Something You Should Know - How to Have More Good Days (and Fewer Bad Ones) & Amazing Facts You Haven’t Heard

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please, read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual.

Starting point is 00:00:18 That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. 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. 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

Starting point is 00:00:49 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.

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Starting point is 00:02:16 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 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

Starting point is 00:02:55 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.

Starting point is 00:03:36 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?

Starting point is 00:04:14 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?

Starting point is 00:04:52 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,

Starting point is 00:05:23 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

Starting point is 00:06:11 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:07:06 Yeah, that's a really fair point. Yeah, I'm definitely not one of those people who says, you know, just stand in front of the mirror in the morning and chant, everything is awesome. And, you know, everything will be awesome. I, you know, 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, well, why didn't you write how to have an amazing day or how

Starting point is 00:07:47 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 have more control over than we tend to think. So dive in, 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,

Starting point is 00:08:26 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

Starting point is 00:09:17 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 she's in a big gorilla suit walks across uh 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

Starting point is 00:10:21 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 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 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 mind that i'm really going to look out

Starting point is 00:11:16 for and if it's um more collaboration that you're looking for and you decide to say 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. I mean, 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 or she's a she's an idiot and she doesn't know what she's talking about and 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

Starting point is 00:12:01 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

Starting point is 00:12:24 or, you know, that your colleague isn't being annoying. I am just 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 would 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.

Starting point is 00:12:44 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 and sort of setting the filters if you like to decide what we should see and what we should you know 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,

Starting point is 00:13:17 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 is the poor thing 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 know you've got your email and you may be on a conference call at the same time you're maybe trying to talk to someone who's just come in to talk to you and you 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.

Starting point is 00:13:57 So the research is pretty clear that actually we make between two and four times as many mistakes when we multitask and which is exactly as you said and then we also slow ourselves down we we feel super busy we're actually typically taking about 30 percent 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. Contained herein are the heresies of Redolph Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator.

Starting point is 00:14:58 Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The heresies of Redolf Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available. 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.

Starting point is 00:15:29 Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes.

Starting point is 00:16:03 Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, 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

Starting point is 00:16:33 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

Starting point is 00:17:31 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, OK, 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 early part of the day is the time to go after the bigger tasks.

Starting point is 00:18:13 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 that, you know, 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

Starting point is 00:18:50 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 uh advice around how you should start your day i'm basically a vampire you know 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 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 how long, it's not like it just, it's so draining to check

Starting point is 00:19:37 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 the principle. If that's the principle. If that's

Starting point is 00:20:05 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, I, 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,

Starting point is 00:20:45 and you have to find what, what works for you, but. Yeah. My peak, uh, 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

Starting point is 00:21:25 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,

Starting point is 00:22:08 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, 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 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 for 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

Starting point is 00:23:09 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 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. So learning, learning is a huge booster. It turns out that we we're inherently wired to find learning new things rewarding. And then, of course course there's all of the good research which i'm sure lots of people already know about uh the power of gratitude

Starting point is 00:23:49 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 uh 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.

Starting point is 00:24:37 Maybe it's some, someone's wearing a nice hat, or you see someone, you know, helping someone else with their, 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

Starting point is 00:25:12 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 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, yeah, I mean, I will admit that possibly it's made me a moderately happy person Great, and the good news is

Starting point is 00:25:51 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. 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

Starting point is 00:26:26 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. In this episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney.

Starting point is 00:27:26 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 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

Starting point is 00:28:15 1,342 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 schoolteacher 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,

Starting point is 00:29:01 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.

Starting point is 00:29:30 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.

Starting point is 00:30:07 Steve Jobs was scared of buttons. M. a sequence I like in the book. Steve Jobs was scared of buttons. MC Hammer doesn't like hammers. And the Dalai Lama is frightened of caterpillars. And, you know, these things, you don't ever hear the word caterpillar and Dalai Lama in the same sentence, do you? 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, do you know, that never occurred to me. Of course, now we know why. Yeah. Selfies kill more people than sharks?

Starting point is 00:30:36 Well, that's absolutely true. Now, that is something I know about. So sharks, people are often terrified of sharks' jaws and all that kind of thing. I mean, 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 is 22 times more likely to be killed by a cow than a shark, probably mostly in a road accident, but not all.

Starting point is 00:31:03 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 really not terribly fair on sharks. And selfies. India is the king of selfie deaths. If people, you know, take a nice photograph, just step back a foot and they fall off a cliff, you know.

Starting point is 00:31:32 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 Sl 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.

Starting point is 00:31:56 The Queen owns a lot of stuff. You know, it's not in this particular book, but in one of our earlier books, Her Majesty the Queen of England 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 she does it in strict legal sense that she owns the sixth 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?

Starting point is 00:32:42 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

Starting point is 00:33:28 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. And again, you have to look up on the source finder

Starting point is 00:33:56 how many more bear hunters than 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,

Starting point is 00:34:12 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.

Starting point is 00:34:32 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.

Starting point is 00:34:50 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.

Starting point is 00:35:20 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, isn't it? A horse-powered nutcracker. 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 to... He was actually, strangely, Leonardo was, it took him i think more than 17 nearly 20 years to finish the monolith he was famous in his day for not finishing anything so he he was basically a doodler he kept 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,

Starting point is 00:36:05 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 where 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?

Starting point is 00:36:25 Yeah, right. Who an extraordinary thing? How do they measure it? And why? Yeah, right. 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 backstory to that, don't you? Yes, I 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.

Starting point is 00:37:13 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. And if you're really good at computing and programming, you can work out what the algorithm is, not only what the numbers are likely to be,

Starting point is 00:37:56 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 $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,

Starting point is 00:38:30 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.

Starting point is 00:38:57 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.

Starting point is 00:39:38 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 mean, what are the chances? But apparently they were. Antimatter costs 17 billion pounds per gram. What's that, 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

Starting point is 00:40:12 dropping glue onto Nazi troops to make them stick to the ground. And 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

Starting point is 00:40:37 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.

Starting point is 00:41:05 Yeah, they, they do it to rest their branches. Um, there's, uh, and actually I was just reading about trees are the most extraordinary things. They communicate with each other underground.

Starting point is 00:41:14 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 what um a sort of built-in uh pump a heart pump because people have always wondered um how it is that the moisture gets from 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.

Starting point is 00:41:54 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, heart 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've realized that this regular beat and it's pumping slowly pumping the water up and down the tree trunk because all

Starting point is 00:42:33 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 learned 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,

Starting point is 00:43:20 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, always, every day, something completely weird we learn that's new. And I think everybody today learned something, whether they believe it or not. John 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 1,342 Quite Interesting Facts to Leave You Flabbergasted. And there's a link to it in the

Starting point is 00:43:53 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. I'm sure you know people who

Starting point is 00:45:02 would really enjoy all those interesting facts that John Lloyd and I spoke about or would like to hear Caroline Webb talk about having a great day every day. Share this podcast with someone you know and ask them to listen. I'll bet they thank you for it. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group.

Starting point is 00:45:43 Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family.

Starting point is 00:45:59 But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural.

Starting point is 00:46:24 It had a pretty good run. 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll, of course, have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible.

Starting point is 00:46:56 The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.

Something You Should Know - How to Have More Good Days (and Fewer Bad Ones) & Amazing Facts You Haven’t Heard

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