Something You Should Know - How To Make Smarter Decisions & Why Some Vices Are Actually Good
Episode Date: March 10, 2022Every airport has runways - and all of those runways have numbers. The numbers are always between 1 and 36. This episode begins with an explanation on how airport runways get their numbers and what pu...rpose those numbers serve. You will also discover why sometimes the runway numbers have to change. https://www.wired.com/2014/05/the-hidden-beauty-of-airport-runways-and-how-to-decipher-them/ Whenever you make a decision, you hope you make the right one. What you may not know is that there are some decision-making models that can help you make better decisions more consistently. Gabriel Weinberg, founder of DuckDuckGo has looked at these mental models which he discusses in his book called Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models (https://amzn.to/2F5c3re). Listen as he joins me to explain how these models work and how you can use them to be a much better decision maker. Not all vices are bad for you. In fact a lot of what people consider sinful, may not be so bad at all -at least in moderation. That’s according to journalist Erik Ofgang. Erik and his father Dr. Henry Ofgang have examined the latest research and found some vices may actually be beneficial. Their findings are in a book called The Good Vices: From Beer to Sex, the Surprising Truth About What’s Actually Good for You (https://amzn.to/2MH6sgR). Listen as Erik explains what they found. Now that people are starting to travel again, there is something important you need to remember to do before you go on your next out-of-town trip. If you don’t, you may have trouble using your credit cards. And what a hassle that can be! Listen to discover what you need to do before you leave home. https://www.popsugar.com/smart-living/photo-gallery/35113991/image/45008935/Call-your-bank PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! We really like The Jordan Harbinger Show! Check out https://jordanharbinger.com/start OR search for it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen! Join the Moink Movement today! Go to https://MoinkBox.com/SYSK RIGHT NOW and get FREE filet mignon for a Year! Go to https://Indeed.com/Something to claim your $75 credit before March 31st! Factor makes it easy to eat clean 24/7, with fresh, delicious, prepared meals! Head to https://go.factor75.com/something120 & use promo code Something120 to get $120 off! Check out Squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you’re ready, go to https://squarespace.com/SOMETHING to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Masterworks gives everyone the opportunity to invest in blue-chip artwork. To receive exclusive access to their latest offerings go to https://Masterworks.art/SYSK LEVEL UP will give you the confidence & know-how to grow your business and thrive. LEVEL UP, by Stacey Abrams & Lara Hodgson, is now available everywhere audiobooks are sold. Discover matches all the cash back you’ve earned at the end of your first year! Learn more at https://discover.com/match M1 Finance is a sleek, fully integrated financial platform that lets you manage your cash flow with a few taps and it's free to start. Head to https://m1finance.com/something to get started! To TurboTax Live Experts an interesting life can mean an even greater refund! Visit https://TurboTax.com to lear more. To see the all new Lexus NX and to discover everything it was designed to do for you, visit https://Lexus.com/NX Use SheetzGo on the Sheetz app! Just open the app, scan your snacks, tap your payment method and go! https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Today on Something You Should Know, why every airport runway has a number and what it means.
Then you can easily learn to think smarter and make better decisions when you understand some basic mental models.
There's a really interesting one called the Streisand Effect and it's really named
after the celebrity, Barbara Streisand.
And it's extremely useful that if you draw attention to something that you don't want
people to see, it can actually draw more attention to it than you intended in the first place.
Also something you need to do before you go on summer vacation
that will save you a lot of trouble. And the surprising facts about a lot of vices that can
be good for you, including sex, sun, chocolate, and more. One that stands out is coffee. Not because
moderate drinking of coffee seems to be healthy, it's that even excessive amounts of coffee
drinking is still healthy.
All this today on Something You Should Know.
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you can use in your life. Today, Something you should know with Mike Carruthers.
Hi, welcome. It seems that a lot of people are fascinated by all things aviation. Anything
having to do with airplanes and air travel is fascinating. I find a lot of it really
interesting. And I came across something that I never knew before. Every airport runway has a number.
Okay, I knew that part.
It's the rest of it I didn't know.
You can see the numbers out the plane window,
and those numbers are painted on the ground or on signs,
and those numbers are not random at all.
Every runway number is between 1 and 36.
The number indicates how many degrees away that runway is
pointing from Magnetic North, rounded to the tens. So as an example, a runway that is pointing 194
degrees away from Magnetic North would be rounded to 190, and then the last digit dropped, making it runway number 19.
Runway 24 is 240 degrees from magnetic north.
And if your plane is taking off or landing on runway 36, you're heading due north.
Now sometimes airports reverse the direction that planes land and take off on a runway,
and when they do that, the runway changes numbers, usually by 18.
So runway 33 becomes runway 15.
Now, if there's more than one runway pointing in the same direction,
as in parallel runways,
then each runway is identified by adding L, C, or R to the number,
meaning left, center, or right,
to help identify its position.
This is all to make sure everybody knows
which runway is which
and which direction everyone is going.
Interestingly, magnetic north can shift itself
from time to time, and if it changes enough,
depending on the location of the airport,
it becomes necessary for the runway numbers to be changed as well. It seldom happens, and everybody hates when it does
happen, but it did happen at the Oakland airport in 2013. And that is something you should know.
You make a lot of decisions every day, big and small decisions.
And each one of those decisions that you make is based on something.
You choose this over that.
You go that way instead of this way.
And sometimes it's the right decision, hopefully more often than not.
And sometimes it's the wrong decision.
There are, in fact, models,
mental models, which, if you're aware of them, can help you make better decisions. Those
mental models are the subject of a book called Superthinking, The Big Book of Mental Models,
and the author is Gabriel Weinberg, who is also the founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo, the
internet privacy company.
Hi, Gabriel. Welcome to Something You Should Know.
Hi, thanks for having me.
So this is one of those topics, I think, that's hard to explain in the abstract.
So let's just get right into some examples of mental models.
What's a good jumping-off point? What's a good mental model to illustrate what you're talking about?
So there's this concept called the forcing function. And all it really is, is something that forces you to think critically.
And the way it usually manifests is you literally schedule time in your calendar. So if you think
personally, that would be like scheduling time to go to the gym every week to make sure you
actually go. But professionally, it often comes up in standing meetings.
And so as an example, in my company, we have what they call a postmortem after every single
project.
And that means we think about what went well, what went poorly, and what we could do better
next time, regardless of the project went great or poorly.
And what that does is it forces everyone to sit around and think about that
critically. And just building that into the calendar for every single project
just compounds over time and makes the company so much better.
Great. Talk about Eisenhower's Eisenhower decision matrix. What does that do?
Great question. So every day we're getting all sorts of interruptions, right? And
that is happening more and more because we live on our phones. And so text messages are coming in,
emails are coming in, and those seem urgent and they are urgent in the sense that they're
interrupting you, but they're generally not important. And so this actually came from
President Eisenhower because the same thing
happens to a president, as you might imagine, they're getting interrupted all the time, right?
And what he did is he wanted to categorize things as important and not important and urgent
and not urgent. And he wants to do, and by extension, if you adopt this model, I want to do as well. And you, you want to work on more important but not urgent things.
And so the urgent stuff that are really urgent, you have to work on like emergencies.
There's a whole set of important, not urgent things like growing your skills, you know, working on your family relationships, working on a deep hobby that might turn into a different career.
That if you just get sucked
up with all the text messages and things like that, you will never get to. And so by categorizing in
your head what is a type of activity, you can consciously then try to avoid some of the
distractions and make sure you're blocking out time for those important non-urgent activities.
It would seem though that you not only have to block out time and schedule those important non-urgent activities. It would seem though that you not only have to block out
time and schedule those important, urgent, whatever it is the things are that you want to do,
you would also have to be very proactive to block those things that interrupt you, to turn off your
phone or to do whatever it takes to keep those interruptions out because otherwise you're still
going to get interrupted.
What happens is when you start a work day, right, and you may at the beginning of the day,
another good habit is to prioritize, right, and to write down the top thing that you should do
today. That's another model that's very beneficial. However, a lot of people actually do that,
but then when they sit down and do that, they get hit by emails.
They get hit by people interrupting them.
And so it's actually very hard to complete that thing during the day.
The way to do that is to really turn off all the distractions, make sure you're not interrupted.
And even if you are, say, nope, I'm doing something else.
And what I often do is literally schedule that into my calendar so that no one can take
that time away from me.
And then I can use that deep work block to really get that top priority thing done.
It does seem though that people, there are people who are so used to the distractions,
the emails, the text, that if they turn it off, the anxiety that builds because they don't know what they're missing ends up interfering with the big task just as much as dealing with the
emails and the texts and the distractions. You're right. This is easier said than done.
There are so many kind of cognitive biases and kind of influence models like you're referencing
fear missing out, right? FOMO that play on your behavior. And so it's not, these things sound easier than they are to do,
but they can be done. And it does take a little while to wean you off of that.
But eventually after doing it a few times, you realize that hardly ever is there actually an
emergency in a two hour block. Like if you wake up from your deep work session, and then check everything in batches, generally, you know,
nothing was on fire. And yet, the next time we try to block out a two hour block, we don't remember
that. And we go, yeah, but something big could come up. And it never comes up. Almost never.
That's true. I mean, I mean, that's why you start to rely on these models. If you just relied on your own intuition, you'd be constantly tricked and fall into the same traps. And so by naming some of
these things and then really committing to them, you can start to escape these kind of mind traps
that you have. Let's talk about unintended consequences. And you hear about that in the
news sometimes, you know, a law will go into effect and have unintended consequences.
But as you point out, there are unintended consequences of our decisions as well.
There's a really interesting one called the Streisand effect, and it's really named after the celebrity Barbara Streisand. And what happened was, she has a really nice mansion,
and she wanted to keep it private. And some photographer took a picture of
it and put it up on their website. And literally no one had gone to this website. It had six views,
but she really wanted to stop people from going to it in the future. And so she sued this
photographer. And all of a sudden the photographer went public with it and it became a huge news
story. And eventually the photographer won the
lawsuit or got dropped effectively and decided to put in the public domain. And so not only that,
now it's public, so it's on Wikipedia. And this whole thing ended up having a name called the
Streisand effect, which means that if you draw attention to something that you don't want
people to see, it can actually draw more attention to it than you
intended in the first place. It's effectively the cover up can be worse than the crime. And so what
you can think about is, if I draw attention to this, is it going to be worse? Maybe I should
just let it go. Like if Barbara Streisand just let it go, probably no one would have ever seen
the photo to begin with. And how many times in life do you look back and you made a big deal about
something that if you just sucked it up and let it go and let it pass, it wouldn't have been all
the trouble it turned out to be? Exactly. And it's hard in the moment to do that because you get
sucked up in all the emotion, especially in kind of a company setting, you have multiple people saying, you know, we got to do something about this. We got to react.
We got to, you know, you got to put out a statement. But in reality, you got to think about,
hmm, now that I know about the Streisand effect, maybe the option of doing nothing is the best
option. One of the mental models that you talk about is something called Hanlon's razor. So talk about that one.
So Hanlon's razor is a kind of, uh, adaption of Occam's razor, which people may be familiar with,
like the simplest answer, uh, maybe likely the true one, but it's adapted to people
and it's extremely useful. And this happens all the time in day to day life where you get a text
and maybe it's a current text, like not very much language, but you're reading in emotion to it.
Like the person is angry with you or it's a sarcastic.
But the reality is, is it may not be.
And the simplest answer often for a short text, for example, is that they were just
on a rush.
Maybe they're in transit and they're trying to not text while driving or something like that.
And by reading into it, you're ascribing way too much emotion and probably the wrong emotion that exists.
So what Hanlon's razor is, is it says don't attribute to malice, which can be attributed to carelessness.
And all it's saying really is give people the benefit of the doubt and don't jump to conclusions about people's emotions when the simple answer is probably they're just going about their business and took the path of least resistance.
It's like when you call somebody and they don't call you back and you assume or you can start to assume that they're avoiding you, that they're being a jerk, that they don't want to talk to you,
and maybe they just never got the message or they're too busy.
Exactly. And so it really helps you in life build trust with people. And what it really means when you have that next conversation is instead of having an accusatory tone
and jumping to conclusions, have an inquisitive tone and maybe ask,
hey, did you get my message? And you might
get the answer. I mean, maybe they really were blowing you off, but more likely they probably
just missed your message or forgot to get back to you. Right. And I think everybody's done that. I
mean, I've had calls that I'm supposed to return and yeah, it just takes me a while to get to them.
It's not because I'm upset or mad or think ill of the other person. I just haven't gotten to it yet.
I'm speaking with Gabriel Weinberg.
He's author of the book Superthinking, the big book of mental models.
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So Gabriel, which of these mental models, if you haven't talked about it already,
which one of these really lights you up? Well, the one that I think I get the most value out of
is an economics concept called opportunity cost, which is a little less kind of, you know, flashy,
but it really is useful. And what that means is
whenever you make a decision, you often think about the benefits of, or the cons or costs or
benefits of that decision alone. But what you're not often thinking about is when you make a
decision, you're also not making a bunch of other decisions. So say like you buy something
and you spend $20 on it,
and you're thinking about, should I spend $20 on that item? What you're not thinking about is I
could have used that $20 to buy all sorts of other things. And that's what's called the opportunity
cost of your decision. And so if you want to make the best decisions, whenever you make a decision,
you have to think about all the other options you could be doing with your time or money. And
that'll help you think of whether there are actually just better ways than what's right in
front of you to use those resources. Yeah, but isn't that list endless?
It is. This gets to, you know, all of these play against each other. So it gets to another model,
right, called analysis paralysis, where you can spend way too much time making a decision.
But it's often better
to not have zero options. And so there is a sweet spot in there. And generally, the sweet spot is
greater than two. Like I like to say, if you only have two options, at least get another one.
And so think about at least three things is kind of the rule of thumb that I like to think about.
And the same is with like, the bigger the decision, the more important this is. So like,
if you're thinking about like taking a job, for instance, you should think about at
least two other options. If you're thinking about, you know, where to go for lunch, maybe it doesn't
matter as much. Well, talk about that analysis paralysis, because I think we've all, we've all
been there. We've all done that. There's another kind of model to operationalize this called
irreversible versus reversible decisions.
Reversible decisions are ones that are easy to reverse.
You can think of them as a doorway that you can walk back through to and from.
And if you make the wrong decision there, it's really easy to undo.
And so you really don't need to or should have a complex process for making that decision.
Then there are irreversible, I mean, irreversible
decisions where you can't really go back through the door. Once you go through, it's locked.
Then think about, you know, having a kid or selling your business or something of great
effect that's hard to undo. For those, you probably want a longer process. And so it's a spectrum.
And so what you kind of want to do is think about how intense the consequence of the decision and how reversible it is. And depending on that, really set a cutoff time for your analysis of the decision. For very small decisions, you know, just make it straight away. And because it's reversible, you can just change it if it doesn't work out. And as you get bigger, you want to evaluate more options and have more of a process. You talk in the book about the sunken cost fallacy, which I think, well, I know I've
certainly fallen victim to, and I'm sure everybody has.
So let's talk about it.
Oh, yeah.
This is one that people get sucked into, if you will, or sucked into all the time.
What that is, is think of it as you go to a movie.
You've already paid the ticket for the movie.
You're in the movie.
The movie is terrible.
Like you can tell from the first 10 minutes, you do not want to see the rest of this movie.
A lot of people will stay at the movie because they already bought the ticket.
But in reality, you already purchased it.
It is a sunk cost, so to speak.
You can't get it back.
Now, maybe you could if you complain on a refund in the movie, but let's suppose you're
not going to do that.
The optimal thing to do once you realize this thing is not for you is to leave the movie
theater and get the rest of your two hours back.
And that applies to all sorts of things.
So it applies to not only just movies or books, but whole projects or things or relationships that you've
invested time in that you can tell really aren't working out. People generally stay in those way
too long because they feel they've invested so much time and effort into them. But once you
realize that you can't get any of that time or effort back, then the optimal decision may be to
just leave. And yet who does? I mean, I think I've walked out of one movie in my entire life, or maybe two, but you're right. Well, I also think, well, maybe it'll get better. It never gets better, but maybe it'll get better. your kind of internal tendencies and biases, right? And so the hope is by naming these concepts
that you can pop into your head
and knowing that it's there
may help you make that decision.
Whereas if you don't know the concept at all,
then you're definitely not thinking about it.
Talk about the five whys.
Yeah, so when something goes wrong,
like I referenced postmortems earlier and what
happens is when you analyze a project when it goes good or bad and you want to know what happened
five wise is a great method for that analysis and what it's doing is it's asking you to keep
asking the question why just like a child does sometimes you know when when you were a kid or
you have a kid and they ask you,
you know, why did this happen? And you answer and they say, well, why did that happen? And you
answer, you say, why did that happen? That's five whys. And what it's asking you to do is just keep
digging deeper into the problem until you get to what's called the root cause versus what's called
the proximate cause. And so an example is the Challenger explosion in 1986. It was a very sad day.
I remember it very well.
And the proximate cause of that explosion was an O-ring that was part of the shuttle.
And you can ask, well, why did the O-ring break?
And it broke because it was too cold.
And why was it too cold?
Because they launched the shuttle colder than they ever had launched before.
Well, why did they do that?
And it turns out that the real
reason is engineers had said not to launch it, but management had a different view of it and decided
to go for the launch. And there was a whole commission report about this. And it turns out
the root cause of this whole thing is kind of a management issue. But if you didn't ask the
question, you might have stopped at just the mechanical failure and not got to the real reason.
Well, and that's what I think most of us do, right?
I mean, we don't do that.
We just look at what we think we know and there we know.
Yeah, and the same thing happens in personal relationships is, you know, you ask, why did
someone do something?
And they give you kind of a cursory reason, which may be true, but it's not like the real
reason.
Like they may have take the
example of blowing you off we were talking about earlier you know they may not have gotten back to
you and that might be totally true but they may also not go back to you because they're upset with
you underneath or they are going through a difficult time in their life and so it's been
very difficult and stressful to get back to you or Or, you know, they lost their phone or whatever it is. And if you don't ask, keep asking a deeper question, you never get to the
real reason somebody's doing something. Yeah. And maybe you don't really want to know the real.
Maybe you don't. Yeah, that's true. I mean, you're absolutely right about that. That's why
it's context dependent. It's a tool to use when you really want to get to the bottom of something. Talk about the mental model of deliberate practice, which applies to learning something new,
which I think is, this is really powerful. It is a very simple method developed by a gentleman
in Anders Ericsson, who studied all sorts of world-class athletes and professionals about
how best to learn skills.
And it seems so simple in retrospect, but it is so powerful and it's unlike how people normally practice. And what it suggests is whatever skill you want to learn, say it's juggling or chess or
something like that, you want to practice the skill right outside your comfort zone. And you
want an expert or a coach to be
telling you in real time what you're doing wrong and so you don't want to go too far out of your
comfort zone you don't want to go play with professionals because then you can't even
understand what you're doing wrong but you want to constantly be putting yourself you don't want
to be repeating the same thing that you already know so we'll be putting stuff a little out of
your comfort zone and then getting this real-time feedback. And then as you progress, you keep changing the skill and make it harder and
harder. And then you get closer and closer to being an expert. And that is by far the fastest
and best way to kind of learn something new. Well, I like these because they're not only
mental models as you describe them, but they're also really pearls of wisdom, you know, like
Hanlon's razor that you pointed out that when you send a text to someone and they don't get right
back to you, it isn't what your mind is imagining that they're mad or they're not speaking to you or
whatever. They just haven't gotten back to you yet. The simplest answer is probably the best one. And
that can relieve a lot of stress. So this has been great.
My guest has been Gabriel Weinberg. He is founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo. And he's also co-author of
the book, Superthinking, The Big Book of Mental Models. And you will find a link to his book
in the show notes. Thanks, Gabriel. Thanks for having me.
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Doesn't it seem that there are so many things that people like that are supposedly bad for you, bad for your health?
Things like coffee, the sun, sweets, they're all bad for you.
But usually there's more to the story than that.
In fact, a lot of these things that are considered sinful or vices
are, in moderation, just fine, and in fact sometimes even good for you.
Eric Ofgang and his father researched a bunch of these vices
to see which ones may have gotten a bad rap
and in fact might be just fine in moderation.
And they've put their findings in a book called
The Good Vices, From Beer to Sex,
The Surprising Truth About What's Actually Good for You.
Welcome, Eric. Thanks for being on Something You Should Know.
Thank you for having me.
So you have this whole list of these sinful things. Let's begin with alcohol, or specifically beer.
How is beer not so bad and maybe good for you?
Well, it's not always clear how they are good for us, but beer, for example, has been shown in about more than 100 studies to
lower cardiovascular disease or complications from cardiovascular disease. And it's been linked
in many, many studies and associated with longer living. That's moderate drinking one to two beers
a day. Alcohol can raise levels of good cholesterol in moderation.
It can also, hops also seem to have a lot of positive properties. And those are, you know,
what seems to be what makes beer potentially helpful. There's also the larger factors that
are harder to piece out in a study, which is, you know, maybe it's how you're drinking and how
you're enjoying that vice that causes you're drinking and how you're
enjoying that vice that causes you to relax and your overall mood to improve. And that,
we suspect, though there's not a whole lot of evidence to back this up yet, but we suspect
that that plays a role in the positive outcomes as well. Let's talk about sleep. And sleep itself
is not actually a vice. It's quite necessary. I think maybe the problem is really lack of sleep,
that people are not giving enough attention to sleep. Well, sleep is one of those things where
it's, I think everyone understands that it's important, but I don't think we realize how
important it is or place enough of a value on getting sleep. So, you know, when we're trying
to be more productive and we're trying to lose
weight and exercise more, oftentimes what we do is set the alarm clock earlier. And that could
make sense here or there and, you know, in a particular instance, of course. But what research
shows is that, you know, people who get more sleep tend to be lighter and lose more weight,
and they also tend to be more productive and have
more mental acuity. So sometimes, you know, getting extra sleep is the best thing you can do to really
maximize that productivity. And sleep is just incredibly healthy for so many different reasons.
It's associated with all sorts of positive health outcomes. And, you know, when we look at schools and high schools, just by moving the start times
back, many districts saw, you know, massive improvements in grades, as well as just overall
health outcomes for the students.
Let's talk about exercise, because, you know, people know they're supposed to exercise,
and they probably don't get enough exercise exercise and we have too many overweight people and all, and people don't like it, but
you talk about how, well, maybe you don't have to do as much as you think you do.
For instance, me personally, you could tell me how great running is all day and I could even
believe it, but the bottom line is I just hate running so much that there's no way, you know, I can't even run to save my life.
And it turns out, luckily, you don't have to.
That the biggest impact on your health comes from just doing, you know, from being totally sedentary to doing a very little.
You know, a lot of times when we talk about exercise, it gets kind of mixed in with appearance.
And sometimes those two things are one and the same, but sometimes they're not. So, you know, you see huge impact on your health
from just doing a little bit. One recent study looked at steps per day, and we all hear the
amount that you should get 10,000 steps a day, and that there's a lot of recommendations out
there saying that. And it turns out that there's no real basis for that exact amount. And this recent study,
which was one study, it looked at older women and looked at how active they were. So it was
limited in some ways in its findings. But what this study found was that the biggest increase
in health was after about 4,000 steps per day. So if you were less than 4,000 steps a day,
that was bad for your health. But if you had more than 4,000 steps, you saw a significant
increase. And they saw that after about 7,000 steps, it tended to level off.
So I think rather than thinking that we have to do all this exercise, or we have to go to the gym
three times a week, and we have to lift weight, we can realize that by just, you know, parking a little further away from our job or
when we go to the grocery store and taking a few short walks, you know, we could get to that 4,000
milestone without too much effort. Of all the things that you looked at, what was the one that
you either found the most interesting or the most surprising, or you pick one.
One that stands out to me always is coffee. Not because that coffee seems to be, again,
moderate drinking of coffee seems to be healthy. It's that there are so many studies showing that
even excessive amounts of coffee drinking is still healthy. And that's surprising to me. One study came out about
a week ago looking at, you know, 25, up to 25 cups of coffee a day was still healthy. And that's
something that, you know, I think that's an insane amount of coffee to do just to drink just from a
logistical standpoint. But there's always a lot of talk about coffee not being something we should,
you know, people give up coffee when they're trying to get healthy
and things like that. And it just doesn't really seem to be any evidence to indicate that A,
coffee is unhealthy, and B, there's a lot of evidence out there indicating that moderate
coffee drinking and maybe even excessive coffee drinking is healthy. In what way?
It can, it's associated with increased longevity,
decreased cognitive decline, decreased chance of some types of diabetes.
Wow. Well, if there was a medicine that could do all that, people would be snapping it up like
crazy. So talk about chocolate. Dark chocolate, the higher percentage of actual chocolate,
the better. There's even some chocolate, some artisan chocolate now you can get without any sugar. And it actually tastes
surprisingly good. I'm not traditionally a huge dark chocolate fan, but I had some of this
recently and it was interesting. It's a different type of treat. But even with some sugar, if you
get 60, 70% dark chocolate in moderation, it seems to have a lot of good properties. And again,
it's associated with, you know, very positive health outcomes.
So sex is sometimes considered, you know, the sinful pleasure, but in fact, it's good for you.
It really is one of those activities that, you know, is obviously very natural, obviously
something everyone does, but it has a lot
of health benefits. It's associated, it can boost, it's been shown to boost your immune system.
It has been associated in some studies with increased longevity. It has been associated
with decreased time with colds and things like that. And, you know, is obviously being in a
committed relationship. It's something that is obviously being in a committed relationship.
It's something that is also associated with a lot of positive health outcomes as loneliness can be
very bad for us. Yeah. And talk about happiness, because when you think about doing things for
your health, that's often not on the radar, but indeed it is. Yeah. It's something that gets
overlooked and there's a surprising
amount of skepticism around it and whether, you know, what extent it helps with your health. But
I always think it's one of those things where it's like the worst case you felt better for a while.
So at the worst case, it's helping your mental health. And there is a lot of evidence showing
that stress and anxiety can be really bad for our health, you know, prolonged stress and anxiety.
So happiness and our outlook, I think, can really help us in our everyday lives and help us
live long, happy, productive lives. And that's one of the things I think that kind of goes across
all these vices. And we talk about, you know, if you don't drink, I don't think you shouldn't
start drinking for health benefits. You know, most of these vices are things, if you don't drink, I don't think you shouldn't start drinking for health
benefits. You know, most of these vices are things that if you enjoy them already, there's something
you should do. And there's potential health benefits from that that may be linked to the
enjoyment you get out of it. But you know, if you don't like chocolate, don't start eating chocolate
as medicine. Let's talk about sunshine, because you know, the sun has been demonized and it clearly has some risks to it, but sunshine has also got some goodness. It boosts our vitamin D
and actually vitamin D deficiency is a major problem in a lot of the U.S. And so it really
can, you know, if you read about the sun, a lot of times you'll just think you have to basically don like a cape and walk outside with an umbrella.
And that, you know, yes, it'll prevent you from getting sunburned, which is good.
Getting sunburned is very bad.
But getting sun and exposure to the sun is very good for us.
It can boost our mood.
It can help us sleep.
And it, again, helps with that level of, you know, it helps
increase our levels of vitamin D. So everyone knows that cleanliness is a virtue and that dirt
is perhaps not so good in a lot of cases, but that a little dirt is actually not so bad,
as you point out. Sometimes an excessive focus on cleanliness can be detrimental. And there's
studies that show that children who grow up on a farm have a decreased chance of allergies.
Children who have pet dogs in particular seem to increase that. And there's even studies that look
at if you have a dishwasher versus washing the dishes by hand, that when you wash the dishes
by hand, the dishes don't get as clean. And in this instance, that's counterintuitively a good
thing because you're exposing your child to more good bacteria and exposing yourselves to more
good bacteria, which can, again, help your overall immune system through gut health and things like
that. And it's, again, one of those instances where there's moderation, where you obviously don't want to, you know, eat off the floor of a public
bus station or something like that. But you also don't want to be constantly washing your hands
or obsessive about scrubbing every surface and living in a sterile environment.
Well, and a lot of the things that you've talked about, I think people have heard
bits and pieces of, but it's nice to hear that it's been researched and that, in fact, there really is some science behind it. Eric
Ofgang has been my guest. He and his father are authors of the book, The Good Vices, From Beer to
Sex, The Surprising Truth About What's Actually Good for You. And you will find the link to his
book at Amazon in the show notes for this episode. Thanks, Eric.
All right. Thank you so much.
Before you know it, warmer weather will be here. And with the pandemic winding down,
people are traveling more by air and by car. And there's one thing that you have to remember to do when you travel that a lot of people forget to do when they travel, that
can really be a hassle.
And I've actually had this happen to me, and that is when you go on vacation you have to
call your credit card companies and tell them.
It's something people often forget to do in the rush to get ready to go on the trip, but
it is really important.
Why?
Well, many if not most credit card companies will decline purchases
made in geographical areas where they know you don't live. So if you don't tell them you're
going somewhere and you try to buy gasoline five states away on your summer trip, your purchase
will likely be declined, as will other purchases, until you call and explain why it is you're buying gasoline five states away from
your home. It's also a good idea to take things out of your wallet before you go on a trip and
leave them at home because if you do lose your wallet or it gets stolen, at least the things you
left behind will be safe. And that is something you should know. Oh, and before you go, while it's
fresh on your mind,
text somebody or send them an email and send them the link to this podcast so they can give a listen.
I'm Mike Carruthers.
Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.
Welcome to the small town of Chinook,
where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper.
In this new thriller, religion and crime collide
when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated
Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager,
but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group.
Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible
criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer,
unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law,
her religious convictions, and her very own family.
But something more sinister than murder is afoot,
and someone is watching Ruth.
Chinook.
Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan.
Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, this is Rob Benedict.
And I am Richard Spate.
We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural.
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.
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.