Show Notes
Your phone rings and something tightens in your chest, so you check the screen and wonder who died, and thirty seconds later you text back saying you missed the call, which isn't quite true because you watched it happen and chose not to pick up. This episode looks at how the most exciting sound in the house turned into a small jolt of dread, why ringing someone now seems to require an appointment first, and what a voice carries that a message never can. It also looks at an experiment where people were asked to reconnect with an old friend, almost all of them chose to text rather than call, and almost all of them turned out to be wrong about which one would feel better. Four things you can do about it at the end, including one you could do this week. If there's something you've always wanted explained, send it through mariemeseck.com. Every idea is read, and if the research allows it, the subject may well find its way into a future episode.
More from The Things Nobody Explains.
You spent the whole day being patient with colleagues, warm on the phone to someone who could do nothing for you, pleasant to a stranger who took your parking space. Then you walked through your own front door and within four minutes you used a tone on someone you love that you would never use on anyone else, and later that evening you wondered what is wrong with you. This episode explains what's actually happening, starting with why holding yourself in a particular shape all day costs more than anyone realises, and why the popular explanation about willpower running out like a battery turns out to be far shakier than it sounds. It also looks at why the safety that lets you be unguarded at home is the same thing that removes your manners, and why the argument is never really about the dishwasher. Six things that help at the end, including the twenty-second repair that most people get wrong without knowing it. If there's something you've always wanted explained, send it through mariemeseck.com. Every idea is read, and if the research allows it, the subject may well find its way into a future episode.
There's a conversation that happens a few weeks after a breakup, where someone stops halfway through explaining what went wrong and says, why is it always the same. Everyone nods, somebody mentions types or parents, and then nobody can actually explain it, so the conversation moves on. This episode explains it. Why familiarity feels so much like chemistry that most of us can't tell them apart, what attachment research actually says once you strip away the version that circulates on the internet, and why some of the repetition has nothing to do with your psychology at all. It also looks at the part that repeats which isn't who you choose, but what you do once you're there, which turns out to be far easier to change. Six things that genuinely help at the end, including one that takes ten minutes on paper and usually surprises people. If there's something you've always wanted explained, send it through mariemeseck.com. Every idea is read, and if the research allows it, the subject may well find its way into a future episode.
You read the message twice before sending it. You replay the conversation for three days. You get to the party and immediately wonder if you're dressed wrong. Almost everyone does it, and most people assume they're the only one. In this episode: what happened when researchers sent students into a room wearing a deeply embarrassing t-shirt, why being left out of a pointless computer game registers in the brain like being hurt, and the quiet reason two people can walk away from a good conversation each convinced the other one liked them less. Three things you can do about it, at the end of the episode. Is there something you've always wanted explained? Send your suggestions through mariemeseck.com. Every idea is read, and if the research allows it, the subject may well find its way into a future episode.
The summer you were ten felt like it lasted forever. Last year went by in about four weeks. Somewhere between the two, time started moving faster, and nobody ever explained why. In this episode, we look at why the years seem to collapse as we age: the old theory that almost everyone repeats and why it probably isn't the whole answer, what actually happens to your memory when every week resembles the last, and why frightening moments feel so much longer than they are. Four simple things you can do to slow it down, at the end of the episode. Is there something you've always wanted explained? Send your suggestions through mariemeseck.com. Every idea is read, and if the research allows it, the subject may well find its way into a future episode.