Something You Should Know - Favorite Superstitions Explained & Weird Science Quirks – SYSK Choice

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today on something you should know, why is it sometimes so hard to say I'm sorry? Then superstitions, why do we have them? And we have a lot of them. About lucky charms, broken mirrors, black cats. Europeans started associating black cats with witches. So that's why black cats at crossing your path was thought to be a sign of bad things to come. As a result, black cats are not adopted as much from shelters. Also, what should you do if you see an egg on the ground that fell out of a nest? And fascinating science, like the only way to cure a hangover,

Starting point is 00:00:40 and why we use maggots to heal wounds. Unfortunately, the grossness is really what prevents people from using this treatment. Maggots are not used nearly as much as they should, given their effectiveness, just because of the gross-out factor. All this today on Something You Should Know. Ah, where are my gloves? Come on, heat. Winter is hard, but your groceries don't have to be.

Starting point is 00:01:15 This winter, stay warm. Tap the banner to order your groceries online at walla.ca. Enjoy in-store prices without leaving your home. You'll find the same regular prices online as in-store. Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. Something You Should Know. Fascinating Intel. experts and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, something you should know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, here we go with another episode of Something You Should Know. And we start today with the topic of

Starting point is 00:01:52 apologies. You ever find it difficult to say, I'm sorry? It's hard for a lot of people. And there is some research that sheds light on why apologizing is so difficult. And it really comes down to the fact that not apologizing just feels better. Two groups of volunteers agreed to write letters addressing something they had done wrong. While the group who apologized had a better sense of integrity after the fact, the group who refused to apologize felt more empowered and had a greater sense of self-worth. The author of the study says that apologies make apologizers feel a little better, but refusing to apologize makes a lot of people feel a lot better and in more control of the situation.

Starting point is 00:02:44 It also turns out that a voluntary apology feels a lot better than an apology given because somebody told you to say you're sorry. And that is something you should know. There's a pretty good chance that you engage in some superstitions some of the time. Maybe you have a good luck charm, or you walk around a ladder because you don't want to walk under it, or you avoid black cats, or you have a lucky number. I mean, there are a lot of superstitions. So where do they come from, and why do they persist? Do all cultures have superstitions?

Starting point is 00:03:23 Well, here to take a look at the history of superstitions and why we have them is Heather Alexander, who has gone back and researched some of our favorite superstitions as well as some strange ones as well. Heather is author of The Good Luck Book, a celebration of global traditions, superstitions, and folklore. Hi, Heather, welcome to something you should know. Hi, thanks for having me. So what is a superstition if you had to define it?

Starting point is 00:03:52 So the actual definition of the word is it's an irrational belief. So it's a belief that's not based in knowledge or fact. It doesn't mean we still don't have them, but it is not a scientific fact-based belief. And do you know, are superstitions pretty much everywhere all around the world? There are superstitions everywhere. Sometimes they vary from place to place, but there are superstitions everywhere. And why is that?

Starting point is 00:04:20 Why do human beings cling to what we know are irrational beliefs, and it is universal all over the planet? I think in the beginning, way back when our ancestors, when we didn't have a lot of knowledge that we do have now about science and how things and the world and how animals and how people work, humans naturally look for explanations. And so if there wasn't a ready scientific explanation for something that was happening around you, we tend to fill in the gaps with stories and we connect things that sometimes are not. meant to be connected, and that gives us a sense of relief and a sense of comfort to know that there is an explanation. But what's so interesting is that now that we have some explanations, we still have the superstitions.

Starting point is 00:05:13 Exactly. And some of it is passed down. We're taught at a very young age from our family. Some things we don't even realize are a superstition, for example, blowing out candles on a birthday cake, or covering our mouth when we yawn. all come from superstitious beliefs. They're just so ingrained in us that we never take a moment to stop and think, why not? And then a lot of other times people say they're not superstitious,

Starting point is 00:05:41 but they actually do a few little things just to be sure, because you sometimes don't want to tempt the fate. So what's the difference between a superstition and a ritual? Because I would think of blowing out birthday candles, I've always thought it's just a ritual that people do. I didn't know it was a superstition, or maybe I don't understand the difference between those two words. Right. So there are many, many rituals that are based or born from superstitions. So they've become rituals for us now. For example, blowing out the birthday cake candles, German kids back in the

Starting point is 00:06:20 1700s were giving cakes with candles on it for the first time. And the candles were lit throughout the day of your birthday. And when it was cake time, you blew out the candles. And there was a big candle in the middle. And if you blew it out, the superstition was that you would then live to see your next birthday. Granted, these were times where children died young or adults also died young, so it was a big deal to wish for your next birthday. Now we blow out candles and we say we make a wish. We don't necessarily all wish for health and to see our next birthday. We might wish for something else. But that's where the superstition came from if you blew out the candle and you were able to have enough breath to blow out the candle, you would then get to see your

Starting point is 00:07:11 next birthday. So from your research, tell me a strange kind of bizarre superstition that you uncovered that that I would find fascinating. So one of the ones actually that I found an amazing story behind was the idea I was always told that eating carrots would give me great nighttime vision. And actually this superstition is traced back to the United Kingdom during World War II. In 1940, a Royal Air Force pilot was the first to shoot down a German plane in the nighttime using what was then secret radar technology. But the British at that time, or the British media, the British military didn't want the Germans to know that they had this technology. So they fed to

Starting point is 00:07:59 the media that this pilot's super night vision was the result of eating lots and lots of carrots. And actually, I'm not sure that the German military believed this, but parents believed it. Yeah, my grandmother believed that. Exactly. And so they decided, well, I'm going to tell my children that. And they started packing carrots for lunch and carrots for here. And it was actually something that was just put out in the press, but it became a belief. And that's actually how a lot of superstitions get their start.

Starting point is 00:08:35 Two different things that have nothing to do with each other. You put together, this one was put together for you, but a lot of times you put them together in your mind. So if I wear my lucky red underwear and I get an A on the test, I then start to believe, and it happens a second time that red underwear equals an A on the test, sort of forgetting that I did study for this test or I did listen in class. There's a lot of superstition. I don't know if there's a lot of it. There are several superstitions that come to mind that come from like Halloween,

Starting point is 00:09:13 dark side, you know, black cats, broken mirrors, that kind of stuff. Where do they come from? The black cat superstition, I mean, cats go back to ancient Egypt, ancient China. They were honored as goddesses. Cats were a very good thing. But back in the middle agents, Europeans started associating black cats with witches. And they feared that the witches kept the cats as companions or that the witches could then turn into cats. So that's why a black cat crossing your path was thought to be a sign

Starting point is 00:09:51 of bad things to come because witches would either be in your life, would be coming into your life. The Puritans, when they traveled to America, brought this superstition with them. Black cats actually are not unlucky in other countries. Actually, in Japan, a United Kingdom, a black cat crossing your path is considered lucky. The problem with the black cat one is, as a result, black cats are not adopted as much from shelters. So it actually is a problem for the black cat community, as it were. That's really interesting that the superstition actually has consequences, well, as you say, to the black cat community, which... Right.

Starting point is 00:10:40 There's actually a lot of them. For example, the giant ant eater is seen as an animal that brings bad luck in South and Central America. And as a result, it's been hunted or it's hit by cars. And now the giant ant eaters are endangered. And it's a direct relationship between the feeling that this animal in particular is bad luck. So it actually does have, for her animals, it does have consequences. consequences. Isn't that weird? Yeah. And what about the broken mirror seven years bad luck thing? Do we know where that's what that's about? The superstition is if you break a mirror, you get seven years of bad luck. It's believed that it goes back to ancient cultures. Back then, the idea of a person's reflection was not only to show their physical appearance, but it was also a doorway into their soul. So shableness. A mirror was like shattering or damaging your soul.

Starting point is 00:11:44 As far as the seven years, seven is a number that comes up a lot in superstition, both for good luck and bad luck. But as I understand it, ancient Romans believe that a person's body renewed itself every seven years. So the idea that the luck would come back if you waited, you had to wait now seven years for your body to renew itself, for your soul to become whole again. Another part of that, though, is that years ago, mirrors were very expensive and fragile, and you didn't want to break a mirror because it cost a lot of money and was hard to replace. So a lot of superstitions also are a not-so-subtle way for parents and others to say, don't mess with the expensive stuff. Heather Alexander is my guest.

Starting point is 00:12:37 we're talking about superstitions. Why we have them and what they do for us. Heather is author of The Good Luck Book. When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion. Inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel.

Starting point is 00:12:56 While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when West Jet welcomes you on board. Here's to West Jetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. In communities across Canada,

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Starting point is 00:13:36 So, Heather, if you had to like, the world of superstitions between superstitions for good and bad. Are there more superstitions about bad things happening or good things happening or is it 50-50? I don't know that it can give you a percentage, but there actually are quite a lot of good luck superstitions, especially good luck charms, things that people either do or physically hold onto to bring good luck, as well as different ways that we make wishes, whether it's wishing upon a star, wishing on, you know, finding a four-leaf clover, horseshoes hung up in a barn to gather luck. So actually, I probably think there is a little bit more good luck than there is bad luck.

Starting point is 00:14:29 Oh, that's interesting. Well, what's the deal with, you know, like I used to have like rabbit's feet when I was a kid. and I have no idea why that's supposed to be good luck. And it's not good luck for the rabbit. No, it's definitely not. It's another one, though, that has had not good consequences for rabbits. What about just the idea of a good luck charm that having this thing in your hand or in your possession will bring you good luck? It comes back to confidence.

Starting point is 00:15:01 And you will see it, especially in athletes, as well as... going on people going on stage, when there is a chance of something going wrong or a situation where you're not exactly sure if you're up at bat at a baseball game, how it's going to actually play out, as it were. Certain behaviors or lucky uniforms or the way you wind up before you hit or the way you start, for example, certain tennis players. players bounce the tennis ball five times. If they bounce it six times, they have to start again and bounce it five times. It's more, this superstition is more a way to calm nerves. As a result, sometimes people can't get beyond that superstition. There's actually a story of Pele, the soccer

Starting point is 00:15:56 player, who had a lucky jersey that he wore. And he once gave the jersey away to a fan. Then after the jersey was given away, he went into a scoring slump. So he decided that he needed to have this jersey back immediately. Actually, but he had given it away to a fan, had no idea where the fan was, actually hired a private detective to track down this fan. Weeks or months later, the private detective comes back, tells Pele, I found the jersey, here it is. Paley puts the jersey back on.

Starting point is 00:16:38 Lo and behold, he scores in the next game and the game after. What Paley didn't find out until much later was the private detective could not find the fan that the original jersey was given away to, pulled another jersey out of his kit that Paley had owned, dirtied it up a little bit, gave it to Paley. And the belief that he was wearing the lucky jersey was enough to give him whether it's the confidence or the umph to to score so that's a lot of these ones as well isn't that interesting well see like the the example that you gave of the bouncing the ball five times to me i would if you asked me i would say that's a ritual that's not really a superstition but i guess the line is kind of blur there's a blur look there is a blurry line between when rituals and superstitions and

Starting point is 00:17:31 where you cross that line. But it's an irrational belief that if I do something a certain way, something else will happen. And I mean, there's NASA, for example, NASA, there is a lot of rituals and beliefs before space travel that happen. And this is a group of scientists who are doing, for example, astronauts before

Starting point is 00:18:01 launch, no matter what time of day the launch is, they will eat a meal of steak and eggs before the launch. And this happened because Alan Shepard, that was his meal before he made that first mission launch in 1961. So let me ask you about a couple of, I guess they're superstitions. And one is, you know, at Thanksgiving, the wishbone, the turkey wishbone, and you pull it apart and whoever gets the biggest piece, gets their wish to come true. Where did that come from? This is actually a story. It goes back to the Etruscans, which

Starting point is 00:18:39 were an ancient civilization who lived in what's now Italy. And they believed that chickens had the power to tell the future. I don't know why. So they would actually draw a circle on the ground and divide it into wedges, sort of the way you would cut a pie, and write a letter of the alphabet inside each wedge. and then grain was sprinkled in each wedge,

Starting point is 00:19:03 and a rooster was placed in the middle, and the local priest would ask the rooster an important question about the city's future, and then watch to see which wedge the rooster would eat from, and that's how they got their answer from those letters. So then after this fortune-telling rooster died, its bones were left out to dry in the sun, and the V-shaped wishbone was used as a lucky charm.

Starting point is 00:19:30 And so anybody who would walk by would stroke it while making a wish. So then the Romans came about, and they liked this lucky wishbone idea, but there weren't really enough chickens to go around. So they began breaking the bone in two. And so this way there are more bones, more wishes for everyone. And then the Romans introduced the wishbone to Europe. And Germany, you actually used geese for the wishbone. And in Britain, some people actually, there was a thing way back when where you would try to balance the wishbone on your nose before making a wish.

Starting point is 00:20:10 And that leads us again to the pilgrims who left Britain and sailed over to what's now the United States. And there weren't many chickens to be used for wishbones then, but there were turkeys. And so they said, okay, we'll move it over to the turkey. And they started making the wishes on the wishbone of the turkey. But the word wishbone didn't come into being actually until about the mid-1800s. And that's when after Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday, that the wishbone became associated with Thanksgiving. So one of the, one, a really good example of this is the, you know, don't walk under a ladder,

Starting point is 00:20:58 that it's bad luck to walk under a ladder. And everybody, any rational person will tell you that that just can't possibly be true. And yet people will go out of their way not to walk under a ladder, even though they know, because I guess you don't want to tempt fate, but we all know that walking under a ladder

Starting point is 00:21:19 doesn't do anything. It's not 100% sure where it comes from, but ancient Egyptians would place a ladder inside the tombs so that in the afterlife, the dead could climb up to the heavens. And they believe that the triangular space under a ladder was filled with spirits. And essentially, the spirits kind of get cranky when they're disturbed by humans. So the fear of walking under the ladder. Others have said that the ladder's triangular shape represents the Christian belief in the Holy Trinity. And so so that walking through or essentially breaking the Trinity is showing disrespect.

Starting point is 00:22:05 So those are two options as to where it comes from. But then again, a lot of superstitions really are warnings of what not to do. So don't walk under a ladder because it could fall on you or a can of paint could fall on you. So that's how it happens. I just find it interesting what you said at the beginning that, you know, superstitions were a way to explain things we didn't know, and now today we do know the truth about science and whatnot. But we still cling to these superstitions. Superstition has really good PR. It seems that they just keep going in the face of the truth. And I guess it's because we see like famous people with their

Starting point is 00:22:50 superstitions or their rituals that kind of help perpetuate it all. A lot of famous people. or celebrities have superstitions that they do. For example, Taylor Swift finds the number 13 lucky and does a lot of things on the number 13. Sorry, a lot of things on the number 13. Opera singer Luciano Pavarotti insisted that he could only perform with a bent nail in his pocket because that was his good luck charm. But he had to find the bent nail on his way to the stage. so he had to find it backstage. As a result, in opera houses all over the world,

Starting point is 00:23:35 they would have assistance drop a few bent nails on the pathway from the dressing room to the stage, so he would be sure to find one in order for him to be able to go on and perform. So that's a fun one there. Yeah, and there's got to be more to that story, like why a nail? But so many of these superstitions seem so kind of random and weird,

Starting point is 00:23:56 but kind of fun to talk about. I've been speaking with Heather Alexander and she's author of The Good Luck Book, a celebration of global tradition, superstitions, and folklore. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for coming on and talking about this, Heather. This was fun. Thanks, Mike, for having me.

Starting point is 00:24:14 It's been wonderful talking to you. Great news. The federal EV rebate is back. Eligible customers get up to $5,000 with the federal EVAP rebate on select 2027 volt and 2026 Equinox EV models. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer today for more details. Hey, it's Hillary Frank from the longest, shortest time,

Starting point is 00:24:34 an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. We talk about things like sex ed, birth control, pregnancy, bodily autonomy, and of course, kids of all ages. But you don't have to be a parent to listen. If you like surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships, and, you know, periods, the longest shortest time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or at longest shortest time.com. One thing that often happens to people such as you who listen to this show

Starting point is 00:25:10 is you learn lots of new and interesting things. And in this next segment, you're going to learn several new things you probably didn't know from the world of science. And I think you'll find it quite fascinating. My guest is Chris Balakrishnan. He is co-founder of something called Nerd Night, where for over 20 years, Nerd Night has delivered to live audiences around the world some interesting, fun and informative presentations about science, history, the arts, pop culture, and more. He's also author of a book called How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi, collected quirks of science, tech, engineering, and math from Nerd Knight. Hey, Chris, welcome to something you should know. Hi, Michael. Thanks for having me and good to be here.

Starting point is 00:25:56 So let's start with the hangover, because anybody who's had a hangover knows that feeling of wishing there was a cure for it. And over the years, people have come up with various ways, various ideas of how to prevent a hangover, how to cure a hangover. I don't know how successful those are. So what is a hangover and what's the science about this whole thing? A hangover is generally a combination of symptoms that you feel after drinking too much. This can include things like a headache, nausea, and even worse. It's a really uncomfortable set of symptoms, and these symptoms actually, believe it or not, cause a significant economic cost. Well, sure, because you think about all the people who,

Starting point is 00:26:49 who are hung over the next day and don't go to work and add all that up and the lost productivity itself is pretty substantial. But is there any progress towards a cure for a hangover? And maybe it's hard to do because it's not a thing. It's a group of symptoms. But where are we with that? The simplest answer, of course,

Starting point is 00:27:11 and the one nobody wants to hear, is that the only sure way to not have a hangover is to not drink. But for many of us, that's not a tenable solution. What other kinds of options are there? Well, unfortunately, the only proven treatment that reduces the effects of the hangover is one that we've all heard about, and that is drinking more alcohol. So why does drinking more alcohol help? To understand that, you have to understand how alcohol is metabolized in the body.

Starting point is 00:27:51 And basically, when you get a hangover, the reason you have a hangover is because of the toxic metabolites of methanol. And so there are two kinds of alcohol that you might run into in your drinks, ethanol and methanol. And the majority will be ethanol. But if you drink a lot, the toxic byproducts of methanol build up in the bloodstream. And methanol and ethanol both compete for the same enzymes that process alcohol. And your body preferentially processes the ethanol. And so by drinking more alcohol, you're giving your body the ethanol that prevents these toxic byproducts of methanol from forming. These are things like formaldehyde.

Starting point is 00:28:41 And so by giving your body ethanol, these toxic byproducts of methanol just don't form. And again, those byproducts like formaldehyde are the things that contribute to the hangover. It does seem like a weird solution to the problem because, you know, we've heard that alcohol is poison, basically, to the body if you drink too much of it. And so if you take poison to then take more poison to combat the poison doesn't seem like it would make much sense. This is the context where this really comes up. That is you're in the hospital. Things have gotten so bad that this is a really a good idea. And doctors will prescribe, for example, IV alcohol to help with the extreme symptoms that you're suffering.

Starting point is 00:29:29 Really? So when you have alcohol poisoning in the hospital, they treat you with alcohol? Yes. In extreme circumstances, yes. when methanol poisoning specifically yeah so is there any other treatment any other cure any other wife's tale about curing a hangover that doesn't involve drinking more alcohol that has any value at all yeah so the other possible treatment is a is a supplement called glutathione and this it turns out is a supplement that you can buy over the counter and is it has now been even branded as an alcohol

Starting point is 00:30:09 as a hangover cure. Glutothion, what it does is, well, first of all, the amount of glutathione in your body is reduced while you're drinking. And so you're depleting your glutathione supply as you drink. And it turns out glutathione is a co-factor that helps these enzymes that process alcohol in your body to function. And so you've depleted your glutathione by drinking. And then, And so bringing those levels back up can help these alcohol processing enzymes work more effectively. There are here as well a couple of caveats. One is that glutathione itself also has side effects.

Starting point is 00:30:57 And these are not enjoyable side effects there, gastrointestinal side effects. And so you can imagine. So it's really a sort of a tradeoff as to whether the best. benefits outweigh the cost of the hangover. Well, and as you said at the very beginning, you know, the best cure for a hangover is to not drink and then you can't get a hangover. Let's talk about maggots because there's some science here. You know, people are pretty grossed out when they see maggots, but there is some scientific use for them. Yeah, so this was a really interesting thing that I just learned, and that is how maggots are used in,

Starting point is 00:31:39 hospitals and in the context of wound healing. And so it turns out that maggots are actually an approved therapy for treating poorly healing wounds. And there are old anecdotes going back to Napoleon's Army and the Civil War that suggested that people who have maggot infested wounds actually healed better than people who don't have maggot infested wounds. And this was actually tested by a medical intern at the time named Ron Sherman, who set up an experiment with 103 people with poorly healing wounds. And it turns out that about 80% of the people who were treated with maggots achieved complete debridement, whereas only about 48% of those without maggots had complete debridement.

Starting point is 00:32:37 And so in 2004, Ron Sherman applied for FDA approval for maggot therapy. And in 2007, maggots became the first FD approved animal treatment. And the maggots that are used are not like the ones in your garbage. I mean, there's medical maggots, right? There are medical maggots. And Ron Sherman has been the key entrepreneur in developing the social. business. So he basically started a company where maggots can be grown in sterile conditions. They're sent to hospitals on like a circular gauze type thing as eggs, and they can be placed on the

Starting point is 00:33:22 wounds and grown in sterile conditions. It sounds so gross, and yet it's apparently, it's very effective. It's so effective. And unfortunately, the grossness is really what prevents people from using this treatment or even offering this treatment in some cases. So maggots are not used nearly as much as they as they should be given their effectiveness just because of the gross out factor. So I'm almost afraid to ask, but what is it that the maggots do that makes it so successful? Basically, maggots have evolved prickly spines that they use to basically loosen the the dead flesh, and this turns out to be a much gentler way of removing dead tissue than a surgeon's

Starting point is 00:34:13 scalpel. They also, like many babies, they can't chew food. And so what maggots do is they basically release their digestive enzymes onto the tissue itself, and that again helps soften and digest the dead tissue, but it spares the living tissue. And the enzymes involved also have antibiotic properties, And then that's where the infection management comes in. And so that's also a contribution of maggots. Finally, there's a part that no one understands, but also appears to be true, is that having treatment with maggot actually improves blood flow to the wound and stimulates blood vessel growth. And this also improves the healing in these poorly healing wounds.

Starting point is 00:35:03 misophonia you talk about and it's we touched on it before in a previous episode but I think it's so interesting because people don't know it's a thing and well you you talk about it misophonia is a condition that's really only recently come to attention where the sufferer is extremely sensitive to particular repetitive noises and by sensitivity what I mean is someone with misophonia feels a real emotional threat when they hear these repetitive sounds. These repetitive sounds include things like the sound of chewing, the sound of snoring, the sound of someone blowing their nose. So these are sounds that we hear every day in normal life,

Starting point is 00:35:54 and many of us are able to filter these sounds out and not even notice them from, and they're just sort of part of the background noise. But someone with misophonia really feels anxious and stressed when they hear such sounds. And it turns out that estimates say that roughly 20% of people suffer from some form of misophonia, but only really 10% of people or so have actually ever heard of misophonia. And when people hear about misophonia, lots of people are. are like, oh, I have that. I've always wondered what was wrong with me.

Starting point is 00:36:38 And it turns out that there's lots of other people that have this condition. Talk about the tea test. Because this is something I'd never heard before. And it has to do with the beverage tea and how you prepare it. And so I'll let you tell the story. So a famous statistician named Ronald Fisher

Starting point is 00:37:03 was making tea for his colleague, Muriel Bristol, another scientist, and she was unhappy with the tea that was made. And she said it was because of the order that the tea was made. That is, was milk added first to the tea, or was the tea added to the milk? And Fisher thought this didn't make any sense. You should be able to add things in either direction and have the same outcome. But Fisher played an important role in the origins of statistics and experiments. At this time, there were not standardized methods for experiments. And in the context of this tea experiment, he devised an experiment to really test Muriel as to whether she could distinguish the two types of tea. And so what he did was he made eight cups of tea, four of which were presented milk first,

Starting point is 00:37:58 four of which were made tea first, and he randomized the order of presentation. And he just simply asked Muriel to identify whether the milk or the tea had been added first. It turns out that Muriel was able to correctly guess the order of milk adding 100% of the time. And why that was is simply because of the thermodynamics. When a small amount of milk hits hot tea, that milk becomes a little bit burned and develops a caramel-y taste, and she could detect that. But what's really important here is that this little experiment was the foundation of modern statistics and modern experimental design that we use now today. This led to the Fisher's exact test, which is a long-standing statistical test used in experiments all around the world. So I know your specialty is birds. So tell me something fascinating, interesting that I probably don't know about birds.

Starting point is 00:39:03 Have you ever heard of parasitic birds? No, but do I want to hear about parasitic birds? It sounds a little gross. So it turns out there are birds that are parasites. And these are not blood-sucking parasites or anything like that, but they are bruised. And so what that means is that these are birds that lay their eggs in the nest of a different species, and then that species raises these young as their own. And it turns out this behavior in birds has evolved independently in seven different groups of birds.

Starting point is 00:39:45 That is, these birds don't build their own nests, and they don't raise their own young. These are all very birdy things that you assume all birds do. but instead of that, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and pawn off that entire effort of parental care onto a different species. And would I know some of these birds? I mean, are they commonly known birds, or are these very weird birds that nobody's ever heard of? You might know about them.

Starting point is 00:40:16 If you follow birds even a little bit in North America, you've probably heard of one species. that is the brown-headed cowbird or the cowbird. This is a bird that's known to lay its eggs in over 200 other different species nests and has been implicated in the declines of a subset of those species. So people tend to hate the cowbird because of this food parasitic behavior and because of this assumption that it's causing problems for other bird species. So that is one famous one. The other famous one is one that I think it's maybe less known.

Starting point is 00:40:52 that they're parasitic but they're cuckoos so like the cuckoo clock so European cuckoos which are the species that are that the cuckoo clock is designed to reflect is also a brood parasite unlike the cowbirds they are very picky in where they lay their eggs they lay their eggs in just a typically a single host species and in fact in cuckoos the eggs of the parasite actually match the eggs of the host so that the host can't tell which eggs are are their own versus the parasites and this is to avoid things like having the host eject those egg those parasitic eggs from the nest do all birds in that species do it or just some birds decide you know we're not

Starting point is 00:41:40 going to raise our own here we're just going to have the birds in the other tree do that that's a great question so that the birds that I was talking about are species where they do it all the time a hundred percent of all the birds are parasitic. So they are always they do it 100% of the time. On top of that, there are other species of birds that only sometimes lay their eggs parasitically. So there are some ducks that do this where they'll just occasionally drop an egg into a different, into a different bird's nest. All different versions of this behavior have evolved. And in fact, it isn't just birds that do this. There are fish that are parasitic. There are insects that

Starting point is 00:42:19 parasitic, basically anything that lays an egg, any group of organisms that lays eggs, there are examples of this type of parasitism evolving. Lastly, because I think this is interesting, is the songs that songbirds sing, how they come to sing them. Talk about that. The songs that they sing, which we all hear all around us, are learned. They learn these songs from their parents. They're not born with them. And so the way that songbirds learn their song is very similar to the way that humans learn

Starting point is 00:42:53 to speak. And very few other animals in the animal kingdom have this type of learned communication. So even chimpanzees, their vocalizations are innate and not learned. But songbirds, parrots, and humans are examples of learned vocal communication. And so, as I promised at the very beginning of this segment, at least I know I've learned several new things I didn't know before, and I imagine most people did too, thanks to you. Chris Balakrishnan, he is co-founder of Nerd Knight

Starting point is 00:43:27 that delivers live presentations about science and history and pop culture and things around the world, and he is author of a book called How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi, collected quirks of science, tech, engineering, and math from Nerd Knight. If you'd like to check that book out, There is a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes for this episode. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate you being here.

Starting point is 00:43:50 Thank you very much. In springtime, it's not that uncommon to come across an egg on the ground that has fallen from a nest in the tree above. So the question is, if you come across one of these eggs, should you put it back in the nest? And the answer is, probably not. If an egg has fallen out of the nest, it's fallen pretty far and is probably damaged, and a damaged egg will not hatch. Also, many bird eggs found on the ground have actually been kicked out of the nest by the mother. Some other birds can determine whether an egg is viable or not and gets rid of the ones that aren't.

Starting point is 00:44:33 And in other cases, the egg has been stolen by another critter and dropped. The other problem is if that egg that you find isn't from, the nest that you think it is, many mama birds will actually abandon an entire nest if there is an unfamiliar egg placed in there. So it's really best to let fallen eggs be. And that is something you should know. If you enjoy what we do here on this podcast, you should become a follower. That way, you get the episodes delivered right to your phone or whatever device you want it sent to, and you never miss a single one. Just hit the follow button on the app you're listening on and that should take care of it. I'm Mike Herr

Starting point is 00:45:16 Brothers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. Hey, it's Hillary Frank from the longest shortest time, an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. There is so much going on right now in the world of reproductive health and we're covering it all. Birth control, pregnancy, gender, bodily autonomy, menopause, consent, sperm. So many stories about sperm, and of course, the joys and absurdities of raising kids of all ages. If you're new to the show, check out an episode called The Staircase. It's a personal story of mine about trying to get my kids school to teach sex ed. Spoiler, I get it to happen, but not at all in the way that I wanted. We also talk to plenty of non-parents, so you don't have to be a parent to listen. If you like

Starting point is 00:46:05 surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships and, you know, periods, The Longest Shortest Time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or at Longest Shortestime.com.

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