Something You Should Know - How to Have a Good Day (Almost) Everyday & Extremely Fascinating Facts You Never Knew

Episode Date: September 20, 2018

I’ve lived with dogs most of my life (and one pretty cool cat) so I am fascinated by doggy behavior. And did you know that even though dogs will eat almost anything – they actually prefer two distinct flavors. We begin this episode of the podcast with that and some other interesting facts about what your dog is really thinking. (Paulette Cooper author of 27 Secrets Your Dog Wants You To Know) https://amzn.to/2xoCi83 You have good days and you have bad days. So what if you could control that so that you had far more good days than bad ones? Caroline Webb, author of the book How to Have a Good Day (https://amzn.to/2pnE0Ct) reveals the psychology, neuroscience and behavioral science that can help you greatly improve the odds that today and tomorrow will be fabulous! If you have to present something at a meeting or make a proposal – do your best to NOT go first. I’ll discuss why and when in the meeting is a more optimal time to speak up. (Sarah McGinty author of the book Power Talk https://amzn.to/2plWwej0 What do 46% of people in Japan do when the doorbell rings? Why do astronauts have to sleep near a fan so they don’t die? This is just two of a bunch of facts you’ll hear from John Lloyd, creator of the Q.I television program in the UK and contributor to the book, 1,342 Quite Interesting Facts To Leave You Flabbergasted (https://amzn.to/2NREHll). If you like interesting facts to dazzle people at a cocktail party – this will be fun! This Week's Sponsors Daily Harvest. Go to www.Daily-Harvest.com and enter promo code SOMETHING to get three cups FREE in your first box! Apple Music. Go to www.AppleMusic.com/something to sign up and get 3 months free! No obligation, cancel at any time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, dogs will eat almost anything, but they actually have two favorite flavors. I'll tell you what they are. Plus, if you want to have a good day more often, expect to have a good day more often. So if you go into a conversation expecting someone to be a jerk, your brain will make sure that you see everything that confirms that you're right, that they're a jerk. Your brain will always make sure that you see more of what's already top of mind for you. That's something that many people will know of as confirmation bias. Also, if you have to present something in a meeting, try not to go first. And lots of fascinating facts you probably never knew.

Here are two. So astronauts have to sleep near fans so they don't suffocate in their own exhaled breath. 96% of people can tell the difference between the sound of hot and cold water being poured. 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 was 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 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 to Something You Should Know. You know, most of my life I have had dogs. I did have a pretty cool cat when I was in high school, Boxer. But for the most part, I have lived my life with at least one dog in the house, and sometimes more than one dog in the house. So I've always been fascinated by what makes dogs tick, what they like, what they don't like, and what as as a pet owner, you should and should not do. And at least when it comes to my dogs, few, if any, well, actually none of them,

could have ever been described as a picky eater. And it does seem that most dogs will eat what you put in front of them as long as they're hungry enough. But according to Paulette Cooper, author of the book 27 Secrets Your Dog Wants You to Know, dogs do have two favorite flavors according to research. They are liver and chicken, which is probably something you didn't know. Now you've probably also heard that you should not give chocolate to a dog, which is true. But what you may not know is you should also not give dogs meat from your table. The fat content in the meat we eat could actually give a dog a fatal attack of pancreatitis. My current dog, Taffy, got a pretty bad bout of pancreatitis after getting into something. And actually, one of David Letterman's dogs died from pancreatitis after it got a hold of a whole ham.

Chicken, turkey, bacon, any kind of meat for humans is probably a bad idea for a dog. Ever wonder what your dog thinks about all day? Well, like many humans, they think mostly about food and romance. Doggy romance. Dogs cannot think about the future, and they do not dwell on the past, and they have no idea that one day they will die. So what's left to think about besides food and romance? And that is something you should know. Have you ever had a bad day?

Of course you have. You've probably had some really, really, really bad days where it seems that nothing goes right. But then you also have those days where everything just seems to go your way. So often, it appears to be the result of chance. Things either just line up perfectly on those great days, or they fall apart completely on the bad days. But what if you could have more control over whether or not you have a good day? Well, perhaps you can. Caroline Webb has taken a look at the

behavioral science, the neuroscience, and the psychology that we can all use to make every day, or at least most days, better days. Caroline is the author of the book, How to Have a Good Day. Welcome, Caroline. Thank you. I'm delighted to be here. So who doesn't want a good day? But how do you define a good day? What's a good day to you? Well, over the years, I worked with hundreds, perhaps even thousands of clients and asked them that same question. I asked them, what is a good day for you? I also asked them, what's a bad day and what will give you more good days?

And so over the years, what I noticed was that actually there were pretty common themes that emerged across countries, across age groups, across gender, across industry. And it was pretty much what I'm sure you would say, which is that, you know, we like to feel as if we are using our time in a way that feels like it's directed at things that matter to us. We want to feel that we're doing well at what we're doing. And we feel good about the interactions that we're having, that we're bringing the best of ourselves to the problems that we're solving, and that we feel like we've got the energy to carry on.

So I would imagine that most people would agree with that, but is it your sense that we're not having those days often enough? Yeah, I mean, people are not feeling engaged. The statistics suggest that 30% of us in the US feel engaged in the work that we do, which leaves a lot of people not feeling engaged. And what I noticed over the years was that although I had wonderful jobs, many different types of jobs, even in really good jobs, there are lots of people having days where you feel more drained than you would like and more worn down. You know, at the end of the day, you struggle to answer that third question really effectively, saying, yes, I do feel great. I feel really excited about the next day. But it does seem, before we get into that, it does seem that a lot of whether or not

I have a good day, objectively, not whether I feel good or not good, but whether my day goes well, has a lot to do with what other people do or don't do. Yeah, that's a really fair point. Yeah, I'm definitely not one of those people who says, just stand in front of the mirror in the morning and chant, everything is awesome. And everything will be awesome. There is luck. And what I've become interested in was what's our wiggle room, you know, within and around the constraints that we all face as human beings. What is there that research tells us we can do to improve our lot? Where is the control that we have that we're not already exploiting? So, you know, I'm not saying that every day can be amazing. People often say to me,

why didn't you write how to have an amazing day or how to have an awesome day? And I've got a sort of trite answer, which is, well, obviously, I'm British. So, you know, that's right. But it's also because I think, you know, I think good is more reasonable as an aspiration. I think luck often comes into awesome. But good is something that we we have more control over than we we tend to think. So dive in where how do we start this? The deep meta message that I would say goes through all of my work. And the thing that I'm perhaps most fascinated by is that the reality that we experience is actually a construct. You know, we think we're experiencing objective reality, but actually our brain can only process a tiny amount of what's

around us at any given time. I mean, by one estimate, we can process consciously 50 bits of information. We're surrounded by trillions at any given moment. So, you know, the reality that we think we're experiencing is actually quite significantly shaped by our own perceptions. And that's something that many people will know of as confirmation bias. So whatever is top of mind for you will determine what it is that you then go on to see or hear. So if you go into a conversation expecting someone to be a jerk, your brain will make sure that you see everything that confirms that you're right, that they're a jerk. And so there are, you know, a number of quite simple mental tricks that you can use to acknowledge and sort of hack the fact that your brain will always make sure that you see more of what's

already top of mind for you. So put that concept of confirmation bias, put that into a real life situation to illustrate how it works. Have you heard of the gorilla studies, you know, on selective attention? Yeah, where they showed people a video that had a gorilla running through it and then nobody actually saw the gorilla. Exactly, exactly. So that was Chris Chabris and Dan Simon's sort of iconic study where they had a bunch of people playing basketball. And the idea was that you counted the passes between the people who were wearing the white t-shirts. There was another team wearing black t-shirts.

And reliably, half the people don't see the fact that halfway through the video, there's a woman in a gorilla suit. You don't know it's a woman, but she's in a big gorilla suit, walks across the field of play, stands still for quite a long time, beats her chest, then walks off. Only half the people watching actually see the gorilla. And that was one of the first studies in the field of selective attention, which is to say that when you are looking out for one thing, you are very, very, very likely to not see the other thing. And there are lots of studies like, there have been sort of homages to that, to that gorilla study,

like one that was done with a bunch of radiologists at Harvard that had them look through a bunch of lung scans. And in the last of the lung scans, there was a bunch of radiologists at Harvard that had them look through a bunch of lung scans. And in the last of the lung scans, there was a picture of a plastic gorilla printed. And 83% of the radiologists didn't see the gorilla because they weren't looking for it. So what does this mean for us? It means that if you take a few seconds before going into a meeting that matters, or even frankly, just sitting in the beginning of the day and say, okay, what is my aim? What really matters to me here? Yes, this person that I'm going to talk to might have been a jerk in the past.

But what is it that I want to have top of, okay, I'm going to look out for signs of collaboration, you will magically see more of that because it's a gorilla that you've decided to look out for. And if you didn't, you'd probably miss it. It's just that powerful. Well, everybody has that experience. And if you deal with the same people all the time, you create these preconceived ideas that, you know, if I talk to this guy on the phone, he's going to go on forever. And I'm going to, you know, he's a windbag or she's an idiot and she doesn't know what she's talking about. So if you go into the conversation with that preconceived idea, that's exactly what you're going to see. Yeah, it's so true. And you can get into a vicious circle. You know, if you've got a colleague who's been underperforming, or a spouse who's been

annoying you, and you know, that's what you've got top of mind, your brain will make sure that you see things that confirm your expectations. And, you know, that can get you into a very tricky, tricky, vicious circle, as I say. So, I am not saying that, you know, your spouse is not being annoying, or, you know, that your colleague isn't being annoying. I am just saying that, you know, there is a lot that we miss every single day by design, right? I mean, otherwise, our brains will get overloaded like a computer with all of its keys pressed at once. So it's important and necessary that we're able to filter out stuff that doesn't seem relevant.

It's just that our brain sometimes gets it wrong as to what's relevant and not relevant. We can be a bit more deliberate in sort of setting the filters, if you like, to decide what we should see and what we should ignore. Well, I've always thought, and it's been my experience, that one of the reasons people miss things, they miss that gorilla in whatever it is they're doing, is they're trying to do too much.

They're trying to take on too many things. It turns out that actually our conscious brain, as well as only being able to process a certain amount of information at any given time, can only really do one thing at a time. So when we think we're multitasking, what we're asking our conscious brain to do is the poor thing's supposed to actually try and juggle these things. And what it's doing is instead of doing them in parallel, it is switching frantically from one task to another. So you've got your email and you may be on a conference call at the same time. You may be trying to talk to someone who's just come in to talk to you.

And you think you're magically, masterfully doing all of these things at once. But actually what you're doing is, you know, your brain is frantically switching from one thing to another, to another, to another. And in each of those switches, your brain is losing a bit of time and mental energy. So the research is pretty clear that actually, we make between two and four times as many mistakes when we multitask, which is exactly as you said. And then we also slow ourselves down. We feel super busy. We're actually typically taking about 30% longer even on two simple tasks we're running in parallel. So, you know, if you want to get more done and you want to do it better,

one of the most powerful interventions is this question of how do you do one thing at a time more often than we typically do these days with all of the incoming messages that distract us. My guest today on Something You Should Know is Caroline Webb. She's author of the book, How to Have a Good Day. So now that my kids are back in school and soccer season has started and then there's guitar lessons and everything else, I've never been so busy. I'm running around all the time. So when I need healthy fuel fast, I know exactly where to turn.

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go. Try this for yourself, and I know you're going to love it. And if you do it now, I've got a bonus for you. Go to daily-harvest.com and enter the promo codeING to get three free cups in your first box. That's the promo code SOMETHING for three free Daily Harvest cups at daily-harvest.com. daily-harvest.com 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, Thank you. 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 Caroline, I think for me, when I have a lot of things to do and I'm tempted to multitask, I know that if I stop and write it down and then say, I'm going to do this and then I'm going to do this. So I'm not keeping track of what has to be done in my head, but it's actually on a piece of paper. It just calms me down and then allows me to go one,

two, three, four, and then it all gets done. Absolutely. And that's another aspect of the limitations of our brain and working with that rather than against it. So we have something called working memory, just like computers, which is our mental scratch pad. And, you know, we can only hold a certain amount in that space. And if you are worrying about 19 things, which a lot of us are, or, you know, 99 things all the time, you're using up some of that mental capacity. And it's just very hard to get any good thinking done if you are using your working memory to kind of think about, oh my God, what are all the things I need to do? So I do talk about the power of actually outsourcing your working memory to a piece of paper. When you are feeling overwhelmed, it's very helpful to actually take a piece of paper or your notepad function on your phone or whatever and just say, okay, what are all the

things that are on my mind? And then that actually essentially clears the cache. It creates more space for you to think, to use that working memory on the real stuff that matters. So there is really good science behind that instinct that you have there. And also, and I've heard other people talk about how, you know, it's very common to tackle the simplest, easiest things in the beginning of the day, because it's easy to check those off the list. And really, that's the time to use your, the early part of the day is the time to go after the bigger tasks. But I actually like the fact that I can check things off my list. It kind of creates a momentum for the day. So I like doing those little things early, because then I look and go, hey, look, I've got all this done. Look at me go.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, actually, research on goal setting is very clear on that. But yes, of course, it's great to have lofty goals. We want that. But we're actually more effective when we've broken down those big goals into really small, tiny steps that give us that boost. And there is real neurochemistry that underpins this, that, you know, we are more likely, the brain likes to repeat things that feel rewarding. So if you set yourself a small goal and achieve it, your brain feels like, oh, right, okay, I'm going to feel

like, you know, doing more. And I also like what you're saying about being careful about advice around how you should start your day. I'm basically a vampire. I'm such a late night person. So a lot of the advice about this is what you should do first thing in the morning just doesn't work for me. Me neither. In fact, there are so many time management gurus that say, you know, you really shouldn't check your email first thing in the morning. And I could no more not check my email first thing in the morning. And I could no more not check my email first thing in the morning than I could fly to the moon. I mean, how do you not check your email first thing in the morning? I couldn't not do that. And it's not like it's so draining to check

your email like, oh, I'm spent for the day, but then it gets it off the list and it's done. But I think that, so going back to what's the principle? The challenge is that if you open your email and then you find something depressing, then given the way that selective attention works, you've got that negative thing top of mind, it's very easy then to see everything that is negative after that. So I think that's, you know, that's the principle. If that's the principle, then just make sure that you're setting your intentions before you open your email.

You know, that can take honestly 30 seconds to say, okay, what matters today? Okay, all right. So what do I want to really pay attention to? Okay, all right. Now let me have a look at the email, you know? Well, I would, if I didn't look at my email, I would assume there's something depressing in there that I'm not looking at. So, you know, at least I've got

a chance that maybe there isn't something depressing and I'll go look at it. So it, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. But everybody, well, like you say, everybody has their own way of doing things, but that just, I don't think there's a one size fits all and you have to find what works for you. But yeah, my peak thinking hours are always in the afternoon. You know, that's exactly the opposite to what you read in the productivity literature in general. Yeah. So if I'm thinking about a time when I want to do some writing or I want to, you know, really have sort of a really in-depth coaching session with, you know, a treasured client, you know, I'll definitely sort of skew it towards late morning to afternoon. Yeah. So, you know, you've got to know yourself. You've got to figure out what are your rhythms, when are you sharpest, when are you clearest and,

you know, work with that. So back to the main point of this conversation, which is to try to make sure that every day or most days are good days. What else can we do? One of the things that I like to keep front of mind is the fact that research is really clear that when you're generous and kind to other people, you get an enormous boost. You know, when you're feeling low or tired, it can feel like exactly the last thing you want to do to kind of think about what can I give to other people in terms of warmth or kindness. But actually, it's really, it's really reliable. Marty Zelligman, who's arguably the leading light in the field of positive psychology, once said that it was the most reliable intervention that he had ever come across in terms of boosting your sense of well-being immediately.

There was a day when I was walking down the street here in New York, and it was pouring with rain, just as it has been the last couple of days, actually. And there was a woman ahead of me who was carrying a paper bag with shoes in it. And I, I honestly, I don't know why. But because of the rain, the bag was falling apart and I was carrying double bagged groceries so I went over to her and I took the outer bag and I gave it to her and she was so grateful but I walked home on air feeling amazing like I I was, you know, enormously connected to the human race and feeling full of the bounteousness of my, you know, my existence. And I only just made it home before my, you know, my other bag fell apart myself. But, you know, I did that. Yes, I did that because, you know, I wanted to help. Also, honestly, because I knew the research and it just at the edge of the, you know, the edge of this sort of thing, knowing the research just makes you perhaps a little bit more willing to give a bit of time to stop and give directions to the tourist that's lost.

To give a hand to the person that's, you know, that's struggling in the office. And if you know that and you know it's going to give you a boost then you know that's a useful thing to carry into each day if you could just a couple of other really quick strategies or concepts that people can can take with them that will help them improve the day uh so learning learning is a huge booster it turns out that we we're inherently uh wired to find learning new things rewarding and then of, there's all of the good research, which I'm sure lots of people already know about the power of gratitude. One of the things that I think people perhaps are less aware of, I think most people know that

taking time to count your blessings and to say, okay, what, you know, what is good? What is, what am I appreciating here? I think most people know that that's a powerful intervention. Many people will know the research saying that even, you know, if you do that for two weeks, six months later, you have a boost to your sense of psychological well-being. What I think a lot of people may not know is that link back to selective attention. And the fact that if you do it, if you say, okay, I'm having a bad day, I've just had a bad commute. Let me force myself to think of three things that I'm grateful for, or three things that I appreciate in the environment around me. Maybe it's some, someone's wearing a nice hat, or you see someone, you know, helping someone else

with their shopping that's falling out of their rainy bag. You know, just putting good things top of mind is not just going to make you feel better, but it's going to make you more likely to see other good things because of the top of mind effect, the fact that whatever is top of mind for us drives whatever we then notice next. And so, you know, that's something which we can all use. And it is an intervention that I use pretty much most days whenever I feel a bit tense or a bit grumpy. I'll say, okay, let me notice three good things in the next five minutes. And it works even if you do it through gritted teeth. You don't sound like the grumpy type, but. Well, but you know, it's because I

use all of this stuff you know I really really do I've always been interested in what's the smallest amount of of intervention that I can truly honestly build into my own life that is easy to build into the grain of you know an average daily busy routine so I've been using this stuff for a really long time. And I, yeah, I mean, I, I will admit that possibly it's made me a, um, you know, a moderately happy person. Great. And the good news is, so can anyone else be a happy person and have a good day if they follow the advice? Caroline Webb has been my guest. The book is How to Have a Good Day. And you'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes for this episode of the podcast. Thanks, Caroline.

You're very welcome. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS

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Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. 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. As a listener to this podcast, there's a good chance that you like listening to interesting information, and you're about to hear a whole lot of it. John Lloyd is a television producer and host in the UK

who started producing a TV show there some time ago called QI, which stands for Quite Interesting. It's all about fascinating information. He's gone on to produce other shows, and there have also been books that have spun off the whole QI idea. The most recent book is called 1,342 Quite Interesting Facts to Leave You Flabbergasted. spun off the whole QI idea. The most recent book is called 1342 Quite Interesting Facts

to Leave You Flabbergasted. For example, octopuses prefer high-definition television to ordinary television. Or the loudest word ever shouted was the word quiet, and it was shouted by a school teacher

in Northern Ireland. And you might say, hey, wait a minute. How do you know that? Says who? Well, if you doubt any of these facts or want to know the source of them, you can go online and you type in qi.com slash 1342, and then you enter the page number that you found the fact, and it will show you the sources of all the facts on that particular page of the book, which is pretty ingenious. Anyway, John Lloyd joins me. Hey, John, welcome. Thanks, Mike. Good to be here.

So I've mentioned a few facts that you've come up with. Dive in and dazzle us with some more. Just randomly, dinosaurs didn't roar. Well, for a start, one of the facts is velociraptors, you know, that you saw in Jurassic Park, they were no bigger than turkeys, most of them, little chicken-sized things. Dinosaurs didn't roar, they mumbled or cooed. So that's another thing. They don't roar like they do in Spielberg movies. Ronald Reagan was a comedian for two weeks. Did you know that? Stand-up comedian. Steve Jobs was scared of buttons. This is a sequence I like in the book. Steve Jobs was scared of buttons. MC Hammer doesn't like hamm word caterpillar and Dalai Lama in the same sentence, do you? It sort of connects up. And similarly, when you think of Steve Jobs, you think a genius, iPhone, amazing presentation skills, probably quite a sort of powerful personality, quite a scary guy in some ways, very interesting guy.

You don't think of a man like that as being frightened of buttons, and it sort of gives it a humanity, you know, somehow. But every picture of him, he's wearing a turtleneck sweater that has no buttons on. Hey! And do you know, that never occurred to me, and of course, now we know why. Yeah. Selfies kill more people than sharks? Well, that's absolutely true. Now, that is something I know about. So sharks, people often terrified of sharks' jaws and all that kind of thing. I mean, you're many times, Americans are many times more likely to be killed by a cow than a shark, probably bumping into one at night on the road. Sharks kill, it's 22 times more likely, that's another fact in the book, America's 22 times more likely to be killed by a cow than a shark, probably mostly in a road accident, but not all. Cows often butt people to death now. But sharks kill, what, half a dozen people a year worldwide? Human beings kill more than a million sharks a year a million worldwide so it's it's really not

terribly fair on on sharks and selfies um india's the king of selfie deaths is people you know take a nice photograph just step back a foot and they fall off a cliff you know it's kind of it is actually quite dangerous selfies because people are concentrating on taking the picture and not on their own safety. So how did the Queen end up with her own McDonald's? She owns a McDonald's? Yeah, that's right. She owns an industrial estate in Slough, which has got a McDonald's on it. She also owns several pubs, one of which is called the Windsor Castle, ironically ironically the Queen owns a lot of stuff you know she it's it's not in this particular book but in one of our earlier books Her Majesty the Queen of England owns legally owns one-sixth of

the Earth's land surface so legally she owns all of Canada all of Australia, all of New Zealand it's extraordinary isn't it I mean it's obviously if she turned up and said I'm going to sell Canada to somebody else the Russians or something I think people would object but in strict legal sense

that she owns the 6th of the world's land surface at her McDonald's has she ever gone down and done a shift, working the French fry machine or anything? That's such a good picture, isn't it? I'd like to see that. Well, since you're sitting there in the UK, here's one that I liked. London gets less rain than Rome, Venice, or Nice, which is pretty surprising.

And interestingly, people in Britain spend five months of their lives complaining about the weather. You also say that 31% of Americans believe they have made contact with the dead. And M&Ms were invented so American soldiers could eat chocolate without it melting in their hands. That's just a few more. And you have one about President Obama. President Obama, when he was president, was the only person outside HBO allowed to watch advanced screenings of Game of Thrones. Quite a privilege, I thought. The Great Wall of China, let's go the other side of the world.

The Great Wall of China was held together with sticky rice. That's what they used instead of cement. Florida has more bear hunters than bears. Well, that was pretty interesting. They don't get a lot of bears there. Must be very frustrating for that. It must be very frustrating. Again, you have to look up on the source finder how many

more bear hunters and bears, which it will tell you, because if it's a lot more, that really would be frustrating if there were only maybe... In fact, how many bears are likely to be in Florida, do you think? Is that really bear country? I don't know, because I'm on the other side of the country,

but I don't suspect there's a whole lot, but maybe, I don't know. But a lot of these facts, that's the reason that we have this source finder thing, is because a lot of the facts, people, I've got friends who don't believe them, and that's why we started the source finder, because check it out, we don't make these things up. You know, they are, because some of them are so weird. Yes, well, there are a lot of weird ones in here. Here's a few.

The excrement of the sperm whale is worth up to $10,000 a pound. Charles VII of France thought he was made of glass. Well, wouldn't that be pretty easy to test if you thought you were made of glass? Couldn't you figure that out pretty quick as to whether or not that was true? But anyway, according to you, he wrapped himself in blankets to prevent his butt from shattering. And every time Alfred Hitchcock drank a cup of tea, he smashed the teacup. So those are weird. You have some weird ones that you like?

Here's one. We all know about Leonardo da Vinci and the Mona Lisa, but he also designed chairs made of cake, a giant egg whisk as tall as a giraffe, and a horse-powered nutcracker. I mean, that is, that's some crazy guy. Is it a horse-powered nutcracker? That That's sort of a big nut you must need for that. Seems like he must have had a lot of free time on his hands. He was actually, strangely, Leonardo, it took him, I think, more than 17, nearly 20 years to finish the Mona Lisa. He was famous in his day for not finishing anything. So he was basically a doodler. He kept thinking, thinking oh I'll go and invent the tank or the scissors or something he's not very good at concentrating things when you actually read

about his life you often wonder why he's so famous because he didn't complete a lot of things on your favorite page it says in the last 50 years insect footsteps have become quieter well that's exactly what I mean. That's why you need the source finder. I can't remember why that is, but isn't that an extraordinary thing? How do they measure it? And why? Who thought the thing?

This is one of my favorite mad ones, is 46% of the population of Japan hides when someone rings the doorbell. So nearly half of Japanese, if you go to their house and ring the doorbell, they'll hide. You really want to know the back story to that, don't you? Yes, I do. Do you have it? Well, they're just very shy. They're just very, very shy people. Oh, yes, this really struck me when I found this one out. Computers cannot generate random numbers.

Now, you would think that's the simplest thing to do, isn't it? You can ask a six-year-old to generate random numbers, but computers can't do it. They have to have an algorithm because computers don't invent anything. They have to be instructed. So some coder has to write a sort of fake random number sequence, but it will always eventually repeat itself. Now you think, okay, that's kind of an interesting piece of trivia, but it's much more interesting than that. If you go again to the source finder, and this is something I do know about, the reason this is important is because obviously all lottery numbers are theoretically random because otherwise a lottery wouldn't be a lottery.

But they're not random. There's an algorithm for every lottery sequence ever invented. You can work out what the algorithm is, not only what the numbers are likely to be, but where the winning ticket is likely to occur in the United States. And there are several people in the United States who are earning upwards of $10, $20 million a year by working out where the shop is, where the winning ticket is likely to be. And then they go to the shop and they buy basically all the tickets in the shop. They might buy, you know, $5,000 worth of tickets or something. And they get rich doing it. And it's because they've worked out that computers can't generate random numbers. Well, one of the other interesting things about computers, I found,

is that you say that the computers that basically operate the nuclear weapons in the United States still run on floppy disks. That's a bit worrying, isn't it? Well, I would think so, yeah. But, you know, that's just me. So astronauts have to sleep near fans, you know, those things that go around, so they don't suffocate in their own exhaled breath. I think that's a really interesting fact.

Because the breath doesn't go anywhere, there being no gravity, it just hangs around their mouth and nose. And because exhaled breath is carbon dioxide, you suffocate. I think that's really fascinating. So here's a couple I like. Drinking one glass of wine makes you more attractive. Drinking a second glass of wine undoes all the good work that the first glass of wine did. Flights from JFK Airport in New York are sometimes delayed so that turtles can be moved off the runway.

And being left-handed, this interests me, boys born in the winter are more likely to be left-handed. I wasn't born in the winter, but I think that's pretty interesting. Okay, your turn. Well, you were just talking about the floppy disks. During the Second World War, U.S. Navy sailors were given detailed instructions on what to do if caught by a giant clam. I thought that was pretty necessary advice. I'm in the chance. What are the chances?

But apparently they were. Antimatter costs 17 billion pounds per gram. That's about how many billion dollars is that? It's very, very expensive to make. Another World War I. During the Second World War, the Allies considered dropping glue onto Nazi troops to make them stick to the ground. Here's one. I know this is one of my favorites in the book, Mike, actually, and you can test this. You can do it in two ways. You can do it online or you can do it for

yourself. It is the most extraordinary counterintuitive fact. 96% of people can tell the difference between the sound of hot and cold water being poured. You wouldn't think you would be able to, would you? But it's absolutely right. Try it online. Just put hot and cold water being poured sound or something into Google. And it is the most extraordinary thing. Something intuitive, you know that's hot water and that's cold water. It's the same water being poured into a jug. What's this tree sleep at night? I didn't know that. Yeah, they do it to rest their branches.

There's an actual, I was just reading about, trees are the most extraordinary things. They communicate with each other underground. They've got a kind of radio network under the earth. They sort of warn each other of things. And the latest information is that trees, not only do they sleep at night to rest their branches, but they've got a kind of heartbeat, a sort of built-in pump, a heart pump, because people have always wondered how it is that the moisture gets either from the leaves into the body of the trunk

or up from the ground through the wet earth into the trunk and up the branches. And what they've discovered is that they have a very slow kind of heartbeat. For example, I mean, what is a human heartbeat? You probably know this. I can never remember. How many beats a minute is a heart? I think the average resting heartbeat is somewhere between 60 and 100 beats a minute. A blue whale's heart beats about nine times a minute.

Very, very slow, because it's such a big thing. And a tree's, as it were hard doesn't actually have a physical heart but the pump mechanism is very very slow so you don't notice it and they've just got this new technology they realize that this regular beat and it's pumping slowly pumping the water up and down the tree trunk because all the latest research about plants plants are you know we we take them so much for granted like so many things in the world but there's a mimosa plants for example learn from experience i mean that is so weird isn't it if you because mimosa plants have

a thing when they're threatened they kind of close up their flowers and their leaves. They curl up into a ball if it's, you know, a storm or something like that. And so what they did, they took these mimosa plants in a pot and they dropped them off a table. And the mimosa plant, knowing because it could feel the gravity, something's happening. So it closed up. And they did it again. It closed up again. And after the third time, they stopped closing up

because they think, oh, you're crying wolf. Nothing's going to happen. How can a mimosa plant think, how does that happen? I just, I find that extraordinary. But that's what we do at QI. It's always, every day, something completely weird we learn that's new. And I think everybody today learned something, whether they believe it or not. lloyd has been my guest he's a television producer in the uk and the latest book to come out of his qi series is 1342 quite interesting facts to

leave you flabbergasted the book is just out and there's a link to it in the show notes. Thanks, John. If you ever have to present an idea in a meeting, try not to go first. Research shows that in a meeting, the first idea presented is often attacked by everyone in the room because energy levels are high at the start of any meeting. You're better off to present your idea about halfway through the meeting after people have had a chance to settle in. Also, try to use fewer words. People who are insecure about an idea or even just insecure about speaking tend to over-explain things, but less is more. Remember in the movie Apollo 13, Tom Hanks said, and so did the real Apollo astronaut,

Houston, we have a problem. That's a concise way of presenting information that sticks. It's a lot better than, Houston, sorry to bother you, and I could be wrong about this, but something's not quite right. And that is something you should know. Ratings and reviews help us a lot. I appreciate it if you can go to iTunes, Google Play, TuneIn, Stitcher, wherever you listen,

and take just a second and leave us a rating and review. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. you know, possibly enrage you. And don't blame me. We dive deep into listeners' questions, offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's perspective, we've got you. Then switch gears with But Am I Wrong?, which is for listeners who didn't take our advice and want to know if they are the villains in the situation. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events

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Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf 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 punt wine wherever podcasts are available