Something You Should Know - How to Apply the Science of Success to Your Career & What You Never Knew About Your Bones

Episode Date: March 18, 2019

Isn’t it great when you have an “A-Ha Moment”? It’s when an idea or the answer to a problem just pops in your head. But is it actually a GOOD idea? We begin this episode by exploring whether those thoughts are worth paying attention to. http://drexel.edu/now/archive/2016/March/Insight_Correctness/ You hear so many things about success such as, “It’s not what you know it’s who you know” or “Nice guys finish last.” The fact is that so much of what people believe about success has been studied scientifically and it turns out some of what we believe is true and other things are not. Eric Barker who writes the blog Barking Up the Wrong Tree and is also author of the book Barking Up the Wrong Tree. (https://amzn.to/2NTGkfT) joins me to explore the science of success and how to apply it to your life.  You’ve probably heard that we are all connected by no more than 6 degrees of separation. It is the basis of the game, “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” But is it true? Are we all that connected? And where did this whole idea come from? Listen and I will explain. http://www.vox.com/2016/2/4/10918942/facebook-friends-study-degrees-of-separation You don’t think about them much but your bones are pretty important and as it turns out, they are really fascinating as well. Writer Brian Switek author of the book Skeleton Keys: The Secret Life of Bone (https://amzn.to/2UyUhT6) reveals the fascinating things going on inside the 206 bones in your body (more or less). This Week’s Sponsors -Capterra. Find the best software for your business by going to www.capterra.com/something -ADT. Go to www.ADT.com/smart to learn how ADT can design and install a smart home system for you. -Quip. Get your first refill free when you buy a quip toothbrush at www.Get Quip.com/something -Geico. Go to www.Geico.com to see how Geico can save you money on your car insurance -Joybird Furniture. Go to www.joybird.com/something and get 25% your first order using promo code: something -Indeed. New users can try Indeed for free by going to www.Indeed.com/podcast  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, when you have an aha moment, how likely is it that it's actually a good idea or the correct answer? Then, how to take the science of success and apply it to your life? For example, is it really true it's not what you know but who you know that counts? The research on this is powerful. In fact, some of the fundamental research in this arena is on weak ties. And that is the people who aren't your closest friends, but the people who are one degree out, that's where so many opportunities come from. Plus, is there really

only six degrees of separation between all of us and your bones, your skeleton? It's amazing what's going on in there. You know, for example, a bone marrow, the marrow inside of our bones, that creates our blood cells. Our bones protect us. They protect our vital organs, that rib cage that wraps around us. They allow our movement and our flexibility. 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. So I rented and watched this movie last night that I want to recommend. It's called Instant Family with Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne. I love this movie because it is based on the true story of director Sean Anders,

who adopted three siblings through the foster care system in California. My wife and I are also going through that system to adopt our son Angelo. So the movie struck a real chord with me and my hat's off to Sean Anders for creating a funny, touching, entertaining, and yet amazingly accurate movie about the joy, heartbreak, and frustration of working through the foster care system. There are so many kids in the foster care system who need a home and they are stuck in this system through no fault of their own. So I invite you to watch the movie Instant Family. Think about getting involved. It may be true that you can't change the world, but you can

change the life of one child. And from experience, I can tell you, it's a pretty magical feeling. And when you think about it, that actually is changing the world. First up today, have you ever had the answer to a problem just pop in your head? You may want to pay attention to that. A series of experiments at Drexel University determined that a person's sudden insights are often more accurate at solving problems than thinking them through analytically. Now, that's partly because methodical problem solving can be rushed and mistakes can happen. However, having an insight is unconscious and automatic. It can't be rushed. When the process runs to completion in its own time and in its own way and all the dots are connected,

the solution pops into your awareness as an aha moment. Experiments with four different types of timed puzzles shows that those answers that occurred as sudden insights or aha moments were more likely to be correct. When taking the timing into account, answers given during the last five seconds before the deadline have a lower probability of being correct. This means that when a really creative breakthrough idea is needed, it's often best to wait for the insight rather than settling for an idea that resulted from analytical thinking, especially when there's a deadline involved. And that is something you should know. Since you are a podcast listener, you've probably noticed that there are a lot of podcasts about success and how to achieve it. And the concern I always have about some of that advice is that it is often one person's idea.

It's how they found success, which is great, and it may work for other people, but it may not. On the other hand, success has been studied scientifically, and from that research comes a lot of objective advice on success. And that really interests me. Eric Barker is someone who looks at that science. He has a blog called Barking Up the Wrong Tree, and he also has a new book out by the same name. And he joins me now to discuss what science has to say about success that might help you be more successful in whatever it is you choose to do. Hey, Eric, welcome. Thanks for being here.

It's great to be here. Thanks. So maybe a good place to start to talk about success and what works and what doesn't work is to look at some of the old maxims on success, like, you know, nice guys finish last. Well, let's start there. Do nice guys finish last? See, it's really interesting because we we often get confused because we look around and sometimes it seems like the bad guys are doing well. And some of the key research here comes from Adam Grant at Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania. And Adam's a very nice guy himself. And when he first looked at the data, he saw a lot of a lot

of good guys ending up at the bottom of success metrics. And this was very sad for Adam until he looked at the complete results. And what he realized was the results were bimodal. In other words, there was a split. The people who were the nicest ended up at the very bottom and the very top. And so what he realized is it's something that intuitively, I think we all grasp. And that is that some people are so nice that they become martyrs, you know, and they just they get exploited, they get taken advantage of and other people are super nice. Everybody loves them. Everybody wants to help them and they do great. So, you know, being nice leads to the very top of success metrics if we do work

hard, if we are good, but if we just do a handful of things to make sure that, you know, we're not getting exploited, that we're not getting taken advantage of. And a big part of that is making sure that you're in the right environment with other good people like you. So how do you explain then why a lot of jerks end up doing pretty well? See, what it really comes down to, it's fascinating, is that it's very much a short-term versus a long-term game. In short-term rounds, there was a lot of research that was done, actually, during the Cold War to try, and it was game theory regarding cooperation in the nuclear arms race. And it was the issue of who comes out the best when there are many rounds of a game. And in the initial

rounds, bad guys are always looking out for themselves. They're always very aggressive and very selfish. And so they often take the lead initially. But over the long term, we all know people get a reputation. And after a while, there's no coordination. People don't trust them, and they don't do as well over the longer haul. So if you make sure that you're taking care of yourself while looking around for others, that you're in good environments. Over the long haul, people tend to do really well. But it's true that initially in the short term, bad guys can get an edge. Yeah. Well, it's always fascinated me about that is because some guys, I've worked with people who have done very well in the long term, who are extremely difficult to work with. Nobody likes them, but they have so much talent that that seems to just trump everything.

As long as you're really, really excellent and the best at what you're doing, it seems like you can be a jerk and win in the long run. At least that's been my observation. You definitely see that sometimes. If somebody's in that top one-tenth of one percent. The thing that's, you know, good for us is that in many cases, you know, in much of the work today, you know, it is group efforts. It is teams. You know, we see the reputations of difficult actors or difficult athletes. And those are, you know, very often individual performers

who have a very high concentrated amount of power in terms of their skill, or in the case of athletes, sometimes, you know, they're competing completely on their own. So yes, the phenomenon you're talking about does happen. You know, in the working world, like I say, reputational effects, when there's teams, when there's groups, you know, being known as somebody who does well, who's reliable. This can really make a difference. We can actually learn something from the bad guys, which isn't bad. And that is, they are self-promoters. They do get the word out about their good activities. And this is something that isn't cruel, isn't mean. But if you're very nice, if you're very humble, if you don't let it be known that you're're very humble, if you don't let it be known that

you're doing good work, if you don't let your boss know everything that you're accomplishing, those reputational effects aren't going to be as strong for you, and that's something that is really key to good people succeeding in the long run. So you say that valedictorians rarely become millionaires, and I assume you mean by that that people who do the best in school may not be the people who do best after school. So go ahead and talk about that. Yeah, this was some research by Karen Arnold at Boston College, and she studied a lot of high school valedictorians. And what she found is they do very well. There's no doubt about that.

Most went on to college and advanced degrees. Many made six- incomes. But the thing was, they didn't usually end up being the people who who led the world or who who changed the world. And that is because fundamentally doing well at school and doing well at life are very different competitions. Doing well at school means playing by the rules. And so you're usually not the person who's leading the charge and who's revolutionizing things if you're always trying to follow what has come before you. Another really key principle here is that the people who do great at school are often generalists. If you love math and you're really good at math, that's nice. But in school, you need to stop studying math to learn history and learn English and learn all these other things. In that way, passion is actually punished. But when we go out into the working world, you know, if you're going to be an engineer or computer scientist,

the science at Google, they don't care if you're good at history. They don't care probably if you're good at English as long as you speak it. They just care if you're good at history. I don't care probably if you're good at English, as long as you speak it, they, they just care if you are good at math and you are good at computer science. So being a specialist is rewarded. So what we see is that school doesn't map onto life exactly in the same way. So those people do well, but they don't usually, they don't usually end up leading the world or changing the world. You are probably someone really good to get to comment on this. And that is my observation that when you look at individual stories of success, almost always, maybe always, there's always a piece of the puzzle that could best be described as luck. You met the right person at the right time.

You were at the right place. Something happened serendipitously that contributed to whatever success you're talking about. Do you agree that's a big piece of it? Undoubtedly. That's totally true. And some people might find that sad. Some people might think, oh, geez, I was just unlucky. But what's really interesting is that Professor Richard Wiseman has done research on luck. And, you know, luck isn't just randomness. There are things you can do to be more lucky. You know, he found that there were many things that people who stumbled upon serendipitous opportunities had in common. Often these people were more extroverted. These people scored higher on openness to experience. You know, these people were very good at finding the silver lining

in negative situations. You know, so there are things you can do to increase your luck by, basically, it's about opening up. It's about doing more things. You know, if you do very few things, the same things every day, if you don't leave the house, you're not going to be exposed to a lot of new opportunities. So luck is definitely critical in success, but luck is something that we can actually increase. And is probably worth trying to do. Undoubtedly. Peter Sims wrote an excellent book called Little Bets that talks about some of the research and the examples in terms of people who tried more things.

And what we see is that by just giving things a shot, not overly committing too much time, energy, or resources, but by giving more things a shot, you meet new people, you hear about new opportunities. You open up the possibility for more good things to happen to you. This is really critical. And we've seen this level of success. This is how Pixar works. This is how top comedians work. They don't just randomly try things. They test jokes to see what works. And then you see the filtered version of what they're done with. So it's really critical that we try and do the things to open ourselves up to increase luck. My guest is Eric Barker. He is author of a book called Barking Up the Wrong Tree, and he also writes a blog with that same name. Since you do it twice a day, why not make it easier and more effective? I'm talking about brushing your teeth, and the

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by going to getquip.com, getquip.com slash something. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet.

Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared

wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Eric, in almost every discussion about personal success will come the subject of confidence, that you have to exude confidence, you have to appear confident because people like people who are confident. But you have a different opinion.

Confidence is really, it's really interesting because, you know, many of the issues on success that we talk about, you know, there's, there is a discussion, there's a back and forth, you know, you could, with confidence, you don't, you don't see too many books on how to, how to be less confident or, you know, there's, there's, there's not another side to that. But what we often see when we look at the research is what you said is absolutely true. Confidence really impresses people. In fact, one study showed that people will actually choose the more confident person, the more confident candidate, over a person who has a better track record, which on the surface is shocking that you would pick a stockbroker who's more confident than somebody who's actually made more money. So, yes, confidence has huge effects on other people.

The only problem is that confidence also leads to a lot of potentially negative things in the sense of we can become arrogant. We can also, you know, people can dislike us because we're too confident. By the same token, you know, confidence often ends up becoming illusory. We're not seeing the world realistically, which can negatively affect our performance. And on the flip side, low confidence actually also translates into, there's a more positive spin on it, humility. We're more willing to learn. We're more willing to listen. We don't offend people. So both high confidence and low confidence have strengths and weaknesses. But it turns out what the research is showing is actually beneficial is to actually reject the confidence paradigm and to try something that's called self-compassion, which is basically to look at things realistic, and rather than lying to yourself about how great you are, to just be

ready to forgive yourself, to realize you can fail. You're seeing the world clearly. You're doing your best, and you realize that you're human, you're fallible, and you're going to forgive yourself. This, in research by Kristen Neff at University of Texas at Austin, shows it has all positives of self-confidence without those negatives like arrogance. Well, that's interesting. I've always been fascinated by confidence and how people who are really confident often get jobs and do things, as you were saying, better than the people who have the track record, because there's something about them that they're good at getting the job because they just exude that I can take care of this, but they can't really take care of it. And we usually find that out

later, but people really fall for that. And that's why something, if you're somebody who doesn't come off as quite confident, who doesn't make that impression on people? There are things you could do there as well, which is what's really critical is being, again, those reputational effects. You know, are there clear metrics for how well you're doing, where at least people can see the, you know, the performance? Are people getting exposed to the good work you do. Because when other people, you know, over time who might be more confident, they start to screw up, you know, at the very least over time, if you're somebody who produces results, who's consistent, who's reliable, who's well-liked, but what's really difficult is in situations where it's not clear who did what. It's not clear who got the credit. That makes things very difficult for low confidence people. You want to make sure that you're in a place where people can attribute your work to you. There are clear metrics and that people can see the good work you're doing. But how do you know whether to let people see the good

work you're doing or you need to toot your own horn to make sure that people see what the good work you're doing? That's a really good point. And there's a, you know, there's a fine line there between, you know, tooting your own horn. One thing that, uh, one thing that I have top executives have heard consistently, uh, recommend is just once a week at the end of the week, sending your boss an email and kind of just doing a nice little sum up of what you've been up to, what you've accomplished, what's been going on. Not bragging, but you're giving them an update because, hey, your boss is busy. They got their own things going on. They've got their own boss. They've got their

own priorities. For them to be able to look at a quick email, bullet points, see here's what you've been working on. Here's what you've been up to. Here's the reason they keep paying you. And here are the good things you've accomplished. You know, that's going to be much easier for them to process. They're going to know you're on top of it. The fact that you took the time to write that sum up. And those are the things that are going to be highlighted in their memory. You know, that's a good way of keeping them abreast of what's going on. Quick bullet point report makes you look good.

And if things don't work out with your current boss, you can take all of those weekly reports you've done, put them all together and use those accomplishments to update your resume. It seems pretty well accepted in discussions on success, the theory that it's not what you know, it's who you know, that you have to have connections to the right people in order to be a success. What do you think? We often hear this issue of it's not what you know, it's who you know. And in many ways, the research on this is powerful in that just knowing more people, having stronger connections to people is very valuable. In fact, some of the fundamental research in this arena done by Timothy Granovetter is on weak ties. And that is the people who aren't your closest friends, is very valuable. In fact, some of the fundamental research in this arena done by Timothy Granavetter

is on weak ties. And that is the people who aren't your closest friends, but the people who are one degree out, that's where so many opportunities come from. Because the people that you are close with, you talk to them a lot. You know a lot of the same things they know. You hear about the same stuff. But people who are one degree out, they're hearing about things you aren't. So that's where a lot of new opportunities, fresh possibilities come from. So merely by having a bigger network, you increase those number of weak ties, you hear about more opportunities, more possibilities, more people to work with. So people hear this and it sounds like, oh, I've got to be an extrovert. I have to be a people person. But there is a flip side to this.

And that is that all that time spent socializing, all that time spent dealing with people, unless you are in a purely social job like sales, you know, they're skill building. You know, and what we see so often is that the research shows a lot of people who are top in their field are introverts. Why? Because they simply have more hours to get good at what they're doing. So it really becomes critical to understand what you're like, if you're more introverted, if you're more extroverted, and aligning the environment and the role with your natural abilities. I remember hearing, in fact, we talked about it on this podcast, this concept of weak ties. And it occurred to me that there's something there that, in fact, your friends, your boss, the people closest to you have an investment in you to keep you the way you are. And not intentionally, but maybe less inclined to help you change into something else.

Whereas people who don't have that investment in you, weak tie people, are perhaps more inclined to help you. There's always that balance because, you know, in friend relationships, there's often envy. If these people are co-workers, you know, they might not want you to leave if you're a great employee. Often, employees have one of two relationships with their boss if they're a good employee and that is reed hoffman talks about tours of duty where good bosses will often say you've been a great employee hey after two or three years here uh you know i will help you find that next great up you know opportunity you did good for me so i'm gonna do good for you and there's other bosses who say you are great at what you do and i'm gonna make sure you keep on doing it because I don't want you to leave because I don't

want to lose a great employee. Sometimes, you know, those people who are one degree out, who have heard about our reputation, if we've done a good job of building it, they in some ways can be more helpful because there's not those sticky issues like envy and that investment in keeping you around. Talk about winners never quit, because I think sometimes they quit. We've heard so much about grit, the ability to persist in the face of challenges. And that's really critical. But we have that other side of it, exactly what you're talking about, which is we need to try new things. Kind of like I was talking about with the

luck issue, that issue of little bets, getting out there and trying new things. This is really critical because we only have so many hours in a day. You need to know what's important, especially if you're young. You need to try things to see what you're good at, to see what you want to apply grit to. So we need to spend a little bit of time just seeing new things, learning new things. And if your entire day is filled up with all these things you're trying to persist and be gritty at, you know, that's not great. In economics, you have the principle of opportunity cost. You know, if you're spending an hour here, you're not spending it there. So we need to make sure that we're not being, you know, we're not persisting on things that aren't going to have long-term value. I wonder, I'd like to get you to talk about, I'm not sure if this is a really big thing or not, but when to quit. That sometimes people think they want to do something and they really try really hard, but they don't have it. They just don't have it. And they keep banging their head against the wall and refuse to quit when maybe they need to. There's no doubt about that.

And there's some research done by Gabriel Ettingen at NYU where she talks about when we should when we should quit and when we should stick. And she has a very simple system for this that we can all apply. She calls it whoop, W-O-O-P-O-P. And many of us wish for things, but we don't know how to validate them. We don't know if we have a good plan. We don't know if we're working out. We don't know if we should stay or we should go. And what she says is using WHOOP, wish, outcome, obstacle, plan. First, you want to think about what is it that you want? What's your wish? Oh, I want to make a lot of money. Okay, but we got to take it to an outcome stage.

What do you actually want to achieve? Okay, well, I want to get a vice president job at a big bank. Okay, that's doable. Next, what's the obstacle? The obstacle is, well, I don't know anybody in HR there. Okay, great. What's your plan? Your plan is, well, I'm going to go on LinkedIn. I'm going to see which friends I know that work at banks or have connections there.

What Etigen found is that not only did this help people take things from the wish stage to actually something executable, but how the people felt after they did this little exercise was very indicative of if their plans were realistic and likely to work out. If people went through those four steps and they felt good, the plan was often realistic, it often worked out. If they felt negative, if it felt like, oh, you know, I can't achieve this, then that was the thing where they should really think about, is this goal realistic or do I need a new or different plan? And of course, the trick is to take that research, to take that advice that you've uncovered and apply that to your own career and your own life path of success. But what you've said really does help bring it more in focus. And I appreciate that. Eric Barker has been my guest. He writes the blog Barking Up the Wrong Tree. And his new book is just out called Barking Up the Wrong Tree, and you will

find a link to it in the show notes at Amazon. Thank you, Eric. Oh, thanks so much. It was really great talking to you. I'm one of those people who likes to read reviews before I buy something, and when it comes to buying the right software for your business, that advice makes a lot of sense. At capterra.com slash something, you can read thousands of reviews before making the decision to buy just the right software. Capterra is the leading free online resource to help you find the best software solution for your business. With over 750,000 reviews of products from real software users, you can discover everything you need to make an informed decision.

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people if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation.

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There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice.

Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. There is something you're using right now. Without it, you couldn't function. You would just be a blob of goo. And yet you rarely think about it. It's your bones, your skeleton, and it is a marvel of nature. Brian Switik is a writer who's written several books. His latest is called Skeleton Keys, The Secret Life of Bone.

Hey Brian, welcome. Thanks for having me on. So let's start with the fundamentals. How many bones do we have? What do they do? What are they made of? Let's start there. We have about 206 bones in an adult skeleton, but that's variable. Not only if you happen to lose a limb or something, you're obviously going to have less bones, but also because there are bones like these tiny bones called sesamoids, or it means seed bones that grow in tendons. And some people have them on the underside of a finger or toe, and other people don't.

There are bones called wormian bones that are basically skull bones that don't fuse with the rest of their neighboring skull bones and are extra. So, you know, 206 is more or less the count in an adult human skeleton. And what bone does, I mean, it really is a multifunctional tissue. It's a system, you know, as much as your skin or your muscle or your nervous system is. You know, for example, a bone marrow, the marrow inside of our bones, that creates our blood cells. Our bones protect us. They protect our vital organs, that rib cage that wraps around us.

They allow our movement and our flexibility. The fact that, you know, we have a shoulder blade that's at our back rather than to our side. The fact that we have, you know, bones in our lower arm that allow us to put our hands palm down or palm up, that's really opened up a lot of possibilities. Everything from the way that we construct or make things like stone tools to baseball to the way that I type, it was all determined by the shape of our skeletons. So it's not just sort of the static stuff that's just there and is kind of pulled around by our soft tissues. It's really this integrated and very important system. And does the system work well? And what I mean by that is I've heard that, you know,

so many people have back pain and trouble because really the skeleton isn't as good as it could be. Yeah. I mean, the human skeleton is absolutely ridiculous. If you asked, you know, an engineer or a designer to make an efficient looking, you know, organism, they'd probably give you something that's a bit more quadrupedal, something closer to a dog or a cat or something like that. The fact that we stand upright and all the pains associated from that is really, you know, something handed down to us from our past history, from when our ancestors used to live in the trees and then they came down onto the ground around about 3.5 million years ago. So we're left with an upper body that became adapted to clambering around and swinging around in the trees,

and a lower body that became adapted to walking upright on the ground. And a lot of our pains, even the fact that we can dislocate our shoulders relatively easily because they're not really anchored in to the rest of our skeletons by very much other than the muscles and the soft tissues. You know, it is an argument for what you might call unintelligent design that, you know, we're this kind of heap of historical accidents that we just happen to be the way we are because of these quirks in our past. But if you ask someone to, you know, create an optimal skeleton for the kind of life that we want to live, it might actually look very different.

And yet, humans are able to do amazing things in terms of endurance and speed and things. So something's working. Yeah, I mean, we're certainly functional. It's one of those things where it's like, how well do we function? What our goal is. So, for example, baseball is a good example for this. Like an olive baboon that you've probably seen in a documentary out in the African savannah. They can't throw overhand.

Their shoulder blades are to the sides. They can chuck stuff at you kind of underhand, but they can't do an overhand pitch or a fastball or anything like that. We can do that because our shoulder blades are at our backs, and we've gained flexibility from that ancient ancestry. So a lot of just happenstances in our past, you know, made us reliant on our ability to be flexible and to, you know, manipulate tools and kind of create structures. You know, we don't have claws or, you know, really sharp teeth or, you know, a protective pelt or anything. We're a really actually kind of weird species. But, you know, what made us so successful is our ability to be flexible and, you know, adaptive with our minds

and manipulating the environment around us. One of the things that's always fascinated me is that bones can break and then heal. I mean, to me, that's just amazing. And what I wonder is, is there something particularly special about human bones because for example when when a horse breaks its leg uh there is little talk about healing the horse's bones usually the horse is put down so is there something special about human bones that makes them more likely to heal well i, I mean, horses, it's bone tissue just like we have. It's just the fact that, you know, historically people haven't wanted to put in the work to get that horse's leg to heal properly,

or if there's a job that that horse has to do that it won't be able to do anymore. You know, horse's bones can heal just like ours do, and it's part of the growth of bone tissue, the way the bone maintains itself, that your bones are constantly laying down new bone tissue, eating up old bone tissue. You know, a bone like your thigh bone or your femur will basically change itself entirely over about, you know, in about 10 years. So it doesn't happen in an instant, but that constant eating away and also building will reshape your bones over time. And it's the same phenomenon. What allows our bones to grow and change shape also allows them to heal. That when a break happens, that those same cells

migrate to that area, start to ooze out new bone tissue. The dead tissue is eaten away, and then there's repair. And hopefully, if it does its job well, you won't be able to even tell that there was an injury there. Another question I've always wondered about, are we as tall as our bones allow, or do our bones just get as big as we would have otherwise? Which is the chicken and which is the egg? Yeah, for us to get bigger or taller, our bones, the anatomy, the gross anatomy of our bones would have to change. That's like, well, you can't really have a mouse the size of an elephant. It would just collapse under its own weight because its bones aren't stout enough to carry that weight.

Or if you look at the bones of a really big dinosaur or something like that, like how stout and sturdy those are. Also, in their case, they had air sacs that invaded their skeletons and made their bones light while keeping them strong and this kind of trade-off that you always have. So bone doesn't have unlimited potential. It has limits on it. So for the human skeleton, you know, to get, you know, bigger or taller, it requires some structural modifications and changes, like, you know, probably our hips and our thigh bones in particular would have to get stouter and sturdier to carry that extra weight.

But there are things in just even our life as we are now that make a difference to our stature, particularly when we're young and growing, that if we're malnourished or we're under incredible emotional stress for a prolonged period of time, that we won't grow to be as tall as we might otherwise be, that we might grow up to be a little bit stunted or have to have, eventually, once we get out of those situations, have those phenomena reversed and be able to grow to what we consider an average or about average adult height.

So everything from the mechanics of this to the fact that our bone is an integrated system, that it's affected by even our emotions. Therefore, under incredible stress and anxiety that releases hormones, it affects the way that we grow. And it plays into just how vital and how dynamic a tissue bone is. Well, and I know that you don't have to go very far back in history. If you go back to Revolutionary War times and go into a home that was built back then, you know, the doorways are lower, people were smaller.

So why? What happened in just a couple hundred years that we're now taller than we used to be? You know, it seems to do a lot with, you know, nutrition and, you know, some of the cultural aspects of these things. We're not necessarily getting taller as a species or an adaptation. We are evolving. Most of it's in our genetics, things like our tolerance to milk and lactose. It's not really been detected in the skeleton.

Just if anything, since the invention of agriculture and people have lived in settled societies, rather than being hunter-gatherers or being more active, that the density of our bones has actually decreased. It looks almost like a form of osteoporosis, where it's easier to lose bone tissue and to break our bones because we're not as active as we used to be because bone responds to exercise and it becomes more dense and more sturdy.

So the fact that shorter households or the impression of shorter people has a lot to do with the way that human culture influences our bodies and also certain things like how we lay out a city and build homes. So we're not getting necessarily taller and taller throughout human history, but the potential that we have now, because, you know, at least in the westernized world, for many of us, you know, food is more available. We have better, you know, care during childhood. It allows us to reach different biological potentials that were always there. It's just they might have been unrealized for one reason or another.

Are teeth bones? They're part of our skeleton, but teeth are not bone the same way that like a rib is bone. So teeth have an outer coating of a mineralized, you know, hard tissue called enamel, and there's dentin underneath that that's a little bit softer. But teeth are very similar to what bones started as, the very earliest bones, about 455 million years old. They didn't repair or maintain themselves the way our bones do now. They were much more like teeth, and they're this exterior armor that offered protection. It was only after that that we started to get an internal skeleton. So even though teeth are very much a part of our skeletons, they're made of different tissues than our bones are. Do we generally do a pretty good job of taking care of our bones, or do we beat them up pretty bad?

For the most part, bones are pretty good at taking care of themselves. But just about everybody, if you look at somebody's skeleton, if they're in a museum or anthropology collection, if they've consented to leave their body to science, you'll find breaks that we didn't even know that we had. How many times have you stubbed your toe on a piece of furniture or getting up off the couch or something like that, and it really hurts? You think, okay, well, it's so bad it's going away. You might have broken it and, you know, had an incomplete fracture or some other damage and not really knowing it was there. And, you know, our bones will record those injuries. So, you know, it really depends on the lives that we live. What's really kind of amazing is that bone can repair itself. That's not that, you know, we snap a femur or something

like that. And then that's just it that, you know, with the proper care and patience that that bone can repair itself and go back to doing its old job. Why is it, does it seem that bones last so long? I mean, the rest of us goes away, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, but the bones seem to go on. I mean, bones in museums that are, you know, zillions of years old. Part of that is that, you know, bones are harder tissue. They're part mineral. It's a mineral called hydroxyapatite, and that combined with a protein called collagen makes bones both strong and flexible, which is important because there needs to be some bend and flex. If it was just the mineral part, they'd be incredibly brittle and just shatter.

But the fact that bones are a hard tissue means that they can last longer on their own. But even then, after a couple of years, I know, I see this all the time when I do, you know, fossil field work and come across the skeletons of, like, mule deer or, you know, ravens or things like that. You know, after a few years, bones will weather away and turn to dust and crack. But if a body or skeleton is buried quickly enough, oftentimes water-bearing minerals

will percolate through those bones and the spaces and the cavities. All the pores that exescus bone is very porous. It's kind of like a sponge. And it will start to turn to some of those minerals that are deposited in it. So the natural mineral will be replaced by harder minerals that have been transported into that bone. And that's how we get fossils. Mineral you know, the mineralization isn't always complete, but enough to let these bones, you know, last for hundreds of millions of years and give us that fossil record that tells us about some of these things.

And lastly, is there anything that we haven't talked about that's particularly fascinating or interesting or people ask you about or are amazed to hear about bones that we haven't talked about? A lot of what I found most fascinating in my research about bones was not just the biology of bones, but sort of how cultural practices around bones and our view of bones has changed over time. For example, in the late 1700s and during the 1800s, anthropology in America was very focused on racial divisions. Basically, there was this belief that there were five races that existed and everybody could be categorized this way or that.

Skeletons and skulls in particular were drawn upon to do this. Many skulls and skeletons and bodies were stolen and sent to museums, you know, to try and prove this. It turned out, you know, total junk, that, you know, race is a cultural and societal concept. There's no skeletal markers, no biological markers, you know, to make these divisions or uphold them. But are you saying that if you dug up a skeleton and all it was was bones, that you can't tell from the skeleton whether a person was white or black or Asian or you can't tell? That's right. Because there's so much variability.

There's only been one trait that's ever been possibly brought out as a potential marker. But even that is pretty squishy. And that's what some anthropologists call spoon-shaped incisors. So your incisors are your big front teeth that, you know, just right at the center of your mouth. And even that, it was thought to be a marker of people of Asian descent, but we also see it in some Native American groups. So even that, like, you might not be able to tell.

You know, even the differences between, you know, different genders. Genders is also a social contract. You can tell the difference between male and female sexes based upon the hip bones. But how someone identifies or would have presented themselves or their life history, you would need to either talk to them or have some other cultural background or artifact, you know, in order to tell these things that, you know, the stuff that we sometimes take as, you know, so apparent to us are actually incredibly variable, and that there's no way to make clean distinctions between one's so much shading and variability through this, even down to our bones, that it really brings us together. Well, it's really interesting how amazing and essential and miraculous bones are, and I appreciate you sharing it with us.

Brian Switik has been my guest. The book is Skeleton Keys, The Secret Life of Bone. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Supposedly, we are all, you, me, and Kevin Bacon, we are all six degrees of separation apart. Pick a random stranger anywhere in the country, and the theory goes that chances are you can build a chain of acquaintances between the two of you in no more than six hops.

Actually, it seems far less than that, mostly because of the Internet. According to Facebook, the average Facebook user is only 3.5 degrees of separation away from every other Facebook user is only 3.5 degrees of separation away from every other Facebook user. And Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is no more than 3.17 degrees of separation from all Facebook members. So where did the 6 degrees of separation come from? Well, there was actually an experiment done in 1967.

But the important thing to understand about that experiment is that it required people to actually know each other, and they had to be on a first-name basis for the connection to count. And that is something you should know. If you haven't already, I invite you to come follow us on Twitter. At Twitter, we are at SomethingYSK. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists?

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. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed.

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