Why You Don't See What's Right in Front of You & The Surprising Truth About Sidewalks

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Why You Don't See What's Right in Front of You & The Surprising Truth About Sidewalks"

Podcast: Something You Should Know
Host: Mike Carruthers
Guests: Keelan Lacer (digital illusionist, author of Blind Spots) and Michael Pollack (law professor, author of Sidewalk)
Date: July 30, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode explores two seemingly unrelated but fascinating topics: how our brains create perceptual and cognitive "blind spots," and the surprising legal, social, and public policy intricacies of sidewalks. Through expert interviews, host Mike Carruthers reveals how much of our perception is illusion and how everyday things like sidewalks shape community life in ways most people never notice.

---

Section 1: The Psychology of Blind Spots (Featuring Keelan Lacer)

What Are Blind Spots? (06:10–07:53)

• Definition:
  Keelan Lacer explains that our brains are like "the most overworked security guard," bombarded with 400 billion bits of sensory information per second, but can only consciously handle about 20 bits. The rest is filtered out—our "blind spots."

  "Your senses are bombarded with 400 billion bits of information. Your brain can only consciously handle around about 20 of those bits... So a blind spot is everything it threw away." —Keelan Lacer (06:10)

• Example:
  Everyday sensations—like clothes on your skin—are ignored until mentioned. The famous "gorilla experiment" is cited, where focused attention blinds people to a man in a gorilla suit walking through a basketball game.

Why Are Blind Spots Dangerous? (09:12–10:30)

• Real-World Impact:
  Lacer recounts serious incidents:

  • Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crash due to collective focus on a minor warning light, missing the disengaged autopilot.
  • Medical errors (nursing overdose).
  • Space shuttle and nuclear plant disasters (fatigue increasing blind spots).

• Quote:

  "Everyone was looking, but no one was actually seeing." —Keelan Lacer (09:12)

Can We Reduce Our Blind Spots? (10:39–11:45)

• Awareness is Key:
  While we can't eliminate blind spots, we can mitigate them by knowing when we’re most vulnerable—during fatigue, fear, or anger (the "three Fs").

• Manipulation by Others:
  Companies and social media deliberately exploit our attention, using distraction and anchoring to influence behavior.

  "The single most powerful thing you can do is what we call the three Fs. If you're fatigued, frightened or furious, your blind spots get dramatically wider in those exact moments." —Keelan Lacer (10:39)

Notable Segment: Supermarkets and Anchoring Bias (11:55–12:38)

• Supermarket "original price" mark-downs use anchoring to trick consumers, because our brains judge value vs. the first number we see (often arbitrary).

---

The Social Nature of Shared Blind Spots (13:26–14:52)

• Contagious Attention:
  In high-pressure or hierarchical settings (e.g., airplane cockpits or shuttle launches), group focus can create "shared blind spots," which are more dangerous because everyone assumes someone else is watching the big picture.

  "A room where everybody thinks the same will have the same identical blind spots with nobody left to really catch them." —Keelan Lacer (14:45)

---

Blind Spots and Magic (16:02–19:22)

• Misdirection in Magic:
  Even magicians fall for illusions they've performed themselves, because blind spots are not about knowledge but about the architecture of perception.

  • Color Constancy Example:
    The checkerboard illusion: two squares look different but are actually identical; our brains adjust for lighting conditions automatically (color constancy)—an evolutionary advantage, but exploitable.

  "Misdirection doesn't work by hiding things from your eyes. Everything happens in plain sight. What it does is exploit the fact that your brain can only consciously follow about four moving objects at once." —Keelan Lacer (16:45)

---

Unreliability of Eyewitness Testimony (21:28–24:37)

• Memory Reconstruction:
  Lacer explains that memory is reconstructed, not recorded. Cites cases where magicians and psychologists have planted false memories or audiences "remembered" events that never happened. This calls into question the reliability of eyewitness testimony in courts.

  "Your brain doesn't record events like a video camera. It reconstructs them afterwards. Every single time you remember something, you are actively rebuilding it, and every rebuild is slightly different." —Keelan Lacer (21:50)

---

Key Takeaway & Advice (24:55–25:39)

• Final Message:
  "You think you're seeing reality, but you're not. And the people who know that are actually using it against you." (Keelan Lacer, 24:55)
• Be aware that almost everything is invisible to you by design, and the same psychological techniques used in magic are used without your consent in social media, advertising, politics, and AI.

---

Section 2: The Surprising Truth About Sidewalks (Featuring Michael Pollack)

The History and Evolution of Sidewalks (28:30–30:26)

• Ancient Roots:
  Sidewalks date back to Pompeii and colonial America; originally, they were private amenities to keep people above waste in the streets, not for community connection.

• Growth into Public Resource:
  As sidewalks connected together, they became vital for commerce, speech, art, transportation, and gatherings.

Who Owns and Maintains Sidewalks? (30:39–34:19)

• Ownership is Complicated:
  Property lines sometimes end before the sidewalk, making it government owned; other times private property extends into the sidewalk area, but with a public "easement" (right to access and use).

• Responsibility for Maintenance:
  In most US towns and cities, private property owners must maintain, clear, and repair sidewalks—even if they don't own them.

  "The very common arrangement in...most cities and towns...private property owners are responsible for maintaining, repairing, clearing litter off of the sidewalk, whether or not they own the space. And you asked why? The answer is because the law says so..." —Michael Pollack (31:57)

• Critique:
  Pollack argues this is bad public policy and contrary to basic property law: the public should maintain infrastructure it uses.

---

Sidewalks as Essential Public Infrastructure (34:19–37:35)

• All Sidewalks Serve Public Functions:
  Even neighborhood sidewalks are vital for community connectivity, safe routes to school, recreation, accessibility and more—not just as building amenities.

• Key Quote:

  "It really is a public resource for transportation as well as... community gathering, for spending time outdoors with friends and neighbors, for engaging in political action or speech or art, or...selling things." —Michael Pollack (35:26)

---

Sidewalks, Speech, and Property Rights (37:35–40:31)

• Public vs. Private Control:
  Sidewalks are generally public forums—even if on "private" land—meaning people can legally protest, leaflet, etc., within the bounds of "time, place, and manner" restrictions.

  "For the most part, [property owners] have responsibility but no control. ...the Constitution guarantees everyone the right to speak freely in what we call public forums. And the Supreme Court has held repeatedly that sidewalks are public forums even when they are sitting on private property." —Michael Pollack (38:03)

---

The Patchwork Problem: Inconsistent Sidewalks (40:31–45:57)

• "Sidewalk to Nowhere" Dilemma:
  Many cities have incomplete sidewalk networks because laws often require new sidewalks only with property redevelopment, leaving gaps.

  • This approach creates sidewalks that begin and end abruptly, causing accessibility and safety issues for those relying on foot travel.

  "We would never build roads that don't connect to other roads...yet we build sidewalks that go nowhere." —Mike Carruthers (43:54)

• Policy Solutions:
  Some cities drop the requirement or fail to enforce it, but this isn’t a real solution. Pollack urges comprehensive, community-funded plans for sidewalk connectivity.

---

Why Sidewalks Matter (46:26–47:09)

• More Than a Low Priority:
  Though often overlooked by the public and sometimes officials, sidewalks are tied to many pressing urban issues—transportation, accessibility, public safety.

  • Community pressure and awareness are essential to improve sidewalks.

  "Sidewalks are essential not just for getting people from place to place, but they connect so many other issues of law and policy." —Michael Pollack (46:26)

---

Memorable Quotes

• On Blind Spots:

  "You think you're seeing reality, but you're not. And the people who know that are actually using it against you." —Keelan Lacer (24:55)

• On Shared Ignorance:

  "A room where everybody thinks the same will have the same identical blind spots with nobody left to really catch them." —Keelan Lacer (14:45)

• On Sidewalk Responsibility:

  "For the most part, [property owners] have responsibility but no control." —Michael Pollack (38:11)

• On Policy Priorities:

  "Sidewalks are essential not just for getting people from place to place, but they connect so many other issues..." —Michael Pollack (46:26)

---

Important Timestamps

• 06:10 — Keelan Lacer defines a "blind spot"
• 07:01 — The gorilla experiment: famous inattentional blindness
• 09:12 — Real-life disasters caused by blind spots
• 10:39 — Strategies to mitigate blind spots
• 11:55 — Supermarkets' anchoring bias
• 13:27–14:52 — Shared/group blind spots
• 16:45 — Magic and misdirection explained
• 21:50 — Why eyewitness memories are unreliable
• 24:55 — Keelan’s summary: "You think you're seeing reality, but you're not."
• 30:39 — Who owns and is responsible for sidewalks?
• 34:50 — Differences between residential and commercial sidewalks questioned
• 37:35–40:31 — Sidewalks as public forums, protest rights
• 41:22 — Why sidewalks are inconsistent and often incomplete
• 46:26 — The public importance and policy implications of sidewalks

---

Conclusion

This episode of Something You Should Know reveals how much in life operates right outside our conscious attention, whether it’s cognitive blind spots in our own perception or overlooked infrastructure like sidewalks that shapes how we live and interact. Awareness—of our mental limitations and of the overlooked systems under our feet—can help us make better decisions and advocate for healthier, more equitable communities.

Transcript

[Mike Carruthers]

Today on something you should know the real reason they play music in stores and restaurants. Then understanding your blind spots, the things you miss that are right in front

[Keelan Lacer]

of you every single second. Your senses are bombarded with 400 billion bits of information, but your brain can only consciously handle around about 20 of those bits. So it makes decisions really fast about what to pay attention to and what to throw away. So a blind spot is everything it threw away.

[Mike Carruthers]

Also, a simple way to save money on big purchases. And some fascinating things about sidewalks you never knew.

[Michael Pollack]

For example, the very common arrangement in most cities and towns across the country. Private property owners are responsible for maintaining, repairing, clearing litter off of the sidewalk, whether or not they own the space.

[Mike Carruthers]

All this today on something YOU should know. One thing I've noticed after interviewing literally hundreds of entrepreneurs over the years is that almost nobody starts a business with a perfect plan. No, they start with an idea. That's how I started. But you gotta take the first step. If you've got something you've always wanted to sell, Shopify makes that first step a whole lot easier. You don't have to worry about how your online store will look or how you're going to get paid or what your checkout process is. Shopify has all that handled. That means less time wrestling with the technology and more time doing what actually grows a business. Shopify already powers millions of businesses worldwide, from big brands like Mattel and Gymshark to new businesses just starting up. So maybe they should be powering your business as well. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com sysk that's shopify.com sysk shopify.com sysk

[Michael Pollack]

something you should know Fascinating intel the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today.

[Mike Carruthers]

Something you should know with Mike Carruthers. Have you ever wondered why stores and restaurants play the music that they play? I have. And so that's what we're going to start with today on this episode of SOMETHING YOU SHOULD Know. Hi, I'm Mike Carruthers and I'm really glad you're here. So the music playing in a store or restaurant isn't there just to fill the silence. In many cases, it's chosen very carefully because it can influence how you behave. Research has found that slower, softer music encourages shoppers to slow down, browse longer, and often buy more. Faster tempo music does just the opposite. It gets people moving quickly, which is why you often hear upbeat music in busy fast food restaurants where rapid table turnover is important. The style of music matters, too. Studies have found that customers are more likely to order expensive wine when a restaurant plays classical music than when pop music is playing. Other research suggests that people rate food as more sophisticated or higher quality when the music matches the atmosphere. And diners tend to linger longer when the music is slower and played at a moderate volume. Loud, fast music, on the other hand, encourages people to eat faster and leave sooner. And none of this is accidental. Retailers and restaurants know that music can subtly influence your mood, your perception of quality, how quickly you move, how long you stay, and ultimately, how much you're willing to spend. So the next time you're shopping or dining out, listen to the soundtrack. It may have been selected less for your enjoyment than for its ability to quietly shape your decisions. And that is something you should know. Every single one of us has blind spots. Not just in our vision, in our thinking. In fact, there are things happening around you right now that your brain is completely ignoring. That's not a flaw. It's actually how your brain is designed to work. Every second, you are bombarded by thousands of sights, sounds, smells, sensations, and other bits of information. If your brain tried to process all of it, you'd never get anything done. So it constantly filters out what it decides. Doesn't matter. For example, until I mentioned it, you probably weren't aware of the feeling of your clothes against your skin or your tongue resting in your mouth. Those sensations were all there all along, but your brain simply edited them out. Most of the time, that's incredibly helpful. But sometimes those same mental blind spots cause us to overlook things that really do matter. Important clues, opportunities, mistakes, even obvious problems that are right in front of us. Here to explain why our brains work this way and how understanding these blind spots can help us make better decisions. And is Keilan Lacer. He is a digital illusionist and one of the world's leading experts on using blind spots to intrigue, baffle, and amaze audiences. Along with the late neuropsychologist David Lewis, he is co author of a book called Blind Spots and why we miss what matters most. Hi Keelan, welcome to something you should know.

[Keelan Lacer]

Hello Mike. It's lovely to be here. Thank you for inviting me onto this wonderful podcast.

[Mike Carruthers]

So explain to me and everyone listening what exactly a blind spot is in your way of thinking.

[Keelan Lacer]

Imagine that your brain is like the most overworked security guard. There's too much happening around you, so your brain decides what matters most. Every single second. Your senses are bombarded with 400 billion bits of information. Sights, sounds, smells, everything. But your brain can only consciously handle around about 20 of those bits. So it makes decisions really fast without asking you about what to pay attention to and what to throw away. So a blind spot is everything. It threw away the stuff that was right there in front of you that you completely missed.

[Mike Carruthers]

And an example of this in real life would be what?

[Keelan Lacer]

So right now you're listening to me, your brain is quietly throwing away the feeling of, of the clothes that are on your skin, for example. The sounds and things in your peripheral vision is editing reality in real time without asking for your permission. A blind spot is simply anything that got edited out. And the frightening thing is you never know you missed it because your brain doesn't leave a gap, it just fills it in seamlessly. So the most perfect real life example would be there was an experiment, the famous gorilla experiment, where you're asked to count how many times a basketball passes between basketball players and a person in a gorilla suit walks through the match, and you miss the gorilla entirely because you're focused on something completely different. You're focused on counting basketball passes and not the gorilla walking through, because you weren't expecting that. These weren't distracted people, they were just concentrated. They were concentrating hard. And that's the problem. The harder you focus on one thing, the blind you are for everything else that's around you.

[Mike Carruthers]

You know what's interesting about that gorilla thing is I've heard that story before, that experiment before, many times. And I always think, well, wait a minute, I wouldn't miss that. If I was watching basketball players passing a basketball and a gorilla walked through the screen that I was watching, I have to believe I would have seen that.

[Keelan Lacer]

And that's exactly what everyone thinks. And that's precisely why blind spots are so dangerous. Every single person who missed the Gwylla sort thinks the same thing. I'm observant, I pay attention. I wouldn't miss something obvious. And here's the really humbling part. When researchers ran this experiment with trained radiologists, some of the most visually attentive professionals on the planet, and they inserted a tiny gorilla into a ct lung scan. 20 out of the 24 radiologists missed it completely. While that because they were actively searching scan for abnormalities, they completely missed a gorilla that was embedded into the CT scan. These people whose entire career is about not missing things and their brain completely edited out a gorilla in a scan.

[Mike Carruthers]

You said a moment ago you used the phrase, that's why blind spots are so dangerous. Well, why are they dangerous?

[Keelan Lacer]

They're dangerous for many, many reasons. For example, Eastern Airlines, I think it was Flight 401. The entire cockpit crew came fixated on a, on a faulty landing gear. It was a warning light and it was just one small light. But nobody noticed. The autopilot had quietly disengaged. They flew a perfectly functioning plane straight into the Florida Everglades. Everyone was looking, but no one was actually seeing. In medicine, a nurse expected a drug label to read 10 units per milligram. Her brain showed her exactly that. It actually read 10,000 units. And sadly, the patient died. And it's not through negligence, it's through blind spots. And we've got so many examples of this. The space shuttle example as well. Operators that had been on 12 hour shifts for three days missed something that caused the space shuttle to ultimately explode. Tragically, seven people died. The Three Mile island nuclear plant workers at 4am missed a stuck valve that was leaking radioactive material, causing one of the biggest nuclear disasters we've ever had. So fatigue makes blind spots dramatically wider.

[Mike Carruthers]

And so knowing that, is there something you can do, understanding that these blind spots exist that help you see them?

[Keelan Lacer]

Yes, there's many things you can do. Firstly, being aware of them. You can't eliminate your blind spots altogether, but you can absolutely learn when you're most vulnerable. And that changes everything. The honest truth is trying to eliminate blind spots entirely would be like trying to flapping to try to fly. Like with flapping your arms. It's baked into how every human brain manages information. But you can work with them. The single most powerful thing you can do is what we call the three Fs. So if you're fatigued, frightened or furious, your blind spots get dramatically wider in those exact moments. And here's the crucial part, those are precisely the moments other people want you to make those decisions. So if you think about. Social media is specifically engineered to make you feel frightened or angry, because a frightened or angry person reacts before they think. And that's not by accident. That's a design choice in how social media platforms work. They want you to engage, and the way you engage is by making you furious about things.

[Mike Carruthers]

And so how are we manipulated by this? You mentioned social media, but who else is using this against us to sell us stuff or whatever?

[Keelan Lacer]

Every company that understands human attention are using these techniques, some innocently, some deliberately, and some in ways that should alarm you. Supermarket is the most universal example. Every crossed out original price exploits an anchoring bias. For example, your brain grabs the first number it sees and Judges everything against it. The original price is frequently fictitious, or it was there for a very short period of time. And that kind of works every time. Next time a restaurant brings you bread for your food, ask yourself, is that a gift or is it a distraction? So you stop basically bugging the staff for how long the food is taking. And it's a classic distraction technique.

[Mike Carruthers]

So what is the blind spot in that example? I mean, to me, that's just a delaying tactic, but, well. Oh, I get. I get it. So the blind spot is that when they bring the bread, you stop noticing. You don't notice how much time is passing before your meal gets there because you've got something to do, you've got something to eat, so you don't see the time passing as quickly. So I'm fascinated by this idea of the example you gave earlier about the airline that crashed because they were not paying attention. And I can understand why some people in that crew might have been blind spotted, but everyone was. Everyone had to have bought into whatever everyone else was buying into. Almost like it's contagious.

[Michael Pollack]

Yes.

[Keelan Lacer]

It starts with one person. The captain noticing the landing gear warning light. That's legitimate, that matters, and it needs attention, and so you focus on it. But like, here's what happens in a cockpit. It's a deeply hierarchical environment. When a captain focuses on something, the co pilot focuses on it, too. Then the flight engineer and the social pressure to attend to what a senior person is attending becomes overwhelming. And so, crucially, nobody in that cockpit thought that they were neglecting the plane. They all assumed someone else had the controls. That assumption was the blind spot. Nobody checked. And so this is what we call a shared blind spot. And they are arguably more dangerous than individual ones because there's nobody left in the room to see what everybody else is missing. And it's the same thing if you think about the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Engineers had raised concerns about the O rings in cold temperatures. But in a room full of people under pressure to launch, with careers and reputation at stake, the group collectively looked away from the warning signs. And ultimately, tragically, seven people died. And this is why we always say diversity is one of the most important tools against blind spots. Different people see different things. A room where everybody thinks the same will have the same identical blind spots with nobody left to really catch them.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, you're a magician, and I imagine a very interesting way that blind spots are used is in magic. So I want to ask you about that when we come back in just a moment. Right now, get up to 15% off. Select storage solutions put heavy duty HDX totes to good use, protecting what's important to you. The solid, impact resistant design prevents cracking and the clear base and sides make items easy to find even when the totes are stacked. Find select shelving and Tote storage up to 15% off at the Home Depot. To organize every room in your home from your garage to your attic, visit homedepot.com how doers get more DONE so good, so good, so good.

[Commercial Announcer]

New markdowns up to 70% off are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Stock up and save big on shoes, tops, dresses, accessories and more must haves for summer. Join the Norty Club to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you wreck

[Mike Carruthers]

I'm talking with Keelan Lacer. He is author of the book Blind Spots and why We Miss what Matters Most. So Keelan, if I understand you correctly, probably one of the best uses of blind spots is a magician, where he deliberately is misdirecting and distracting. And I've often thought, you know, I'm smart enough to figure out if I go see a magician, that I'm going to watch for that and that I should be able if I'm consciously trying to figure out where the blind spot is, where the misdirection is. But I can never figure it out. A good magician can even fool people who are looking for it.

[Keelan Lacer]

And that's exactly the point. Knowing that misdirection exists does not really protect you from it, not even slightly. And I say that as someone who spent decades both performing and studying it. When I watch a fellow magician perform a trick that I have performed hundreds of times myself, I can still experience the illusion. What my perception receives and what my brain receives are two different things. So every single time, because the blind spot isn't in your knowledge, it's in your architecture of your perception itself. Misdirection doesn't work by hiding things from your eyes. Everything happens in plain sight. What it does is exploit the fact that your brain can only consciously follow about four moving objects at once. And a skilled magician simply gives your brain more than four things to process and quietly does the real work behind the scenes within that flow.

[Mike Carruthers]

Wow. So as a magician, can you are you able to watch another magician and see what they're doing better than I can? Or you're just as susceptible to it as me?

[Keelan Lacer]

Because I've been doing magic since the age of Four, there's very little that would necessarily fool me as a magician. I do still get fooled, and I think most magicians do get fooled. Penn and Teller. A TV show I've been on twice called Fool Us lets you create the whole concept. The show was about magicians coming on to try and fool them. But I can still be fooled by perceptual optical illusions. For example, the checkerboard illusion, which is a very famous example, where you see basically a checkerboard like a chess set board, and you see the two colours, two sort of the black, gray colours within the checkerboard, and they look completely different colours, but when you cover them over, you see that they are actually the same color. Even though I've known about that illusion for decades, since I was a child, I'm still fooled by that. My perception is still fooled by that optical illusion. No matter how much I know about it and the science behind it works, my perception still sees those checkerboard colors as different, even though they're exactly the same.

[Mike Carruthers]

And I wonder why. I mean, is it just a flaw in the brain? I mean, I've had. In fact, I just saw that online the other day where somebody said, you know, these two squares are the same color. Put your finger in between them and you'll see that they are, but when you pull your finger away, they're not the same color. So it must be just some kind of weird quirk in the brain.

[Keelan Lacer]

Exactly. You can walk in knowing exactly what's about to happen, and it still works because you cannot consciously monitor everything simultaneously. So it's not a flaw at all. It's actually one of the most brilliant pieces of engineering in the known universe. It's just become very exploitable. You just described is a perfect example of that. Your brain isn't making a mistake. It's just doing something extraordinarily sophisticated called color constancy. And it's adjusting to what it shows you based on the surrounding light in context. Because in the real world, that's exactly what you need it to do. If your brain just showed you raw, unprocessed visual data, a white piece of paper would look completely different colors, depending on whether you're in sunlight, shade, artificial light, et cetera. And your brain corrects for all of that automatically. So you can function in the real world. But the side effect is that sometimes this correction produces an illusion. But I think that's genius, personally.

[Mike Carruthers]

Are there people who are not fooled by this that can look at those things and say, no, those are the same color. They don't see the world the way the rest of us do.

[Keelan Lacer]

That's interesting. And no human brain on the planet is immune to these illusions. And I think it's one of the most counterintuitive findings. Intelligence, expertise, experience, none of it really protects you. The visual system operates at a level that's completely inaccessible to conscious thought. So when you look at those two squares, your visual cortex has already processed the image and delivered its conclusion to your conscious mind before you've, you know, had a single thought about it. Your rational brain never gets invited to that meeting, so to speak. And it's the same. It's true in magic. I can perform an illusion for a fellow magician who has taught me the same trick that, you know, they still experience it. It's not because it's about fooling your mind, because we're talking about your fooling your visual system. And those two things are completely different. What varies between people isn't whether they can be fooled. Everyone is fooled as quickly as kind of how quickly they recover and question what they've experienced.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, this seems to cast some doubt on the whole idea of eyewitness testimony, because eyewitnesses, which, as I understand it, are, you know, if you have eyewitnesses to a crime, that's some pretty solid evidence. And people say, I know what I saw. But what you're saying is you may not know what you saw.

[Keelan Lacer]

Absolutely. And eyewitness testimonies is one of the most dangerous blind spots, I think, in our entire justice system. What's happening with those different eyewitness accounts isn't that someone or some people saw clearly and some didn't. It's that every single brain in the crowd was constructing its own version of reality based on its own expectations, emotions, and prior experience. So the crucial thing about memory that most people don't realize is that your brain doesn't record events like a video camera. It reconstructs them afterwards. Every single time you remember something, you are actively rebuilding it, and every rebuild is slightly different. A magician called Norman Triplett demonstrated this beautifully. I think, in the early 1900s, he performed a vanishing ball trick. And afterwards he asked the audience what they saw, and people described the ball's trajectory through the air in extraordinary detail. But the ball never left his hand. They had reconstructed a memory of something that had never happened.

[Mike Carruthers]

How in the world is that possible? If the ball never left his hand, how were people seeing it leave his hand?

[Keelan Lacer]

Because they are expecting it to leave his hand. And then your brain fills in those snapshots And I actually proved there's a few examples, video examples, when I toss a coin from one hand to the other and there's a video example in the book via a QR code and you can literally see the coin fly from one of my hands to the other hand, you can see it go across, but then I show you from behind and the coin never goes across. I like about false memories as well. Professor Elizabeth Loftus took this further. She implanted a completely false memory in a 14 year old boy. She told him he had been lost in a shopping mall, aged five, and he hadn't. And within days he was describing the toy store, the bald man who had found him, the blue shirt that he was wearing. It was total fiction, but it felt to the boy completely real. And this is why wrongful convictions built on eyewitness testimonies have sent innocent people to prison for decades. The eyewitness wasn't lying. They probably genuinely believed every word their brain had simply edited and reconstructed the scene. And so different people do, as you say, see different things because different brains have different expectations. And that's why diversity in a jury, in a boardroom, any decision making group is so genuinely powerful and extremely important.

[Mike Carruthers]

And so wrap this up for me. What's the message here? What is it you want people to understand about this? That perhaps we never. Because it's not our experience that we don't understand, our experience is our truth and that's what we experience. But what are you trying to get people to see here?

[Keelan Lacer]

You think you're seeing reality, but you're not. And the people who know that are actually using it against you. Of the 400 billion bits of information hitting your sense, you know your senses every second, as I said, your brain consciously processes only about 20 of those. Almost everything is invisible to you by design. Now the same techniques, distraction, misinformation, priming, forcing, are being used at scale through social media, advertising, politics, AI, often without consent at all. Which is a difference between what, what I do as a magician. As a magician, you come to a magic show and I'm deceiving you, but you've consented to it. But these same techniques are often used without people's consent.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, the intriguing thing about blind spots to me is, you know, you don't notice them because they're blind spots. You don't know what you don't notice. And so I appreciate how you've explained it and made us more aware of what blind spots are and what to look out for. I've been talking with Keelan Lacer. He is co author of the book Blind Spots and why We Miss what Matters Most. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you Keelan. Thanks for being here.

[Keelan Lacer]

Thank you so much.

[Mike Carruthers]

I'm Art Schmanning.

[Keelan Lacer]

I'm Madison Skinner.

[Mike Carruthers]

I'm Eva Jovic.

[Michael Pollack]

I'm Decori Amore.

[Mike Carruthers]

Wanna train like a Red Bull Athlete?

[Commercial Announcer]

Tell us your fitness goals this summer to enter the Red Bull Athlete Challenge. You'll get to try each of our workouts for a chance to win an ultra ultimate Red Bull experience.

[Keelan Lacer]

Think you have what it takes?

[Commercial Announcer]

Hey friends. Olivia from Ollie. Between new routines and the ultimate group project known as parenting, you need science backed solutions that work with your life. That's where Ollie comes in. Start your mornings off right with multis made to support nutrition and immune health. Choose from our lineup of gut supporting probiotics and we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fam chase their big dreams. Head back to class with the number one Gummy supplement brand stock up on Olli.com today. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

[Mike Carruthers]

Every so often we kick around ideas for future something you should know episodes. And we ask ourselves, well, what would people find interesting? And I can honestly say that never, not once, has anyone suggested, hey, let's do a segment about sidewalks. I mean, sidewalks. Who would want to hear about sidewalks? Well, as it turns out, you should. Sidewalks are surprisingly fascinating. If there's a sidewalk in front of your house, who actually owns it? Who's responsible for repairing it? If it's public property, can protesters legally stand there and demonstrate in front of your home? Why do some neighborhoods have sidewalks but others don't? And why do sidewalks sometimes just end? It turns out sidewalks are at the center of questions involving property rights, public safety, free speech, city planning, accessibility, and a lot more. Once you start looking at them, you realize sidewalks aren't just places to walk. They're one of the most overlooked and important pieces of public life. Here to explain is Michael Pollack. He is professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Development at the Benjamin N. Cardoza School of Law in New York City, and he is author of the book Sidewalk the Life and Law of America's Most Overlooked Resource. Hi Michael. Welcome to Something youg Should Know.

[Michael Pollack]

Thank you so much.

[Mike Carruthers]

So do we know where and when the idea of sidewalks started? It seems like they kind of would just even if no one invented it, it would kind of develop on its own. But do we have any sense of the earliest sidewalks?

[Michael Pollack]

Well, so sidewalks are really ancient concept. There are sidewalks preserved in the ruins of Pompeii, and here in the United States. There were sidewalks in New Orleans when it was a French colony. There were sidewalks in New Amsterdam when it was a British colony or a Dutch colony. I should say we've had sidewalks for a very long time. They were sort of, as you suggested in your question, they were originally thought of as a resource for that particular home or that particular business. So a person would ride their horse or their carriage up, maybe hitch the horse to a post, and then they would be able to get out and step on this raised concrete, or in many cases, it was made out of wood at the its original conception, step out onto this wooden sidewalk and not have to stand in the gutter where animal waste was or human waste and water were. And so it was primarily this sort of front door to a home or to a business that was raised out of the Messier road. So that was the original idea. It was not really thought of as a thing that was connecting place to place, that was bringing people to one another. And it was certainly not thought of as a place where commerce would take place, where speech and art would. Would take place. That happened later as sidewalks began to get connected to one another. And in that connection, my view is that's where the magic really lies.

[Mike Carruthers]

So in the modern day sidewalk world, I'm not sure there is a modern day sidewalk world, but in the modern day sidewalk world, there's a sidewalk in front of my house. Who owns that?

[Michael Pollack]

It's a complicated question. In some communities, it all depends on local law and even the specifics of a person's particular property line in their deed. Sometimes the boundary line of private property ends before you even get to the sidewalk. So it ends at the edge of a person's lawn or at the front of a building. In those circumstances, the sidewalk, just like the road, is owned by the government. It's public property. In other jurisdictions, even other pieces of property, a person's property line might actually extend not just to the curb, meaning it includes the sidewalk. Sometimes it even goes into the road a little bit. So in those cases, the sidewalk you might think of as sitting on private property. The thing that makes it complicated, though, is that even in those cases, the general public has what we call in property law, an easement or a right of access to be in that private space. And so to sort of sum it all up, sometimes a sidewalk is public Property, sometimes it's private property with a public right of access. So for us as individuals going about our lives, we don't notice the difference either way. We have the right to be there, to walk there, to do all sorts of things there. But from the perspective of the private property owner, you might think at least that it would make a difference whether they own the sidewalk or not. It turns out that when it comes to the obligations placed on those private property owners, it actually doesn't make as much of a difference as one would think. They have a whole slew of obligations to maintain the. To maintain the sidewalk, whether or not they own it.

[Mike Carruthers]

Why? Why? If they don't own it, why is it their responsibility?

[Michael Pollack]

Yeah, so that's frankly the thing that got me the most exercised about this, the most upset. The very common arrangement in the. Not every city, but most cities and towns across the country that private property owners are responsible for maintaining, repairing, shoveling, clearing litter off of the sidewalk, whether or not they own the space. And you asked why? The answer is because the law says so, because city and town laws have put that responsibility on private property owners rather than on the city itself. And that's something that I think is all wrong. It's wrong not only as a policy choice, and it's wrong not only in terms of the consequences, which are often pretty poor. It's also wrong just as a matter of basic property law, but even in the case where there's private property and that public easement, basic property law would say that the person who enjoys the right of access, in this case the general public, they're the ones who are supposed to have the obligation to take care of their own right of access, not the owner of the underlying property. So regardless of whether the land is public or private, basic property law would say it's a public responsibility to take care of it. And yet we've just consistently, for centuries made a different choice when it comes to foisting sidewalk management responsibilities onto the adjacent property owner. And again, I think that's a mistake.

[Mike Carruthers]

It seems to me there are different kinds of sidewalks, right? There's, you know, like in a residential area, someone's front yard may have a sidewalk in it. That is different to me than, say, the sidewalks on Fifth Avenue in New York, which are big, wide sidewalks that lead to buildings and lead to stores. Are they considered just sidewalks or are they different?

[Michael Pollack]

Well, let me ask you, why do you think they're different?

[Mike Carruthers]

Because a residential sidewalk seems like a convenience, whereas the sidewalks on a main street like Fifth Avenue in New York are the only way to get into buildings and stores and shops. They're essential. Whereas the sidewalks in a residential area are just a convenience.

[Michael Pollack]

This goes back to what we were talking about before in terms of sort of what is the sidewalk really for? A lot of these laws were rooted in that history where the sidewalk was primarily understood to be an amenity or a feature of a particular building. And so in that version of what a sidewalk is for, it makes a little bit more sense. Maybe it makes a lot of sense to say that's a responsibility of that property owner, because the benefit of the sidewalk is for that property owner. That's sort of what I think you're getting at when you talk about accessing that skyscraper with all of the offices and shops and whatnot. The thing is, nowadays, the primary function of a sidewalk is not just to get people in and out of a particular building, but to create a coherent network for people to be able to move around an entire city or an entire town. And so it really is a public resource for transportation as well as for, you know, just community gathering, for spending time outdoors with friends and neighbors, some cases, for engaging in political action or speech or art, or, as I was saying, as well, for selling things. You know, we have vendors who operate on the sidewalk. We have businesses that food trucks, for example, that do work on the sidewalk. And so the space is serving all of these functions that is not just for that particular business, that particular building next to the sidewalk. And so because it has all of these public and community functions, it's all the more reason to make it a public and community responsibility. Now, your question about a more suburban or residential neighborhood where there's a single family home and a lawn and a sidewalk in front of it? It's certainly true that that sidewalk is serving fewer of those functions, but it still serves that critical function of community connectivity, right? Even in that residential neighborhood. That's how kids are getting from home to school, or at least how they could be getting from home to school if there were safe and consistent sidewalks that connected their neighborhood, where they live, to where their school is. And so it's essential for them that that sidewalk be safe, well maintained, cleared of snow and so on.

[Mike Carruthers]

If I have a sidewalk in front of my home, which I do, is it considered public or private property in the sense of if somebody wants to come and protest or do something on the sidewalk, is it public land that they can do that because they can assemble in public? Or is that my private property, since I'm responsible for It. And I can say, call the police or say, hey, get off my land.

[Michael Pollack]

Yeah. So one of the difficult things about this system of private responsibility that we have is that it also leads property owners to naturally make the same assumption you just did, right. That because they're responsible for it, they also have rights to control it. And it's generally not true. Now, there are. I said generally there are exceptions, but for the most part, they have responsibility but no control. So you asked about protest. The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees everyone the right to speak freely in what we call public forums. And the Supreme Court has held repeatedly that sidewalks are public forums even when they are sitting on private property. That's because of that public easement, that public right of access. People have the right to speak and protest on the sidewalks, to do signature gathering, to campaign for political candidates. They have the right to do those things on public sidewalks. But there's an important asterisk to all of that, which is governments are allowed to impose what we call time, place, and manner restrictions, even in a public forum. That's why, for example, even though I might have the right to speak freely on the sidewalk, I might not have the right to do it at 4 in the morning at 1000 decibels with as big a loudspeaker as I might want to have. And so there are questions, frankly, still some open questions in the law about, for example, could a town prohibit protest in a residential neighborhood? What if the entire town was residential neighborhoods? Would that make a difference? Could a town prohibit protest in a commercial neighborhood? Well, that raises a different set of concerns where a lot of times the purpose of a protest or a picket in a commercial neighborhood is to disrupt that particular business. Where would the civil rights era have gone if people, for example, could not picket in front of a segregated restaurant or place of business? And so there are different considerations, to be sure, in commercial and residential neighborhoods. And the law respects and understands some of that.

[Mike Carruthers]

You used the term a little while ago, consistent sidewalks. And I live in a town that has very inconsistent sidewalks, where you'll be walking down the street and the side or down the sidewalk, and the sidewalk just stops. It ends in the middle of the block. And some streets have no sidewalks. And what determines that?

[Michael Pollack]

Well, first of all, I think what you're describing is a very common set of circumstances and one that's very frustrating for folks. It's very frustrating for people trying to get around recreationally. It's particularly frustrating for people trying to get to and from work or school, particularly when those Individuals don't have access to a car of their own. So there are a number of layers to how that decision has been made and what the consequences are. So sidewalks are generally the choice of the government to either impose or build themselves or to direct property owners to build. Now, that doesn't mean that an individual property owner can't build their own sidewalk on their own property if they want to. Of course they can, and many of them do. You'll often see in a newer development, they might ring the development with a sidewalk. That might have been their choice as a property developer to do, but it also might have been that city's choice to force that developer to do so. A lot of cities that don't have many sidewalks, what their law says right now is that when a particular parcel of land is redeveloped, that triggers an obligation to install a sidewalk along that parcel. The idea being that in the long run, all of the parcels on the street would get redeveloped eventually, and eventually the sidewalk network would be all connected. The problem is that in the meantime, you have these patches of sidewalk and no sidewalk, and you end up with what's often called the sidewalk to nowhere problem. So it does go back to government decision making and a lack of thoughtful planning about a whole community's network. And why has that happened? Well, I think the reason that's happened is twofold. One, it's generally been a tendency just to overlook the sidewalk as an important thing. We would never think about building streets that didn't connect to each other or railroad tracks that didn't connect to each other, because that is intuitively a ridiculous thing to do. But we tend our law, our policymakers often tend to treat the sidewalk as an afterthought or as something that folks can sort of manage with or without. And that's not really true, particularly with people with mobility limitations and other disabilities. And as I was saying, for people who don't have cars of their own, who are therefore reliant on sidewalks and public transportation to get to where they need to get to live their lives on a daily basis.

[Mike Carruthers]

What you said was really interesting, that we would never build roads that don't connect to other roads, because there would be absolutely no point to that. And yet we build sidewalks that go nowhere, that start and then stop in the middle of the block, with the policy being, well, over time, the houses will sell and be redeveloped and will make the new owner put in a sidewalk. That could take centuries. I mean, some properties never sell. They stay in families forever. So, I mean, that's just dumb.

[Michael Pollack]

I don't disagree with you. And there are cities that are suspending or waiving that requirement. Houston is one of them.

[Mike Carruthers]

What do you mean?

[Michael Pollack]

But in the sense that Houston has sort of recognized that they have this persistent sidewalk to nowhere problem. And so they have been not enforcing and in some aspects waiving the responsibility on property owners to install new sidewalk when a property is redeveloped. So there are communities that are recognizing the, as you were saying, the silliness of that kind of approach. And for the record, I agree that approach is quite silly. What I worry about though is that if you don't pursue that approach to building new sidewalks and you don't replace it with a different approach, well, then there just aren't going to be any new sidewalks. And that's also a serious problem. So it goes back to my bigger point that cities, towns have to step up and develop a plan, an actual coherent, thoughtful plan about where sidewalk needs to be improved, where sidewalks need to be installed, and how it's going to get done cohesively and done with general funds, not individual property owners own wallets.

[Mike Carruthers]

I would imagine that if you talk to a lot of city planner type people, they will tell you we got a lot more, bigger problems in our town than sidewalks. That in terms of priority, sidewalks is probably not real high. If the town has things like, you know, water mains are breaking every week, or, you know, I mean, old infrastructure needs replacing, the sidewalks can wait. I think that's the image that people have.

[Michael Pollack]

To the extent it is, my argument is that that's wrong. Sidewalks are essential not just for getting people from place to place, but they connect so many other issues of law and policy. In other words, the solutions to a lot of other issues that cities and towns are facing have a sidewalk component. A lot of the city planners that I talk to recognize the importance of sidewalks. And so I think it's less a problem of local officials not paying them enough attention. It's more a problem of everyone else not paying them enough attention, not being willing to put the political pressure on to get the work done.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, if your book had not come across my desk, I would have never thought to think that, you know, we should talk about sidewalks. But, you know, here they are. Sidewalks are everywhere, right at our feet, and they affect us in ways that I don't think many people give much thought to until they just heard what you had to say. I've been speaking with Michael Pollack. He is a professor of law at the Benjamin N. Cardoza School of Law in New York City. And author of the book Sidewalk the Life and Law of America's Most Overlooked Resource. There's a link to his book in the show notes. And Michael, thanks for coming on and explaining all this.

[Michael Pollack]

Thanks so much Mike. It's been a real pleasure.

[Mike Carruthers]

Have you ever needed to buy something right away? Like a plane ticket or a hotel room? Or a new appliance? Even a power tool? When something feels urgent, most of us stop shopping around and simply pay whatever it costs. Behavioral researchers have found that urgency changes the way we make buying decisions. We focus on solving the immediate problem instead of finding the best value, and that's when we tend to overspend. If the purchase isn't truly time sensitive, one of the smartest money saving strategies is simply to wait a day. That pause gives you time to comparison shop, look for coupons, consider refurbished or open box options, and ask yourself whether you really need that particular item in the first place. You may even discover that that must have purchase isn't really necessary. Waiting just 24 hours won't save you money every time, but for large purchases it can often save you hundreds of dollars while helping you avoid buyer's remorse. And that is something you should know. We rely so much on word of mouth of people telling other people about this podcast. It's what grows our audience and we could really use your help. So please share this podcast with someone you know, someone you love, someone who you think would enjoy it. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.

[Commercial Announcer]

Class is now in session and the UPS store is here to help you ace arriving on campus, our certified packing experts can pack everything you need from desktops to decor. Plus, when you pack and ship with us, you get our exclusive pack and ship guarantee. Your items arrive safe or your money back. Restrictions and limitations apply. To get a 20% off packing coupon and for full details, visit the upsstore.com packing

[Mike Carruthers]

Close your eyes, exhale, feel your

[Commercial Announcer]

body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.

[Mike Carruthers]

Fast and breathe.

[Commercial Announcer]

Oh sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.

[Mike Carruthers]

1-800-contacts.