Something You Should Know - A Smarter Way to Make Big Life Changes & The Strange Rise of the House Cat

Starting point is 00:00:00 There is one word, I think, gets people in trouble with money. It's probably. I'm probably spending about this much every month. I'm probably saving enough. I'm probably on track for retirement. Probably is not a financial plan. I've been using Monarch. It's a personal finance app that puts your whole financial picture in one place,

Starting point is 00:00:23 and it replaces probably with actual numbers. For example, Monarch showed me that, our spending last month jumped about 30% from the month before. 30%. We had some home repairs, but none of the bills seemed like a big hit at the time, but put them all together and, wow. But I didn't realize how much our spending had jumped until Monarch showed me. And I think that's how money can get away from you.

Starting point is 00:00:51 It's not necessarily one giant expense that sets off alarm bells. It's all the things that add up that you don't really notice. That's what I like about Monarch. You can see your spending, accounts, investments, and savings goals all in one place and see what's really going on with your money. If you're operating on probably, maybe it's time to find out, write your own money story with Monarch. Use code sysk at Monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at Monarch.com. with code S-Y-S-K.

Starting point is 00:01:35 Today on something you should know, what really makes leaves change color in the fall? Then, want to make a big change in your life? There are ways to make succeeding a whole lot easier. Nobody can be accountable to their own goals personally at the same level as when you are accountable to your peers. We talk about peer pressure. I think there's such a thing as peer power,

Starting point is 00:02:00 but only if we initiate that in our lives. Also, why airplane food may taste bad and you're the reason why. And cats. They can be aloof, mysterious, and act like they couldn't care less about us. And dogs may be the reason why. If there were no dogs, we would think of cats as the most highly domesticated animal there is. Compare them to, I don't know, birds or cows or goats.

Starting point is 00:02:25 A cat couldn't be more domesticated. It's only when we compare them to dogs that they appear not to be. All this today on Something You Should Know. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday I'll have a place to wear that.

Starting point is 00:02:48 Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility. Sell it. Every day, people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty. painless. Take what you don't wear, listed on Vinted. Listing is quick and simple. And when an item sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you. And importantly, there are no seller fees on Vinted. So when you sell something, you keep everything you earn. I like this whole idea, because instead of clothes just

Starting point is 00:03:26 taking up space, somebody else gets to wear them and you get some money out of the deal. Your closet, it looks better too. I mean, everybody wins, even the closet. So maybe it's time to stop waiting for someday. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing with no seller fees, so you keep everything you earn. 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. The summer fades and we head into fall, the leaves, in many places, start to change color. But why do they change color? That's the topic we start with today. I'm Mike Carruthers. Welcome to something you should know. We tend to think that leaves turn red and yellow because the weather gets cold,

Starting point is 00:04:24 but trees are actually paying more attention to the shortening days. As summer ends and daylight decreases, trees stop producing chlorophyll, which is the substance responsible for green leaves. As the chlorophyll breaks down, other pigments, other colors in the leaves, become visible. So those yellow and oranges and reds weren't necessarily created in autumn. They were there all along hiding underneath the green all summer. Now, temperature does matter in determining how spectacular the colors will be. Warm, sunny autumn days followed by cool but not freezing nights tend to produce brilliant colors. An early hard frost can actually spoil the show by causing leaves to wither and fall.

Starting point is 00:05:14 You can sometimes see the effect of sunlight on a single tree. Leaves getting direct sun may turn red, while leaves on the shady side remain yellow. So autumn color isn't simply a sign that it's getting cold, it's a tree shutting down its summer food-making operation and getting ready for the winter. And that is something you should know. If you want to change something about yourself, like lose weight, save money, exercise more, get ahead at work, the usual advice is to buckle down, use some willpower and try harder. But what if trying harder isn't the best place to start?

Starting point is 00:05:56 There's a lot of research showing that where you are, who you're with, and what's around you can have an enormous influence on what you actually do. In other words, instead of trying so hard to change yourself, you may be much better off changing your situation. You can make temptation easier to resist, good habits easier to follow, and even bring out a different side of your personality without relying so much on willpower.

Starting point is 00:06:26 That's especially interesting coming from Angela Duckworth because she is famous for studying grit, the power of passion and perseverance. But she has come to realize that grit alone isn't always enough. Angela is a psychologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Her TED Talk is one of the most watched TED Talks of all time. And her book, Grit, was a number one New York Times bestseller. Her new book is Situated.

Starting point is 00:06:56 Find the people in places that bring out your best. Hi, Angela. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you for having me, Mike. I'm excited. So first, explain this idea that changing your situation can change your life or change something about your life. Explain how this whole concept works. Well, something you should know is that your situation, your objective, physical and social circumstances are shaping everything you do. And you can shape the situation first that one of the most, I guess, effective and efficient ways of changing yourself is to change who you're with and where you are. So what would be an example of how those changes in your situation can change things in your life?

Starting point is 00:07:46 If you are in a situation where temptation is near at hand, and I know many of us would say, well, that's not me, but I would ask you, where is your cell phone right now, for example, then you are dramatically more likely to indulge in that temptation, perhaps to your later regret. If you don't want to eat something, put it far away. If you do want to eat it, put it close at hand. If you don't want to look at your phone, don't charge it in your bedroom as the vast majority of Americans in my research with Gallup, like apparently do. If you have no problem with your phone at night, then it doesn't matter. But those are just in some ways trivial examples of how your physical situation. changes what you think about and then in turn what you end up doing.

Starting point is 00:08:32 But of course, there are people too. I think one of the things that is striking about the last 15 to 20 years of American culture is that we're spending less time with people. So our situations don't have people in them as much as they used to. And one of the big lessons of the achievement research that I've been doing and that of other scientists is that it is almost always easier to achieve. achieve a goal if you are striving toward that goal in the company of others who have the same goal. But it would seem to matter a lot who the people are you surround yourself with, that, you know,

Starting point is 00:09:10 some people can bring you up and encourage you to succeed and other people can just pull you down. You know, every time I assign to my undergraduates or my MBA students here, I teach at Wharton and at the University of Pennsylvania, anytime I sign a team project, I get an email from a student who worries about the team dragging them down and about, you know, the possibility that like at the end of the semester, they'll have done all the work. And in fact, twice the work that they would have had to do if it were just an individual project. And in fact, a lot of worry and a lot of research has been, oh, like, what if you have group think? What if you all end up having the same idea? What if you create slacking? But one of the striking findings from my research and, again, that of others, is that when you set a goal and, as you point out, you have a team of like-minded strivers, right?

Starting point is 00:10:07 And you tell each other, for example, like, this is the goal I'm trying to achieve. Like, I would like to go to the gym, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. What's your goal? The person that you tell that to is your accountability partner. They might, in turn, share their goal. and it might be a totally different goal. Like I would like to stop procrastinating on these applications for a fellowship. But what research shows is that both of you are more likely to achieve that goal just for having told the other person.

Starting point is 00:10:32 So when we think about being our best, I do think we should be thinking about being our best in the company of and because of other people. So I've certainly heard, I think everybody's heard that concept of, you know, if you don't want to overeat, junk food. Well, then don't bring junk food into your house. If it isn't there, you cannot eat it. I mean, and that's essentially at a very low level what you're talking about. Yes? It is. And what my research shows, I surveyed hundreds of Americans asking them really almost exactly that question, Mike. Like, you know, would you like to eat less junk food? Unanimously, yes. Like, we asked them, what do you think people should do? And they said, oh, they should not bring junk food in the house. If you're going to have it in the house, put it on a high shelf. try to buy things in smaller packages, try not to buy junk food at all. So these are all situational

Starting point is 00:11:25 solutions. Then we ask them, same people, same Americans, what do you do? Well, I use willpower, right? So I think we know at some abstract level or some intellectual level that the best way to change ourselves is to change our situation first. And yet so many of us wait around until the heat of the moment and then say, yeah, but I won't eat that. I won't scroll on that. I won't do that. And that to me is a big mistake. I certainly understand that and empathize with those people because it's one thing to sit at home and say, you know, write down, I'm going to stop eating junk food. And this is my big goal. But then you're at the grocery store and you're really hungry and you see those twinkies.

Starting point is 00:12:12 And, you know, it's a moment of weakness that basically, sabotages your goal. Well, a lot of people are watching the Odyssey. So let me just use King Odysseus as an example here. You know, there's a chapter in the journey home where King Odysseus is trying to, you know, make it home on a journey. He's been away for 10 years. And he is visited by the goddess, Circe.

Starting point is 00:12:39 And Circe says, you know, you're going to encounter temptation on the way home. So if you're with me, like this is a day. with me, like this is analogous, maybe a little less, you know, mundane than like being at the grocery store and faced with temptation. But the goddess Circe says you're going to be faced with temptation. In fact, you're going to be on this journey home and you're going to want to stop on these islands where these beautiful sirens are going to sing a song that's so beautiful, you know, you can't actually stop listening to it.

Starting point is 00:13:05 And then you're going to essentially be marooned there and you're never going to get home. And this, in effect, is what we confront when we have temptations, whether it's Twinkies at the grocery store or, you know, that next video that you regret watching, you know, long past your bedtime. We think we are strong enough. Odysseus thought he was strong enough. And Circe said, believe you may, you're not strong enough. You need a physical restraint. You need a physical situational solution to resisting temptation. And that is what Odysseus does. He binds himself to the mass with rope. And, you know, he sails past temptation. So I think what we need to do in modern real life is to have situational fixes to not say,

Starting point is 00:13:49 you know what, I'm going to buy this jumbo pack of Twinkies. But I know that I'm only going to eat them, you know, very rarely and at the appropriate times. We think we're going to be strong. But in fact, in the future, we are going to be weak. So binding yourself to the mast is essentially not buying the Twinkies or buying one so that you are not tempted to have. you know, a whole palette of them when you are weak as you will be in the future. So talk about the degrees of resisting temptation, which you just mentioned. Some people will say don't bring it into the house. Others will say, we'll put it on a high shelf. But if you know

Starting point is 00:14:28 it's on a high shelf, you know right where it is when temptation strikes. So do those little degrees help or just don't bring it in the house? I think friction helps anyone, right? And More friction is better. So for some people, they're like, I could reach the high shelf or even if it requires a lot. They need more friction. In fact, I think some dieters would say they can't bring in the house. And some dieters, honestly, I know this is controversial, will say, that's not enough.

Starting point is 00:14:57 They need a GLP1. And I'm going to, you know, claim here, and you don't have to agree with me that taking a GLP1 is a way of changing your situation. Your situation used to have ultra-processed food. Now the world still has ultra-processed food that continues to be manufactured, but now you're taking a GLP-1 and that changes your behavior. So in some ways, that's a very radical way of changing your situation. But anything that's not relying on changing your thoughts or changing your behavior directly to me is a situational strategy. I want to hear how else and where else in life we can use this strategy.

Starting point is 00:15:37 and we'll do that in just a moment. Trade ice skating at Nathan Phillips Square for ice cubes in your umbrella drink. Let Porter Airlines fly you from Toronto Pearson nonstop to 10 top sun destinations in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Costa Rica. Enjoy award-winning Porter service. Toronto has loved for 20 years and start your vacation as soon as you're on the plane.

Starting point is 00:16:04 Book your sunny getaway today at FlyPorter.com. and actually enjoy economy. You gotta try breakfast. And what better way than with a delicious pre-organic coffee? Starting with just $1 all day, every day now until December 31st. You gotta try breakfast. I'm participating in A&W locations in Ontario. We're talking about how making changes to your situation and the people in your life can change your life.

Starting point is 00:16:47 And my guest is Angela Duckworth. she's author of the book Situated, Find the People in Places that Bring Out Your Best. And Angela, we were talking about how you can make changes that make it easier to not eat junk food, which I think illustrates the point really well. But where else in life can we use this and how does it work? Well, I mentioned relying on peers, and I remember reading a paper recently, that was just these striking line graphs of how often people are turning away from groups and turning just to, I guess, themselves.

Starting point is 00:17:25 You know, we exercise alone. We entertain ourselves alone. Many of us are eating alone. Many of us are working at home alone. And when I say use peer power, what I mean is to resist that trend and to say, you know what, I want to run a marathon. I'm going to join a running club. I want to go to the gym more.

Starting point is 00:17:42 I'm going to have a workout buddy. I'm trying to write a book. I'm going to join a group of struggling writers so we can meet. If you are an alcoholic and trying not to be an alcoholic, the single most effective way to beat your addiction, according to research, is to join Alcoholics Anonymous, to do what you could try to do on your own DIY, which, by the way, is 50 times more common in the English language than it was when it was introduced about 50 years ago. instead of doing it DIY, I'm going to use peer power. I'm going to intentionally join a group of people who have a similar goal, even if those goals are individual goals. I think that's one of the most important things for young people to hear because when you

Starting point is 00:18:29 look at these trend lines, they are most steep for young people, for teenagers and young adults. So whatever you're trying to do, that hard thing, make it easier by being part of a group that is also trying to achieve a goal like yours. Well, I find it really interesting what you said a moment ago that just telling somebody you're going to do something has an effect. You know, there is this football team that I studied as part of researching this book. They are the Dillasal Spartans,

Starting point is 00:19:00 and they have taken this to a high level, and I think it is something everyone should know, which is that writing down your goals, which if you're on the Della Sal Spartans every week, you write down your week's goals. They have game goals and, you know, conditioning goals and practice goals if you are a football player on the Dillusel Spartans. But they don't stop there. And by the way, research shows that making a physical note of your goals.

Starting point is 00:19:24 Okay, that helps. But they swap goals with each other. They call them commitment cards. And the person with whom you swap cards is your commitment card partner for the week. Now, does this work? There's not a control group, but I will tell you this. The Dillisal Spartans are the work. winningest football team in history, 151 consecutive wins without losses over a 12-year period.

Starting point is 00:19:51 They continue to be one of the winningest football teams in America. And when you ask the coaches, in particular, the coach under whom this streak happened and who created the commitment card tradition, he will say that nobody can be accountable to their own goals personally at the same level as when you are accountable to your people. peers. So again, you know, we talk about peer pressure. I think there's such a thing as peer power, but only if we initiate that in our lives. There are situations, though, that are difficult to change. If you're in a marriage or you have children that are problematic, you can't trade them in and get other children. So what about in situations that are a little more structured and just not

Starting point is 00:20:36 possible to get out of? You know, I want to agree with you, you know, on denomination. that there are aspects of your situation, whoever you are and whatever your privilege, there are aspects of your situation that you cannot change, that you have no agency to change. But if you would just make another list, and maybe it is shorter, but I don't think it's empty, of the things that you can change. I mean, even relationships, maybe you're not able to change your family of origin, but you can create relationships with, for example, mentors. One of the common denominators of high achievers in my research is that they are proactive

Starting point is 00:21:18 about asking other people they don't yet know for advice. They are proactive about working on projects with mentors that put them in the same orbit for weeks or months. And finally, they very intentionally cultivate mentors for life, you know, mentors who really change, you know, everything about your situation because they are always looking out for you. But finding a mentor, I think that's difficult for a lot of people. Well, let me get more tactical because I think looking and, you know, just hoping a mentor will appear on the horizon is not great advice.

Starting point is 00:21:56 But just to take Oprah Winfrey as an example, she is a mentor magnet without parallel and has had many influential mentors. And one of them is Maya Angelou, you know, the great author. and activist. And before Oprah Winfrey was as famous as she is now, she was a no-name journalist from Baltimore who begged and begged Maya Angelou for an interview. And Maya Angelou eventually submitted, you know, essentially because Oprah was so gritty. It was only five minutes. She only asked for five minutes of conversation and advice. And she was prepared. She listened. At the end of the five minutes, she said, thank you, Dr. Anjolu and goodbye.

Starting point is 00:22:37 And Dr. Anjolu looked at her watch and then looked up at Oprah and said, who are you, girl? And that was the beginning of a friendship and a mentoring relationship that may change. I think you could argue, changed both of these women's lives. So don't just keep looking on the horizon to see who shows up. Send an email or a letter to someone whom you would like to meet and ask them for five minutes of conversation and advice. It's pretty hard to say no to an email like that. Well, you mentioned the word a moment ago, and so you opened the door, but talk about grit. I know you wrote a great book about it some years ago, but how that works into this.

Starting point is 00:23:20 When I talk about grit, I talk about somebody who has passion and perseverance for long-term goals. And I think there's a lot to say about that. There's a lot to say about their mindsets, you know, the beliefs that gritty people carry with them, that give them positive optimistic thoughts. I'm going to tell you something I think people should know, which is that there are four positive optimistic thoughts that drive passion and perseverance for long-term goals. First, this is interesting.

Starting point is 00:23:49 Second, this is important. Third, I can do this for, I know what to try next. And for much of my career that occupied me, I thought, wow, imagine what people could do if they woke up in the morning and they had these four positive optimistic thoughts that would leave them to strive and to not give up. And in the last half of my career, I've just been asking myself, do those four positive optimistic thoughts only come from the inside? Or, for example, this thought, I know I can do this. Does it partly come from a mentor looking you in the

Starting point is 00:24:30 eyes and putting their hands on your shoulders and saying, Mike, you can do it? You can do it. this. And I've come to believe through my research that that's exactly right, that our situation inspires certain thoughts and not others. And those thoughts, of course, motivate our behavior. So if you are trying to look for the chain reaction in your own life, if you want to be better than you are, then of course you're going to have to think differently than you think now. But if you go all the way back to where those thoughts originate, you realize that your situation, your physical and social circumstances, that's where to begin. I think the mistake is to say, well, I'm just going to try harder. That's waiting, you know, to the last moment. And I don't know that

Starting point is 00:25:14 it's especially wise to just say, like, I'm just going to force myself to think more positively, because how long will that last? But put yourself in a great group of peers, get yourself a mentor, set up your personal space, decorate your personal space with quotes that continue to, you know, give yourself the sort of self-talk you want, and let your situation, do the work. So you've given people a lot to think about, wrap this all up for me and some parting words of advice. I think the way to change yourself is to change your situation first. Human beings are incredibly sensitive to the people and the places around them. And if you can notice where you are at your best and put yourself in those situations, then you will be making

Starting point is 00:26:02 doing hard things, and of course that is the Road to Excellence effort, you will be making hard things easier. Well, when you have a way to make hard things easier, how do you argue with that? I've been talking with Angela Duckworth. She is a psychologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She has a TED Talk, which is one of the most watched TED Talks of all time. The name of her book is Situated.

Starting point is 00:26:30 Find the people in places that bring out your best. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. And Angela, thank you for coming on and talking about this. Thank you, Mike. I have loved this conversation, and I look forward to the next one. Trade ice skating at Nathan Phillips Square for ice cubes in your umbrella drink. Let Porter Airlines fly you from Toronto Pearson nonstop to 10 top sun destinations in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Costa Rica. Enjoy award-winning Porter service.

Starting point is 00:27:02 Toronto has love for 20 years and start your vacation as soon as you're on the plane. Book your sunny getaway today at flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. You gotta try breakfast, you gotta try bread me a double-you. And what better way than with a delicious pre-organic coffee starting with just $1 all day, every day now until December 31st?

Starting point is 00:27:35 I've got to try breakfast. I participating A&W locations in Ontario. Cats are a little strange when you think about them. Dogs have been bred for thousands of years to work with us, protect us, and follow our commands. Cats? Not so much. And yet today, tens of millions of American households have pet cats. So how did an independent little predator that often seems perfectly capable of living with

Starting point is 00:28:11 without us, become one of the world's most popular pets. The answer goes back thousands of years when cats discovered that hanging around humans offered some very practical advantages, and humans discovered that cats possessed a skill they so badly needed. From there, a remarkably unusual relationship developed. We fed them, we welcomed them into our homes, and eventually treated them like members of the family, while cats somehow managed to. remain very much cats.

Starting point is 00:28:45 Here to explain how this happened and what the long history of cats reveals about these mysterious animals is Rod Phillips. He's a professor of history at Carlton University in Ottawa, Canada, and author of the book, Cats, a History. Hey, Rod, welcome to something you should know. Thanks, Mike. I'm very happy to be here. So if an alien came down from outer space and said, okay, I understand you human,

Starting point is 00:29:11 people, but explain these cats. What's a cat and what is it? How would you explain that? What is a cat? A cat is a small mammal. It's pretty harmless. And cats have been around humans for maybe 10, 12,000 years in various capacities. But for most of the time, they were useful for dealing with rodents, particularly, but vermin in general, and protecting human grain supplies and other food supplies from rodents like rats and mice. That's the essence of their presence in human society. Has that always been their essence? Have they always served as pets? I mean, they must have been wild at some point, and somebody said, hey, let's let the cat into the house. So then they became pets. Yeah, it's a complicated and a long story. But to go back to the beginning, cats evolved from wild cats. So wild cat is one word, not just a wild cat. It's a wild cat. And wild cats are indigenous to many parts of the world, particularly in Europe and Asia and Africa. And the first real contact between humans and wild cats came in the Middle East, probably somewhere around Iran and Iraq. When humans began to,

Starting point is 00:30:34 settle down. They stopped being hunters and gatherers. They settled into sort of fixed communities, and they began to practice what we now call agriculture. So agriculture meant cultivating certain crops, particularly cereals and grains, also vines to make wine, grains to make beer and so on. And as they did that, they began to store grain for future harvests and also to keep themselves alive for the following year. year. So they began to store grain in, often in underground pits that were just sort of covered with whatever they had. And these pits, of course, attracted rodents. So rats and mice came to feed on the grain. And then we have these wild cats that are living out in the wild. And they

Starting point is 00:31:22 were drawn to human communities because human communities now had these rats and mice. And these with natural prey for the wildcats. Now, this is the first contact that we know, and we can see this in excavations, where we have the remains of human settlements, along with the remains of wildcats and also evidence of grain supplies. So that's how we have evidence of this.

Starting point is 00:31:49 And then over time, over thousands of years, wildcats evolved into cats. Now, cats are basically, the same as wildcats. They look like wild cats. If you look at a picture of a wildcat, I've never actually seen one in the flesh or in the fur. If you look at a wildcat, it looks much like a tabby cat. But it's bigger. It's a few pounds heavier. Not that much bigger, I should say. It's just a few inches bigger. But they're essentially the same as the wild cat, but cats have smaller brains. They have different digestive systems.

Starting point is 00:32:27 And above all, they behave a bit differently. So as cats were among humans, they became kind of more used to being among humans. They were no longer hostile and aggressive towards humans as wild cats can be. Yeah, I was going to ask you, were wild cats or are wild cats? Yeah, well, they are. Well, they're like a lot of animals. They would rather not be near humans. And so wild cats in the wild these days, if they see humans, they just move away.

Starting point is 00:33:02 If they get, if they're confronted, if they have nowhere to go, they can be quite aggressive. And they'd be quite dangerous as well. I mean, they're not big cats like lions and tigers, you know, but they're pretty dangerous. So cats, you know, change that behavior. They became more friendly towards humans until, you know, over time, over thousands of years, they became sort of used to humans being around them. And, you know, we don't know whether they let humans touch them or pick them up or anything like that. But they certainly became much more used to having humans around them.

Starting point is 00:33:36 And humans became used to having cats around them. So their original purpose was really to catch mice and rats. But at some point, they became pets. Yeah, it's a very long process. I mean, over time, you can see the prime purpose of having a cat around. and was to feed on rodents, was to deal with rodents. I mean, bear in mind that, you know, this is beneficial to the cats and to humans because, you know, the cats got food and the humans were, you know,

Starting point is 00:34:08 had vermin and rodents and so on removed from their food supplies and their houses. So it was beneficial, but there was no sense that humans thought that cats should be domesticated in any way, that they should form relationships, with cats, they were just convenient to have around. They would come in, they'd go out, they'd feed themselves, they didn't need to be looked after. And, you know, one of the things that is interesting is that around the same time, people began to have dogs. Now, dogs and cats are often seen as mutual enemies, and probably they are in some respects. But people forged different relationships with dogs. They brought them into their homes. They began to train them,

Starting point is 00:34:54 they began to breed them. You know, they trained dogs to guard houses, to herd animals, to pull sleds, you know, all kinds of things. Whereas cats were never trained to do anything. You know, what they were valued for, which was catching mice and rats, they just did because that's what they did. And so, you know, over time, you can see that, you know, people had cats around them. They had dogs often in their houses, but they began to treat them quite differently. And, you know, while they forged relationships with dogs, they didn't see any need to with cats. So cats were, you know, kind of on the fringes of things.

Starting point is 00:35:33 Dogs were quite central to humans. Cats were on the fringes. And it's their sort of fringe status. They were thought of as, you know, more outsiders. And you see a lot of commentaries saying, well, you know, dogs belong in human society, but cats don't. And so they're there, they're present. but they're outsiders at the same time. And that's really important for some of the attitudes that developed about cats later on.

Starting point is 00:36:00 Yeah. Well, you know, there's two types of people in the world, right? There's dog people and cat people. And, you know, they all have their, they both have their own reasons for liking their particular favorite pet, but they're very different reasons. They are. And, I mean, I think if we asked people, you know, a few hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, if they were dog people or cat people,

Starting point is 00:36:22 it wouldn't even be a question. But everyone was a dog person, and you'd say, why would I be a cat person? Because, you know, cats just didn't figure in people's daily lives. I mean, they were there, but they were kind of overlooked.

Starting point is 00:36:37 They were just under the radar. And it's true, you know, that you find very, very few references to cats in archives, for example, whereas, you know, dogs figure quite prominently. Well, but I think it's partly, or mostly because dogs seem to reciprocate or react to human contact, whereas cats couldn't care less.

Starting point is 00:37:01 Yeah, there's that. I mean, we often think of dogs as domesticated animals and cats is really not domesticated or only half domesticated. And we use dogs as a kind of model to judge cats against. So we can say a dog is a very domesticated animal. It's a person-friendly animal. You can train a dog. A dog will always come when you call it.

Starting point is 00:37:24 You know, when you come home, the dog will come to the door. But a cat, well, hard to train. You know, we all know about herding cats. Cats are hard to train. They tend to be aloof. You come to the door. There's no cat. So, you know, they're quite different.

Starting point is 00:37:40 And so, you know, people think of cats as being aloof and selfish and deceptive and, and, you know, many other things. But when they do that, they're comparing them to dogs. And I often think that if there were no dogs, we'd think about cats very, very differently. Because if there were no dogs and we had cats in our houses, we would think of cats as the most highly domesticated animal there is. Compare them to, I don't know, birds or cows or goats or anything like that. A cat couldn't be more domesticated. But it's only when we compare them to dogs that they appear not to be.

Starting point is 00:38:15 But if cats did not have the inclination ability and desire, to catch mice and rats, they probably wouldn't even be, we wouldn't be having this discussion. I mean, that's why they showed up. That's why they're part of our society and part of people's lives because of that ability and skill. Absolutely. You're absolutely right. I mean, I've never thought of it in those terms, but you're absolutely right. If cats had not come to human settlements to hunt and kill and eat, the rats and the mice that were feeding on human grain supplies. No, I mean, they would have remained wild cats. That would have remained in the wild, like a lot of animals, a lot of other animals.

Starting point is 00:39:02 And they would never evolve into cats. So you're right. This is the key thing about them. And that brought them into human society. But, you know, they're just wide differently from dogs. They don't have the same kind of, you know, what we call the affiliate of characteristics of dogs. They're just not as not as willing to deal with humans as as dogs are. They don't have you know we think of dogs as loyal because we like to you know impose these human

Starting point is 00:39:35 qualities onto animals. So we think of dogs as loyal and friendly and and and you know our best friend and for cats we don't and so you know there they are just always present always useful but not loved but tolerated more than liked I think So when you say cats evolved into house cats Did they evolve or were they bred?

Starting point is 00:40:03 No they evolved There's no evidence that people bred cats until you know maybe two three hundred years ago When particular breeds like Siamis, Burmese Angoras and Russian Blues and so on, you know, there are now, you know, dozens of, you know, what I call purebred cats or recognized breeds of cats, you know, and they developed, you know, independently.

Starting point is 00:40:30 By the 19th century, yes, people were breeding them. They were looking for stock and they were breeding the stock and so on for shows and for commercial purposes. But for the most part, for tens of thousands, for thousands of years, cats just bred themselves. They were, they weren't bred by humans, again, unlike dogs in this respect. So, you know, we get, you know, the hunting dogs, the herding dogs, the working dogs of all kinds. And, you know, they're bred into many, many different varieties. I mean, most cats look like cats. Doesn't matter whether they're angoras or siamese or your household tabby. They all look more or less the same. Whereas you think of dogs, you think of, well, you know, malamutes and and spaniels and chihuahuas and greyhounds. I mean,

Starting point is 00:41:16 there is a huge variety of dogs, which there really isn't of cats. But cats are related to big feline things like lions and tigers, right? Yeah, they're all part of the cat family, you know, but there are many, many species within the family and then subspecies as well. So, you know, the wildcats are a species of the family of cats. And then, you know, the wild cats are of the, of the family of cats. and then cats evolved from them over thousands of years. As I said, they're a little bit smaller

Starting point is 00:41:53 and what's more important is that they behave differently. They've learned to behave differently towards humans than the big cats. But the interesting thing is that all the cats in the world, whether, I don't know if you have a cat, but I mean, you know, your cat, people's cats, your neighbor's cats, cats in Japan, or Russia or France or anywhere in the States and Canada,

Starting point is 00:42:20 all these cats have exactly the same DNA as the wild cat in the Middle East. So these are still the wild cat of the Middle East, but they've modified their behavior and they look slightly different. It's quite an astonishing thing to realize, and this is only in the last 20 years that the scientists have found that they share this DNA. So in my neighborhood, we have at least one, probably more,

Starting point is 00:42:48 bobcats that wander around, and you see them every once in a while. And we see them on our ring camera and what they look so much like a house cat, but bigger. Yeah, again, another species of the cat family. But interestingly, you know, no other species of the cat family. So not bobcats, not. or, you know, any others have actually been taken in by humans. And, you know, what we think of as being domesticated by humans.

Starting point is 00:43:23 I mean, there are, you know, many other species of small cats. I mean, obviously, you don't want a, you don't want a lion or a panther in your living room. But there are many, you know, other kinds of small cats, not quite as small as cats, but things like bobcats and so on, that you could think might have been domestic. investigated, but they weren't. And we don't know quite why. We don't know if wild cats were kind of had a tendency to be less hostile to humans. You know, you can you can look at these animals in zoos or in places where they're penned, but you can't, you don't know what they're like in the wild. And we know that, you know, certain certain animals like oscelots, for example, are pretty friendly to their keepers, you know, they'll rub up against their legs and roll over.

Starting point is 00:44:12 but in the wild probably not. So yeah, this is the only species of the cat family that we've domesticated. But they often behave the same. I mean, if you know cats, you know that they love boxes. They'll jump into a box. If you leave an open box, they love jumping into them. And it's a great video of a zoo. The keepers put a huge appliance box into the pen of a lion,

Starting point is 00:44:41 and it does exactly as a cat does. It walks up to it and sniffs it and then jumps into it. Of course, it destroys the box. But, you know, I mean, there are so many similarities between cats and their big siblings. You said, you know, as everyone knows, dogs come into your house and you can train it to sit and, you know, guard the house and whatever. But cats can be trained. We've seen trained cats in shows and things. So it's not like they can't be trained, but they seldom are.

Starting point is 00:45:11 No, cats can be trained And they can certainly be trained much more than people Than people train them I think for the most part people don't want to train cats I mean they they take cats on You know knowing that they're going to be untrained I mean you can train a cat to use a litter box Not to scratch furniture

Starting point is 00:45:32 You know to come for food and that kind I mean not to jump on the kitchen counters You can train them but most people don't go any further than that. I mean, you can train a cat to walk on a leash, to do tricks to roll over, high five, you know, all the kinds of things that people like to train their dogs to do. It takes longer with cats, partly because cats just aren't as receptive to treats. I mean, you know, the best way to train a dog is using treats to reinforce behavior.

Starting point is 00:46:02 Cats just don't care for treats nearly as much. And so they're, you know, for that reason, they're a lot more resistant to training. But no, you certainly can train them. And there is talk about using cats much more. The sense of smell. I mean, people think dogs have a great sense of smell, but cats have a much finer sense of smell than dogs. And there is talk of training cats for purposes like sniffing out explosives and that kind of thing.

Starting point is 00:46:35 Now, I've heard that, you know, there's concern about cats today because they kill a lot of birds and that, you know, people who like birds are very concerned about that. It's absolutely true. Actually, this goes back to the 19th century when there was concern about the decline of the bird population and people began to point at cats. Well, I mean, there are lots of reasons why bird populations decline and one of the major ones is loss of habitat, you know, with urbanization and industrialization, mining and that kind of thing. So, you know, bird populations decline for a lot reasons, but cats are certainly very, very important. It's not so much house cats or, you know, like people's pet cats that go out in Rome. I mean, they will, of course, kill birds and

Starting point is 00:47:22 kill other small mammals and so on. It's mostly feral cats. And if you look at the cat population of the world, and we have no idea how many cats there are, people suggest between 600 million and a billion in the world, but most of them are feral cats. So they're cats that live in the wild, They live in groups called colonies, they live away from human populations, and they just feed on what's available. And so they feed on birds, they feed on small mammals, they feed on snakes, reptiles of various kinds. But certainly the cost in terms of birds is huge as far as cats are concerned, but mainly feral cats. Well, it's interesting what you said. I'd never really thought about it before, but we compare.

Starting point is 00:48:10 dogs and cats. And so we think cats are aloof because they're aloof compared to dogs. But cats are cats and they're very domesticated and people love them. I've been talking with Rod Phillips. He is a professor of history at Carlton University in Ottawa, Canada. And he is author of a book called Cats, A History. There's a link to that book in the show notes. And Rod, thank you for being here. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate it. Fine food has a terrible reputation. But here's something interesting. At cruising altitude, the cabin is extremely dry,

Starting point is 00:48:49 and the air pressure is lower than what you're accustomed to. Both of those things interfere with your ability to taste and smell. Research has found that our perception of saltiness can drop by as much as 30%, while sweetness can drop around 20%. And even the constant background roar inside an airplane can all, alter the way we perceive flavor. Well, this creates an unusual problem for airline chefs. Food that tastes perfectly seasoned in their kitchen can taste bland and terrible at 35,000 feet.

Starting point is 00:49:25 That's why airline meals often use stronger seasonings and ingredients that are rich in umami. It's that savory taste that's found in things like tomatoes, mushrooms, and parmesan. It may also help explain the curious popularity of tomato juice. on airplanes. Tomato juice holds up unusually well when your other taste sensations have been dulled. And that is something you should know. You know, if you were to share this podcast with someone you know, a friend of yours, a relative, or a stranger, you'll be doing them a favor because now they'll have a new podcast to listen to that perhaps they haven't, and you will look so smart for having

Starting point is 00:50:07 done so. And we would appreciate it a lot. It helps us grow our audience. and that's what helps keep this podcast going. I'm Mike Rothers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad. I get it. I'm Siaiaia and I live in Ice Cove.

Starting point is 00:50:30 I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how. I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem.

Something You Should Know - A Smarter Way to Make Big Life Changes & The Strange Rise of the House Cat

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.