would pay to show your hatred of them. Once again, a weird audience behavior.

• 15:01Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about the psychology and the magic of audiences. And my guest is Robert Viagis. He is editor in chief of Encore Monthly and author of the book, Right This Way: A History of the Audience.

• 15:15Speaker 00

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

• 15:43Speaker 05

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 16:11Mike Carruthers?

  So, Robert, have there been other ways that audiences have changed in terms of how they react? Or what they do, or anything like that?

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. I'll give you an example. How much audiences, even here in the United States, have changed over the last 100 years? Okay, 100 years ago, there was a form of entertainment called vaudeville, which was, you know, live variety entertainment. Actors would come in, whether it was a comedian, there was a dancer, and there was a... People would juggle, people would do special tricks, they would do rope tricks, they had animal acts, etc. People would come in and watch that. But I have to tell you that back in those days... Um, one of the most popular forms of entertainment was ethnic entertainment. People would make fun of different ethnic groups. They had what they would call um a Dutch comedian,

• 17:07Speaker 02

  which was a Jewish comedian. They would have Irish comedians. They would come in and they would do Irish uh accents. And there was a tremendous amount of blackface. This was one of, for years, they had uh, they had a form of entertainment called minstrel shows where white actors would dress up as black actors. They would black up and they would, they would tell uh, you know, why did chicken cross the road? That sort of, sort of thing. Um, and this was the most popular form of entertainment in this country. But at that same period of time, if you told a sexual joke, if you told a dirty joke, you would be, you'd be blackballed. You would be, you're not, you would not be able to work.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  In vaudeville, they had very strict rules about what kinds of things that you could joke about and what you could not. Alright, that was only a hundred years ago. In the last hundred years, it has come a hundred and eighty degrees. If you come out and uh tell a sexual joke, people laugh their heads off. There's children on sitcoms that do sexual humor. But at the same time, if you come out and you do a uh, an ethnic character, the, our sense of humor, what we consider to be funny, has changed so much in the last hundred years. And those are just a couple of examples.

• 18:25Mike Carruthers?

  One of the things that fascinates me about audiences and, and comedians will often tell you this, that you can do the same act in front of an audience and kill one night and the next night bomb. And yeah, it might be the performance is off a little bit too, but the, but audiences have a personality, it seems, that, that some nights the audience is great, other nights the audience is not. And I, I don't know how anyone can explain that.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Well, I know that on Broadway, which is my, my, most of my experiences is with dealing with Broadway audiences. It is notorious among actors that Friday night performances are always the worst. Friday night audiences are always the worst. Usually they've been working all day, they're exhausted, they may have had a couple of pops on their way in, and they tend to be uh, they, they tend to do what they, it's called sitting on their hands. They don't applaud, they don't laugh. It's very, very hard to get a Friday night audience uh rolling. Good actors are able to do it, but it's hard.

• 19:26Mike Carruthers?

  Is there anything else about the kind of the group mentality of audiences that that because you know what's interesting to me is if you go to watch a play or even a movie with a lot of people in the audience, you become this part of this oneness of the audience, but when the lights come on, you don't go, hey, wasn't that great, you don't still don't talk to anybody, but but during the show, you were all in this together and then when the show's over, it's, you know, okay, I don't need to talk to you or see you ever again.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  You become a creature. It's interesting how unanimous audiences can be. When something funny happens, you don't like get half the audience laughing and the other half of the audience growling. Audiences tend to pick up energy from the other people sitting with them, and they tend to reach unanimity. I remember talking to playwrights. One thing that became very popular in the 90s was to do a play and then afterward have a talkback, where people could raise their hands and ask questions about the play, or give comments on the play, etc. And I spoke to a playwright who once said, "Individual audiences are

• 20:41Speaker 02

  always wrong, but the audience as a group is always right." And that's why a lot of these people, instead of having talkbacks, they'd rather just sit out in the audience and just listen. Movies do this too. They do, they do audience reaction. They have, instead of just asking one or two people, they will sit there in the back and they will watch the audience watch the movie. And they, the reaction that they, the group reaction is more significant than individual comments, because a big audience will somehow reach a magical consensus just from being in the same room together.

• 21:21Mike Carruthers?

  It also seems that the room, the theater, the space in which you're watching something has a, has something to do with how people react.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  You've probably heard in New York, they have what's called Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway. And primarily, those are based on how many seats are in the house. And you'll sometimes see a show, they'll open on Broadway and people will say, "You know, this was really, this needed to be in a smaller theater. It needed to be in an Off-Broadway house. This is really an Off-Broadway show. They should never have brought it to Broadway." There was a Pulitzer Prize-winning play a few years ago called Driving Miss Daisy. Driving Miss Daisy only has three characters in it. When they did it originally Off-Broadway, it was in a tiny little theater, a tiny little, a very intimate Off-Broadway theater. When it went on tour,

• 22:16Speaker 02

  it played these big houses that were designed for musicals. And I remember talking to the actors who were performing in it. And they said, "We really have to open up our performances. We have to, we have to use our bodies more. We have to project our voices a lot more. We have to make the characters broader so that audiences could see and they could experience what the characters were, were like." I mean, look at the difference between stage performing and movie performing. In stage performing, people, you know, they're sitting out in the house. They're sitting some distance away. Whereas in movies, movies, a camera can get right into the actor's face.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  And you can see the actor like lifting one eyebrow to express something. If that actor, a lot of times when movie and TV actors try to appear on Broadway, they'll give you that little eyebrow raise in the middle of a performance and people will be able to see it out to about the fourth row. And everybody else in the house were like, "Why isn't he doing anything?" In the old days, they used to have a, a style of acting that was called Del Sart. And Del Sart, they would tell the actors to do certain movements that would express certain emotions. And the audience learned that like when an actor would tilt their head back and put the back of their hand up against their forehead, that meant they're sad.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  And the audience, and it was something that could be seen all the way in the back of the balcony.

• 23:48Mike Carruthers?

  You know, it's interesting today, when you go to a movie at the movie theater, just before the movie starts, they play that little clip that it says, you know, "Please silence your phone, please don't talk, please don't text, please don't spoil the movie." People didn't used to have to be told that, but now they do.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  They're so used to like watching things in their living room, taking their shoes off. If they see something funny, they'll explain it to the person next to them. They've become used to that, and it's hard for them to change lanes and go into an audience where there are different expectations that they don't know about.

• 24:28Mike Carruthers?

  I wonder how technology is going to change what it means to be an audience member.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  You know, everybody always thinks that like the technology level we've gotten to is as far as they're going. I am just going to be fascinated to watch the way audiences evolve over the next 20, 30, 40 years.

• 24:50Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this is fun because I think people, once they hear you, next time they go see something as part of an audience, will pay attention to the audience and notice how it reacts as a group, and I think it's really fun. My guest has been Robert Viagas. He is editor in chief of Encore Monthly, and he is author of a book called Right This Way: A History of the Audience. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Appreciate you coming on. Thanks, Robert.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Mike, thanks so much for having me on the show. It's a great show. You are a great interviewer, and I had a ball talking about audiences with you, with your audience.

• 25:28Speaker 00

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

• 25:58Speaker 05

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 26:29Mike Carruthers?

  Uncertainty. The word itself doesn't feel comfortable. We like certainty. We like people who seem sure of themselves. Lack of certainty seems kind of wishy-washy. But there may be a different way to look at uncertainty, that maybe facing the world with a little less certainty might be a good thing. That's according to Maggie Jackson. She's an award-winning author and journalist who's been featured in The New York Times, Business Week, Vanity Fair, The Times of London. And she is author of a book called Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. Hi Maggie, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  Great to be with you and your audience.

• 27:12Mike Carruthers?

  So, explain what you mean by being unsure, because I think, you know, my initial reaction when I saw it, and I think most people's reaction is, well, what could be good about that? We like people who know what they're talking about, or who appear to know what they're talking about, who are sure of everything. So, what do you mean unsure? Let's define the term.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  Well, uncertainty, you're right, gets a very bad rap. I mean, it's sort of seen as synonymous with weakness and inertia, and yet I'm arguing the opposite. And science is proving that uncertainty is really a path to flourishing and better decision-making. But you're right, it's important to define uncertainty. We often talk about the uncertainty, that is, a shorthand for the unknowns out there. We really don't know if it's going to rain despite all the models and forecasts that we have. And that's a, you know, a kind of uncertainty that we've tackled for hundreds of years through mathematical probabilistic... Kind of tactics that allow us to get likelihood.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  I'm talking about our uncertainty. And that is the human response to the unknown. And so what is, how do we feel? Or how do we respond when we confront something new? Ambiguous, muddy, murky, et cetera?

• 28:37Mike Carruthers?

  So give me an example of what you're talking about. Because I'm not sure I quite get it. But maybe a concrete example would help.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  Sure. Well, when you perhaps hit the unexpected traffic snarl up and you're in a hurry on the way to a meeting or you're on the first day of a new job, you're faced with something new and unexpected. And you don't know what's going on. And that's precisely the moment when you're unsure. And that is, you've reached the limits of your knowledge. You suddenly realize that the old ways of life or your old expectations aren't going to be sufficient. And you need to update your knowledge of the world. That's when we are uncertain. And the science of what really happens in that unsettling moment is fascinating

• 29:29Speaker 03

  because it feels uneasy. And we have a tremendous stress response to uncertainty. That makes sense because we evolved to need answers. So when we're put in that spot, you know, when we're on the spot with being uncertain, we actually feel stressed. But while your heart might beat and you might sweat a bit, at the same time, there are these astonishing changes in the brain that are remarkably positive. For instance, your focus widens and your brain becomes more receptive to new knowledge. Your working memory actually is bolstered when you're in that uncertain moment. And so the brain, as one neuroscientist told me,

• 30:12Speaker 03

  is telling itself there's something to be learned here.

• 30:16Mike Carruthers?

  So when I'm stuck in traffic and I'm late for my appointment and I'm uncertain in how late I'm going to be or what the problem is or why I'm sitting here and I'm getting angry, it doesn't feel like that's a positive anything.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Partly because we equate that uncertainty with this negative condition. But at the same time, if you can sort of understand that uncertainty is a moment of vigilance. It's not an easy thing. It's actually challenging to wake up from the status quo, from your expectation. You thought you were going to get there on time. You know, you thought that maybe this job wouldn't have a mean boss or whatever. But your expectations are broken. That's exactly when the human being learns. That's why babies seek out what's surprising in their environment. And so uncertainty, if we don't cut short the opportunity to be uncertain, then we can learn.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  It's actually the foundation, the stepping stone to learning. And it's really important. And one illustration comes from a study of CEOs in Europe when the European Union was expanding. And two business school professors studied and surveyed and interviewed 100 CEOs in Western Europe about this change. And a great group of them were very sure about what was going to happen. This was going to be good for their company or this was going to be bad for their company. They were sure. But a third group in the mix, they were ambivalent. And they weren't quite sure of whether it would result in more customers or higher prices, et cetera.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  A year later, the business school professors came back. The ambivalent CEOs had been more resourceful and they had been more inclusive. They listened to more voices. In other words, they actually inhabited and explored and investigated the space of uncertainty. In other words, uncertainty is about possibility.

• 32:19Mike Carruthers?

  In order to get the benefits of that, that you're talking about, because very often when you're feeling uncertain, you're feeling uncertain about something, you're unsure. It doesn't feel necessarily good. Do you need to get rid of that feeling in order to let the benefits come in? Or do both things exist in tandem or what?

• 32:41Speaker 03

  Well, uncertainty is a signal. And as I mentioned, it's good stress. It means you're on your toes. It means you're alive to the circumstances. And one of the most important points is that it's not just a preface to good thinking. It's actually an accompaniment. So for instance, experts. Let's just take the, you know, the example of expertise. We gain expertise by accruing knowledge, you know, putting in those 10,000 hours, so to speak. And we gain mental models of just what to do. You know, the doctor thinks chest pain, that means heart attack. And so that kind of expert, and that's a great thing. That's really impressive in predictable situations.

• 33:25Speaker 03

  But when something new happens, and here comes the wakefulness of uncertainty again, actually, the more adaptive expert is one who spends more time investigating this new complex messy problem than even novices. And they also evaluate different options and also don't just evaluate one option. So the adaptive expert is nimble in the crisis because they're inhabiting that space of uncertainty.

• 33:56Mike Carruthers?

  When I think about uncertainty in my own life, and then your example of, you know, stuck in traffic and not sure why, it's often accompanied by frustration and anger because you're unsure. You'd like to be sure, you're not sure, and it makes you frustrated. Do you need to like get rid of the frustration first in order to deal with the uncertainty in a positive way? Or do they kind of go hand in hand? Or what?

• 34:23Speaker 03

  There is a difference between being fearful of uncertainty, and that includes being angry at the fact that something's uncertain. There's a personality measurement, a disposition called intolerance of uncertainty. Now, people who are intolerance of uncertainty, who tend to be more rigid thinkers, who tend to dislike surprises, actually feel like something that is unexpected or ambiguous is unfair. I hear that quite a bit from scientists. Whereas if people are able to lean into uncertainty, and that is see it as a challenge, not a threat, they're actually more flexible thinkers. And that's a really important distinction.

• 35:06Speaker 03

  So, you know, uncertainty always might give us a little prickle of unsettling unease. If we can recognize that that's actually helping us think better, think more widely, you know, be on top of things, that's a great starting point.

• 35:23Mike Carruthers?

  And I guess that's kind of what I was getting at in kind of a weird way, is that there are seemingly people who are so rigid that uncertainty would be much more difficult than people who are a little more go with the flow, well, let's take a look. That it's a personality thing as well as a brain thing, that how you are wired will dictate in some regard how well you deal with uncertainty.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  Precisely. And that is a great point, too, because there are a few things I could say about this. One is, yes, we're all, maybe not born, but we're all shaped to be somewhere on the spectrum of, you know, eager, tolerant of uncertainty. However, uncertainty is also, as well as a dispositional trait, it's also situational. So it's really important to understand that when we're tired, when we're in situations where we feel compelled to be in an answer, you know, you're the new person in the room, in the conference, around the conference table, and you feel like you really should say something. You're more likely to be intolerant of uncertainty.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  So you're more likely to make a snap judgment. You're more likely, you know, you're less likely to see the nuances around you, to see the complexity, et cetera. So it's important to show that each of us has a disposition. It's situational, but at the same time, it's changeable. So as I was mentioning, we can all practice uncertainty. One of the exercises in a program that's going to be starting up in Columbus, Ohio, to teach resilience to high schoolers is just have them answer their cellphone without caller ID. Wow. And that seems so simple, but that's just a great example of how sometimes we build,

• 37:20Speaker 03

  in this day and age, especially with technology, certainty-seeking answers into our day. You know, GPS and, you know, the app for the weather. I'm in, I've become an all-year, round the season, you know, round the year, all-season, open-water swimmer. I moved to the shore during the pandemic. And I can look at the app until I'm blue in the face, but I don't know what I'm going to get when I'm down by that ocean. It always surprises me. And even in the half an hour that I'm swimming, there are changes. And I now think of it as a daily dose of uncertainty. You know, it's a real game changer when you can begin to see

• 38:00Speaker 03

  that uncertainty is something that is a wonderful signal that you don't know. And now you can investigate. In fact, uncertainty is actually highly related to curiosity. And so the component of curiosity that's probably most important of the curious disposition is, again, this tolerance of the unknown. We think of curiosity as being this childlike, wondrous, almost easy thing to be. But no, it also includes that unsettling discomfort because you are, you know, moving beyond the edge of what you know.

• 38:41Mike Carruthers?

  I think part of, when I think about uncertainty, part of the reason that I think people don't like it or uncomfortable with it is it doesn't really go anywhere, that at some point you have to make up your mind, you have to be certain about something in order to move on to something else. And to sit with uncertainty like, well, so how long do I sit here? How long do we contemplate this? How long do we stay uncertain before we make a decision?

• 39:10Speaker 03

  Well, yes, and of course, I'm not arguing for, and no one would argue for, irresolution and indecision as the goal. It's just that when we sort of shut down on the opportunity to be uncertain, when we close our mind quickly, we're actually shutting down on opportunities to basically explore all the possibilities, or at least many more possibilities than just one. And another component of uncertainty that's really important, and then also maybe a little unsettling, is that it involves pausing. It does involve slowing down.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  You know, when a group is collaborating and someone offers a note of dissent, that is the best possible path to, you know, better collaboration. But it slows the group down because it's keeping them from rushing to judgment. It involves deeper discussions, more intense complexity of discussions.

• 40:18Mike Carruthers?

  It also seems that when we see uncertainty in others, it can drive you crazy. Like if you're at a restaurant and someone takes forever to figure out what they're going to order because they're not certain, it's like, come on, come on, make up your mind, let's go, we got to move on. We all got to order and eat here. That when we see it, especially maybe in others, it makes us even more uncomfortable because it's not our uncertainty, it's somebody else's, and I'm already certain what I'm going to order, and they're just hemming and hawing.

• 40:50Speaker 03

  Yes, and I think that partially speaks to the trade offs with uncertainty, that it does, you know, demand a certain amount of investment in time, just as anything that gets you past just the first knee jerk answer does. I mean, maybe we can reframe that. And if you're watching your friend having a little bit of decision, it might come from part of their life, they're in a new diet or what have you. So we can see that uncertainty with compassion. We can also see it as a chance to listen as they debate various possibilities, even if it's just on a restaurant menu and they might find something there that you hadn't seen.

• 41:33Speaker 03

  Because you all, you know, maybe the person who decides first and most quickly at the restaurant is the person who always gets the same dish every time.

• 41:42Mike Carruthers?

  Right.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  Well, that's actually not contending with uncertainty.

• 41:45Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it's interesting how people push back against uncertainty. I guess because if you're uncertain, then you don't know how things are going to work out. But things have a tendency to work out. And we often worry about uncertainty, perhaps too much, because, well, because I just said, things have a tendency to work out.

• 42:08Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. And I would say that helicopter parenting is a search for uncertainty that's in vain. Basically, parents are using incredible surveillance techniques, technology, you know, enabled surveillance techniques to constantly keep tabs on their kids. And, you know, we can debate all day about whether the world is unsafe or not safe. And I'm not saying that this doesn't have a place in modern life. But at the same time, are we really trying to search for certainty where there can't be any? And then in doing so, kind of stifling our kids and also not getting to know them?

• 42:49Mike Carruthers?

  Well, and as I think about it, you know, all the technology that we use today, particularly all of it that's in our phone, is like this quest to rid ourselves of uncertainty. So you keep track of where your kids are. You know how long it's going to take to get to someplace. You know the directions. You know what the weather's going, you know, everything. So all the uncertainty is gone.

• 43:15Speaker 03

  Exactly, and I think we even can question whether or not it's just a facade of certainty that we have. You know, basically, when we can realize that even the answer that we gain is provisional in life. That even the certainties that we hold dear are really not, you know, etched in stone.

• 43:39Mike Carruthers?

  Well, the quest for certainty, when you think about it, is so elusive because, I mean, think about somebody who checks their phone every 10 minutes because they want to know, is somebody trying to get a hold of me? Has something happened? Is my kid okay? Well, that's good for maybe 10 minutes, and then you do it again, and then you do it again, and then you do it again. So you're never certain. As soon as you're certain,

• 44:03Mike Carruthers?

  two seconds later, something could happen, and now you're uncertain again. So it's like you can never get it, and yet we never stop trying to get it.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  Yes, and that's why uncertainty helps us be nimble and agile. But, and that doesn't mean we're insecure or feeling that life is quicksand. Rather, it means we grow stronger as we wake up to life as it is, rather than life as we assume it to be or wish it to be. And that's a really important way to, you know, to discover a more flourishing life, as well as it's a very important way to relate to one another. I mean, one of the ways in which I have learned from uncertainty in my personal life is that, you know, when one of my daughters was upset,

• 44:56Speaker 03

  you know, my younger, I would try to just give her an answer or sort of, you know, say it'll be okay. And in essence, I thought this was, you know, either cheering her up or helping her out. But in essence, I realize in retrospect, it was kind of shutting down her ability to be in that moment and investigate and then reflect. And I was shutting down that kind of ability to be in the uncomfortable middle space between question and answer.

• 45:28Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I like what you said about this quest for certainty is really an illusion. I mean, we're as certain as we think we are. We're never that certain. And maybe embracing uncertainty and being unsure opens up other possibilities. I've been speaking with Maggie Jackson. She is a journalist and author, and the name of her book is "Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure." And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for coming on today, Maggie. I enjoyed talking to you.

• 45:59Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you. Really wonderful, interesting conversation, and I'm glad to be pushed on the points that you wanted to clarify. That's really helpful for me to understand.

• 46:12Mike Carruthers?

  Around the holidays especially, but really any time, it would always be nice to be able to get more done in less time. Well, here are three simple ways to do just that from productivity expert Don Wetmore of the Productivity Institute. Three things. First, have a plan. Have a daily plan will make anyone more productive. Yet, fewer than one out of four people actually do it. Even a simple to-do list will make a difference. Plan to get a lot done. If you only plan one thing to do, it will take all day to do it. When you pack your day with tasks, it creates a healthy pressure to be more productive.

• 46:54Mike Carruthers?

  And clean up your workspace. Studies show that working in a messy environment will cause you to waste an hour a day being distracted. Organize your desk and get that hour back. And that is something you should know. Something I really enjoy and find very helpful and useful is reading the reviews people leave of this podcast. It does a lot of things. It helps our visibility. It shows people that other people are reviewing it, and it also just gives us insight into what people think of the work we do. So if you have a moment, leave a rating and review on whatever platform you're listening on, and I'll be sure to read it. I'm Micah Rutherford. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 47:41Speaker 00

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• 48:09Speaker 05

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