How To Do Everything - Pee-Rex

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Today from the archives, a chance to win a free t-shirt if you have a sharp ear for dinosaur moans. And we help a listener with a question about public bathrooms. Plus, why both "Nathaniel" and "Phyllis Isabel Gertrude" are statistically awful names for a child.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 exclusive games, behind-the-scenes content, and more. 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

We need to begin this week's show with a correction. A couple podcasts ago, we talked to a guy named Jesse, and he and his family used the word Nate to talk about a dumb person or an idiot. Yeah, you might say, why are you being such a Nate? So Jesse had called us in the hopes that we would be able to find out the roots of this, where this had come from in his family.

We failed to do so. But our listener Amelia called in with a possible solution. Well, I was actually wondering if you were going to mention it. I used to do medical transcription and when he was saying how, you know, they call someone who's being dumb or whatever and Nate, I'm like, well, but Nates are buttocks. Wait, so the word Nate means buttock? Wait, so the word Nate means buttock? Well, plural, yeah. Oh. Also, also clunes, C-L-U-N-E-S, those are buttocks.

We're talking about Latin here. I guess, yeah. Okay, okay. Well, so maybe this Nate insult dates all the way back to, you know, ancient times. Maybe, maybe. I guess if you were to meet somebody named Nate Clooney. Yeah. Yeah.

That's really a worst case scenario. Yeah. We have some very important news that we're going to talk about now. And it may change the way that you think about dinosaurs. On the line with us now are Julia Clark and Chad Eliasson. They work at the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. So Julia, can you just tell us what you all found out about dinosaurs? So what we found was that instead of this vision, this kind of, this image we have, you know, most typically you've got these dinosaurs running in movies and somehow they're

able to run and have a giant open mouth and roar. First of all, this is not a context in which many animals vocalize. If you can just imagine kind of running along and you're about to eat a hamburger, you know, are you going to make a big roar? You know, so you might be out of breath because all animals essentially vocalize when they're exhaling. Yeah, I mean, when we think about dinosaurs and we get most of our, I guess, data from movies. We imagine these incredible big roars and these high-pitched screams. Your best guess, based on the data that you have,

what does it actually sound like? So we looked at this interesting behavior that no one had really thought of before, of vocalizing with a closed mouth. It allows them to produce much lower frequencies than if they were vocalizing with an open mouth. Let's hear it then. How does it sound? Yeah, we're going to get so yeah, Chad should take it away.

It's difficult. So I'll give you my kind of impression. So maybe something like maybe, possibly, maybe a little higher, but it's really hard to do. I can't inflate my esophagus. Well, thank you both so much for talking to us about this. Yeah, thank you for having us. Yes, thank you. I feel like a fun thing to do now that we know

what dinosaurs actually sounded like. Now that we know what sound might signal to you that a dinosaur lurked nearby, is we should hide dinosaurs throughout the rest of today's episode. Make it kind of like a game. Yes, and so you, as you keep listening to the show, you will hear dinosaurs, and at the end of the episode,

count up how many dinosaurs you heard, send us that number, whoever sends us the correct number first will get a t-shirt or something. We have some t-shirts. Yeah, we maybe, what we should do is make t-shirts with extra tiny sleeves in case it's a T-Rex that wins. Or maybe with a cutout back in case it's a Stegosaurus. Yes. Or maybe just one slit down the back in case it's a spinosaurus.

We've reached the boundary of the dinosaurs I know. Or a hole in the back if it's got a long tail like an ankylosaurus. So send us the correct number to howto at npr.org. Whoever is first gets a horribly altered T-shirt. t-shirt. Hey, this is, you are listening to an archive episode, but this is the two of us, Ian and Mike, coming to you from the present day. Yeah, we're still, we're our regular normal selves here in the year of 2025.

So you may think, wait, this is an archive episode. I'm not going to play this dumb game they've just introduced, but go ahead and play and we will send you a t-shirt. Yeah, we will honor our commitment as stated in the archive episode. If you're able to complete the task, you will win a prize. One of you. We will send out one single t-shirt. Whoever sends us an email with the correct number first gets a t-shirt. The sends us an email with the correct number first gets a t-shirt. The rest of you honestly probably won't even get an email reply. And you may not even want a t-shirt because if you've ever caught a t-shirt at like say an NBA game or any kind of game where they throw t-shirts, those are not good t-shirts.

I like the idea we would just arrive at someone's house if they win with a t-shirt cannon and shoot it at them. Just shoot it straight out of point blank. So who knows, give it a try, see what happens. In the meantime, if you have a question for us, send it to howto at npr.org and we will do our best to answer it for you. And you may have a chance to win a t-shirt execution style. Hey Kimberly, what can we help you with?

Okay, so assuming that all bathrooms are cleaned every single day, all public restrooms, I am wondering which stall actually gets used less. Are people more likely to go to the farthest one or the closest one or the handicap one? Basically, when you walk into a public restroom, is there some kind of system you could use to maximize your chances of getting the cleanest stall? Yeah, exactly.

Uh-huh. And when you're in a situation where you have to use a public restroom, which stall do you usually pick? So it was always the farthest or the biggest, but then I went to a phase where it was always the closest one, and now I just go somewhere right in the middle, just because I think that might be the closest. So that's my strategy right now. Because I'm with you on the picking the closest one in the thought that people would always walk past that one first.

Yeah. So it would be the least used and therefore the cleanest. I don't know. I mean, if a stall is used once but horribly, it would be the least used but the filthiest. Exactly. Exactly. But I think I am going for least use because I assume that most people are trying to keep it somewhat clean. Okay.

It's quite an assumption. All right. Well, we are going to try and find you at least something. I think the best we can do for you, honestly, to help help the odds. We can't we can't guarantee a perfect bathroom life but we'll get as close as as humanly possible. I think that's fair. If that fails we'll just send you some Purell. Okay well thank you for answering my question or at least working on my question and being invested in this with me. I've been thinking about this for probably way too

long so thank you. We're there for you Kimberly. You guys are the best. Right in the stall with you. Kimberly, we think we have somebody who can help you. Nicholas Christenfeld is a professor of psychology at the University of California San Diego and he's done extensive research into how people make the choices they make. So Nicholas, heard Kimberly's question how can she pick the best bathroom stall? Well best is of course a tricky problem with the bathroom stall probably actually least bad is what she's looking for. Yeah. But presumably one thing that she might have in mind is the least popular one. Obviously she should choose one that's not currently occupied

but she may have in mind the even more than that but you would like to want to that's least likely recently to have been occupied or or at least used since it was last cleaned sir it was good to push that jibba fit uh... interesting double problem right one is to say you know how do people choose from

from these arrays of apparently identical options? And then second, if she can figure out how other people choose, she would like to deliberately choose differently. Well, okay, so she walks in, there are four stalls, there's no evidence that any one is worse than another. What's the right play? Right. So then our get a few if you come in and these are just laid out for right in front of you all equidistant all equiclean and so on then people other people have this tendency to go for the middle and avoid the edges and then I think she could exploit that by doing

the opposite her natural instincts would would be to go for the middle and if she recognizes that instincts in herself or knows that exists in other people, then she could do the opposite. So hit the edges? Right. Hit the first one, maybe. Yeah, and I think that would be a reasonable option. You know, if the one on the edge, the nearest the door, would be the one that people would naturally be averse to. And if she can embrace it, then she could be its first user of the day. I mean, the risk there is that people see your legs and shoes, but because it's more

exposed, people tend to avoid it, it's probably going to be the cleanest of the four. Right. Yeah, that's a reasonable way to do it. You trade privacy for cleanliness. And again, this will be modified by the specifics, but as a first approximation, that seems like a good rule for her. Okay, that means that you're right, she could walk in there and it could be a disaster. Exactly. But all things being equal, first one is the best one. Yeah, on the edge. All right. I'm curious about another thing that you've researched.

Can you tell us about your research into initials, in people's names? Yes, so this was inspired by the thought that lots of people have that that maybe your name does have some impact on you some nominal determinism if you will that if you're called mister heart pain you'll have your life uh... years it asking you know why die of a heart attack and ever to meet you heart pain of you know did you have a heart attack

and the thought being that you're called heart pain there there has to be some consequence and so we wondered about this and some of these things are hard to test, but we want to see, you know, is there a general positive effect of good names and a negative effect of bad names? And you can find lots of good names in the world. You know, so people call their children hope, faith, and charity, for example, but they rarely call their children loser of player

or hopeless you know they recognize that would not be and i think that it turned out people less careful with the initials so all parents are very careful to avoid negative names sometimes they slip away by these negative initials and he can look and we looked at

death certificates he can find people who spent their lives with initials like ass or pig or die and see what effect does this have on mortality compared to going through life with initials like win or wow or VIP. And it turns out from this data set you could find a difference in longevity, that is being called VIP adds a little to your life and being called p i g uh... subtract a little bit from it

anything inconsistent with what you'd expect the causes of death that are most moved by these initials are the for things like suicide or accidental death the kinds of things you might imagine would be you know most responsive to your

your psychological state. Wow. The thought is, for a start you have to go through middle school with these initials, and it will not escape the attention of your peers. But then also, you go to the bank and the person says, initial here, and you have to write down PIG. Or you go to buy pillowcases, and the sales clerk says, oh, would you like those monograms? And you have to think like, I don't't really want pig written on my pillowcases and so you got this constant slight but constant negative effect on your life. This is

really fascinating and I we I feel like we actually helped Kimberly today. Yeah oh good yes maybe she can report back later how much better her life is. We should probably figure out what her initials are though. Well beginning with K I think she might be okay already. She's probably good, yeah you're right. Alright, thanks Nicholas. Okay, bye. Take care.

Well that does it for this week's show. What did we learn today Mike? Well I learned that Nate actually does have a relationship to people that are dumb. It means butts. I do think that's interesting. It's nice to learn the Latin that Nate means butts. I do think that's interesting. It's nice to learn the Latin that nates means butt. I have a pretty formal relationship with my butt, so I call it by its full name, Bethaniel.

I also learned that dinosaurs make a kind of a low humming or cooing sound. It's interesting to imagine. Like, it seems like when you think about what this closed-mouth sound would sound like, it really sounds like a bunch of dinosaurs are at a very interesting lecture, you know? Just mmm, mmm, mmm. Right, so there's like some like velociraptor in front giving like a lecture on Diplodocus's Odyssey and they're all wanting to look intelligent so they're just nodding along.

Brilliant. How to Do Everything is produced by Nadia Wilson with Technical Direction from Lorna White. Our intern this week is Annabeth. Annabeth spent the week putting the finishing touches on a new tablecloth for the show. We don't have a table, but we appreciate the, let's call it a floor blanket.

Yeah, it's kind of a very thin rug. Our artist in residence is Justin Whitty. You can send us your questions, send them to us at howto at npr.org. Our website is howtodoeverything.org. I'm Ian. And I'm Mike. Thank you.