Me. Welcome to the You Are Not So Smart Podcast.

Episode.

Episode.

One. one. In psychology they call it the cocktail party effect and makes sense. Let's say you're at not a cocktail party, but a children's birthday

party. Something really noisy. You're there maybe as a favorite to your mom and

it's your little niece or your little nephew and all their

friends running around screaming, laughing.

There's a clown making balloon animals over there.

There's a stereo blasting music against the walls and all the adults are having conversations. But you find yourself

cornered by your Aunt Martha, and you know, you have to pay close attention, you have to allow

her to tell her story and let all of the other sounds go blurry.

So you can hear what she has to say about her tribulations concerning sprinkles, her geriatric cat who refuses to throw up on the hardwood floors,

and instead insist on hurling on the hardwood floors and instead

insist on hurling on the carpet in front of her television which is terrible she

says because she must sit there and wait for it to dry while watching reruns of

matlock and kicking sprinkles away.

Right you say. reruns of Matlock and kicking sprinkles away.

Right, you say, as she explains, well, it's easy to clean it up once you let it dry.

Now you can't just nod and let your mind slip off because with all that noise it's going to disperse into the crowd. You're going to hear what this guy is saying over here, you're going

to listen to the lyrics over there.

And that's the cocktail party effect.

It's your ability to pay attention to one person and drown out the rest so intensely that

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