Something You Should Know
Why You Click With Some People & How to Pursue Anything with Excellence
29 Jan 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: How can your phone impact your conversations?
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Today on Something You Should Know, how your cell phone can cause a big problem just by sitting there. Then, the science behind why you just click with some people but not others.
There are things that can make you less likely to click. You cannot experience synchrony virtually. If you're not in another person's physical presence, you really can't experience synchrony to its fullest and richest extent.
Also, when you have extra money, what do you tend to spend it on? And what it means to pursue something with true excellence?
It means a couple of things, Mike. The first thing that it means is that you have to be okay with making yourself vulnerable and risking failure. So it's one thing to say you're going to give something your all. It's another thing to actually put yourself in the arena and make yourself vulnerable and risk failure. All this today on Something You Should Know.
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Listen to Vulgar History, Regency era, wherever you get podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.
You know what I've started doing? I've started hiding my phone, and I'll tell you why. Hi, I'm Mike Carruthers. Welcome to Something You Should Know. So when I have an important conversation, like dinner out or a meeting with someone, I hide my phone, like fully gone, not face down on the table, not silenced. but gone in my pocket. Here's why.
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Chapter 2: What does it mean to click with someone?
Remove it from sight. It's a small move, but it instantly makes you seem more present, more likable, and more dialed in. Which, in a world where everybody is half-distracted all the time, is a huge advantage to you. And that is something you should know. There is this magical moment, and I know you've experienced this probably several times, and that experience is this.
You meet someone, you talk to them for a little while, and somehow you just click. Instant chemistry, like you were meant to be. Not just in romantic relationships, but in friendships, or as work colleagues, too. There's just something about when the two of you are together, you're in sync. And it can all be summed up with the phrase, we just clicked. But what does it mean to click?
Why do we click with some people and not others? Is it just chance that two people click, or can you make it happen? And what if you feel like you click with someone, but they don't feel the same? All of this and more is about to be discussed with my guest, Kate Murphy. She's a journalist who has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications.
And she's author of a book called Why We Click, The Emerging Science of Interpersonal Synchrony. Hey, Kate, welcome to Something You Should Know.
Well, thank you so much. Happy to be here.
So from your point of view, as somebody who has studied this, what does it mean to click? What is going on?
Well, it's that feeling of resonance and it can be romantic, it can be platonic, but it's when you meet someone and it's that instant feeling of ease and attraction and the conversation is effortless and you just feel connected.
But is it just a magical moment and that's the end of it? Or is there some science here that can explain why you click with this person, but maybe not that person?
Well, this is something that writers, poets, philosophers have been trying to wrap their heads around for centuries. But it's only recently that scientists have started to wonder what causes that feeling. What is it? Is it pure magic and mystery? But is there something that's identifiable as to what's happening within us when we feel that? Because it is almost physical.
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Chapter 3: What is the science behind interpersonal synchrony?
So there are all these factors that can come into whether or not you sync with someone. So like you say, maybe later when you say maybe they grew on you, maybe you all fell into synchrony later because of your association, because of those conversations that you had that helped you have that neural alignment.
But a lot of times, just in the moment, it happens very quickly when you get a read of someone. And it can also go the other way, where you have that immediate experience of like, oh, the person is off-putting for whatever reason. It's just they're not a good fit. And again, at that moment, at that moment, could change later.
Yeah, but it seems like you could have the same experiences with one person and the same as you do with another person, and click with one and not click with another. And as you say, there could be a lot of reasons for that.
But when you take away those things, like you're playing a game together or you're doing activities together, there still has to be something about that person that seems really hard to put your finger on that is causing you to click with that one and not that one.
Absolutely. No, no, that's absolutely true. And and it's really it's sort of multimodal sync syncing is because I've already talked about it's not only these physical things that we do together. It's also all these under the hood things that are happening, the the respiration, the heart rate and a lot of things they can't even measure yet. But we have this instinct to sync with another person.
We like to connect. That's what feels good. But there is a special alchemy. When you think about all the unlikely friendships and romantic pairings where you think, oh, I never would have put those two together. Well, they likely wouldn't have either. There is a special alchemy between two people, between their bond, bodily oscillations. I mean, we're made up of trillions of cells.
The way I like to think about it is that we're all kind of like these walking symphony orchestras. And we have all of these instruments playing at different frequencies and different amplitudes. And when we meet another person, they have their whole orchestra playing as well.
And other people may recognize or appreciate the tune you're playing or just a certain couple of few instruments in your orchestra. And you can sync on certain levels but not in others. And there's some where you can just join in in harmony all together. So it really, it just depends on where you are in your life as well as those underlying ineffable factors that causes you to be in tune.
to click, to be in harmony. I love all these turns of phrase that people have been saying, you know, since well before anybody thought to measure why it was true, but things like in-step, in-tune, in-harmony, on the same wavelength, clicking, it's all actually true on all these subconscious and autonomic levels.
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Chapter 4: What distinguishes true excellence from pseudo-excellence?
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So Kate, knowing what you know, and now that science is looking into why people click and how they click, are there things you can do to nudge it along or it either happens or it doesn't?
I think a lot of it, it either happens or it doesn't happen. It's that peculiar alchemy. But I will say that you can make yourself more receptive to it and make yourself more available to it happening. And like I mentioned, doing these synchronized activities, I mean, when you think back to Aristotle, and the peripatetics.
I mean, there was a reason why he lectured these students while walking around the grounds or why Steve Jobs always invited people he wanted to influence to walk around with him. So there is something about synchronized activities, line dancing, singing, where people just naturally, it makes them more available and makes people more likely to develop affinities for one another.
It's the thought that because you are sinking on certain levels, it makes you more likely to sink on those deeper levels. So there's that. There's also being really engaged with other people, being really curious and being open and allowing it to happen, to give yourself over to the various Signals that we can measure and also can't measure that may be coming from the other person.
So it's really making yourself actually just be a good listener, asking questions and really allowing yourself to get on the other person's wavelength. So, you know, though at the end of the day, it's really that peculiar alchemy between you and another person.
You can make yourself, you know, almost like put up your antenna, make sure that you're available and that you really are paying attention to the other person and allowing them in.
Are there people, I'm really curious about this, are there people who tend to sync up, who tend to click with a lot of other people or find themselves in positions where lots of people yearn to click with them? There's something about their charisma or their charm that makes them more clickable than others, right?
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Chapter 5: How can you pursue excellence without burning out?
The thing I love about this is that you can actually see it happening and realizing how much We are almost like tuning forks roaming the planet, looking for resonance and finding it or not with other people and moving into it and out of it with other people. And that's what essentially makes up our social lives.
Has there ever been a survey done? Has everybody clicked with somebody sometime, more or less? I mean, not everybody, but is it a fairly common experience or is it a fairly uncommon experience?
It's a fairly common experience for most people, but there are things that can make you less likely to click. The research clearly shows that people who have autism or ADHD, that can interfere with synchrony. It's not that you can't click with people, but it makes it a lot harder.
Also, some psychological disorders like depression and anxiety and narcissism can make it more difficult to click with people. So I won't say that I would hope most people do or experience clicking. And when you aren't clicking with people, that's when you have things like loneliness and what we call this loneliness epidemic.
And a lot of that also has to do with because you cannot experience synchrony virtually. Because as we've discussed, it is a multimodal phenomenon. It encompasses more senses than the five we take for granted. And so if you're not in another person's physical presence, You really can experience synchrony to its fullest and richest extent. And by the way, eye contact is really very important.
And the research also shows that when people aren't looking at each other, whether their backs are turned to each other or they're looking at a phone, they're much less likely, and also it's pretty hard, to develop any type of synchrony. So, I think people are really, who are just relying on virtual relationships.
You can, to some degree, feel like you've experienced some degree of synchrony, but then often, as often happens in online dating, when people meet face-to-face, they're sorely disappointed because they're just not feeling it. It's just, the click does not happen.
Well, I mean, that seems to explain so much right there, that you just can't click with somebody if you're not physically in the same room with them. I mean, it doesn't seem like it would even be possible, and yet people seem to be more distant from others because of phones and things that we don't connect with people. And, you know, if you don't connect, you can't sync, you can't click, and...
And even when you're in the same room, to really be present and notice that, because you have to be aware of notice to be able to have that moment of connection, of clicking with another person. And you bring up another point that when we were talking about those commonalities of experience, we have so few of those now, if you think about it.
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Chapter 6: What role does vulnerability play in achieving excellence?
Hey, Brad, welcome. Mike, it's great to be back.
Thanks for having me.
So first, help us understand what excellence is and what excellence isn't.
I think that there is a lot of confusion between what I call pseudo excellence and actual excellence. So pseudo excellence is so much of what you see on social media where folks think that they need to be perfect at everything. They need to wake up at four in the morning. They need to have a 37 step routine and a super restrictive diet and take a cold plunge four times a day and on and on and on.
And the question there is, what's it all for? What's the 37 step routine serving? What's the cold plunge doing? Are you just doing hard things for the sake of doing hard things? That to me is pseudo excellence. I think genuine excellence is, again, when the mountain that you're climbing is one that you chose because it aligns with your values, and it's one that you genuinely want to climb.
And the reason that I think that, yes, this is for everyone, it's not just for elite athletes or master chefs or Grammy-winning musicians, is because so many people that I spoke with in the reporting process said that they have a sense of longing in their lives and kind of a sense of going through the motions and almost numbness.
And when you pursue excellence, when you are serious about an activity, when that activity becomes a craft, one of the greatest rewards that you'll ever get from it, more than any medal or any income or any promotion, is a sense of satisfaction that you've gained skill and you've gained competence.
A lot of the things, though, that people have to do, and maybe in the big picture, they have to, there are things they want to do, but the day-to-day stuff isn't stuff I love to do. I have to pay the bills. These aren't things that seem to require excellence, or do they?
I think that the answer here is it depends. Some of us are really fortunate to have a livelihood that very much aligns with our values, where we can pursue excellence and mastery in our work. Some of us don't, and that's totally okay. I think another big misconception is that excellence is just a pursuit that is professional.
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Chapter 7: How can you effectively raise the floor on bad days?
And not only am I working towards that goal of lifting more weight, but that goal of lifting more weight is also working on me. It's shaping me as a person. And none of this is related to my day job.
So talk about doing this in a real way and maybe comparing it to somebody who doesn't do it in an excellent way. But just moment by moment, day to day, how is it different to do something with excellence versus not? It's one thing to talk about, well, you give it your all and you do the best you can. But what does that mean?
it means a couple of things mike the first thing that it means is that you have to be okay with making yourself vulnerable in risking failure uh just about everybody can remember there were kids back in high school that were too cool to try right they phoned it in in gym class they sat in the back row they never tried in music and they did it because they were way too cool
But the truth is they weren't too cool. What they were is they were insecure and they were scared to fail. So instead of giving something their all and making themselves vulnerable to failure, they just never tried. And I think so many adults have yet to outgrow this tendency. So it's one thing to say that you care. It's one thing to say you're going to give something your all.
It's another thing to actually put yourself in the arena and make yourself vulnerable and risk failure. And you don't get excellence unless you're willing to do the latter. So that's the first thing. The second thing is really approaching what you do with an intentionality and a focus around it. So excellence is the opposite of going through the motions.
You want to be extremely present for what you're doing. And in the modern world, that often means that you have to design your environment to help you become more present. Depending on what your activity is, it might mean leaving the phone behind. It might mean trying to select certain people to do it with.
It might mean having a 10-minute prep session where you get into the right headspace to approach your craft. But it really demands a level of intention and focus that feels different than just the going through the motions of everyday life.
and then i think the third factor that is really important is consistency so it's less about a commitment to intensity and it's more about a commitment to consistency and to showing up again and again over time and as you do that the relationship that you forge not only with your activity but also with yourself becomes that intrinsic reward that keeps you coming back but don't you ever have days where you just go through the motions that i just don't have it today and it's okay
Oh, absolutely. To deny that is really to deny our humanity. We're not optimized robots. We're people doing the best we can in a chaotic world. I think there, the practice becomes, how do you try to stop a bad day from becoming a bad week? And then when you have a bad week, how do you try to stop a bad week from becoming a bad month?
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Chapter 8: What is the relationship between enjoyment and excellence?
It's unrealistic to try to be excellent at everything because you're not going to be excellent at everything. But in order to really be great at something, yes, you have to enjoy it. And I think this is another one of these misnomers with pseudo excellence.
You have all these guys on the internet and they run around pretending to be Navy SEALs talking about how great they are at suffering and how hard everything is. Guess what? No elite athlete. No elite artist, no great writer hates writing or doing sports or making art. They might find it really challenging. They might find it very hard. They might have bad days.
But the totality of the experience, of course they like it. Because if you don't enjoy what you do, if you don't have fun, then you're not going to last very long. There's this enormous misnomer that intensity and joy are separate and they're opposites. But what I found in my reporting and my research is that actually intensity and joy can often coexist.
Like you can bring your all and be really intense about something and have a great time doing it. And when you have that combination, that's when really good things tend to happen.
Do you bring this to everything you do that you enjoy? I mean, if you're going to scramble an egg, are you this intense about it? Or this is for a few select things in your life.
It's gotta be for a few select things. I think that, as I was saying, if you try to bring this to everything, like you're just gonna burn yourself out and you're probably not gonna enjoy or be very excellent at any of the things. So I think this is for one or at most two things in your life. So a lot of people have a primary craft And then maybe there's a secondary craft.
So in my own life, I bring this most to writing. That's my craft. I'm very lucky. It's also my profession. And then as an athlete, I try to train with this mindset most of the time, but certainly not all the time because it's secondary. There are times when I'm in the gym and I'm checking my email in between sets because it's not my job and that's okay.
If I tried to do this when I was scrambling at Ag, I think I'd be miserable and burnt out all the time. And then there are things in life that like we should just enjoy for their own sake. You know, I'm not trying to be excellent at watching Netflix. Sometimes I watch Netflix just because I like it.
So I am not arguing that we should be perfectionist and we should be these type A buttoned up pushers in every domain of life. What I'm arguing is that we should pick one or two activities.
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