Something You Should Know - Engineering Marvels Right in Your Neighborhood & What It Takes to Be an Expert

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

I bet you’ve had that experience of waking up just before the alarm goes off. It turns out it isn’t coincidence. Listen as this episode begins with the explanation as to why this happens so often to so many people. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/why-do-we-wake-up-right-before-our-alarm/ The next time you take a walk around the block you will see it very differently after you listen to Spike Carlsen author of the book A Walk Around the Block (https://amzn.to/378CyuL). He discusses why the cement you walk on, the phone poles that line the street and the lawn in front of your house all have fascinating stories to tell.  Who doesn’t love a cozy fire in the fireplace on a chilly night? However, there is a potential problem with your fireplace on the days and nights when you do not have a fire. Listen as I explain how your fireplace could be causing you to waste a lot of money and the simple way to fix it. https://www.rennerinspectionservices.com/improve-home/ What makes someone an expert? In many cases people are experts only because they say they are. However, being a true expert in something is a bit more complicated than that. Here to explain is Roger Kneebone, MD Director of the Imperial College Centre for Engagement and Simulation Science and the Royal College of Music Imperial College Centre for Performance Science in the UK and he is author of the book Expert: Understanding the Path to Mastery (https://amzn.to/31cUuR1). Listen as he explains what it takes to be a true expert and why you should be skeptical of anyone who claims to be an expert.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations.

You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Today on Something You Should Know, ever wake up just before the alarm goes off? I'll tell you why that happens. Then the fascinating backstories of ordinary things around your neighborhood, like telephone poles. One little thing I found fascinating with telephone poles is they each have a birthmark

that should be at about eye level. And that birthmark has information on the species of the wood, the manufacturer, and when it was installed and that type of thing. Also how to make sure your fireplace isn't costing you money this winter. And lots of people claim to be experts at things, but being a true expert at anything is a little more complicated. I think there's a difference between being expert and being an expert, because I think you can become expert in something, and that's different from being recognized by the world

as an expert. All this today on Something You Should Know. 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. 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, welcome to another episode of Something You Should Know. Has this ever happened to you? You set your alarm to wake up in the morning and then just before it goes off, you wake up on your own.

Coincidence? Apparently not. What happens is when you set the alarm, you subconsciously tell yourself what time you're going to wake up. Then about an hour before wake-up time, your body begins to secrete stress hormones into your system in preparation of the stress of waking up. About an hour later, you wake up all by yourself. In a study, people went to bed and were told what time they would be woken up the next morning. And some days it was 7 o'clock, some days it was 9 o'clock. And in each case, the researchers saw that the stress hormones began to be released about an hour

before the person was told they'd be woken up, even though the wake-up time kept changing. So it appears that you actually program your own internal alarm clock, which sometimes goes off just before the real one next to your bed. And that is something you should know. So let's take a stroll around your neighborhood. Because every day you probably walk out your door and go about your business without paying any attention to all of the things around your neighborhood. The street signs, the traffic lights, the utility poles, your front lawn, the animals running around your yard. And all of these things have an interesting story that I think you'll find fascinating.

And here to take us on this little tour of your neighborhood is Spike Carlson. He's author of a book called A Walk Around the Block. Hi, Spike. It's an honor to be with you. So I think a good place to start is concrete, because around my house anyway, the streets and the sidewalk and the foundation of my house is all made from concrete. It's hard to walk out of your house and not step on concrete. And concrete's really interesting.

You know, it has an amazing history. It's the most used man-made material on the planet. We create about 10 billion tons of it a year. And so that's about 3,000 pounds for every man, woman, and child on the planet. So it's a very used material. It has a fascinating history, too. The Romans kind of developed the formula and figured out how to do it, you know, back, you know, 100, 200 A.D. And then the formula was lost for about 900 years.

And when they discovered it in a Swiss monastery in the 1400s, it kind of came back to life again. And so, you know, even something as kind of drab and dreary as concrete has a good story to it. And what's the difference between concrete and asphalt? And these words get thrown around, but I'm not sure anybody really knows what they mean. Yeah, the two that get mixed up the most are cement and concrete. And cement is basically kind of the powdered version with the lime and other grains. And then as you add aggregate, that becomes the concrete. And asphalt, a lot of people look at that and go, it's mostly just the tarry, gooey substance. But about 90 or 95% of asphalt is also aggregate. So a lot of people call it asphalt concrete. And so those are kind of the main

differences. You know, a concrete street might cost three or four times as much as an asphalt street. It may last, you know, twice as long. So lots of times when planners are trying to figure out what to put down, you have to take into account budget and whether you're going to have to cut into it to get to utilities and those types of things. So in most neighborhoods, unless your utilities are underground, in most neighborhoods you look up and there are telephone poles and they're somewhat unsightly and I think most of us don't even notice them anymore, but they're really interesting. So talk about those. There's a hierarchy to a telephone pole. The lower portion is usually called the yard sale sign

region where people post their lost dog signs. Then as you go up, you get to the low voltage and communication wires. There's always a four-foot safety gap when you get into the kind of more of the household current. And then at the very top, you'll often get the high voltage wires, high voltage transmission wires. And, you know, one little thing I found fascinating with telephone poles is they each have a birthmark that's installed at the factory. And after it's installed, it should be at about eye level. And that birthmark has information on the species of the wood and the manufacturer and when it was installed and that type of thing. And if that is way above your head, the pole probably wasn't planted deep enough.

If it's down around your knees, it was planted too deep. And so it's just kind of a way for inspectors and linesmen to get that thing planted the right depth. So that's called the birthmark. And most telephone poles and utility poles have them. Isn't that – nobody knows that. And, well, they do now because you just told us, but I'd never heard that before, ever. Yeah, well, my wife hates taking a walk around the block with me just because of that. Because you stop and look?

Yeah, it's interesting. It's weirdly interesting. In every neighborhood, there are fire hydrants. There are fire hydrants everywhere. And I guess like telephone poles, we tend not to even notice them anymore. But obviously they're important to have, but they're really interesting as well. You know, we start at the top and look at it, and the bolts and valves on a fire hydrant are five-sided.

And that, of course, is because it makes them more tamper-resistant. So that's starting there. If you go back in history, most water systems were made of wood. And so if there was a fire in a neighborhood, the fire department would usually dig down, find that pipe, drill a hole in it, and bail the water out of that. And then they would stick a peg in there to mark it so they could find it in the future. And that's where the term fireplug comes from. Well, one of the things that I notice about neighborhoods now compared to years ago is that it's much more common for people to keep to themselves,

that people on the block don't know each other as much as they used to. I don't know if you looked at that, but I think that's pretty interesting. You know, things have gotten so segmented these days. There's areas where there's residential, and then there's business, and then there's, you know, commercial, and things have gotten so segmented. And if you go back in time, it was in the neighborhood, people would work and live and play in the neighborhood. And that has diminished as things have gotten more segmented. Part of it is to give neighborhoods an identity. Like in my town, there's one neighborhood where everyone on the boulevard

plants beautiful flowers every spring. And so that has become the identity of that neighborhood. You know, we have the old part of town where people like to, you know, walk through there and look at the architecture. You also point out that there really is a practical reason for knowing who your neighbors are. Local governments are most effective if you're within two friends of someone in government. So that if you have a question or a concern, that you can get to that person to express your concern. And so those are just, you know, some of the ways that community can be built, you know, more green space, the more welcoming a neighborhood is.

Yeah, well, it is interesting. I mean, I actually was talking to someone not that long ago, and I asked, I knew somebody that lived on their street, and I didn't know, and I said, do you happen to know this person who lives on your street? And she said, well, I make it a point not to know my neighbors. And I thought, well, that's kind of strange, and yet it seems to be pretty common policy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, to each his own. You know, people are comfortable in different ways, but there are ways to make a black feel more community-oriented, and it's really an individual choice. If I live in a neighborhood and I need a jumpstart on my car or I've locked myself out of my house, I want to make sure I know some of my neighbors so I can ask them to help and I can help them in the same situation. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I did one segment that got cut from the book, and it's on little free libraries, which are these little, you know, libraries on a stick where people will put 20 or 25 books. And, you know, the guy who started that just found that just even something as common and simple as that is a place where, you know, neighbors get together and there's something to talk about. And the more commonalities you can create, the better. Talk about the front lawn. Yeah, the front lawn, that was an interesting one to tackle. If you look at your lawn, every square inch there's about eight grass plants. And so you've got, you know, your average lawn has seven million little plants to take care of.

And there's, you know, kind of an interesting history behind lawns. Some people think that lawns started or areas started getting mown and cut down so that defenders could more easily see people who were going to attack the castle. It just gave them better sight. And then King Louis XIV, he at Versailles decided lawns were a good deal and they gained in popularity. And there's lots of misconceptions about lawns. There's a lot of information out there or data that says that the chemicals and things we put on our lawn, you know, add to the green and the algae in nearby waterways. And that's true to an extent, but there's other things that add to that too. And that's simply the decomposition of leaves, you know, dog droppings and other things. So there's a lot of ways lawns get a bad rap where they really shouldn't get a bad rap.

So that's one of the things we take a look at. Well, one of the interesting things about lawns is that everybody seems to have come into alignment that we all should have this green lawn that has no weeds, no clover, no nothing. And wasn't the Scotts Company pretty instrumental in that PR campaign? Very instrumental. I mean, if you didn't have the perfect lawn, you were an outcast. Kind of around, you know, when Levittown came in and everyone was put in a yard and there was a mandate that you had to mow your lawn, you know,

once a week. And if you didn't, someone from the Levittown overseers would come out and take care of that. We're talking about some of the interesting things in and around your house and neighborhood that you probably haven't thought about much before. My guest is Spike Carlson. He's author of the book, A Walk Around the Block. 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 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. So Spike, let's talk about some of the creatures in the neighborhood, the animals that run around the yard and whatnot. Yeah, I tried to pick two that were kind of common to city, suburban, and rural life.

And the two I picked were pigeons and squirrels. It's very hard to interview a pigeon, and so what I decided to do was spend a few days with a pigeon racer, a guy named Phil Nelson, who has 240 pigeons. And I kind of went through the series with him of training a pigeon and then being involved with a pigeon race. And they're fascinating creatures. I mean, yes, they have that misnomer of being rats with wings, but they're also very, I don't know if we can use the word smart, but, you know,

seemingly smart animals. They've been taught to play ping pong and they were taught to guide missiles during World War II. And they have a sense that we don't. This race that I partook in was a 100-mile race, and they were released, and the guy said, you know, they're all going to beat us home, and they did. And it's kind of a combination of keen eyesight and hearing and smell and sensitivity to gravitational and magnetic forces, and then just being very tough birds. You know, pigeons have been awarded more medals for animal bravery than any other animal. I mean, horses have won three awards, dogs 20, and pigeons 30,

just because they are actually a pretty reliable way of communication. And they've been used right up to within the past 20 years for communication. The other animal I looked at was squirrels. For that, I interviewed one of the more interesting pieces of research on that was I interviewed a squirrel linguist, a guy by the name of Robert Lischick at Auburn University. And he'd studied squirrel communications for about 25 years. And again, someone like that is just fascinating to talk with. They have one sound where if they see a cat, a cat's their main enemy,

they have a sound that tells the cat, okay, I see you and you see me and we can play this chase around game or we can just call it off. And then they have another series of sounds where it's an increasing number of cooks and a flagging tail, which warns other squirrels in the area that the predator is getting closer and closer. And then there's another sound that when Elvis has left the building, when the predator has left, that the coast is clear. So, you know, that was a fascinating part of it. Another thing is this time of year you see squirrels running around,

burying nuts like crazy. And you start looking into that. There's different squirrels store their food different ways. The common gray squirrel buries their nuts and acorns over a wide area. And they only remember where they bury a nut for about 20 minutes. But they have a keen sense of smell and they often leave a little fertilizer behind when they bury a nut. And so that's why they can find, you know, some people say they only find about 25% of the nuts they bury, but that's just

another kind of interesting thing about squirrels. And you said that squirrels talk to cats, but do cats understand the language? That I don't know. It's just kind of that warning sound that says, okay, you see me, I see you. Robert Lischick used mechanical cats to kind of test this theory. I don't know, we didn't get into whether the cats understand, but the squirrels are trying their best to communicate. So people might not think of traffic lights as particularly interesting, but in fact, they are, according to you anyway. Yeah. Again, it's one of those things that I just found weirdly fascinating. For as often as we go through stoplights and see them and how often they control our lives, there were some really interesting things I discovered about them.

And so, you know, one thing was, well, let me quiz you. You know, how long does a stoplight stay yellow? Well, I think it depends, doesn't it? It does depend. And there's actually a formula that's used nationwide. You take the speed limit and you divide by 10 and that gives you the number of seconds. So if you're in a 55 mile an hour zone, that light will stay yellow for about five and a half seconds. If you're in a 40 mile an hour zone, it'll be about four seconds. And no matter what, stoplights will always stay yellow for three

seconds. They also stay, there's an all red phase where it's red in both directions for one to two seconds. So that's, you know, there's a formula for everything. It's applied nationwide so that whether you're driving in Hawaii or Alabama, those rules of thumb kind of hold. You know, the crosswalk push buttons in New York City, only about 10% of them actually do anything. The whole traffic timing cycle is so complex that if they were to actually interfere with the flow of traffic, things would just be a mess. And so only about 10% of those push buttons actually do anything. And there's just other things about stoplights. I mean, we're often so perturbed by the emergency vehicle preemption system, that light that flashes when there's an ambulance or a squad car going by.

But they reduce intersection crashes by about two-thirds, and it increases response times by 25%. And so as irritating as those can be, they really do the job they're intended to do. Well, one of the things I find interesting about stoplights is, I mean, they stay red, different intersections stay red longer in different directions than others, but it's like they somehow they've kind of timed it out right. And like most of the traffic gets through before it changes. But then there are other times where you're stuck at a red light thinking, this is taking forever. You're right. I went down to the Minnesota Department of Transportation Traffic Center, and they do indeed, and it depends on the time of day and the heaviest traffic flow,

from that center, they can program the lights to make the flow better in one direction or the other. There's also sensors in the pavement and seeing eyes and cameras that can also give that stoplight a sense of, you know, when adequate traffic has gone through there and it's time to turn. So as a whole, it varies from state to state and city to city. It's rare for any stoplight to not go through a full cycle in four minutes. And so that stoplight you've stayed at for forever was almost invariably no more than four minutes. Yeah. Well, four minutes at a stoplight is like, you know, four minutes in the dentist's chair.

It takes a long time. I did want to ask one other thing about the lines on the road. Well, they, like signs, they communicate to us. And, in fact, when I was talking with the lines and signs people, they said lines are more important signs because they tell you where you are. They tell you, you know, where the exit is. They, of course, divide, you know, different forms of traffic, different directions of traffic, you know, rumble and mumble strips, which are included, you know, decreased traffic crashes by 25%. But the lines you see on your basic two-lane road, they seem like they're so frequent, but

the lines themselves are 10 feet long, and then the space between is 40 feet long. But like stoplights, the uniform traffic manual kind of dictates how things are across the nation. So they're a language of their own. Well, one thing that every city, every neighborhood, every town has to deal with, and without it there's no city or neighborhood or town, is water and sewers. And in the Twin Cities here, the city of St. Paul draws their water out of the Mississippi River. And, you know, 40 miles downstream, they release it after it's been through sewage treatment. And then another 17 million people downstream on the Mississippi River draw their water out and put it back in too. And so, you know, technology and science

has really gotten us a long way in that. If we didn't have great sewer systems, we just couldn't have big cities and we wouldn't be as healthy as we are. So everywhere from sewage to, you know, power poles, I just find fascinating. Well, I do find that power pole thing pretty interesting, that they each have a birthmark. I'm kind of looking forward to ending this and running outside to look at the birthmark on the pole outside my house. My guest has been Spike Carlson. He is author of the book, A Walk Around the Block, and you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Spike. Yeah, thanks so much. It's been fun. Do you love Disney?

Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing 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. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks, and me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture.

Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. What does it take to be an expert? This is something I find really interesting. People claim to be experts in all sorts of things. There are health and nutrition experts, relationship experts, financial experts. But there's no real definition of what an expert is, nor is there any requirement. Anyone can use the word expert to describe themselves.

But that doesn't make it so. Today, we hear a lot about how we should trust the experts. But which experts? And when it comes to predicting the future or telling us what we should do, the experts often later turn out to have been dead wrong. Still, we throw the word expert around a lot. Someone who's really studied what makes an expert an expert is Roger Kneebone. He's a medical doctor, and he directs the Imperial College Center for Engagement and Simulation Science and the Royal College of Music Imperial

College Center for Performance Science in the UK. He's author of a book called Expert, Understanding the Path to Mastery. Hey, Roger, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you. So I like experts. We say right at the top of this podcast that we have the world's top experts, and we certainly strive to find the best expert guests we can. But there are also a lot of people who claim to be experts who really aren't, at least according to what I think of an expert is.

So what do you think an expert is? What do you have to be to be an expert? I think that's a really interesting point, because very often being an expert is a social judgment made by other people, because in the work that I've been doing, I've been talking to many, many experts and hearing their stories, getting to know them. And almost all of them, if you ask them, they don't say they're expert. They they're very proud of what they've done and what they can do. But they see themselves as as having set out on a on a path that doesn't have an end, really.

And and so their judgment of themselves is often very different from the judgment of other people. And I think that's one of the interesting things about expert is that it's not a fixed definition. I think you can tell that some people are clearly at the top of their game. They're known internationally and they occupy a particular place. But actually, we're surrounded by many other experts who may not even recognize themselves in that way. One of the things I find interesting is that people, I think, perceive experts if they're successful.

In other words, somebody could have something happen to them, and now they're very successful at whatever it is they do and they don't know any more than they did yesterday but now that they're successful they're an expert but they still don't know more than they did yesterday when they were not an expert i think partly i agree i think that is true but i think there's something else which is that experts the experts tend to be valued i think according to the field in which they work and so um fighter pilots and brain surgeons and concert violinists for example tend to sort of occupy a higher position in the hierarchy than um plumbers or garage mechanics or plasterers or carpenters.

And I think that's a real problem, because actually, what we're talking about when we're thinking about people becoming expert is a characteristic of that person and the journey that they've gone through to become expert, not defined by the field that they're in. And so you can have people who are just as expert, if not more than many others, who are doing apparently, I wouldn't say unimportant, but sort of widely recognized areas of work. And I think we are surrounded by experts on all sides, but we often don't notice that because we don't think to look and i think if we if we reframe that and think about becoming expert as as the the result of an extended pathway that takes years and years and

years and which requires you to go through a series of transformations a series of changes really then then it becomes easier to say whether or not somebody is expert at the end, because I think you can confidently say that if people haven't gone through that long pathway, then probably they aren't expert, because becoming expert is much more than acquiring knowledge or component skills. I think it's about acquiring wisdom and the ability to make judgments about new situations. So when we talk about experts, people often say, well, you know, you should talk to Bob. He's an expert in that. And Bob may be really good at that, but it doesn't necessarily mean Bob can teach you how to do it. So is an expert somebody who

does something well or somebody who can teach something well? Well, I think it's probably both. I think there are lots of people who do something well but who aren't necessarily experts. And the way I've been looking at it is to say that there is a progression, a pathway, which I've loosely based on the sort of medieval guild model of you start as an apprentice working in somebody else's workshop and you do what they tell you, whether you want to do it or not, whether you like it or not.

Often you don't like it, but you have to do it anyway. And you do that for a number of years. And in that process, of course, you get good at doing the things that you've learned. But you also learn a whole lot of other stuff about how to make sense of the materials you're working with, the tools, the other people, the space you're in. And then the second phase is what used to be called a journeyman. Obviously now not a gendered use of that word, but the idea that you take the skills that you've learned and you go out and you journey across your country, say, and you apply your craft. You do what you've learned to do. You take responsibility for the good things and the bad things. And you do what you've learned to do you take responsibility for the

good things and the bad things and you do that for a number of years too and then finally the stage of becoming a master is when you you you do pass that on you you have other people you become responsible for and you you pass on not only the the skills and the knowledge that you've acquired during those earlier stages but also the sort of accumulated wisdom knowledge that you've acquired during those earlier stages, but also the sort of accumulated wisdom of how you've dealt with the things that have gone wrong, how you've put them right, how you've worked with other people who may be difficult, how you've sort of adapted and responded to whatever the circumstances have been over the course of those many, many years. Because becoming expert is an internal process of change. It's not purely the acquisition of component parts.

And so are you saying that there's no shortcut that to be an expert, you have to put in all that time and there's no way around it? I'm saying that there is no shortcut. If you want to become really, really good at something, at a whole field of expertise, rather than just individual components of it, then you need to have spent years and years going through the stages, the internal stages that lead to you becoming expert. And part of that is learning to do what other people tell you. But part of it is also making your own mistakes, building up your own bank of knowledge and experience that leads to wisdom, getting things wrong, finding your way out of them, and learning particularly how to apply what your field involves in the bigger context of what's going on all around. And of course, that keeps changing. And so I wonder, doesn't the marketplace weed them out that if somebody says they're an expert and they're not, that we would know that and figure it out and, you know, they get bad

ratings on Yelp or whatever it is that their expertise is questioned to the point where they're no longer considered an expert. I don't think that's always the case. I mean, I wish it were, but I think there are quite a lot of people who purport to be experts and give a very good external appearance of being experts, but actually they're not very good. Isn't a lot of like when we're dealing with pandemics or the economy or and we turn to the experts for their advice and what's going to happen, they're often very wrong. They may be experts, but you can't predict the future. And trying to do so and trying to tell people what to do based on past models,

you may be an expert, but you also may be really wrong. And I think one of the things about understanding what it means to become expert is that that enables us to make judgments about how much to trust people who purport to be experts. And if what they are expert in is an area of knowledge that is clearly impossible to be definite about, then we have to take that into account. And we take notice of what people suggest, but we don't do uncritically what people tell us to do just because they say they're experts. And so I think one of the reasons it's important to think about this process of what being expert means is it enables us to make sensible decisions about whom to trust. Isn't part of being an expert, though, that there's something about, because for example, you could have two really great tennis players, and one of them is just at the very top of his game, and the other one is just not there.

And they may have had the same training, they may have spent as much time as the other but one of them just has that something yes i'm sure that's true and i mean i think that a lot of that comes down to early experiences and early opportunities and of course to personality and all those things that make one person different from another person. And you can't say, I mean, there's much more to being expert than just simply going along a certain path for a certain length of time. Because everybody will respond differently to the opportunities they encounter along that path. And that's a function of their individual characteristics and their determination to get better, and their level of ambition and their level of innate dexterity or whatever all sorts of

things combine there so you can't say that so becoming expert is not something you can separate from the people who become expert it's a pathway that i think you can map out and you can say that at one extreme it is not possible to become an expert brain surgeon in six months or whatever it's going to take a long long time but whether it takes 15 years or 16 years or whatever it is will depend on individuals characteristics and on the environment they're in all kinds of things. It's a complex picture. But I think looking at it overall, you can say that to become experts, to become really expert, just does take a very long time.

And in that process, you have to have made a lot of mistakes and you have to have found out how to deal with them. And you have to have gone through a process of personal growth that is much more than simply the acquisition of skills. But nobody wants to wait for that. That takes too long. I know nobody wants to wait.

But I think you have to. I mean, I think there's a real danger in thinking that you can get instant experts and i think one of the problems is that if you just look at the things you see experts do you can often think oh well that doesn't look so difficult i could learn to do that and you probably could learn to do that but because you haven't gone through the other bits then that's the only bit of what they do that you can do and so you you you you miss out understanding all the other bits that their expertise consists of and so you you you you miss out understanding all the other bits that their expertise consists of and so when you get somebody to come and help because your boiler's blown up or you know you've had some problem in your house you don't want only somebody who's only ever dealt with that kind of

boiler that's blown up in that kind of way you want somebody who can who can say okay well you know let's look more generally at your heating system. Should it be this? Should it be that? Here's what we might do. Here's what we could change. Here's what we can leave for a bit longer. You want somebody who's got that kind of all-round experience that they've only got from dealing with lots of other people, not just you. Isn't this all a bit, I don't know, academic maybe? I mean, I understand what you're saying, that being a true expert requires you really have to put in the time. But people claim to be experts at everything. And people often take that at face value.

And so if someone says they're an expert, and I believe that, and they come and fix my furnace or my swimming pool or whatever and it works out pretty well I guess they were an expert I disagree I don't think you are an expert I think you may say you're an expert and you may hoodwink other people into believing that you're an expert because you're persuasive and you can con them into thinking that you are but that's exactly my point unless you have been through these stages and you have become an expert in the way that I describe I think you may call yourself an expert but you're not one but if I call myself an expert if I call myself an expert and people believe I'm an expert then I am an expert because there's no, no one else really matters except, well, I know you, I know it bothers you, but go ahead. I don't agree at all. I think that you

may call yourself an expert and you may, you may persuade other people to believe you when you say you're an expert, but if you're not an expert, then you're not an expert. If you can't do what an expert in that field needs to do, then you're not an expert. you can't do what an expert in that field needs to do then you're not an expert but there's there's no consequence there's no official board of experts that you know stamps expert approval on people if somebody comes and fixes my furnace and it was broken and you did and he did a good job I'm likely to recommend him as a real expert on this. And who's to say he isn't? If you set up as an expert, let's say, airline pilot, and you're not an expert airline pilot,

you might have had some lessons and be able to take off and land, but you can't deal with thunderstorms or diverting in midair or any of those things, or an engine fire. You're not an expert. And so although you may appear from the outside to look like an expert because you're looking like a pilot and you can take it take an airplane off and other people may assume that you're an expert because that's what they expect it doesn't mean you are an expert and if you're not an expert but you pretend you are then first of all you're're dishonest, you're misrepresenting

yourself, and you're taking advantage of other people's gullibility. But that just means you're a charlatan. It doesn't mean that you're an expert just because you say you are. And I think that if we are to be able to make judgments about people who call themselves experts, we need to have a clear idea of what becoming an expert really entails, and then we can find out, or we can try to find out, whether somebody who calls themselves an expert has actually been through those stages. Well, it really depends, I guess, too, on what you want an expert in. If it's, you know, 10 below zero outside, and my house is freezing, and my furnace is broken, what I need is an expert furnace fixer guy.

I don't need an expert on the history of furnaces or the principle of how furnaces work. I need somebody to fix the furnace. Now, there may be people who are more knowledgeable, but if a guy shows up in the middle of the night and fixes my furnace, he's an expert because he solved he solved my problem and and you know you've said a couple of times that if you want to be considered an expert well considered by who i mean it depends on what you're looking for an expert in right i think there's a difference between being expert and being an expert, because I think you can become expert in something. And that's different from being recognized by the world as an expert.

So you can become an expert teacher, let us say, or you can become an expert lawyer or an expert, all sorts of things. But that's not the same as as the kind of expert you were talking about earlier, where you hang up your shingle as an expert and expect to be respected because of it. So the process that I've talked about is a process we can all experience of getting closer and closer to becoming expert. But it's an interesting process because it doesn't have an end. It has a beginning, but it doesn't have an end. And as we were saying at the start, there's no point really where you can clearly say yesterday I wasn't an expert and today I am. And interestingly, all the experts I've spoken to would say things like, well, one of them was a tailor. The tailor said that there's no such thing as a perfect suit, but I'll never stop trying to make one. It's a process that continues. My experience is that, and I'd like you to either agree or disagree, that as important as this clearly is based on what you're saying, that people maybe don't care as much as they should because they accept somebody as an expert if they self-describe as an expert. And I can tell you every week I get emails, press releases of people who want to come on this podcast

who are experts in nutrition, experts in entrepreneurship, experts in relationships. And you look a little deeper and there's nothing about them that is an expert. Nothing. But people accept them as an expert. They're all over the media because they're an expert. Yes, exactly. But that's my point really, Mike, is that I don't think they are an expert. They may because they're an expert. Exactly. But that's my point, really, Mike, is that I don't think they are an expert. They may say they're an expert.

They may pretend to be an expert. But if you're just some guy who emails me out of the blue and there's nothing on the web about them and they say they're an expert, why should I believe them? And so there needs to be substance to it. And I think that's the point I'm making is that if you're trying to, we all of us have a responsibility not to take at face value people who say they're expert. Because it's easy to say it, especially when you're not. Right. Well, but my question was, don't you think, though, that people don't seem to care that much. That when somebody says, my guest today is Bob Smith and he is an expert in blah, blah, blah. That people go, oh, well, I better listen to this because that guy just said he's an expert. And people don't really care.

They'll listen. I completely agree. I think people use the word loosely and imprecisely. I think people very often don't think what that word means. They just use it glibly as somebody who says they know something about something. And that's the point I'm making, really, is that if we are to understand and value and recognize true experts whom we depend on when we need them, we must know that our airline pilots are properly qualified and experienced. We must know that the surgeons who operate on us know how to do it. We must know that the people we go and see in the opera house

or the whatever it is, are as good at what they do as they as they purport to be. And as you've as you've rightly pointed out, we can't take at face value what people say, because lots of people say they're experts. and it's just simply not true well i think you've shed some light on something that's really important and that is that just because someone claims to be an expert or is referred to as an expert doesn't mean they really are an expert and that that we as consumers we need to dig a little deeper and make sure that this expert really is an expert. And you've also explained well what it takes to be an expert. You can't become an instant expert. No such thing.

Roger Nieborn has been my guest. He's a medical doctor, and he directs the Imperial College Center for Engagement and Simulation Science and the Royal College of Music Imperial College Centre for Performance Science. He is author of the book, Expert, Understanding the Path to Mastery. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, Roger.

Thanks, Mike. It's been a great pleasure. As the weather cools down this time of year in many parts of this country and in many parts of the world, it's really nice to have a cozy fire in the fireplace. But when you're not using your fireplace, it could be costing you a lot of money. How? Well, if you leave the damper open, warm air from your house goes right up the chimney. Some research shows that it's comparable to leaving a window open in your house 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That's how much heat you're losing. One estimate is that a fireplace costs about $500 extra per year in lost heat.

So close your damper if you're not using your fireplace and make sure it closes tight. Two other big sources of heat loss, by the way, are leaks around the dryer vent and heat lost through the trap door of a folding attic stairs. And that is something you should know. Our audience continues to grow by leaps and bounds, thanks really in large part to people like you sharing it with people they know. I would ask you to help us keep that momentum going and tell someone you know about this podcast. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Lauro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity.

The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot.

During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.