Speaker 1: Hello, puzzlers, Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast, the soothing antiseptic
Speaker 1: gel for your puzzling scraped knee. I am your host,
Speaker 1: A J. Jacobs, and today's guest is the awesome Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, a longtime friend of mine, author of many books,
Speaker 1: and host of the Psychology Podcast. Right here on iHeart
Speaker 1: Welcome Scott.
Speaker 2: Oh, such a delight to be here.
Speaker 1: Well, i'd delight to have you. I love your podcast,
Speaker 1: I've been on it and it's an honor to have
Speaker 1: you on mine.
Speaker 2: Well, we've co hosted before the fun.
Speaker 1: And we co hosted. That is so true, exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: now this is no co hosting. I'm the host. Don't
Speaker 1: get any ideas please. I thought we could start with
Speaker 1: a quick puzzle and then I might ask you a
Speaker 1: bit about the science of curiosity, one of your many specialties,
Speaker 1: and curiosity, of course, is a requirement for puzzling. So
Speaker 1: today's puzzle is called the silent P as in the
Speaker 1: letter P, not the bodily function, because we are a
Speaker 1: classy podcast and it is in honor of your show,
Speaker 1: The Psychology Podcast, where the first word, of course has
Speaker 1: a silent P. At the beginning psychology. So in this puzzle,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be giving you a clue and the
Speaker 1: answer will always be a word starting with a silent p. So,
Speaker 1: just to make it a little more puzzly or more uzsily,
Speaker 1: I guess the clues will also contain silent peace. Okay,
Speaker 1: and these will be fake silent piece. These are not
Speaker 1: actual silent piece peace. I'm choosing to make silent. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, if I said this is the study of
Speaker 1: a Erson's personality, the answer might be the first word
Speaker 1: of your show.
Speaker 2: The word study doesn't start with the pe oh, psychology, psychology.
Speaker 1: Exactly, you got it? Okay? Are you ready?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: This is a Erson's n name, an Erson's n name. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's the clue. With the peas pronounced. Is a
Speaker 1: person's pen name? What might that been?
Speaker 2: Oh? Oh, oh uh po.
Speaker 1: Pseudonym? Exactly, you got it? Pseudonym? All right, you're on
Speaker 1: a roll. Are you ready for the next one?
Speaker 2: Let's go.
Speaker 1: This is a disease in which air cannot ermeiate a
Speaker 1: Erson's lungs. Air cannot ermeate a person's lungs. Okay, with
Speaker 1: the peas pronounced, that is a disease in which air
Speaker 1: cannot permeate a person's lungs. Do you know what that
Speaker 1: word might be?
Speaker 2: Not bronchitis, not not pneumonia, Yes, pneumonia exactly, you got it.
Speaker 1: Look at that pneumonia, all right, last one before.
Speaker 2: We do at one in order of difficulty.
Speaker 1: Maybe it might be a little harder. Yes, I would
Speaker 1: say a little harder, but just like five percent harder.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: This is a type of rare, a rare that you
Speaker 1: sing or apps using effect itch. That was hard to say,
Speaker 1: a rare you might sing using perfect itch. Okay, that
Speaker 1: same clue with the piece pronounced. This is a type
Speaker 1: of prayer that you might sing, perhaps using perfect pitch.
Speaker 1: And the answer might be he's thinking, use the word prayer.
Speaker 2: Of Psalm Psalm.
Speaker 1: That's it, exactly the song the book of Psalms Psalms
Speaker 1: in the Bible, exactlys A L. M.
Speaker 2: Nailed nailed it.
Speaker 1: You nailed that. You did. You are an excellent This
Speaker 1: was it. This was this is more accurate than any
Speaker 1: I Q test. Absolutely well. I thought, if you don't mind,
Speaker 1: while we have a couple of minutes, I might ask
Speaker 1: you about one of your many specialties, the science of curiosity,
Speaker 1: because curiosity. Of course, it's one of my favorite human characteristics.
Speaker 1: It's crucial for puzzling, and I think it makes life
Speaker 1: so much better. Does does science back that up? What
Speaker 1: have you learned about the science of curiosity?
Speaker 2: Well, there's a there's there's different dimensions of curiosity, so
Speaker 2: it's a multi dimensional thing. And one element is just
Speaker 2: joyous exploration, like, oh, you know, there's no endpoint. I
Speaker 2: just like to explore and see what is going on.
Speaker 2: There's also a thrill seeking form of curiosity where I
Speaker 2: really like, I get excited by the unknown, things like
Speaker 2: I like going on at a road trip without a map.
Speaker 2: And then there's what I think is well stress tolerance,
Speaker 2: which is I can really, you know, deal with stress.
Speaker 2: You know, I can handle the stress that comes from
Speaker 2: entering uncertain situations. So that's a form of curiosity. There's
Speaker 2: social curiosity, which is like I like finding out why
Speaker 2: people behave the way they do. But there's the fifth
Speaker 2: one that I wanted to bring up to you today
Speaker 2: because many people when I was aware of it. I
Speaker 2: think it's very linked to puzzling, the attraction of puzzles,
Speaker 2: and that's what's called deprivation sensitivity and that's I work
Speaker 2: relentlessly at problems that I feel must be solved, and
Speaker 2: I think that, you know, when you I see a
Speaker 2: real linkage between uh, puzzle attraction and magic, you know,
Speaker 2: the interest in magic, people try to figure it one
Speaker 2: to always figure out, you know, I'm really into magic lately,
Speaker 2: and and and the biggest reaction to get in people's
Speaker 2: what how how tell me? Tell me? And I think
Speaker 2: that and do you tell them no? Because the magician
Speaker 2: never reveals the difference code. Of course, the magician's code.
Speaker 2: You tested me, and now I can get into the
Speaker 2: magic castle.
Speaker 1: It was gonna report report me.
Speaker 2: To the magic Castle again exiled, but no. So I
Speaker 2: think that's a that's a trait that is correlated with
Speaker 2: the others, but not it's not one hundred percent correlation.
Speaker 2: Not everyone scores high in deprivation sensitivity. But I just
Speaker 2: suspect that there's individual differences here that predict dixt into
Speaker 2: which You love puzzles, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, well I love a couple of things. You say. First,
Speaker 1: I totally agree magic and puzzles are cousins, because, yeah,
Speaker 1: magic is basically a puzzle where they don't tell you
Speaker 1: what the solution is. So you have to go home
Speaker 1: and you know, talk about it with your friends. But
Speaker 1: the idea of this relentless drive to try to solve things,
Speaker 1: I will say that's a too sort of a double
Speaker 1: edged sword in my opinion, because I love the drive,
Speaker 1: but I also feel it's okay if you never solve
Speaker 1: the puzzle. The joy is sometimes in the process of
Speaker 1: trying to solve it.
Speaker 2: That's so true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this guy I interviewed, the godfather of Sudoku, he said,
Speaker 1: puzzles are three symbols question mark, forward, arrow, exclamation point.
Speaker 1: So the bafflement, the trying to solve, the aha moment,
Speaker 1: and you've got to love that arrow. It can't all
Speaker 1: be about the exclamation point. Is there a way to
Speaker 1: cultivate curiosity, make yourself more curious?
Speaker 2: Great question, I think that you know, we want we
Speaker 2: think about it like in an education context, how can
Speaker 2: we stimulate curiosity in young people? And that's sort of
Speaker 2: the context which I've most thought about this, because I'm
Speaker 2: really interested in education and increasing curiosity among children. A
Speaker 2: lot of a lot of curiosity is really neat to us,
Speaker 2: this drive, but we we sort of forget about that
Speaker 2: drive because we get distracted with other drives and with
Speaker 2: other responsibilities and things. I think that anytime you can
Speaker 2: put someone in a situation where it's an exploration kind
Speaker 2: of situation, it's gonna bring out their natural drive for curiosity.
Speaker 2: I just think, you know, I took a pause when
Speaker 2: you asked me that question because I think that it's
Speaker 2: not something that we like. You can't you don't want
Speaker 2: to teach you know, here, here's how to have more curiosity.
Speaker 2: It's how can we remove the barriers that that are
Speaker 2: inhibiting our natural drive for curiosity? In my view, but
Speaker 2: if you frame things as a game, you frame things
Speaker 2: as there's no goal, there's no or no one crime outcome,
Speaker 2: like a divergent thinking, creativity kind of situation, you just
Speaker 2: need to put people in the right mindset to let
Speaker 2: their natural curiosity drive roam free. That's sort of the
Speaker 2: way I see the situation.
Speaker 1: That is great. One thought I had was there is
Speaker 1: h in some cultures, In some eras, curiosity is seen
Speaker 1: as a negative like don't be so not there's the
Speaker 1: saying curiosity killed the cat. So do you think there
Speaker 1: is a downside to curiosity or that's just a bunch
Speaker 1: of spoil sports.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, Well, the deprivation sensitivity trait has been linked
Speaker 2: to high levels of anxiety, and you know, it's not
Speaker 2: as unanimously correlated with well being as joyous exploration, for instance.
Speaker 2: They so those two traits do differ in their correlations
Speaker 2: with happiness and well being. But you know, I think
Speaker 2: it's interesting because you know, happiness is not the only
Speaker 2: metric of success in life. You know, meaning is also important,
Speaker 2: and a lot of artists are constantly driven by their
Speaker 2: deprivation sensitivity and their need to know and their curiosity.
Speaker 1: I will say, from what you've been telling me, I
Speaker 1: am moving more and more towards joyous exploration being my
Speaker 1: favorite kind of curiosity. And I love that. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: to me because the other one seems to have some downsize.
Speaker 1: So here at the Puzzlert, we enduse all kinds of curiosity,
Speaker 1: but especially joyous exploration.
Speaker 2: These five dimensions of curiosity. By the way, when you
Speaker 2: give credit to my colleague Todd cast who studied that
Speaker 2: with his colleagues, and then most recently, we just published
Speaker 2: a paper showing that grit alone is not the best
Speaker 2: predictor of creativity if you combine perseverance with curiosity. So
Speaker 2: I call it curious grit. Curious scrit is better than
Speaker 2: just having your head down consistent with your interests all
Speaker 2: the time and not looking at other avenues. So that's
Speaker 2: a very hot off the press finding. I thought I
Speaker 2: drop in there.
Speaker 1: All right, you heard it here first puzzlers, and thank
Speaker 1: you for being a curiosity booster. Scott. People can listen
Speaker 1: to more of your wonderful insights on the psychology podcast
Speaker 1: that's right here and my heart and as always I
Speaker 1: have an extra credit for the puzzlers at home. The
Speaker 1: clue is this is a ease of apor which lists
Speaker 1: the rice of an object. An ease of aper that
Speaker 1: lists the rice of an object. Little hint to the answer,
Speaker 1: the silent p this time not at the start of
Speaker 1: the word, somewhere in the middle. So there you go.
Speaker 1: An ease of aper that lists the rice of an object.
Speaker 1: Thank you all for go be curious. Go check out
Speaker 1: the ratings of the show. Maybe give it a five star.
Speaker 1: That would be fun. I think that could be a
Speaker 1: fun exercise and curiosity. And we will see you next
Speaker 1: time for more uzzling uzzles that will uzzle you uzzlingly.
Speaker 3: Hey, puzzlers, Greg Pliska, your chief puzzle officer here with
Speaker 3: the extra credit from our previous show. We played categories
Speaker 3: with the siblings Vanessa and Jonah Bayer, and your extra
Speaker 3: credit category was fruits and Vegetables. We asked you to
Speaker 3: come up with a fruit or vegetables starting with each
Speaker 3: of the letters in their surname B a yeer. Here's
Speaker 3: some of what we've got on our list. B banana, beat, BlackBerry, blueberry, bockjoy,
Speaker 3: broccoli and Brussels sprouts, a apple, arrowroot, arugula or to
Speaker 3: choke asparagus and avocado.
Speaker 4: Why yam, yellow squash, yuka, yellow pepper and u zu
Speaker 4: e just two eggplant and andive r ridikio, radish raspberry, rubard,
Speaker 4: romaine and rude bega.
Speaker 3: So bring your rudabagas with you and we'll see you.
Speaker 4: Here next time on the Puzzler podcast.
Speaker 5: Thanks for playing along with the team here at the
Speaker 5: Puzzler with aj Jacobs. I'm Greg Pliska, your chief puzzle Officer.
Speaker 5: Our executive producers are Neelie Lohman and Adam Neuhaus of
Speaker 5: New House Ideas and Lindsay Hoffman of iHeart Podcasts. The
Speaker 5: show is produced by Jody Abergan and Brittany Brown of
Speaker 5: Roulette Productions, with production support from Claire Bidegar Curtis. Our
Speaker 5: associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg. The Puzzler with AJ Jacobs
Speaker 5: is a co production with New House Ideas and is
Speaker 5: distributed by Therapist Coda No No, No, No No Rearrange
Speaker 5: Those Letters distributed by iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 6: If you want to know more about puzzling puzzles, please
Speaker 6: check out the book The Puzzler by AJ Jacobs, a
Speaker 6: history of puzzles that The New York Times called fun
Speaker 6: and funny. It features an original puzzle hunt by yours truly,
Speaker 6: and is available wherever you get your books and puzzlers.
Speaker 6: For all your puzzling needs, go.
Speaker 5: Visit the puzzler dot com.
Speaker 2: See you there,