How Great Ideas Are Born & Why We Stick With People Like Us

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How Great Ideas Are Born & Why We Stick With People Like Us"

Podcast: Something You Should Know
Host: Mike Carruthers
Guests: Paul Sloan (innovation & creativity expert), Michael Morris (cultural psychologist)
Date: January 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores two powerful aspects of human experience and ingenuity:

• How great ideas really emerge—often by accident or unpredictable paths—and what we can do to cultivate more innovative thinking in our lives and work.
• The deep-rooted human instinct to cluster in tribes, how these groups guide our identity and choices, and why this impulse both bonds and sometimes divides us.

Expert guests Paul Sloan and Michael Morris provide engaging stories and actionable insights into creativity, serendipity, tribal behavior, and how understanding these instincts can enrich our personal and collective lives.

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Part One: The Birth of Great Ideas with Paul Sloan

1. The Myth of Planning and the Reality of Serendipity

[00:44, 07:30, 08:49]

• Great ideas and true success are rarely the product of careful planning; they often spring from accident, failure, or an unexpected turn.
• Paul Sloan:

  “The idea that you can plan for success is a dangerous idea. ...Many of the most interesting things that happened to them in life were the result of an accident.” (00:44, 08:49)
  “If they look back and they're honest, they’ll say that many of the most interesting things that happened to them in life was the result of an accident or something unexpected.” (08:49)

Memorable Stories of Accidental Invention

• Potato Chips Origin (Saratoga Chips):
  When a customer complained about thick, soggy fries, chef George Crum sliced potatoes paper thin out of annoyance, accidentally creating the crisp we know and love. (06:04)
• Penicillin:
  Alexander Fleming’s frustrated return to a neglected petri dish led to the discovery of penicillin, as he recognized opportunity in what many would dismiss. (07:30)
• Other Examples:
  Post-it Notes from failed glue, Viagra’s side effect leading to a new, hugely successful drug usage. (11:52, 18:42)
• Paul Sloan:

  "If Sir Alexander Fleming had just ignored that mold in the petri dish, we wouldn't have penicillin... The clever people are open to the idea that they can do something about it and are prepared to take action." (11:52)

2. The Role of Open-Mindedness and Productive Boredom

[10:33, 11:21]

• Boredom and downtime spark unconscious problem-solving and creativity.

• Deliberate randomness, such as changing routines or seeking new experiences, can catalyze breakthroughs.

• Paul Sloan:

  "Bring more boredom into your life... Many of the greatest ideas... come at times when they've been deliberately going through a mental downtime…” (10:33)

3. What to Do When Opportunity Knocks

[11:52, 18:18]

• Cultivate an attitude that seizes on serendipitous events, investigates mistakes, and follows up.

• The difference between inconsequential accidents and great innovation is action and resourcefulness.

• Mike Carruthers:

  “It’s all about the next step. The next step... is either to do something with them or just throw them in the trash." (18:18)

4. Innovation: A Numbers Game

[13:08, 20:11]

• Large volumes of ideas result in a few successes; even major companies (like Procter & Gamble) systematically create the conditions for innovation.

• Most ideas will fail, and that's okay—what matters is consistently generating and testing ideas.

• Paul Sloan:

  "Innovation is a very wasteful process. You generate a lot of ideas and you implement the very best and you throw away hundreds." (13:08)
  "Unless you are prepared to roll the dice, you never roll a six." (20:11)

5. The Power of Perspective and Outsider Thinking

[23:40]

• Major breakthroughs often come not from experts but from outsiders who see the problem differently.

• Story: Jorge Odon, a car mechanic, invented a childbirth device by paralleling the mechanics of wine bottle cork removal to labor. (23:40)

• Paul Sloan:

  "He came up with this idea because he didn’t think like a doctor... By taking a completely different approach... he was able to come up with an unexpected solution." (23:40)

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Part Two: Why We Stick With People Like Us—Tribal Instincts with Michael Morris

1. The Human Drive for Tribes and Belonging

[29:02, 30:16, 32:06]

• Humans are fundamentally tribal—living in groups bound by shared ideas, culture, or profession.

• These groups or “tribes” are the foundation for trust, collaboration, and our sense of meaning.

• We each inhabit multiple tribes—family, profession, hobby groups, religious communities.

• Michael Morris:

  “We can trust people beyond kith and kin... because if someone shares our culture... they are predictable to us. We can coordinate and collaborate with them. ...Tribes are what made us human. They’re what got us out of the Stone Age.” (29:12)

2. Code Switching & Multiple Identities

[30:16, 32:06]

• We adopt different behaviors, norms, and language (“code switching”) depending on which tribe we’re engaging with—be it work, family, hobby, or political group.

• Michael Morris:

  “We all switch between different code words and different registers when we are trying to mesh with our different tribes.” (32:06)

3. The Instincts Behind Tribalism

[35:20, 36:48, 38:17]

• Peer Instinct: Desire to belong, be accepted, experience group conformity.

• Hero Instinct: The drive to contribute to and gain status within the group.

• Ancestor Instinct: Feeling of connection to tradition and a historical continuity.

• These instincts foster solidarity and cooperation, not hostility; our modern problems come from how these impulses are channeled.

• Michael Morris:

  “We are wired as humans to have certain basic motivations… the motivation to belong, to be understood, to be accepted.” (35:20)
  "They are instincts for solidarity, not for hostility." (34:06)
  "Being in like minded political groups satisfies these tribal motivations in a very, very effective way... but this has created a feedback loop." (43:14)

4. Tribal Instincts: Uniquely Human?

[37:15-38:17]

• Animals may group, but humans uniquely collaborate with shared, abstract intentions based on culture, planning, and shaped norms.

• Michael Morris:

  "They collect in groups... but these groups don’t collaborate according to a common plan... What allows us to form shared plans... is a unique human trait." (37:15-38:17)

5. Tribal Comfort, Security, and the Double-Edged Sword

[38:29, 41:25, 42:00]

• The comfort of being among similar people is deeply satisfying—a feeling of “my people” and being understood.

• However, strong tribal identity may also reinforce echo chambers (e.g., social media bubbles) and inflamed political division.

• Feeling at ease in “tribal” groups can make transitions or the deaths of those tribes (e.g., the decline of radio professionals) feel like personal loss.

• Michael Morris:

  “The reason it feels good when we’re in a like minded group... is because we have hardwired motivations, needs that get satiated by that experience. So it’s part of the human nature.” (40:30)
  "There's something exciting and stimulating about diversity... But there's also something deeply comfortable about having like minded groups that provide support and security." (42:00)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Paul Sloan:

  “It’s no good having these accidents unless you’re prepared to act on them and see them as information and opportunity rather than as an inconvenience and an annoyance.” (07:30)

• Michael Morris:

  “We are... hardwired to mesh with the people around us, to feel that we are in agreement with the people around us. That is one of the things that we get from being part of a tribe—this sense of community and belonging and understanding.” (35:20)

• Mike Carruthers:

  “It’s all about the next step... after those potato chips was either to do something with them or just throw them in the trash, and that’s the end of it.” (18:18)

• Michael Morris:

  “Being in like minded political groups satisfies these tribal motivations in a very, very effective way. ...The problem is that this has created a feedback loop...” (43:14)

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Key Takeaways and Actionable Insights

On Creative Success

• Be receptive to the unexpected. Don’t discard accidents or frustrations too quickly.
• Deliberately introduce randomness or change into your routines. New paths breed new perspectives.
• Take action. Recognizing and pursuing unplanned opportunities—rather than letting them pass—is the hallmark of innovators.
• Quantity is part of quality. Don’t be afraid of generating lots of “bad” ideas; only a few need to stick.
• Look for outsider perspectives. Breakthroughs often come from viewing problems outside their typical frame.

On Tribal Instincts

• Acknowledge and leverage your tribes. They power cooperation, innovation, and societal progress.
• Embrace code switching. Adapting to different contexts enriches your life and facilitates collaboration.
• Recognize both comfort and limitation. While tribes offer support and affirmation, be aware of echo chambers and seek connections across diverse groups.
• Understand the instincts at work. Belonging, contributing, and connecting to legacy are powerful motivators—and knowing this can help channel these instincts for good in personal and public life.

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Additional “Something You Should Know” Segments

(Timestamps: 02:53, 47:38)

• Emoji Use Enhances Digital Communication: Emojis act as “digital body language,” clarifying tone and reducing misunderstandings.
• Weight Loss and Self-Monitoring: Regularly tracking meals, weighing in, and using engagement tools increases weight loss success rates—frequent self-monitoring is crucial.

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The Tone & Style

True to Mike Carruthers’ conversational and insightful style, the episode mixes expert interview, engaging true stories, and practical wisdom. The tone is encouraging, accessible, and curious—aiming to equip listeners not only with knowledge but with simple ways to improve everyday life.

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For anyone interested in how innovation really happens and why people are drawn to like-minded groups, this episode weaves together scientific research, fascinating anecdotes, and actionable tips that resonate far beyond the hour.

Transcript

[Mike Carruthers]

I'm Alex Honnl, professional rock climber and founder of the Honl Foundation.

[Michael Morris]

I wanted to let you know about.

[Mike Carruthers]

A brand new season of the Planet Visionaries podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. This is the podcast exploring bold ideas and big solutions from the people leading.

[Paul Sloan]

The way in conservation.

[Mike Carruthers]

Join me in conversation with the likes of climate champion Mark Ruffalo, biologist and photographer Christina Mittermeier, and one of the most successful conservationists of our time, Chris Tompkins. Join us on Planet Visionaries wherever you get your podcasts. Today on something you should know. The power of emojis to prevent misunderstanding. Then the real way great ideas and true success are born.

[Paul Sloan]

The idea that you know you can plan for success is a dangerous idea. And most older people, if they look back and they're honest, they'll say that many of the most interesting things that happened to them in life were the result of an accident. They started a business, it didn't work, but they stumbled on something else. They met their future partner by accident.

[Mike Carruthers]

Also a proven way that really helps lose weight and keep it off. And the fascinating way humans congregate in tribes. We like people like us.

[Michael Morris]

The reason it feels good when we're in a like minded group and everybody knows your name and everybody understands you is because we have needs that get satiated by that experience. It's part of the human nature.

[Mike Carruthers]

All this today on something you should know. You know, the New year has this way of making people rethink things. You've got ideas, skills, something you've thought about selling for a long time. The problem usually isn't the idea, it's actually, you know, starting something. That's where Shopify comes in. It gives you everything you need to sell online or in person without having to be some tech expertise. Millions of people already use it. From big, big brands to first time business owners. You can build a store fast with their templates and their AI tools help you write product descriptions, headlines, even edit your photos. Marketing's built in too, so you can reach people through email and social media. And when things start working, Shopify scales right along with you. In 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for per month trial and start selling [e-mail] sysk go to shopify.com sysk that's shopify.com sysk hear your first this new year with Shopify by your side.

[Paul Sloan]

Something you should know, fascinating intel, the.

[Mike Carruthers]

World'S top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you should know with Mike Carruthers do you use a lot of emojis in your online writing? In your texts and emails? I tend not to very often, but maybe I should do it more often because they do serve a pretty valuable purpose, it turns out. Hi and welcome. I'm Mike Carruthers and this is something you should know. One of the biggest problems with texts and emails and posts is they're not very good at conveying tone. Sarcasm, teasing and irony are especially easy to misread because there's no voice or facial expression to guide the reader. Research shows that we've quietly solved some of the problem with emojis. Certain emojis act as tone markers, helping readers understand what a message is really trying to say. The classic wink emoji is one of the strongest signals of sarcasm or playful intent. It tells the reader, don't take this literally. A tongue out face emoji often signals joking or exaggeration, while a laughing emoji usually softens criticism and signals friendly humor. Even a simple smiley face can turn what might sound blunt or cold into something warmer and more cooperative. So emojis aren't just decoration, they're kind of digital body language, helping us to say what we actually mean when the words by themselves fall short. And that is something you should know. When people ask, where do great ideas come from? I think they're usually hoping for a really simple answer, but there isn't one. Great ideas come from all over the place, sometimes from places no one expected at all. In fact, some of the most important ideas in history were not planned. They were accidents. Penicillin, the slinky teflon, even potato chips all came from mistakes, chance encounters or experiments that went sideways. And when you look closely at how those ideas actually happened, you start to see some patterns, clues about how creativity really works and how breakthroughs are often less about brilliance and and more about noticing what other people overlook. Here to share some of those stories and what they teach us about generating better ideas is Paul Sloan. He's a recognized authority on innovation and creative thinking, and he's the author of several books, including the Art of Unexpected Solutions. Hi Paul. Welcome to something you should know.

[Paul Sloan]

Hi.

[Mike Carruthers]

So let's start with a story. And everyone loves a good story. And when we're talking about legendary ideas that come from unexpected places, a good story could really set the tone here. So let's start there.

[Paul Sloan]

So there's a famous story of an event that took place at the Moon's Lake House restaurant in Saratoga Springs, New York in the summer of 1853, a particularly demanding customer, who is rumored to have been the railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, repeatedly sent his order of french fried potatoes back to the kitchen, complaining that they were too thick and not crispy enough. This annoyed the chef, who was called George crum. In a moment of pique, he decided to teach the fussy customer a lesson. He sliced the potatoes paper thin, fried them to a brittle crisp in hot oil, and for good measure, doused them with an extra helping of salt. To crumb's astonishment, the customer, instead of being insulted, was delighted with the Saratoga chips, as they came to be known. This accidental creation was an instant success, and what are known as chips were born. It's an example of an accidental, unexpected solution that came from repeated experiments and frustration and annoyance. And it just popped out and somebody tried something, and surprise, surprise, it worked. It's an unexpected solution.

[Mike Carruthers]

And is that a good story because it's so rare and unexpected and unusual, or is it a good story because it illustrates great ways that ideas show up?

[Paul Sloan]

Well, a little of both. But there are many, many examples, many, many scientific inventions which are the result of accidents. And of course, the most famous is penicillin, discovered by sir Alexander Fleming. He came back from holiday. He was a microbiologist. He found that one of his petri dis had developed a mold that was resistant to bacteria. And most people would be annoyed. They'd say, just, oh, the cleaner didn't clean out the petri dish. I'm going to have to do it myself. But he was intrigued. And this is one of the key messages in the book. It's no good having these accidents unless you're prepared to act on them and see them as information and opportunity rather than as an inconvenience and an annoyance. And when he studied it, he discovered something which was resistant to bacteria. He stumbled on penicillin by accident. And that's the most famous story.

[Mike Carruthers]

Of course, a lot of things happen by accident that turn out to be nothing or bad ideas or easily discardable ideas. I mean, if that guy had not liked those potato chips, nothing might have happened. I mean, there's so many.

[Paul Sloan]

Exactly, Right?

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah. There are so many things that have come and gone because they didn't work. So how do you know what's going to work?

[Paul Sloan]

Well, you don't. You have to abandon this concept of control and planning and certainty. We tend to think that our life is going to be planned and progress in a straightforward fashion. If we work hard at school, we'll get good grades. We'll get to university, we'll get a good job, we'll progress up the career ladder. But life's not like that. Life is full of unexpected occurrences. And most older people, if they look back and they're honest, they'll say that many of the most interesting things that happened to them in life was the result of an accident or something unexpected. They were made redundant from one position and it turned out to be the best thing. They started a business, it didn't work, but they stumbled on something else. They met their future partner by accident. And it's very, very common. And so the idea that you can plan for success is a dangerous idea. And it's much better to be open minded and receptive to whatever's coming down the pipe at you and to seize the opportunities as and when they arise.

[Mike Carruthers]

So many times I've thought about this, because as I look back on my own life, nothing seems to really go according to plan or not for long. Like you might have a plan and launch your plan, but pretty soon something's going to derail it or divert it or something. And yet people talk about planning their life and planning their career and planning, but almost nothing goes according to plan.

[Paul Sloan]

Exactly.

[Mike Carruthers]

But it seems so unhuman, like unhuman nature, to just sit back and say, well, I hope something randomly wonderful shows up today, and if not, maybe tomorrow. We need to feel like we're in control and to feel like it's out of our control would be difficult.

[Paul Sloan]

I'm not saying no control, I'm not saying could be completely at random and don't do anything that's structured. But if you introduce the random, if you deliberately do things, I advise you to accept productive boredom. Bring more boredom into your life. We tend to be focused all the time on doing things and concentrating in very short bursts on little things. We're listening to a podcast, we're watching a video, we're reading a book, we're watching the tv. We're doing things all the time. And yet many of the greatest ideas that geniuses have had have come at times when they've been bored, when they've been deliberately going through a mental downtime where the subconscious is working on problems and coming up with ideas rather than concentrating on one particular thing.

[Mike Carruthers]

Is there any formula to this in the sense that, I mean, we've probably all thought of things that maybe could have become great ideas that could have gone on to do great things, but it's very easily. Those things are very easy to dismiss and just steamroll over them. And get on to the next video or podcast that you want to watch or listen to. Is there a way to go, wait, stop. I want to stop and look at this.

[Paul Sloan]

Yes. And you need an attitude, which is, if something interesting comes up, I'm going to follow it up, I'm going to investigate it, I'm going to do something about it. If Sir Alexander Fleming had just ignored that mold in the petri dish, we wouldn't have penicillin. You know, if Crum had ignored his new chips, we wouldn't have them. So when something serendipitous happens, you've got to be prepared to act. You know, when Art Fry came up with post it notes working for 3M, he did something with it. He helped a colleague and they discovered a use for it. A glue that wouldn't stick. I mean, what's more useless than a glue that doesn't stick? Well, it turns out it's very useful. And very often these things crop up which seem wrong and seem accidental. But the clever people are open to the idea that they can do something about it and they are prepared to take action.

[Mike Carruthers]

But it does seem that, you know, when you talk about this topic, a lot of the usual suspects show up. Post it notes, Velcro, those things that make it seem like this is very rare. There's only a few we can really point to. Penicillin, potato chips, but that generally most ideas aren't going anywhere.

[Paul Sloan]

Well, that's true. Most ideas don't go anywhere. And I run a lot of brainstorm sessions with corporate clients and we might generate 100 ideas in the day, only two or three of which might ever be implemented. But that's fine. I mean, innovation is a very wasteful process. You generate a lot of ideas and you implement the very best and you throw away hundreds. And, you know, when you were conceived, your father generated 50 million sperm. Only one of them got through, and that created you. And the other 49. And 50 million failed. But it doesn't matter because one succeeded.

[Mike Carruthers]

Sometimes it seems that it isn't the solution as much as the marketing. The way you sell it, the way, you know, I think of things like Elf on the Shelf. I mean, come on. I mean, it's. Yeah, it was, it was fun. It made a lot of money. But it wasn't some great, new, innovative, penicillin like idea. It was a doll.

[Paul Sloan]

And the pet rock. Do you remember the pet rock?

[Mike Carruthers]

Sure.

[Paul Sloan]

That was a crazy idea. And marketing's full of crazy ideas and unexpected things that work and things which were expected to work and didn't. I mean Coca Cola put a tremendous amount of effort into New Coke and the segue was tremendous amount of investment and things that were expected to succeed have fail like the Amazon Fire and Google Glass and things that were completely unexpected have succeeded. So yeah, that's the nature. That's what makes life interesting, I think.

[Mike Carruthers]

Where great ideas come from. That's what we're talking about today with Paul Sloan. He's author of the book the Art of Unexpected Solutions.

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[Paul Sloan]

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[Mike Carruthers]

So Paul, since you study this, do these successful ideas have anything in common with that? You can point to that if somebody said to you, okay, so I want to get more involved in this. I want to start looking for ideas like, well, how do you get your head in the game?

[Paul Sloan]

Introducing the random doing something different every day and taking different route to work, taking a different approach in all sorts of ways. These are key things that you can do to bring more of the unexpected into your life. And whenever there's an accident, whenever there's a mistake, treat it as a learning opportunity. Treat it as something that you can do something with, maybe you can learn from, rather than an annoyance. In January 1992, a container with 29,000 plastic bath toys was washed overboard in the Pacific Ocean. It was an environmental catastrophe. Toys that had been manufactured in China were en route to the usa. They were called floaties, bath toys like little ducks. And most people would say, that's terrible. It's going to wash up all over the place. But an oceanographer based in Seattle called Curtis Ebersmayer saw this as a great opportunity to study ocean currents. Because up until then he'd been doing small samples, a sample of 29,000 items in the ocean. They knew where that started. And he then asked people all around the world to watch out for these. And as they came up in different shores, in different places, he was able to use that to help map ocean currents. He saw that accident not as a problem, but as an opportunity.

[Mike Carruthers]

But then it seems like it's all about the next step. The next step after those potato chips was either to do something with them or just throw them in the trash, and that's the end of it. The next step is either to throw that petri dish away and move on to something else, or stop and say, whoa, wait a minute, it's that next step.

[Paul Sloan]

Indeed. And that's what innovations, and if we're talking about major innovations, if we're talking about, you know, Viagra was an accident. But then Pfizer had the sense to recognize that although it failed in its initial objective, which was reducing men's blood pressure then, but there was a side effect which was highly beneficial. They repurposed the product and made it into a world beating drug, which is very, very popular. So when accidents happen, when things like this happen in business, you've got to be prepared to take a chance and put some resource into developing a product and testing it and doing things with it. But in your everyday life, you'll find many times there are little things that happen which give you an opportunity, an opening for something more interesting, an avenue to try something. It's not just the big inventions. It's not just the penicillins and the Viagras that matter. It's meeting someone really interesting and then not letting them go, keeping their details and sending them an Email, meeting them for a coffee, having a discussion, rather than saying, who was that interesting person? What a pity I never stayed in touch with them.

[Mike Carruthers]

Do you think there's a way, or is there a way to plan for this? I mean, it's not possible to plan to have an accident, because if you plan it, then it's not an accident. But can you plan, can you create the situation where, artificially, that these kind of innovations and ideas show up?

[Paul Sloan]

A company like Procter and Gamble plans for innovation and over half of their revenues come from new products every few years. And they do this by looking around and asking people for ideas in focused areas. And they keep trying things, many of which fail. So they launch products which fail, and they launch two or three that fail and they'll have one which is a big success. And they treat it as a numbers game. And if you roll the dice, you'll roll a two, you'll roll a three, occasionally you'll roll a six, and that's when it pays back. But unless you're prepared to roll the dice, you never roll a six.

[Mike Carruthers]

But you said a moment ago that take a different way to work, or when accidents happen, notice. What am I looking for on my new way to work? What am I looking for in this accident, other than the fact that it's an accident?

[Paul Sloan]

You're looking for some stimulation, you're looking for a different idea, you're looking for a different approach in life. Something which just triggers your brain to think of something new because habits are dangerous and we slip into habits. There was a very interesting experiment in London where the Metro system, the underground, went down for a while and everyone had to find a different, different way to work for a while. And then maybe they might go on a boat, they might go on the train, they might go by bicycle, they might go by bus. And then once the. I think it was a strike, the underground strike was over. A lot of people returned and over 90%, we could track this through the use of the Oyster card, which was the card which tracked people's voyages. Over 90% went back to the way they'd previously traveled to work. But a high number, 7, 8, 9%, stayed with the new method. They found they didn't go back to what they'd been done for the previous many, many years because they'd been forced to try something new. They actually found something that was more interesting, more quicker, more beneficial for some reason, and they stuck with it. So when we're forced to change, very often it's uncomfortable, but we find something Interesting in that change.

[Mike Carruthers]

Another thing that interests me about this is when you look at these innovations, you don't usually get a lot of innovations from one person. Somebody comes up with the post it note, or the potato chip or the Petri or penicillin, but they don't come up with 10 penicillins, they come up with one and it's like you're done.

[Paul Sloan]

That's true. I mean, Thomas Edison might be the exception to that rule. But, yes, generally speaking, you're right.

[Mike Carruthers]

But you wonder why, if you're so good at this, why can't you keep doing it?

[Paul Sloan]

What taxi company would have thought of Uber? What taxi company would have said, we can create a whole new business by not having any taxis? None of them. And if you'd had a brainstorm meeting in a taxi company and said, how can we get more business? Nobody would have said, let's get rid of all our taxis and use the people who are prepared to give people a lift for a small fee. And if you were Marriott hotels or Sheraton and you'd had a big brainstorming meeting, you say, how can we expand our business? Nobody would have come up with Airbnb. Nobody would have said, let's not have any more hotel rooms. Let's just use the capacity of people who are prepared to rent out a room or their own holiday cottage or something else. So people who are embedded in an industry find it very difficult to think really laterally.

[Mike Carruthers]

Before you go, give me one more example of this kind of innovative thinking, because I like the stories.

[Paul Sloan]

Well, let me tell you about Jorge Odon. And he is an Argentinian car mechanic. A friend of his came over one evening and he said, I'll give you a puzzle, Jorge, and I bet you can't solve it. And Jorge said, what is it? He said, if you take an empty wine bottle and you push a cork into the empty wine bottle, how'd you get it out again? And Jorge said, I don't know how you do this. And his friend said to well, you can see it. There's a video on YouTube. You can actually see it. There's a technique. And what you do is you push a plastic bag into the bottle and then you jiggle it round until the cork is nestling somewhere in the plastic bag. And then you blow into the plastic bag and you inflate it around the cork and then you can pull the cork out. And Jorge thought, that's a very interesting idea. And he went to bed that night, and in the middle of the night, he Woke up with a brainwave. And the brainwave was this. He said, getting a baby that's stuck out of the birth canal of a mother is just like getting a cork out of a bottle. It's the same problem in its essence. And he went away and he designed a thing called the Odon device, which is to help people in childbirth where the baby is stuck. And eventually, after a lot of problems, he got Becton Dickinson to back the idea, and they built it. And it's now in use in many, many countries all around the world because it's cheap and it's effective and it's safe. And you put the plastic bag around the baby's head, you inflate it very slightly, and then you pull the baby out. And the point about the story is that he came up with this idea because he didn't think like a doctor or a nurse or a clinician. He thought like a car mechanic. And he said, getting a baby out of the birth canal is not a medical problem. It's a mechanical engineering problem. And let's use mechanical engineering techniques. By taking a completely different approach, coming at the problem from an entirely different perspective, he was able to come up with an unexpected solution. And very often, you know, it's the person who's never been involved in the problem that can come up with the creative idea, because they're not constrained by all the assumptions that the experts have.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, it does seem that it's not just the idea, it's a formula. It's an idea with the right person or people at the right time.

[Paul Sloan]

Time and time again, we see that these things are unexpected, unpredictable, accidental. But somebody's had the nous, the gumption, the courage to seize the opportunity and do something with it.

[Mike Carruthers]

It makes you wonder how many great ideas got missed. You know, millions. Millions have got missed. Like it could have been that petri dish, but instead, they just cleaned it out and moved on. And whatever the example is, and I'm sure that's happened countless times, we'll never know, but it's certainly fun to look at the ideas that did make it, that did hit and understand why they did. I've been talking to Paul Sloan. He's an authority on innovation and creative thinking and author of several books, including the Art of Unexpected Solutions. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Paul.

[Paul Sloan]

I've enjoyed it, Mike. Thanks very much.

[Mike Carruthers]

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[Mike Carruthers]

You may not think of yourself this way, but you belong to tribes. In fact, you belong to several of them. Your community, your family, your profession, your hobbies, even the groups you identify with online. All of these groups, all of these tribes shape the way you think, how you act, and even how you see the world. And what's interesting is that you behave differently in each one of these groups. Humans seem to have a deep tribal instinct to sort ourselves into groups and take cues from the people around us. That instinct has helped us survive, cooperate, and build cultures. But it's also the same instinct that can divide us and create conflict. So why are we wired this way? What do tribes give us? And is it possible that the same tribal instincts that separate us could actually help bring us together? That's what we're about to explore with Michael Morris. He's a cultural psychologist at Columbia University and author of the book Tribal how the cultural instincts that divide us can help bring us together. Hi, Michael. Welcome to something you should know.

[Michael Morris]

Thanks for having me, Mike.

[Mike Carruthers]

So these tribes, these groups that we're a part of, explain how they work and why they exist in the first place.

[Michael Morris]

We live in very large communities that are bound together by shared ideas, by the sort of legacy of inherited culture. And, and that set of shared ideas enables the circle of trust to be much broader in our species than in other species. We can trust people beyond kith and kin, you know, beyond our relatives, beyond our. The people that we see every day. Because if someone shares our culture, if they share those ideas that we, that we operate with, they are predictable to us. We can, we can understand their actions. We can, we can predict what they will do. We can coordinate and collaborate with them. So in my book, tribes are a very good thing. And tribes are what made us human. They're what got us out of the Stone Age.

[Mike Carruthers]

So mention and identify some of the tribes that people listening typically belong to.

[Michael Morris]

Their church is a community bound together by shared ideas. Their country is one. Perhaps the company they work for has an organizational culture. Maybe they're part of a profession like lawyers or engineers, where there's a lot of shared frameworks that come from your training that give you a common worldview with the other members of that profession. So, you know, we inhabit multiple tribes in our lives and one of the things that, that leads to in the way that our cultural psychology works is that not all of our identities can operate at once. You know, I'm a, I'm a former athlete, but I'm also a professor. But, you know, I'm also, you know, live in the country, you know, and I can't follow the norms of all of those identities at the same time. They have to take turn. So when I, when I go to the country and I see the environment and I see the people there, it brings certain ways of living to the fore. And when I return to Manhattan, it brings other ways of living to the fore of my brain. So this is often called code switching. You know, we talked about it when politicians like Obama would speak in a slightly different way to an African American audience compared to an audience of white farmers in Kansas. But we all engage in code switching. You know, we switch to professional jargon when we get to work. We talk to our buddies at the gym differently than we talk to our co parishioners at church. You know, we all switch between different code words and different registers when we are trying to mesh with our different tribes.

[Mike Carruthers]

What's the benefit of being in a tribe that may seem self evident to you, but, but we're members of all of these tribes. Why?

[Michael Morris]

Yeah, well, I think what you're touching on there, and in your initial question is that there's been this, there's been a bad rap for tribes and tribalism over the last 10 years. And it started around the end of Obama's last term, in Trump's first term, where people started noticing political polarization, you know, between the Red tribe and the Blue tribe. And there was this sense that something has been lost in our democracy, right? That people are not treating each other with respect, they're not listening to each other, there's political violence. And one way that people interpreted this was that we are somehow hardwired to hate other groups. And that this deeply buried instinct came back to the surface and now we're screwed because we're cursed by this ancient instinct to hate us. And I think this couldn't be less accurate and it couldn't be less helpful as a way of understanding, you know, the partisan conflicts that we've been in.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, if the tribe that you're in or one of the tribes that you're in is political, it's kind of hard to imagine there wouldn't be some sort of agenda to get your politics out there. And that's going to create conflict with people whose political tribe opposes what you believe. But so many tribes are not political. They're very benign. As you were saying earlier, you could have hobbies or you could be a lawyer. And so you're part of a legal tribe that cooperates with each other. Seems very cooperative.

[Michael Morris]

Anthropologists and behavioral scientists, we've made a lot of progress in this area and there's considerable consensus that there are some hardwired instincts that are unique to humans and that make us different from all the other species. But they are instincts for solidarity, not for hostility. They are instincts that allow us to coordinate with others so that we can collaborate. They enable us to cooperate with others so that we can have large scale cooperation and economies of scale. And they enable continuity across the generations in our communities that allows for a deep feeling of connection with the past and a deep feeling of meaning. And so I think that this trope of toxic tribalism, this idea that humans are hardwired to hate and democracy and international cooperation and pluralism will never work anymore. I think it's a really pessimistic, fatalistic way of talking.

[Mike Carruthers]

Putting the politics aside for a moment, though, people are joining tribes voluntarily or not, or born into tribe, because tribes.

[Michael Morris]

Do what we are wired as humans to have certain basic motivations. And one of those is the motivation to belong, to be understood, to be accepted. And so we have this one instinct that I call the peer instinct that, you know, is related to what we call conformity, which makes us intrinsically rewarded to mesh with the people around us, to feel that we are in agreement with the people around us. And that is one of the things that we get from being a part of a tribe, this sense of community and belonging and understanding. Now, another thing that we get from tribes is related to what I call the hero instinct. And this is the side of our psychology that makes us driven to make a contribution. We want to give to the group in some way, and in part, we want to give to the group because we gain standing, we gain status, we gain respect, and with that comes some tribute from the group. You know, we get social opportunities and we get resources that we wouldn't get otherwise. And so that's another thing that we get from being part of a church or being part of a corporation or being part of a profession.

[Mike Carruthers]

I think you said, or I read that the instinct to be part of a tribe is uniquely human. But I see, you know, I look out and see what look like tribes of deer in a field or tribes of birds. So it doesn't seem like it's uniquely human because aren't those other animals congregating in tribes?

[Michael Morris]

Well, they, they collect in groups, but these groups don't collaborate according to a common plan. You know, it can sometimes look that way if you see like a wolf pack, you know, hunting. But they are not working with a shared intention. They are just working on reflexes. When they work together. Chimpanzees are the animals closest to us. And when they, when they hunt as a group, it's just side by side, individual hunting. There's not a, there's not like a plan that they've shared. And what the first tribal instinct of humans, the peer instinct, this idea that we are driven to imitate the people around us and to mesh with them. It's what allows us to form shared plans so that we could hunt and we could gather and we could defend our group in an organized way as a united front. And other species can't really do that.

[Mike Carruthers]

And isn't at the core of all of this something as simple as people like being with people like them or who like what they like?

[Michael Morris]

That's one way to describe, I think, the peer instinct, which is that, you know, it's motivating to be among a like minded group. It gives us a deep feeling of security and a feeling that I, a feeling that we understand the world because we're in consensus with other people. And I think that people used to get their peer instincts satisfied because they lived in ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods or they went to a house of worship, you know, every week and they were around a group of people who may not have been the same ethnicity of them, but who subscribed to the same dogma and religious worldview as them. And that has waned away in our country over the last two generations. You know, the, the most frequent religious identity on the census now is none. There's been residential sorting largely on the basis of a political ideology. You know, so the, the liberals have moved to the coasts and the conservatives have moved to the heartland. And so I think that's part of why we see a change in the way people relate to political parties, that the sort of primary identity groups that give us this feeling of security and the feeling of understanding have become the Democrat and Republican parties. Whereas, you know, a generation ago you didn't know which of your neighbors were Democrats and Republicans, you didn't know which of your colleagues were Democrats or Republicans. It wasn't as salient an identity a generation or two ago.

[Mike Carruthers]

So you hear the term tribal instinct. Is the desire and need to be in a tribe an instinct really? Or is it just, it feels right, it feels good to be with people that know this, that understand this, that I can talk to about this, that we can do this together. It seems more of a deliberate thing, not an instinct.

[Michael Morris]

Well, it, it started, you know, we started living in tribes about 50,000 years ago, you know, and civilization is only like 5,000 years old. So it's pretty well established that a lot of our social behavior is wired by evolution in ways that were adaptive for early humans, that, you know, helped them survive and thrive. And then we live in a very different world, but with the same psychological hardware that evolved in the, in the Stone Age. So we also have conscious beliefs about community. But the reason it feels good when we're in a like minded group and everybody knows your name and everybody understands you is because we have, you know, hardwired motivations, needs that get satiated by that experience. So it's part of the human nature.

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah. Because everybody's been in a tribe and in a group and knows that feeling of, you know, these are my people, they get me and I get them. This feels very comfortable. I like being here as opposed to, you know, being with other people who you may not know anything about them because when you walk into a room full of people who, you know, are engineers or whatever, you know, you're walking into friendly territory.

[Michael Morris]

Yeah. And a different side of you comes out.

[Paul Sloan]

Right.

[Michael Morris]

You know, spontaneously.

[Paul Sloan]

Right.

[Michael Morris]

You, you're an engineer, you walk into a group. It's another, it's, it's, it's the engineering wing of the building at work. And then you can just start talking about safety factors and degrees of freedom and other technical terms and everybody knows exactly what you mean and everybody respects you for it. Whereas when you are on an interdisciplinary task force or a multifunctional task force at work, you know, you're around people from the marketing division, people from the accounting division, people from sales, those are different tribes. And there's something exciting and stimulating about diversity. Right. And that's why we design for diversity. But there's also something deeply comfortable about having like minded groups that provide support and security.

[Mike Carruthers]

There's also something about a group that being in a group, when you sit down with the people in a group, say the people you work with or people who share a common interest, I don't know what that feeling is. You can let your guard down, you know, you can talk and people understand what you're talking about. You don't have to explain things. Like, there's just a comfort level that's hard to explain. But I think people know what I mean.

[Michael Morris]

Oh, you're describing the feeling really well. And I think that it's definitely very connected to, you know, how social media as this kind of filter bubble. You know, it's a sort of, it filters what information comes to you and then it's like a bubble, like an echo chamber that when you express an opinion, you get immediate positive reinforcement and it gives you, it satisfies the peer instinct itch, you know, because you feel understood. It also satisfies the hero instinct itch because you feel, you feel like you have status. You know, the whole idea of virtue signaling is, you know, I say something really exciting, extreme, and then people say, oh, you're so right, you know, you get it, you know, and so it's a way of building up my credit, you know, in the community by saying things even more extreme than the last person said. And then there's also at times the ancestor instinct itch, which is this desire to feel part of some sort of enduring estimable tradition. And so, you know, the different political parties, they look back to their respective heroes. You know, the Democrats talk about jfk. You know, the Republicans talk about the great Republican presidents of the past, like Reagan, and they feel connected to those times. So being in like minded political groups, it satisfies these tribal motivations in a very, very effective way. And the problem is that this has created a feedback loop where people are getting almost all of their political information from like minded groups, whether it's their residential community or their online community. And the country didn't used to be that way.

[Mike Carruthers]

You know, it occurred to me when I was going over the material for this interview, it occurred to me that tribes die. Sometimes. I was the member of a tribe that died or is in the process of dying. And that's radio. Before I did this podcast, I was in the radio business and the radio business was a real tribe. You get radio people together and they can talk about radio all night long. That they love it, but it's gone. A lot of it is gone. I mean, there's still, obviously there's still radio, but the magic that I used to experience isn't there anymore. And it's kind of a shame. But I guess that happens. I'm sure that happened with the horse and buggy business when it went away too.

[Michael Morris]

But I think with radio, there's a special reason to be sad, which is that there's an idea in cultural and political theory called imagined Communities. So when you listen to the president, president, you know, FDR in the old days, you know, giving his Fireside chat over the radio, you could imagine that almost all your American compatriots were listening at the same time in their living rooms, gathered around their radio station. And that created a feeling of national unity that is really important. And so I feel like when we have this splintering of the media landscape, there's a danger of losing the common reference points that help us understand each other as a nation.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, the way you've explained this, the whole idea of tribalism, of the desire to join like minded groups and the rewards of being in a like minded group are so, I think, ingrained in us. It's really good to understand what's going on. I've been speaking with Michael Morris. He's a cultural psychologist at Columbia University and he's author of a book called how the Cultural Instincts that Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Michael, thanks for coming on and talking about this.

[Michael Morris]

Thanks so much.

[Mike Carruthers]

I would bet that the most popular New Year's resolution, or certainly one of them, has got to be to lose weight. And the fact is that a lot of people don't get through the end of the month before they give up. If you're resolving to lose weight this year, there's recent research that suggests that how you track your progress may matter more than sheer willpower. Large scale data from mobile weight loss programs show that people who regularly log their meals, weigh themselves often, and actively use tracking tools are significantly more likely to achieve meaningful weight loss than those who don't. The strongest predictors of success are early and frequent self monitoring and high levels of app engagement. Habits that help you stay accountable and aware of your daily choices rather than just vaguely thinking about losing weight. And that is something you should know. You know, we really work hard to put out a quality podcast and we'd like to reach as many people as we possibly can. And you can help us by sharing this podcast and telling your friends and helping us grow our audience. I'd appreciate it. I'm Mike, her brothers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. Well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life again gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a [e-mail] Switch limited time.

[Paul Sloan]

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[Paul Sloan]

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Oh the Regency Era. You might know it as the time when Bridgerton takes place or the time when Austin wrote her books, but the Regency Era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history. And on the Vulgar History podcast, we're going to be looking at the balls, the gowns and all the scandal of the Regency era. Vulgar History is a women's history podcast and our Regency Era series will be focusing on the most rebellious women of this time. That includes Jane Austen herself, who is maybe more radical than you might have thought. We'll also be talking about queer icons like Anne Lister, scientists like Mary Anning and Ada Lovelace, as well as other scandalous actresses, royal mistresses, rebellious princesses, and other lesser known figures who made history happen in England in the Regency Era. Listen to Vulgar History wherever you get podcasts.