Why You Don't See What's Right in Front of You & The Surprising Truth About Sidewalks

Something You Should Know

This episode explores how our brains filter out 99.9% of sensory input, creating 'blind spots' that cause us to miss obvious things—like a gorilla in a basketball video or critical warnings in a cockpit. It reveals how b

Key takeaways

• Keelan Lacer, co-author of 'Unseen,' explains that brains process only ~20 of 400 billion sensory bits per second, filtering out everything else by design

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) I know you like interesting and thought-provoking conversations and ideas because you listen to something you should know. So let me recommend another podcast I know you will enjoy. It's the Jordan Harbinger Show. Jordan has a real talent for getting his guests to share stories and offer thought-provoking insights. Over the years, I've sent a lot of people to listen, and I get feedback from people who are so glad I introduce them to the Jordan Harbinger Show. Recently he discussed Scientology and the children who are raised in that organization. It's a fascinating conversation. And he talked with Dr. Rhonda Patrick about how to protect your mind and body from the modern world. And it's tougher than you think. I've gotten to know Jordan pretty well. We talk frequently, and I tell you, he is a very smart, insightful guy who does a hell of a podcast. Check out the Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen. listen to podcasts. Today, on Something You Should Know, the real reason they play music in stores and restaurants. Then understanding your blind spots, the things you miss that are right in front of you. Every single second, your senses are bombarded with 400 billion bits of information, but your brain can only consciously handle about 20 of those bits. So it makes decisions really fast about what to pay attention to and what to throw away. So a blind spot is everything it through away. Also, a simple way to save money on big purchases and some fascinating things about sidewalks you never knew. For example, the very common arrangement in most cities and towns across the country, private property owners are responsible for maintaining, repairing, clearing litter from the sidewalk, whether or not they own the space. All this today on something you should know. The city moves fast, but your vibe that's different. Sharper, smoother, more alive. Ah, just a boy, a boy, have to be in this wild night, a firefly to my boy, that's just a boy. The new Honda City isn't just made to drive, it's made to feel. The new Honda City, all-new vibe. 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. Have you ever wondered why stores and restaurants play the music that they play? I have. And so that's what we're going to start with today on this episode of Something You Should Know. Hi, I'm Mike Carruthers, and I'm really glad you're here. So the music playing in a store or restaurant isn't there just to fill the silence. In many cases, it's chosen very carefully because it can influence how you behave. Research has found that slower, softer music encourages shoppers to slow down, browse longer, and often buy more. Faster tempo music does just the opposite. It gets people moving quickly, which is why you often hear upbeat music in busy fast food restaurants where rapid table turnover is important. The style of music matters too. Studies have found that customers are more likely to order expensive wine when a restaurant plays classical music than when pop music is playing. Other research suggests that people rate food as more sophisticated or higher quality when the music matches the atmosphere, and diners tend to linger longer when the music is slower and played at a moderate volume. Loud fast music, on the other hand, encourages people to eat. eat faster and leave sooner. And none of this is accidental. Retailers and restaurants know that music can subtly influence your mood, your perception of quality, how quickly you move, how long you stay, and ultimately how much you're willing to spend. So the next time you're shopping or dining out, listen to the soundtrack. It may have been selected less for your enjoyment than for its ability to quietly shape your decisions. And that is something you should know. Every single one of us has blind spots, not just in our vision or in our thinking. In fact, there are things happening around you right now that your brain is completely ignoring. That's not a flaw, it's actually how your brain is designed to work. Every second, you are bombarded by thousands of sights, sounds, smell, sensations, and other bits of information. If your brain tried to process all of it, you'd never get anything done. So it constantly filters out what it decides doesn't matter. For example, until I mentioned it, you probably weren't aware of the feeling of your clothes against your skin or your tongue resting in your mouth. Those sensations were all there all along, but your brain simply edited the mount. Most of the time, that's incredibly helpful, but sometimes those same mental blind spots cause us to overlook things that really do matter, important clues, opportunities, mistakes, even obvious problems that are right in front of us. Here to explain why our brains work this way and how understanding these blind spots can help us make better decisions is Keelan Lacer. He is a digital illusionist and one of the world's leading experts on using blind spots to intrigue, baffle, and amaze audiences. Along with the late neuropsychologist David Lewis, he is co-author of a book called Unseen, Blind Spots and Why We Miss What Matters Most. Hi, Keelan, welcome to something you should know. Hello, Mike. It's lovely to be here. Thank you for inviting me onto this wonderful podcast. So explain to me and everyone listening what exactly a blind spot is in your way of thinking. Imagine that your brain is like the most overworked security guard. There's too much happening around. you so your brain decides what matters most every single second your senses are bombarded with 400 billion bits of information, sights, sounds, smells, everything, but your brain can only consciously handle around about 20 of those bits. So it makes decisions really fast without asking you about what to pay attention to and what to throw away. So a blind spot is everything it threw away, the stuff that was right there in front of you that you completely missed. And an example of this in real life would be what? So right now you're listening to me. Your brain is quietly throwing away the feeling of the clothes that are on your skin, for example. The sounds and things in your peripheral vision is editing reality in real time without asking for your permission. A blind spot is simply anything that got edited out. And the frightening thing is you never know you missed it because your brain doesn't leave a gap. It just fills in seamlessly. So the most perfect real-life example would be there was an experiment with a famous gorilla experiment where you're asked to count how many times a basketball passes between basketball players and a person in a gorilla suit walks through the scene and you missed the gorilla entirely because you're focused on something completely different. You're focused on counting basketball passes and not the gorilla walking through because you weren't expecting that. These weren't distracted people. they were just concentrating hard. And that's the problem. The harder you focus on one thing, the blind you are for everything else that's around you. You know what's interesting about that gorilla thing is I've heard that story before, that experiment before, many times. And I always think, well, wait a minute. I wouldn't miss that. If I was watching basketball players passing a basketball and a gorilla walked through the screen that I was watching, I have to believe I would have seen that. And that's exactly what everyone thinks. And that's precisely why blind spots are so dangerous. Every single person who missed the gorilla sort of thinks the same thing. I'm observant. I pay attention. I wouldn't miss something obvious. And here's the really humbling part when researchers ran this experiment with trained radiologists, some of the most visually sort of attentive professionals on the planet. And they inserted a tiny gorilla into a CT lung scan. 20 out of the 24 radiologists missed it completely while that because they were actively searching scan for abnormalities they completely missed a gorilla that was embedded into the the CT scan These people whose entire career is about not missing things and their brain completely edited out a gorilla in a scan You said a moment ago you use the phrase that's why blind spots are so dangerous Well why are they dangerous? They're dangerous for many reasons. For example, Eastern Airlines, I think it was flight 401, the entire cockpit crew came fixated on a faulty landing gear. It was a warning light and it was just one small light but nobody noticed the autopilot had quietly disengaged. They flew a perfectly functioning plane straight into the Florida Everglades. Everyone was looking but no one was actually seeing. In medicine, a nurse expected a drug label to read 10 units per milligram. Her brain showed her exactly that. It actually read 10,000 units, and sadly the patient died. And it was not through negligence. It's through blind spots. And we've got so many examples of this, the space shuttle example as well, operators that had been on 12-hour shifts for three days, missed something that caused the space. shuttle to ultimately explode. Tragically seven people died. The three-mile island nuclear plant, workers at 4 a.m., a stuck valve that was leaking radioactive material causing one of the biggest nuclear disasters we've ever had. So fatigue makes blind spots dramatically wider. And so knowing that, is there something you can do understanding that these blind spots exist that help you see them? Yes, there's many things. you can do. Firstly, being aware of them. You can't eliminate your blind spots altogether, but you can absolutely learn when you're most vulnerable, and that changes everything. The honest truth is trying to eliminate blind spots entirely would be like trying to flopping, sort of try to fly with flapping your arms. It's baked into how every human brain manages information, but you can work with them. The single most powerful thing you can do is what we call the three Fs. So if you're fatigued, frightened, or furious, your blind spots get dramatically wider in those exact moments. And here's the crucial part. Those are precisely the moments other people want you to make those decisions. So if you think about social media is specifically engineered to make you feel frightened or angry because a frightened or angry person reacts before they think. And that's not by accidents. That's a design choice in how social media platforms work. They want you to engage. and the way you engage is by making you furious about things. And so how are we manipulated by this? You mentioned social media, but who else is using this against us to sell us things? Every company that understands human attention are using these techniques, some innocently, some