Pod Insights Something You Should Know How Great Innovators Think & Turning Anger Into Strength About this episode Try formulating an answer to a difficult question while looking someone in the eye. It is almost impossible. You must look away. Why is it so hard to concentrate while looking at someone? This episode starts with an explanation of that. http://www.livescience.com/7155-helps-concentration.html
To be labeled as a great innovator is an honor. Innovators are held in high esteem. But what is it that makes them so special? What goes on in their heads that allows them to create innovative ideas? Here to delve deep into the minds of some of our greatest innovators is David Galenson. He is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and author of the book Innovators (https://amzn.to/40ySzVN)
Have you ever thought about where your anger comes from? When you get angry do you get aggressive, or do you use your anger to resolve the problem? If we let it get the best of us, anger can cause us to say or do things we regret, damage relationships or worse. There is a better way to deal with anger according to my guest, Sam Parker. He is a journalist who has written for publications including the Guardian, Telegraph, Observer and GQ magazine and he is author of a book called Good Anger: How Rethinking Rage Can Change Our Lives (https://amzn.to/4m3g4OS).
In determining your premium, auto insurance companies factor in your address. But why should you pay more (or less) depending on where you live? Shouldn’t it be about how well and how much you drive? Listen as I explain the reasoning. https://www.alink2insurance.com/blog/how-location-impacts-car-insurance-premiums
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Speaker 00 Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones. Like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then, sometimes you make great ones. Like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options, so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.
0:32 Mike Carruthers? Today on Something You Should Know. Why it's so hard to look someone in the eye when you're trying to come up with an answer to a question. Then, understanding innovation and the innovators who create it.
0:45 Speaker 02 The conceptual innovator is like the little kid who's always got his hand up and he's waving, "I know, I know, I know." Conceptual innovators are very, very self-confident. Steve Jobs, you know, he used this hyperbolic language, right? "We're gonna make it a dent in the universe."
1:01 Mike Carruthers? Also, why do they use your address to determine how much your car insurance costs? And an important discussion about anger and help for those who struggle with it.
1:11 Speaker 03 I think what's happening actually is that we've been given lots of ways to express our anger, but very few ways to resolve it in a good way. Part of the problem is that we conflate anger with aggression and violence. So we get lots of bad anger. We just don't get much of what I call good anger.
1:26 Mike Carruthers? All this today on Something You Should Know.
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2:56 Speaker 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.
3:10 Mike Carruthers? When you're trying to answer a difficult question, where you look, where you focus your gaze, may have a lot to do with how good your answer is. How can that be? Well, let's find out. Hi, and welcome to this episode of Something You Should Know. When someone asks you a difficult question, it's sometimes hard to keep eye contact with them. And there's a reason for that. Not looking at someone can help you come up with a better answer. This is called gaze aversion. And adults do it 85% of the time. Children only do it about 40% of the time. So in a study, a group of children
3:51 Mike Carruthers? were trained to look away when contemplating a question, while others were not told to do anything. Then they were asked a series of questions. The students instructed to look away answered 72% of the questions accurately, while the untrained group only answered the questions correctly 55% of the time. The difference between groups was especially evident the more difficult the questions were. The theory is that the human face is just too distracting. It's hard to look at someone in the eye and also come up with an answer to a question. So perhaps we shouldn't try in the first place.
4:33 Mike Carruthers? And perhaps teachers need to understand that an averted gaze may just mean, "I'm thinking." And that is something you should know.
4:47 Mike Carruthers? Well, if there is one word you hear a lot today, it's innovation or innovator. If someone is labeled as an innovator, he or she is revered. I mean, that is a lofty label, being named a true innovator. But what exactly is innovation? And who are these innovators that we admire so much? What's so special about them? And what can we learn from them? It's easy to think of innovators in the technology world, but actually, every industry, as well as the arts, all have innovators. Here to help you better understand the world of innovation and the people in it is David Galenson.
5:27 Mike Carruthers? He's a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and author of the book, Innovators. Hi, David. Welcome to Something You Should Know.
5:35 Speaker 02 Thank you very much. I appreciate the invitation.
5:38 Mike Carruthers? Well, I love this topic because innovation has become such a buzzword. And if you're an innovator, I mean, that word just carries such cachet. But what exactly, in your view, as somebody who studies this, what is an innovator and what is innovation?
5:55 Speaker 02 Well, it does have a cachet, and it should. Economists make a distinction. We say an invention is doing something new. But an invention becomes an innovation when it diffuses, that is, when it's adopted by other people. So an innovation is a useful invention. And so innovators are significant people.
6:17 Mike Carruthers? And some examples of great innovators, just to make sure people understand what we're talking about, would be, just throw out some names. Who do you, who's in the Hall of Fame of innovators, in your view?
6:28 Speaker 02 Well, you know, the people I've been studying recently, I started with painters. Paul Cezanne was the greatest artist of the 19th century, the most important, the most influential. Pablo Picasso was the most influential painter of the 20th century. Jackson Pollock was an enormously influential American painter. Andy Warhol, equally important.
6:50 Mike Carruthers? But they're painters. When I think of innovators, I think of Steve Jobs, or, you know, people who did, when you use the definition of, you know, something people use, well, I don't use Picasso.
7:03 Speaker 02 No, this is specific to a discipline. An innovator is somebody who changes the language of their discipline. And their discipline can be consumer technology, you know, like Steve Jobs, or it can be painting. Cezanne changed the way painters paint. Picasso changed the way enormous numbers of painters paint. And so, you influence people in your discipline. There are rare people who influence people beyond their discipline. For example, Picasso, I used to say that Picasso was the most important painter of the 20th century. Now I say he's actually the most important artist, because he influenced not only painters, but he influenced poets, and novelists, and architects, and even filmmakers. So, his influence, the
7:47 Speaker 02 thing about innovators is, obviously, they're influential people. The greater their influence, the greater their importance, right? The greater the importance of their inventions.
7:55 Mike Carruthers? When someone is considered an innovator, because they change something, and they create something that other people adopt, are there just 18 million ways to get there? Or do these people have something in common?
8:11 Speaker 02 I discovered that they really do have something in common in terms of their procedures. Psychologists had studied creativity and they tended to study it one discipline at a time. And they argued that poets innovate in a certain way, novelists innovate in a certain way. And my question started with life cycles. I mean, I'm an economist, right? Economists are interested in how people function over the course of the life cycle. So the question I really started with is when in their lives are innovators most creative? And why? And I discovered that unlike the psychologists, it was important to recognize that creativity is not monolithic. Poets don't all work alike. Novelists don't all work alike.
8:53 Speaker 02 There are two very different kinds of creativity, each with a very different distinct pattern of discovery over the life cycle.
9:01 Mike Carruthers? And those two ways are?
9:04 Speaker 02 I call one group conceptual innovators. These are the young geniuses. You wanted examples of innovators. Albert Einstein, Orson Welles, Sylvia Plath, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Steve Jobs, Miles Davis. But then, on the other hand, there are the people I call experimental innovators. Experimental because the first definition of experimental in the Oxford English Dictionary is trial and error. These are the old masters. These are people who mature much more slowly. Paul Cezanne, Charles Darwin, Virginia Woolf, Robert Frost, Alfred Hitchcock, John Coltrane, Warren Buffett.
9:43 Mike Carruthers? And the way they get to where they're going, you say that in these two different disciplines, is similar? All the people in those two groups kind of get there in the same way?
9:55 Speaker 02 Yes. I hear the surprise in your voice and the answer is yes. And let me tell you the general characteristics of each of these groups. Conceptual innovators determine the purpose of their work before they begin to make it. So typically, they plan their works carefully, then they execute them systematically. Conceptual painters make very careful preparatory drawings and studies before they begin to paint. In contrast, the experimentalists are people who...
10:27 Speaker 02 Want to portray the real world. They're they privilege observation and description and understanding of reality. They're often more concerned with process than with products. They are people, they consider themselves seekers. They want to make discoveries in the course of creating their work. So they have goals, but the goals are very vague.
10:50 Mike Carruthers? But doesn't a big part of being an innovator mean that you you succeeded? Because and what I mean is, so for example, it's easy for me to imagine that somewhere on in Picasso's career, when he first emerged, people could have said, that is the strangest thing I've ever seen, what a piece of crap. And we never hear from him again. So would he have still been an innovator? He still painted a Picasso, but success seemed to have been a big ingredient.
11:25 Speaker 02 Influence is the key. So when Picasso invented cubism, completely new style of art, the critics did say, that's the biggest piece of crap I've ever seen. But other painters responded to it. They adopted it in enormous numbers and it became the new language of painting in the 20th century. Same thing with Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol began silkscreening paintings and the critics not only said, that's that's bad art, they said, that's not art at all. Art depends on the touch of the artist. But other painters began using photographs and mechanical reproduction. And so, you know, it's influence that determines the importance of an innovation. If Picasso, if cubism had not influenced other painters, you never would have heard of Picasso.
12:09 Speaker 02 But he had enormous impact on other painters.
12:12 Mike Carruthers? So we hear stories and legends of great innovators, and you've talked about several. And they're often depicted as go it alone kind of guys, that they did this all themselves. And then you hear things like, well, you know, great innovation is the result of collaboration. So what do you say?
12:30 Speaker 02 Throughout most of our history.
12:34 Speaker 02 Individuals have made the key breakthroughs. So for example, Picasso had teachers. His father was an artist and taught him art. But Picasso's work was distinctive. And that tends to be the case, that again, everybody in any discipline has teachers, and they virtually all have colleagues. But in most cases, it's individuals who make the breakthroughs. If in some, you know, some of the breakthroughs are genuinely jointly made. And then, you know, there may be two or three people who share in an innovation.
13:05 Mike Carruthers? When a conceptual innovator comes up with a new idea, is there any sense of where does the idea come from? Is it just poof, generated out of nothing? Or is it a way of looking at the world that you find, like, what's the, what's the path?
13:23 Speaker 02 The conceptualists innovate by combining existing ideas. They create new ideas, but in almost every case, they're combinations of existing ideas that were never previously associated with each other. So they create these surprising syntheses of earlier art or of earlier science, for example, in Einstein's case. And these are radical leaps. Other people are amazed at them. They say, nobody ever would have thought of combining those things.
13:55 Mike Carruthers? Can you give me an example of that? Of taking two things and coming up with something innovative?
14:02 Speaker 02 The Walkman was very popular. You know, you remember, you're old enough to remember a Walkman, right?
14:07 Mike Carruthers? Yep. I think I still have one.
14:10 Speaker 02 Let's combine a computer with a Walkman. And he created an iPod. Now, he was so successful that the Walkman no longer exists. But those are two things that nobody had ever thought to combine.
14:25 Mike Carruthers? Well, and that brings up a really interesting question. Because yes, he thought of it, but he didn't actually do it. So is he still an innovator? And that's what I want to ask you next. I'm talking to David Galenson. He's author of the book, Innovators.
14:43 Speaker 00 Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones, like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then, sometimes you make great ones, like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options, so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.
15:12 Speaker 05 The best part of waking up? A full cup of Folgers coffee and music on full blast.
15:39 Speaker 05 Shop Folgers K-Cup Pods and more at your nearest retailer.
15:42 Mike Carruthers? So David, Steve Jobs came up with the idea for the iPod. But here's the thing that I really want to get your comment on. But it wasn't Steve Jobs who went into the lab and sat there every night trying to make an iPod. He hired people to do it. He could no more make an iPod than you could. So was he an innovator, or is he just a good manager?
16:07 Speaker 02 No, there's a very interesting point. I was struck. When Steve Jobs died, I was home, I wasn't feeling well, I was watching television. They cut into CNN and they announced his death, and then immediately had a talking head. It was a pretty authoritative guy, I think it might have been Ken Oletta of The New Yorker. And he said Steve Jobs was the greatest inventor of his generation. He was the Thomas Edison of his time. But other people objected violently, basically in the way you're saying. They said, "Look, Steve Jobs didn't invent the personal computer or the iPod. Other people did." And we could debate for a long time, and there's no obvious solution to whether Steve Jobs invented those things.
16:48 Speaker 02 But at the very beginning of Steve Jobs' career, he was working with Steve Wozniak. And Wozniak created the guts of a personal computer.
16:59 Speaker 02 And they, and Steve Wozniak was just gonna give away, it wasn't a full personal computer. You really had to be a kind of a tech nerd to, to make it work with a screen and everything. But he was just gonna give it away. And Steve Jobs said, no, we can make money selling these things. And that was, that was the Apple one. Now, that was not a complete personal computer. But Steve Jobs kept pushing Steve Wozniak. Wozniak was a, a technical genius, but he had no, he didn't have much drive. And so Jobs insisted that Wozniak make it into a form where a non-nerd could simply sit down, type on a keyboard and see the, the, the words appear on the screen. Steve Wozniak was the first person who ever did that, where typed on a keyboard and, and saw the letters appear on the screen in front of him.
17:44 Speaker 02 That was the Apple II. Now, when Wozniak invented the Apple II, they realized that this was gonna make a lot of money and they were going, so they decided to incorporate Apple. So they wrote up an agreement where Wozniak and Jobs each were to have 45% of Apple. And then there was an executive who was, you know, gonna be the, kind of the CEO and he was gonna have the other 10%. Steve Jobs took this agreement over to Wozniak's house. Steve Wozniak's father was an engineer and he saw the agreement and he said, my son's not gonna sign this agreement. This is nonsense. He said to Steve Jobs, you didn't invent anything, my son did.
18:26 Speaker 02 And Steve Jobs started crying, which it turns out is what he did when he was confronted by adversity. But Steve Wozniak said, no, no, no, Dad, I'm gonna sign this agreement. And Wozniak explained that, yes, he had done all of the technical work, but Jobs was the one who had the idea of doing it and Jobs was the one who was gonna sell it. So, you know, we could debate for a long time philosophically whether Steve Jobs invented the personal computer or Wozniak did. Wozniak is actually in the inventor hall of fame for having invented the personal computer. But Steve Jobs is the person who's associated with creating the personal computer because it was his idea, right? And that same thing with the iPod or the iPhone. He had an idea.
19:13 Speaker 02 And then he hired people who could make it and he supervised them. So it's it's an interesting point, but this is conceptual innovation. Conceptual innovation is consists largely of having a novel idea.
19:28 Speaker 02 And Steve Jobs said that, you know, when you ask innovators about their work, very often they feel kind of guilty because they didn't really do anything. They just saw something. But in in most cases, it's seeing that thing. That's the key. Once once Steve Jobs saw that you could make an iPod or an iPhone, then engineers could get together and work out how to do it. But somebody had to think of doing it.
19:56 Mike Carruthers? And so he is he is entitled to his label as an innovator.
20:02 Speaker 02 We can we can argue about that, but yeah, I think he's widely regarded as an innovator. There are still some people who say, no, he's not an innovator. They make the case that you made a few minutes ago.
20:11 Mike Carruthers? And so why didn't Steve Wozniak hang around? I mean, he's he's an inventor. He invented the personal computer. And he had all that Apple stock.
20:23 Mike Carruthers? But he's no longer and hasn't been with Apple for some time.
20:27 Speaker 02 No, I mean, the interesting thing is that Wozniak invented the personal computer. I think he was 24 years old. And he had 45% of Apple when it, you know, when it was incorporated. But he didn't like being a, you know, an executive and he he left the company very soon. He never made another innovation in his life. Whereas Steve Jobs went on and was identified with the creation of all of these other eyes, the iPod, the iPad, the iMac and so on.
20:58 Mike Carruthers? So do conceptual innovators have or describe that they have an aha moment? Like it just all of a sudden? Boom, there it is. Or it
21:10 Mike Carruthers? even though it's relatively quick, it's not that quick. Or do they they have a an aha moment?
21:17 Speaker 02 Well, the conceptual ones do. I mean, they're sort of the traditional characterization, the caricaturing of innovation is, you know, a guy with a light bulb going on over his head. And there's that moment, the eureka moment. And so there's a moment when Jobs said, We can put the Apple I in a fancy case with a screen and we can sell it as the Apple II. And that was, that's simply, you know, that's, that's what he said. I didn't do anything. I just saw something. And that's a moment. Making the thing, you know, takes time. But the key there was the, the idea, just saying, we could do this. We can do something that nobody's ever thought of doing.
21:58 Mike Carruthers? So when great innovators innovate, when they go public with their new innovation, you know, here's the new computer, here's the new, whatever it is. How in that moment are they typically viewed as, as crazy? Or, I mean, what do people generally think right away?
22:18 Speaker 02 Radical is, is the term that's very often used to describe these, these conceptual innovators, you know, whether it's Miles Davis changing radically from one style of jazz to another, Sylvia Plath creating a new kind of poetry, or Samuel making a new kind of movie with Citizen Kane, radical, conspicuous, sudden, dramatic.
22:38 Mike Carruthers? But I wonder how deliberate it is. In other words, the, the radical reaction, oh, that's radical. That's the reaction. But from the innovator point of view, did they set out to be radical? Or did they just, meh, let's try this. And then the reaction was, wow, that's amazing. But it was just, yeah, something to try.
22:59 Speaker 02 The conceptual innovator is like the little kid who's always got his hand up and he's waving, I know, I know, I know. Conceptual innovators are very, very self-confident, arrogant. They say, I'm a revolutionary. Steve Jobs would, you know, he used this hyperbolic language, right? We're gonna make it a dent in the universe. The computer's the most important invention that's ever been invented. And I always thought, well, gee, you know, I thought fire was kind of a big deal. You know, Sylvia Plath, when she was writing her October poems, she was a only moderately known, her husband was a better, better known poet than she was. But she was writing, she wrote her great poems within a single month. And after she wrote her poem Daddy, she wrote to her mother and
23:44 Speaker 02 she said, I am a genius of a poet. I am writing the greatest poems of my life. They will make my name. When Scott Fitzgerald finished writing The Great Gatsby at the age of 28, he knew it was a great book. He wrote to his editor and he said, "I have just written the greatest novel ever written by an American." So these are people who live in a world of black and white. They don't think they've done something great. They know it and they tell you.
24:09 Mike Carruthers? Well, I obviously have not studied innovation the way you have, but from my casual observation, it has always seemed to me that great innovators innovate once. Like they come up with this great new thing, but they seldom come up with another great new thing that's just as revolutionary as the first new thing. Like you get one bite at the apple and that's about it. Is that true or just my perception?
24:40 Speaker 02 The potential danger for these conceptual innovators is they change the world when they're 25, but then they become captives of their own innovation and they just repeat that over and over for the rest of their lives. Now Picasso is not a good example of that, actually, because he was one of the great serial innovators of the 20th century. Picasso invented cubism when he was 25, a completely new style of art that was enormously influential. Five years later, he made the first collage. He put a piece of oilcloth on a canvas. Now to you, that may not sound like a big deal, but since the Renaissance, there had been a tradition, a convention in painting, that only paint could be placed on the surface of a canvas.
25:24 Speaker 02 Picasso broke that. And again, it's difficult to understand how big a change that was in those days, right? These are people who, they didn't have an internet. They didn't have movies. They didn't have television. Art was one of the most important activities for the most sophisticated people. And these people knew the tradition. They knew hundreds of years of art history. And this was a shocking innovation. It shocked other artists. Young artists responded to it immediately and began making paintings with things other than simply paint. And they called it collage. It was a new genre. So that's a second, it's a completely separate innovation. Two years later, he made another radical innovation.
26:09 Speaker 02 Picasso, at the age of about thirty-two, began alternating styles. He made paintings one day that were cubist, the next day that were traditional. No artist had ever done that. Again, it was shocking to his elders, but his peers embraced the idea. Marcel Duchamp, another important painter of that era, said this is the most important thing that Picasso has ever contributed to art, the idea that we can be free.
26:39 Mike Carruthers? Well, this has been a great tour into the mind of innovators and I think given all of us a better understanding of how innovation works. I've been talking with David Galenson. He is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and author of the book Innovators. There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. David, thank you.
27:00 Speaker 02 Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
27:03 Speaker 00 Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones, like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then sometimes you make great ones, like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers, not available in all states. The best part of waking up? A full cup of Folgers coffee and music on full blast.
27:59 Speaker 00 Shop Folgers K-Cup Pods and more at your nearest retailer.
28:06 Mike Carruthers? So I'll confess that when I first heard about my guest for this segment and the topic he discusses, which is anger, I thought, eh, yeah, been there. We've done that a few times. How much more is there to learn about anger? But when you hear this next conversation, I think you'll come away thinking differently about your anger and the anger of other people. After all, we all get angry. It's what we do with that anger that really matters. Sam Parker is a journalist who has written for publications, including The Guardian, Telegraph, Observer, and GQ Magazine. And he's author of a book called Good Anger:
28:46 Mike Carruthers? How Rethinking Rage Can Change Our Lives. Hi, Sam. Welcome to Something You Should Know.
28:52 Speaker 03 Hey, Mike. Thanks for having me.
28:53 Mike Carruthers? So I hear people say that, you know, we live in a very angry world, that the world is getting nastier and angrier. Is that true? Do you think we're angrier than we used to be? Or is that perception?
29:07 Speaker 03 No, I think it's correct. I think what's happening, actually, is that we've been given lots of ways to express our anger, but very few ways to resolve it in a good way. So a lot of the modern ills get blamed on social media, and I'm afraid I'm going to do a little bit of that again. We've been handed this incredible tool for venting what we're upset about. But unfortunately, that very tool stymies any opportunity to have a constructive conversation with anyone. So we get lots of bad anger. We just don't get much of what I call good anger.
29:34 Mike Carruthers? I just love what you just said. I have never thought of it that way. But we have so many ways to express our anger and so few ways to resolve it. That you've just, we don't even have to do the interview now. We're done. That was brilliant. That's a brilliant quote. It's a brilliant quote.
29:52 Speaker 03 Thank you. Something I studied was the conditions under which, according to psychology, an expression of anger can be truly cathartic, that we can truly feel that it is done as good. And often anger is a very social emotion. So if I made you angry and you came to me and told me that, and we talked through why it was, and I shared my perspective, and we came to a more empathic understanding of each other, and we agreed on a way forward that was defined by mutual respect, that's a fantastic use of anger. What you see on Twitter and you know Facebook and everywhere else where we go now to rant is that people never really get to have that conversation. And actually, if those platforms were to enable that, we'd spend less time on them. So it's not in their interest at all.
30:37 Speaker 03 They just want us to be stuck in the kind of fog of our initial rage, never really able to, uh, to, you know, get to a happy place with it. And I think this is part of the reason why the world feels very angry at the moment is that we have a lot of anger ventilation and very little anger resolution.
30:53 Mike Carruthers? But social media aside, we have the same problem in real life. If, if what you just said is true, that the way to resolve anger in a positive way is the, the process that you just described, well, who does that in real life either? I mean, people, you know, give the silent treatment or they, you know, and then, and don't say anything, or they blow up, or, but, but they don't do what you just said.
31:18 Speaker 03 Well, some people do, but yes, it's very difficult. And I think this is the skill that we need to learn. Part of the problem is that we conflate anger with aggression and violence. You know, one is a healthy emotion that has lots of useful information for us. It can be incredibly energizing in a positive way. The other is a behavioral choice that we make that normally makes things worse. And what I'm interested in most of all is what I call the other anger problem, which is not actually the people who, who can't stop losing their temper or getting into confrontations, but it's the people who, um, who suppress their anger, who often don't even know it's there, right? It's the people pleasers, it's the conflict avoiders, it's the people who keep the peace often at the expense of their own.
31:59 Speaker 03 And something I realized in my own sort of journey was that this was really something that sat behind why I felt anxious. And the role of an inability to express anger healthily in depression and anxiety is something that we don't talk about enough. And lots of people out there are very good socially, uh, they don't cause problems for anyone else, but because they don't honor their anger, they have no way of expressing it, they can't really identify it, they're paying a personal price for it on the inside. And I think this is something that we need to start to talk about.
32:30 Mike Carruthers? Let's start talking about it. Do you think people don't express their anger because they don't know they're angry? Or they just know it and stuff it in?
32:39 Speaker 03 It's a combination. Some people do a mixture of the two. There are many reasons historically, socially, why lots of people feel feelings of shame, taboo, sort of fear around anger. We often learn as children that if we display our anger, we will be punished or rejected for it. Certain groups in society are really punished for expressing anger in an excessive way. And so we have lots of barriers when it comes to expressing anger in the first place. Other people, yeah, you know, they do repress it, they sort of suppress it. And they do that, I think, out of fear a lot of the time. And this leads to, as I say, it's something that sits often behind depression and anxiety. But it is something that we can unlearn.
33:22 Mike Carruthers? So help me unlearn it. How do you then come out the other side and be able to express your anger? And, you know, I don't want to be hanging around people who are constantly expressing their anger like, "Okay, shut up, you know, enough's enough." "Yeah, we know yesterday you were angry about something else and now you're angry about this."
33:42 Speaker 03 It's how they express it though, right? I mean, if somebody is coming at you and they're being very kind of dogmatic or domineering with their anger, they've kind of allowed aggression to overtake them a little bit. That's not pleasant to be around. But if someone is coming to you and saying, "Hey, look, you know, this incident made me angry the other day and, you know, this is why I think it is and I wonder if we could resolve it this way." No, you don't want to be having that conversation every day. But imagine if we just had that conversation occasionally at work. Instead of going and stewing in what we're upset about or complaining about a person behind their back. You know, there's so many ways that we're inefficient with our time because we're not really talking about the fact that we're angry. So I agree with you. I think, you know, you don't want to be spending all day talking about anger.
34:26 Speaker 03 But actually, a conversation about anger can be positive, it can be calm, it can be constructive. And if we did that, we'd actually save ourselves a lot of strife.
34:34 Mike Carruthers? But in life, a lot of times, anger comes up when things are not calm. You call me a jerk and I get upset and angry and yell something back at you. I'm not going to come back to you two days later and go, "Well, you know, Sam, the other day..." I'll probably explode in the moment and say, "Oh, yeah? You can't call me a jerk." But I mean, that's how people deal with that.
35:00 Speaker 03 Well, you know, I've learned to deal with it differently. And I think that you can take a beat with anger. And part of it is asking yourself the question of like, what the anger has to tell you. What we're very good at is understanding the information anger has about other people. So we're great at going, okay, Mike's made me angry. He must be a jerk. But if you then actually learn to ask yourself the next question, what is, what is the anger telling me about myself? What is it pointing me towards? What is it signaling? Then you get to more useful information and then you can act on it more calmly. And actually, the energy of anger can hang around for a very long time. I mean, I don't know about you, but you know, something really gets to me. I will still be annoyed about it two days later, three days later, a week later. But when you come at it with a little bit of calmness, a little bit of clarity, you can then choose which way to direct that energy.
35:46 Speaker 03 This is a silly example, but I use it from time to time. You know, if my partner and I have an argument and I'm initially, you know, full of frustration at how she's misunderstood me or how I've been unfairly treated. What I'll sometimes do after we've had an argument and we're cooling off is take the energy of that anger and I will go and clean the kitchen cleaner than it's ever been cleaned. And the reason I'm doing that is because I want to show her what a great person I am and how she was wrong to ever doubt me. Now, that's just refunding the energy of anger into something constructive. What I might have done in the past, or what a lot of people do, is perpetuate the argument for longer or storm out of the house or, you know, go and kick a wall or something. When you start to see anger as a choice, you can take the information and you can take the energy of it and you can put it to good use.
36:31 Mike Carruthers? Yeah, but what you just said, though, was you had an argument. So that's where I think things go off the rails is in that argument that I thought you didn't have, that I thought you walked away and came back two days later.
36:44 Speaker 03 But there's nothing wrong with having an argument. You know, when an argument becomes unhealthy is when it becomes toxic, excessive. You become aggressive with each other. You start flinging insults around. You know, we all know what a bad argument looks like, but a good argument is actually a really healthy part of a relationship. In fact, if you have a relationship in which there is no argument and both parties are too afraid to show when they're angry and upset, that's unhealthy in its own way. It's a terribly tense thing to be around. It's not a great environment for children often, you know? So you do have to find that middle ground. And having a little bit of an argument is not a bad thing. It's just when we let it get out of control.
37:23 Mike Carruthers? So walk me through a good argument.
37:27 Speaker 03 Okay, so my partner and I have have made each other angry, or one person has made the other angry. Sometimes what we do is use the discomfort caveat, which is a principle of admitting upfront that you're feeling angry, which kind of sets a more, let's say, empathic sort of tone between you from the beginning. It makes you feel like you're on the same side a little bit more. But you have the argument, you talk about what you're upset about, and then you agree to a timeout. You know, you take a little bit of a break, and then you both go and reflect on it, and you come back after a certain amount of time and talk again. Physiologically, they say that 20 minutes is the right, is the minimum time for this. That's how long it takes for your nervous system to reset, for the amygdala hijack that took place to calm down again.
38:13 Speaker 03 In that time, by the way, you shouldn't just rehearse what you're going to say when you get to get, you know, go back into the argument, you should go and distract yourself with a book, or a walk, or a podcast, or something. Then come back and have the conversation. And the crucial thing is to think about what has the anger alerted you to other than the mistake of the other person? Like, that needs addressed, that shouldn't be forgotten. But what is the unmet need that it's pointing you towards? What is the sort of wound from the past that it's prodded? You know, what is it in you that has been made to feel insecure, or upset, or, you know, afraid? These are difficult questions to ask ourselves, but when you get used to it, you start to see that the reason we get angry is because we're being told by our psyche that we need to make a change.
38:57 Speaker 03 And often that change is not the most obvious one. It's not just that person needs to apologize, it's something else, maybe as well.
39:05 Mike Carruthers? Okay, so I got a bunch of questions.
39:09 Mike Carruthers? Your description of an argument resembles nothing like my description of what an argument looks like. There was no arguing.
39:18 Speaker 03 Well, there was an argument in the beginning when you, when you're sharing what it is that you, you know, one person's upset about.
39:23 Mike Carruthers? But no, there was sharing, there wasn't arguing.
39:28 Mike Carruthers? I mean, maybe they're two words for the same thing. But your, your version is so tame and thoughtful and, and like, there's a plan, rather than just saying what comes ever, ever comes out of your mouth because you're angry. That's an argument.
39:47 Speaker 03 Right, and you can do that part, but we all know the difference between an argument that stayed within the parameters of, let's say, a certain amount of reasonableness, right? And we know the difference between that and an argument that has escalated into something else, when you really have lost your head, right? There are very two different types of exchanges, and I think you can have the first version, and you can have a crossed word, that's just a natural, normal part of being in an adult relationship, but you can then choose to break away and reflect on it properly and come back. Another really good thing you can do in a relationship is talk about anger when you're not angry, you know? Talk about what your triggers are with each other, talk about why you think they may
40:28 Speaker 03 exist, talk about previous arguments that you've had, and you start to map out with each other a little bit, you know, what it is that really winds each other up about each other. And I think if you have that when you're in a place of calm, you're taking a little bit of an insurance policy out against your next argument. It means you can get to the resolution bit quicker, not saying you don't sometimes still lose your head. But, you know, it's all about giving yourself information and giving yourself a map as to like why it is you get angry and how you can come back from it.
40:59 Mike Carruthers? But when you or someone in the argument loses their head, or if an argument begins with who the hell do you think you are, it's not going well from the very beginning, how do you calm down when things start to get out of hand?
41:13 Speaker 03 Well, like I say, I mean, you do have to take a physical break, you do have to give your, you have to remember like anger is a physiological response, right? We have a hijacking of our brain, we're flooded with adrenaline, we all know the physical symptoms of a moment of rage, it can be very uncomfortable, you have to give your body time to reset, and with that, your mind and your powers of rationalization and, you know, coherent argument building and all the rest of it. So you take yourself away and you give yourself some time for that reset to happen. But then, the piece that people don't often do is then really be honest with yourself and really be inquisitive about why you got angry and what that's pointing you towards,
41:56 Speaker 03 and what is the information for me about me and not just the other person.
42:01 Mike Carruthers? So I know people, I bet you know people, who almost, or who seem to almost never get angry.
42:08 Speaker 03 Yes.
42:09 Mike Carruthers? Who are those people?
42:11 Speaker 03 I actually think they are more of us than you might think. And something I heard a lot when I was researching my book was people say to me, I don't really get angry. I'm not really an angry person. One in particular sticks out to me. He was a very celebrated novelist in the UK. I was having a conversation with him and he was talking about talking to his therapist and describing a sort of uncomfortable feeling he gets around certain people in certain situations. And his therapist said to him, you realize you're describing anger. And this was like a eureka moment for this guy. He was in his 30s. He'd never even, he would have told you he was not an angry person. What was really happening was that it was manifesting as a sort of anxiety.
42:52 Speaker 03 And this is when we get into the way that many people, because they've learned that anger is something they shouldn't express, or that it isn't safe for them to. They develop another emotional response in its place. A lot of women will tell you that they, they cry when they get angry. You know, sadness is what comes out. Personally, for me, it's, it's more anxiety. If I'm angry about something, it can manifest as anxiety. So there are lots of people who, who have this kind of dysfunctional relationship with anger where they don't, they don't know that it's actually anger that they're feeling. And this is part of the problem. So you kind of have to learn like, how do you ident, how, how, how do you know when you're feeling angry when you don't think you are? Because the truth is that nobody can live without anger. There's no life without it.
43:36 Speaker 03 I think you said that at the top of the conversation and that's absolutely right. But lots of people will tell you that they live without it, or that they never get angry. If they said that about any other core emotion, you'd probably think, hmm, that sounds a little unrealistic or unlikely. When people say it about anger, we think, oh, they must just be chill. You know, they're enlightened somehow, or they're, you know, they're kind of, they're above anger or something. It's nonsense.
43:57 Mike Carruthers? So given all you've said over the last several minutes, let's recap a little bit here about what people can do. With their anger that perhaps they've never done before.
44:09 Speaker 03 The first thing you need to do is redefine what anger is to yourself. You need to separate it from ideas of aggression and violence. You need to re-conceptualize it as a healthy emotion that has information for you and energy that you can use. Then you need to figure out, what's my personal relationship with anger? If it's not direct and healthy, which for a lot of people it isn't, what do I do instead of feeling angry? Like, what are my responses that kind of cover the anger up? And also, what happens to my body when I feel angry? I learned that teeth grinding, which is something I used to do, you know, all through the night, was actually a lot to do with holding on to anger. So it can manifest itself in the body. Sometimes the body knows something that the mind hasn't caught up with yet.
44:51 Speaker 03 So start to understand your personal set of signals and responses to anger when it comes along. Then it's about when you recognize that you're feeling angry about something or you're angry with somebody, not acting in the moment as best you can, taking it away and analyzing it from every angle. So not just what does it say about the other person? What does it say about me? What are the unmet needs that it's pointing me towards? Then it's about deciding, what do I do with this? Sometimes it's about going and having a direct conversation with someone when you feel calm enough. It's about having the bravery, which comes with practice of saying, you made me angry. I need to talk to you about why. That can lead you to a constructive conversation.
45:34 Speaker 03 Sometimes, for whatever reason, that just isn't feasible or it doesn't seem the right thing to do. Then the question is, well, what do I do with this energy that I've still got in my body because I'm angry? Let's channel it into something productive. Let's channel it into doing something that gets me ahead. Then you've made a choice about your anger that actually improves your life rather than making it worse.
45:53 Mike Carruthers? How hard is this? I mean, I guess it depends on where you are on the scale, but, but, I mean, is this, is this something if you put your mind to it, you can just do it? Or is this something that takes a lot of practice and you're going to get it wrong?
46:06 Speaker 03 I think a really good metaphor for this is trying to use anger when you never really have is a bit like trying to drive a sports car when you don't have a license. You are gonna bang into things, you are gonna stall, you're gonna get it wrong a bunch of times. It's really difficult. It's kind of like emotional ninja stuff, I think. You need to give yourself the grace to slowly get better at it. You need to be upfront with other people and explain to them that you're trying to get better to act on your anger and hey, you might get it wrong here and there. It's all about being open and curious about it. But I personally have been on this path for the best part of the last 10 years. I'm by no means expert at it, but my life has improved immeasurably, both my mental
46:50 Speaker 03 health, the trajectory of my career, my personal relationships. All of it has been improved by practicing and learning to get better at acting when I'm angry in the right way.
47:00 Mike Carruthers? Well, anger is certainly a topic we all have to deal with. We all know people or are people who have anger issues. And clearly you've mastered it. You seem to have figured out how to deal with anger, and so can we all. I've been talking with Sam Parker. He is a journalist and author of the book Good Anger: How Rethinking Rage Can Change Our Lives. There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Sam, thanks. Thanks for being here.
47:29 Speaker 03 Thanks, Mike. I've really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for having me on.
47:35 Mike Carruthers? When you buy car insurance, one of the factors that determines how much you pay is your address, where you live. But that seems odd, since when you drive, you are by definition not home. The fact is, though, that if you live in a rural area with little or no traffic, you're likely to face lower auto insurance costs than folks who live in a crowded city or even the suburbs. Why? Well, a big reason is that you're more likely to get into an accident close to home than you are far away. In fact, only about 1% of car accidents happen 50 miles from home or farther. There's also the issue of auto theft and burglary, which has nothing to do with driving.
48:20 Mike Carruthers? If you park your car in a high-crime area overnight, that has to be taken into consideration in determining your rate. And so that is why your home address matters, and that is something you should know. You know, at the end of most episodes, I ask you to share this podcast with someone you know to help grow our audience. And after, you know, 1,200-plus episodes, I'm running out of ways to ask. So I just ask, please, share this podcast with someone you know and help us grow our audience. I'd appreciate it. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thank you for listening today to Something You Should Know.
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