# The 3 Things Every Room You Live In Must Have to Be Okay | Leidy Klotz

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/good-life-project-963599/the-3-things-every-room-you-live-in-must-have-to-be-okay-leidy-klotz
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/good-life-project-963599/the-3-things-every-room-you-live-in-must-have-to-be-okay-leidy-klotz.md
Podcast: [Good Life Project](https://stenobird.com/podcast/good-life-project-963599)
Published: 2026-07-27T09:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://shows.acast.com/goodlifeprojectinspirationmotivationhappinessmeaningsuccess/episodes/the-3-things-every-room-you-live-in-must-have-to-be-okay-lei
Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/61de0665cc27c20014ea15cf/e/6a6121ab541edc613e748f1c/media.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/good-life-project-963599/episodes/the-3-things-every-room-you-live-in-must-have-to-be-okay-leidy-klotz
Duration seconds: 2814

## Resource

Most of us think the biggest decision about a room is whether it's functional. Leidy Klotz thinks that's the wrong question, and the right one changes how a desk, a kitchen, or an entire return-to-office policy actually lands on the person living inside it. Leidy Klotz is a behavioral scientist and engineering professor at the University of Virginia who studies how and why humans design. His research has appeared in Nature and Science , and he's been interviewed everywhere from Hidden Brain to Freakonomics to The Atlantic. Before any of that, he spent 22 years as a professional soccer player and then built schools for a living, which is part of why his take on space is so physical and so lived-in. In this conversation, you'll explore: The three psychological needs that every space either feeds or starves, and why they trace straight back to hunter-gatherer survival Why Susan Cain's open-office backlash and today's return-to-office mandates are the same failure wearing different clothes The strange, well-documented phenomenon of "habituation," including the story of an architecture student who walked past a six-story landmark building for years without ever seeing it A simple practice called "space before screen," and why the top of a parking garage might be the cheapest awe you'll ever find What it means to build a space that keeps someone's memory alive, drawn from one of the most personal stories Leidy has ever told on a podcast If you've ever felt something shift the moment you walked into a certain room and couldn't say why, this conversation gives you the language for it. You can find Leidy at: Website | LinkedIn | Episode Transcript Next week, we're sitting down with Chris Guillebeau to talk about why the anxious feeling that you're running out of time might be l…

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## Transcript

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