April 26, 2024 • 14 mins
Hello, Puzzlers! Puzzling with us today: host of "The Psychology Podcast," Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman!
Join host A.J. Jacobs and his guests as they puzzle–and laugh–their way through new spins on old favorites, like anagrams and palindromes, as well as quirky originals such as “Ask Chat GPT” and audio rebuses.
Subscribe to The Puzzler podcast wherever you get your podcasts!
"The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs" is distributed by iHeartPodcasts and is a co-production with Neuhaus Ideas.
Our executive producers are Neely Lohmann and Adam Neuhaus of Neuhaus Ideas, and Lindsay Hoffman of iHeart Podcasts.
The show is produced by Jody Avirgan and Brittani Brown of Roulette Productions.
Our Chief Puzzle Officer is Greg Pliska. Our associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, puzzlers, Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast, the soothing antiseptic
gel for your puzzling scraped knee. I am your host,
A J. Jacobs, and today's guest is the awesome Scott
Barry Kaufman, a longtime friend of mine, author of many books,
(00:28):
and host of the Psychology Podcast. Right here on iHeart
Welcome Scott.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Oh, such a delight to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Well, i'd delight to have you. I love your podcast,
I've been on it and it's an honor to have
you on mine.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, we've co hosted before the fun.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
And we co hosted. That is so true, exactly. Well,
now this is no co hosting. I'm the host. Don't
get any ideas please. I thought we could start with
a quick puzzle and then I might ask you a
bit about the science of curiosity, one of your many specialties,
and curiosity, of course, is a requirement for puzzling. So
(01:06):
today's puzzle is called the silent P as in the
letter P, not the bodily function, because we are a
classy podcast and it is in honor of your show,
The Psychology Podcast, where the first word, of course has
a silent P. At the beginning psychology. So in this puzzle,
I'm going to be giving you a clue and the
(01:29):
answer will always be a word starting with a silent p. So,
just to make it a little more puzzly or more uzsily,
I guess the clues will also contain silent peace. Okay,
and these will be fake silent piece. These are not
actual silent piece peace. I'm choosing to make silent. So,
(01:50):
for instance, if I said this is the study of
a Erson's personality, the answer might be the first word
of your show.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
The word study doesn't start with the pe oh, psychology, psychology.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Exactly, you got it? Okay? Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (02:12):
This is a Erson's n name, an Erson's n name. Okay,
So that's the clue. With the peas pronounced. Is a
person's pen name? What might that been?
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Oh? Oh, oh uh po.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Pseudonym? Exactly, you got it? Pseudonym? All right, you're on
a roll. Are you ready for the next one?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Let's go.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
This is a disease in which air cannot ermeiate a
Erson's lungs. Air cannot ermeate a person's lungs. Okay, with
the peas pronounced, that is a disease in which air
cannot permeate a person's lungs. Do you know what that
(03:01):
word might be?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Not bronchitis, not not pneumonia, Yes, pneumonia exactly, you got it.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Look at that pneumonia, all right, last one before.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
We do at one in order of difficulty.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Maybe it might be a little harder. Yes, I would
say a little harder, but just like five percent harder.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
This is a type of rare, a rare that you
sing or apps using effect itch. That was hard to say,
a rare you might sing using perfect itch. Okay, that
same clue with the piece pronounced. This is a type
of prayer that you might sing, perhaps using perfect pitch.
(03:51):
And the answer might be he's thinking, use the word prayer.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Of Psalm Psalm.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
That's it, exactly the song the book of Psalms Psalms
in the Bible, exactlys A L. M.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Nailed nailed it.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
You nailed that. You did. You are an excellent This
was it. This was this is more accurate than any
I Q test. Absolutely well. I thought, if you don't mind,
while we have a couple of minutes, I might ask
you about one of your many specialties, the science of curiosity,
(04:38):
because curiosity. Of course, it's one of my favorite human characteristics.
It's crucial for puzzling, and I think it makes life
so much better. Does does science back that up? What
have you learned about the science of curiosity?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Well, there's a there's there's different dimensions of curiosity, so
it's a multi dimensional thing. And one element is just
joyous exploration, like, oh, you know, there's no endpoint. I
just like to explore and see what is going on.
There's also a thrill seeking form of curiosity where I
(05:14):
really like, I get excited by the unknown, things like
I like going on at a road trip without a map.
And then there's what I think is well stress tolerance,
which is I can really, you know, deal with stress.
You know, I can handle the stress that comes from
entering uncertain situations. So that's a form of curiosity. There's
(05:36):
social curiosity, which is like I like finding out why
people behave the way they do. But there's the fifth
one that I wanted to bring up to you today
because many people when I was aware of it. I
think it's very linked to puzzling, the attraction of puzzles,
and that's what's called deprivation sensitivity and that's I work
relentlessly at problems that I feel must be solved, and
(05:58):
I think that, you know, when you I see a
real linkage between uh, puzzle attraction and magic, you know,
the interest in magic, people try to figure it one
to always figure out, you know, I'm really into magic lately,
and and and the biggest reaction to get in people's
what how how tell me? Tell me? And I think
(06:20):
that and do you tell them no? Because the magician
never reveals the difference code. Of course, the magician's code.
You tested me, and now I can get into the
magic castle.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
It was gonna report report me.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
To the magic Castle again exiled, but no. So I
think that's a that's a trait that is correlated with
the others, but not it's not one hundred percent correlation.
Not everyone scores high in deprivation sensitivity. But I just
suspect that there's individual differences here that predict dixt into
which You love puzzles, you.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Know, Yeah, well I love a couple of things. You say. First,
I totally agree magic and puzzles are cousins, because, yeah,
magic is basically a puzzle where they don't tell you
what the solution is. So you have to go home
and you know, talk about it with your friends. But
the idea of this relentless drive to try to solve things,
(07:14):
I will say that's a too sort of a double
edged sword in my opinion, because I love the drive,
but I also feel it's okay if you never solve
the puzzle. The joy is sometimes in the process of
trying to solve it.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
That's so true.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yeah, this guy I interviewed, the godfather of Sudoku, he said,
puzzles are three symbols question mark, forward, arrow, exclamation point.
So the bafflement, the trying to solve, the aha moment,
and you've got to love that arrow. It can't all
be about the exclamation point. Is there a way to
(07:55):
cultivate curiosity, make yourself more curious?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Great question, I think that you know, we want we
think about it like in an education context, how can
we stimulate curiosity in young people? And that's sort of
the context which I've most thought about this, because I'm
really interested in education and increasing curiosity among children. A
lot of a lot of curiosity is really neat to us,
this drive, but we we sort of forget about that
(08:20):
drive because we get distracted with other drives and with
other responsibilities and things. I think that anytime you can
put someone in a situation where it's an exploration kind
of situation, it's gonna bring out their natural drive for curiosity.
I just think, you know, I took a pause when
you asked me that question because I think that it's
not something that we like. You can't you don't want
(08:42):
to teach you know, here, here's how to have more curiosity.
It's how can we remove the barriers that that are
inhibiting our natural drive for curiosity? In my view, but
if you frame things as a game, you frame things
as there's no goal, there's no or no one crime outcome,
like a divergent thinking, creativity kind of situation, you just
(09:04):
need to put people in the right mindset to let
their natural curiosity drive roam free. That's sort of the
way I see the situation.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
That is great. One thought I had was there is
h in some cultures, In some eras, curiosity is seen
as a negative like don't be so not there's the
saying curiosity killed the cat. So do you think there
is a downside to curiosity or that's just a bunch
(09:34):
of spoil sports.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Oh wow, Well, the deprivation sensitivity trait has been linked
to high levels of anxiety, and you know, it's not
as unanimously correlated with well being as joyous exploration, for instance.
They so those two traits do differ in their correlations
(09:58):
with happiness and well being. But you know, I think
it's interesting because you know, happiness is not the only
metric of success in life. You know, meaning is also important,
and a lot of artists are constantly driven by their
deprivation sensitivity and their need to know and their curiosity.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I will say, from what you've been telling me, I
am moving more and more towards joyous exploration being my
favorite kind of curiosity. And I love that. Yeah, that
to me because the other one seems to have some downsize.
So here at the Puzzlert, we enduse all kinds of curiosity,
but especially joyous exploration.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
These five dimensions of curiosity. By the way, when you
give credit to my colleague Todd cast who studied that
with his colleagues, and then most recently, we just published
a paper showing that grit alone is not the best
predictor of creativity if you combine perseverance with curiosity. So
I call it curious grit. Curious scrit is better than
(11:02):
just having your head down consistent with your interests all
the time and not looking at other avenues. So that's
a very hot off the press finding. I thought I
drop in there.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
All right, you heard it here first puzzlers, and thank
you for being a curiosity booster. Scott. People can listen
to more of your wonderful insights on the psychology podcast
that's right here and my heart and as always I
have an extra credit for the puzzlers at home. The
(11:33):
clue is this is a ease of apor which lists
the rice of an object. An ease of aper that
lists the rice of an object. Little hint to the answer,
the silent p this time not at the start of
the word, somewhere in the middle. So there you go.
(11:54):
An ease of aper that lists the rice of an object.
Thank you all for go be curious. Go check out
the ratings of the show. Maybe give it a five star.
That would be fun. I think that could be a
fun exercise and curiosity. And we will see you next
(12:15):
time for more uzzling uzzles that will uzzle you uzzlingly.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Hey, puzzlers, Greg Pliska, your chief puzzle officer here with
the extra credit from our previous show. We played categories
with the siblings Vanessa and Jonah Bayer, and your extra
credit category was fruits and Vegetables. We asked you to
come up with a fruit or vegetables starting with each
of the letters in their surname B a yeer. Here's
(12:48):
some of what we've got on our list. B banana, beat, BlackBerry, blueberry, bockjoy,
broccoli and Brussels sprouts, a apple, arrowroot, arugula or to
choke asparagus and avocado.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Why yam, yellow squash, yuka, yellow pepper and u zu
e just two eggplant and andive r ridikio, radish raspberry, rubard,
romaine and rude bega.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
So bring your rudabagas with you and we'll see you.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
Here next time on the Puzzler podcast.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
Thanks for playing along with the team here at the
Puzzler with aj Jacobs. I'm Greg Pliska, your chief puzzle Officer.
Our executive producers are Neelie Lohman and Adam Neuhaus of
New House Ideas and Lindsay Hoffman of iHeart Podcasts. The
show is produced by Jody Abergan and Brittany Brown of
Roulette Productions, with production support from Claire Bidegar Curtis. Our
(13:49):
associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg. The Puzzler with AJ Jacobs
is a co production with New House Ideas and is
distributed by Therapist Coda No No, No, No No Rearrange
Those Letters distributed by iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 6 (14:08):
If you want to know more about puzzling puzzles, please
check out the book The Puzzler by AJ Jacobs, a
history of puzzles that The New York Times called fun
and funny. It features an original puzzle hunt by yours truly,
and is available wherever you get your books and puzzlers.
For all your puzzling needs, go.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
Visit the puzzler dot com.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
See you there,
Hello, puzzlers, Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast, the soothing antiseptic
gel for your puzzling scraped knee. I am your host,
A J. Jacobs, and today's guest is the awesome Scott
Barry Kaufman, a longtime friend of mine, author of many books,
(00:28):
and host of the Psychology Podcast. Right here on iHeart
Welcome Scott.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Oh, such a delight to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Well, i'd delight to have you. I love your podcast,
I've been on it and it's an honor to have
you on mine.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, we've co hosted before the fun.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
And we co hosted. That is so true, exactly. Well,
now this is no co hosting. I'm the host. Don't
get any ideas please. I thought we could start with
a quick puzzle and then I might ask you a
bit about the science of curiosity, one of your many specialties,
and curiosity, of course, is a requirement for puzzling. So
(01:06):
today's puzzle is called the silent P as in the
letter P, not the bodily function, because we are a
classy podcast and it is in honor of your show,
The Psychology Podcast, where the first word, of course has
a silent P. At the beginning psychology. So in this puzzle,
I'm going to be giving you a clue and the
(01:29):
answer will always be a word starting with a silent p. So,
just to make it a little more puzzly or more uzsily,
I guess the clues will also contain silent peace. Okay,
and these will be fake silent piece. These are not
actual silent piece peace. I'm choosing to make silent. So,
(01:50):
for instance, if I said this is the study of
a Erson's personality, the answer might be the first word
of your show.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
The word study doesn't start with the pe oh, psychology, psychology.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Exactly, you got it? Okay? Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (02:12):
This is a Erson's n name, an Erson's n name. Okay,
So that's the clue. With the peas pronounced. Is a
person's pen name? What might that been?
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Oh? Oh, oh uh po.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Pseudonym? Exactly, you got it? Pseudonym? All right, you're on
a roll. Are you ready for the next one?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Let's go.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
This is a disease in which air cannot ermeiate a
Erson's lungs. Air cannot ermeate a person's lungs. Okay, with
the peas pronounced, that is a disease in which air
cannot permeate a person's lungs. Do you know what that
(03:01):
word might be?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Not bronchitis, not not pneumonia, Yes, pneumonia exactly, you got it.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Look at that pneumonia, all right, last one before.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
We do at one in order of difficulty.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Maybe it might be a little harder. Yes, I would
say a little harder, but just like five percent harder.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
This is a type of rare, a rare that you
sing or apps using effect itch. That was hard to say,
a rare you might sing using perfect itch. Okay, that
same clue with the piece pronounced. This is a type
of prayer that you might sing, perhaps using perfect pitch.
(03:51):
And the answer might be he's thinking, use the word prayer.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Of Psalm Psalm.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
That's it, exactly the song the book of Psalms Psalms
in the Bible, exactlys A L. M.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Nailed nailed it.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
You nailed that. You did. You are an excellent This
was it. This was this is more accurate than any
I Q test. Absolutely well. I thought, if you don't mind,
while we have a couple of minutes, I might ask
you about one of your many specialties, the science of curiosity,
(04:38):
because curiosity. Of course, it's one of my favorite human characteristics.
It's crucial for puzzling, and I think it makes life
so much better. Does does science back that up? What
have you learned about the science of curiosity?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Well, there's a there's there's different dimensions of curiosity, so
it's a multi dimensional thing. And one element is just
joyous exploration, like, oh, you know, there's no endpoint. I
just like to explore and see what is going on.
There's also a thrill seeking form of curiosity where I
(05:14):
really like, I get excited by the unknown, things like
I like going on at a road trip without a map.
And then there's what I think is well stress tolerance,
which is I can really, you know, deal with stress.
You know, I can handle the stress that comes from
entering uncertain situations. So that's a form of curiosity. There's
(05:36):
social curiosity, which is like I like finding out why
people behave the way they do. But there's the fifth
one that I wanted to bring up to you today
because many people when I was aware of it. I
think it's very linked to puzzling, the attraction of puzzles,
and that's what's called deprivation sensitivity and that's I work
relentlessly at problems that I feel must be solved, and
(05:58):
I think that, you know, when you I see a
real linkage between uh, puzzle attraction and magic, you know,
the interest in magic, people try to figure it one
to always figure out, you know, I'm really into magic lately,
and and and the biggest reaction to get in people's
what how how tell me? Tell me? And I think
(06:20):
that and do you tell them no? Because the magician
never reveals the difference code. Of course, the magician's code.
You tested me, and now I can get into the
magic castle.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
It was gonna report report me.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
To the magic Castle again exiled, but no. So I
think that's a that's a trait that is correlated with
the others, but not it's not one hundred percent correlation.
Not everyone scores high in deprivation sensitivity. But I just
suspect that there's individual differences here that predict dixt into
which You love puzzles, you.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Know, Yeah, well I love a couple of things. You say. First,
I totally agree magic and puzzles are cousins, because, yeah,
magic is basically a puzzle where they don't tell you
what the solution is. So you have to go home
and you know, talk about it with your friends. But
the idea of this relentless drive to try to solve things,
(07:14):
I will say that's a too sort of a double
edged sword in my opinion, because I love the drive,
but I also feel it's okay if you never solve
the puzzle. The joy is sometimes in the process of
trying to solve it.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
That's so true.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yeah, this guy I interviewed, the godfather of Sudoku, he said,
puzzles are three symbols question mark, forward, arrow, exclamation point.
So the bafflement, the trying to solve, the aha moment,
and you've got to love that arrow. It can't all
be about the exclamation point. Is there a way to
(07:55):
cultivate curiosity, make yourself more curious?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Great question, I think that you know, we want we
think about it like in an education context, how can
we stimulate curiosity in young people? And that's sort of
the context which I've most thought about this, because I'm
really interested in education and increasing curiosity among children. A
lot of a lot of curiosity is really neat to us,
this drive, but we we sort of forget about that
(08:20):
drive because we get distracted with other drives and with
other responsibilities and things. I think that anytime you can
put someone in a situation where it's an exploration kind
of situation, it's gonna bring out their natural drive for curiosity.
I just think, you know, I took a pause when
you asked me that question because I think that it's
not something that we like. You can't you don't want
(08:42):
to teach you know, here, here's how to have more curiosity.
It's how can we remove the barriers that that are
inhibiting our natural drive for curiosity? In my view, but
if you frame things as a game, you frame things
as there's no goal, there's no or no one crime outcome,
like a divergent thinking, creativity kind of situation, you just
(09:04):
need to put people in the right mindset to let
their natural curiosity drive roam free. That's sort of the
way I see the situation.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
That is great. One thought I had was there is
h in some cultures, In some eras, curiosity is seen
as a negative like don't be so not there's the
saying curiosity killed the cat. So do you think there
is a downside to curiosity or that's just a bunch
(09:34):
of spoil sports.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Oh wow, Well, the deprivation sensitivity trait has been linked
to high levels of anxiety, and you know, it's not
as unanimously correlated with well being as joyous exploration, for instance.
They so those two traits do differ in their correlations
(09:58):
with happiness and well being. But you know, I think
it's interesting because you know, happiness is not the only
metric of success in life. You know, meaning is also important,
and a lot of artists are constantly driven by their
deprivation sensitivity and their need to know and their curiosity.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I will say, from what you've been telling me, I
am moving more and more towards joyous exploration being my
favorite kind of curiosity. And I love that. Yeah, that
to me because the other one seems to have some downsize.
So here at the Puzzlert, we enduse all kinds of curiosity,
but especially joyous exploration.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
These five dimensions of curiosity. By the way, when you
give credit to my colleague Todd cast who studied that
with his colleagues, and then most recently, we just published
a paper showing that grit alone is not the best
predictor of creativity if you combine perseverance with curiosity. So
I call it curious grit. Curious scrit is better than
(11:02):
just having your head down consistent with your interests all
the time and not looking at other avenues. So that's
a very hot off the press finding. I thought I
drop in there.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
All right, you heard it here first puzzlers, and thank
you for being a curiosity booster. Scott. People can listen
to more of your wonderful insights on the psychology podcast
that's right here and my heart and as always I
have an extra credit for the puzzlers at home. The
(11:33):
clue is this is a ease of apor which lists
the rice of an object. An ease of aper that
lists the rice of an object. Little hint to the answer,
the silent p this time not at the start of
the word, somewhere in the middle. So there you go.
(11:54):
An ease of aper that lists the rice of an object.
Thank you all for go be curious. Go check out
the ratings of the show. Maybe give it a five star.
That would be fun. I think that could be a
fun exercise and curiosity. And we will see you next
(12:15):
time for more uzzling uzzles that will uzzle you uzzlingly.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Hey, puzzlers, Greg Pliska, your chief puzzle officer here with
the extra credit from our previous show. We played categories
with the siblings Vanessa and Jonah Bayer, and your extra
credit category was fruits and Vegetables. We asked you to
come up with a fruit or vegetables starting with each
of the letters in their surname B a yeer. Here's
(12:48):
some of what we've got on our list. B banana, beat, BlackBerry, blueberry, bockjoy,
broccoli and Brussels sprouts, a apple, arrowroot, arugula or to
choke asparagus and avocado.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Why yam, yellow squash, yuka, yellow pepper and u zu
e just two eggplant and andive r ridikio, radish raspberry, rubard,
romaine and rude bega.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
So bring your rudabagas with you and we'll see you.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
Here next time on the Puzzler podcast.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
Thanks for playing along with the team here at the
Puzzler with aj Jacobs. I'm Greg Pliska, your chief puzzle Officer.
Our executive producers are Neelie Lohman and Adam Neuhaus of
New House Ideas and Lindsay Hoffman of iHeart Podcasts. The
show is produced by Jody Abergan and Brittany Brown of
Roulette Productions, with production support from Claire Bidegar Curtis. Our
(13:49):
associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg. The Puzzler with AJ Jacobs
is a co production with New House Ideas and is
distributed by Therapist Coda No No, No, No No Rearrange
Those Letters distributed by iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 6 (14:08):
If you want to know more about puzzling puzzles, please
check out the book The Puzzler by AJ Jacobs, a
history of puzzles that The New York Times called fun
and funny. It features an original puzzle hunt by yours truly,
and is available wherever you get your books and puzzlers.
For all your puzzling needs, go.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
Visit the puzzler dot com.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
See you there,
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