SYSK TRENDING - Curious Quirks of the Human Brain

Something You Should Know

This episode of 'Something You Should Know' explores fascinating quirks of the human brain, from why time seems to speed up with age to how

Key takeaways

• Time feels faster as we age because routine reduces the number of memorable 'landmarks' our brain creates.
• Learning new skills or experiencing novel situations can slow down perceived time by creating more mental landmarks.

Main topics

• Perception of time and aging
• Cognitive biases in memory and behavior

Notable quotes

"When you're young, everything is new. And so your brain is constantly doing lots of work... that influences your sense of the passage of time."

Conclusion

The human brain operates on countless invisible shortcuts and biases that shape

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) There is one word I think gets people in trouble with money. It's probably. I'm probably spending about this much every month. I'm probably saving enough. I'm probably on track for retirement. Probably is not a financial plan. I've been using Monarch. It's a personal finance app that puts your whole financial picture in one place. And it replaces probably with actual numbers. For example, Monarch showed me that our spending last month jumped about 30 % from the month before. 30%. We had some home repairs, but none of the bills seemed like a big hit at the time. But put them all together, and wow. But I didn't realize how much our spending had jumped until Monarch showed me. And I think that's how money can get away from you. It's not necessarily one giant expense that sets off alarm bells. It's all the things that add up that you don't really notice. That's what I like about Monarch. You can see your spending, accounts, investments, and savings goals all in one place and see what's really going on with your money. If you're operating on probably, maybe it's time to find out. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code SYSK at Monarch.com. to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50 % off your first year at Monarch.com with code S-Y-S-K. Speaker 1 (1:36) Your brain is doing some pretty strange things right now, most of which you're completely unaware of. For example, why can you walk into a room and suddenly forget why you went in there? Why does your brain sometimes confidently remember things that never actually happened? Why can a song get stuck in your head for hours? And why is it almost impossible to get rid of? The human brain is remarkably powerful, but it's also filled with some very odd quirks, shortcuts, and glitches that influence how you think, remember, and behave. That's why today's SYSK Trending topic is Curious Quirks of the Human Brain. Art Markman is a cognitive scientist and an expert on how the mind works. And he's here to explain some of the strangest things your brain does and what those quirks reveal about you. And we'll get to that conversation right after this. Some days I eat pretty well. Other days, meh. I get to the late afternoon and realize that, nutritionally speaking, today has not exactly been my finest work. Which is one reason I've been using cachava. This is ridiculously easy. Two scoops in a shake and you're getting plant-based protein, fiber, greens, and a whole lot more. No artificial flavors, colors, or sweeteners. No soy, gluten, or preservatives. And here's what really surprised me. It tastes good. I tried the new salted caramel. I really like that salty-sweet combination. I always have. But there are a bunch of other great flavors too. Strawberry, vanilla, chocolate, even cinnamon French toast. So you're not sentenced to drinking the same thing every day. I really like cachava because I don't have to think very hard about it. When I know I could use something nutritious, it's there. It takes about a minute and I'm done. So if you're nutritional... Intentions are sometimes better than your nutritional reality. This is a good time to try cachava because something you should know listeners get 15 % off their first order. Go to cachava.com and use code S-Y-S-K for 15 % off your first order. That's cachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com, code S-Y-S-K. Speaker 1 (4:03) How can you not be fascinated by the human brain and how it works? Particularly when you step back and see that it sometimes works in very strange and mysterious ways. And I think the more we understand how the brain works, or at least shine a spotlight on it and observe how it works, the better insight we gain into ourselves. And someone who I think would agree with that premise is psychologist Art Markman. Art is a professor of psychology and marketing at the University of Texas at Austin. He's the co-host of a podcast called Two Guys on Your Head, and he is the author of several books, including Brain Briefs, the answers to the most and least pressing questions about your mind. Hi, Art. It's great to be here. Thanks so much. So one of the questions you tackle, which I think... a lot of people would be curious about is why we find kitten videos so irresistible. The Speaker 2 (5:02) thing about kitten videos is that they are this perfect storm in the sense that one of the things that evolution has done is to recognize that infants are annoying in every species. And so what they do to make sure that parents still want to take care of them is they do things to make them look really cute. to the people who are going to take care of them. And so infants of every species have big eyes and they have little small features. And so we love those. And so what happens is kittens have that aspect ratio. They have big eyes, very small face, you know, very symmetric. And so what we're doing is getting this evolutionary dose of cuteness. And then Rather than having to live life in all of its moments to wait for the one moment that's great, what a kitten video does is it's kind of like the highlight reel for football fans. You don't have to sit through the whole game. You just get the highlight, really the great part of it. And so what a kitten video does is it takes this extraordinarily cute thing and then just gives you the highlights. And they're absolutely fascinating. Speaker 1 (6:17) So talk about liars, because that interested me, how we can tell when people are lying, if we can at all. If Speaker 2 (6:25) you go on the internet and you start searching around, you will find all of these tips for catching liars. And a lot of these tips... have to do with these unconscious tells that people are supposed to give off when they're lying. So