Ciara Kelly

speaker

347 appearances 15 recordings 4 series first heard May 2026 last heard 14 Jun

Ciara Kelly’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 15 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 12.

Appearances

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The Claire Byrne Show · Humans prefer to turn left or walk anticlockwise! · 12 Jun 2026 podcast

I mean, we already know, Ciara, about 90% of people are right-handed.

So it makes sense, for example, if you're running, you would put the dominant leg on the outside of a curve and therefore that would drive you left, it would drive you counterclockwise.

So much of this was known, but during COVID, people began to notice stuff that would have otherwise passed them by.

Well, it's funny you should mention running there because in the first modern Olympics in 1896, athletes actually ran clockwise around the track and then it was changed in 1913 because the majority of athletes felt it was an unnatural direction to run.

Yeah, I mean, it felt weird.

And that reflects the biological tendency to turn left.

And, you know, this is, I mean, it's already known that we think about clockwise and counterclockwise quite differently.

So, for example, in psychology,

clockwise movement is associated with order and conformity.

So anti-clockwise movement can feel a little bit counter-cultural, a little bit radical, and we like that in very, very controlled ways, as if we're questioning convention by going anti-clockwise and booking the trend, whereas in fact we're not, we're simply moving with the crowd.

For listeners at home, Brandon, where might they notice this behavior in everyday life, like our supermarkets or shopping centers or museums?

Are they playing on this?

They are, because these have been consciously or unconsciously designed to facilitate more left-hand turns than right-hand turns.

Now, look, the biggest risk with this, Ciara, is that people will become obsessed with it and start overthinking how they move, what they do.

I don't know which sock they put on first in the morning and other such things that don't matter hugely.

Because once you think about this, you start noticing it absolutely everywhere around you.

The big message is that a lot of our behaviour is unconsciously shaped rather than consciously.

Now, it doesn't mean it's bad.

You know, our brains have favourite directions, but it doesn't mean we should challenge them.

Sometimes it's best to just go with the flow.

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