How To Do Everything - Apple Stores, Cow Chips and Miracles

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

On today’s episode from the archives, Apple’s top-secret guide on how to be a human being. Plus, how (not) to scam the airlines, and a competition you might want to avoid.You can email your burning questions to [e-mail] To Do Everything is available without sponsor messages for supporters of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me+, who also get bonus episodes of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! featuring show outtakes, extended guest interviews, and a chance to play an exclusive WW+ quiz game with Peter! Sign up and support NPR at plus.npr.org. How To Do Everything is hosted by Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag. It is produced by Heena Srivastava. Technical direction from Lorna White.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, it's Mike and Ian, and today we have another classic episode. And this one contains within it a tip that both of us still use. You know when you have really great leftovers and you're so excited to take them for lunch the next day? And then you get to work and you realize you left them at home. It's the worst thing that could happen to you. It's the worst thing. Mike here has a tip. So a tip that my dad passed on to me was that if I put my keys in the fridge with my food,

then I would almost never forget it because I'd almost always need to use my keys to lock the house or unlock my bike or get into my car. And so, yeah, that became the way that I never forgot my food is by putting the keys in the fridge. So, yeah, so in the morning, I guess you just go in, your keys are a little cold, I guess.

Yeah, they're typically cold. And honestly, sometimes I'd be ready to leave and think, man, where did I put my keys? and then I'd be outside trying to figure it out and then have to go back in and remember that my food is with my keys. I can imagine, though, I'd get to a point where I know I'm going to forget that too.

So eventually there's just all this stuff in the fridge on top of the lunch with the keys. Yeah, I'm sure if I packed my tool bag and my keys and my food all in the fridge together, my roommates wouldn't be too happy. Let me ask you this question. Have you ever used one of those keyless entry-type keys like you hit the button, it opens your car door?

My car is from the early 80s, so I don't think I've used those before, but that's a good question, whether or not the cold would affect the battery life or the functionality of the key. Yeah. Well, maybe we can, if somebody hears that, they try it, and they can never get into their car, they can call us, and we'll talk about that next time. All right, thanks for the tip, Mike.

Thank you. This is How to Do Everything. I'm Mike. And I'm Ian. On today's show, a tip that will get you quickly through airport security, but that you absolutely should not do. But first, Apple just unveiled a bunch of new stuff, and we're wondering how are they going to get us to buy it? Sam Biddle of Gizmodo, now of Intercept, just got his hands on the top secret Apple store employee manual, in which Apple attempts to control. every facet of their employees' behavior and appearance?

Yeah, completely. Right. There is an Apple way to do pretty much everything that happens inside an Apple store. Almost every minute physical gesture. There's a right and wrong way to do it. There's a wrong way. There's an Apple way to stand. There's an not-apple way to put your hands on a table.

Well, you're supposed to stroke your chin. I think that was my favorite part was this sort of absurd chart of which behaviors are considered aggressive and which are considered friendly. Yeah, this is the section, emotion portrayed by nonverbal gestures. Yes. Which is like basically it's a chart teaching you how to be a human being. Exactly. Right. If you have just arrived here from some extraterrestrial culture, This would be a pretty good primer on, you know, how not to seem like you're going to murder someone, like smile, don't, you know, put your hands in the fists up in front of them. Well, you have the chart in front of you.

Can you give us sort of an example of how the language works in the chart? Yeah, so on the chart, which appears on page 45 of the manual, positive behaviors are broken down into things like cooperation, expectancy, evaluation, acceptance. and then subdivide the things like unbuttoned coat, which is a sign of cooperation or stroking your chin is a sign of evaluation or tilting your head, hand-to-cheek gestures. I'm not really sure what that means. It's just scratching your face.

But then on the other side of the chart, drumming on the table or putting your head in your hands is a kind of boredom. You're not supposed to kick the ground or ball your fists. No, and don't point directly to anyone or make a tisk sound. those are signs of frustration according to Apple. So there's this other, it looks like throughout the manual they have all these basically role plays for, you know, what if a customer says this? So let's you and I go through one of them.

This is a technique. Well, first tell us the technique. It's called the three Fs. The three Fs, feel, felt, and found. Yeah, it's a way of putting yourself in the other person's shoes so that you don't have to actually admit any wrong. So Apple has this, they have it lined up, so the Genius is supposed to use all three of the Fs in one interaction. Yep, yep. So I'll be the customer here.

Sure. So Genius, this Mac is too expensive. I can see how you feel that way. I felt the price was a little too high myself, but I found that the real value is because all the building software comes right there. So you see that I haven't really answered. your problem, which is the fact that the computer is expensive. But I'm saying, you know, I'm sort of like speaking to you from within this conscience, this retail conscience, that, you know, this isn't so bad,

without actually having to talk about a price tag at all. The Apple employees are also, they're limited, there's things that they are absolutely not allowed to say. Oh, yeah, a lot is off-limits. So tell us a few of the things that jumped out at you there. Sure, yeah. Well, you're not allowed to acknowledge that there are any, bugs in the world of computing, which is, you know, ridiculous.

Everything has bugs, whether it's an Apple product, Google product, an Android product. There aren't even a lot of a problem, though, which is really incredible. Yeah, I can understand maybe wanting to avoid the word bug because you don't want to portray the stuff you're selling as having bugs. But everything has problems. You know, even if someone drops their computer and it's completely their fault, they might say, well, the problem getting the laptop hinge to close. You're not allowed to call that a problem.

You're supposed to refer to it as a condition or an issue. A condition. Right, like it'd come down with a glaucoma or something. It's a situation. Sometimes it's really just a flat-out denial of reality. Geniuses are not allowed to say hot, the word hot, when talking about a computer. Nothing runs hot. Which is a huge thing, at least with my iPhone, it will get so, so hot.

Yeah, I mean, if you use it outside, sometimes, it gets so hot that it shuts down. My laptop at work gets so hot that it's uncomfortable to touch it. You're only allowed to say warm. Warm. The condition is known as warm. Right. You can never say the word hot. Can I ask you one more thing?

Sure. This is something I actually kind of rely on here in Chicago. It's really in the cold winter. I get really, I'm so happy when it warms up because I'll sort of stick it inside my glove and it'll warm up my hands. Right. So you follow these things a lot. Is there maybe a best, like, app or something that is going to warm up my phone the most so I can kind of predict it?

I think your best bet is probably a game, like a very snazzy 3D game. That's particularly, you know, you just want something that's going to kill your battery, basically. You know, turn Wi-Fi on, turn Bluetooth on, turn as much stuff on as possible, and put on a game, and that thing will. I think we'll do like a coal. Well, this has been great. Thanks, Sam. My pleasure, really. This message comes from Rinse.

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for you. Our email address is how you. to at npr.org. We promise that no matter what you ask us, we will find the exactly right person to provide an answer. All you have to do is send us your question. Send it to how to at npr.org. If your question is, how do I send an email, it's going to be difficult for you to send in that question.

But you can call our 800 number. Oh, yeah. 1-800 gag-ax-5. Yep, 1-800. G-A-G-A-X-E-E. the number five. We learned a new term this week, miracle flight. It's a term

people in the airline industry use. We'd never heard it before, so we wanted to know more. We have with us now a major airline pilot. He would prefer to remain nameless. So we'll just call him Captain Bob. Captain Bob, can you tell us what a miracle flight is? Oh yeah, a miracle flight. Well, we don't see these

on every flight, but unfortunately you see them probably a good amount of the time, 50% of the time. This is where we have passengers who, they get on board the aircraft with some malady. Generally, they arrive in a wheelchair, and we're not sure what happens, but somehow from the point of departure to the point of arrival, they're healed. They no longer need the wheelchair. Hence, it's our miracle flight. That's right. They can walk off the aircraft under their own power. And so what's going on here? Well, we're not sure if there's some cosmic element. We're not sure if some of the flight attendants are actually healing the passengers, or they're just trying to scan the airline and get around security in an easy way.

Okay, so it's not the food. Definitely not the food, if there even is food. So these people, they are renting or finding a wheelchair just to get through TSA security, faster and I guess be the first to board the plane. How often do you think you guys and the flight attendants can spot them? Well, they're easiest to spot, of course, when they just get up in flight and avail themselves of the lavatories or when they just get up and walk off the aircraft at the end and they say, sir, you need your wheelchair. No, no, I'm fine. I can make it. Wow, look at him go. The Wisconsin Cowchip Throwing Championships were held last weekend. That's a sport where you throw cow chips.

Which are cow poop. They are cow poop. And Kevin Tressler is this year's champion. So we thought we'd get a quick how-to on how to throw a cow chip. Kevin, first of all, how does it feel to be champion? I don't know. It was kind of, honestly, funny to me and my whole family because I've never done this before. So I always watch it.

So wait, you've never thrown chip before? No. Wow. So what do you... You're a natural. Yeah. Well, I figured I played disc golf. I mean, that could have helped, but I don't know.

So, yeah, I got to admit, I didn't know there was a cow chip throwing competition until very recently. Can you tell me how it works? They just have a huge, like, kind of trailer of just, like, a whole bunch of cow chips. and you can't, like, break up the couch, you can't, like, modify it at all, I guess. So it sounds like the first thing you do is you select the best possible chip. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I guess you don't want to have a huge, like, the smaller ones are better because they go farther.

Like, you get exactly, like, six inches of diameter. It's probably the best chip. So once you get, once you get a select the chips and you're throwing, tell us, is it like a discus, do you spin around and launch it? How's that work? No, you can just get a running start and throw as hard as you can. But you definitely, you just throw it, kind of want to throw it overhand, for sure, because you can't throw it like a regular, like, throwing a Frisbee or else.

It's not going to go, like, it's not going to go very far. And so how far was your winning throw? 211.3 feet, I think. Wow. Is there a big crowd there watching that you need to worry about hitting? Yeah, there's. Yeah. Like, some people get hit by him, but, I mean, it's not, no concussion or anything.

But there's definitely have to, like, make sure you throw it away, like, down the middle away from the crowd. I mean, concussion or not, getting hit with cow poop, that can't be a good thing. No, not as well. How many throws do you get from one chip, usually? Like, like, reusing the chip? Do you just get the one throw? You get two throw, you pick two chips, and you get two. throws, and they pick the farthest throw, is the one that counts.

But that couch, it breaks probably when it lands, right? Well, not always. It depends on how big it is. Like, my, they actually gave me my winning couch it back to cheap. Yeah, where is it? What have you done with it? It's in my garage, but me, my family have been joking around, like, saying, like, how they put signed baseballs and a little glass containers,

and they could put the couch up in there and keep up the house. probably airtight for sure All right Well congratulations Kevin It's great to talk to you Yeah thank you

Well that does it for this week's show Would you learn Ian Well I learned You know that Sam talked about The Apple employees have the three Fs For when somebody comes to them with a problem I think that that might be good for

Any problem Somebody comes up like in your life Somebody comes up to you with a problem that you kind of don't want to have to deal with that you could use the 3Fs the feel felt and found do you want to try telling me a problem that I don't want to talk to you about and I'll okay all right what if we're driving together and I don't have enough money for gas and you haven't contributed any any money at all does that work yes all right so hey we're just about empty here do you think you could get this next tank of gas I can see that

you feel that I should pay for the gas. I myself felt like I should pay for the gas. But I've found that it's easier not to pay for the gas. We still need to get where we're going, and we don't have any gas. I can see that you feel that we don't have any gas. I too felt like we don't have any gas. But I found it to be an effective way to avoid paying for gas. So this just feels frustrating.

I can see that it feels frustrating. I find that I want to punch your face. How to Do Everything is produced by Hina Shravastava with technical support from Lorna White. Get us your questions by emailing us and email to our email address. That's how to at npr.org. I'm Mike. And I'm Ian. Thanks.

Thank you.