Something You Should Know - How Social Media Sucks You In Without You Knowing It & How Chemicals in Your Home Mess with Your Hormones

Episode Date: January 31, 2019

Some people like their chocolate chip cookies crispy right out of the often while others like them soft and chewy and some people like them somewhere in between. This episode begins with an explanation of how to get them just the way you like them every single time. http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/cooking-tips-techniques/baking/chocolatechip-cookie-types Ever find it hard to get off Facebook or Instagram? Ever find yourself checking social media more often than you know you should? That turns out to be all by design according to Cal Newport. Cal is an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University and author of the book Digital Minimalism. https://amzn.to/2GcOvCf. Listen as Cal explains how social media sites manipulate your behavior and what you can do about it.  There is new science that reveals that the chemicals around your house can really mess with your hormones and your health. Fire retardants in furniture, fragrances in cosmetics, BPA in aluminum cans and credit card receipts – all these things are having serious consequences on you and your family. Pediatrician Dr. Leonardo Trasande is vice-chair for research for the department of pediatrics at New York University and author of the book Sicker, Fatter, Poorer https://amzn.to/2S9GN2b. He joins me to explain the latest research that is sounding the alarm about the effects of these household chemicals.   As Valentine’s Day approaches, you may be thinking about buying roses for someone special. Listen as I explain how not all roses are created equal and which ones are best to buy and where best to buy them. http://www.howdini.com/howdini-video-6637626.html This Week’s Sponsors -Capterra. Visit www.Capterra.com/something to find the best software solutions for your business -ADT. Go to www.ADT.com/smart to learn how ADT can design and install a smart home system for you. -Geico. Go to www.Geico.com to see how Geico can save you money on your car insurance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, do you like your chocolate chip cookies soft, crispy, or somewhere in the middle? I'll explain how to get them just right. Then, if you find it hard to stop checking social media, that's all by design. These companies engineered the apps to create exactly this effect. I'm here having dinner with a friend, and yet I have to pretend to go to the bathroom so I can check this some more. What's going on here? This makes no sense. There's nothing accidental about that. Then, the best kind of roses to buy for Valentine's Day.

And the most important things you can do to keep chemicals out of your body. Watching the recycling number on plastic bottles is important. Avoiding the numbers 3, 6, and 7. 3 is for phthalates, which mess with the male sex hormone. 6 is styrene, a known carcinogen. And 7 are the bisphenols. It can have sex-specific effects on body mass as things like puberty happen. All this today on Something You Should Know. As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about.

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

And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. I want to address something that happened in the previous episode of this podcast because I got several emails

from people who thought that I was particularly tough on Shoshana Zuboff, author of the book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. And I wasn't trying to be tough on her. I actually agreed with her. And I said in the interview, I don't disagree with you. I was trying to get her to make her point. And so I may have come off as a little overzealous in trying to coax out of her to make her point. But I apologize if it sounded as if I was being particularly mean or nasty. That wasn't my intention at all. First up today, there are three types of people in the world. Those who like chewy chocolate chip cookies, those who like them crispy,

and then those who like crispy on the edges but soft in the middle. But how do you get them to come out that way? Well, it's all in the science. If you like soft and chewy, then you should use all-brown sugar, even though the recipe probably calls for both brown and white sugar. Brown sugar contains molasses which adds moisture to the cookies. Molasses is also slightly acidic which causes the proteins in the dough to firm up quickly instead of spreading out. If you like thin and crispy, use all white sugar and no brown sugar. White sugar helps absorb moisture in the dough,

resulting in crispier cookies, and as it heats and dissolves, it causes the cookies to thin out. If you like it soft in the center but crispy on the edges, use equal parts of granulated white sugar and brown sugar, which is probably what the recipe calls for in the first place. The granulated sugar causes just enough spread for the edges to firm up, while the brown sugar softens the middle for that irresistible chew. And that is something you should know.

When social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram first showed up, it all seemed pretty benign. These were fun places to go to connect with friends or make new friends, and it all seemed pretty harmless. But now there's concern that maybe it's not so harmless and not so benign, that you as a participant in these social media sites, are being manipulated, and manipulated in different ways, not the least of which is to spend more time on those sites. There appears to be a very deliberate attempt to keep you on social media sites as long as possible, and if you leave, to get you back as soon as possible. Which of course leads

to another concern. If you're on social media sites for hours on end, what are you not doing instead? Who are you not interacting with? What are you not getting accomplished? How much time per day do you think the average person who's on social media spends there? In this next conversation you're about to find out, and I think the number will amaze you. Anyway, there is now a rethinking of social media and how we use it, and one of the people shining a light on this is Cal Newport. Cal's an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University and author of a new book called Digital Minimalism. Hi, Cal. Welcome. Hi. Good to talk to you again.

So since you did the research on this, talk about how social media and other personal technology use has changed and why we're talking about this in the first place. I mean, everyone's using lots of technology, but no one's happy about it right now. This seems to be what's different right now versus, let's say, two years ago or three years ago. The exuberance is gone, and it's been replaced for a lot of people with exhaustion. And it's not that any one of these technologies is useless when you look at it individually. That's not the complaint I hear from people. The real issue seems to be more about autonomy. People think they're spending more time on these things than they want to, more time than they know is healthy, more time than they

know is useful. They're looking at their screen to the exclusion of activities that they know are more meaningful and more satisfying. They're feeling manipulated, like their emotions are being pushed around, like what they believe is being affected by algorithms. And all this is adding up to that sort of persistent, low-grade sense of anxious exhaustion. People think this is out of whack, something has to change. Yeah, well, I can recall when a lot of these social media things came up, like Facebook and Twitter and all this, that there was this sense that I think not only I had, but everybody had of, you've got to be on Twitter, you've got to be on Facebook, this isn't debatable, you have to do this because this is what all the cool kids are doing.

I remember this. I mean, I have never had a social media account. And I would say, especially during, say, 2010 to 2014, people were just worried on my behalf. It wasn't just they were puzzled. They were aghast. Like, what do I missing? And I get lots and lots of responses, but nothing seemed all that convincing. It was just lots of little small things or what ifs or potential inconveniences that could be avoided. There was nothing in there that really seemed to me like this is a life changing technology or that if I didn't have it, I was going to really be missing out on something that was really important to me. And so I just never signed up. And at some point, I stopped earnestly asking, what am I going to miss out if I'm not on this and just started answering the question for myself, which is really not that much. So what is the downside here? What is the downside of using all of this technology as much as people use it? And what do you have, since you have no social media accounts whatsoever? What do you have by not having social media in your life that I don't have because I sometimes go on social media? Well, I think the key is focusing

maybe not on what is specifically bad about the technologies, but about the good things that you might be not putting enough emphasis on. Because it's not that looking at the funny meme on Twitter is in itself terrible. It's that if you're doing that all day, what's the things that's keeping you away from? What are you missing out on? What are like the real meaningful experiences or growth you could be doing instead? So the minimalist wants to double down on the things he or she knows for sure are important and not so worried about the little things they're missing out on. Well, I think people have or are starting to get a sense of that. And people have probably heard, as I have heard, about research that says, you know, the more time you spend on Facebook, the more likely you are to be depressed and feel bad

about your life. And the theory has been that, well, because other people are only posting the great things of their life, your life feels pretty puny in comparison. And that, although it seems like you're having fun on this, you're kind of taking a beating to some extent. Well, that effect is definitely going on. So what you're looking at, for the most part, might not be making you happy. And then there's the point of what are you missing out on. So there's research that's compelling in this direction as well that says if you're interacting online a lot, even if those are meaningful seeming interactions and nothing at all is negative about them, that probably means

you're spending less time interacting in the real world. And this is certainly true of young people who increasingly move their social lives to these digital interactions. But the digital interactions don't give you nearly the same satisfaction as real world interactions because our brain has evolved for sitting across from someone and looking at body language and how their voice changes and subtle changes to their facial cues or modulation. This is a real social interaction. It doesn't recognize a little emoji or a quick text message going back and forth the same way. So it's also making people lonely, not because the media itself is making them lonely, but because it's keeping away from the things that they need to avoid that from happening. But you have to understand

people listening to you and thinking, well, look, this guy doesn't have a social media account. He barely texts and emails socially. I'm not sure he's the guy that really understands this because he's never really been in it. Well, I've been researching and writing about social media for years. And what I've found is that it's not that complicated to understand. There's not secret Gnostic rituals happening on there that I don't know about. Oh, maybe. Yeah, maybe there are. And you just don't know. Maybe there are. Yeah, this is why everyone does secret hand signs when they walk by me.

That's right. I'm missed out on the... No, I understand what happens on social media. I'm very widely read on not just the technology, but its effects. I've done quite a bit of work about the specific ways in which the very detailed features have been engineered to try to induce various compulsive behaviors. I mean, it's a technology I know more about than I probably want to. So I don't think I'm missing out on why people like it. And I also do want to emphasize that we're talking about something like

digital minimalism. It's not social media is good or social media is bad, or you should use this technology or you should not use this technology. What it's really about is figure out what's important and then use technology intentionally to support it. And so there are, for example, plenty of digital minimalists who very intentionally deploy social media in specific ways and get huge wins out of it. Because there's no particular technology that's all good or all bad in this particular framework. It's approaches that are good or bad. If you're putting tools to work for deeply important things, that I think is good. If you're just letting it wash over you, hey, this is interesting. Oh, that might be interesting. And you're ceding your time over to these app companies and letting

it just take control of your schedule. That's what I think is going to be bad. It seems to me that the tide has been changing for a little while now, whereas it used to be that you had to be on Twitter, you had to be on Instagram, you had to be on Facebook. Now when you say, no, I'm not on Twitter, I'm not on Instagram, nobody gasps like, what are you, out of your mind? There seems to be a settling down of, yeah, maybe too much of this is too much of this. I'm definitely sensing that. It really did used to be very weird if you weren't using the big platforms.

Now it's so standard for people to say, well, I don't use this. I don't use this. I kind of still use this, but not that much anymore. That's the standard response. Well, I barely check Facebook anymore. I stopped using Twitter. I guess I'm still using Instagram too much. We're used to that now. a standard response like well i barely check facebook anymore i stopped using twitter i guess i'm still using instagram too much we're used to that now that's so different though because i've

been working on this for years and i can tell you until about two years ago all of the energy was on the side of these modern technologies on the phone are exciting it's the future you can't have a career or a business or even a social life if you're not deeply enmeshed in this. And people who are pushing back on it, we're seeing as sort of eccentric. So there's been a rapid shift. And I think the time has come for something like minimalism, for people to say, OK, that was fun. The first 10 years of the smartphone era, it was a new technology. It was exciting.

There was exuberance around it. So we all just tried it out. We were all first adopters. Let's try lots of things. Let's download lots of things, which is not a bad response to a new technology coming along. But now we're 10 years older and we've seen it. We know some things are better than others. And completely giving your life over to the gadgets does not make you happier or more high tech or give you a personal brand that makes you a million dollars on Instagram or whatever it is that people used to think.

And I think now we're ready for a more mature relationship with these tools. And that makes about sense. 10 years. iPhone was 2007, about 10 years of consumer-facing smartphones. And we're ready for a more mature relationship. We say, okay, that was fun. Now let me get back to my life and what's important. And if I need you, tech, I'll let you know. And I think that's probably going to be the more healthier relationship to have. I'm speaking with Cal Newport. He is an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University and author of the new book, Digital Minimalism. People who listen to something you should know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. Thank you. wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool.

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So Cal, I think it's been thought for a long time that what really drives social media interaction is that fear of missing out. If I'm not on Facebook or Twitter, what am I missing? So I better get on there and see. But you think perhaps it's more sinister than that. I do. It's not the fear of missing out or the narcissistic drive to show yourself to the world. That's the other common strategy. It's neither of those two things that are driving people to compulsively click on these

apps all day long. It's neither of these two forces that lead Facebook products to now have 50 minutes per day of engagement minutes from the average US user. What's really going on, as far as I can tell, is that these companies engineered the apps to create exactly this effect. And it happened around the time that social media moved on the mobile. They were looking for ways to drastically increase the number of minutes that users were spending on the sites per day. This was a really big problem. The original Web 2.0 vision of social media,

the web browser-based Facebook, for example, was much more static. You maybe checked a few times a week. Things didn't change that often. They needed to fix that if they were going to succeed with their IPO. And that's when they really changed the whole dynamic of the social media experience.

So it was no longer about, I post information about myself and then read information about others and instead became about these micro indicators of social approval. So likes and hearts and retweets and someone auto tagging you in a photo. So, you know, hey, look, someone someone's just posted a photo that you're in. This was introduced because what it gave you as a user was this constant stream of indicators. And every time you hit that app, there could be more that it piled up. And not only were these indicators, but they're

indicators about you. They're indicators that someone else was thinking about you and they're arriving all day long. And sometimes when you click on the app, they're there and sometimes they're not. There's nothing accidental about that. That was borrowing very well-known ideas from behavioral psychology that had been co-opted by the designer of Las Vegas casino gambling games about how to do reinforcement schedules. That was engineered so that the app would become something that was very difficult to not compulsively hit on once you had it on the phone. So the shift from I like social media, sometimes I feel bad when I see my friends showing pictures of their perfect life, the shift from that to why am I hitting this thing constantly?

I'm here having dinner with a friend, and yet I have to pretend to go to the bathroom so I can check this some more. What's going on here? This makes no sense. That is engineered. That was the point. This was put into the apps because they needed those user engagement minutes higher. Did you say that the average American user uses Facebook 50 minutes a day? Yeah, well, Facebook and Facebook products, that includes Instagram as well. But yeah, 50 minutes. And that's just the average. If you look at the upper end of that scale, it gets pretty scary.

Wow. I mean, that certainly lends credence to what you were saying. If you're spending that much time doing that, you're spending that much time not doing something else. And that's significant. Like 50 minutes a day, that adds up. Let's just look at it economically. 50 minutes a day, if that was put towards, let's say, economic self-improvement, like learning a new skill, that's a lot of money on the table for you and your family that's being missed. Let's think socially, 50 minutes a day of connecting to people in your community or your family could be much, much stronger bonds. They're

going to be a foundation on which you can handle the ups and downs of life, even just exercise. 50 minutes a day of exercise, you'd be in great shape. I mean, it's non-trivial. And that's why Facebook is now worth $500 billion. If you can have a billion plus users and you can get them spending that much time typing information about themselves for free into the app and having ads served to them, that's why they're worth twice as much as ExxonMobil. And so this fun little dorm room project where you put up your relationship status has really morphed into something that's a lot more, if not sinister, at least worrisome. Yeah, I don't spend a lot of time on Facebook or social media. I'll go on there. I don't post much. I will look at things that friends have posted,

but I'm not one of those people that gets really sucked into it. As much as I sometimes get sucked into youtube where i'll watch a video on youtube because somebody said you got to watch this video on youtube and then you know they suggest other video if you like this video maybe you'll like these videos and then you know 10 minutes later it turns out it's an hour and a half later and i've been wasting time watching youtube videos yeah YouTube is a big source of problems. A lot of young people, for example, who have essentially stopped watching TV, they've replaced it to a large extent with YouTube. And it can be, first of all, it's very addictive

because those algorithms are really good at showing you what you want to watch next. But unlike, let's say, a programmer at a TV station who's deciding, here's NBC's schedule, those algorithms aren't people, right? They're algorithms that are looking at data and trying to maximize a metric, which is how long do you keep watching? And so it doesn't know what it's showing you necessarily. It's just looking at statistics and saying, well, people who looked at this were more likely to keep watching if I showed them X and if I showed them Y, right? So you have these blind algorithms statistically trying to learn what keeps people watching. Well, these don't have our best interest in mind. And so we see this effect on YouTube all the time where people joke that you're usually

only three or four recommendations away from some incredibly extreme content that whatever YouTube is always what four recommendations away from a terrible conspiracy theory or something like this. And so there are real dehumanizing consequences when we say, let's just have statistical algorithms study us as abstractions, transform our behavior in the numbers, group all the numbers together, and figure out how do we get these abstract number entities to spend more time on our platform. They're really good at what they do, but the experience they're creating is probably not good for our culture at all. So what do you suppose if Mark Zuckerberg was on the line here or somebody from some other technology, what's the defense of this? Zuckerberg's been saying recently,

everyone deserves a chance to connect and express themselves. I'm paraphrasing slightly, but that's been his recent defense. And I think the flaw with this, and he knows this, is that what they're trying to do, and they've been successful at this until recently, they're trying to get people to equate these large walled garden corporate intranets like Facebook with the Internet itself. They want people to think, OK, if you want to connect to people or you want to express yourself or find information, you have to use one of our giant conglomerate walled garden services. That's just not true. And I think people are waking up to understand that there's this broader internet that's out there, this sort of wonderful, decentralized, resilient, robust network with all these great protocols that's been there for 20 or 30 years. And the notion that we have to all use the sort of training wheel internet that Facebook offers, or it'll be too complicated,

we're too stupid to find people or express ourselves or use the internet if we don't have the helpful apps of Facebook. I just don't buy that. And I don't think people are either. I think Facebook is for the social internet today, what AOL was for the World Wide Web in the 1990s. It was like a gentle on ramp for people who were too intimidated to download a web browser. Like, I don't know what that is, but AOL that just came in the mail and the interface is nice and it says you've got mail and it's friendly, right? That was their whole pitch. But then people figured out, oh, I can use the internet. I can get a web browser. It's actually much more interesting than these channels that AOL is showing to me. That's what's going on, I think, with these giant walled garden conglomerates like

Facebook is they tried to convince us this is the internet. If you want to connect to people, do interesting things, you have to use our private service. But it's really just not true. So that's their main defense is, if you don't like us, you don't like the internet. Yeah, well, two things to what you just said. One is, I think, to some extent, still, that people believe that Facebook is relatively benign, that when they go on there, they see their friends friends and they interact with their friends. And that's the beginning and the end of it. And secondly, Facebook has made it. I mean, for me, I have found people on Facebook.

I would have never found them otherwise. So it is helpful in that regard, but there's so much more to it behind the curtain that nobody really knows about. There's two things going on there. So yeah, one, behind the curtain, there is so much going on. Like the fact that every single thing you do is being tracked and put into a database and run through statistical algorithms so that you can be diced and sliced and sold to advertisers at really inflated prices, which people aren't very comfortable with. But then there's also this argument that, well, if it makes it easier to do certain things, then that's a reason for the service to exist. But minimalism in general

is hostile to that idea. They say there's lots of things you can do that might bring some benefits to your life. That's not the question. The right question is, what's the best things to do? So for example, I haven't really connected with people that I knew a long time ago because I don't use Facebook. But I'm not sure that I'm worse off because of that, which is really the minimalist way to think about it is everything you could do is going to bring you some benefit. Joining a bowling league, you might meet some friends you might not otherwise have. Everything has benefits. The question is, what's the best benefits? What are the things that really make the big difference?

And for a lot of people, not everyone, but for a lot of people, a lot of these social networks, there's just not enough benefits for the time that they seem to take and for the energy they seem to take and for the compulsive use they seem to generate. Well, it certainly makes you think. It makes me think about how we're being manipulated into spending so much time checking social media and perhaps more importantly, what we might be doing instead. Cal Newport has been my guest. He's an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University, and the book is called Digital Minimalism. There's a link to his book in the show notes.

Thanks, Cal. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. 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

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The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts.

So I think everybody has a sense that as a general rule, chemicals are bad for you. You don't want a lot of chemicals in your body. Pesticides, for example, are things you want to keep out of your body. Perhaps you've heard that the receipts you get from gas stations or grocery stores are coated with a chemical called BPA, and if you touch it, that can get in your body, and that's not good. And you've no doubt heard that you're not supposed to heat food in the microwave in a plastic container because the chemicals in the plastic can leach into the food and get into your body.

So, yes, we all have a sense that chemicals are not good. But what most of us know about this is pretty vague and incomplete. And as it turns out, we need to know a lot more, because the science is in, and a lot of the news is not good news. Here to explain it is Dr. Leonardo Tresonde. because the science is in and a lot of the news is not good news. Here to explain it is Dr. Leonardo Tresonde. He is a pediatrician. He is vice chair for research of the Department of Pediatrics at New York University.

And he's author of a book called Sicker, Fatter, Poorer, The Urgent Threat of Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals to Our Health and Future and What We Can Do About It. Hi, doctor. Welcome. Thank you for having me. You bet. So, start by making the case here because, as I said, I think people have a general sense that chemicals aren't good. We don't want a lot of extra chemicals in our body. There's no real upside to that.

But I think the picture's a bit blurry and incomplete. So, focus it and fill in the blanks. Sure. So let's just talk about hormones, which we don't think about in our daily lives, but there are basic signaling molecules that our body uses to orchestrate normal bodily functions from keeping warm to maintaining healthy metabolism to salt, sugar, and even sex. And what we know about the chemicals in our environment, synthetic chemicals, is that they scramble those signals and contribute to disease and disability. So we know of over 1,000 synthetic chemicals in the environment to date that are hormone disruptors.

And these are things that disrupt hormones at very low levels. We used to think that effects on hormones only occurred at very high levels of exposure and with rare things like pharmaceuticals badly designed or what have you. But the evidence is now strongest for low-level exposures to four categories of chemicals. The flame retardants, which are used in electronics, furniture, the phthalates, which are used in cosmetics, personal care products, even food packaging, pesticides, which are used in agriculture, and bisphenols, which are used in thermal paper receipts and aluminum can linings. Wow. And there isn't really anyone that doesn't come into contact with at least one or more of those every day.

And the reality is that the science is accelerating in telling us that these chemicals are making us fatter. There are 50 obesogens that we know about to date. The most prominent example is a chemical that's been in the news a lot called bisphenol A or BPA. And it's used, as I talked about, in the lining of aluminum cans. And it makes fat cells bigger, disrupts the function of a protein that protects the heart called adiponectin. And it's a synthetic estrogen. So it can have sex-specific effects on body mass as things like puberty happen. In addition to whatever research has been done to show this, how does this affect everyday people and their life? These chemicals do a variety of things. In early life, exposure can disrupt brain development. As a pediatrician,

I was trained very early on to screen newborns for their thyroid levels because thyroid hormone dysfunction can be treated with medication. But now we know that low-level effects on the thyroid gland in pregnancy are important because the baby doesn't make thyroid hormone on his or her own. And flame retardants and pesticides disrupt in subtle ways the function of that thyroid hormone, contributing to consistent decreases in cognitive function as measured with IQ tests, and even magnetic resonance images that show the same parts of the brain that you would think would be affected if a child had a lower IQ or had some behavioral difficulty. So it's that kind of evidence that shows the permanent and lifelong consequences of these chemicals. And they have

effects on our economy too. We know now that for just a few of the chemicals alone, the cost of exposure to these chemicals that mess with hormones in our bodies is $340 billion. That's a billion with a B each year. That's 2.3% of the U.S. gross domestic product. That's literally a tax of $1,000 on each taxpayer each year because of chemical exposures that disrupt the hormones in our bodies. So what, on a very practical level, I mean, if these chemicals are disrupting my cognitive function, if I can't think as well because I have these chemicals, I'd like to know what

I can do about it on a very practical level. So what advice is there? The great news here is that there are safe and simple steps that we can take to limit exposure to the chemicals of concern. So avoiding canned food consumption is a great way to reduce your bisphenol exposure. Also saying no to that thermal paper receipt is important because the bisphenols are in the coating, the glossy coating that the ink is burned into, and it can get in your skin and ultimately in your body, and there's always that hand-to-mouth contact that we sometimes do subconsciously. Also, watching the recycling

number on plastic bottles is important. Avoiding the numbers three, six, and seven is a great start. Three is for phthalates, which mess with the male sex hormone, which is important for libido as well as reproductive function. It also messes with metabolism. Six is styrene, a known carcinogen, and seven are the bisphenols that we talked about earlier. So explain that a little more, because I confess that when I buy bottled drinks, and I imagine other people the same thing, I don't check the recycle number on the bottle. So explain how that works. Well, there's a recycling number. It's a triangle with three arrows that is often on the side or

the bottom of a plastic bottle, be it water or whatever you're trying to drink. And it ranges from one to seven, and three, six, and seven are the ones to avoid across the board. The other thing to think about when it comes to plastic is avoiding microwaving plastic. There's this notion that microwave safe is safe for human health, but that's just not true. It's only good for looking at what a plastic can do with gross warping or disruption of the lining. At a microscopic level, we now know that microwaving these plastics can leach and etch at a small scale level such that the chemicals get into food and ultimately into our bodies. You said before that aluminum cans that soda comes in has that lining and that that's a problem. But what about the cans that vegetables come in has that lining and that that's a problem. But what about the cans that

vegetables come in or beans come in? The problem is that aluminum cans don't discriminate by the food type. Bisphenols get into these foods. And the particular concern now, you've seen a lot of attention to BPA-free, even on these cans these days, you're seeing BPA-free. The reality is we're playing chemical whack-a-mole, where BPA is being substituted with a chemical called BPS or other related relatives. And what little we know about BPS is it's as estrogenic. It's even more persistent in the environment and toxic to embryos. Well, I know I had heard that this problem with the thermal receipt paper and the BPA that's in that paper, and to some extent the problem of BPA in water bottles, that that problem has either

been solved or it's on its way to being solved because that's being phased out. Well, so far we know that BPA is getting moved out of these thermal paper receipts. But unfortunately, we're playing the same game of chemical whack-a-mole where BPA is being substituted with BPS as well as other alternatives. This is the problem with looking at chemicals one by one as opposed to looking at classes of chemicals that are siblings of each other structurally. And generally, structure follows function. It's not perfectly that way, but in general, that means that chemically similar molecules that are used in products, and the focus is always on making the product, not thinking about the implications for human health, can have the same consequences for disease and disability.

But most of the cans that vegetables and beans that they come in, those are not aluminum cans, are they? I mean, they feel very different and look very different than beverage cans like soda and beer. They're both problematic. Whether it's beer, soda, healthy food, unhealthy food, vegetables, tuna, what have you, the reality is that they all have this same lining because the BPA or other bisphenols prevents corrosion of the metal lining. If it's in a can, I'd avoid it across the board. So talk about pesticides in food, which is one of the big things you talk about, because I've heard conflicting information that yes, there are pesticides in some of our food, but that they're acceptable levels,

but no, maybe they're not, or maybe it's on some food and not others. So let's dive into that. The reality is that we've made substantial progress, even with the Environmental Protection Agency in phasing out the use of certain pesticides in homes. But the reality is it's still widely used in agriculture, conventional agriculture. And especially for green, leafy fruits and vegetables, things like spinach and lettuce, the reality is that there can be very high levels of these pesticides that ultimately get into our bodies. There's a so-called dirty dozen list that Environmental Working Group manages that focuses consumers on the fruits and vegetables where it's

better to eat organic than it is to eat conventional. And the great news about the past decade is we've seen leaps and bounds in the broad availability of organic, such that even the big box stores are taking this on. And that really speaks to the price margin that's changed substantially in organic food, so that it's not necessarily breaking the bank the way it used to. Well, that's a concern I think a lot of people have, and where there's some confusion that if organic is so much better, well, does that mean that conventional food is dangerous? Or are the levels in there low enough that we shouldn't be concerned? And is organic the panacea? Organic doesn't mean 100% pesticide-free. There are natural pesticides that are used, but it avoids the use of synthetic chemical pesticides that

are known to be of greatest concern. You mentioned at the beginning here, personal care products, makeup, cosmetics, that kind of thing. So talk about the concerns there. Right. In addition to phthalates, which are used for scents and other purposes, there's a bit of a loophole in the way the Food and Drug Administration handles fragrances in particular. It's not to say that all fragrances are bad, but what little we know about the chemicals that are used in fragrances are that they can disrupt especially the male sex hormone, but also have other consequences for thyroid and other functions that are important for the body. And so the good news here is there's an app for that. Skin Deep is one managed by Environmental Working Group that can guide folks in picking the best

cosmetics. But if you wanted to look for two words to avoid anything with P-H-T-H in it or phthalate, that's a mouthful to pronounce because of the way the spelling goes, but also fragrance are the two words to avoid there. I imagine people have said to you, you know, you're just Chicken Little saying the sky is falling, that, you know, everything's fine. And we don't need to be overly concerned about this stuff. To which you say what? I'm quite an optimist, actually. I mean, look at the of BPA in those uses.

I'm not saying it's a perfect process. More recently, we've seen the Teflon-like compounds literally be removed from certain buffet-style food packaging at two major supermarket chains, simply because of a small study that documented in five packages the presence of these chemicals that mess with thyroid hormone as well as metabolism. And you saw on Twitter and Facebook these food packages being set aside. That's a first step and speaks to a couple of factors. One is the power of consumer change that can really drive this in a way that improves all of our health. There's a great power in that pocketbook or wallet. In addition, if school systems and employers start to insist on the change that we seek, they can even be a force multiplier over and above individual consumer power in that regard,

really insisting on companies to change their ways for the better. And the reality is we're seeing companies move into this space and do the right thing. And so you're actually favoring companies that are doing the right thing and willing to step in and gain greater market share. And that is the kind of virtuous circle that really gives me great hope in improving the future. Lastly, you mentioned flame retardants that are in furniture and electronics. So what's, I mean, we have to have furniture and pretty hard not to have electronics. So what's the remedy there?

We know that simply recirculating the air in the home can get rid of a lot of the persistent organic compounds that accumulate in electronics and carpeting and a variety of uses for these chemicals. And we've come a long way in this regard with the flame retardants. California, of all states, was the state that required these flame retardants be put into furniture because out of an abundance of caution and an interest to reduce the rate and spread of fires, the idea was that adding a little flame retardant would go a long way.

Well, the reality is that there were not lives saved, and these chemicals mimic thyroid hormone, contributing to effects on the developing brains of arguably an entire generation of Americans. And California did the right thing in 2013 and got it out, and they now insist on disclosure on the label of a piece of furniture, whether or not this material has flame retardant or not. Now, that doesn shows, you should definitely cover it up with wool or some other material to keep it from circulating in the home or consider throwing it away. Well, as you point out, the science is there and it's up to us to pay attention to it and make some changes about the chemicals that we allow in our house and in our bodies.

Dr. Leonardo Tresande has been my guest. He's a pediatrician, vice chair for research at the Department of Pediatrics at New York University, and author of a book called Sicker, Fatter, Poorer, The Urgent Threat of Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals to Our Health and Future and What We Can Do About It. There's a link to his book in the show notes. Thank you, Doctor. Thank you so much. Again, I really appreciate it. Valentine's Day is not far off, and if you're planning to buy roses

for someone special this Valentine's Day, there are some things to consider. If you want the roses to actually bloom, be careful where you buy them. Roses come in many different grades, and there is a big difference. Low-grade roses look pretty, but they've not fully bloomed yet. These are the kind you usually find in the grocery store. They're fine and affordable if you don't mind the fact that they will never open. They're not bred to fully blossom. The big beautiful roses that you may find at the

florist will bloom with a luxurious fragrance. They also cost a lot more money, and the longer the stem, the more you will pay. There are a few ways to save money on quality roses. Asking the florist for shorter stems should help. Also, consider mixing in a few fine roses with some other deep red varieties for a fuller bouquet. Just keep in mind that all the red blooms will cost a bit more around Valentine's Day. And that is something you should know. If you enjoy this podcast, I'd like to enlist you to help us grow our audience and share it with a friend. 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 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 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.

Contained herein are the heresies of Redolph Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The heresies of Redolf Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available.