Something You Should Know - How To Reverse Engineer Your Way to Success & Why You Couldn’t Live Without Houseflies

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Starting point is 00:00:31 Today on Something You Should Know, why being an optimist is good and why faking it is almost as good. Then, reverse engineering. It's a seldom discussed pathway to success and greatness. It's how we got the personal computer and laptops and even the iPhone. What's less well known is that reverse engineering also explains how writers like Stephen King and Malcolm Gladwell learned their craft. Also, now that we're allowed to go outside, we really should because the benefits are amazing. And as annoying as house flies are, we couldn't live without them. They are incredibly valuable. If we want to measure a fly's

Starting point is 00:01:12 value in terms of human benefit, probably the most prominent of those things is that they're pollinators. And it's estimated that the value of insects as pollinators to humans is about over half a trillion dollars a year. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat.

Starting point is 00:01:57 Download Bumble and try it for yourself. 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. If you're an optimist or a pessimist? I've been asked that before, and I find it's kind of an interesting question, because at least for me, the answer is, it really depends. Some days when things are going well, I feel very optimistic, and then there are those days where just nothing goes right, and I have to admit, I feel pessimistic. But certainly, being an optimist has its rewards. Optimistic people have better mental and physical health,

Starting point is 00:02:49 and when they do get sick, they tend to recover faster than pessimistic people. They also earn more money, have more friends, and are generally happier. Although your level of optimism is somewhat built into your personality, it turns out that if you act like an optimist, you will become more optimistic. So, straighten up your posture. Optimistic people tend to have good posture. And they walk with bigger steps. Act happy. Use a cheerful tone of voice, even if it feels funny. Use optimistic language.

Starting point is 00:03:24 Instead of saying things like, I'm going to make changes, say, I'm going to make some improvements. According to Michael Mercer, author of the book Spontaneous Optimism, research has proven that doing what optimistic people do will make you more optimistic. And that is something you should know. How do you become great at something? Are the people who are at the top of their game really special? Do they possess some inherent ability that makes them so good?

Starting point is 00:03:59 Or can we all be great at something if we practice enough? What is the path to greatness, and is it open to everyone? Award-winning social psychologist Ron Friedman, author of the book Decoding Greatness, has researched what makes for a top performer, and he says it isn't necessarily what you might think. Hey Ron, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. So by definition, greatness is reserved for a select few, because if we were all great, well, then we'd all be average. So whenever there's a discussion of top performers in anything, sports or business or whatever, it's always, you know, Michael Jordan, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs.

Starting point is 00:04:46 And, you know, somehow those people don't seem that ordinary. They seem to be very special. And while people may find it interesting to hear about them and to talk about them, I don't think that most of us think we can actually get there. If I were to put my finger on the thing that motivated me to write this book, that would be it, is this misperception that we have that greatness is for others. And it comes from the stories we've been told about success. There are two basic stories that most of us have heard throughout our lives. The first story is that greatness comes from talent. It's this idea that we're all born with certain innate strengths and that the key to achieving greatness is finding a field that allows those strengths to shine, whatever those strengths are for you.

Starting point is 00:05:34 The second story is that greatness comes from practice. And according to this perspective, getting to the top requires the right practice regimen and an appetite for doing lots of hard work. But in doing the research, what I found is that there's a third story, and it's one that's not often told, yet it's the path that an astonishing number of top performers, everyone from writers and artists to inventors and entrepreneurs used for generations. And it involves mastering a skill that few people have heard of, and that skill is called reverse engineering. And it works how? Reverse engineering simply means studying the best in a field and then working backward to figure out how they did it. In Silicon Valley, it's well known.

Starting point is 00:06:18 There's a long history of coders who have deconstructed winning products to learn how they're made. It's how we got the personal computer and laptops and even the iPhone. What's less well known is that reverse engineering also explains how writers like Stephen King and Malcolm Gladwell learned their craft and how painters like Claude Monet became a groundbreaking artist and how Judd Apatow became one of the most successful comedy minds of our generation. Studying the best works in a field and then working backwards to figure out how they were created turns out to be a lot more common than anyone realized. So you mean that if I were to go ask any of the people you just mentioned, how'd you do

Starting point is 00:06:57 that? They would say, well, I looked at the best and I reverse engineered what they did. And then I did that. It's not clear to me that they would identify the term reverse engineering, but it is without a doubt the component of reverse engineering that has enabled them to perform at the level that they have. And I'll give you some clear examples. In the case of Stephen King, he utilized a process called copywork. And what that means is, in his case, he would take comic books,

Starting point is 00:07:26 and he would recreate them word for word for memory when he was a kid. And that enabled him to pick up on some of the hidden patterns that are embedded in some of the more successful stories. In the case of Gladwell, Gladwell has said that he would look at William Buckley. William F. Buckley, that was his favorite writer growing up. And if you looked at his early work, he describes it himself as insanely derivative because all he was doing was looking for patterns and trying to model off them. And I think that so many of us actually do this implicitly. No one's ever taught us to go and copy someone else's work or to look for hidden patterns. But invariably, that is one of the key steps to figuring out what works in your field and then adapting some of those formulas to create new works.

Starting point is 00:08:13 That's the key. When you say copying other people, there's something about copying that doesn't, you know, we're told don't copy. You know, you come up with your own way of doing things. You come up with your own idea. You don't copy somebody else's. Yes. And just to be clear, I am not suggesting that copying is the path to greatness. What I am suggesting is that the process of copying can teach you some of the tricks of the trade that you can then apply in new ways by evolving some of those proven formulas. And one of the interesting things that I discovered while doing the research

Starting point is 00:08:51 is that copying actually makes us more creative, not less. And here's why. It's because the process of copying someone else's work opens our eyes up to decisions that we might have otherwise overlooked. And that experience of considering options that we normally would ignore makes us more creative in subsequent work. And so there's research out of the University of Tokyo that had amateur artists copy the work of an established painter and compared a different group that didn't go through that experience and was just told to create original work. And what they found was that the process of copying the work of an established artist actually made their subsequent paintings more

Starting point is 00:09:35 creative. And it wasn't by mimicking the style of the artist they copied. It was being original in completely new ways. And I think, Mike, the key takeaway here is that the last thing that you want to do when you're searching for novel ideas is to be stuck in your own head. Creativity comes from blending ideas, not isolation, which is why this process of studying other people's work in an analytical way and looking for hidden patterns is so powerful. Still, you can look for patterns in other people's work and blend ideas and all the things you're talking about. But if you don't have the talent and you're not willing to put in the time and the practice, then you got nothing. Without question. There's no question that if you are born with particular strengths that match your field, you're going to have an easier time excelling. Same is true for practice.

Starting point is 00:10:27 If you have the right practice regimen, you're going to do much better. But there's a glaring problem with the notion that it takes 10,000 hours to succeed at any particular field or that just practice generally is enough to get you there. And that glaring problem is that you can't practice an idea you've never considered. The best ideas don't emerge from hours of isolated practice. They're waiting to be found inside the work of masters, which is what reverse engineering allows you to do. Just because you can identify patterns in other people's work doesn't mean you can do it, though. I mean, I could spend years analyzing and reverse engineering Michael Jordan's ability to play basketball.

Starting point is 00:11:12 It's unlikely I will ever have the ability to play basketball like him. In the case of Michael Jordan, that's a physical sport, and without question, we're all going to have particular physical limitations. The limitation to that thinking is that reverse engineering, although it might not make you Michael Jordan, identifying what he's doing differently will likely improve your performance on the basketball court and enable you to guard against other players more effectively. And so if we make it a black and white discussion of either I'm going to become Michael Jordan or this doesn't work, then most strategies are not going to work because Michael Jordan is such a singular talent.

Starting point is 00:11:54 What we should be looking at is what's the quickest way to improve? What's the quickest way to improving our skills? And there's no question that reverse engineering can help us improve our skills in ways that go beyond simply simple practice. By how much? You know, there's no real, I can't point to a particular number, because it depends on your inborn ability. It depends on how you're going about reverse engineering, how well you're applying it.

Starting point is 00:12:29 There are so many factors there that make it difficult to pinpoint, to give a definitive answer. I guess what I mean is the implication is that if you reverse engineer greatness, you too can be great. And my question is, can you be great or can you just maybe be better than you might otherwise have been? That's such a great question, Mike. I don't know whether I can say definitively that you can be great. But I do know that if you've given up on your dreams because you've become convinced by

Starting point is 00:12:57 one of the two conventional stories that A, you don't have the inborn talent, or B, you don't have 10,000 hours or the ability to just practice, practice, practice for a decade of time, then this offers an alternative option to not just improving your skills, but allowing you to strive for some of the things that perhaps you've given up on. How do you do it? How do you reverse engineer someone else's success? And how do you know what you're looking at is actually the reason that they got there? There are a wide variety of techniques for reverse engineering, and all of them involve looking for clues that reveal how an object was created. So it ultimately depends on what field you're looking to reverse engineer work in. So in the world of

Starting point is 00:13:45 writing, nonfiction authors will often go to the bibliography at the end of a work to identify the sources that went into creating it. In the world of cooking, chefs will often order food to go, where they can place certain sauces on a white plate and parse out the ingredients. Sometimes they'll use a microscope. Photographers will scan images for clues like the length of shadows that reveal the time of day and the location of a light source. The critical thing ultimately is to not just enjoy an object passively, but to continuously think, how was this constructed? What can I learn from this? And how does this apply to a project I'm working on. We're talking about peak performance and how to use reverse engineering to achieve it,

Starting point is 00:14:32 and my guest is social psychologist Ron Friedman, author of the book Decoding Greatness. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool.

Starting point is 00:15:15 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. Since I host a podcast,

Starting point is 00:15:43 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 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 00:16:31 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 Ron, sometimes I think that in the quest to reverse engineer greatness, to figure out what someone did to get to the top, typically you would look at their talent and their abilities. But sometimes it isn't just talent and ability that propels you to the top. And so here's an example. Okay, so let's say you want to be a great singer, a really successful singer.

Starting point is 00:17:18 And you could focus on how other great singers sing, but I've talked to enough people in the music business that'll tell you that there's a lot of people who can sing really well. You need to know how to play the game of being a success in the music business. And yeah, singing's important, but there's a lot more to it than that. So if you're spending all your time perfecting your pitch and how you breathe and the way you pronounce words, you're missing the boat. I love that example because in Decoding Greatness, I talk about some of the formulas that musicians use to be successful.

Starting point is 00:17:54 And one of those formulas is standing out from other musicians and also evolving their approach over time. Some of the greats like, for example, David Bowie and Beyonce, what you'll find is that every year or so, they will evolve their image. And that's a pattern too. And they're doing it because they realize that if they continue to put out the same product, album after album, they're going to fade. And this is often what you see with many musical acts, is that they fade over time because they continue to bring out the same types of songs, the same look and feel. And that's an element that contributes to their success as musicians that you may not pick up on unless you attempt to reverse engineer what they're

Starting point is 00:18:45 really doing. So when you reverse engineer, what are you doing? Are you sitting down with a piece of paper and going, okay, well, so let's see here. He did this and he did this. I mean, what's the process specifically? It depends on the particular field. But one of the things that often plays a role is something I call zooming out. Zooming out essentially means elevating yourself to a higher level and evaluating what is really happening

Starting point is 00:19:12 without staring at the details. It's the difference between standing up close to a canvas and seeing the brushstrokes and taking a few steps back and witnessing the totality of what is on the canvas. And an example of this in writing is a process called reverse outlining. So everyone has heard of outlining. It's what we do in middle school and in high school where we plan a paper in advance by listing the major points we intend to address in the various sections of our paper. Reverse outlining entails working backwards and outlining the major points contained within a completed piece. So it's a simple process, but it empowers you to uncover hidden structures within the work of public – of authors other than yourself. So I can tell you I've taught writing on the graduate level and on the undergraduate level. And one of the things that you teach

Starting point is 00:20:05 people is to reverse outline because once they reverse outline, they can't help but see that certain paragraphs aren't contributing anything. But you can also do this with the works of published authors to identify what it is that's happening over the trajectory of a essay or of a book. Now, reverse outlining goes beyond writing. Marketers can use it to reverse outline memorable advertisements. Consultants can use it to reverse outline successful proposals. Podcasters can use it to outline a program structure. And when you do that, you're able to pick up on things that you might otherwise miss that can help contribute to your evolving the formula in a new way. And what about the, you know, the idea that,

Starting point is 00:20:52 which I think is kind of inbred in how we approach success is, you know, yeah, that's good, that worked for him, but that's not going to work for you. You have to come up with your own way of doing things because his way isn't going to be your way. I'm glad you brought that up because the truth is someone else's formula, if you just simply try to reproduce it, the chances of you being able to pull it off in a way that feels authentic to you are low. And I give an example where I actually reverse engineer a TED Talk. It's actually one of the most popular TED Talks of all time by Ken Robinson. And I look to see what he is doing within that talk and try to show people how they can reverse engineer other TED Talks to identify what the formula is and also evolve it in a way that feels authentic to them. And one of the things that you discover when you analyze Ken Robinson's TED Talk is that he actually relies on very few facts. Although he's an education expert, he actually just conveys one fact throughout the entire talk. Now, he's able to do that because

Starting point is 00:21:56 he's an education expert. He actually relies on anecdotes and storytelling to become persuasive to his audience. But if you're not an education expert, you might feel like you actually do need some facts to present a persuasive talk. Or another thing that Ken Robinson does is that he relies on a lot of jokes. What if you're not funny? What if that's not your personality? And so what I try to tell people is that you don't need to just simply identify a single formula.

Starting point is 00:22:21 Often the best outcomes can come about when you reverse engineer four or five or six examples that really resonate with you and pick out the elements that feel like they would work best in your particular circumstance. And so it's not about finding a single formula and then utilizing it for yourself, but rather being inquisitive about what it is that's working and how might I apply this to what I'm working on. So I certainly see the value of finding someone else who is successful and deconstructing, reverse engineering their success. But I guess what I'm wondering is how do I know that when I identify, well, the reason they were successful is they did it this way.

Starting point is 00:23:09 How do I know that that's really the reason that they were successful? They might have been successful because they were pretty good and they knew the right person or they were at the right place at the right time. How do I know what I think is the reason for success is actually the reason for success and then build my success on top of that? I don't think that what we're trying to do here is reverse engineer one particular person's career path. What we're trying to identify are what makes a particular work within a given field so

Starting point is 00:23:43 impactful. And I think that is a crucial difference because we're not trying, for example, to recreate my, if I want to write a great book, I might say to myself, wow, that Malcolm Gladwell, he's really successful. Why don't I just try to figure out what he's doing and copying it? That probably is likely to not work for some of the reasons I mentioned, which is that audience expectations tend to evolve. And also because what Malcolm Gladwell did in the early 2000s was unique at the time and is no longer quite as unique. One really solid example of somebody we might know that reverse engineered someone else's success and used it to be successful. And you say Barack Obama is a perfect example. So explain that. Well, long before he became president, Obama was a dreadful speaker and he got trounced in his first congressional race.

Starting point is 00:24:43 And that's a little bit hard for people to believe. And the reason that he did not succeed as a speaker is because he had been a law professor and was used to lecturing students. Voters didn't appreciate being lectured to and they let him know at the ballot. And after that stinging loss, for a while, Obama actually considered leaving politics until he noticed the way that pastors delivered sermons at church. And he started applying that approach to his speeches. And so when he came back to politics, he started – he was now telling more stories. He was modulating his tone. He was using repetition to drive home points.

Starting point is 00:25:21 And what Obama's story illustrates is that often the quickest path to success isn't finding your talent or practicing harder. It's about plucking strategies that work in other fields and then importing them into your own. Well, it's interesting as I'm listening to you speak, I'm thinking that I, without knowing what I was doing, have done this several times in my life, in my career and in my personal life. I've done what you're talking about, where I've kind of reverse engineered what people who are good at it do and then tried to emulate them in my own way. So it's interesting to hear that it's a legitimate way to achieve success. Ron Friedman's been my guest.

Starting point is 00:26:03 The name of his book is Decoding Greatness, and you'll find a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Ron. I enjoyed it. Thank you for your time. 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

Starting point is 00:26:40 Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Starting point is 00:27:27 In the spring and summer, when you go outside, it seems there are always flies waiting to bother you. They buzz around your head, they land on your food and on your drinks. They can be a constant annoyance. And when you take into account all the species of flies, which includes mosquitoes, which is something I didn't know until today, flies are your almost constant summertime companion and pest. So what are flies? Where do they come from?

Starting point is 00:28:00 Do they serve any useful purpose? And is there anywhere in the world that doesn't have flies? With the answer to these questions and more is biologist Jonathan Balcom. He's the author of a book called Superfly, The Unexpected Lives of the World's Most Successful Insects. Hey, Jonathan, welcome. Hi, Mike. Great to be here. So let's start with some facts.

Starting point is 00:28:24 What is it we know about flies on the planet Earth? Flies are a major group in the most successful group of animals on Earth. Insects make up about 80% of all known species, and flies make up about 160,000 of those, and it's estimated there may be five times as many on Earth that are yet to be described by us. So they're a massive group. They're like the entrepreneurs of insects. They're very nimble. They're very clever. They do a lot of amazing things, how they interact with other species and their environments. And so that's kind of why I wanted to talk about these animals. And so at any given moment, how many flies are there in the

Starting point is 00:29:05 world? It's estimated there are 20 million flies, about 20 million flies for every human. So if you do the numbers, that puts them in the quadrillions, I think. There's estimated to be quintillions of insects. That's one with about 18 zeros after it. So there's just huge numbers. And when we talk about flies, we talk about house flies, horse flies, dragon flies. Are they all flies? Yeah, it's confusing. No, some of those are. Horse flies are, deer flies, mosquitoes. There's lots of obscure ones, but dragon flies are not. That's another group. Beetles, of course, have wings. People know beetles aren't flies. Wasps dragonflies are not. That's another group. Beetles, of course, have wings. People know beetles aren't flies. Wasps and bees are not flies. They're hymenopterans. So there's quite a few groups of winged insects. A lot of them are flies, but not all of them.

Starting point is 00:29:56 So when I think of a fly, I think of like the common house fly. That's the thing. And I remember having a conversation, I think on this podcast with somebody about, you know, what purpose could they possibly serve? Not just flies, but just insects in general. I mean, I'm sure they have their own purpose, which is to multiply and keep making more flies, but they seem to be more trouble than they're worth, which is why we swat them and smack them and spray them and try to kill them. Yeah, it's easy to forget how useful they are. Many people may not know it all, hence the question. But if we want to measure a fly's value in terms of human benefits, they certainly do benefit us in huge ways. Probably the most prominent of those things is that they're pollinators, that

Starting point is 00:30:42 they are ranked second only to the bees and wasps as pollinators. And in alpine and northern regions, they are the champions of pollinators. And it's estimated that the value of insects as pollinators to humans is about over half a trillion dollars a year, the total commercial value of pollination of plants, crops that we eat. And flies are a huge part of that. They're also important, though, as waste disposers. They clean up dead, rotting bodies. And poop, they clean up huge amounts of that. And sure, that's gross, but hey, we'd be living in a much less clean and pestilential, in a much more pestilential planet if we didn't have flies. And the other really critical point here is that

Starting point is 00:31:26 they're very important members of food webs. They're as predators and parasites themselves, they consume a lot of creatures, but they are also consumed by many. So if flies disappeared, the food webs would collapse, the planet would essentially collapse into chaos, and we wouldn't survive that event probably. Wow. That's really surprising. Gives me new respect for flies, but they certainly are annoying. And when flies annoy people when they're buzzing around, I assume they're just looking for something to eat, for the most part. That's right. They're out for food. Of course, in the case of a mosquito or a horsefly, the food they're after is that lovely liquor that we have coursing through our bodies,

Starting point is 00:32:10 blood. But also, yeah, houseflies zipping along your arm. I was visited by many houseflies researching my book. I actually quite like the tickle of them, but most people would rather they not be there. But yeah, they're looking for scraps and they have this proboscis on their mouth and they have this wonderful ability to use it as a both a sort of squeegee as a sort of a squeegee mop so they can release fluids through the mop through the proboscis to liquefy food on the surface and then they can imbibe it they can lap suck it up through the proboscis. So it's a very, very complex organ, a very useful organ for them to get by. In terms of, you know, pests and that sort of thing, it is worth mentioning. The bad side of flies is that they parasitize us. They come for our blood.

Starting point is 00:33:02 Some of them do. And they're also vectors of diseases such as, of course, malaria, Zika, yellow fever, fortunately not COVID. And they're crop pests, quote-unquote pests, because, of course, that's how we categorize them. So in those ways, that's the bad side of flies. But, you know, they're just indispensable. And I just want to add that they're also very useful. We know more about genetics thanks to flies. The fruit fly is sort of the darling of genetics research. And they're also crime solvers.

Starting point is 00:33:37 Their capacity to locate a dead body at great speed and with great accuracy has led to many murder convictions and also some exonerations. And the other thing I wanted to mention there in terms of the utility to us beyond being pollinators and waste disposers is that they are also used in medicine for wound healing. They have properties that lend itself very well to healing intractable wounds such as diabetic ulcers and the like. So wait a minute. Let's go back to how they solve crimes. Explain that. I mean, you can't say, hey, Freddy the fly fly go find this body like you might tell a dog so how do they find bodies and how do we know that's what they're doing Freddie finds the dead body by his or her own

Starting point is 00:34:15 resources their sense of chemical smell if you like is so acute that they are very quick to recognize the presence of a dead body in the vicinity. So they will come along and they will land on the carcass and they will start their life history, which in that case is not so much food, although that's something they will use a carcass for, but mainly it's to lay eggs. Those eggs hatch out on a particular schedule depending on the species and the weather conditions. The maggots feed on the carcass. And if by looking at the carcass and the stage of development of the maggots, forensic entomologists, which is the specialists who

Starting point is 00:34:57 specialize in this rather morbid field, they can determine to within hours the time of death of the victim. And that's a really critical piece of information, the time of death of the victim. And that's a really critical piece of information, the amount of time that's elapsed since their death. And that's why evidence from insects has led many, many times to exonerations as well as convictions in murder cases. Wait, wait, though. It's not that the flies are finding the body

Starting point is 00:35:23 and they're following the flies to locate the—it's not that the flies are finding the body and they're following the flies to locate the... It's not that. No, it's more a case of not knowing where the carcass is, and then when somebody's body is discovered in the woods, it could be days or weeks later, the development of the stages of development, the evidence either left by flies or still present by the flies allows the researchers, the entomologists, to determine very closely how long ago it was that that body died. And that can be a very important piece of evidence in terms of knowing the whereabouts

Starting point is 00:35:56 of a suspect or suspects in the case. I should add, Mike, though, that there is quite a lot of research ongoing and has been done in the past, including at the University of Tennessee when I was a grad student there. There's a place called the Body Farm, which is a cordoned off area of many acres of woodland and other habitats. And the scientists actually place dead human bodies there. They obviously have to get special permission to do this. And then they get the baseline data on when and what kind of flies arrive. Of course, it's only specific to the

Starting point is 00:36:31 particular geographical region. So this kind of research is going on around the world. When flies, maggots are baby flies, basically, right? Right, yes. And I don't know much about insects, but it seems that most animals don't lay their eggs on their food, but flies seem to do that. Yes, they typically lay their eggs on their food. Why? Well, they feed, and then they give a head start for their young by laying eggs on the carcass or the poop or whatever food source it is. And there are flies who eat more agreeable things, such as nectar and such. laying eggs on the carcass or the poop or the whatever food source it is, and there

Starting point is 00:37:05 are flies who eat more agreeable things such as nectar and such, but by laying the eggs there, you give a good head start to your young. Oh, so it's a food source for the young. That's correct, yeah. With the wound healing I mentioned, that's the same case. It's gross to think about, but these maggots, which are contained in a pouch, sort of like a tea bag, a mesh pouch, they're feeding on necrotic tissue, tissue that's not going to heal and that. They scour it out. And then the scouring of the rasping mouth parts help to clean the wound. They don't eat fresh, good tissue. They only go for the rotting necrotic tissue. So that's why they're so valuable at healing intractable wounds.

Starting point is 00:37:58 So knowing what you know about flies, when you're sitting at a picnic and one lands on your hot dog, do you still eat the hot dog? It's a great question. It depends. I think I'd probably rub it off. I'd probably give it a little wipe just to be on the safe side. You know, flies and house flies are definitely contaminated often because of some of the types of unsavory items that they're attracted to. And they can mechanically transfer germs from one thing to another. So yeah, I think, you know, covering food is a good idea. And if a fly lands on something, then wiping it off is a good idea. There was a study done, actually, and more people were grossed out by the presence of cockroaches on their food than flies. But it's been suggested,

Starting point is 00:38:42 there's data that suggests that cockroaches are a little bit cleaner than flies. That's interesting, yeah. I mean, people are, because flies will come around your picnic and land on your food, people, you know, wave their arms and get rid of them, but they still go ahead and eat the food, because to not, if we threw it all away, well, nobody would eat anything. Yeah, some enterprising biologists at a border area where there was food kiosks outside, I think it was in Guatemala, they wanted to impress upon the food vendors that the flies do transfer bad things to our food. And what they did was they sprinkled white flour, I think it was, on the latrines nearby. And then a few hours later, little bits of white flower were showing up in the footprints of the flies who'd gone from the latrines to the

Starting point is 00:39:29 food outlets. So that was one way of demonstrating, and the vendors started covering up their food after that. Yeah. Is it possible to go anywhere in the world and there not be flies? Well, I can tell you they're found on all seven continents, and I believe they're the only group of insects that can make that claim. So on that basis, perhaps not. Of course, in the depths of winter in the Antarctic, you're probably not, you're not going to have any mosquitoes buzzing around you, but, you know, stay until summer and you probably will. If a fly, I mean, how do flies get around? Like, do flies like hide in suit, and then when you get to your destination and open your suitcase, the fly pops out and off he goes? I mean, do they travel that way, or do they just fly where they fly on their own, or how do they get around?

Starting point is 00:40:15 Yeah, most of their dispersal is, of course, just using their wings. But I've seen flies in large aircrafts on intercontinental flights, and I think, you know, is that fly going to – well, you've got to figure occasionally some of those flies exit the plane on landing when the doors open. I can imagine it's maybe a bewildering experience for a fly to suddenly find themselves in Nairobi when they left New York nine hours earlier. So for sure, because of their omnipresence and their ability to move quickly, we have definitely helped disperse them. You mentioned suitcases, and I have to just add that flies are incredibly good at getting into tight spaces. Not so much the adults, but the larvae, the little maggots. They're small maggots that actually can crawl between the teeth of a suitcase zipper. That little bit of information is proved useful in, again, back into this forensic entomology

Starting point is 00:41:13 cases where murderers have hidden their victims in suitcases and the flies can get in there and access that. And again, they leave a trail of evidence as to when and where that victim was killed. Talk about how flies relate to each other. Do they mate for life? Do they mess around? Do they have girlfriends and boyfriends? How do they communicate with each other? That kind of thing. Yeah, they sure do mess around. Flies have very colorful sex lives. I like to say that fly sex comes in 50 shades of brown. They have courtship songs, they have wing fanning, they have some quite complex courtship displays. You get male-male competition where males will square off in fights. But do they live in communities? Where do they go at night? How long

Starting point is 00:42:03 do they live? That kind of thing. Well, most of the lifespan of most insects is in the larval stage. So there's a short egg period. It's the same with caterpillars turning into butterflies and moths. So the larvae need maybe a couple of weeks to mature. And then the adult period, well, actually the adult period of some flies can be months, but a lot of small ones, midges and such, it may be a day or less. So it really varies quite a bit, not surprisingly, with such a diverse group of insects. So the housefly buzzing around my house that I then see on the windowsill a couple days later may have lived a good long life. Some of them may have, indeed. I have to tell you, Mike, I rescue them out of my house.

Starting point is 00:42:47 It just gives me a good feeling to liberate them. If I see them buzzing, bouncing against a window pane, as happens in the warmer months, it's fun to take them out and let them fly. Well, but that's hard to do. And I was going to ask you about, they're very hard to catch. They're very hard to hit. Because why? It's a way of escaping predators. Their great speed is probably because they have a history of being pests for other humans, primates, other animals with swatting tails. You know, when you look at cows in the field in the summer or horses, those tails are swatting

Starting point is 00:43:24 constantly. They're not swatting at marshmallows. They're swatting at flies. So I think flies' speed and guile is a product of their unpopularity among other animals. a credible source, that flies experience time differently. That although we think we're swatting a fly really fast, the fly perceives us as moving very slow. And they have tons of time in fly time to get out of the way. I love that idea, too. It gets at the question of, you know, what's the experience of a fly?

Starting point is 00:44:00 And I want to just make a note here that flies have been shown in close, careful experiments to have an attention span. They do have some cognitive skills. So the question of whether they're alert or conscious does come to mind. All the flies around my house and that are outside, where do they go at night? Do they live in a community? Do they just sit in a tree? Do they hang out with their girlfriend? Where are they? They're probably where the kind of places where birds go at night. You know, we see them in the day. They're all over the place. They're calling, they're flying everywhere. And then at night, where are they? Of course, there's some birds that are active at night, and there are some flies active at night. But most of them, as you say, they go to bed somewhere.

Starting point is 00:44:42 Where are they? My guess is, and I have to say this is not an expert answer. I don't remember researching this. They probably just find nooks and perch quietly there. They do sleep. I can tell you that. Flies do sleep. And so they're probably doing what birds do. They find a quiet perch that's on an outer limb in a tree in the case of birds and perhaps

Starting point is 00:45:01 under an eave or under a little bit of bark in the case of flies. And they hide there for the night, and all going well, they'll be ready to resume their activities the next morning. You mentioned at the beginning that there are thousands and thousands of species of flies, and probably thousands of species that have yet to be discovered, but of all the species we know, is there any species that really is particularly interesting or that you find fascinating? Let me give a bizarre one. Bot flies. So I'll just mention a bit about them. Just something I thought was fascinating about their life history.

Starting point is 00:45:37 Bot flies are quite large, bumbling flies. They don't have any mouth parts. They don't feed as adults. And they get their maggots inside our body and the maggots feed on us it's kind of gross but it's also pretty morbidly fascinating how did they how does the maggot entered our body and how that happens is a really I think an interesting situation that involves a courier involves the involvement of another fly so what a bot fly does a

Starting point is 00:46:02 female who's ready to delay eggs, she perches and looks for a mosquito, hopefully a female mosquito because it's only females who bite us. And a mosquito comes by, bot fly flies out, grabs the mosquito, temporarily holds the mosquito captive while she lays an egg on the mosquito and then lets the mosquito go. The egg hatches into a maggot which crawls to the mouth part, the proboscis of the mosquito that biting mouth part and then when the mosquito if from the bot flies perspective and the mosquitoes perspective if the mosquito is successful in finding someone to bite and of course this needn't necessarily be a human it could be a rhino or another mammal then the mosquito bites

Starting point is 00:46:41 the little maggot crawls down the proboscis, gets onto the host who's being bitten. Mosquito withdraws, flies away, and then the little maggot crawls through the hole left by the mosquito to start his or her little bit of several weeks of development and growing inside the host before hatching out and dropping onto the ground and pupating and eventually becoming another adult bot fly. That's just disgusting. I understand. In fact, this whole conversation has been kind of gross, but interesting nonetheless.

Starting point is 00:47:12 Jonathan Balcombe has been my guest. He's a biologist and author of the book Superfly, The Unexpected Lives of the World's Most Successful Insects. And you will find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Jonathan. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, Mike. It's been a real pleasure. During the pandemic, it was recommended and seemed to be the smart thing to do to stay home, stay inside, and not expose yourself to other people. Now that things have opened up a bit, it's worth talking about the fact that being outdoors is really, really good for you.

Starting point is 00:47:51 There have actually been studies regarding the effects of nature on kids and their development. And it turns out that Mother Nature does know best. Simply being outdoors, interacting with nature, has been shown to reduce stress, it gets kids more focused, and even enhances a child's emotional and social development. One study in Environment and Behavior magazine said that the more natural the surroundings, even the more greenery around the home, the more significant the stress reduction. Even teens benefited from being outdoors. They showed increased self-esteem, independence, and initiative with more interaction with nature.

Starting point is 00:48:33 So now that we can go outdoors, we really should be outdoors. And that is something you should know. If you like what we do here, you can support this podcast and it's really easy to do. Just tell someone about it, ask them to listen. It helps us grow our audience and ensures that we can keep delivering interesting episodes for years to come. 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.

Starting point is 00:49:18 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,

Starting point is 00:49:41 and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. 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

Starting point is 00:50:16 on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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