Something You Should Know - Best Moments of 2018 You May Have Missed – Part 1

Episode Date: December 24, 2018

With over 100 episodes a year, it is entirely possible you may have missed some of the best, most interesting moments of the past year. Or perhaps you may have forgotten some interesting intel you learned. So here are some highlights from 2018.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, some of the best moments you may have missed over the past 100 episodes this year, including what your kids really think about you, plus how to create more special moments in your life. I mean, I think we have a certain fatalism about these moments. You know, we appreciate them when they happen, and it's just kind of unpredictable magic. But this is actually a power that we have that we may not be using, and that is we can understand what these special moments are made of, and we can create more of them. Plus, great life hacks, how your friends influence your behavior,

and why you get embarrassed. The whole point of embarrassment is it's designed to connect us, because it's a tricky thing. We want to hide our face, but that's supposed to show simply we didn't mean to be a threat. We know we messed up. All this and much more today on Something You Should Know. As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily.

Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know,

I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Hi and welcome. One of the reasons that I suspect you and a lot of other people listen to this podcast, and the reason it's so popular, is because when you listen, you learn and discover so much. I know I do. And even if you're a regular listener, you may not get to every episode. And even if you do get to every episode, you can't remember everything. I mean, we do two new episodes a week, 51 weeks a year. There are two interviews per episode, so that's 102 interviews a year,

plus two pieces of short intel in each episode. That's another 102 pieces of information. That's a lot. So at the end of the year, I think it's fun to go back and review some of the highlights. Because here's the thing. For any interview or any bit of intel to get on this podcast, there has to be something really outstanding about it. Something amazingly interesting or useful that you probably didn't know before.

And so in this episode, I want to share and relive some of those really interesting bits of intel, many of which I remember and have stuck with me over the year, and I think are worth replaying. Starting with, and this is a good time of year for this, as you may be planning your New Year's resolutions, what you think about your health, how you rate your health, excellent, good, fair, or poor, really matters. Because how you rate your health is probably correct.

In research at Carnegie Mellon University, those people who rated their health as excellent were twice less likely to develop a cold than people who rated their health as good or fair. It suggests that people who consider themselves to have excellent health have a stronger immune system than those who have some doubts. Poor self-ratings of health have been found to predict actual health and mortality in adults. Previous studies have focused on behavior like exercise and diet and how it predicts health and longevity.

The study shows that there's something to actually believing you're healthy. Perhaps when you believe you're healthy, you are more likely to act that way, but it is clear that a good attitude about how healthy you are really matters. Next, I spoke with psychologist Noelle Nelson about the power of appreciation, and this has really stuck with me, that being appreciative for the things that you have can really make a difference. Here's what she had to say. There's been an awful lot of work done on optimists. And optimists are appreciators, meaning they basically run around appreciating pretty much everything all the time. And the studies have shown that optimists live longer, age better, do better at work, at school, and actually outperform their own abilities.

And optimists, if you're asking me, you know, are people more naturally appreciative or not, the easier way to look at it is, well, do you think of yourself more as an optimist, a glass-half-full person, or a pessimist, a glass-half-empty person? If you're an optimist, the chances are very good you are an appreciator, because that's what they do. I guess people might think that, well, if you just appreciate all the things you have and all the people in your life, you kind of lose your motivation to want more, because you've already got everything. Well, that's confusing appreciation with gratitude.

Gratitude is something you do in hindsight, if you will. For example, if somebody does something nice or you have a nice house or your kid did well in school, you're grateful. But appreciation is something you do regardless. In other words, it's valuing something. So you can appreciate something in the future, as opposed to being grateful. Grateful is something that you're grateful for something in the past.

But you can appreciate something in the future. For example, I've got a meeting coming up, a work meeting later this week. I can start right here, right now, valuing that meeting, valuing the people that I'm going to be working with, and therefore appreciating the work ahead of time. Now, will the meeting go well? I don't know, but I can guarantee this, is that I'm in a better place because of valuing it, even though it's in the future, than if I either didn't think about it at

all or was worrying about the meeting. That is an interesting distinction. I think, at least I would consider appreciation and gratitude kind of the same thing. And most people do, Mike. Most people do. And that's why they don't really see why appreciation is so powerful. Because when you said, you know, well, how can appreciation have that big an impact on your body and so forth? It's because you're making a conscious

choice to focus on things differently. And that absolutely impacts you. I guess it's hard to do, too, if you're not used to doing it. How do you do that? How do you stop yourself and start being more appreciative? It's really simpler than it sounds, because if you just look up from wherever you are right this second and think of, okay, so what in my next five minutes could I value? Well, let's see. I'm going to make myself a cup of tea. I certainly value that, A, I have tea,

B, that I enjoy the taste of it, C, that it'll relax me a little bit. You can just start with wherever you are. And the question to ask yourself is, what do I value? That's the operative word. What do I value about this thing? Said another way, what is it worth to me? It's the same meaning of appreciation that we think of when we say land appreciates,

gold appreciates, art appreciates, that kind of thing. That's Noelle Nelson. She's author of the book, The Power of Appreciation. And if you'd like to hear the entire interview, it is in episode 123, which you can find on our website, somethingyoushouldknow.net, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, so I'm a parent, and if you're a parent or ever plan to be one, one thing you think about is, how will your kids remember you?

What will they think of once they've grown up and look back on their time with you? According to an article from Time Magazine's website, here's what really matters. If you are a parent, here's what really matters. If you are a parent, here's what your kids will remember about you. They'll remember the times you made them feel safe or unsafe. Those would be the times you chased away the monster under the bed. But kids feel unsafe when they see their parents lose their temper.

Those memories also stick. They remember the times you gave them your undivided attention. Kids measure love primarily by our attentiveness to them. The times you stop what you're doing to have a tea party or go outside to throw a ball will be memories etched into their minds and hearts forever. The way you interact with your spouse. You are the model for what a relationship looks like. Your words of affirmation or criticism. Their identity and self-worth are molded largely by your words.

Traditions. Kids have a deep need for predictability. They will cherish family traditions, so you should make sure to have some. Now, let's talk about the special moments in your life. What makes a special moment so special? Because if you know what it takes to have a special moment, perhaps you can construct more of them. I spoke with Dan Heath. He and his brother Chip Heath are researchers and writers, and they're author of a book called The Power of Moments, Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact. And he talked about what makes a special moment, what makes a positive experience so

special. Positive experiences are linked by four elements. Those elements are elevation, insight, pride, and connection. So I'll terms of a drink with a friend at sunset or performance in your high school musical. There's something about it that's joyful and extraordinary. When it comes to insight, those are very different kinds of moments. That's in an instant, we rewire our understanding of ourselves or our world. So you might figure out this is the last day I'm going to spend in this job. You might look across the dinner table one night and realize, hey, this is the person I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. They come suddenly and with force. The third element is pride. So probably everybody listening to this somewhere in their house, you have a little box or a

file drawer where you keep things that are special to you, thank you letters from people that you've helped or certificates or awards or plaques. They're moments that capture us at our best, moments when we accomplish things we weren't sure we'd be able to. And then the final element that occurs again and again and again is connection. So often these moments that are so memorable to us are social moments or they're moments that deepen our ties to other people. So, you know, think about a conversation that goes on for hours with a dear friend or think about a particularly grueling project you may have had at work that

once you succeeded and got to the end of it, you felt bonded to that team forever. And so when we talk about experiences, whether we're thinking about the customer experience, the patient experience, the student experience, the employee experience, what we're really talking about is how can we create moments out of these four elements that enrich those experiences? Because they do seem to be somewhat random, don't they? They just, they come whenever they come, and they're magic when they're magic, and then they're gone, and then you wait for the next one. That's exactly right. I mean, I think we have a certain fatalism about these moments. You know, we appreciate them when they happen.

They're serendipitous. You know, you bump into someone that turns into a friend or someone that you have a relationship with. And it's just kind of unpredictable magic. But this is actually a power that we have that we may not be using. And that is we can understand what these special moments are made of. And in the business world and in our personal lives, we can create more of them. How so? How do you, because part of what seems to be so special about those moments is that they're not artificially created. They're spontaneous, and they're just aha kind of moments.

Well, let me give you an example of an artificially created moment that's actually pretty special. So there's a hotel in Los Angeles called the Magic Castle Hotel. And let me first say that whatever image is popping to your mind right now when I say the Magic Castle Hotel, it doesn't look anything like that. It looks like what it is, which is a 1950s-era apartment complex, two stories, that's been converted into a motel. I think hotel is actually stretching it a little bit. It's been painted bright yellow. Totally unremarkable place to look at. But would you believe that on TripAdvisor, this place is ranked the number two hotel in LA ahead of the Ritz,

ahead of the Four Seasons? And so the natural question is how in the world could that be true? Well, the Magic Castle has figured out moments. So I'll give you one example. By the pool, which is a totally ordinary looking pool, it might be the same size as your neighbors in the backyard. But by the pool, there's mounted on the wall a cherry red phone. And just above the phone, there's a sign that says Popsicle Hotline. And you can pick up this phone. Somebody will pick up, say Popsicle Hotline will be right out. They'll bring out grape, cherry, orange, popsicles, all delivered poolside on a silver tray by somebody wearing white gloves like an English butler, all for free. They have a snack menu where kids can

go up to the front desk and ask for a variety of snacks for free. And they've got board games you can check out and movies you can check out. And they'll do your laundry. If you drop it off in the morning, they'll have it back by the end of the day. They've got magicians that come and do tricks in the lobby. And so when you start thinking about the hotel through that lens, you realize, hey, people will forgive average looking rooms, an average looking hotel, an average looking lobby, if you deliver some moments that stand above the rest. And what the Magic Castle has figured out is that if some moments rise above the rest, that's often enough to create a great experience, even if not every single detail is perfect. That's Dan Heath, and he, along with his brother Chip, are authors of the book The Power of Moments. If you'd like to hear the entire interview, it is in episode number 124.

Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation.

And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate.

We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll, of course, have some actors on as well,

including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now. Now I'm somebody who's pretty skeptical when it comes to home remedies, but, and we talked about this in the past year, there does seem to be some truth to

some home remedies and they are worth trying. For example, chicken soup for a cold. Researchers still aren't sure why, but most agree that chicken soup does work. It may be that the soup calms down the inflammation that triggers the cold symptoms. Honey for a cough. According to the World Health Organization, this should be the go-to treatment for children with a cough. A teaspoon of honey before bed reduces the amount of coughing and apparently helps kids sleep better. I've actually used that when I had a cough and I didn't have any cough medicine.

I tried honey and it really does work. Ice for headaches. Applying ice to the head or back of the neck can numb away pain linked with migraines and the chilly sensation may also help get your mind off that throbbing pain in your head. Vodka for stinky feet. If you're fresh out of rubbing alcohol you can use vodka. The alcohol inside is an antiseptic just like rubbing alcohol and it will help dry out moisture in the process it'll wipe out odor causing bacteria and fungus gargle to fight off a cold if you feel a cold coming on try gargling with plain water a study of

close to 400 healthy volunteers found that those who gargled with plain water were significantly less likely to come down with a cold. Ginger for motion sickness. If you tend to get carsick, take along some ginger candy. It's a good idea and studies have proven it works. So we all want to be happy and we all know what it feels like to be happy. But where does it come from? We talked about that in episode 128 with David Niven. David's the author of several books on happiness, including 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People,

and he explores the science of happiness and shared some really interesting findings on how to be happy and why life sometimes makes it hard to be happy. We have a general tendency to exaggerate the importance of what's happening immediately around us. And so, you know, everybody falls victim to, oh man, I'm stuck in traffic, this is the worst thing that's ever happened, kind of thinking. And the folks who are on a kind of a healthier, happier plane are able to sort of step back from that a little bit and put that into perspective and not let those little frustrations that absolutely everybody encounters, not let them stand for the day, not let them dominate their thinking.

You know, that's one of the things that, you know, I think shocks people when I talk about, you know, happiness research is, you know, the general notion that happy people have some kind of magical existence where they float between, you know, chocolate sundaes and other delights. And in reality, you know, happy people get stuck in traffic and happy people, you know, have some unpleasant co-workers and happy people, you know, have some unpleasant co-workers and happy people have all the same kinds of frustrations, but they're better at not letting those frustrations block out everything else. They're better at, you know,

being able to put things in just the tiniest bit of perspective to say that, you know, even if traffic is really frustrating, it's not more important than the other 23 and a half hours of your day. And we all know people like that, but do you think, or does the science say, that those people are wired that way, or that's a deliberate thing that they try to do? Well, I think there's kind of a combination here. I think that as we get smarter about the building blocks of a good life, that people can see the path to that. You know, I think some people are blessed to be wired that way and they can happily go about, you know, sort of shaking off the frustrations. And then, you know, a lot

of us can learn to approach things that way. I'll give you a perfect example of this. Breaking a routine, no matter how trivial, no matter how small, breaking a routine contributes to a positive outlook and a more creative approach to what you're doing. So what does that mean? Well, if you eat the same sandwich at lunch five days in a row, break the routine. If you go to work the exact same way every day, break the routine, go a slightly different way. If this is the stuff that you wear to work every Monday, break the routine and wear a different shirt. Little things, little things like that, that anybody could learn and put into practice and all of a sudden contribute to a slightly more, you know, positive

approach to what they're doing. And so I think, I think the bottom line answer is it's both. There's some people who happened upon this, you know, by, you know, by nature. And there's some people who happen upon a better approach to life by, you know, by reading books, by, by listening to your show, by, you know, thinking through what, you know, what they could do very easily that would make their lives just a little better. There's so much talk about the need for relationships, human contact, all of that. But why is that? What is it that people get from that that makes them happy? What people, everybody needs, including the introverts, what everybody needs is the human reinforcement. They need a sense of themselves

relative to other humans that puts them in something of a positive light. So what does that mean? Well, I give you my favorite example of something tiny that will contribute to a positive outlook and is inherently human. Do something. It could be as minor as holding the door open the next time you're walking into a convenience store. Do something kind for someone. And everyone, I don't care how introverted you are, everyone gets this little ping of pleasure from this notion that even in that tiny little act, it's a reinforcing notion that I'm a good person. Look at that. Look what I've just done for somebody. And that's the kind of thing where you say relationships come in all different shapes and sizes. Families do. Personal lives do. But everybody has that need for that little bit of reinforcing human contact. And that's why research is really not uniform on there's one thing that everybody needs except this.

They need that human reinforcement no matter which way you access it. And holding the door open is just one little thing that happens to apply and work for absolutely everybody. That's David Niven talking about happiness. He is author of the book, 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People. And you can hear the entire interview by finding episode 128 on our website or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're a regular listener to this podcast, you may have figured out that I do like life hacks. We've talked about several of them and had a guest or two to talk about interesting life hacks on this show. And here are some of the ones we've talked about in the past year that are pretty cool. These are from House Beautiful Magazine. If you want to remove deodorant stains from clothes,

all you need to do is get some of that colored foam that is wrapped around most dry cleaners' hangers. You know, when your clothes come back from the dry cleaners on that hanger, they put a little foam around the top of the hanger? Well, you get some of that foam, rub it on the spot, and the deodorant stain is gone. No water required. If you want to extend the life of strawberries because they do go moldy fast,

wash them in a cup of vinegar and three cups of water before you put them in the refrigerator. That will kill the bacteria and make them last a lot longer. Just make sure you dry them before you put them in the fridge. If you want to use fewer paper towels, here's a really clever technique. Because you know it's easy to just grab a wad of paper towels to clean up a mess, but there is a technique that allows you to use far fewer. All you do is use one paper towel at a time and fold it first. When you fold a paper towel, it allows what's called interstitial suspension to occur, meaning the droplets of moisture that you're cleaning up, they can cling to the towel as well as each other in between the fold, basically increasing the

amount the paper can actually hold by far. Try it. It is actually amazing. Cut round cakes the right way. If you have a round cake, you shouldn't really cut triangles. Instead, what you should do is cut down the middle and remove one long rectangular piece at a time. This allows the two halves and then the four quarters to be pushed back together again. Finally, this will peel potatoes faster. Instead of taking time to peel your potatoes before you boil them, just make a cut around the middle of the potato deep enough to puncture the skin. Then after cooking, the skins will literally just come right off. People who listen to Something you should know are curious

about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet.

Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly

about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. We don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed,

but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Now this next segment is hopefully going to make you feel better because we all do embarrassing things. And I think you'll agree that when we do something embarrassing, we're a lot harder on ourselves than other people are. And you know that because when you see other people do embarrassing things, you're probably pretty forgiving, but we don't forgive ourselves.

And I spoke about this with David Allen. He's author of a book called I Can't Believe I Just Did That. And he has some interesting information into why embarrassment, why that feeling when we do something embarrassing, why it causes us to be so hard on ourselves. That's a phenomenon that we refer to as the imaginary spotlight effect. So we know that people have a tendency to imagine that there's a spotlight on them and that others are judging them harshly and mocking them or ridiculing them or laughing at them. And that imaginary spotlight is disproportionate to the reality. Most people are actually thinking about themselves.

They're not thinking about you or me. But it's a fairly universal phenomenon that we tend to think that we're at the center of attention. So what is that feeling, that embarrassment feeling of whatever that is? It must serve a purpose or it must have served a purpose. What is it? Well, we think that in evolutionary terms that when you're embarrassed, you project certain signals. So your face turns red, you tend to smile, you might put your hands in front of your face. Embarrassment correlates with very specific physical activities. And we think that those are signals that send the message, what just happened was unintentional. It wasn't meant to be a threat. I wasn't trying to take more food. I wasn't trying to take power.

It was a mistake. And so embarrassment is what social sciences call a pro-social phenomenon. It sends a signal, I'm okay. I'm trustworthy. I like you. You can like me. We can all get along. And yet it feels horrible.

It does feel horrible. If only it felt as good as the message it's sending, but it doesn't. Right. It does feel bad. Scientists think it really is located in what's called the anterior cingulate cortex, and that regulates a lot of body functions. And when embarrassment happens, it also triggers sweating and a high heartbeat and heavy breathing, and it's all kind of connected in there. Other than this being kind of an interesting topic to talk about,

why is this important? Why are we talking about it? Because everybody has felt embarrassed. Everybody's been in a situation where they've seen someone else be embarrassed. We all know what it is. We all get it. So why is this important? Well, I think there are a couple things about it that are important.

So one is, I happen to think embarrassment is, like I said before, it's a pro-social phenomenon. So it's often a very, very good thing. It's good that we're afraid of embarrassment. It's a glue that keeps society healthy and keeps strong norms in place. But it does sometimes have a negative impact as well, which is the fear of embarrassment prevents us from making new connections, prevents us from engaging in interactions that can further the causes we believe in, further the businesses we're engaged in, that can grow our networks. And so embarrassment can have an anti-economic effect in terms of limiting interactions. Sure. Well, if I'm afraid to do anything that I might otherwise be benefited by doing, that's a problem. I mean, if...

Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And very often, it's simply that fear of embarrassment, of that fear of saying the wrong thing, that fear of being judged, that is all that's in the way between you and some advancement in your own life that actually would also benefit society as a whole. Right. I mean, if I'm afraid to give that speech and I never give it, then I don't meet that person afterwards who offers me a job and pays me a million dollars, all because I was afraid that I might blow it and people would judge me. Exactly. Exactly. And we often talk about stage fright, but I think we actually, we also need to talk about stage flight, which is that people flee from

the stage. They don't take that center stage because of that potential of being judged. And yet, why do you suppose it is that since all of us have sat in the audience and seen someone embarrassed, whether it's a formal presentation or in the audience just being in the room or wherever, we don't judge. We more likely feel sorry for that person or root for them in hopes that they recover. We're not saying, oh, what a jerk, what an ass, what an idiot. And yet that person thinks that's what we're saying. But since we have the experience of being that audience, why don't we learn from it when we're embarrassed?

Oh, wouldn't that be great? We would all be so much better off if we really did appreciate the way the mind actually works. But instead, it goes back to that imaginary spotlight effect and, and, um, and that, that feeling like, uh, that it's a very intense feeling, um, that goes along with those physical sensations. It's not, it would be nice if your face just blushed, but you didn't feel anything. Instead, your heart beats faster. Um, your, uh, your vision narrows. You can actually, when you're embarrassed, you can actually see less. And in part, though, it's because it gets tied in.

The brain is a pretty primitive instrument in certain ways, and it gets tied into those fight-flight responses that we know are designed for our survival to protect us so that if you're in the wild and there's a very large animal that could eat you, your fight-flight response kicks in and you either run away or you're going to go into fighting mode, embarrassment turns into that because of the way the brain is designed and the impulses of the amygdala that are in the brain that trigger that fight-flight response. So what can people do, if anything, to mitigate that when they're feeling embarrassed? Does it help to say, I know everybody's judging me, but they're really not?

Well, actually, it does help. We do think it does help often to put on loudspeaker the things, the thoughts that you're having. So, it does actually simply help to say, oh, am I embarrassed? Boy, am I embarrassed right now? Or to make some joke about it. If it's a one-on-one conversation to say, have you ever done anything like that? And then let the other person talk and share. And when the other person shares what they've done, that tends to dissipate the embarrassment because we feel then very connected. The whole point of embarrassment is it's designed to connect us and we have to kind of follow

that because it's a tricky thing. We want to hide our face, but that's supposed to show simply we didn't mean to be a threat. We know we messed up. That's David Allen talking about embarrassment. He is author of a book called I Can't Believe I Just Did That. And that is from episode number 135. When your trash leaves your property, when you take the trash out to the curb, anyone can legally take it.

Identity thieves know that, and they do go through trash. That's why you should be shredding documents you never realized. For example, prescription labels, whether they're stapled to the bag or the bottle, these labels list your name, the name and strength of the drug, the date of the initial dispensing, and the pharmacist's name. Thieves can use this to refill the prescription or steal your identity. If you have resumes, your old resume, you don't want to just throw them out, you want to shred them, because resumes hand crooks your name, phone number, address, email address,

employment history, and education history all in one very convenient package. Your pet records should be shredded. Papers from a vet visit show your pet's name. And according to a Google app survey of 2,000 people, your pet's name, there's a good chance it is a password that you use, and thieves will try it. Return labels. You should shred free return labels you receive in the mail along with any envelopes with your name and address. Thieves often pair this with what you post on social media, like your family member names and your work history, and they can cobble together your identity and steal it. Birth announcements. Children are 51% more likely to be victims of identity theft than adults.

So shred birth announcements you don't save, which typically have the child's name, birth date, weight, eye color, and other personal identifiers. One of the really interesting conversations I had in the past year was with Dr. Nicholas Christakis. He is a physician, a sociologist, and he's author of the book Connected, The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How they shape our lives. And he talked about the amazing ability of people in your network, in your circle of friends and family, how they affect you and affect your behavior in ways you don't realize. And we started by talking about how he got interested in this. I am a hospice doctor.

I take care of people who are dying. And for many years, I was researching the widower effect or the fact that when a person dies, their spouse's risk of death goes up almost immediately and for about a year afterwards. And this is a very simple example of a network effect. So if my wife dies, my risk of death doubles. That's a kind of person-to-person spread of illness, a kind of non-biological contagion of disease. And I had been studying these pairwise effects for quite some time, and at some point about 10 years ago began to realize that these pairs of individuals could be agglomerated

to form larger social networks, and that the effects shouldn't stop just from one person affecting another, they should spread more broadly. Well, yeah, I would think so, because, I mean, if the death of a spouse, if that event can cause their spouse's risk of death to double for a year, I mean, that's a pretty strong influence, so it's got to go further than that. In fact, it was during the time I was, at the time, actually at the University of Chicago, taking care of patients who were dying, and I went to visit a woman who was dying of dementia, and her daughter was the primary caretaker, and her daughter was exhausted from caring for her mother,

and the daughter was married, and her husband had become ill, as it were, from his wife's, you know, exhaustion caring for her mother. And one day as I was driving home from my home visit to the patient, I get a call from the husband's best friend, who himself is now very concerned. And so here we have a kind of, you know, from the mother to the daughter, the daughter to the husband, the husband to the friend, kind of non-biological spread of disease or illness. And that sort of experience got me to start thinking about how it is that health-related

phenomena can spread widely in social networks. Well, how close does someone have to be for them to influence you and you to influence them as part of this network. I'm thinking specifically in social networks, online networks seem to me pretty removed. It's not the case that anybody you're connected to directly, let alone indirectly, can affect you. You have to have some kind of personal connection to this person. And so this is most relevant when we talk about Facebook and so forth. What we find is that even though people might seemingly have hundreds, allegedly, friends online, actually those friends don't affect them the same way that their real friends do,

the kind of face-to-face interaction with people who are truly their friends affect them. So while it is the case that we can have hundreds of social relationships or use the internet to maintain a broader network of people, so the fact of the matter is that we're influenced by the same kinds of people who are important to our lives that we always were. It all sounds very individual. It depends on who you are, and it depends on who your circle of friends are, and your family, and all that. But what's the takeaway here? What can we learn from this, knowing that there's all this influencing going on? Well, we make a number of broad arguments.

The first argument is that, in some sense, the book engages this very old topic of free will. And what we show is that people are not as autonomous as they think, even when it comes to deeply personal things like their body size or their sexual practices or their emotional state. Or frankly, we talk a little bit about suicide cascades in the book. I mean, there's a shocking example. Whether you kill yourself or not might depend on whether your friends kill themselves. That's a very deeply personal decision, yet it seems to be influenced by other people.

So on the one hand, we talk about how all these seemingly very individualistic behaviors are actually influenced by the behaviors of others, and not just people you know personally, but even the people you don't know. That is to say, the friends of your friends and your friends' friends' friends can ripple through the network and affect you.

This would seem to suggest that we have less free will than we might have thought. On the other hand, even as it is the case that you're being influenced by all these other people, you can influence all these other people. In fact, choices you make in your life can influence hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other people. And so it's equally important not just to realize that we are influenced by others, which might, let's say, decrease the relevance of free will, but also that we can influence others, which actually cuts the other way and increases the importance of free will. Because when we make positive changes in our lives, we don't just benefit ourselves and the people we know and love,

but many other people as well. So that's one of the big ideas. Another big idea is that many public policy interventions and clinical interventions actually are much more effective when we take into account the structure of the network. So intervening in groups of people or targeting particular individuals, let's say for vaccination, for the flu, for example, or if we're working with an epidemic of violence in a school, figuring out what the structure of the network is and which individuals are the most influential, or if we're dealing with a crime, for instance, in a community, or all kinds of other public health problems,

apathy, voter apathy, for example, that the familiarity with how networks are organized and how they work can help us to structure public policy interventions to do a better job of addressing these social problems. That's Dr. Nicholas Christakis. He's a physician and author of the book, Connected, The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. You'll find the full interview in episode 145.

And that's part one of our look back at some of the highlights, some of the more memorable moments, and some of the more fascinating intel from the past year. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa D. Mons, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? We're serving up for hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you. In Don't Blame Me, we dive deep into listeners' questions, offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real.

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