Something You Should Know - How Not to Die Anytime Soon & Why You Need Friction in Your Life

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

When you get sick, your instinct is to withdraw — crawl into bed, cancel plans, and avoid people. As unpleasant as that feels, it turns out that instinct may be doing something surprisingly important for everyone else. This episode begins with why feeling miserable when you’re sick is actually a good thing. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160107094128.htm If you really want to know what’s most likely to seriously injure or kill you, talk to an ER doctor. They see patterns most of us never think about — and many of the dangers are far more ordinary than you’d expect. Ashley Alker joins me to share the risks she sees again and again — and how to avoid them. She’s an emergency medicine physician, medical consultant for shows on Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and Disney, and author of 99 Ways to Die and How to Avoid Them (https://amzn.to/3NlW91w) Friction is everywhere. It slows you down, wears things out, and wastes energy — yet without it, you couldn’t walk, drive, or even stand still. What would life actually be like if friction didn’t exist? And why is understanding it so important? Jennifer R. Vail explains the invisible force that quietly shapes nearly everything you do. She founded DuPont’s first tribology research lab, delivered the TED Talk The Science of Friction (viewed over two million times), and is author of Friction: A Biography (https://amzn.to/454i7wf) And finally, there’s a simple way to make coffee or hot chocolate taste better — without changing the recipe. The color of your mug actually alters how your brain perceives flavor. We wrap up by revealing which colors work best for which drinks. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130103073238.htm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you like something you should know, you're probably a curious person who enjoys learning about the world. And if you're looking for more places to learn, you should know about a podcast from TED called How to Be a Better Human. The host, Chris Duffy, was recently a guest here talking about why he loves laughter and how you can find more of it in your everyday life. On How to Be a Better Human, Chris interview scientists, experts, and TED speakers about fascinating, practical topics from how your dog experiences the world to how to stop doom scrolling, to how to find a deeper sense of belonging. You can find how to be a better human, wherever you listen to podcasts. Today on something you should know, the real reason you feel so miserable when you get sick. Then an ER doctor reveals the many things that can kill you.

Some you may not know. Water can be deadly in overconsumption, so you never want to give a baby under six. months water and you never as an adult want to drink copious amounts of water because it causes something called hyponotremia that can result in brain swelling seizure and death. Also, a simple way to make a good cup of coffee taste even better. And friction, you know the force that resists motion. It's a big part of your life. Every day throughout the day you're dealing with friction, I'm dealing with friction. So I think it's important to be able to recognize friction, to understand friction, and I could even so boldly claim that doing so could help us save the world.

All this today on Something You Should Know. Of the Regency era, you might know it as the time when Bridgeton takes place, or is the time when Jane Austen wrote her books. The Regency era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history. Volker History's new season is all about the Regency era, the balls, gowns and all the scandal. Listen to Vulgar History Regency era wherever you get 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. You know when you're sick, like with the cold or the flu, you don't really want to do much of anything. You kind of want to be left alone. Well, there's a really good reason for that. that, and that's what we're going to start with today on this episode of Something You Should Know. Hi, and welcome, I'm Mike Carruthers. So when you get sick, those symptoms you feel aren't just random misery. Scientists now understand that many of those symptoms, like fatigue, loss of appetite,

low mood, social withdrawal, they're part of what's known as sickness behavior. These responses are triggered by your immune system, which releases signaling molecules that communicate with your brain and deliberately change how you feel and how you behave. From an evolutionary perspective, these symptoms appear to serve a purpose. Feeling tired keeps you from traveling very far. Losing your appetite reduces shared use of food and water. A lack of interest in social contact limits close interaction with other people. Even feeling a little bit down may help encourage isolation and rest.

and together all of these changes in your behavior reduce the chances of you spreading illness to the people around you. So when you're sick and you feel terrible, it may not be your body falling apart. It may be your body doing exactly what it's supposed to do, slowing you down, keeping you home, and helping protect the rest of the community.

And that is something you should know. Even though we all know that one day, we will die. We spend a lifetime trying to avoid it. And sure, the end can come very randomly from an accident or some rare disease, but we know enough about the big killers to know how to drastically improve the odds of not dying. And you know who's a real expert on this is Dr. Ashley Alker. She seems to be on a mission to keep people from dying. In fact, it's her job. She's an ER physician, and she's also been a technical consultant and medical screenwriter improving the medical accuracy on shows for Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and Disney.

She is the author of a book called 99 Ways to Die and How to Avoid Them. Hi, Doctor, welcome to something you should know. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Well, it's interesting. We interview a lot of people on this show that talk about, you know, how to live, and things to do to stay healthy and live a long life. You're coming at this. I mean, it's kind of the same thing, but it's how not to die,

which is a different approach. Why that approach? First off, it's the easiest approach for me as an emergency medicine physician because that is my biggest goal every day when I'm at work is to keep people from dying. And I think that it kind of frames my viewpoint, Instead of telling people, you know, you need to do these things to be healthier, which most of those things, you know, we already know, eat healthy, exercise, don't smoke, don't drink alcohol, sleep. These things that we kind of seem to reiterate a lot of times. I thought I would come out at a different way with a bunch of interesting subjects and 99 diseases that you don't have to die from if you have the right information in most cases. Why do most people die?

What causes, do we know? People die from what mostly? Is it just the old age? It depends on where we're talking demographic-wise. If you're talking about the United States, then mostly it's heart disease and cancer, which when we say old age, a lot of times we're talking about these chronic diseases kind of building through the years, the end result, which, you know, in some cases is a heart attack or terminal cancer.

Additionally, there are different demographics. So some people in certain countries will die of certain things more frequently. For instance, in certain Asian countries, stomach cancer is very prevalent, where in the U.S. are the cancers that are most prevalent often are things like breast cancer and women, colon cancer, used to be lung cancer, but that's reducing. So it depends on where you are and what you do and who you are. But the most common things in the United States are definitely heart disease and cancer. What are some of the things that would surprise me that are maybe more common than I would think they are?

Something that I think surprises people that was very deadly was strep throat. So strep throat is a disease that's extremely common, and we treat it with antibiotics. And one of the first antibiotics, penicillin, is very effective at treating the disease. So it seems like it's not a big deal. But before we had antibiotics, this is something that a lot. of people, especially children, would die from. And there's a lot of complicated diseases that can result from untreated strep throat. So strep throat itself isn't helped very much by the antibiotics. You know, it shortens the course a little bit, but that's not while we're treating the disease. We treat the disease to prevent the complications, which include things like an abscess of the throat called a peritonsular abscess, post-strep glomular nephritis, which is a kidney disease that can result in kidney failure. And then some things that you might have heard before, rheumatic fever. And lastly, scarlet fever.

So these are all diseases related to strep throat that we don't really see that much anymore because we treat strep throat. Sometimes we take for granted the places that science and medicine have taken us and the safety that those things afford us these days from things like strep throat. As an emergency room physician, what are some of the things that you see a lot of? a lot of. I mean, I would imagine you see car crash victims, accident victims. What are the things you see the most? I do, I work at a trauma center, so obviously I see

a lot of trauma. It depends if you're in a city, you'll see more, we call it, knife and gun club versus seeing trauma coming in from the freeway. And I live in an area that's a bit rural, so I have the farm injuries. And the farmers are kind of almost famously resistant to

first of all, getting hurt, but then also once they're hurt, they're like, I'm fine. And I'm like, you know, Bob, you lost a hand. So we're going to have to do something about this. So, you know, you do see a lot of that. You see a lot of heart attacks and strokes. Anything that can kill you does eventually bring you to the emergency department. But then there's the sneaky things, the things where people, you know, some of the least helpful and unfortunately, you know, a lot of doctors, their least favorite complaints are weakness and dizziness, because it can be anything. It can be anything from. you're just tired today to a stroke or to something like botulism. I had a patient who came in

who was having just generalized, you know, a little bit of weakness. And I noticed his or her eyelids were a little bit droopy. And in, you know, that moment after talking to the patient, it kind of had set off something in my mind where I thought, you know, we should probably check for these things. And it was a very lucky find because this is something that, you know, often gets missed, at least the first time, if not the second time. So, you know, hidden amongst hundreds of complaints that aren't necessarily, you know, life-threatening, but are emergencies to the people who come to the department because they can't possibly get health care other places. They don't have a primary care. They don't have insurance. Whatever the reason is. But hidden amongst, you know,

the failings of our health care system that bring, you know, hundreds of thousands of people to the emergency department every year are people who are dying. And so picking those people out through, you know, good triage and through good histories and talking to the patients and, you know, really understanding the patient's story. That's how you find those people. So wait, the droopy eyelids, I didn't understand. So what did the droopy eyelids tell you? So the droopy eyelids story, that is one of the, it's called potosis and it's one of the signs of botulism. And botulism is kind of a sneaky bacteria because the bacteria itself isn't really the issue. The issue is that one spotulism is contracted. It creates a toxin and that toxin

makes you have certain types of weakness and that weakness eventually will affect your respiratory muscles and cause you to stop breathing. So you have to catch it at a certain point of time, in time. And unfortunately, once the toxin is formed, it will last several months. And the weakness is not reversible in that kind of acute phase. So once the toxin is in you and you have to have certain weakness, you basically have to wait for the nerves to grow back to regain those, you know, those muscles and those faculties. So for instance, if a botulism patient was completely paralyzed, you would have to intubate them with a breathing machine, a tube down the, you know, down their trachea and breathe for them until their nerves basically grow back and they're able

to move and breathe again. So it's a very scary disease, one that unfortunately we see in very specific populations a lot of times. And one of those populations is infants. And, you know, by heart had a huge recall of botulism found in formula. And people are like, oh, how could this happen? Botulism is everywhere in our environment. You know, we navigate it, you know, daily. But for kids, it's very different. Kids under the age of one, they have less acid in their stomachs. So when we, you know, ingest botulism most of the time, you know, it just passes. It's not a big deal. you can't generally get botulism that way as an adult unless it's in very, very high quantities, such as found in like homed canned goods that are infected with botulism and stored for years.

And the bacteria, you know, it proliferates in that situation and then you have an issue. Whereas with kids, under the age of one, it's a very small amount because their, you know, their body cannot fight it in the same way. And their GI track basically creates an environment where it can proliferate and grow. And so it's one of the reasons we don't give infants honey. It's one of the reasons we say, you know, don't make home formula. You know, obviously if you're breastfeeding, that's great. But don't make your own formula at home. And it's one of the reasons that the FDA regulates formula so, so well and so highly. And, you know, they found this botulism issue with by heart quickly, but it's still something that has unfortunately affected, you know, many infants. So the droopy, long story short, the droopy eye. is one of the things you will see in botulism kind of early on. It's one of the things that it's kind of what we call patho-nemonic for the disease. It's one of the things that like if you can pick it up, it's often one of the early signs. But it is a difficult disease to put your finger on.

We're talking about the many things that could kill you and then how to avoid dying from those things. And my guest is Dr. Ashley Alker. She is an emergency medicine physician. And author of the book 99 Ways to Die and How to Avoid Them. If Bravo drama, pop culture, chaos, and honest takes are your love language, you'll want all about Terry H podcast in your feed. Hosted by Roxanne and Chantelle, this show breaks down Real Housewives Reality TV and the moments everyone's group chat is arguing about. Roxanne's been spilling Bravo T since 2010, and yes, we've interviewed Housewives

Royalty like Countess LeWan and Teresa Judice, Smart Recaps, Insider Energy, and Zero Fluff. to All About Tierage Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, new episodes weekly. When they were young, the five members of an elite commando group nicknamed the Stone Wolves raged against the oppressive rule of the Karatirakian Empire, which occupies and dominates most of the galaxies inhabited planets. The wolves fought for freedom, but they failed, leaving countless corpses in their wake. Defeated and disillusioned, they hung up their guns and went their separate ways, all hoping to find some small bit of peace amidst a universe thick with violence and oppression. Four decades after their heyday, they each try to stay alive and eke out a living,

but a friend from the past won't let them move on, and neither will their bitterest enemy. The Stone Wolves is Season 11 of the Galactic Football League Science Fiction series by author Scott Sigler. Enjoy it as a standalone story, or listen to the entire GFL series beginning, with Season 1, The Rookie. Search for Scott Sigler, S-I-G-L-E-R, wherever you get your podcasts. So, Ashley, are there things that you see in the emergency room that have changed your behavior? And what I mean by that is, years ago I used to know a guy who was, he was a paramedic. And he was a paramedic back in the day when seatbelts were first becoming a thing.

And he became a very big proponent of seatbelts. of the things he used to see responding to traffic accidents. Is there anything that you see that has changed your behavior or made you a proponent of? I guess I'll start by answering this and saying that I am not a stereotypical emergency medicine doctor. So we're kind of known as a group of individuals to be thrill seekers. There's a lot of, you know, a lot of my colleagues have climbed Everest and rock climb and, you know, mountain bike and do, you know, crazy, cool things and our space medicine doctors. I'm a writer and I prefer to be safety first oriented. And so I think I'm in a certain subset of emergency medicine

doctors that maybe have a little bit more anxiety around all the things that we know from our job and the things that we've learned and seen and becoming physicians. So yes, there are a lot of things that change my behavior. I mean, everything from not wanting button batteries, in my home to, you know, because kids, if they swallow a button battery, it can cause, very specifically, just this type of battery can cause a perforation or hole in the stomach and intestinal track. And that's a very big emergency for kids. And kids like to swallow things. So they'll go for anything shiny. And that's one of the things, you know, a coin can be no big deal. They often pass that, no problem. But a button battery can be life-threatening. So everything from that to, you know, I wrote,

I wrote this in the book, and it's one of those things that's not very common, but if you can avoid it, do it. You know, I don't swim in hot springs, but if you're going to do it, keep your head above water because, you know, a very particular brain eating amoeba likes to, you know, live in this type of water. And if you submerge yourself in it and that amoeba is there, it is possible to contract it. And it is, you know, one of those things that's 100% fatal. rabies. So things like bat bites in the U.S. are the most common way to contract rabies. In other countries, it's often stray dogs. But in the United States, because of our very robust vaccination program for pets, the most common way to get rabies is bat bites. Well, bat bites are both painless and often leave no mark. So if you ever are touched by a bat or wake up in a room with a bat, you immediately need post-exposure prophylaxis. So anytime there's any type of bat, situation in my family or friends. I'm, you know, I'm just go get, go get a rabies vaccine because that is something that's 100% fatal. You just don't want to mess around with it. You never know. And bats that have bad behavior, a bad behavior or odd behavior if they're out during the day, if they're in

human homes, those are often bats that are infected with rabies because it causes them to do abnormal things. Well, those are things I'd never heard before about about bats. I mean, I assume that, that people got rabies like, you know, from a raccoon or a squirrel or a dog, but I didn't know it was bats and it's always fatal. And I would love to hear some more of those little things that people may not know that could be life-saving. Really quick. The squirrels you don't have to be too worried about because rabies is something that is carried by mammals exclusively. But it is generally larger mammals. Bats, you know, they're on the small side. but squirrels usually die before they can give the disease to others.

So raccoons are definitely something you need to worry about dogs, cats that are feral, unvaccinated, and then bats, as I said. So, you know, that's something to definitely watch out for an information that's kind of helpful for you to have in your real life. Other things, you know, water can be deadly and overconsumption. So you never want to give a baby under six months water and you never, as an adult, want to drink, you know, copious amounts of water that doesn't contain electrolytes. And that is because it causes something both in babies and in adults called hyponotremia that can result in brain swelling seizure and death. It might have been what caused the death of actor Bruce Lee. There's, you know,

a lot of debate about this. But it definitely has caused issues in other, you know, people. And it's more common than you think, for instance, Brooke Shields had a seizure due to hyponotremia due to water overconsumption. happens a lot in marathon runners. And basically what it is is that your kidneys can only process a certain amount of water. So if you drink, you know, gallons of water and there are no electrolytes to balance out that water, you dilute your blood to the point that the electrolytes in your blood drop, and that changes, it shifts, you know, water in and out of the brain tissue and eventually causes swelling. So, you know, drink that, you know, recommended eight glasses of water a day. and if you're, you know, overconsuming water for any reason, like running a marathon,

consider water that contains electrolytes. Other little tidbits, never ignore chest pain and always go straight to an emergency department. Chest pain and stroke symptoms are just not things we mess around with. You just always want to get checked and always want to make sure that it's not a heart attack, because if it's a heart attack, it's something that we can help with and fix these days. But if you wait too long, there's no turning back. that tissue dies, generally around 90-minute mark the tissue starts having irreversible damage. So, but if you get in there quickly, we can pop those arteries back open and, you know,

cardiologists have amazing talented equipment and technology these days, and they can save these hearts. I mentioned it before, but never give a baby honey that's under a year old because it can have botulism in it. I'm curious, what about accidental poisonings? Do you see a lot of that in, in the emergency room of people that, you know, or kids that get under the sink and eat something, does that happen a lot? Yes, definitely. One of the, you know, more common things that we don't think about are these over-the-counter medications. So the number one cause of acute liver failure in the United States is Tylenol.

That causes most acute liver failure and Tylenol overdoses. So taking an inappropriate amount of Tylenol. If you take appropriate amounts of Tylenol, as recommended, in the setting of having like a normal liver, et cetera, then fine, no issue. But if you, you should never take more than four grams in a day and, you know, children need weight-based Tylenol dosing as recommended on, you know, the bottle. Another one that can do this that is very dangerous, but we probably just don't think of is iron. Iron is something that can cause severe liver toxicity, liver failure and death. So multivitamins, which are often gummy vitamins these days,

often contain high amounts of iron. And so you have to be careful with kids. For adults, iron, you know, it's less of a problem. It's really when kids get into, at least in the amounts that are found in vitamins, obviously those are created for adults. But often kid vitamins don't contain iron for that reason, because if they get in there and they're like, ooh, you know, my yummy flimstone vitamins, they don't, you know, and they eat the whole thing, iron is one of the things that you don't want in those pills. So, you know, iron overdoses, Tylenol overdoses, these are things that are in your medicine cabinet that can be deadly and overdose and you just need to be very careful with. Lock your medicine cabinet. They should always be kept away from kids. Other things that people

probably don't think about is carbon monoxide. That's a huge one. And it was very interesting. In my research, I found that most homes are like around half homes in the United States don't have carbon monoxide detectors. We all have fire alarms, which is a bit annoying because at some point, you know, we can figure out our house is on fire. But carbon monoxide is odorless, colorless. You don't know when it's there until it's too late often. This is one where people often come into the emergency department and are, you know, I have headaches, nausea, vomiting. There's a story in there about a couple who are on vacation in a hotel in Mexico, but I mean, I should mention in the U.S. Also, there's often not carbon monoxide detectors in hotel rooms or if you're at an Airbnb,

but this is something fairly easy. They're $20 off of, you know, wherever you want to buy it. And so my point being is, you know, you asked if I had changed any of my, the things that that I do based on what I know, and I carry carbon monoxide detectors when I go on vacation certain places, just plug it into the wall and make sure there's no issue because that's something that is deadly but is very preventable. Well, I find what you do so incredible because when someone comes in the door and they're sick and they have symptoms, it could be a million things. I mean, some of them are obvious, I guess, but as you were saying earlier, sometimes symptoms could be any.

and you have to fairly quickly figure it out. And I don't know how you do that. There's a saying it's when you hear hoofbeats think horses, not zebras. And that saying in medicine is to tell us, think of the most common cause of these pathologies, because that's probably what's going on, especially the most common cause in your environment. Don't think of the most, you know, outrageous possible cause of these things. But every once in a while, you will see these outrageous diseases. And, you know, there are some that I have seen and there are some that are my colleagues have seen that are just very interesting. One is, I've never seen this personally, but one that I find really interesting is Chigwatera, which is a fish-borne disease. And it basically

affects sodium channels. But initially, it presents like a food point. poisoning. But then after that, the symptoms get very bizarre. Everything from hot and cold reverse, like when you touch hot, it'll feel cold. And then some patients will feel like their teeth are falling out. So it's just very odd, like the things that these diseases, kind of the capacity for these diseases to create different pathologies in humans, there's another type of fish poisoning that creates amnesia by attacking the hippocampus. And it's actually, you know, it was, was this disease was first discovered on Prince Edward Island, where all these people ate these muscles containing, you know, the toxin it. It was plankton related. But the point being is that,

you know, they, they will have memory issues for the rest of their lives because of this. So there's all these diseases that are very interesting and very rare. And, you know, not everyone will see them in their career. But I, you know, I know people who have seen these diseases in their career. And that as a doctor is very interesting. Well, you've covered a lot of territory here. A lot of things I'd never really heard about or thought about from, you know, bat bites to Tylenol to button batteries as well as the more common ways that people end up in the emergency room. I've been talking with Dr. Ashley Alker. She is an emergency medicine physician and author of the book, 99 ways to die and how to avoid them. And there's a link to her book in the show notes.

Ashley, thank you so much. Yeah, no problem. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Hey, it's Hillary Frank from The Longest Shortest Time, 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 Shortestime.com.

When I say the word friction, it probably sounds like something from high school physics class. But friction shapes your daily life in ways you almost never notice. It determines how much gas your car uses or how quickly your shoes wear out, why your phone heats up, even how long machines and appliances last before they fail. Friction is constantly working against you, wasting energy, creating heat, causing wear and tear. In fact, an enormous amount of the energy we use every day is lost to friction. So friction isn't just an abstract scientific idea. It's a hidden force that quietly influences your time, your money, and the world around you.

Here to explain how friction really works and why it matters so much is Jennifer Vale. She founded DuPont's first tribology research lab. Tribology is the study of friction. And she has a great TED talk called The Science of Friction. She is also author of a book called Friction, a biography. Hi, Jennifer, welcome. Hi, Mike. Thank you for having me. Of course.

So I think people know what friction is. It's that force that resists motion, and you can see it everywhere if you look for it. But why are we talking about it? Why is this such an important topic, do you think? Yeah, so friction is something that shows up in every physical interaction. It is resistance to motion. So every day, throughout the day, you're dealing with friction, I'm dealing with friction, and its impacts are really ubiquitous, and I don't know that they are fully appreciated.

So I think it's important to be able to recognize friction, to understand friction, and I could even so boldly claim that doing so could help us save the world. Whoa. Save the world. Wow. I'm going big there. Yeah, that's. And so when you talk about friction, like we deal with friction every day, just throw out some examples just to get people thinking on the same track. When you're walking, I think everyone's had the experience of both having not enough friction and actually too much friction.

If you've had shoes that are sticking too much, you sort of scuff along and stumble that way. But more commonly, if you don't have enough friction, if you step on ice or water, you slip. And so that is one of the most common examples of friction that we deal with every day when you're driving into work. all of the moving parts in your car are dealing with friction. If you have contact lenses when you're blinking, thank goodness that someone figured out how to address the friction there because otherwise your contact lenses would be very uncomfortable and really moving around a lot when you're blinking.

Do we have a good sense of who discovered friction, who figured it out, and when that was? Yeah, it's actually a great question, and I didn't really get a clear answer when I was researching this, When did we officially decide friction was a thing? You know, there's been evidence that we've learned how to manipulate it back in antiquity. But I think perhaps, you know, Da Vinci and Galileo were some of the first ones to really start to formalize it. So Da Vinci was very interested in a perpetual motion machine, but he quickly realized that this was a fallacy because there was this force working against him. and that forces friction.

And he actually set up a bunch of experiments where he was starting to understand and quantify friction. So in the sense of really formalizing it in a scientific way, I would say Da Vinci was the first one to do that. And friction is, in fact, the reason why perpetual motion machines

can never be perpetual motion machines because friction is always at work pushing back on motion. So eventually things stop. Yeah, friction is actively resisting motion. And another big name in studying friction, Amantan's, he was also interested in a perpetual motion machine. So it's this interesting theme throughout scientists trying to understand the world around them.

They end up stumbling upon friction because they are trying to get things to move forever and realized, eh, something's there getting in my way. way, and that something is friction. And it seems, when you think about it, that we spend a lot of effort trying to minimize friction with designs and materials and lubricants. There's, that's a constant battle to minimize friction, right? Yes, definitely. We lose a lot of energy to friction.

I think about one-fifth of the energy that we use in the world and consume is actually going to friction. So it's a huge industry trying to minimize friction. And are there different kinds of friction or is friction friction friction? We do classify it in different ways. There's rolling friction, which is typically lower than sliding friction. You know, if you slide a box across the floor, it's more effort for you if you're sliding it exactly on the floor, whereas if you put it on a cart with wheels, it's much easier.

And that's because it's a different type of friction. we have different mechanisms behind friction. There's different things that can cause it. And there's also friction when you first start to move versus the friction during movement. And again, if we go back to moving a box, you know when you first try to push it, you have to really give it an oomph. That's because the friction at that startup is higher than the friction once you get things moving. So lots of different types of friction and different things we have to do. do to study and understand and manipulate them.

And is friction something that just in general engineering, whether it's building a bridge or designing a house or whatever, is friction ever like a big part of the formula or not? Yeah, friction better be in that formula. Otherwise, things will start to go very wrong. So friction is part of the basic mechanics and physics of the world around us. So one of my favorite examples of this, if you've ever been to a theme park or an amusement park, you know, there's a style of ride where the passenger vehicles are all just connected to each other in a continuous chain. And in one case that I'm at least aware of, I'm sure this has happened many times, they went to turn on a brand new ride designed in this style, and the thing didn't move.

and the reason it didn't move is because they didn't take account that startup friction being as high as it would be. It wasn't really well understood in that design. And they had to add more power into pushing everything to turn it on to overcome the friction. So if you neglect friction or you don't understand it properly, it will make you pay and in that case literally stalled them out. Yeah, well, you know, I'm often thought about that. Like when a, A big, long freight train starts up and starts to move. There's a lot of friction trying to make that train not move. And somehow they figure that out so that they can actually get the train to move.

Yeah, it's actually really remarkable. I think that all the time I live near a railroad track and we get really long trains. And I just think all the time how much power you have to get just to get the thing moving. And that's why they really don't want trains to have to stop too often when they're those big freight. trains, but also I think on the other aspect of it, how much friction is required to stop those trains. And that's, of course, obviously, where we really like friction when we're breaking. But goodness, that's a lot of friction and a lot of frictional heating to get those big heavy trains to stop.

So I never knew this, but friction has the study of friction has a name. And so explain that what it is and why it's called that. Yeah, so the science of wear friction and lubrication is called tribology. And that is actually a relatively new modern science, even though we've been contending with friction since we discovered fire. The term was formalized in the 1960s because a group of engineers got together in England to study a bunch of manufacturing failures that were happening. And they thought it was because things weren't being lubricated well. But when they looked at it, They realized it was a far more complex problem. And so they actually went to the Oxford English Dictionary to ask the editor, Hi, we need a term for this field that we've stumbled upon. What can you come up with? And the editor suggested tribology because things ending in ology tend to be well accepted in science.

And the Greek word tribos meant to rub. and so it's really the science of rubbing things together. So do you consider like stickiness of friction? Like if you tape something down, is that friction causing it not to move or is that stickiness causing it not to move? That is a really great question. And that stickiness, we would call that adhesion.

So that is separate but related because if you have tape that's stuck to the counter, But then you want to try to move the tape, you will have friction. And that's because adhesion is one of the mechanisms behind friction. So in order for something to move, if it's really sticky and really adhesive, you're going to have to break those adhesive bonds, which gives rise to friction when you're trying to move things. So friction is then the force needed to overcome the bonds and enable motion. Okay.

So in all of the study of friction, have there ever been any surprises, anything like, well, we can't explain that or that didn't make sense? Or does it pretty much stick to the rules? I think friction has always kept us on our toes. Most cases in science, a law is a law and it doesn't get broken. But with our laws of friction, you find certain materials might behave different ways because of how their bonds are. or at certain speeds, well, those laws just don't come into play, because friction also has a component where it creates heat. And heat then changes materials, and it changes your whole system.

So there's always surprises. When I worked in my lab, I would think I was getting a handle on what my materials were doing. I could change something like, you know, the environment it was in, put it into vacuum, or change the temperature or even the load or the speed. and all of a sudden the friction would start doing something a little bit different. So there's still ways friction keeps us on our toes. It's not always straightforward. And that's why our journey with understanding friction has been so interesting.

Talk about crayons, the friction of crayons, because I would have never thought to ask you that except you write about it. So what is that? It's really amazing if you think about any of your writing utensils that they work the way they do. And you've definitely noticed when the friction is not optimized because either the crayon will chatter, I'll call it. It sort of sticks and jumps around the page. It's not a smooth line.

Or with your pencil, if the graphite isn't great, it gets that scratchy and that awful sound that gives you goosebumps. And it's because it has too high friction and it's scratching and jumping across the paper. So with crayons, it's this wonderful combination. of the material that you want to transfer to your paper with having some wax, which is a solid lubricant. We're used to lubrication being water or oils, but there are solids and waxes are some of them. And by having that perfect balance of friction, you're able to write on the paper smoothly, but still transfer the material of the crayon to the paper. And if you look through patents throughout

the years, formulas of crayons have been continuously changing because they're constantly finding new ways to optimize that balance of pigment and smooth stroke and ability to use the crayons that you don't even notice that you're using a very interesting friction gadget. This is kind of a weird question, but do you see the world through these friction glasses that we're talking like now? Or are you able to turn it off? It's a fantastic question, and I'm laughing because I sort of joke that it's a curse that I want to spread to everyone. And I do.

I see the world through all of these tribalogical interactions, and it sometimes comes to haunt me because if I happen to trip, someone around me will be like, oh, it's a shame we don't have a friction expert here that could have saved you that trouble. But, yes, once you start learning a bit about friction, you start to see. see it everywhere. Makes it fascinating, but sometimes I do wish I could turn it off a little bit. Can you give me an example of like just an everyday thing that you would notice that no one else would that you see friction in the story that I don't? Like, you know, when you go to the supermarket and you get that cart with the wheel? Yes. That's a friction problem based on what you've been saying, but I would have never, until we've just had this conversation, never thought that that's really a friction problem, it's just a squeaky bad stuck wheel problem.

I think a lot of people, if they think about friction, they actually do associate it with things that squeak, you know, squeaky hinges, and that squeaky wheel is definitely a friction problem. I notice friction, you know, even when I'm getting dressed and, you know, feeling the fabric over my arm, you can feel if the fabric in your arm has higher or lower. friction. You probably don't notice it at all. I definitely do. So that's sort of all the different ways that friction will come to haunt me. But the squeaky wheel is definitely a big one and a nuisance. And what's the squeak? What is that? It's a question that tribologists don't have a

hundred percent answer for. They're still investigating it. So there's still a lot we need to learn about friction, it's believed to be due to vibrations that friction is causing. And we know friction causes vibrations with your windshield wipers, speaking of examples that you may not think of. That is a great friction problem. You've seen your windshield wipers do that chattering thing when the rain is there, but it's not enough to really lubricate the blade. It jumps around and it vibrates. And so if you have vibration, vibrations can cause noise. We love this when it's, you know, an orchestra with a string section because that friction is causing the vibration that creates music. But in some cases, it might be causing that annoying squeak that you'd rather not hear and then use WD40 to get rid of the squeak.

So where there's friction, there's heat, right? Friction always causes heat. Yes, because friction at the end of the day, if it's resisting motion, that's the mechanical energy, right, to move things. Energy isn't created or destroyed, so we're just converting that energy to a different type, and it's converting that mechanical energy of movement into thermal energy, which is heat. But that can become a problem, right, or not? It can definitely be a problem. A great example of this is actually going back to Roman chariot racing, where they're going so fast, they had frictional heating that would make the chariot hot for them to stand on. So to overcome this, they would actually have what I call the first pit stops in documented history.

The chariots would sort of slow down and people would throw water on the chariot to cool it off because otherwise it would be burning your feet. That is how hot friction can get. And are there new frontiers of friction or not? Are there new, is it being used in different ways? Or you're discovering interesting things that no one found before? Friction is helping us to understand climate change. How can friction help us save energy, reduce emissions? It's also being used to extend life.

And then the new frontiers of it are really trying to use friction to help. help us uncover clues to understand things like viral infection, Alzheimer's disease, and detecting dark matter. So definitely a lot of dimensions still out there for friction to explore. So you said right at the top of this conversation. You said that there are things about friction that could absolutely save the world. So I think we better get to that. What do you mean by that? I think this is an absolutely mind-blowing thing that it can, but I do firmly believe that. And that's because energy is a big crisis we're having. We want to reduce energy and reduce emissions.

And friction is such a powerful tool with that. We have 20% of our energy being spent to overcome friction. So if we understand where that friction is and identify the unnecessary friction, you know, sometimes we need it for breaking, but sometimes we don't. That is a lot of energy that we can save. There are a lot of emissions that we can save. So it almost seems like in our back pocket, we have this really readily available tool handy for us to start saving energy, start reducing emissions. And I just think it's very cool that this force that we've defined as resisting us is really something that can help progress us and move us forward. Well, what did you, you said that,

What was the 20%? Yeah, it's estimated that about 20% of all of the energy we use in the world is being used to overcome friction. Like how, what's an example of that? An example could be in a manufacturing plant while you're, you know, trying to machine parts or make parts. You have to put a certain amount of energy in to moving the tooling to machine the part. and a certain amount of that energy is there because it has to overcome friction. Like with that amusement park ride we're talking about, it requires more energy to start it up because of all the friction.

Well, if we reduce that friction, then you can use less energy to start the motion, and you have now saved energy. This is actually how we've improved fuel efficiency of our cars and airplanes. So it's something tribologists are actively doing, but there's a lot more opportunity there. And then there's the friction between people, which is kind of the same thing, but not your area of expertise, I suspect. This was very insightful. Jennifer Vale has been my guest. She is author of the book Friction, a biography. And she also has a TED Talk you can see online called The Science of Friction.

There's a link to her book at Amazon and the show notes. and Jennifer, thank you for being here. Have you ever noticed that your drink tastes different depending on the mug you use? Turns out it's not your imagination. Research in sensory psychology shows that visual cues

influence taste perception. In controlled experiments, people consistently rated hot chocolate as more flavorful and more enjoyable when it was served in orange or cream-colored cups. compared with white or red cups, despite the recipe being identical. Scientists believe that your brain integrates visual information with taste,

so certain colors can enhance how rich or satisfying a drink feels without changing the drink itself. Similar effects show up with coffee. Studies comparing coffee served in different colored mugs found that white mugs tend to make coffee taste more intense and less sweet, while colored mugs or clear mugs can shift perceived sweetness and bitterness, again with no change in the coffee itself. This suggests that color-flavor interactions are real and measurable,

and that's something you should know. Something You Should Know is produced by Jeff Havison, Jennifer Brennan, executive producer is Ken Williams. I'm Mike Ruther's 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 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.