Something You Should Know
The Surprising Power of Silence & How to Overcome Your Cravings - SYSK Choice
Sat, 22 Mar 2025
When you feel that urge to go to the bathroom – it just might be a good time to make an important decision. That probably sounds weird. What could the connection possibly be? Listen as I start the episode by explaining why and then it will make perfect sense. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/full-bladder-better-decisions-controlling-your-bladder-decreases-impulsive-choices.html We live in a noisy world which is only getting noisier. Not only is there noise coming at you from the outside but also from inside your own head. All that noise can’t be good. What’s the solution? Simple silence! That’s according to Leigh Marz, a consultant and coach who is coauthor of a book called Golden: The Power of Silence in a World of Noise (https://amzn.to/3yKi203). Listen as Leigh reveals the negative effects of noise that are often hard to notice. She also has some great advice to help you turn down the volume on noise and enjoy the benefits that silence has to offer. Where do cravings come from? Why do we get them? Can you stop them? Should you ever give in to them? Here to discuss the science of cravings and how best to handle them is Amy Shah, MD. She is a board-certified medical doctor, having trained at Cornell, Columbia, and Harvard Universities. She is the author of the book I’m So Effing Hungry: Why We Crave What We Crave – and What to Do About It (https://amzn.to/3JCOHL8) It would seem sensible that your homeowner’s or renter’s insurance policy covers things related to your home. And it does. However, you might be surprised to learn what else it also covers including things that are unrelated to your home. Listen as I explain some of those likely benefits. http://consumerist.com/2012/04/12/stuck-with-a-forged-check-homeowners-insurance-to-the-rescue Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why should you wait to make decisions with a full bladder?
Man, this is going to sound weird to start off this episode, but if you need to make a decision, wait until you have to go to the bathroom. Research published in Science Daily says people make better decisions when they have a full bladder. That's because when the mind is struggling to restrain a bodily function, it's easier for us to exert self-control in other areas.
Chapter 2: What are the surprising effects of noise on health?
The authors of the study explain that when you're preoccupied with thoughts of finding the closest bathroom, your ego is in check. You're much less likely to overthink things or give in to unrelated impulses. Consequently, the decisions you make are simple and efficient and more likely to be right on the mark. And that is something you should know.
Chapter 3: How can silence improve mental and physical well-being?
You may not realize it, but we live in a very noisy world that keeps getting noisier. And that's not an especially good thing. When was the last time you truly got to experience silence? Total silence. It turns out to be really good for you. And all that noise? Not so good for you. And it's more than just that. The sounds we hear have a real impact on our health and our well-being.
Noise can affect your mood, your relationships, how well you think. It has all sorts of ramifications. And it's easy to brush it off and say, well, it's just noise. But I invite you to take a few moments and listen to Leigh Mars. She is a consultant and coach and co-author of a book called Golden, The Power of Silence in a World of Noise. Hey, Leigh, welcome to Something You Should Know.
Hey, thanks for having me, Mike.
Chapter 4: What is the definition and value of silence?
So I think everyone has heard the phrase, silence is golden. And there was a hit record in the 60s called Silence is Golden by the Tremolos. And I think there's this general belief that silence is good, that in the right situation, silence can be very profound and just good for you. I'm not sure how or why, but I think there's a belief in that. But why? Why is silence good?
And maybe an even better first question would be, what is silence? I mean, is silence a thing or is silence the absence of something?
Oh, that's a great question. Well, on one level, it really is the absence of noise. And we look at it coming, the noise coming to us through our ears and through our screens in many cases, and also the noise that's just generated by our own darn minds.
But as we explore this question, the deepest silences when we asked all those interesting people, neuroscientists, politicians, artists, poets, a man incarcerated on death row, all kinds of people, we asked them that question and they pointed us
towards a deep internal silence so it's not necessarily just about what's happening outside of us although that's also a lovely type of silence but a silence internal that brings about a type of presence where we believe there can be healing and enjoyment and connection and all kinds of things and you believe that because why because you want to believe that or you have real evidence to believe that
it's not so much that we're researchers studying that but what we are doing in our work in the world is for example i work with a lot of scientists and engineers who are trying to get harmful toxic chemicals out of our products and out of our environment and they were coming at these issues these you know really complex and intractable issues in a certain way in the four walls of their offices and under fluorescent lighting and all these things but we took them out into the redwoods and really contemplating these issues
with big open space and open calendars and no Wi-Fi. And they really came to some novel thinking, breakthrough thinking. So really time and time and again, I am seeing the results of people tapping into silence, connecting with one another in a different way to come through that breakthrough thinking.
In your definition of silence, is it all silence? Because when like when you say we went out to the Redwoods, to me, that's also like a visual silence, like you're getting away from the clutter of your life and you're seeing something. It isn't nothing, but it's very peaceful silence.
Yeah, the taxonomy of noise we take on in this, and we could take on visual and things like that, but we kept it to auditory noise, that which happens in our ears and the decibel levels, which has been exponentially on the rise, in case you're wondering, and the research really does bear that out.
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Chapter 5: Why is the world getting noisier and how can we cope?
Yeah, it feels like it's getting louder and it really is getting louder. So one way we know that is we look to emergency sirens as a proxy indicator for the surrounding environments, because of course they need to cut through the din in order to get our attention.
So in the past hundred years, to your point, it's been gradual, but those sirens have gotten six times louder in order to cut through the noise around us. And we do a better job measuring decibel levels in Europe overall than we do in the United States.
But the estimates from the World Health Organization is that 65% of the population, about 450 million people, live with decibel levels that are harmful to their health. So on that auditory level, it is definitely getting louder. But we also thought it was important to look at information. So
In 2010, the past CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, estimated that every two days we listen to as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization to 2003. So we are taking in the study show about five times as much information as we did just a generation ago. So there's just this overwhelming amount of information being generated and that we're trying to take in on a day-to-day basis.
And that, we believe, actually increases our internal chatter, our internal noise. So Ethan Cross, a professor at the University of Michigan, estimates that we listen to something like 320 State of the Union addresses of internal compressed speech every day.
So our concern is with all this auditory, informational, and internal noise that we're really not able to tune into what is most important to us in our lives, our relationships, our work, and our purpose for being here.
So you mentioned a moment ago that all this noise, all this chatter that we have to turn the sirens up louder to get over is harmful to our health. Well, how so? Because I think people have a sense, just a sense without knowing anything, that quiet is nice and it's probably better than lots and lots of noise. But how do we know it's health-related?
We know this through different studies which look at not just the harm that comes to us in the ears, you know, certainly hearing loss is a serious issue that can lead to isolation and things, but it actually is also tied to cardiovascular disease, to diabetes, to loss of sleep and all of the downstream effects of loss of sleep as well. So there's a lot of science coming out.
Initially, we looked at silence as more of a control variable. So the other side of that is the benefits of silence. So it used to be that silence was sort of where we considered a baseline to return to.
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Chapter 6: What are practical ways to find silence in a noisy world?
Well, you're right in that when we're talking about noise, we're talking about unwanted distractions. So that is different from sound or certainly music and things like that. It's also different on the informational level from data, which is neutral. We like data. Or internally, it's also different from thought, which we also enjoy. So the distinction is that unwanted distraction.
We're talking about silence and why it's so good for you. My guest is Leigh Mars. She's co-author of a book called Golden, The Power of Silence in a World of Noise. For a long time now, I've been recommending The Jordan Harbinger Show as another podcast you might want to listen to.
The Jordan Harbinger Show is different than something you should know, but as you'll see, it aligns well with this audience. Meaning, if you like this podcast, you're probably going to like that one. The Jordan Harbinger Show. Each episode is a conversation with a different, fascinating guest. Recently, he had on Amanda Ripley talking about how to survive an unthinkable disaster.
which strikes close to home for me, having just been through the fires and mudslides in California and evacuated twice. He also spoke with Jay Dobbins, who's a former ATF agent who went undercover with the Hells Angels. Now that's a conversation worth hearing. And listening to his conversations will make you a more critical thinker about the world around you.
Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show, and there's a good chance it finds its way into your regular rotation of podcasts. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Hello, I am Kristen Russo. And I am Jenny Owen Youngs. We are the hosts of Buffering the Vampire Slayer. Once more, with spoilers, a rewatch podcast covering all 144 episodes of, you guessed it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
We are here to humbly invite you to join us for our fifth Buffy Prom, which, if you can believe it, we are hosting at the actual Sunnydale High School. That's right. On April 4th and 5th, we will be descending upon the campus of Torrance High School, which was the filming location for Buffy's Sunnydale High.
To dance the night away, to 90s music in the iconic courtyard, to sip on punch right next to the Sunnydale High fountain, and to nerd out together in our prom best inside of the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
All information and tickets can be found at bufferingcast.com slash prom. Come join us.
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Chapter 7: How does shared silence create connection and intimacy?
do more favors for people i just feel more abundance in life and so for each of us it's to look at really what are the signals that were saturated by noise and how can we take care of that maybe turn down the dial a bit and what are the signals that we are finding the silence that we need and require to really be the kind of person that we want to be in this world
So I get that silence has its benefits, but it also seems sometimes that when you're sitting in silence, you can start to ruminate and think about problems and things. And that really what you want to do is distract yourself with maybe music or a podcast like this one. So you're not ruminating and thinking about your own problems as opposed to just sitting in total silence. Right.
Well, it's like, I think we think of it as sort of it's the place to start because in this noise-soaked environment where it is so loud and jarring and the impact of that on our health is, you know, is without question. It's the science we lay it out. And then the desire to get into a place of a quieter internal state, it just doesn't require absolute silence on the outside.
Although that could help, that does help some, but you mentioned for yourself, it's maybe a little better to have a soundtrack or a podcast or a different place to focus. And so we're just trying to create a little bit more space for the ways that we find that internal silence that is so nourishing to us, that helps us get
clear on what it is we care most about, where we put our energies, and what is true in our life. And that could be in a loud environment, like I said, sort of like in my dance studio. That's how it is. It's loud, but I'm quiet.
When you think about it, when there's a problem, when there's conflict, the tendency is to talk more about it, argue about it. And maybe a little silence would help rather than trying to hammer it out.
The Quakers have been doing that for hundreds of years. When there's a sense of polarity or positionality or rigidity in a meeting, the clerk will call for silence. And in that silence, an answer will come, some resolution.
And so even if it means like, you know, taking a break from the problem at hand, sleeping on it for a night and coming back together, just giving a little space to it, clarity can come through that place.
I wonder why people don't seek this out just on their own, that because it does tend to feel good and relax you and make you sharper, why we don't tend to gravitate to this just because.
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