Short Stuff: Turning Down the Radio When You're Lost

It’s a typical human reaction: When you’re driving and you realize that you’re lost, you turn down the radio. On its face it makes no sense – or does it? (It does.)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, get this the Stuff You Should Know book
that's coming out this fall, The Incomplete Compendium of mostly
Interesting Things. It has a cover. Now, it's been born,
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(00:22):
So go check it out. It's free to check out.
So go, Hey, you welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh.
There's Chuck. There's Jerry. This is Short Stuff. I'm Josh.
Jerry's over there, there's Chuck. Let's go car radios killers.

(00:45):
I know this is so I have to say this
article was like pretty great. It's, um, it's a how
stuff works article and it's why do we turn down
the radio when we're lost? And it was like it's
got that kind of classic how stuff work sheen where
it's like, well, here's the simple answer, but let me
find all this other stuff that has to do with
this that makes it that much more interesting, you know. Yeah,

(01:06):
it's also kind of funny to look back to the
nineteen thirties and realize that their cell phone was the
car radio and they were just as worried that it
was going to kill people driving. Yes, right, So like
there's this question like, are we every time we're worried
about some new technologies the same thing as when people
before us worried about technology that proved to be totally safe,

(01:30):
or will we eventually hit some some technology that were like, oh,
actually no, this one doesn't qualify. It's actually way worse
than everything else. And will it be radios again, maybe
they'll have another shot at being dangerous. Who knows that's right. Well,
in the early thirties they were so worried about it.
They some states find people who put cars in their radios.

(01:52):
And it wasn't until about eight years after nineteen thirty
nine years that they actually did some real studies the
Princeton Radio Research Project. They said, you know what, it's
not a big deal to listen to a radio in
your car. If anyone cares what we think, then that
sounds like our current times, where it's like this is dangerous,
this is dangerous, we should come up with some laws

(02:12):
to protect ourselves against this. And then finally we're like, oh,
let's actually study it and find out a little bit.
And then now it's it's actually fine. So, Um, so
the radios were deemed safe, right, Uh, they were deemed
to not play a role in car accidents specifically. But
the question is this so? So at some point the

(02:34):
Society of Automotive Engineers basically said, hey, we've got this
figured out. As long as you're not distracted for more
than fifteen seconds while you're driving, you're gonna be just fine.
Which is that's just totally untrue, right of course, everybody,
every anyone knows that these days, um that that fifteen

(02:55):
seconds is like a death sentence basically in a car.
But did they did they sign off on radios under
that fifteen second rule? I don't know. I think they
have now whittled that down to two seconds because they
realized that driving three football fields without paying attention is
actually quite dangerous, no matter what you're listening to, right exactly, So,

(03:21):
I guess a car drives at fifty five miles an hour,
drives about a football field every five seconds, So, yeah,
fifteen seconds, you can get into a lot of trouble
even at fifty five Yeah too, I mean two seconds,
that seems about right, because even though you shouldn't be
distracted at all, everyone is I mean, there are things

(03:42):
going on that you can't help but be distracted by sometimes.
Did you ever take any of those like UM insurance
reduction slash d U y schools? No classes? Did you ever?
You didn't do that? I went to that, never for
do UI or anything like that. But UM, like you
could get like a discount on your insurance if you
were like a teenage driver and you went to take

(04:02):
one of these safe driving classes. But inevitably the instructor
would just start shelling out like um stories about people
doing stupid stuff while they're driving. And one that always
stuck with me was somebody eating cereal while they're driving.
And for years I just thought that was the most
bonkers thing, And then I finally saw it with my
own two eyes, somebody else on the road eating cereal

(04:24):
while driving down the highway during a morning commute. And
it is as bonkers as you would think. It wasn't
any less bonkers seeing it, I guess because there's a
liquid involved, and two hand makes it different than eating
something else. Well, I can drive pretty well with my knees,
are you. I don't know if I would eat clam chowder?
Can you really? I can kind of, but then I'm

(04:45):
also like I can freak myself out and be like
this is really really dangerous. Well, in my car now
has one of those uh sort of driving assistance where
you don't have to hold the steering wheel, that is,
you don't even need meat. It's super freaky and makes
me feel a little bit like unsafe. Right. Yeah, I

(05:08):
have that too, where it's like you start to drift
a little bit and then the car just goes no, no,
and like pushes you back into your lane down one.
It's a little creepy. It feels like your car is possessed, yeah, basically,
or it's like a little a little bossy for my taste.
You don't have to use that stuff. You can turn
that stuff off. I don't know if you can in

(05:29):
the one I have, but but maybe so. Um So,
here's the thing. Distracted driving is an actual thing. But
radio's got signed off on now. They realize that if
you are driving down the road just listening to the radio,
not like fiddling with it or messing you know, finding
a like the right track on your phone or connecting
your phone via Bluetooth to your media center or whatever

(05:52):
in your car. But if you're just listening to music,
it actually helps you focus more. So not only is
the radio not in and of itself or listening in
the music not in and of itself, um, distracting, it
actually helps you focus and probably drive better. So baring
all that in mind, Chuck, doesn't it make sense? That
is the most bizarre thing you could possibly do when

(06:14):
you're lost and you realize you're lost or you're really
trying to concentrate on driving, that you would turn the
radio down. It doesn't make any sense if you think
about it on its face. What it does make is
a great teaser for part two right after that, Man,
you know me so well. Well, now we're on the

(06:35):
road driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing
or two from Josh Man, Chuck. It's stuff you should know,
all right, all right, So if we're talking we need

(07:02):
What we're really talking about is multitasking, and it's pretty
interesting how the human brain works. We've talked about the
brain add nauseum on the show, but just as a refresher,
you've got the cerebrum. If someone subscribed as cerebral, that
means they have uh pretty tight higher cognitive functioning. Going on,

(07:24):
talking about emotion, talking about language, Sure, what's next? What
about the sarah, the cerebellum that's right, that controls muscle movement, balance,
stuff like that. And then you've got the dumb old
brain stem, which just you know, like if you want
to breathe and blink your eyes and stuff like that
and get messages between the spinal cord and the other

(07:45):
two parts of the brain, then your brain stem is
gonna step up right. So um, So, all these parts
of the brain are kind of working in conjunction to
help you do things like drive or walk around or
chew gum or whatever. All of them are going to
play a role either by themselves are in conjunction, more
likely in conjunction with the others. And the way that
you do go through life and not just you, Chuck

(08:08):
or you dear listener, but everybody, every human goes through
life taking in all of the information available to us
through our senses. Are five basic senses, right, which is
um uh, touch, hearing, smell, vision, taste, and then the
sixth one are morphic field sense that's right, seeing dead people,

(08:29):
that's right exactly, or knowing when somebody is staring at
the back of your head. So when you when you
get all of this information, your brain is processing it.
It's um encoding everything, and it's basically while it's encoding
it because it's getting so much different stuff. And I
know we've talked about there's plenty of times before in
past episodes, but I just still to this day find
it fascinating. But the brain is basically saying this is important,

(08:53):
This isn't important. Um, this I can throw away. This
I need to put more focus on. And apparently the
brain is capable of carrying on at least two tasks
virtually simultaneously, but one is considered more important than the other.
So you've got your primary task and your secondary task,
that's right, and switching back and forth between these. Your

(09:14):
brain is really good at it. It's called attention switching,
but it is actually switching, and it does take time.
It's not it doesn't take long, but it can add up.
And Uh, if you think that you're something, you know,
people like to brag about their multitasking abilities. Uh, you're

(09:35):
not really multitasking though you think you are. But what
you're really doing is just doing a lot of things
more poorly than you would be doing right exactly, which
is surprising because multitaskers are such like type A go
getters to begin with, that you would think if you
explain to them, like, hey, you're actually doing way worse

(09:56):
that each of these different things than you would be
if you just did one at a time and complete
each task, that they would take up that mantel. But
I still suspect that they wouldn't, you know. Yeah, I
mean anything over too is a problem for the brain
such that it's not like the brains like, all right,
I'll do all three of these at once, but it's
gonna really I'm gonna struggle. Your brain literally says no, sorry,

(10:16):
that third thing is in line now behind these other
two things, and they're actually in line as well. Or
the brain might even just toss that third one out.
But yeah, there's got to be a primary one, there's
got to be a secondary one, and maybe if it's
in a good mood, your brain will take on the
third one. But when it switches between these things, because
that's the thing. If you have two things that you're

(10:38):
doing and you can't do them actually in parallel, what
that means then is that your brain has to switch
between them right as they kind of compete for one another,
for your brain's resources with one another. And when it
does that, all sorts of terrible things happen. Because it's
not an instantaneous switch. There's a very slight delay, and

(10:58):
in the that slight delay, you can lose attention, lose concentration,
our response time is eaten up. There's a whole bunch
of things that kind of go south, where if we
were just focusing on one thing at that moment, we
would be doing much better at it, and we're doing
two things instead, and we're doing both things more poorly.

(11:18):
That's right, because if you're multitasking, your error rate increases
increases by much as and like we said, you're not
speeding up anyway. If you're multitasking, it's doubling the amount
of time it would take to do each of those
things if you were just doing those things, right, So
you think you're saving time and you're not. No, So
like it's you just said, a chuck, you're doubling the

(11:40):
amount of time it actually takes. Multitasking doesn't take less time,
it doubles the amount of time, which is mind boggling,
ironically enough, Yeah, and you probably don't even realize this.
If you think you're a good multitasker, the small errors
you make, and it could be dumb little things like
you have to go back and retype a line of
an email that you would have typed it correctly the

(12:02):
first time it had you been only doing that, or
zoning out on someone and saying, I'm sorry, will you
repeat that? Because I was doing something else. You're you're
literally your brain is not able to right exactly. So
it makes sense then that if you are suddenly you saidden,
you're driving along, you suddenly realize you don't know the way,

(12:22):
or maybe you're coming up on a street that you
need to turn on, and and these are this is
not familiar area too, and you really need to concentrate.
You would turn down the radio to to remove a
distraction from your brain so that your brain can focus
more clearly on finding this turn, or taking in this
other sensory information, or making these decisions that it needs
to make to get you where you're going, which makes

(12:44):
a lot of sense if you think about it. That's right,
And I'm not sure the science behind it, but I'm
sure some people are a little more um sincerely stimulated
than others by different sences and I'm one of those
that sound can really get to me if I have
I've got to turn that radio down if I'm lost,
or I'll go crazy or the worst thing in planet

(13:07):
Earth to me is having two music's playing at once. Yeah,
that's terrible. Like if you have your volume on on
your computer and you have a tab that's playing music,
and you open another tab and it starts playing, it's
just just utter chaos. Can't do it. Nope, I'm with you, Chuck.
You got anything else about turning down the radio when

(13:27):
you're lost? Turn it down. People, do one thing at
a time. You'll get there quicker and it will be better.
There you go. So that means, since Chuck summarized everything
so beautifully, that short stuff is out. Stuff you should
Know is a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
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