Frozen lasagna medium power 15 minutes sounds like Ocho time. Let's play Hey there, it's Steven Dubner. This is the time of year We'd like to play for you some of the other shows we've been making for the Freakonomics radio network today an episode of No Stupid Questions with Angela Duckworth and Mike Mon. We started the show a few years ago with me as Angela's co-host But when it came time to replace myself, well, I think you'll agree that Mike has done brilliantly Mike is an executive with Qualtrics and does a variety of other interesting things Angela in case you don't know is a research psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the book Grit I hereby predict that you will love this episode of No Stupid Questions and that you will immediately follow the show on your podcast app So don't make a liar out of me.
As always, thanks for listening Yeah, that was basically psychology 100 years ago. I was just like, what's this restaurant? Let me tell you what happened. I'm Angela Duckworth I'm Mike Mon and you're listening to No Stupid Questions Today on a special episode of the show, do you need closure in order to move on?
When a lottery gets to over one billion dollars? I call a friend in another state and then millions of money Mike, we have an email from Shreya Bargava and it is something I have long wanted to talk about. Let's go Hi, Mike and Angela I recently read about the zygarnic effect and wanted to ask is it true that people remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks and could this be extrapolated to human relationships? Do relationships that have no closure stick around in our heads more than the ones we've been able to resolve and amicably close?
Oh my gosh. Yes. Yeah, you're like knee-jerk reaction is yes when you have closure. It's totally different.
What leaves your head? Is that your intuition? Yeah, and just in general I love closure. I appreciate closure even the Irish exit drives me insane Wait, what's the Irish exit?
It's when someone just like leaves and doesn't say goodbye. They just slip out of a party Why is it called the Irish? Do Irish people do that? I actually have no idea look around and you're like, where's the Irish friend?
I had maybe it's a terrible thing to say now I actually it could be it could be widely inappropriate. I've done it before though I mean having you done that by the way like you go to wedding reception and you think strategically I'm gonna be super visible like you're in the line of sight of the bride in the groom and the bride's family and friends family But then you know in this moment where everybody's distracted they're throwing the bouquet or something I've totally snuck out. Have you not done that? No, I agree with you 100% I've also done that I'm thinking about a wedding I went to this summer and the minute everyone was distracted And I made FaceTime with enough people be lying to the car and then it was weeks later that the groom was like wait Were you there for the dancing?
And I was like, oh, yeah, I think so. Yeah, I was great That might be your first confession to me of fitting ever now. I have to reevaluate everything We're gonna have to get closure on this or it's gonna keep bothering me But until then I might be thinking about and that is actually the zygarnic effect, right? So, you know this email from Shreya is the zygarnic effect real and I guess I should tell you what it is I don't know that you've heard about it, but not so the zygarnic effect is attributed to blooma zygarnic She was a psychologist and she was a student nearly a century ago.
She studied with Kurt Lewin He was a great psychologist himself Zygarnic says that she was in a restaurant and she observed that the waiter could keep in their head Just like a ridiculous number of orders and drinks and who's getting what and have they been served? So she's just marveling at this and she's like how is it that you can keep all these things in your head? But then she's been more astonished because and this is a little bit like myth now You know she did write about it, but I think it's been maybe embroidered as myths are we can mythologize all things that are cool We do so maybe this is a bit of a screen-written ending But after the waiter serves everyone's food and serves it correctly What happens is they finish eating this large group that bloomas like our next part of and one person, you know legend has it Goes back to retrieve an item that they left behind and this guest spots the waiter and asks for help and thinks that oh this waiter Who obviously remember everything would remember where they were sitting It's and the waiter looks at this dinner guest and seemingly has no idea who they even are much less where they sat And whether they had left something behind and so the waiter had kind of like erased the hard drive of memory once the task was finished So the zigarning effect refers to keeping in our minds unfinished tasks And when we have closure when something is checked off or resolved then that thing exiting our mind That's the myth here's a really interesting corollary and this is maybe why I believe it because I went to school Tell me if I'm way off on this I mean how often did you cram before a test you have all this information in your head or maybe not even cramming But you study you study you get ready and then you take the test and then it's all gone I have the closure of having finished the class or taking the test and it just flows into the ether I had not thought about that mic But I think that would be an excellent demonstration of the zigarning effect for me What is salient is being a professor Sometimes I will put up a slide in my class and it will be like verbatim the main point of the last class Sort of like a goal is defined as blank And I think to myself well class was only a week ago I spent three hours in every possible way demonstrating these definitions my students love me They love this class They have readings to do on this subject And I am sometimes astonished at the sub 100 accuracy of these easy to me questions But one could argue that if you are just like oh great that class is over or I've taken that quiz Like I don't need to know that anymore I mean the zigarning effect is narrowly speaking about unfinished tasks But you could also just say like you know someone tells you a passcode or a phone number And you're like mentally rehearsing it in your head And then you like type in 724 and then you have no idea afterwards And sometimes I can't even hold on long enough until I need to I know But okay, so bloom is like arnich lived a century ago and she had these observations But let's just say that bloom is like arnich was not running a lot of randomized controlled Experiments she was going to restaurants. Yeah, that was basically psychology 100 years ago Just like what's this restaurant?
Let me tell you what happened So more recently two social psychologists DJ Masicampo and Roy Baumeister They had the idea of doing an experiment to see whether bloom is like arnich was right And whether it was really true that unfulfilled goals persist in our minds until they are fulfilled and then they exit I'll just give you an example of one of the studies They did to show that there really is a zygarnic effect They said, you know the thing is that when you're doing something and you have to keep it in your head like 724 724 it's like an unfinished task, it eats up cognitive bandwidth And it gives you by the way an idea of why the brain doesn't actually remember 724 after it doesn't need to because you want that cognitive bandwidth To do something else. We only keep in our minds active what we need to and so they just ran these clever experiments where for example They gave people something to read that they needed to focus on like a passage from a novel And if you had had a task assigned to you that you had not yet completed that you knew you were gonna have to do afterwards You were more likely to mind wander and to understand less of what you're reading I mean the analogy would be if I go to a meeting And I know that there was this one thing that I wanted to email before I went to the meeting But I ran out of time what they found in this experiment is that you're a little distracted the whole time You're doing this intermediary task by the task that you have not yet finished, but you know you have to but is that not everything in life I mean how often do you finish everything that you need to do? Yeah, I mean I keep a pad of paper by my bed And as I'm going to bed the lights are off I've already fallen asleep and I wake back up and it's like oh my gosh Didn't do this close my eyes wake back up didn't do this okay So you write things down on the pad before you go to sleep right so then in the morning I'll remember to do them, but when have you gone to a meeting okay? Wait, I want to go back to the head.
Yeah, okay I think that's doing two things one is when we write things down It's just externalizing memory Yes, you're not gonna forget the five things that you were supposed to do that you didn't do that you need to do in the morning great But the other thing is you're keeping those things out of the buffer of your head So you're allowing yourself for example I assume to like just go to sleep and not be 74 74 74 and that's what mr Found in a way it's like the antidote to this kind of preoccupation we have with unfinished task is you're right This happens all the time But also all the time we make plans and what they found in these experiments is that if the volunteer in the experiment Who was being subject to the zigarnic effect if they had an opportunity to write about a thing that they were supposed to do Basically write down a plan then they didn't suffer from the zigarnic effect So the idea that you have of keeping that pad of paper and a pen at your bedside And I keep as you know like this one dollar notebook You know those cheap composition notebooks I have this system where on the right side of those pages I take my notes They're all stated I can go back to my lab no books from my very first-year graduate school because I have them all But on the left side of these pages which are often blank if I'm in a meeting or doing something I'm in a main task But in my head, you know, you ever have those little thought bubbles and you're like, oh, I forgot to my milk Right like oh I have to email that person I have maybe 4,000 of them a day and it's very distracting So I have all these plans and as soon as I write them down They're out of my head I don't have to remember 724 724 because the next time I open my notebook It's just there for you So part of it is this externalization of memory And that allows us the quote-unquote closure of that task whether it be done or not So that we can then focus on what's right in front of us Yeah, I think that the way to think about it is your brain is doing what it needs to do It's prioritizing And the brain is relieved of the responsibility of keeping something in its working memory Like the kind of active memory of the brain Because you know that you've written it down, you know you've made a plan And you don't have to worry about it anymore This is somewhat argue one of the great leaps forward for human civilization When we have writing It's a way of externalizing all the things that you don't have to like Keep in your working memory or frankly even in your long-term memory Because you can go look it up But this general idea is yes You can free up the brain to do things that it more urgently needs to do Because you have externalized Still to come on this special episode of No Stupid Questions Angela and Mike discuss how the zygarnic effect comes up in our relationships with other people A little bit of mystery, Mike Mon, a little bit of mystery goes a long way Now back to Angela Duckworth and Mike Mon's conversation About closure and the zygarnic effect on No Stupid Questions So Mike, when it comes to the zygarnic effect I think in a way the more interesting thing is what happens emotionally And my favorite thinkers on this are Tim Wilson and Dan Gilbert And they are psychologists who have this idea that we all have like psychological immune systems What? I know, right? Meaning somebody keeps me healthy psychologically? Yes, just like a body regulates its temperature and its blood pressure and some metabolism We also regulate the processing of emotion Oh my gosh, yes, but sometimes we're so well, I should not speak I am so bad at that You?
I think you were so even killed But I think all of us have moments where we get thrown off base The times when I think I'm least regulated emotionally Maybe are the times when I have so much to do And am feeling immense time pressure And I just need people to be efficient And do their job and do it well And I don't have a ton of time to explain or walk through or be patient And those are the moments when I have the greatest regret Because maybe I've acted inappropriately because I'm so under time pressure and other pressures So in such a stressful situation in one word What would you describe your mood or your emotion as? Deep frustration is probably the emotion that explodes out Okay, so let's think of a time recently where you were stressed And people around you were not doing what they needed to do When they needed to do it and you got frustrated And then I want to ask you you're not frustrated now, right? No, tell me the story of what happens with that frustration So I recently was going through an experience where I was supposed to meet with this person This unnamed person And I needed an introduction to this person from somebody else And it just never happened. I talked to the person I said, hey, we just set up the meeting didn't do it Hey, I need to have this meeting didn't do it So I'm growing increasingly frustrated And I think I'm gonna send them a text that's kind of loaded And darn it just do your job type of thing Yeah, and instead I waited and then the next time I saw the individual I said to them Hey, we're supposed to be having this meeting Can you help me understand?
Are you avoiding it because you don't want me to meet with that person? Or you feel threatened by my involvement there or you don't care? I just need to understand why are you not doing this And I forced the conversation for them to then explain Because I think so often We don't want to have an uncomfortable conversation Or we don't want to tell them the real reason So we just avoid So did you get the explanation that you wanted? I got the explanation This person just said, hey, I don't think it's the right time I'm working on this to them I think that we'll be better off if we do it this way Okay, maybe we disagree with strategy Or maybe I agree with that strategy But regardless, I've never been told that strategy And none of us on our side had So we got some level of closure Yeah, and then what happened to your emotion?
Were you as frustrated before and after the explanation? Or did your frustration diminish? Which is what Tim Wilson and Dan Gilbert You know, that's their big theory That emotions linger when there's lack of closure And emotions end when we do have explanations about what's going on Yeah, what happened for you? I would say that my frustration with the lack of action Diminished And then a new frustration grew that Either I did not present myself in such a way That this person felt they could be fully honest with me And frustration that they didn't feel that So it's kind of a mutual Hey, if I'm not being the kind of person that you can talk to Then I need to fix that or you need to give me feedback Or let's figure that out Versus just avoidance So I'll try to give an accounting for like how emotion works And when we continue to feel frustrated When we stop feeling frustrated I want to say this applies to positive feelings too The idea is that our feelings linger Whether they're positive feelings like joy Or negative feelings like frustration They stop when we have a complete accounting for what happened So like the idea of you being frustrated with this colleague According to this theory That once they explained to you Why they didn't want to have the meeting At least a certain kind of frustration Should have gone down Because you're like oh I get it Now you could have a new frustration But that new frustration is because now you don't understand Why you don't have the sort of relationship Where they wouldn't have just told you in the first place And when you get closure on that The prediction is that you'll again Feel a diminishing of that frustration So our emotions go up and down With closure or lack thereof That makes perfect sense to me in negative emotions This doesn't make sense for positive emotions For positive emotions I mean do I want closure on joy I feel like I want that to keep going Yes Oh that was so beautiful That seems terrible Yeah so let me tell you about one of their studies Where they ask college students To read text messages From other students In this case they were students from the opposite sex Who had evaluated them positively Now if you were uncertain About which student had actually written the message Then your positive mood Lingers longer Then when you do know This reminds me in high school We used to have this Valentine's Day fundraiser every year And you could send carnations to someone right Yes okay I was going to say that's what we did too It's always carnations It's always carnations It's almost carnations It's so cheap Exactly Maybe literally So you know you could of course sign the note Or you could choose not to Or you could put like an admirer Exactly You know why is it so intriguing to have a secret admirer It's because like You have lack of closure And explanations bring an end to emotion And I think you're right Mike You might not want that so No that makes sense When you phrase it that way like I get it I also think and maybe this is not at all the same thing But part of playing the lottery They always say it's not actually about winning the lottery Because the chances are so small Yeah But it's when you buy the ticket There's this anticipatory effect Where you think about All the fun things you could do And it brings so much joy Just thinking about like Oh this would be amazing And then it doesn't happen But nobody ever actually expects it to happen anyway And that whole time when there's lack of closure You get to marinate In your low probability fantasies About what you're going to do When you win the lottery Exactly and it's actually really really fun You have never played the lottery Mike Mon Have you?
I live in Utah It's actually illegal here But I Wait what? You can't buy lottery tickets in Utah You don't have a lottery in Utah? We do not know Can I just say That I need to move to Utah? Because lotteries Okay this is a totally different topic But I think Lotteries exploit the general human Inability to understand low probability phenomena They're kind of evil TPH I actually agree And obviously all the data shows What you're saying is that They're almost a regressive tax So all of the moral arguments That I agree with Are why lotteries are bad So now I'm going to confess something That you're going to hate When a lottery gets to over 1 billion dollars Yeah I call a friend in another state No And then millions of money You do not Seriously?
Only because I feel like I've been caught right now Holy shmoly But only because I just think it's fun So darn fun Have the like Opportunity to just fantasize for a little bit About everything I know I'm not going to win But it's almost like paying the $10 to go see a movie I pay $10 to spend 3 days thinking about What I would do with the lottery winnings And that's really fun And then you get closure that clearly it didn't work As you're saying The positive emotion goes away But it was a really fun 3 days And I'm okay with that And you don't totally know You're not going to win Well I'm pretty sure Pretty sure right Yeah you're no quantitative idiot But you also Know that the probability isn't zero So I think relatedly One of my favorite studies That Tim Wilson and Dan Gilbert ever did They have a study Where they approach students Undergraduates Who are studying in the library And they give them an index card And the index card Has a dollar coin So it's kind of like Cool and unusual Now there's two conditions In the uncertain condition The card conveys this vague information About the source and purpose of the money It's signed by the smile society And just says like We like to promote random acts of kindness But it's sort of like what I'm in the library You're just going to be a card That's the uncertain condition Then there's the certain condition Students in the library They get handed Index card It's got a dollar coin Tape to it Except now Each of those elements of information Are preceded With a very helpful question Instead of just the smile society Which you're like what It's preceded with Who are we? The smile society And then instead of just getting We like to promote random acts of kindness You get Why do we do this? We like to promote random acts of kindness And it asks the question for me To maybe anchor me in Understanding or Yeah, okay I see that So that's the clever little experiment So I'm going to give you a little closure now Because you made yes What's going to happen Because I need closure I'm a person that needs closure Yes, let me give it to you So Tim Wilson and Dan knew all about this like RNA effect In fact that was one of the inspirations For their theory And the prediction would be That when you do have this closure Where you're like Oh I know why I got this dollar coin And I know who these people are That the positive emotions Would end sooner And that's exactly what they found So these students Who were studying library And getting these cards Then they were approached by another experimenter A few minutes later And they were asked to complete a survey And those who had received The certain card Meaning the card with the Questions that explained Everything that was going on Were actually in a less positive mood Than those who had received The uncertain card That's so interesting So you're exactly right Mike You can use this to Make your negative emotions Go away sooner And you can use this To make your positive emotions Linger If you can find ways to forestall Or delay closure This is so interesting I mean there's this valentine's book That we always read as kids Called Somebody Loves You Mr. Hatch Is this the Mon Family?
Yes this is the Mon Family Oh gosh I want to be part of this family I'll mail you this book It's an awesome book But there's this older gentleman Lives Alone Never Had A Family And he gets this big box of chocolates That says Somebody Loves You And he talked about how before He ate the same crappy sandwich every day And ate alone at his job Had a shoelace factory And had no friends A shoelace factory I mean they portray this as a very sad situation But the point is The guy's life completely changes Because somebody loves you But he doesn't know who right? Yeah right He's like maybe it was the person I buy the paper from Maybe it was someone at work Maybe it was the neighbors And he becomes so involved in his community And he starts making brownies And inviting people over and all this And then the postman comes back And says Mr. Hatch I'm in a lot of trouble I delivered this to the wrong house Wait and then what happens? Gotta read the book Just kidding I'll tell you What basically happens is Then the postman tells everyone in town Hey I made this mistake And then it ends with this beautiful Like everybody loves you Mr.
Hatch and they have this party But the whole thing that changed his life In this very short fictional children's story To be clear Not knowing who Quote loved him And therefore he went on this journey To find out could it be any of these people And it opened up a whole new world to him Of like Opportunity to build relationships And anticipation of positive things A little bit of mystery Mike Mon A little bit of mystery It goes a long way Look I do want to give you Some advice from John Gottman John Gottman is the most famous Couples counseling slash How to have a good relationship So what does Gottman say? I'm going to read to you From the science of trust Emotional attunement for couples And it's about how couples can build A healthy trusting relationship And he says Negative events in couple relationships Are inevitable Yes The way relationships fail Is through something called this like RNA effect If a couple's negative events are not fully Processed That's what he calls attunement Right like getting to closure If they're not fully processed Then they're remembered and rehearsed Repeatedly Oh yes Turned over and over in each person's mind Then he says That you find some way to Get a kind of closure By attributing blame To the other person It kind of spirals And he says the potential role Of this like RNA effect is colossal If we engage in attuned processing Right getting to closure Of a negative emotional event Or a regrettable incident with our partner We will only fogly remember it The details will become hazy And the event insignificant On the other hand If we dismiss and avoid processing A negative emotional event It will not disappear It will fester Ready to be triggered Again Gottman continues This is why Attuning Right getting closure To a negative regrettable incident Is so incredibly important Like the Viennese waiters In Zygarnik's cafe If partners avoid processing the incident With attunement The event And its negative emotion Will lie inside each partner Like an improvised explosive device An IED Ready to explode If inadvertently is stepped on Let me give you an amen And a hallelujah Going back to a relationship I had This is 15-20 years ago I don't know It's a long time ago Anyway This person lived in New York I lived in Arizona They said if I move out to Arizona Can we date? They moved out to Arizona Didn't talk to her for a year Wait why? I don't know I'm just dumb I don't have a good reason But the point is that We then did date And this fight came up Over and over a minute Oh the fight about like what happened But then you didn't even call me for a year And then you didn't call me for a year So like I don't know how to take Gottman's advice on this Because I was like I don't know what else to say I was wrong I'm sorry But it wasn't a sufficient explanation then For this anonymous person Okay see this is what I guess we're getting to There was never closure This is not why it didn't work out But it never ended We never got closure And I guess what you're telling me is I am responsible Because I never gave sufficient explanation Probably because there wasn't sufficient explanation Because I just didn't I don't know Maybe either you didn't fully understand Or your explanation Wasn't a complete enough Explanation for that person When I was in French class In high school And I'll never forget it My teacher Dr.
Rowland said In French of course To Comprons-la Say to Pardonnay Right Because it's so true To understand is to forgive Not to understand Is not to forgive Right And if anything I think we can generalize Because it's true for positive emotions too Right To Comprons-la Say to Finne Which I mean I hope this is correct in French But to understand Is to have it finished You know whether it's good Or whether it's bad Yeah And Mike I wonder If we might ask our listeners If they have An experience of closure Or the lack of closure And what it means To them So if you have such a story Mike and I both would love you To record a voice memo In a quiet place With your mouth close to the phone Email us at NSQ At Freconomics.com And you'll get closure By listening To yourself on a future episode Of the show And Mike let me also add That if you like this show And want to support us The very best thing you can do Is simply to tell a friend About no stupid questions You can also spread the word On social media Or leave a review in your podcast app They can also send it To someone who goes to them And say hey Listen to this I need closure Because I can't move on without it So why don't you give that to me Thank you very much Yeah but you can send it from A random email address And sign it the Smile Society And you know There's no idea what's going on And then they'll be ruminating About it forever and ever But let me get some closure On this conversation Mike We I think Have given some closure To Shrayah About her outstanding question I guess for me You know you started off by Talking about the Irish exit From weddings and so forth I guess I want to ask you Do you feel like this conversation Has changed anything That you might do In the future at a wedding Or otherwise Well as I mentioned I love closure I'm someone who I think generally Needs closure Or appreciates closure I think on the negative side It motivates me to be kinder And make sure that my explanations Are thorough and that we're You know if some closure is needed That we're there I think actually The most fun part of this conversation For me though Is thinking about the Joyful effects that can come from Also maybe not giving closure On happy things I think that's a really beautiful Thing about random acts of kindness Maybe you're just like That somebody loves you Mr. Hatch type idea That there's so much joy That you can create out of this as well Do you know what my very favorite thing Is about this conversation That you're gonna just pause there And then we'll have no closure I'll tell you next time No stop stop stop it No Dot dot dot Coming up after the break A fact check of today's conversation No stupid questions is produced by me Rebecca Lee Douglas And now here's a fact check Of today's conversation In the first half of the show Mike and Angela wonder About the origin of the phrase Irish exit or Irish goodbye And they wonder if it's offensive It's certainly not a compliment The expression is supposedly based On a stereotype Of Irish people over imbibing The connotation being That they would be too intoxicated To say goodbye Before leaving a social event Another theory Is that the phrase was inspired By the mass Irish immigration During the 19th century potato famine However, the idiom is primarily American In Great Britain Roode leaving without saying goodbye Is referred to as taking a French leave And in other parts of the world It's leaving the English way Or the Polish exit It seems that whichever country you're in They're sure to be a xenophobic way To describe this particular behavior Later, Angela tells the story Of how psychologist Blooma Zygarnack Observed that interrupted tasks Are more remembered than completed ones Angela adds that The restaurant anecdote Is possibly more folklore than fact And indeed she's correct According to a 2018 Biographical review of Zygarnack's life Published in neuroscience and history It was actually Zygarnack's mentor Psychologist Kurt Lewin Who was inspired by the working memory of a waiter Not Zygarnack herself We should also note That while experimental methodology Wasn't practiced in the way That is expected of academics today There was more to this research Than just going to a restaurant And observing the waitstaff's behavior Zygarnack and Lewin conducted an experiment Involving 164 subjects Who were asked to perform a series of tasks That were either interrupted or completed It was in that study That the Zygarnack effect Was officially documented Finally, Mike and Angela reminisce About high school Valentine's Day fundraisers In which students could send one another flowers They guessed that carnations Were commonly used for this tradition Because of how cheap they are to buy in bulk The reason may partially be financial Carnations are notoriously less expensive Than other popular valentine's flowers Like roses or lilies Although they're not literally a dime a dozen As Angela suggests However, it's also true that carnations Have been used throughout history To represent love In the Victorian era, a red carnation Was given to express admiration Dark red conveyed an intense love or yearning A striped carnation signified refusal And yellow meant disappointment or disdain That's it for the fact check Before we wrap today's show Let's hear listener thoughts On some of our recent episodes Of no stupid questions Here's what listener Logan Thompson DeSah Had to say after listening to episode 162 How can you be kinder to yourself? I do think there's a lot of benefit To having a conversation with your friends About the kind of things you say to yourself I decided to ask one of my friends If she feels she's very self-critical Yeah, we had a really nice conversation about it And towards the end, I mentioned to her Like I had the tendency to come home from work And think about something dumb that I said Or a mistake that I made And saying to myself like, oh, you're f***ing moron And she looked at me and said I would punch somebody who said that to you Honestly, maybe tear up in the moment But since then, anytime I think to myself About you f***ing moron, I stop myself halfway through And I think about that conversation Here's what listener Jason Adams had to say In response to episode 168 Would you be happier if you were more creative? Hi, this is Jason.
I enjoyed listening to your episode About happiness and creativity Listen to it, I had so many feelings I co-wrote the songs that he doesn't know Which appeared in the movie Euro Trip in 2004 And despite some success, this song has not made my fortune as a musician I became a freelance software engineer myself to survive This work can be dry and tedious And sometimes you just cannot satisfy your creative urge With the work you do to subsist I can say with some authority The creative work, like other work, has its ups and downs It's got its own tedium and agony The great appeal of creative work on the other hand, I think, is control and escapism Creation offers the prospect, perhaps illusory, of controlling one's reality You can take refuge however briefly in a world of your own And here's what listener Judy Bates said After listening to episode 169 Can we disagree better? I wanted to share that the best tool I ever learned in dealing with conflict with others Was to start with the phrase Help me understand That phrase put the other person in the mindset of explaining to me versus fighting with me And helped me to keep my mind more open to opposing viewpoints This ultimately led to more collaborative relationships with my colleagues And better end results Hope that helps Thanks so much to those listeners and everyone who sent us their stories And remember, we'd love to hear your thoughts on closure Send a voice memo to NSQ at Frigonomics.com Let us know your name and if you'd like to remain anonymous You might hear your voice on the show Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner again I hope you enjoyed this special episode of No Stupid Questions There are many more where this came from Just search for No Stupid Questions in your podcast app Meanwhile, coming up next time Another show from the Frigonomics Radio Network This one hosted by my Frigonomics friend and co-author Steve Levitt His show is called People I Mostly Admire And you'll hear a fantastic conversation with Kat Bohannen, the author of Eve How the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution The most important thing we ever did Was get our hands on the levers of reproduction to overcome our most basic problem Which is that we suck at making babies That's next time Until then, take care of yourself And if you can, someone else too Frigonomics Radio and No Stupid Questions Are both part of the Frigonomics Radio Network Our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio This episode was produced by Rebecca Lee Douglas New York Boudich is the show's production associate Our staff also includes Alina Coleman, Eleanor Osborn Also Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Griffin Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnston, Julie Canfer Morgan Levy, Neil Caruth, Ryan Kelly, Sarah Lilly, and Zach Lipinski Our original music is composed by Luis Garra If you would like to read a transcript Or check out the underlying research of this or any of our shows That is all at Frigonomics.com As always, thank you for listening Wow, I do not know what to make of the Portrait of Humanity that you just painted there The Frigonomics Radio Network The head inside of everything Stitcher