Cluttered Desks, Cluttered Minds & Toddler Hands

other myrriad objects there. Yeah. Yeah, I've got a beautiful leaf, uh, photos uh, Kinsey knife yeah yeah, you um well, minds a lot neater now, Like we we moved to locations shortly after my son arrived, so for the longest my desk was pretty messed up because it's just like a pile of art that I wanted to somehow stick to our art resistant surfaces around our desk area, like the wall. It's not really cubicle, but just I'm lucky enough to have to surfaces like the wall in front of me,

the wall beside me. But it's it's it's made in a way to where you can't it's really difficult to stick things to and uh and the only way you can really do it is like this, this sort of complex system where you use uh, pins and um and tape at the same time and kind of like sow your art into the wall and it takes forever. So that, yeah, it's really the only way to do it. So for the longest, my desk was just like piles of notes for podcast book screen about a monitor that I didn't

have hooked up yet. Um and you know, it's just just awful. I saw it as a fortress of papers and books, like you were walling everybody out. I know it probably looked pretty bad with the monitor because the monitor was was not hooked up, and it was like between me and Jonathan Strickland as if I was never going to hook up this monitor and I was gonna use it slowly as a divider and uh and so I'm glad to have that hooked up so people can see, Oh,

he's not just a defensive clutter. Yeah he was. He was going to get there, go somewhere with that at some point. So yeah, well, and we are going to talk to you about spaces, orderly spaces, chaotic spaces, how do they affect us? And I will say that I do like a nice orderly space, but when I'm working on a project, things spirals sort of everywhere, and that makes sense to me because I'm referencing a lot of

different things. But I might be an order muppet an order. Okay, this is the idea that, of course we have casks in order. The two great movements in life, right, A movement towards order, a movement away from order. Of course, to quote while Stevens the poet, a violent order is a disorder, and a great disorder is an order, and these two things are one. So it's a complicated topic. There's a lot of back and forth, but a simplified

way is too. Indeed, look at Jim Hinson's The Muppets and divide them into agents of order and agents of chaos. That's right. Dahlia Lithwick, writing for Slate, talked about this, this idea that you either fall into one of two categories chaos muppet, which are out of control, emotional, volatile. They tend towards this is for saying this. They tend

towards the blue and fuzzy. They make their way through life in a swirling maelstrom of food crumbs, small flaming objects, and the letter C. We're talking about Cookie Monster, Ernie Grover, Guns, Dr Bunsen, Honeydew Animal, and she says, Zelda Fitzgerald, here's here's a historical figure who was a chaos Muppet. Okay, But on the other side, you've got your order Muppet. And she says she's thinking about Bert Scooter Sam the Eagle Kermit of course, right, and the blue guy who

is perennially harassed by Grover at restaurants. She says, the order Muppet, every Man, that blue Guy. They tend to be neurotic, highly regimented, averse to surprises, and they sport monstrously large eyebrows. She said. They represent the responsibility of running the world and they feel weighed down by it, but they secretly revel the knowledge that they keep things afloat. Okay, Yeah,

which are you? Well, we were talking about this earlier and I'm still struggling to come with an answer because I'm definitely not the guy who threw the sword fish. Like that's like to me, like he and uh An Animal are right up there like the extremes of chaos mupet Gonzo too. Really, they're they're right up there at the threshold of of of utter chaos. And then of course on the other end, you have uh, Sam the Eagle, I guess would be like the most orderly Muppet because

Kermit will wave his arms around a bit. But but Sam is a rock and he's gonna stick to it, uh no matter what. And I feel like I'm maybe a little more towards the middle. So it's hard to hard to I mean, maybe some of the members of the band were a little more balanced and laid back, but I don't think I'm a doctor, both because I had to have seen you as a chaos muppet when

you're working and you're in the middle of something. But I have also seen you as the order muppet who every six months goes around the office and says, why is all this chalk around and clings things up and you get rid of all the jars of urine and whatnot hanging around. Well, maybe I'm maybe I'm kind of like the Count, because the Count is there's yes, the Count one, two, three, Uh, he's because he's orderly in

a very and he's all about the numbers. But this his obsession with the numbers tends to disrupt everything else in his life. So I feel I feel like, maybe I'm not saying that it's a one to one comparison, but I feel like I'm kind of that kind of mixed where they're they're parts of me that are very orderly, but sometimes those get in the way of other stuff and causes disorder over here. I'm kind of in flux. I guess well, I'm with Dhlia Lithwick. She says that

she is a faux chaos muppet. Yeah, but at the center is order. What about you? That's what I'm saying. I'm with I'm with her, that your faux chaos muppet. Okay, yeah, but it also depends on the situation and um my

environments and everybody's environment as well. Discuss But the thing is, those chaos muppets, they always get a bad rap, right because the surroundings they don't look so good, and people perceive them as you know, just sort of lay about who can't even be bothered to clean up their spaces. In fact, it brings to mind the broken windows theory, right, the idea that that the way that you ultimately combat um social upheaval and problems of crime is that you

focus on all the little things you focus on. Say that broken window or some graffiti because of the windows are broken. If there's graffiti on the wall, it's sending this message to everyone else that minor transgressions are okay, and therefore we can extrapolate that that the less minor and fractions are okay as well. And then it becomes more and more chaotic. It builds up like kibble. Yeah, like one broken window begets several broken windows, and then

all of a sudden you've got mayhem going on. And I think about the Crag Street Tunnel in Atlanta as an example of a graffiti ridden tunnel but also an example of extreme creativity. In fact, on any given day you can pass by this tunnel and see people getting their photograph taken in front of it or making videos in front of it, because ultimately it's this stand in for an act of creativity. Yeah, it's a graffiti free zone. And I think about this a lot every time I

go past it. I wonder about graffiti free zones and to what extent, uh, basically, what affect they have on creativity, because it's not it's it's a situation where suddenly it's not just like a daring graffiti artist can go there and tag. And it's not just you know, somebody throwing up some sort of a gang tag either. It's everybody,

even people who would normally not even think about it. Well, the crop tunnel does have a good amount of very interesting art, and what I think it's interesting about it is that it requires you to stop and take a second look. And so that's sort of this idea that we're going to look at when we talk about spaces,

in particular workspaces clutter versus order. Yes, all right, So as luck would have it, we have a study that looks at how um chaotic versus clean, neat and orderly environments affect our productivity, affect our creativity, affect our sponse to stimuli. Because again, to your point, we tend to put it in a quick Felix and Oscar odd couple scenario right where one is the slav and one is the orderly individual, and and the slab is just he's just a slab. All he's doing is contributing to the

comedic environment. But that's about it. Where it's it's this is study reveals it's a lot more nuanced than that, and it's actually a really good study for those of us whose desk get a little bit um chaotic from time to time. The title this study is physical order produces healthy choices, generosity, and conventionality, whereas disorder produces creativity. It's a two thousand thirteen paper from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, and it's it.

It basically revolves around three different experiments involving an orderly work environment and a disorderly work environment. Yeah, and let's just read out the first line, because I think this sets the tone. The first line is order and disorder are prevalent in both nature and culture, which suggests that each environ confers advance edges for different outcomes. So it's not so black and white as the order and the

chaos muppets. Yeah, it's not a situation where all right, we have the orderly muppets in the calf muppets are just tearing down society. Like, both have survived, both have are here due to an evolutionary process, so they must both must both be important. Like I always come back to the cuttlefish and about how you have these larger cuttle fish that are mating and you have the masculine cuttlefish who are all about brute strength and UH and say and and just making sure they get their mate

that way. And then you have the sneakier, smaller cuttlefish who disguised themselves as females. And the ultimate take home there is that cuttlefish evolution UH has favored both styles, both types of cuttlefish, and ultimately both types of cuttlefish are necessary for the survival of the species. And so we see a similar thing with disorder muppets and order

muppets in human society. And you see this in this study, which is so interesting because, as you mentioned, there are three experiments that Kathleen DeVos and the other re searchers conducted, and in the first experiment, they randomly assigned a group of college age students to spend time in adjacent office spaces.

One was tidy, the other was cluttered with papers and other work related to try to us, and the students spent their time filling out questionnaires that were unrelated to the study, so the students didn't know really why they were there. After ten minutes, they were told they could leave and they were offered an apple or a chocolate bar. Okay, So those students who sat in the orderly office were twice as likely to choose the apple than those who

sat amid the chaotic mess of papers. In addition, when the participants were presented with the opportunity to donate to a charity, those placed in the orderly room donated more of their own money. Interesting. Okay, so what's coming out of this? The pro I guess you could say for the orderly room here is that we were talking about more civic minded behavior, more generous and conscientious at least in terms of their diets. You know, their their minding,

their peas and cues. Now, what strikes me about this experiment is it I inevitably draw back to our our podcasts about symbols and the power of symbols, and the idea too about clothed cognition, that our our clothing is a kind of symbol that informs how we behave and

how we carry ourselves. And here we see a physical environment that is a symbol for order, a symbol for what is expected of us, uh, the symbol for cleanliness, and that kind of translates into our mind in terms of cleanliness of of ethics, cleanliness of of our of our of our dietary habits and uh and and just an interesting insight into how spaces control our behavior. So yeah,

back to the broken window theory. If you're in that room that's cluttered, messy, apparently nobody has been paying attention. You could eat that chocolate bar. You don't need to give that much money to charity, right. Yeah. It also reminds me of the Panopticon, you know, because because the Panopticon is of course a structure of order. And if you if things are disorderly, then you're you're thinking, well,

I guess nobody's watching. It doesn't it doesn't matter. But if everything is lined up, if everything seems to be in this heightened states state of order, then you also feel like you're more responsible for your actions. Okay, so if you out there are messy desk dwellers, you probably wanted to get vindicated here and you will in the next study. Yeah. So similar deal participants were put into the messy room with disorder everywhere they put into the nice, clean,

or early room. But this time they're asked to come up with new uses for ping pong balls and and so and of course, which makes me wonder, how many different uses can you find for ping pong balls. They're pretty pretty specific and what you can do with them,

but I'll leave that to everyone's imagination. Uh. Anyway, the result, overall, participants in the messy room came up with the same number of ideas for new ways to use these ping pong balls as the clean room counterparts, but their ideas were rated as more interesting and creative when evaluated by

the judges. So dependent judges. The judges they were judging, they just like a list of ideas, brainstormed ideas for what you could do with a pair of ping ball balls and anyway, So ultimately we're showing here that participants in the disorderly room were more creative. They were able to come up with more novel ideas for what to do with those ping boonballs, which again a very limited object to have to brainstorm around. Then they're clean room counterparts.

So making this case that creativity or the ability to take a risk in your thought processes is also borne out in their final experiment, in which they were given the choice of adding a health boost to their lunch time smoothie that was labeled either new or classic. Guests who chose the classic, well, the classic is going to be chosen by the clean room people because they want to stick with something that is proven, that is established. They're not going to take any risk on some sort

of new fangled smoothie editive, that's right. But those in the messy room, they were like, bringing on, want the new formula. Let's go crazy with this smoothie. Just put everything in it. I don't care, wood chips, ping pong balls. Yeah, the ping pong ball smoothie was born of this experiment, I bet. Yeah. So that messy environment can actually cause people to feel inspired to break free of tradition, right to say, Okay, that window is broken, let's let's do

something with that. Let's make some artwork out of it. You know. I feel like at times it even it even helps to have like a disorder avatar to turn to, you know, like like a figure like an animal or a hunter s Thompson, where you could you you sort of think around them, you sort of you sort of live vicariously through them for a few moments, and it has an overall creative benefit to you, sort of like

a spirit animal. Yeah, like you know, you have a spirit animal is animal you can sort of draw from that and uh and yeah, and at least for for for a little bit. As you you you sort of bath in his glow, you're able to feel a little more liberated, a little bit more daring in your ideas. All right, let's take a quick break, and when come back, we are going to try to get at the bottom of why this creativity, in this sort of inspiration and

perhaps even learning are linked to messy environments. All right, we're back, and you know it just real quick, you know, talking about working in disorderly environments, chaotic environments. And I think to coffee shops again, a place where both of you and I working coffee shops a lot, and there's a lot of really interesting history about the coffee shops roll in uh in creative thought in Western culture, and

that is a chaotic environment. And in the best of situations, because you have people ordering different drinks, you have all sorts of weird sounds of the espresso. You know, God knows what kind of music we're gonna play. People from an in and out, and if you're lucky, it's a variety of people. So it's you know, it's beautiful people, ugly people. People you know, from from the top of the ivory tower, people who sleep under the tower, all coming into the same space, and it I for one,

feel that creative energy rolling off of it. Yeah. I mean you talked about the periody of enlightenment and this convergence of coffee houses, people turning away from from the liquor, from the alcohol and going towards coffee as a stimulant and as a result, sharing more of their ideas in this community centered, uh sort of area, And the same

thing today is going on. Although a lot of us are wearing headphones, you do get exposure to everyone, and so it does make sense to me that the chaos of all of that might create these associations that would help you kind of ping pong around until you get these novel associations, these novel ideas. In fact um, it really helps when you're studying a topic. And most people think, oh, when I go to study, it should be in a quiet,

orderly room. But there is a New York Times article called Forget what You Know about good study habits, and it says in a classic nine experiments, psychologist found that college students who study need a list of forty vocabulary words in two different rooms, one window lists and cluttered and the other modern with a view of the courtyard did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice in the same room, And later studies

have confirmed the confirmed the finding for a variety of topics. So the idea here is that the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down the forgetting process because the more layers of chaos, I guess you could say here, um, the more sort of patterns and things that you have to take in data, the more points of association your brain makes to whatever it is that you are concentrating on at that very moment, and

so it becomes a stickier memory for people. Yeah, and it lines up kind of well with what Wall Steven says about the more chaos you have, the chaos kind of becomes an order, and the more order you have, it kind of comes comes more and more chaotic. Now, in talking about learning and chaos, one has to visit the world of the child, of the todd of the baby, because for one thing is we've touched on many times before. Humans are natural born scientists, even the very little wee ones,

their their their brains are open to the world. There they have this lamp like view of things. They're bringing in all this data, but at the same time, they often seem to be agents of chaos. They seem to revel in making a mess. They seem to know no other way of life than to smear it on the wall on their face, to eat noddles with their hands, and then and then rub their their pesto covered fingers through their hair. I mean, never was there a better

chaos muppet than any child, particularly the age of two. Yeah, they are all animal uh and with maybe a little Gonza or the swordfish dude thrown in for for that whole period of time. I actually had a professor in college who said that the reason why children love animals and stories is that they tend to really um mine with them and be like and see themselves as animals, unpredictable and crazy and running around until they get more

of their humanness under their belts. But in this case, there is a study that shoes up this idea that this uh animal like behavior is helpful in learning things. Yes, researches at the University of Iowa study how sixteen month old children learn words for non solid objects. So we're talking about stuff like oatmeal, glue, peace peas, uh, you know, mucus. Uh, all the various non solid objects that they be coming out or going into your child. There's a lot of

traffic there. Uh. Now, previous researches coming out for sure, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, out the nose that it just happens. Now, the previous research on this topic had shown that Toddler's learn more readily about solid objects because they can easily identify them due to their unchanging size and shape. So an apple is always shaped like an apple, whereas apple sauce, you know, is shaped like whatever the container is. That's basic physics and they get it and their brain is

processing that data. So but but but the previous data said, yeah, as far as the oozy stuff, the running stuff, the apple sauce, the snot the pas, but what have you, They were that they're maybe not as good about identifying that stuff. Now, what this study did. The researchers decided to test this. They said, is this really the case? Is it's just you know, our bias on this particular situation. So they exposed sixth sixteen month olds to fourteen non

solid objects. Mostly it was food and drink stuff like you know, apple sauce and pudding and soup. And then they presented the items and gave them made up words. So like some of the examples though, we're like Dax and Kiv, nonwords used to uh to identify these various gooey foods. So that this is this idea that they're to be purity here, there's no associations because other words that they might have learned in relation to this exactly, just to test what the sort of information they would

retain by interaction with this food exactly. And then a minute passes and they asked the children to identify the same foods in different sizes or shapes uh, so you know, again different containers, different visual presentation of this non solid doctor. And then so this required the answers to go beyond relying simply on shape and size and to explore what

the substances were made off to make the identification. So you can see where this is going in terms of how toddlers behave with with dewey foods and UH, and how you might interact with them. So of course they started prodding it and probing it and pushing it up in their fingers and smearing it out on their bodies, throwing it at the walls, watching the noodles worm their

way down right, and rubbing it into their heads. Just just just this ecstasy of of of handling the non solid stuffs and this tactile experience actually allow this toddlers to learn to better learn the names of foods when they got to play with them. Yeah, which I love this idea because all of a sudden, everything in that world makes sense. As a parent, when when your kid is lobbying this this disgusting liquefied peace at your face. Yeah,

you think, ah, yes, you're learning, my love. They transforms this moment where they're playing with with pricey organic apple sauce or something, you know, and you're just like, are you're wasting your food? You're playing with it, why don't you eat it? And it turns that into this fabulous moment of oh, you were discovering the universe. You are, you were learning, you're using your your tactile senses to

better identify non fluid objects. It's uh, it's it's the kind of study that makes makes parenting a little easier. It really does. And you sent uh some pictures of children, toddlers who were just covered in various kinds of pasta, including spaghetti that I think, I don't know how you're going to feel about. This made me want to jump

in there with them. Really yeah, oh, we'll see. This is if you do a search, do like a Google image search for pasta party or toddler pasta party, baby pasta party, you have to play around with a little bit.

You will see images of this where generally it'll consist of like a very small child swimming pool filled with pasta noodles, cooked pasta noodles, and then there'll be some like naked or maybe diapered or swimsuited babies in there just lounging around with handfuls, just fistfuls of spaghetti, some of it in their mouth, you know, fist in it right into their mouth, smearing it on their bodies, noodles hanging off of them, and uh, it can be a

bit frightening, especially since U some of the photography is good and some of it is a little sketchy looking. Well you see, you sent that to me, and I'm a really tuckedile person and my first impulse was like, yeah, I want to feel that. I want to feel those spirals of pasta in my hands and I want to squish them. I actually started to grip my cheek. Well, I tell you, I first discovered this phenomenon, uh, prior to having a son, and at the time I was like,

this is this is grim. This looks like something out of a horror movie. I want no part of this. Now, I have to say that my my thinking on it is, well, if I knew for certain that it would distract him for thirty minutes, I would totally fill that tub up with with noodles. Uh. So you're your perspective on these changes, and certainly, knowing what we know now from the study, I definitely see the value in it. Now you could

go to go a little overboard. You could decide that you're you need to throw a party for every non fluid object or slightly squishy your gooey thing, uh, and then you're just just just gonna eat your food budget up. I'm not a fan of the world peas in a kiddie pool. I'm going to stick to the pasta myself. But it does give you this idea that you have this uh, this access to this rich patina of associations. If you're trying to figure out the world. If you're

trying to explore it, name it. Then the more you can add to that database, including tactile things. But that would allow you to know that this noodle is squishy, or this noodle is spiral, this noodle is super long and thin. The more you can really get a bead on what this whole kind of human existence thing is. Yeah, and and and certainly educators are onto this. You know, you go to a you go to a museum that really has a robust children's area or or a children's

museum a hands on learning center. I mean, that's the kind of stuff they're gonna they're gonna really push. It's not just look at the alligator. Here's a section of of of an alligator's hide or a representation of it. You can actually touch. Here is some It's one thing to look at some sea life in the in the aquarium behind glass, but let's actually have a touchdank where you can reach in and actually have that tactile experience.

And uh and and all of that, uh, you know, makes just so much more sense once you once you really dive into the data here, I think it's adult swe shild erasist as well before we're learning new things. Perhaps not everybody would like to see us squishing pasta or other types of adventures, but you know, well, I'm I'm writing something for the upside about chemical weapons right now.

I'm probably not going to try and saren or or mustard gas or or clorine gas on my own just to have that pacto experience, because those are certainly um non solid objects. I'm glad that you've made that decision not to do that. All right. Well, on that note, let's call the robot over and catch up on some listener mail. All right, This one comes to us from Jerry, who's responding to our Panopticon episode. He says, Hello, Julian Robert, I just finished listening to your episode on the Panopticon,

which I found both interesting and informative. I am in the business of information security, and one aspect of the Panopticon as life concept that may not be obvious to all is that it isn't always a deterrent against antisocial behavior. In fact, it can have quite the opposite effect by inciting a segment of society into antisocial behavior. A great example of that is the hacktivist Anonymous movement of the

past few years. Now. Those movements are all over the map in terms of motivations, but a common focal point is on the loss of privacy, liberties and so on. As an observer, it's particularly interesting to watch as the establishments they are rebellion against use the very rebellion to justify additional laws which further erode those things that the

activists are fighting for in the first place. I also think that a key element of the movement is for participants to stay out of the eye of the panopticon as they carry out protests by using various means of obstucation,

hence the name anonymous. To carry on the analogy, the movement uses the gaps in the panopticon's vision to hide their antisocial behavior, at least what those involved believed to be gaps, as recent prosecutions would lead one to realize the shadows are not as dark as they might see. I think that is an important faucet because I strongly suspect that the desire to rebel would be far smaller, if not non existent, if those involved were carrying out

their activities in the public eye. Like social disobedience of days gone by in respect, the panopticon both drives them to rebel and drives them to do so only from the perceived blind spots of the watchful eye. Anyhow, I thought it was an interesting active. They didn't come up

on the show, Jerry. I think that Jerry gives us so much to think about here because mostly and I'm going to play a lot of Devil's advocate here, but I think mostly that when we think about anonymous or hacktivists, we tend to think of it more as them bringing

transparency to previously hidden information. But what he is saying is very interesting in the fact that they're not out there front and center actually allows them, people who are not necessarily trying to bring things to transparency, to be a little bit more devious and that they should be out there front and center to actually enact justice. But the question is do you think that they could. Do you think that the anonymous activists, the people who are

you know, on the side of social justice? I should say, do you think that if they were there for us to see that they could accomplish the same amount of information as the question? Yeah, I don't know. I have my I have my doubts on that too. It seems like, you know, to his point, the days of like pure social disobedience, Um, I mean, you still see examples of it, but it's hard to imagine large masses of people engaging

in it without mass these days. Of course, he's coming at it from a security perspective, and so it's just really interesting to to bring that to light. So yeah, if anybody has any thoughts, and I'd love to know, because this is a very rich argument pro and con, and Jerry makes some really good points. All right, Well, here's another bit of listener maile related to the Panopticon episode.

Um Hi, guys Sean from Saskatoon here with the with the least to contribute to a conversation that I've ever had in so far as my primary idea of boils down to nothing. Sounds good, Do go on? He says, I believe that the normalization associated with having an all seeing I on seven does not necessarily lead to a perpetual state of stress of paranoia. We're not equipped to handle something like that, and those who do do so not because of an external situation but a chemical imbalance.

It's the very basis for realization. I'm thinking primarily of a study examining driving habits in the real world, where cameras were mounted in hundreds of people's cars for years to study how distracted or careful drivers were. They all knew they were under observation and got paid to be in the study every year in case they needed a reminder that they were being watched. Uh. They soon behaved as though they were quite alone, covorting with ladies in

the night. In some cases, we're leaving themselves while driving, juggling multiple phones and a cigarette. Some behavior may be curb due to cameras, as they are correlated with a decline and crime, but by and large they are ignored and don't cause significant grief that There are obvious residents of London and New York to cite two examples of cities almost entirely under CCTV observation who feel that their rights are being violated and who rail against the intrusion.

But uh, and I could be wrong here. There are probably people who would be railing against other government intrusion or civil rights violations where there are no cameras at all. Uh. This is a complicated issue, and I'm not a state security apologist, but the mere presence of cameras everywhere, or the omnificence of government about all internet traffic doesn't really bug me nearly as much as their ability to act

without a warrant. Keep up the great work. I look forward as always to your next philosophical, psychological, biological, and technological musics. All right, very good point. Here are we equipped to even deal with this idea that we're constantly being surveiled and perhaps under uh, this construct that we are not we just fold into it as the people who were being watched on these security cameras and their camera became normalized to the whole situation. So I think

that's a good question. But I also wonder if it is part and parcel of the idea that's ingrained in all of us that when we get in the car, no matter if there's a camera watching us, we are in a private space. Hence all the news pickers on the highway. Yes, yeah, it's always kind of better than that is when you see somebody really dancing out to music, though, yeah, I always like that. Well, you know, here's a here's a little bit of listener mail comes in in response

to our Cubicle Doom episode. Which has some crossover into the Panopticon area. Um this one, Louis writes and says, Hey, guys, I'm catching up on old episodes, and I thought I'd tossed in my two cents about pink noise. Years ago, I worked at a startup web company and we, unbeknowns to the workers, had a pink noise generator in the building.

This all came to light in the summer when the temperatures were really hot and the electric company was asking larger office buildings to shut down non essential electrical devices. The pink noisemakers were deemed to be such devices. I worked in a cubicle farm, and the change was instant and dramatic. While the pink noise was on, you couldn't hear a phone conversation for more than about a cubicle away. When the pink noise was off, you could clearly hear

the same conversation from five cubes over. UH. To this point, everyone assumed that we were always hearing the air handling system, until our maintenance person pointed out that the tiny one demeter one diameter speakers in the ceiling space about seventy to ten feet apart. Thank you for all the great content. Out of about thirty different podcast series I listened to on a regular basis, you are my favorite. Thank you again, Louis.

Thanks Louis. So that's nice because that angle is a benevolent panopticon that was looking out for them, piping in some pink noise and in our new office space. I really wish that we had the same scenario. It would be kind of cool. Yeah, certainly an example here though, where they didn't necessarily believe in God until God stopped believing in them. If you think of God as a pink noise machine. All right, um, here we have a

quick bit of a listener mail from Eric. Eric writes in in response to a cute episode The Science of Cute, because I wonder how many people react to too much cute or attempts at cute that fail. In Harry Potter, Dolores Umbridge has has described as a hard person to

display many cute kittens in her rooms. The pictures were called horrid in the books not cute, and Umbridge herself tries to sound and dress cute, but was grossly overweight and looked like a toad in the book I wish you had talked about what happens when people go for cute and end up in the opposite direction. Well, I think that's whole, that whole caricature thing, right, when someone takes something to an extreme than it becomes the uncontny

valley or horrific. And I think about that when I think about clowns, no offensive clowns out there, or even um dragon performance, because sometimes it is such a performance of the female model that it looks um what is the word that I'm going for, ghoulish, foolish? Yeah, maybe part of it is just our ability to you know, to see those patterns and to realize something is not right. This, this individual or this thing the cute is trying way too hard, and therefore it must cover up some sort

of malign uh instinct at the heart of it. That's not really that's not really a cute cartoon character. There must be some sort of horrible monster inside of It's gonna eat me, you know. I was thinking about that in the context of staring, because we talked about this um inability to look away when we should. It is just our mind trying to square what it's seeing, because it's saying this is this is outside of what I normally see. I can't stop looking. I need more data exactly. Yeah.

It all comes back comes down to our processing of the world around us and trying to realize what's a risk to us, what's not really a risk, and how we should react. So can cute be awful? Yes? Oh yes, all right, So there you have some interesting listener mail to cap off what I think is a really interesting uh insight into our our orderly and disorderly lives. Yeah, and a comforting aspect of why a child is making an incredible mess for you to clean up and peas

are splattering on your walls. Yeah. And the next time you're walking around at work and you notice, like I do, that some people have cubes that look like they've barely been moved into and other people look like they have lived there for centuries. Understand that we need both types. We need we need the creative energy of the chaos, we need the we need the the the refining order

of that neat space as well. All of it comes together and it's it has survived evolution for a reason, right, and we should flip between those spaces that we have a nice balance perspective. There you go alrighty, all right? You wanna check out our blog posts. You want to check out all these podcast episodes that we're talking about, including ones that you will not find on iTunes, You need to go to stuff blow your Mind dot com.

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