Something You Should Know - How DNA Affects Almost Everything About You & Understanding Your Sense of Direction

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Starting point is 00:00:46 That is where DNA is unparalleled in its power to be able to prevent something like a heart attack rather than trying to cure that heart attack you know after it's happened or obesity or alcoholism or any of these other things. Also do you know how to tell if a pair is really ripe? Most people don't. And how good is your sense of direction? I mean, people vary a lot in how good they are at getting from A to B. And when someone says, I have a great sense of direction, they probably have a lot of experience of successful journeys.

Starting point is 00:01:25 All this today on Something You Should Know. 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.

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Starting point is 00:02:33 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 something you should know. Not too long ago, I got a new car and I noticed when I got the car that the little valve covers on the tires where you put the air in, they were green. And I asked the guy who sold me the car, I said, why are they green?

Starting point is 00:03:06 And he said, that's because your tires are inflated with nitrogen. And very often when you get a new car or when you buy replacement tires, you are offered a nitrogen inflation. In other words, filling your new tires with nitrogen instead of plain old air. Usually at somewhere between $5 and $10 per tire. The theory is that it can help your car's tires last longer and improve mileage.

Starting point is 00:03:32 So does it? Well, in large trucks and commercial fleets where nitrogen is used routinely, it does seem to help reduce air loss and the aging of the rubber in the tires, and it also helps to cut down on wheel erosion. This is according to the National Highway Safety Administration. But do those benefits translate to your car? Eh, a little.

Starting point is 00:03:56 Some of the regular air loss in tires is the air seeping through the rubber. The fatter nitrogen molecules can't leak out as easily, so your tires stay fuller longer. But it's not much of a difference. So should you do it? Well, according to the tire manufacturers, it's definitely not necessary. But it will do no harm to your tires.

Starting point is 00:04:19 Depending on the cost, it might be worth it and you might see a slight improvement. But regularly checking your tire pressure, whether air or nitrogen, once a month would go a long way. And more than half of us don't do that. And that is something you should know. How much do you really understand about your DNA exactly? I think we all have a sense of what it is, that we have genes and they came from our parents and they make up who we are and influence who we are. But there's a lot about genes and DNA I bet you don't know.

Starting point is 00:04:56 And there are some myths about how it works that a lot of people believe. We are about to clear all this up, set the record straight, and get a really good and fascinating understanding about all of this from Robert Plowman. He is a professor of behavioral genetics at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience at King's College in London. He previously held positions at the University of Colorado and Pennsylvania State University, and he is author of a book called Blueprint, How DNA Makes Us Who We Are. Hi, Robert.

Starting point is 00:05:29 Welcome. Pleasure to have you here. Well, thanks, Mike. I really look forward to talking to you. So we do hear a lot about DNA. You know, we see it on television. We see ads for companies where we can, you know, spit in a tube and get our DNA results back. So we have a sense of what it is, but what is DNA exactly? Well, that's a great question because I think everyone thinks

Starting point is 00:05:53 they know what it is. It's the inherited material in all living organisms. And in humans, it consists of 3 billion steps in the spiral staircase of DNA, the famous double helix. And each of those steps has information. 99% of all of those steps in the double helix of DNA are the same for all of us, but 1% differ. And it's those 1% of the differences that we're studying to ask, to what extent do they make people different? So at some level, everybody knows hair color is inherited and eye color. And that when we say they're inherited, we mean there are DNA differences that we've inherited from our parents that make us have either brown hair or blonde hair. So DNA is the material that we inherit from our parents that is responsible for what we talk about as genetic influence. And so when you say that we're 99% all the same, basically,

Starting point is 00:06:59 that means that that's why we all have two arms and ten fingers and because we're all the same. Exactly right. That's what makes us human, the 99%. Doesn't it seem kind of weird that there's only this 1% that creates such huge differences in people? Maybe, but 1% of 3 billion is still many millions. So there's still a lot of differences there. And the differences are things like hair color and eye color and that kind of thing, height and all that. But what else is it? People know, I think, have a sense that they inherit things about their hair and their voice or whatever.

Starting point is 00:07:42 But what are some of the other things that we're inheriting? Well, when I started out in graduate school 50 years ago, in psychology, you couldn't even mention genetics. No one ever thought genetics could be affecting your personality or your mental health or your ability to learn in school. And so, it was a real, you know, amazing finding that over those few decades, we began to realize that just about everything shows genetic influence. Things have changed so much from the environmentalism of the 1970s to an acceptance of genetic influence now that the real question now is what is not heritable? We don't know of anything that differs reliably between people that is not heritable. Personality shows genetic influence,

Starting point is 00:08:34 mental health and illness, cognitive abilities and disabilities. Just about everything shows genetic influence. Well, that really surprises me because it's not the conventional wisdom. It's not what most people believe. I think, and I've always thought that, yes, some things are genetic, some things are inherited, but other things are because of the environment that you are in or you grew up in. You know, it's the nature versus nurture argument. Yeah, it is surprising. I've done surveys, though, of the population,

Starting point is 00:09:09 and people are much more accepting of the notion of genetic influence, not just for simple physical things like height and hair color and eye color, but for more complex things, you know, like something that you know you can measure well, body weight, for example, body mass index, you know, people are surprised to learn that it's so heritable. None of these things are 100% due to genetic influence, but weight is about 70% due to genetic differences. Now, that means it doesn't mean 70% of your weight is due to genetics and the rest of the environment.

Starting point is 00:09:45 What it means is the differences between people in the population in weight, about 70% of those differences are due to inherited DNA differences. It is surprising, especially when you get to things like, you know, personality or how well kids do at school. From Freud onwards, we always thought that what's important is the family environment. It's what your parents, how your parents interact with you that's important, what we call nurture. But now most psychologists accept that genetics, that is nature, accounts for about half of the differences on average across all traits in psychology. So that is a dramatic change in how we think about the origins of differences between people. Doesn't it have to be, though, that you may be genetically predisposed to something but there also has to be some sort of trigger and by that i mean your parents may be diabetic and you may pre predisposed

Starting point is 00:10:53 to getting diabetes but if you don't eat a lot of sugar if you don't eat what diabetics tend to eat you won't get it exactly right you know for know, for example, weight is heritable. And I know from my DNA, I actually have a high genetic risk for putting on weight. But does that mean I'm destined to be a genetic fatty? No, not at all. Because along the lines of what you're saying, if I didn't eat like a pig, I wouldn't put on so much weight. So it's a genetic propensity. It's probabilistic. It's not hardwired deterministic. When we talk about complex traits like weight or common disorders like diabetes, which you mentioned, it's not a single gene. If it were a single gene, it would be deterministic. There's thousands of single gene disorders. And if you have one of those genes, you will develop the disorder.

Starting point is 00:11:51 It doesn't matter what your environment is. But when we talk about common disorders and complex traits, we're not talking about one gene or 10 gene or 100 genes. We're talking about thousands of tiny effects of many different genes so it's not one gene which is deterministic it's many genes which makes it probabilistic is the genetic risk though what is the genetic risk meaning what's the mechanism so you're let's say you are predisposed to put on weight. Is that because you're predisposed to not be able to control your eating or you would eat the same as a thin person,

Starting point is 00:12:31 but you would put on the weight? What is the gene doing? Yeah. Well, that's the thing is it's not the gene. That's the way people used to think about it. If it's genetic, what's the gene? But we're talking about thousands of genes, each which have little effect. Now, there are some major mechanisms like the one you mentioned where your metabolism is such that you tend to put on weight more. That's what people used to think was important, but it actually is probably of little importance. More important are psychological mechanisms like satiety, whether you feel full. You know, I mean, most normal people, when they're full, they don't want any more food. But if I'm at a restaurant with friends and there's food on the table, I say,

Starting point is 00:13:17 oh, I don't want anything more, I'm full. But then as we continue talking, suddenly all the food starts disappearing and you know where it went. The other mechanism is called responsiveness to food cues. And that's, you know, like if I pass a bakery, it takes all my willpower when I smell those fresh pastries not to go in the shop. But I've learned that if I go in the shop, it's deadly for me. So there are many mechanisms involved, and it isn't going to be simple. But now that we are able, thanks to the DNA revolution, to identify some of these genes, we can begin to use them to predict behavior, even if we don't know about the mechanisms responsible for those genes' effect. If you inherit, let's say you inherit your eye color from your mother,

Starting point is 00:14:06 well, what determined that as opposed to inheriting your eye color from your father? Do we know, or is it just random or what? Now, again, that's a single gene, but I think the general point you're making is that you get about half of your genes from your mother, half from your father. And it's really the point of sex is to randomly mix up those genes. So that, I mean, for example, I just got a dog that's a crossbreed. And if you look at that, that's a mix between either a mother or a father who's of one breed and the other. Take a cocker spaniel and a poodle. And if you mate them together, you'll see that they have about eight pups, 10 pups on average. And you see that normal distribution from pups

Starting point is 00:14:53 that look almost just like cocker spaniels to pups that look almost like poodles, but most of them are in the middle with weird combinations of them. Some have the cocker spaniel ears, you know, the floppy ears, and some have the tail of a poodle. Well, it's the same with us. We're mixtures of the genes from your mother and your father. And that's really interesting to me because I particularly am interested in learning abilities and how well kids do at school, for example. And when you think about nurture, my sister and I both have the same parents, right? So we have the same nurture, basically. Yet we differed a lot in how well we did at school. I loved school and found it easy.

Starting point is 00:15:39 My sister didn't like school and found it hard. It's hard to explain that environmentally, actually, because we always thought nurture is the systematic environment provided by your parents. But genetics predicts differences within families. Yeah, but it seems like there are some things that happened that you couldn't predict that I want to ask you about in just a moment. My guest is Robert Plowman. He is a professor of behavioral genetics, and he is author of the book Blueprint, How DNA Makes Us Who We Are. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at

Starting point is 00:16:17 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

Starting point is 00:17:00 Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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,

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Starting point is 00:17:57 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.

Starting point is 00:18:06 There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Robert, what happens, though, when there are things that seem so unpredictable? And, you know, like the heartbreak of, let's say, you know, two very healthy parents from very healthy families, no history of anything, and then their child gets cancer and it can't be environmental because the child is too young

Starting point is 00:18:35 for it to have been environmental most likely. So where did it come from? A lot of cancers are not heritable. They're not due to DNA differences you inherit from your parents. Many cancers are due to mutations that happen after conception. So one that's easy for people to understand is skin cancer, for example. If you expose your skin to sun a lot, what that radiation does is it causes mutations, changes in your DNA in your skin locally. Now that is not inherited. Maybe your propensity to suffer from these mutations might show some genetic influence, but basically

Starting point is 00:19:21 it isn't very heritable. The mutations that occur there can go crazy, and that's what cancer is. It's a mutation in mechanisms that occur when our cells divide. But you won't pass that on to your kids either. You didn't get it from your parents, you won't pass it on. The only mutations and DNA differences that you pass on are in your sperm or eggs. Well, so often you hear people who say, or the advice is that if your mother had breast cancer, that your risk of getting it if you're a woman is higher or ovarian cancer or prostate cancer for men. And you're saying that the link isn't there. It's a very weak link.

Starting point is 00:20:07 These are some of the least heritable things, much less heritable than these psychological traits. And that's because a lot of cancers are caused by these, what we call spontaneous or de novo, new mutations that you did not inherit. Now, with Angela Jolie, for example, most of these disorders, though, have rare and very severe types that can be caused by a single gene. So, with breast cancer, there are these two genes, they're called BRCA1 and 2, that greatly

Starting point is 00:20:40 increase your risk so that you don't need to be a geneticist to see it because you'll often see that women develop very severe breast cancer early in life in their 30s or 40s. Their sisters tend to have it. And it's also bilateral, both sides, and ovarian. So this is, you know, very hefty sledgehammer-like genetic effects. But the thing is, these are rare, very rare. I remember hearing that the real magic of DNA is or will be when we're able to tell somebody's propensity for getting diabetes, heart attacks, those kinds of things, and be able to do things to prevent them

Starting point is 00:21:26 as opposed to treat them later. And that is where DNA is unparalleled in its power, because you can detect at birth what someone's risk is. It's a no-brainer for medicine to be able to prevent something like a heart attack, rather than trying to cure that heart attack, you know, after it's happened, or obesity, or alcoholism, or any of these other things. They're very hard to cure once they've occurred. But prevention, you know, as Benjamin Franklin said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And so all of medicine is moving this way. So many countries, including the UK, are now offering DNA testing, not for these fun things that people do on 23andMe and these other direct-to-consumer companies, but to predict important medical disorders so that we can begin to prevent them.

Starting point is 00:22:28 Since, as you've clearly pointed out, none of this is a single gene. These are all lots of little whispering genes that are combining to do these things. Will it ever get to the point where you'll be able to nudge these things or is each one so unimportant by itself that it's just too many fish in the sea? You know, never say never, but how are you going to change thousands of genes? And even with a single gene, you got to worry about unintended consequences because a gene doesn't do a single thing. Like we talk about the gene for type 1 diabetes, but that gene isn't a gene for type 1 diabetes. It's a gene that does many different things. So you've got to worry about changing it

Starting point is 00:23:18 because you want to change its negative effects like type 1 diabetes because it's likely to have very unintended consequences. You said that your interest is in genetics as it relates to education, and I don't think most of us have any understanding of that, that your genes determine how well you'll do in school. Education has been the backwater of genetics. It's now suddenly the star so that we can predict that better, how well kids do at school. We can predict that better with DNA than we can any other trait in the behavioral sciences. The only things we can predict better is not medical disorders like heart disease. It's about the same as heart disease. The only things that are better is we can predict height about twice as well, but we can predict 15%

Starting point is 00:24:11 of the differences between kids and how well they do at school using DNA alone. So that for me has been the most exciting finding is to see education go from the backwater of genetics to suddenly, just in the last couple years, being the star of genetics. So you can look at someone's DNA and predict how well they'll do in school. You know, again, people might be surprised. You know, what do you think determines how well kids do at school?

Starting point is 00:24:43 Well, 20, 30 years ago, people would say, well, it's their parents. It's how well their do at school. Well, 20, 30 years ago, people would say, well, it's their parents. It's how well their parents brought them up and how much they focused on education. And then also the schools, how good the school is that you send your kids to. But the biggest systematic effect, accounting for about 60% of the differences, is inherited DNA genetics. And now with the DNA revolution, we can't predict all 60% of that, but we can predict about a third of it using DNA. And this is only from research in the last few years, last three or four years.

Starting point is 00:25:21 So that's going to get more and more predictive. But even now, it's much, DNA is a better predictor of how well kids do at school than how good the school is the kid goes to. And do you know why? What's going on? Why does this kid do better because his DNA is different? Because what's going on in his head that makes him do better in school compared to this other guy? Environmental measures that we use in psychology, like how much parents read to kids, even how many books you have in the home, they show genetic influence. Now, the reason for that is, say, books in the home is the single best

Starting point is 00:26:02 predictor of how well kids will do at school. And it's reasonable to think, well, that's just nurture, right? Books in the home means the kids learn more and they do better when they go to school. But I hope after hearing me, people will say, well, what about genetics? Those books don't get on the shelves by themselves. Parents put them there. What kind of parents have more books on the shelves than other kind of parents? You know, presumably parents who are more educated. So when you say more educated parents have more educated kids, the genetic hypothesis begins to loom large there.

Starting point is 00:26:36 Maybe it's genetic. And it is. There's a strong genetic component there. So there's a correlation between kids' genetic propensities and their environments. Kids who get the genes from parents who are highly educated are more likely to get environments that are also correlated with that genetic propensity. So, that's a big area of study now. But what interests me the most is that this is directly, and I'm finally getting to the real answer to your question, you know, is how does this work? Well, the genes aren't there at birth changing your neural wiring.

Starting point is 00:27:15 The way the genes work is to make you use your environment differently. So if you study, say, these really bright kids, for example, or even easier, musically gifted kids, it's almost as if you can't stop them from being musical. Or I've studied mathematically gifted kids. You know, they see the world in mathematics. They hang out with math-oriented friends. They tell math jokes to each other. You know, they're using their environment to foster their propensities, their genetic propensities. So increasingly, I think of the way genes work is to change our appetites, what we like, rather than our aptitudes. It's not like hard wiring in the brain.

Starting point is 00:28:06 It's more like how we use the environment to develop our genetic propensities. Well, so much of what you've said, I've never heard before. And it is so exciting to think that we'll be able to, or can even now in some ways, predict what illnesses people might likely get and to be able to, or can even now in some ways, predict what illnesses people might likely get, and to be able to prevent them. I mean, that is such a huge, huge game changer. My guest has been Robert Plowman. He is a professor of behavioral genetics

Starting point is 00:28:36 at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience at King's College in London. And the name of his book is Blueprint, How DNA Makes Us Who We Are. And there is a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you for explaining all this, Robert. Really enlightening.

Starting point is 00:28:54 Good. I enjoyed talking to you, Mike. 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:29:14 Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister 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. 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.

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Starting point is 00:30:13 I'm sure you've heard people say things like, oh, I have such a good sense of direction, or I have no sense of direction. I know there are times when I think my sense of direction is really good, and other times when I have been way off and totally turned around. Do you have a good sense of direction? What is a sense of direction? I mean, is that a real thing? That's something Michael Bond wanted to know. Michael is a science writer and former senior editor at New Scientist,

Starting point is 00:30:46 and he's author of a book called From Here to There, The Art and Science of Finding and Losing Our Way. Hi, Michael. Hi, thanks very much. So when someone says, I have a good sense of direction, or someone says, I have no sense of direction. What are they talking about? What does it mean to have a sense of direction? They're probably talking about several different things. I mean, people vary a lot in how good they are at getting from A to B. And when someone says, I have a great sense of direction, they probably have a lot of experience of successful journeys. But largely, it has to do with experience. If you grow up having to find your way around and you grow up with the confidence

Starting point is 00:31:34 to do that, then as an adult, you're more likely to have a little problem finding your way around the city or the countryside. But sense of direction, in practical terms, it's getting to where you want to go. But along the way, there's things like, you know, how anxious you are, how good you are reading a map, how attentive you are to your surroundings, and how good you are at keeping track of where you've been. All these things contribute to that. Some might think that, well, I don't even need a sense of direction anymore because I've got a navigation thing in my car. I got Waze on my phone. I can find my way anywhere and I don't

Starting point is 00:32:17 even have to look. I mean, that's absolutely correct. If you're always going to be in areas where you've got satellite coverage, you've always got a phone, you've always got the technology, then you're going to be pretty safe in that way. There's going to be times when all that goes down, when the system crashes. And if you've been relying totally on that, then you're going to be pretty lost in those situations. But for the most part, yeah, you're going to get away with it. It's worth being aware that our spatial system, system in our brain that we use to find our way is also used in other areas of cognition, such as memory, creative thinking. And what we don't know is if we completely

Starting point is 00:33:07 cut off our spatial system in our brain, which is what happens when we use GPS to get around, what's happening to that area? And is that going to impact our abilities in other areas of our cognitive life? We don't know the answer to that. So is sense of direction really a sense? Or you said earlier that if you have experience finding your way around, then you'll have a better sense of direction. Well, to me, that sounds more like a skill you develop than some sort of, you know, God-given sense that you might have, like the sense of taste or smell or sight. It's more the potential to have an ability to develop a skill set like any other skill set. We have the capacity to be good at it. Partly it is experience. I mean,

Starting point is 00:34:01 it can come down to where you grew up. People who grew up in the countryside tend on average to be better at finding their way around than people who grew up in the city. And that's simply because in the countryside, the environment is messier. There are more circular routes, there are fewer straight lines. Also, the way you grow up, if you grow up in a city or in the countryside, being allowed to roam around and develop that experience, then you end up being where you are or you're about to be where you want to be. And you realize you've completely missed the boat. You're all wrong. You're turned around.

Starting point is 00:34:56 You're in the wrong place. So when somebody with a good sense of direction gets it wrong, what went wrong? What probably went wrong is your attention was taken up by something else. The one thing that is more important than anything in tracking your way across an area that you're unfamiliar with is attention. Even if we start off knowing where we're going, we've got to remember where we've been in order to update that internal map, if you like. So people who are good, generally who have a good sense of direction and who are good at finding their way around, are just as liable to get completely turned around and find themselves disorientated if they have been distracted. So being disorientated by itself is not a measure

Starting point is 00:35:51 of your overall ability because there are so many factors involved in finding our way from A to B, but attention is probably the most important. Anyone who has gotten lost, whose sense of direction has failed them, who thought they knew where they were and then realized they are now lost, knows the feeling of panic, that sense of, I don't know where I am. And being panicked when you don't know where you are can't possibly help the situation. But it does seem to be uniquely human to do that. When people get panicked, get anxious even, they tend to lose the ability to navigate because we're all taken up with other things that we're worried about, our safety or what we should do and our decision-making and sort of where we are and

Starting point is 00:36:54 where to go rather gets lost. So once that fear sets in, it does seem to scramble our sense of direction and people who get lost in the wilderness and get very seriously lost will always tell you that this is the primary impulse that they felt on realizing that they're lost, that generally become extremely fearful. When it comes to our sense of direction, how do you think humans stack up to other animals? Because, you know, we hear the stories about, you know, the dog that was 20 miles from home and somehow found its way home,

Starting point is 00:37:36 or just, you know, how birds migrate, and they have an incredible sense of direction. How do humans measure up? We're often compared with birds and other animals who are great navigators in a negative way, but actually humans are extremely good at navigating in the environments that they need to. Across long distances, wide open spaces, if we have the necessary kind of cues in the landscape to help us we're generally pretty good well i wonder because you know i have a son who just started driving and up until then i mean as a passenger in the car he never really paid much attention to where we were going or what, because he always he could say, well, I'll find it.

Starting point is 00:38:29 And he would just use Waze in his phone or use the navigation in the car. And I'm just wondering, is his sense of direction going to be hampered by the fact that he never really needs it? And if someday he does need it, it isn't going to be there. Well, almost certainly, because there have been studies done on people while they're navigating using a GPS device. And that spatial part of the brain around the hippocampus that we've been talking about, when you're using a device like that, that's pretty much dead. I mean, I don't mean dead. It's just inactive, passive. So if you don't use something like that in the brain, then it's not going to get any better. And it's very likely that we will lose our navigation ability if we don't use it.

Starting point is 00:39:25 But it's not to say if we don't use it. But it's not to say that you can't learn it again. You can't start to get better at it. But, you know, when you're using Waze driving your car, there's nothing going on in the navigator brain, if you like. And when you suddenly, if that device stops working, then you've got nothing to fall back on. Yeah. Well, I've always thought there's this, you know, I don't know, sense of comfort of knowing your way around, of knowing the lay of the land, of knowing how to get here

Starting point is 00:39:57 from here to there all by yourself, that if you're using electronics, you never really get to experience. There's the question, what are we losing? Part of it is to do with, I think, how you experience the world around you. If you have to navigate through it, then you have to pay attention to your surroundings. You have to interact with it. And in doing so, you learn something about it. And so in a way, I'm talking about a sort of an aesthetic, I suppose, rather than a practical need.

Starting point is 00:40:37 In navigating, you're somehow connected to your environment in a way that you're not when you're using technology. So I think it's, for me, it's not, you know, it's clear that the spatial part of our brain is not doing anything when we use a GPS. But I don't think that's necessarily important because the brain reassigns its resources elsewhere. And that's fine. But it's worth, I think, us to be aware of what we're losing when we do that.

Starting point is 00:41:12 You said earlier that if you want to build up your sense of direction, it's better if you grew up in a rural area that has a lot of unique landmarks that help you develop that sense of direction. But on a practical level, in terms of getting around, it's a lot easier to get around in a city like, say, New York, where, you know, the streets are numbered and they're parallel and perpendicular. Now, it's easy to confuse, you know, 38th Street with 39th Street because it kind of all looks similar. Some would say that there are some cities that every block looks the same. So it's easier to be able to count streets to get from here to there, but your sense of direction is better developed in a rural area where things aren't so neat and

Starting point is 00:41:59 organized. So if you're walking along a street and it looks the same as another street that you know that you've walked along, then the brain is going to be confused as to which street you're on. But if every street looks a little bit different, perhaps has different kinds of trees in it or the doors are painted a different colour, this kind of variety really helps. And this is one area where neuroscience clashes with architecture and urban planning, because architects love symmetry. And in psychology, it's pretty clear that the brain doesn't like symmetry, particularly when it's trying to navigate. Yeah. Well, I think when you say that, it rings right that it's a lot easier to find your way around if this block know, this block doesn't look exactly like the block you just came from because they, because it all kind of runs

Starting point is 00:42:50 together and then you don't know where you are. Exactly. So that grittiness that I, that I was talking about, it's, it's useful in one respect because you don't have to worry about whether you're veering off on a, on a curve and you can count your streets. But at the same time, if you're in a gritty city and you say you come up out of the subway, there's a four-way junction. Oh, that's one of 2,000 identical junctions in the city. And what you really need are landmarks, iconic buildings that you can see, or houses look different in one district compared to another. You want things

Starting point is 00:43:34 to be broken up in that way. So what else in looking at this whole topic of finding your way and getting lost, what else did you find that was really interesting? What did you want to accomplish here? I was really interested in talking to people whose job it is to find lost people. So search and rescue experts I talked to in Canada and the US and Britain, all in different environments. But the one thing that they all say is that when they find someone who's been seriously lost,

Starting point is 00:44:13 they are always in the same kind of emotional state, which is really terrified and being lost, being really lost in a wilderness area where you have no real means to find your way back. You're relying on luck or someone to come and find you. That has a similar effect on everybody, even people who are highly trained and who know what they should do if they're lost end up being absolutely terrified by this experience. And it's a sort of panic attack that people suffer, and they usually imagine that they're going to die. And it's probably something that our early ancestors also felt when they got lost. It was almost certain death where they'd be in a place where there would be fearsome predators and, you know, no one was going to come and find them. So that's something that fascinated me, that sort of common experience that people have today and is quite likely also shared by Homo sapiens living 100,000 years ago.

Starting point is 00:45:32 And when you are lost, is there any sort of general advice that people who do search and rescue find that, you know, the best thing to do if you're lost is this? The best thing to do if you're lost is to stop whatever you're doing. Be still, sit down, and try to wait for that feeling of panic to leave you. That's the thing that everyone is told. Very few people are capable of doing that. What most people do, the vast majority of people,

Starting point is 00:46:09 when they suddenly realize they're lost, is to walk faster, run, move, do anything to get out of where they are. And of course, because they're in that panic state, there's no way they're going to make a sensible decision. They're not going to go the right way. They're not going to be able to remember where they've come from, so they can't retrace their steps. Nothing's going to work in that state, which is why just stopping for as long as you can to collect your thoughts, you've got the best chance, but it's hard to do.

Starting point is 00:46:50 And then what do you do? Because even if you do calm down, which you say is obviously pretty important, you're still lost. So once you've let that feeling of panic go by, what do you do next? Absolutely. So if you succeed in stopping and getting over this initial panic attack, then trying to retrace your steps, remembering the direction you came from, very sensible. Looking around and seeing if you can recognize any landmarks, the shapes of hills or certain trees that you might have seen from a different direction. So it's basically trying to think about

Starting point is 00:47:25 your situation. Part two of the advice is, okay, you stop and you really can't work out where you are. The thing to do is to stay where you are. Now that of course is sensible when you've told someone where you're going. If you've told someone that you're going off into a certain area and they know when you left, then search and rescue teams in these areas are highly skilled and experienced at finding people if they have some ideas as to where they might have gone. If you've done none of those things,

Starting point is 00:48:06 if you haven't told anyone, if nobody knows you're there and it's useless waiting, then you're on your own. You've got to just use whatever wits you can gather. It's about engaging your rational mind and going with that rather than the stream of emotions. Does our ability to navigate our sense of direction, does it get better with age or does it get worse with age? You're at your peak in your late teens, early 20s. And then after that, steadily, on average, people get a little bit worse with age. And that could be to do with all kinds of things. And it doesn't mean to say you have to allow those skills

Starting point is 00:48:55 to get worse. I mean, if you pay attention to them, and you exercise them, then you can be a great navigator into old age. But in old age, of course, the disease that afflicts a lot of people is dementia. And the very first ability to fall away in dementia is spatial ability. When someone starts to feel disorientated in places that they're familiar with, then that's an early sign. So I think the effect of age on spatial ability is something that I wasn't aware of. And another thing, just quickly, is how navigation abilities differ from country to country. In Scandinavia, Finland, and Sweden, people are very good navigators. And there's no difference between male and female navigation skills in those countries.

Starting point is 00:49:59 There are some very surprising findings on this. And we don't have all the answers yet. Well when you think about it where would the human race be if we hadn't developed a sense of direction if we hadn't figured out how to find our way from here to there from point A to point B and yes today it does seem less important because of GPS still, I bet everybody listening has had at least one and probably several times when their sense of direction has helped them find their way, and it's nice to know we have it. Michael Bond has been my guest. He is a science writer, former senior editor at New Scientist,

Starting point is 00:50:41 and he is author of the book, From Here to There, The Art and Science of Finding and Losing Our Way. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Michael. Okay, Mike. Thank you. Cheers. Bye. Ever try to buy ripe pears at the store? It's almost impossible. Why? Well, pears bruise very easily, so it's better to pick and ship them when they're unripe. Plus, pears don't ripen on a tree. They just turn mushy and mealy. So it's actually better if they just ripen on your kitchen counter.

Starting point is 00:51:16 But when you're choosing pears to eat, you don't feel a pear all the way around to see if it's soft. If it is, it's too late. To test for ripeness of a pear, press down lightly on the stem end. If it gives a little around the stem, then the pear is ripe. Pears take a little advanced planning, but if you do it right, there's nothing like biting into a perfectly ripe pear. And that is something you should know. I would love it if you would tell your friends about this podcast, even just one friend or two. Okay, three. But just tell somebody.

Starting point is 00:51:50 Ask them to listen and let's see what they think. I'm Mike Carruthers. 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

Starting point is 00:52:05 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. Loro, who has been investigating a local church

Starting point is 00:52:23 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 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 Lining,

Starting point is 00:53:05 a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Something You Should Know - How DNA Affects Almost Everything About You & Understanding Your Sense of Direction

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