How Great Ideas Are Born & Why We Stick With People Like Us

Written communication strips away tone, facial expression, and nuance — which is why texts and emails are so easy to misinterpret. Sarcasm, humor, and intent can get lost, sometimes with awkward or costly consequences. This episode begins with how emojis can restore subtlety to digital communication — if you know which ones actually help and which ones make things worse. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563221002946?utm Some of the greatest ideas — and even entire careers — were never planned. Potato chips, penicillin, and Post-it Notes were all accidents. Success often comes not from careful design, but from noticing opportunities hidden inside unexpected events. Innovation expert Paul Sloane explains how breakthroughs really happen and how you can position yourself to recognize them when they appear. Paul is author of The Art of Unexpected Solutions (https://amzn.to/3ZeKEvw). People naturally gravitate toward others who think, act, and believe the same way they do. We form tribes — social, political, professional — and those bonds can feel deeply comforting. But this instinct also shapes how we see outsiders and influences cooperation, conflict, and culture itself. Cultural psychologist Michael Morris explores why humans evolved this instinct and whether it ultimately helps or harms us. He is author of Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together (https://amzn.to/4pJ6K4n). And finally, weight loss is one of the most common New Year’s resolutions — and one of the quickest to be abandoned. Research suggests that a handful of surprisingly small habits can dramatically improve your chances of sticking with it. We wrap up with what actually works. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34259635/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS SHOPIFY: In 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at https://Shopify.com/sysk PLANET VISIONARIES: We love the Planet Visionaries podcast, so listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you're listening to this podcast! In partnership with The Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. 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, the power of emojis to prevent misunderstanding. Then the real way great ideas and true success are born.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  The idea that you can plan for success is a dangerous idea. And most older people, if they look back and they're honest, they'll say that many of the most interesting things that happened to them in life were the result of an accident. Started a business, it didn't work, but they stumbled on something else. They met their future partner by accident.

• 2:14Mike Carruthers?

  Also, a proven way that really helps lose weight and keep it off. And the fascinating way humans congregate in tribes. We like people like us.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  The reason it feels good when we're in a like-minded group and everybody knows your name and everybody understands you is because we have needs that get satiated by that experience. It's part of the human nature.

• 2:39Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 2:43Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:27Mike Carruthers?

  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.

• 4:09Speaker 03

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

• 4:22Mike Carruthers?

  Do you use a lot of emojis in your online writing? In your texts and emails? I tend not to very often. But maybe I should do it more often because they do serve a pretty valuable purpose, it turns out. Hi and welcome. I'm Mike Carruthers and this is Something You Should Know. One of the biggest problems with texts and emails and posts is they're not very good at conveying tone. Sarcasm, teasing, and irony are especially easy to misread because there's no voice or facial expression to guide the reader. Research shows that we've quietly solved some of the problem with emojis.

• 5:03Mike Carruthers?

  Certain emojis act as tone markers, helping readers understand what a message is really trying to say. The classic wink emoji is one of the strongest signals of sarcasm or playful intent. It tells the reader, "Don't take this literally." A tongue-out-face emoji often signals joking or exaggeration, while a laughing emoji usually softens criticism and signals friendly humor. Even a simple smiley face can turn what might sound blunt or cold into something warmer and more cooperative. So emojis aren't just decoration.

• 5:43Mike Carruthers?

  They're kind of digital body language, helping us to say what we actually mean when the words by themselves fall short. And that is something you should know. When people ask, "Where do great ideas come from?", I think they're usually hoping for a really simple answer. But there isn't one. Great ideas come from all over the place. Sometimes from places no one expected at all. In fact, some of the most important ideas in history were not planned. They were accidents. Penicillin, the slinky, Teflon, even potato chips.

• 6:25Mike Carruthers?

  All came from mistakes, chance encounters, or experiments that went sideways. And when you look closely at how those ideas actually happened... You start to see some patterns, clues about how creativity really works, and how breakthroughs are often less about brilliance and more about noticing what other people overlook. Here to share some of those stories and what they teach us about generating better ideas is Paul Sloane. He's a recognized authority on innovation and creative thinking, and he's the author of several books, including "The Art of Unexpected Solutions." Hi, Paul. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 7:07Mike Carruthers?

  So let's start with a story. Everyone loves a good story, and when we're talking about legendary ideas that come from unexpected places, a good story could really set the tone here, so let's start there.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  So there's a famous story of an event that took place at the Moons Lake House Restaurant in Saratoga Springs, New York in the summer of 1853. A particularly demanding customer, who was rumored to have been the railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, repeatedly sent his order of French fried potatoes back to the kitchen, complaining that they were "too thick and not crispy enough." This annoyed the chef, who was called George Crum. In a moment of pique, he decided to teach the fussy customer a lesson. He sliced the potatoes paper-thin, fried them to a brittle crisp in hot oil, and for good measure, doused them with an extra helping of salt. To Crum's astonishment, the customer, instead of being insulted,

• 8:06Speaker 01

  was delighted with the Saratoga chips, as they became to be known. This accidental creation was an instant success, and what are known as chips were born. And it's an example of an accidental, unexpected solution that came from repeated experiments and frustration and annoyance, and it just popped out. And somebody tried something, and surprise, surprise, it worked. And it's an unexpected solution.

• 8:36Mike Carruthers?

  And is that a good story because it's so rare and unexpected and unusual? Or is it a good story because it illustrates great ways that ideas show up?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Well, a little of both, but there are many, many examples, many, many scientific inventions, which are a result of accidents. And of course, the most famous is penicillin, discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming. Came back from holiday. He was a microbiologist. He found that one of his petri dishes had developed a mold that was resistant to bacteria. And most people would be annoyed, they'd say, just, oh, the cleaner didn't clean out the petri dish, I'm gonna have to do it myself. But he was intrigued, and this is one of the key messages in the book. It's no good having these accidents unless you're prepared to act on them and see them as information and opportunity, rather than as an inconvenience and an annoyance. And when he studied it, he discovered something which was resistant to bacteria.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  He stumbled on penicillin by accident. And that's the most famous story.

• 9:42Mike Carruthers?

  Of course, a lot of things happen by accident that turn out to be nothing, or bad ideas, or easily discardable ideas. I mean, if that guy had not liked those potato chips, nothing might have happened. I mean, there's so many-

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Exactly right.

• 9:58Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah. There are so many things that have come and gone because they didn't work. So how do you know what's gonna work?

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Well, you don't. You have to abandon this concept of control and planning and certainty. We tend to think that our life is gonna be planned and progress in a straightforward fashion. If we work hard at school, we'll get good grades, we'll get to university, we'll get a good job, we'll progress up the career ladder. But life's not like that. Life is full of unexpected occurrences. And most older people, if they look back and that they're honest, they'll say that many of the most interesting things that happened to them in life were the result of an accident or something unexpected. They were made redundant from one position, and it turned out to be the best thing. They started a business, it didn't work, but they stumbled on something else. They met their future partner by accident, and it's very, very common.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  And so the idea that, you know, you can plan for success- It's a dangerous idea and it's much better to be open minded and receptive to whatever's coming down the pipe at you and seize the opportunities as than when they arise.

• 11:03Mike Carruthers?

  So many times I've thought about this because as I look back on my own life, nothing seems to really go according to plan or not for long. Like you might have a plan and launch your plan, but pretty soon something's going to derail it or divert it or something. And yet people talk about planning their life and planning their career and planning, but almost nothing goes according to plan.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 11:31Mike Carruthers?

  But it seems so unhuman like, unhuman nature to just sit back and say, "Well, I hope something randomly wonderful shows up today and if not, maybe tomorrow." We need to, we need to feel like we're in control and to feel like it's out of our control would be difficult.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  I'm not saying no control. I'm not saying be completely at random and don't do anything that's structured. But if you introduce the random, if you deliberately do things, I advise you to accept productive boredom. Bring more boredom into your life. We tend to be focused all the time on doing things and concentrating in very short bursts on little things. We're listening to a podcast, we're watching a video, we're reading a book, we're watching the TV. We're doing things all the time. And yet, many of the greatest ideas that geniuses have had have come at times when they've been bored, when they've deliberately taken, going to a mental downtime where their subconscious is working on problems

• 12:35Speaker 01

  and coming up with ideas rather than concentrating on one particular thing.

• 12:40Mike Carruthers?

  Is there any formula to this in the sense that, I mean, we've probably all thought of things that maybe could have become great ideas that could have gone on to do great things, but it's very easily, those things are very easy to dismiss and just steamroll over them and get on to the next video or podcast that you want to watch or listen to. Is there a way to go, "Wait, stop. I want to stop and look at this."

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Yes, and you need an attitude which is if something interesting comes up, I'm going to follow it up, I'm going to investigate it, I'm going to do something about it. If Sir Alexander Fleming had just ignored that mold in the petri dish, we wouldn't have penicillin, you know, if Crom had ignored his new chips, we wouldn't have them. So when something serendipitous happens, you've got to be prepared to act. You know, when Art Frye came up with Post-it notes working for 3M, he did something with it, he helped some colleague and they discovered a use for it, a glue that wouldn't stick. I mean, what's more useless than a glue that doesn't stick? Well, it turns out it's very useful.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  And very often, these things crop up which seem wrong and seem accidental, but the clever people are open to the idea that they can do something about it and they are prepared to take action.

• 14:04Mike Carruthers?

  But it does seem that, you know, when you talk about this topic, a lot of the usual suspects show up. Post-it notes, Velcro, those things that make it seem like this is very rare, there's only a few we can really point to, penicillin, potato chips, but that generally, most ideas aren't going anywhere.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Well, that's true. Most ideas don't go anywhere. And I run a lot of brainstorm sessions with corporate clients and we might generate 100 ideas in the day, only two or three of which might ever be implemented, but that's fine. I mean, innovation's a very wasteful process. You generate a lot of ideas and you implement the very best and you throw away hundreds. And you know, when you were conceived, your father generated 50 million sperm. Only one of them got through and that created you. And the other 49 of 50 million failed. But it doesn't matter because one succeeded.

• 15:06Mike Carruthers?

  Sometimes it seems that it isn't the solution as much as the marketing, the way you sell it, that the way... You know, I think of things like Elf on the Shelf. I mean, come on, I mean, it's, yeah, it was fun, it made a lot of money, but it wasn't some great new innovative penicillin-like idea, it was a doll.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  And you know, the pet rock, do you remember the pet rock? Sure. That was a crazy idea. And marketing's full of crazy ideas and unexpected things that work and things which were expected to work and didn't. Even, I mean, you know, Coca-Cola put a tremendous amount of effort into New Coke and the segue was tremendous amount of investment and things that were expected to succeed have failed, like the Amazon Fire and Google Glass. And things that were completely unexpected have succeeded. So, yeah, that's the nature of, that's what makes life interesting, I think.

• 16:04Mike Carruthers?

  Where great ideas come from. That's what we're talking about today with Paul Sloan. He's author of the book, The Art of Unexpected Solutions.

• 16:15Speaker 04

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• 17:11Mike Carruthers?

  So Paul, since you study this, do these successful ideas have anything in common that you can point to? That if somebody said to you, okay, so I want to get more involved in this, I want to start looking for ideas, like, well, how do you get, how do you get your head in the game?

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Introducing the random, doing something different every day and taking different route to work, taking a different approach in all sorts of ways. These are key things that you can do to bring more of the unexpected into your life. And whenever there's an accident, whenever there's a mistake, treat it as a learning opportunity, treat it as something that you can do something with, maybe you can learn from, rather than an annoyance. In January 1992, a container with 29,000 plastic bath toys was washed overboard in the Pacific Ocean. It was an environmental catastrophe. Toys that had been manufactured in China were on route to the USA. They were called floaties, bath toys like little ducks.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  And most people would say, "That's terrible, it's going to wash up all over the place." But an oceanographer based in Seattle called Curtis Ebersmayr saw this as a great opportunity to study ocean currents. Because up until then, he'd been doing small samples, a sample of 29,000 items in the ocean, they knew where that started. And he then asked people all around the world to watch out for these. And as they came up in different shores in different places, he was able to use that to help map ocean currents. He saw that accident not as a problem, but as an opportunity.

• 18:47Mike Carruthers?

  But then it seems like it's all about the next step. The next step after those potato chips was either to do something with them, or just throw them in the trash and that's the end of it. The next step is either to throw that Petri dish away and move on to something else, or stop and say, "Well, wait a minute, it's that next step."

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Indeed, and that's what innovations and if we're talking about major innovations, if we're talking about Viagra was an accident, but then Pfizer had the sense to recognize that although it failed in its initial objective, which was reducing men's blood pressure, but there was a side effect which was highly beneficial. They repurposed the product and made it into a world-beating drug, which is very, very popular. So when accidents happen, when things like this happen in business, you've got to be prepared to take a chance and do it. And put some resource into developing a product and testing it and doing things with it. But in your everyday life, you'll find many times there are little things that happen which give you an opportunity, an opening for something more interesting, an avenue to try something.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  It's not just the big inventions, it's not just the penicillins and the, you know, the Viagra's that matter. It's meeting someone really interesting and then not letting them go, keeping their details and sending them an email, meeting them for a coffee, having a discussion rather than saying, who was that interesting person? What a pity I never stayed in touch with them.

• 20:15Mike Carruthers?

  Do you think there's a way, or is there a way, to plan for this? I mean, it's not possible to plan to have an accident, because if you plan it, then it's not an accident. But can you plan, can you create the situation where artificially that these kind of innovations and ideas show up?

• 20:41Speaker 01

  A company like Procter and Gamble plans for innovation and they, over half of their revenues come from new products every few years. So, and they do this by looking around and asking people for ideas in focused areas. And they keep trying things, many of which fail. So they launch products which fail and they launch two or three that fail and then they'll have, you know, one which is a big success and they treat it as a numbers game. And if you roll the dice, you'll roll a two, you'll roll a three, you'll roll, occasionally you'll roll a six and that's when it pays back. But unless you're prepared to roll the dice, you never roll a six.

• 21:17Mike Carruthers?

  But you said a moment ago that, you know, take a different way to work or, you know, when accidents happen, notice, what am I looking for on my new way to work? What am I looking for in this accident other than the fact that it's an accident?

• 21:34Speaker 01

  You're looking for some stimulation, you're looking for a different idea, you're looking for a different approach in life, something which just triggers your brain to think of something new, because habits are dangerous and we slip into habits. There was a very interesting experiment in London where the metro system, the Underground, went down for a while and everyone had to find a different way to work for a while. And then maybe they might go on a boat, they might go on the train, they might go on by bicycle, they might go by bus. And then, once the, I think it was a strike, the Underground strike was over, a lot of people returned. And over 90%, we could track this through the use of the Oyster card, which was the card which tracked people's voyages.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Over 90% went back to the way they'd previously travelled to work. But a high number, 7, 8, 9%, stayed with the new method they found. They didn't go back to what had been done for the previous many, many years, because they'd been forced to try something new. They actually found something that was more interesting, more quicker, more beneficial, for some reason, and they stuck with it. So when we're forced to change, very often it's uncomfortable, but we find something interesting in that change.

• 22:45Mike Carruthers?

  Another thing that interests me about this is when you look at these innovations, you don't usually get a lot of innovations from one person. You know, if somebody comes up with the Post-it note, or the potato chip, or the Petri, or penicillin, but they don't come up with 10 penicillins. They come up with one and it's like, you're done.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  That's true. I mean, Thomas Edison might be the exception to that rule, but yes, generally speaking, you're right.

• 23:13Mike Carruthers?

  But you wonder why, like, if you're so good at this, why can't you keep doing it?

• 23:18Speaker 01

  What taxi company would have thought of Uber? What taxi company would have said, "We can create a whole new business by not having any taxis"? None of them. And if you'd had a brainstorm meeting in a taxi company and said, "How can we get more business?", nobody would have said, "Let's get rid of all our taxis and use the people who are prepared to give people a lift for a small fee." And if you were Marriott Hotels, or Sheraton, and you'd had a big brainstorming meeting and you say, "How can we expand our business?", nobody would have come up with Airbnb. Nobody would have said, "Let's not have any more hotel rooms, let's just use the capacity of people who are prepared to rent out a room, or their holiday cottage, or something else." So people who are embedded in an industry find it very difficult to think really laterally.

• 24:02Mike Carruthers?

  Before you go, give me one more example of this kind of innovative thinking, because I like the stories.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Well, let me tell you about Jorge O'Don and he is an Argentinian car mechanic. A friend of his came over one evening and he said, "I'll give you a puzzle Jorge and I'll bet you can't solve it." And Jorge said, "What is it?" He said, "If you take an empty wine bottle and you push a cork into the empty wine bottle, how do you get it out again?" And Jorge said, "I don't know how you do this." And his friend said, "Well, you can see it. There's a video on YouTube. You can actually see it. There's a technique and what you do is you push a plastic bag into the bottle and you jiggle it around until the cork is nestling somewhere in the plastic bag. And then you blow into the plastic bag and you inflate it around the cork and then you can pull the cork out." And Jorge thought, "That's a very interesting idea."

• 24:55Speaker 01

  And he went to bed that night and in the middle of the night, he woke up with a brainwave. And the brainwave was this. He said, "Getting a baby that's stuck out of the birth canal of a mother is just like getting a cork out of a bottle. It's the same problem in its essence." And he went away and he designed a thing called the O'Don Device, which is to help people in childbirth where the baby is stuck. And eventually, after a lot of problems, he got Beckton Dickinson to back the idea and they built it. And it's now in use in many, many countries all around the world because it's cheap and it's effective and it's safe. And you put the plastic bag around the baby, you inflate it very slightly and then you pull the baby out.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  And the point about the story is that he came up with this idea because he didn't think like a doctor or a nurse or a clinician. He thought like a car mechanic. And he said, "Getting a baby out of the birth canal is not a medical problem. It's a mechanical engineering problem. And let's use mechanical engineering techniques by taking a completely different approach, coming at the problem from an entirely different perspective." He was able to come up with an unexpected solution. And very often, you know, it's the person who's never been involved in the problem that can come up with a creative idea because they're not constrained by all the assumptions that the experts have.

• 26:15Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it does seem that it's not just the idea. It's a formula. It's an idea with the right person or people at the right time.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Time and time again, we see that these things are unexpected, unpredictable, accidental, but somebody's had the nous, the gumption, the courage to seize the opportunity and do something with it.

• 26:38Mike Carruthers?

  It makes you wonder how many great ideas got missed, you know?

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Millions.

• 26:43Mike Carruthers?

  Millions have got missed. Like, it could have been that Petri dish, but instead they just cleaned it out and moved on and whatever the example is.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  I'm sure that's happened countless times.

• 26:55Mike Carruthers?

  We'll never know, but it's certainly fun to look at the ideas that did make it, that did hit, and understand why they did. I've been talking to Paul Sloan. He's an authority on innovation and creative thinking and author of several books, including The Art of Unexpected Solutions. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Paul.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  I've enjoyed it, Mike. Thanks very much.

• 27:20Speaker 04

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• 28:20Mike Carruthers?

  You may not think of yourself this way, but you belong to tribes. In fact, you belong to several of them. Your community, your family, your profession, your hobbies, even the groups you identify with online. All of these groups, all of these tribes, shape the way you think, how you act, and even how you see the world. And what's interesting is that you behave differently in each one of these groups. Humans seem to have a deep tribal instinct to sort ourselves into groups and take cues from the people around us. That instinct has helped us survive, cooperate, and build cultures. But it's also the same instinct

• 29:04Mike Carruthers?

  that can divide us and create conflict. So why are we wired this way? What do tribes give us? And is it possible that the same tribal instincts that separate us could actually help bring us together? That's what we're about to explore with Michael Morris. He's a cultural psychologist at Columbia University and author of the book, "Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together." Hi, Michael. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me, Mike.

• 29:36Mike Carruthers?

  So these tribes, these groups that we're a part of, explain how they work and why they exist in the first place.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  We live in very large communities that are bound together by shared ideas, by the sort of legacy of inherited culture. And that set of shared ideas enables the circle of trust to be much broader in our species than in other species. We can trust people beyond kith and kin, you know, beyond our relatives, beyond the people that we see every day. Because if someone shares our culture, if they share those ideas that we operate with, they are predictable to us. We can understand their actions. We can predict what they will do.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  We can coordinate and collaborate with them. So in my book, tribes are a very good thing. And tribes are what made us human. They are what got us out of the Stone Age.

• 30:40Mike Carruthers?

  So mention and identify some of the tribes that people listening typically belong to.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Their church is a community bound together by shared ideas. Their country is one. Perhaps the company they work for has an organizational culture. Maybe they're part of a profession like lawyers or engineers where there's a lot of shared frameworks that come from your training that give you a common worldview with the other members of that profession. So, you know, we inhabit multiple tribes in our lives. And one of the things that that leads to in the way that our cultural psychology works is that not all of our identities can operate at once.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  You know, I'm a former athlete, but I'm also a professor, but you know, I'm also, you know, live in the country, you know, and I can't follow the norms of all of those identities at the same time. They have to take turn. So when I, when I go to the country and I see the environment and I see the people there, it brings certain ways of living to the fore. And when I return to Manhattan, it brings other ways of living to the fore of my brain. So this is often called code switching. You know, we talked about it when, when politicians like Obama would speak in a slightly different way to an African-American audience compared to an audience of white farmers in Kansas.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  But we all engage in code switching. You know, we, we switch to professional jargon when we get to work. We talk to our buddies at the gym differently than we talk to our co-parishioners at, at church. You know, we, we all switch between different code words and different registers when we are trying to mesh with our different tribes.

• 32:38Mike Carruthers?

  What's the benefit of being in a tribe? That may seem self-evident to you, but we're members of all of these tribes. Why?

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think what you're touching on there and in your initial question is that there's been this, there's been a bad rap for tribes and tribalism over the last 10 years. And it started around the end of Obama's last term and Trump's first term, where people started noticing political polarization, you know, between the red tribe and the blue tribe. And there was this sense that something, something has been lost in our democracy, right? That people are not treating each other with respect, they're not listening to each other, there's political violence. And, and one way that people interpreted this was that we are somehow hardwired to

• 33:34Speaker 02

  hate other groups and that this deeply buried instinct came back to the surface and, and now we're screwed because we're cursed by this ancient instinct to hate others. And I think this couldn't be less accurate and it couldn't be less helpful as a way of understanding, you know, the partisan conflicts that we've been in.

• 33:59Mike Carruthers?

  Well, if the tribe that you're in, or one of the tribes that you're in is political, it's kind of hard to imagine there wouldn't be some sort of agenda to get your politics out there and that's going to create conflict with people whose political tribe opposes what you believe. But, but so many tribes are not political. They're, they're very benign. As you were saying earlier, you know, you, you could have hobbies or you could be a lawyer and so you're part of a legal tribe that cooperates with each other. Seems very cooperative.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  You know anthropologists and behavioral scientists, we've made a lot of progress in this area and there's considerable consensus that there are some hardwired instincts that are unique to humans and that make us different, you know, from all the other species. But they are instincts for solidarity, not for hostility. They are instincts that allow us to coordinate with others so that we can collaborate. They enable us to cooperate with others so that we can have large-scale cooperation and economies of scale. And they enable continuity across the generations in our communities that allows for a deep feeling of connection with the past and a deep feeling of meaning.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  And so I think that this trope of toxic tribalism, this idea that humans are hardwired to hate and democracy and international cooperation and pluralism will never work anymore. I think it's a really pessimistic, fatalistic way of talking.

• 35:43Mike Carruthers?

  Putting the politics aside for a moment, though, people are joining tribes voluntarily or not or born into tribes. Because tribes do what?

• 35:55Speaker 02

  We are wired, as humans, to have certain basic motivations. And one of those is the motivation to belong, to be understood, to be accepted. And so we have this one instinct that I call the peer instinct that, you know, is related to what we call conformity, which makes us intrinsically rewarded to mesh with the people around us, to feel that we are in agreement with the people around us. And that is one of the things that we get from being a part of a tribe, this sense of community and belonging and understanding. Now, another thing that we get from tribes

• 36:39Speaker 02

  is related to what I call the hero instinct. And this is the side of our psychology that makes us driven to make... A contribution. We want to give to the group in some way. And in part, we want to give to the group because we gain standing, we gain status, we gain respect. And with that comes some tribute from the group. You know, we get social opportunities and we get, we get resources that we wouldn't get otherwise. And so that's another thing that we get from being part of a church or being part of a corporation or being part of a profession.

• 37:21Mike Carruthers?

  I think you said, or I read, that the instinct to be part of a tribe is uniquely human. But I see, you know, I look out and see what look like tribes of deer in a field or tribes of birds or, so it doesn't seem like it's uniquely human. Because aren't those other animals congregating in tribes?

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Well, they, they collect in groups, but these groups don't collaborate according to a common plan. You know, it can sometimes look that way if you see like a wolf pack, you know, hunting. But they are not working with a shared intention. They are just working on reflexes when they work together. Chimpanzees are the animals closest to us. And when they, when they hunt as a group, it's just side by side, individual hunting. There's not a, there's not like a plan that they've shared. And what the, the first tribal instinct of humans, the peer instinct, this idea that we are driven to, to imitate the people around us and to mesh with them.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  It, it's what allows us to form shared plans so that we could, that we could hunt and we could gather and we could defend our group in a, in an organized way as a united front. And other species can't really do that.

• 38:49Mike Carruthers?

  And isn't at the core of all of this? Something as simple as people like being with people like them or who like what they like.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  That's one way to describe, I think, the peer instinct, which is that, you know, it's motivating to be among a like-minded group. It gives us a deep feeling of security and a feeling that, a feeling that we understand the world because we're in consensus with other people. And I think that people used to get their peer instincts satisfied because they lived in ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods, or they went to a house of worship, you know, every week and they were around a group of people who may not have been in the same ethnicity as them, but who, who subscribed to the same dogma and religious worldview as them.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  And that has waned away in our country over the last two generations. You know, the, the most frequent religious identity on the census now is nun. There's been residential sorting largely on the basis of a political ideology, you know, so the, the liberals have moved to the coasts and the conservatives have moved to the heartland. And so I think that's part of why we see a change in the way people relate to political parties, that the, the sort of primary identity groups that give us this feeling of security and the feeling of understanding have become the Democrat and Republican parties, whereas,

• 40:26Speaker 02

  you know, a generation ago, you didn't know which of your neighbors were Democrats and Republicans, you didn't know which of your colleagues were Democrats or Republicans. It wasn't, it wasn't as salient an identity a generation or two ago.

• 40:39Mike Carruthers?

  So you hear the term tribal instinct. Is, is the desire and, and need to be in a tribe an instinct really? Or is it just, it feels right? It feels good to be with people that know this, that understand this, that I can talk to about this, that we can do this together? It seems more of a deliberate thing, not a, an instinct.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Well, it started, you know, we started living in tribes about 50,000 years ago, you know, and civilization is only like 5,000 years old. So it's pretty well established that a lot of our social behavior is wired by evolution in ways that were adaptive for early humans, that, you know, helped them survive and thrive. And then we live in a very different world, but with the same psychological hardware that evolved in the Stone Age. So we also have conscious beliefs about community, but the reason it feels good when we're in a like-minded group and everybody knows your name and everybody understands you is because

• 41:47Speaker 02

  we have, you know, hardwired motivations, needs that get satiated by that experience. So it's part of the human nature.

• 41:57Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, because everybody's been in a tribe and in a group and knows that feeling of, you know, these are my people, I get, they get me and I get them. This feels very comfortable. I like being here, as opposed to, you know, being with other people who you may not know anything about them. Because when you walk into a room full of people who you know are engineers or whatever, you know you're walking into friendly territory.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a different side of you comes out.

• 42:30Mike Carruthers?

  Right.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  You know, spontaneously, right? You're an engineer, you walk into a group, it's another, it's the engineering wing of the building at work, and then you can just start talking about safety factors and degrees of freedom and other technical terms, and everybody knows exactly what you mean and everybody respects you for it. Whereas when you are on an interdisciplinary task force or a multifunctional task force at work, you know, you're around people from the marketing division, people from the accounting division, people from sales, those are different tribes, and there's something exciting and stimulating about diversity, right? And that's why we design for diversity.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  But there's also something deeply comfortable about having like-minded groups that provide support and security.

• 43:18Mike Carruthers?

  There's also something about a group, that being in a group, when you sit down with the people in a group, say, the people you work with, or people who share a common interest. I don't know what that feeling is. You can let your guard down. You know you can talk and people understand what you're talking about. You don't have to explain things. Like, there's just a comfort level that's hard to explain, but I think people know what I mean.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  Oh, you're describing the feeling really well. And I think that it's definitely very connected to, you know, how social media has this kind of filter bubble. You know, it's a sort of, it filters what information comes to you. And then it's like a bubble, like an echo chamber, that when you express an opinion, you get immediate positive reinforcement. And it gives you, it satisfies the peer instinct itch, you know, because you feel understood. It also satisfies the hero instinct itch, because you feel, you feel like you have status. You know, the whole idea of virtue signaling is, you know, I say something really

• 44:32Speaker 02

  extreme, and then people say, oh, you're so right. You know, you get it, you know? And so it's a way of building up my credit, you know, in the community by saying things even more extreme than the last person said. And then there's also, at times, the ancestor instinct itch, which is this desire to feel part of some sort of enduring, estimable tradition. And so, you know, the different political parties, they, they look back to their respective heroes. You know, the Democrats talk about JFK, you know, the Republicans

• 45:10Speaker 02

  talk about the great Republican presidents of the past, like Reagan, and they feel connected to those, those times. So.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Being in like-minded political groups, it satisfies these tribal motivations in a very, very effective way. And the problem is that this has created a feedback loop where people are getting almost all of their political information from like-minded groups, whether it's their residential community or their online community. And the country didn't used to be that way.

• 45:53Mike Carruthers?

  You know, it occurred to me when I was going over the material for this interview, it occurred to me that tribes die sometimes. I was the member of a tribe that died or is in the process of dying. And that's radio. Before I did this podcast, I was in the radio business. And the radio business was a real tribe. You get radio people together and they can talk about radio all night long, that they love it. But, but it's gone. A lot of it is gone. I mean, there's still, obviously, there's still radio. But the magic that I used to experience isn't there anymore. And it's, it's kind of a shame. But I guess that happens.

• 46:35Mike Carruthers?

  I'm sure that happened with the horse and buggy business when it went away too.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  But I think with radio, there's a special reason to be sad, which is that there's, there's an idea in, in cultural and political theory called imagined communities. So when you listen to the, you know, the president, President, you know, FDR in the old days, you know, giving, giving his fireside chat over the radio, you could imagine that almost all your American compatriots were listening at the same time in their living rooms, gathered around their radios. And that created a feeling of national unity.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  That is really important. And so I feel like when we have this splintering of the media landscape, there's a danger of losing the common reference points that help us understand each other as a nation.

• 47:32Mike Carruthers?

  Well, the way you've explained this, the whole idea of tribalism, of the desire to join like-minded groups and the rewards of being in a like-minded group are so, I think, ingrained in us, it's really good to understand what's going on. I've been speaking with Michael Morris. He's a cultural psychologist at Columbia University, and he's author of a book called Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Michael, thanks for coming on and talking about this.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Thanks so much.

• 48:10Mike Carruthers?

  I would bet that the most popular New Year's resolution, or certainly one of them, has got to be to lose weight. And the fact is that a lot of people don't get through the end of the month before they give up. If you're resolving to lose weight this year, there's recent research that suggests that how you track your progress may matter more than sheer willpower. Large-scale data from mobile weight loss programs show that people who regularly log their meals, weigh themselves often, and actively use tracking tools are significantly more likely to achieve meaningful weight loss than those who don't.

• 48:51Mike Carruthers?

  The strongest predictors of success are early and frequent self-monitoring and high levels of app engagement, habits that help you stay accountable and aware of your daily choices rather than just vaguely thinking about losing weight. And that is something you should know. You know, we really work hard to put out a quality podcast, and we'd like to reach as many people as we possibly can, and you can help us by sharing this podcast and telling your friends and helping us grow our audience. I'd appreciate it. I'm Michael Brothers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 49:29Speaker 04

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• 49:57Speaker 05

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