David Carbonell (7:08)

Oh, hi Mike. Thanks for having me.

Mike Carruthers (7:10)

Sure. So first explain what worry is. And I'd like to know what's the difference between worry and anxiety.

David Carbonell (7:19)

Worry is basically the cognitive part, the thinking part of anxiety. A person could have anxiety in several forms. They might have physical symptoms, shortness of breath, pulse picking up. They might have unpleasant emotions, feeling apprehensive, on edge. They might have anxious behaviors, biting my nails, avoiding something that I dread. And they can also experience anxiety in the form of thoughts, typically intrusive what if thoughts. What if this meeting goes poorly? What if I catch a disease? What if my son flunks out of school? What if we lose the house? That kind of thing. And so those collectively those thoughts mostly not always set up by the presence of the what if clause. That's the form of worry that most people struggle with.

Mike Carruthers (8:13)

And oftentimes it seems we worry about things that we probably never needed to worry about. But sometimes we worry about things and it was a good thing we worried. So clearly worry has a role. But so when is it a problem?

David Carbonell (8:28)

Worry can be useful if it tips me off to something that I have to do that I have to tend to. Gee, what if I'm not ready for that meeting next week and I haven't prepared? Well, it tells me prepare. And once having gotten that message and having prepared well, then I don't need the message anymore. And hopefully, ordinarily that message will drop off my radar once I've taken the necessary precaution of preparing for the meeting or arranging a doctor appointment or whatever. All too often, though, even if I have taken the message and made my preparation, or even more commonly, when there really isn't any preparation to do, the worry persists and it functions like an annoying neighbor who keeps coming around tapping me on the shoulder. Have you thought about what will happen if you die next month? And there's nothing I can do with that information. The neighbor's just annoying. And I have to figure out what's a good way to relate to this thought, because since it's not a neighbor, I can't tell him, go home. The thought is in my own mind. And then that's the challenge for people dealing with chronic worry. How can I relate to the presence of this intrusive, unwanted reminder of something that probably isn't going to be an issue?

Mike Carruthers (9:49)

So why is it, do you suppose, that some people handle worry so much easier and other people see trouble where it just not there?

David Carbonell (10:03)

Well, there seems to be strong indicators that there are genetic predispositions to this, that right from birth, some people are born better candidates than others to have trouble with this. Some people come to having a panic attack or chronic worry episodes rather naturally, and other people seems like, gee, they couldn't have a panic attack if you paid them to do it. They just don't have the temperament. They'll have other difficulties in life, but not that. So first off, the predisposition that anxiety disorders tend to run strongly in families, and if you find one person in this generation who's had trouble with an anxiety disorder, odds of finding others back a generation or more are something like three to four times as high as if you looked at a random person on the street. So there's genetic predisposition and there's the learning of what happens to them. How do they deal with their first episode? Did they get help? Did they have good information? They might outgrow that first episode immediately. If they didn't, they might labor in secrecy and fear and doubt. And that's the breeding ground for a chronic problem.

Mike Carruthers (11:25)

Well, certainly there are children who suffer with anxiety problems, and I imagine if they don't get some help, that that's not going to go away by itself. Or maybe. Does it ever just go away by itself?

David Carbonell (11:40)

Probably not. Not going away by itself in the sense that parents don't recognize it, nobody does anything differently, and it just fades away. Now, it's very common for children to have, you know, ordinary childhood Phobias, those tend to be outgrown. You know, fear of the dark, fear of the, the lion in the closet and so on. Those are developmental stages that kids tend naturally to grow outgrow. But a child who in particular has a tendency to worry, a child who watches health commercials, public health messages on television, and worries about those diseases that they're talking about, who sees the message from the cancer society looking for donations and begins to worry, what if my family gets cancer? That's probably not going to be outgrown. A child who has that habit, that habit's probably going to stick unless something happens to help them. I'll set that aside.

Mike Carruthers (12:45)

Is there a sense of why somebody can hear the same information? I tried to call mom and she didn't pick up the phone. I'll try her again later. She must not be near her phone. And then someone else hears that and assumes, well, she must have been in a car crash, she's probably dead or in a ditch. What happens in the mind? That story goes one way with one person and, and the other way with the other person.

David Carbonell (13:15)

Well, one way of thinking about it is people who have this tendency towards anxiety and worry, they're much more susceptible to doubt than the average person. And that's a big highlight of worry. People experience doubt and they treat it like danger. And so the, the person oriented to worry, mom or my spouse, doesn't pick up the phone the first time I call, it's not going to occur to them that there are other explanations. This is dangerous. I have to remove that doubt, I must be sure. Whereas other people are more prepared to roll with the, the uncertainties. Well, if I can't reach her now, I'll probably be able to reach her in a half an hour. So it's that misunderstanding of doubt and treating it like danger that's at the heart of this.

Mike Carruthers (14:10)

It seems to me that when somebody is a worrier, so if they're worried that mom's not picking up the phone, so something horrible must have happened and then they find out nothing happened, it was fine, she just wasn't near her phone. The next time it happens, that person doesn't think back. Well, the last time this happened it was nothing. So this time it'll be nothing that we don't learn from experience, that we over worry.

David Carbonell (14:36)

No, no. The repeated experience of discovering the thing I worried about didn't happen will not really do anything to soothe the chronic worrier. And partly that's because they tend to do things in response to the thoughts they have. Of doubt. Maybe they'll drive past mom's house and see does the car seem to be there. Maybe they'll call others. Maybe they'll literally try and talk themselves out of it. They'll respond in ways which most of us can recognize. Gee, that wouldn't do anything to enhance the safety of a close relative. But they'll still think, well, maybe it helped somehow. And so then they're caught in a bind. They have to keep repeating these, what we call safety behaviors each time they experience the doubt. Doesn't do anything to make anybody safer, but they're afraid. Gee, if I let go, if I treat it so casually as to not drive by mom's house, what if that is the thing that triggers a really bad event here? And so they get caught up in the idea that they've somehow prevented a bad outcome with their worrying, and that motivates them to worry more.

Mike Carruthers (15:55)

Yeah, see, I think there is that tendency to think that if you're worrying about something, you're working on it.

David Carbonell (16:03)

Exactly. You know, one of the phrases I hear so often from my clients, it helps if I expect the worst. Well, actually, it probably doesn't help if you expect the worst. But they have that sense, if I'm not worrying, then I'm treating life too casually.

Mike Carruthers (16:21)

And if I am worrying, maybe I'm preventing the problem from ever happening or working on the problem to help it somehow.

David Carbonell (16:31)

Yes. Yeah, somehow. And of course, if you ask them to pin it down, it becomes hard to figure, well, how are you actually helping? But that. That's a powerful belief that at least I care enough to worry about it.

Mike Carruthers (16:46)

My sense is that most people who you would consider worriers, people who get anxious and worry, wish they didn't so much.

David Carbonell (16:55)

Absolutely. That's exactly right. People do not enjoy their worry. They wish they had less of it. Unfortunately, that leads them to oppose and resist their worry in ways that are counterproductive, that make them more prone to worry rather than less.

Mike Carruthers (17:16)

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Mike Carruthers (19:43)

So David, if you do worry or you are worrying about something, how do you stop it?

David Carbonell (19:51)

Well, the paradox here is you can bring it in for a soft landing by not struggling to stop it. That you cultivate a relationship with these thoughts of acceptance, even of playing with rather than trying to stop it. So if I asked you take 20 seconds and don't think about the moon, you'd probably find it hard to do that because now you see a big glowing orb in your mind space. They do a similar thing. They tell themselves don't think about it. And of course it leads them to think about it more. So what we want to do is help people develop a more playful, accepting way of having the thoughts. They don't have to treat them seriously, but they need to allow the thoughts to be there rather than oppose them.

Mike Carruthers (20:43)

So what does that look like? Give me an example of being more playful with the thoughts.

David Carbonell (20:48)

You know I had a conversation with a man who was a broadcaster. And he described to me an instance. He was taping his show and he had this sudden, terrible thought, what if I need to pee during the show? And that grabbed all his attention. And he had a lot of trouble focusing on his job, getting past the thought. Later on, we talked about it. What else could he have done? And I suggested to him, well, how's this for response? Gee, I wonder if I can hit the front row from here. That's a way of taking the thought and joking with it, playing with it and then moving on to the next thing rather than arguing or struggling with it. One very useful technique a lot of chronic worriers that I work with use. I'll ask them to do their worrying if they have another language, if they're bilingual in any way, I'll ask them to do their worrying in the weaker language. And just that changes it enough that now they have to stop and think, well, how do you say choked to death in German? And it changes the whole context. The way they relate to the thought doesn't change the content at all, but it has big changes for how they relate to.

Mike Carruthers (22:07)

Seems like just from experiencing and watching this, that the more you worry, the more you worry, the more you worry, that it compounds on top of itself.

David Carbonell (22:18)

Yes, that's exactly right. And the way it compounds the mechanism is you worry and you try to stop and you worry some more and you tell yourself, that's silly, stop that, and you worry more. That's the method of compounding. It's, I worry and I oppose it. And so the whole focus on helping a person worry less is on helping them let go of that resistance, not to struggle, but to play with the content of the worry.

Mike Carruthers (22:48)

Something I've. Because I know people who are like real worriers, and I think if they stop worrying, who would they be? Because that's what they do. How would they fill up their day because they spend so much of it worrying?

David Carbonell (23:05)

Yes, well, this is a real issue for people who may be working in therapy to become less of a worrier. And it's true, that's become part of their identity. And they will have worries about, gee, if I don't worry so much, what am I going to do? And you know what? One of the most interesting things that'll happen is as they start to worry less, and maybe they've had a theme that they worry about, be it health or money or family, as they start to worry less about that, guess what's going to happen. They're they're going to go through a phase where they worry about the fact that they're not worrying, that that's how integral the act of worry is. As they worry less, they're going to worry, oh, am I, am I not taking life seriously enough now? Perhaps I should be worrying more. I'm not comfortable when I'm not worrying.

Mike Carruthers (24:03)

It seems like a never ending cycle. It just feeds on itself.

David Carbonell (24:08)

Well, it's true. It is a cycle. It does feed on itself. It's not that it's never ending. When we talk about what could someone expect as they work on this, I always like to talk about a recovery rather than a cure, that this is a habit you learn to inhibit rather than a disease that you overcome and leave behind. It's much better thought of as a habit and some people are much, much more prone to it than others.

Mike Carruthers (24:38)

So the next time, let's say I'm worried about something overly worrying because I think people who worry too much know they worry too much. But they, that doesn't help them stop it. But so if you're worrying about something, what's the, you know, if there is such a thing, kind of the first aid, like how do you. Is there a way to stop it in its tracks? Is there a way to slow it down? Anything?

David Carbonell (25:04)

One good first step in slowing it down is postponing. Now I don't want to have anybody tell themselves stop worrying and oppose it. That doesn't work. Something that often works a lot better. Well, I see. I keep thinking about problem xyz. Hmm, let's see. How about I come back to this in half an hour. I'm going to set an appointment. I'm going to actually set a little alarm on my phone in half an hour from now. If I feel the need to worry about it, I'll do it then. In the meantime, I'm going to go on about my business. Postponing is a powerful way that people can influence this. There's a good chance that when the time comes that they set for the appointment, it's no longer going to be first in their mind and they're going to be more likely to be able to say, I don't care about that. I don't think I need to keep this appointment with worry now. So that's a very good first step. Let me postpone this. If this is important, it'll be important in an hour and a half. I'll come back to it then.

Mike Carruthers (26:11)

I've often wondered if people who worry that one of the rewards for being a worrier is that when you worry about something and whatever you're worried about doesn't happen or the resolution is somewhat different than the horrible thing you've been thinking, that that feels so good that it's worth worrying about so that you feel good when it doesn't happen.

David Carbonell (26:38)

Well, there's some of that. It feels good for it to stop. And they also have, in all sincerity, a sense that somehow they played a role. If I hadn't worried, maybe it wouldn't have turned out so well. So they get the relief. And they also feel like I've been the best person I could. I worried and therefore my child is okay. I worried and therefore this project turned out all right. It's not just that they get the relief, they also feel like I authored the better outcome.

Mike Carruthers (27:13)

Well, this has been really insightful because I think a lot of us have worried about things that we never needed to worry about, and yet we went through that whole process as you described how our brain tricks us into thinking there's danger and then we expect the worst and we're ready for a fight and it's all so pointless and yet it's so hard not to do. I've been speaking with David Carbonell. He is a clinical psychologist who specializes in the treatment of anxiety disorders, and he is author of a book called the Worry how your brain tricks you into expecting the Worst, and you will find a link to that book in the show Notes. I appreciate you coming on. Thank you, David.

David Carbonell (27:54)

Oh, thanks for having me.

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Sarah Hindman (29:28)

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Mike Carruthers (29:52)

Virginia by Chev and has many campuses including at 2121 15th Street north in Arlington, Virginia. Have you ever opened up Microsoft Word or whatever word processing thing you have and look at all the possible fonts you can use and then wonder why? Who uses some of these strange looking fonts? Where did they come from? And maybe more importantly, do the type styles the fonts that we use, does it have an impact on the people reading what we write? Do you send a message by the font you use? Well, the short answer is yes and there is a lot of interesting research into this that we're about to discuss, but with Sarah Hindman. She is a graphic designer who specializes in exploring how fonts influence people and she is author of a book called why Fonts Matter. Hi Sarah, welcome to Something youg Should Know.

Sarah Hindman (30:47)

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Mike Carruthers (30:49)

Is there research regarding I assume there probably is about just the everyday use of, you know, in emails and memos and things about which fonts do what and and even type sizes. I know some people like to use little tiny type sizes and I don't know if that's good or bad or is it all just preference.

Sarah Hindman (31:12)

There is loads of research and especially as technology, things like eye tracking technology and FMRI scanning, neuroscience scanning gets more and more accessible. We are understanding so much more. Firstly about how we read how how our eyesight eyesight changes over time. So if you're a teenager you can read that tiny, tiny little type but once you get past the age of about 35 your eyesight starts to change. So when you go to when you look at an email in teeny writing you're going to have to enlarge it. Or for me the classic is you go to a restaurant and everybody's got their phones out with their torches on because they can't quite read the menu because it's in teeny letters in a kind of quite dark lighting. And there is lots of research to show that size matters, the space between the letters matter. Some typefaces are much more readable than others, but a lot of the time it depends on who the audience is. There is no one right typeface, one right font for everybody. Sometimes it needs to make an emotional connection. It needs to be what you expect to see in that context. Other times it needs to be incredibly readable at a first glance. So there's research into typefaces on car dashboards where you need to just really quickly be able to see the information and not have to think about it for any length of time because you need to make a split second decision. So huge amounts of research into this.

Mike Carruthers (32:45)

Are there fonts that are basically considered easy to read for just about everybody?

Sarah Hindman (32:54)

If you want a font that would be standard on your email? There is some research that was done in the last couple of years by the team who was researching for a new BBC typeface and they worked out that of the ones on your email, if you use Verdana and you make it a decent size, then that's probably about the most readable choice that you can make. There is other research to show that if you want to come across as a little bit more intellectual or talking about or knowledgeable, that if you use a typeface like Georgia, because it has the little feet, the little serifs, then we associate that with knowledge in history. So you've got. Both of them are quite easy to read, but they have different emotional connections that they're going to make with you.

Mike Carruthers (33:45)

But the emotional connection is in the mind of the reader or is in the mind of the sender.

Sarah Hindman (33:51)

It's going to be interpreted by the mind of the reader. So both of you have an idea, but it's like the clothes that you decide to wear. I know what I want to communicate, but it's down to the people looking at me as to whether they think it's appropriate. I don't know, for me to be wearing my pajamas down to my local shop.

Mike Carruthers (34:09)

Well, the two fonts you just mentioned, Verdana and Georgia, aren't ones. I think I see a lot. I mean, I see Ariel a lot, Times New Roman a lot. And maybe it's just default and maybe people pick a new.

Sarah Hindman (34:23)

Exactly, exactly that. Times New Roman was the default for a long time, then Ariel was the default for a long Time. So unless you really want to think about fonts or you really want to care about them, a lot of the time, you'll just use whatever's there in front of you, because it's all about just writing and communicating, and it's only once you want to start. Once you start thinking about it, then you will play with them a little bit more.

Mike Carruthers (34:50)

But are those good choices? I mean, does the research show that? Ariel Times New Roman. If you just want to send out a memo and get people to read it, no problem.

Sarah Hindman (35:01)

Times New Roman would be better if you switched it to Georgia. Times was designed for the Times newspaper, and it was designed for those very, very narrow column widths of the newspaper. So it's quite condensed. And as soon as you're actually spreading it out all the way across a page, it starts to become a little bit harder to read. And the same with Arial. It's not designed for readability so much as the more modern typefaces like Vedana, which have been designed with characters that make them look different from each other. So at a glance, you can read them much more easily.

Mike Carruthers (35:36)

Can you trace back the origins of all these fonts or do some of them. They're so old, is no story or what?

Sarah Hindman (35:46)

So, printed type, the very first printed typefaces appeared in China and Korea centuries before they started to be used in Europe. And the first printed typefaces in Europe were designed in Germany in the mid-1400s. Lots of people were trying to invent mechanical handwriting because there was so much demand for written books. And it was a man called Johannes Gutenberg who's generally credited with printing the first ones, although, as I said, lots of other people were trying to. And he also had a team around him. So he printed in what were really kind of Gothic typefaces, if you think of a heavy metal record cover, those kind of really spiky Gothic typefaces you might see on that. But at the time, this is what handwriting looked like. So he just printed. He made metal printing type out of what looked like the handwriting of the day. So in a way, this would have been the most readable. This was like the Times New Roman or the arial of the 1400s, because it was so familiar. And then gradually, as time has gone on and different technologies and also different aesthetics have come along. So a few decades later, that spiky typeface was just not fashionable anymore. So the new printers decided, oh, we want a new, simpler typeface for a modern era. So we're going to be influenced by ancient Rome. Which we think is the height of civilization. And then you come to the 1950s when, again, serifs, anything kind of historic has fallen out of favor. So suddenly, this new, very minimalist typeface called Helvetica and lots of other styles like Helvetica were suddenly incredibly popular because they mirrored the aesthetic of the moment. So they develop both through technology, but also it's what society. The tastes that we kind of. That we appreciate at any moment in time.

Mike Carruthers (37:44)

Isn't that interesting that fonts go in and out of style like clothes? Is there any evidence that there's a difference in terms of the way a reader reads something, if it's a serif or sans serif type, if the letters have the little feet at the bottom, or they. Or they don't have little feet at the bottom?

Sarah Hindman (38:05)

Well, on a very, very basic level, if a typeface has got serifs on it, you will assume that what you're reading is a little bit more intellectual, a little bit more. More researched, a bit more academic, maybe. There was a really fun study where two groups of people were given exactly the same article from the New York Times. One, one group read it in a serif typeface, the other one read it in a sans serif typeface. So the feat. So, in fact, I think it was New York, I think it's possibly Times New Roman versus Ariel. And they were asked how satirical, so how witty, and they thought the article was. And the people who read it with serifs thought that the article was actually more satirical than those who read it without serifs. So it creates a mood that can. Can kind of influence or flavor how you read the article that you're reading.

Mike Carruthers (39:06)

What about type size when you're reading an article, as you pointed out, you know, sometimes when you read a menu, you can't read it. It's too dark and too small. But also, you know, I don't want to read articles where the type is really big either. I mean, is there a sweet spot for type size?

Sarah Hindman (39:22)

Yes. I mean, type size does matter in the teeny, tiny type doesn't work for everybody. Unless, of course, you're creating something for the teenage market and you don't want the grownup to read it. And as it gets bigger, it. Yeah, absolutely. It starts to shout. I mean, these days, because we look at things on our screens, you never quite know what size type is going to enlarge or shrink down to, but there is the sweet spot, which designers or you can see for yourself when you're looking at when you're looking at a screen. And it also depends on whether you're looking at on a computer screen or your phone because you'll hold one much closer to your face than another. So if you're holding it closely, you can have much smaller type. So you take lots of things into consideration. And at the end of the day, type has to be tested in the circumstances that you're going to read it in. So there's no point saying, oh, you should always use 12 point type, because that's not going to apply across everything.

Mike Carruthers (40:19)

Well, that's an interesting point because how you send it may not be how it's perceived by the other person because they may be looking at it on their phone, they may be looking on a huge computer monitor. You don't know how they're reading it. So is there any kind of like default? No matter how they read it, this is probably going to work best.

Sarah Hindman (40:40)

Definitely don't go and use that fancy new font that you've just downloaded from somewhere because if they don't have it on their machine, it's just going to default to Arial all to Times New Roman. Don't shout at people. Uppercase letters, all caps. It just shouts. So I think that that for me would be one of the big things not to do. You know when you get an email and it's all caps in the subject and it's stop shouting at me, unless.

Mike Carruthers (41:06)

I guess they want to shout at you.

Sarah Hindman (41:10)

If you want somebody to read your email, maybe you don't really shout it.

Mike Carruthers (41:14)

Probably not. So if I sent you an email, just say to confirm this interview and you responded, what would I be reading? What type face and what size would it come back at? What do you use?

Sarah Hindman (41:31)

Mine would come back to you in Georgia because I know that you're going to have it on your system and I want the serifs because I want you to know that I'm a little bit of a nerdy kind of type geek. And it's going to be, I would imagine, in 12 or 13 point. I set that as a default a long, long time ago. So I don't go and change it every time. But if you've set your browser to default to something else, then it's going to translate it and make it look. You might have set your. You might have set your email to only to convert everything into bright magenta comic sans in 16 point and I have no control over that.

Mike Carruthers (42:08)

Yeah, I can assure you I didn't.

Sarah Hindman (42:12)

It would have given me quite a.

Mike Carruthers (42:13)

Comedic voice Though, in fact, I wouldn't even know how to do that. And so I wonder, you know, you hear rules like, like if you're writing a resume or something, you know, don't use a lot of different typefaces. That. And, you know, what about all that? What does the mind do when there's lots of bold or lots of underlines and lots of different typefaces on a document? I mean, my sense is it's kind of cluttered and hard to read. But is there research on that or.

Sarah Hindman (42:44)

There's a really. A great study where they actually measured how much people frowned when they looked at different types of designed pages. And when there were too many fonts and too many different, some of them arranged left, some of them more arranged to the right, and it was really hard to read, they found people frowned much, much more. And when typeface environments were much easier to read, so they had more space, they had fewer fonts, and it was much easier to navigate around the page, they found that people didn't frown, and in fact, it made them feel happier. And they were much more likely to then respond to the email, whether it was replying to it, whether it was buying something. So I really like the idea that somebody actually sat there and measured frowns for this. And I completely agree. If there's lots going on on the page, it's like being in a really noisy nightclub. Everybody's clamoring for your attention. You don't really know which words to read because all of them are shouting at you.

Mike Carruthers (43:44)

When I look at Microsoft Word and I look at all the fonts there, and you say that's just a tiny sliver of all the available fonts in the world. Who created those? I mean, I don't mean by name, but generally, who are the people that create fonts and do they make money because they're now part of Microsoft Word or like, do they get royalties from that?

Sarah Hindman (44:07)

Sadly, I don't think any type designers get royalties from putting their fonts on Microsoft Word. They do. So there are lots of different places that as a designer I would get fonts from. There is a lot of your listeners might use Adobe products, and Adobe fonts come built into their products, and the type designers who design those fonts, they definitely get royalties. So the big type foundries who will also basically lease you the fonts that you can use, it's a little bit like the record industry. So they're like the record companies, and the type designers are like the musicians. And each of their fonts is like the record that they. They release. So they're published by these big type foundries. And it's. So it's a really flourishing business, especially as technology's changing and lots of people are becoming much, much more aware. The different fonts, we're really enjoying using all of the different ones that we have accessible to us.

Mike Carruthers (45:05)

What are some other examples of how fonts influence us? Because I just don't think people think about it when we read words. We think that what's important, and I guess it is, is what's being said. But explain some examples of how the fonts influence us as a reader.

Sarah Hindman (45:26)

There are. I think there would be some really easy examples. So if you took your cola of choice and you just saw even a sliver of each of the logos, you would know from the style of the lettering, from the style of the font on the can, which brand it was without even reading it, without even reading the word that it said. And also movie posters, you know exactly what kind of movie you're about to go and see just from the style of the font. You know if it's kind of a science fiction or if it's going to be a horror movie or a romance movie, just from the. The letters that you read again before you've even read the title, or even if you do read the title, it. The letters actually tell you what it's going to be. But exactly as you say, we don't think about that because when we read, rather than looking at the shapes of the letters, you. The meaning with, the thing that they mean, the thing that you're reading, the ideas, they get beamed straight into your head. So you go straight from looking at something to ideas and imagination or songs or flavors, and actually how they got there is not something that you ever really need to think about.

Mike Carruthers (46:33)

I know you've done a lot of research yourself and work in this. Is there anything else that people would find really surprising or interesting in terms of the way fonts influence us?

Sarah Hindman (46:45)

So I'm really interested in how different typefaces interact with our different senses. And one of the very early pieces of experiments I did was looking at how if I give you two identical jelly beans to eat, and I get you to look at either a curved typeface or a jagged typeface, how you will actually perceive the jelly bean as tasting sweeter or sour. And that's been now been published as a study, which I find really exciting because I'm a graphic designer, not a scientist. So when the scientists take my work seriously, it's great. But then I decided to get really clever and I thought, okay, we know if a product's expensive because you have a really expensive looking font on it, kind of what an expensive looking font looks like. It's very skinny, it might have some very sort of hairline details on it, whereas a very cheap font looks kind of almost like childish. It's very round. It looks a little bit more like it's been drawn with a child's marker pen paintbrush. So I thought, okay, I bet I can make chocolate taste much, much more expensive. And I went along to an event and I tried putting chocolate in either expensive or cheap typefaces. And then I asked people how it tasted. And the first day it went brilliantly. I had expensive chocolate. People rated it as tasting more expensive. They enjoyed it more. And then the second day I ran out of chocolate because it turns out your experiments are really popular if you give away free chocolate. So the second day I did the same thing again, but I took along some really cheap chocolate this time. But at the end of the day, I tallied up results again and I was really a little bit disappointed. Surprised, because not only had it not worked, but actually the people who'd eaten the cheap chocolate to the expensive typeface, the expensive font rated it as tasting even cheaper and nastier. And then when I went along and asked the scientists, what on earth had I done wrong? They said, oh, it's because you tried to convince people that something expensive or something, sorry, that something cheap was expensive. And when the anticipation and the actual experience didn't match, it amplified the cheapness of what you were trying to give them. So I think the moral at the end of this is a typeface. A font can nudge your perception a little bit. It can add a tiny little bit of sweet sprinkles to something, but it can never convince you that something is what it's not.

Mike Carruthers (49:13)

Well, this is such a great example of a topic, of a thing that we all use all the time, either as a reader or a writer. Typefaces are influencing us and influencing the people who are reading our stuff. And we know so little about it, and now we know a little bit more. I've been talking with Sarah Hindman. She's a graphic designer and author of the book why Fonts Matter. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Sarah. This was really interesting.

Sarah Hindman (49:43)

Thank you very much. It was a pleasure talking to you.

Mike Carruthers (49:48)

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Podcast Advertiser/Host (51:50)

Hey hey. Are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinkx and me, Melissa D. Montz for Don't Blame Me But Am I Wrong? We're serving up four hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you and Don't Blame Me. We dive deep into listeners questions, offering advice that's that's funny, relatable and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's perspective, we've got you. Then switch gears with But Am I Wrong? Which is for listeners who didn't take our advice and want to know if they are the villains in the situation. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events and present situations that we might even be wrong in our lives. Spoiler alert. We are actually, quite literally, never wrong. But wait, there's more.

Sarah Hindman (52:33)

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